Extreme Ownership in Recruiting: Success Guide with Brad Wilson

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Brad Wilson [00:00:03]:
Ultimately, the best way to build trust with a government contractor if you're a recruiting firm, is to get them the right people that they need with the right security clearances that are able to start in a timely manner. In government contractor recruiting, nothing says, I don't really know what I'm doing then submitting candidates with the wrong clearance level. We had just had our second kid when I made the jump. Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:22]:
Like, how do you juggle, like, literally a brand new baby and a brand new baby business?

Brad Wilson [00:00:27]:
Looking back, even right now, I'm really not sure how I do it. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:37]:
On what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing.

Brad Wilson [00:00:42]:
Mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:48]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast. Two reasons. First of all, this is one of my buddies in the govcon space, and I love talking government contracting. But secondly, and what I think is most importantly is the market has absolutely shifted. It has changed. And here's the question. Did you shift with it? Did you make changes in yourself, or did you keep on doing the same things that ended up not working? My guest, Brad Wilson, actually had to make the shifts himself as the market changed. Like, we all had the heydays.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:22]:
It was the golden era of recruiting, and then everything changed. So, Brad, welcome to the podcast.

Brad Wilson [00:01:28]:
Benjamin, appreciate you having me on, man. Very excited for this.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:31]:
All right, real quick, before we do a deep dive and all this stuff, talk a little bit about what you're doing now.

Brad Wilson [00:01:36]:
Yeah, so I'm the founder and the owner over here at STEM Solutions, in which we focus on all things security clearance and government contracted recruiting. You know, we provide a contingent contract to hire and RPO recruiting services to government contractors as well as small commercial companies here in the Northern Virginia area.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:56]:
Awesome. Awesome. So I know we've known each other for a while, kind of like in bouncing in between, like, you know, the government contracting chat and like, you know, you get to know, like, the. The people out there doing the same stuff that you're doing. But for all the listeners, how did you even end up in this wonderful world?

Brad Wilson [00:02:12]:
Yeah, it's, you know, I think, like, probably every recruiter you speak to. I got my degree in recruiting. Right. That's how it works. No, none of us do that. After college, I actually, I was in a recruiting job without really realizing it. I was a staffing coordinator for, like, a Parks and Recreation Group. So, you know, we would staff all the lifeguarding positions and seasonal health type roles and stuff like that.

Brad Wilson [00:02:36]:
So I was recruiting without really realizing it. So did that for a couple years and then I went to recruiter college, AKA Aerotech. You know, I know a lot of your guests have been on that and like everyone says, the training, the training is absolutely second to none at Aerotech or some of those other big grad shops. So that was a great time. Did my time there and then got recruited out to actually go be an internal recruiter at a government contractor. So that was a great time helping build that company. You know, while I was there, I think we went from like 150 to 300 employees. So getting to make that impact, getting to see those people that you place, getting that face time with executives and VPs and business development folks and just learning as much as you can.

Brad Wilson [00:03:16]:
I loved it. So recruited for them for three years and then actually got promoted to running IT and facilities and some other departments within the company. And I did that for another three years. So really got to learn kind of how a government contractor runs, both from a recruiting perspective and then from a back office infrastructure perspective and seeing all that goes into that, especially on the overset overhead and corporate operations side. So I was with that company for six years and you know, the whole time just kind of had this, this itch to grow this recruiting business. You know, I knew the opportunity that was there. I knew I kind of had a unique experience from seeing it from both the internal recruiting side and the operations side and the staffing agency side. So wanted to bring that all together.

Brad Wilson [00:03:59]:
And then in 2022, took the full time leap and took STEM Solutions full time. And, you know, here we are now, almost three years later.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:06]:
Okay, I want to talk about this. You said you took STEM Solutions full time?

Brad Wilson [00:04:09]:
Yes, sir.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:09]:
So were you doing this part time, like creating?

Brad Wilson [00:04:13]:
Exactly, was doing a little bit of placement here and there, you know, maybe three, four placements a year, maybe some hourly work for old colleagues, things like that. So I was doing that for about two years, you know, just kind of saving money and doing that on the side until I had that nest egg ready to make that leap.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:30]:
I've seen this happen. This is actually kind of like what I did too, except for you probably made a little more placements when you're working part time than I was. So for somebody out there that's like looking at making that jump. They don't have that financial wiggle room, the nest egg, or, you know, the Savings setup. How did you start doing this part time while still keeping your full time income safe?

Brad Wilson [00:04:50]:
Yeah, for sure. You know, I was super conscious of making sure there were never any conflicts of interest. Making sure we were never recruiting on, you know, the same programs or even with the same government agencies. And I tried to do, you know, as different a skill sets as I could. So my old boss, she actually went and worked for a pretty large government contractor as their HR director and was like, hey, we need some help finding, you know, cleared people like everyone does. And she actually bought me on hourly so I was able to do some hourly work for her for a couple months. And you know, that's kind of like, you know, you, you got the taste for it. And I was like, all right, where's the rest of it at? And then.

Brad Wilson [00:05:25]:
Yeah, so from there actually I went to like a recruiting training seminar from the Recruiter U. If anyone doesn't know about the Recruiter U, their recruiting training program highly recommend them. So I went to one of like their free get you in the door seminars and got some really good tactics from that. And from the taxes I learned from that seminar, I was able to actually land a couple of contingent clients. And yeah, over the next, you know, 2019, 20, 20, 2021, I was able to do a few placements a year and just kind of slowly save money until we were ready to take this full time.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:57]:
Okay, so and for the listeners, when you took it full time, there's like two questions that I might kind of like would love for you to share. Like what spurred you finally making that jump? And also for the listeners, you have three kids under five right now. So like you had some youngins in there when you're like, you know what, screw this, we're starting our own business.

Brad Wilson [00:06:15]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. My wife, yeah, she was so cool with it. She's been my biggest supporter throughout this to be fair. But yeah, what spurred it was, you know, we were kind of all in that Covid craze. Everything was going crazy in my position, with my full time job, it was just reading the tea leaves. Were all going to go back to the office. I was in charge of facilities, so I really had to be in the office. You know what I mean? There was no, there was no hiding out from that.

Brad Wilson [00:06:39]:
And the responsibility they were giving me, it was great, great, great company. It's called Validatech. I highly recommend it. They treated me like gold there. But I was just like, you know, it's kind of either I go all in on this validatech thing and trying to raise up the corporate ladder or now is the perfect time. The market was great back in 2022. You know, let's really make the jump. We had maybe nine months, nine, ten months of expenses saved up for both business and personal expenses.

Brad Wilson [00:07:03]:
So we were ready to go, go.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:05]:
And okay, now you did this jump with a bunch of young kids in the house.

Brad Wilson [00:07:09]:
Exactly. Yeah. We had just had our second kid when I made the jump. Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:14]:
Like, how do you juggle like literally a brand new baby and a brand new baby business?

Brad Wilson [00:07:19]:
Looking back, even right now, I'm really not sure how I do it. No, just really segmenting my day I think was a big thing. You know, from, hey, these hours I'm locking the office, making calls, doing bd, doing sourcing, whatever it may be, and then, you know, stepping out when I had to and then jumping back into it. And then once we had our third kid, it really got too much to be able to work from home with all with three toddlers running around. It's not really fair for me to tell my wife, hey, keep those kids quiet. So that's when, you know, kind of moved out into an office here in Old Town Manassas, which has really helped kind of set that boundary between personal life and the business. You know, I say it's funny, I'm like, the whole reason I made the jump is so I could keep working remotely and that now I'm, I've forced myself back into an office. But it's good because it's a space for us to grow when we start hiring more folks and stuff.

Brad Wilson [00:08:06]:
But yeah, just really trying to maximize and optimize the time that I am working, getting as many cold calls out and speak to as many candidates and hiring managers as possible. And then that way at the end of the day you can feel good about what you did and you can kind of turn off that side of your brain. And then when I go home and you know, from 5:30 to 8:30 it's that bedtime rush and I can just be fully dad and not thinking about work and stuff like that. So that, that's one of the key things.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:29]:
That's awesome.

Brad Wilson [00:08:30]:
So we're going to do a lot.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:32]:
Of talk about govcon. We're going to do like talk about like the ins and outs of security clearances and the fun stuff that we have to deal with here. But I want to talk about the shift. The market shifted. You literally made the jump in the heydays, like the golden era of recruiting, where I know plenty of recruiters that, like, got started in and didn't really have to do any business development. It all came in down, but things shifted. When did you start noticing that shift?

Brad Wilson [00:08:54]:
Yeah, you know, like you said in 2022, it was a heyday. I mean, if you just had the title recruiter on LinkedIn, you were going to Bill250. I mean, you didn't really have to do any. Any other work. Crazy. I really felt the shift. You know, I can almost point to it exactly. It was like late March of 2023.

Brad Wilson [00:09:09]:
I was at Great Wolf Lodge with my family. I was looking at the calendar for the week ahead, and I hadn't had any calls set up by my team. You know, our sourcer will usually throw. We'll throw calls on our calendar. And I didn't have any calls set up. And I was like, okay, that's pretty weird. I was like, maybe it's just, you know, it's just a blip. And then the week following and the week following and the week following, there were still not as many calls being set up.

Brad Wilson [00:09:30]:
And, you know, for the next couple months, we were still making some placements just because, you know, in recruiting, you don't get paid off the work you do today. You're getting paid off what you did three months ago. So we were still making some placements for the next couple months. And then over the summer of 2023, it was like, where did. You know, where did all the work go? I'm a big fan of the Inbox zero method. You know, where you get your inbox to as low emails as possible. And. And yeah, one.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:53]:
Sorry, I think my inbox is like a quarter million.

Brad Wilson [00:09:56]:
Yeah, yeah, right. That's good. But. He's good. But, yeah, one, like Friday or Thursday afternoon, I got to Inbox zero and no emails were coming back in. And I was like, well, that's not a good thing. So, you know, that's kind of when we really had to say, okay, what's going on here? You know, talking to some other people is like, okay, it's not just us experience this. So we knew the market had shifted for a lot of folks.

Brad Wilson [00:10:17]:
You know, there's a million reasons why I have my theories. I think everyone has their own theories, but that doesn't really matter as to why it's. It kind of just mattered how you were going to react. So that's when I really had to look in the mirror and say, okay, what are we doing? What type of activity are we doing? Are we tracking Our metrics, Are we tracking the right metrics? Are we truly, you know, you really know in your heart of hearts if you're working hard enough at something or not. No matter what you tell yourself, you know, you really really, you really know, you always know if you're doing enough or not. So it really just kind of came with some soul searching for a few days. Like, damn, are we, are we pushing enough? We can probably be doing more. Right? You know, we are working hard, but are we working on the right things? Are we working on that 10 to 20% of activities that's actually going to drive 90 of our revenue, or are we doing things that we want to do that are, you know, more fun, that, you know, might feed our soul more, but they're not making placements for us, you know, so, yeah, I really had a soul search on that and I knew I had to, I had to get better myself if I wanted to leave this company.

Brad Wilson [00:11:13]:
So I went out and sought some training. And, you know, I knew, like I said, I had had that experience with the recruiter, you when I first made the transition, which was positive. So I hopped back in and kind of did their full coaching course for a year and had a coach and a mindset coach and went to weekly meetings and just really rebuilt the business from the ground up to where we are now, which is, you know, going into 2025, ready to just dominate.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:38]:
Okay, so you've sat down, analyzed, reflected, figured out like, what you guys need to actually do to move the needle and really just got some new, like, you know, coaching, which, you know, I, I know we've talked off long and it like, really helped change the game. Yeah. So like, like when it comes to like actual activity that is now moving the needle, like, what are some of the things that you did that is different and changed?

Brad Wilson [00:12:00]:
Yeah. You know, we have a singular focus. We have our key number. I think every business has a key number. Hey, what's. If I do this every day or every week, we will meet revenue goals. What's your key number? So now everyone on our team has their key number of interviews that we need to set up every week, you know, for what you want to do revenue wise. So every day we just wake up.

Brad Wilson [00:12:18]:
Where is our interviews coming from this week? You know, me personally, I hold myself to four interviews a week. Okay, where are we getting those four interviews a week? And then you just work backwards from there. Okay, cool. Our sourcer has reached out to X amount of candidates. We're probably going to have to cold Call for an hour each day to make sure that we are, you know, meeting that delta to get the number of candidates we want to talk to every day. But we also have to make sure, you know, our email campaigns are going out on the business development side, making sure that we're cold calling on the business development side as well. So just having that key number in mind that's related to your revenue and then working backwards from there. And the key number has to be something you can control as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:53]:
Okay, key numbers that you can control. That's perfect. And so, you know, is there anything else that you really shifted and we'll talk about like BD tactics later on in the conversation. But like mindset wise, is there anything else that you can attribute to your personal shift and you making those changes?

Brad Wilson [00:13:10]:
Yeah. You know, one thing I really learned in the mindset and that has stuck with me is the idea of this upper limiting concept or the upper limiting problem. I'm sure you're probably familiar with that or have heard it before, but you know, it's just this concept of when we're trying to improve ourselves and when we try to get better, we're always going to have the ceiling. And once we get to the ceiling, we're like, it's not comfortable over there. Yeah, I don't know, it's over there. So, you know, that's called the upper limiting problem because you get to this upper limit and it's a problem because you're not used to what's going to happen on the other side of that limit. So even if we're not doing well and we're not billing, once we get to a point where we're about to break through, we might start to self sabotage. We might start to be like, oh, I had a good week, I don't need to make these calls, or oh, you know, I can watch these videos or oh, you know, I don't need to get into work early today because things are going well because we're already in this zone of comfort.

Brad Wilson [00:13:58]:
We know what the zone of comfort is. Even if things aren't going well, we still at least are aware of it. So when we get to that upper limit, it's on us to really stay focused, maintain those activities that have got us here, then break through. That way we can get to that next level and then it, you know, just kind of keeps rinse and repeat from there. So that's an idea I've really taken with me for over the past year of like, hey, you're getting to A new level. Don't start to self sabotage now. Continue these good activities that have gotten you to this level and then you're going to break through. And now we can reassess and see, okay, what else do we need to do to get to that next level?

Benjamin Mena [00:14:30]:
What is one of the upper limit, like, limits that you ran into?

Brad Wilson [00:14:34]:
You know, even just recently, you know, within the last two quarters where business has really picked up a lot and you know, interviews are starting to pile up and before it's like, hey, let's always call candidates as much as we can. Always get them on the phone throughout the process. We want to get an update from candidate, call them, don't email them or text them. And as business starts to pick up in this, you know, the admin factor picks up. It's so easy to just be like, okay, let me just shoot them an email or let me just shoot them a text, you know, and that's kind of an upper limiting problem because it's like, okay, that's taking us back to our old ways of what we know is comfortable. When it's like, hey, the new level is here. You're in the new level. Let's maintain this positive activity that has got us here, you know, let's maintain the standard that has got us here through this new level.

Brad Wilson [00:15:13]:
Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:14]:
I want to jump over to the wonderful world of government contracting.

Brad Wilson [00:15:17]:
Yeah, it's always fun, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:15:19]:
Okay, so there's a few different places that we can go. Let's start with the candidate stuff and talk with clearances before we start talking about companies, like for those that know nothing about government contracting, DoD, IC, all that fun stuff. Why is it harder to recruit?

Brad Wilson [00:15:35]:
I would say there's like 50 answers to that. There's two big ones. Competition within the government contracting space, especially within the professional services space. Everyone's a staffing agency from Northrop Grumman and Khaki and Booz Allen all the way down to, you know, STEM Solutions and everyone in between. We're really just staffing agencies at heart. So everyone is your competition, your clients are your competition. So there's a lot of competition and then there's a lot of government backend administrative stuff that can blow your deal up. From clearances being processed correctly from one government agency working well with another government agency, but they might not work well with this third government agency.

Brad Wilson [00:16:15]:
Something I shared with you the other day. We almost just lost a placement this week. Thankfully, we saved it. Our candidate was absent in high school the day that he had to register for selective Service. Ergo, he's not registered for selective service. Therefore he's not eligible for government employment or to get a security clearance. So I'm called him like, dude, what's going on? Did you go to public school? Like, even, what's the deal? He's like, yeah, man. I just.

Brad Wilson [00:16:40]:
I guess I wasn't there that day. So it's just little stuff like that. In a million years, you would never think that would come back to bite you to blow up a deal. Thankfully, selective service takes all of 2 minutes to register for, so we were able to get that done in ever to crisis. But just little things like that can constantly come back to bite you. I heard a good analogy, and I think it applies really well to government contracting is like, you know, like those old timey corsets women used to wear, and there's like a million buttons down the back. And whoever said it, they were like, you got to button each one of those buttons, and if you leave one unbuttoned, even if you get the rest unbuttoned, eventually the whole thing's going to snap open. You know, recruiting and much also within government contracting, it's a process and it's a checklist and it's asking tough questions to get those answers.

Brad Wilson [00:17:23]:
And you got to make sure you're checking everyone off along the process because if you leave one unbuttoned, it's going to blow the whole thing up sooner than later, you know, and then talking.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:31]:
About like the client side of the house, like, one of the crazy things that I've seen over the years of government contracting is people come to me like, hey, I just got a brand new client. They're looking for a TSSCI full scale poly. I'm like, have you ever done government contracting before? Have you ever done this stuff? No, but they reached out to me. I'm excited. I got an agreement side. How do I find these people? And I'm just like, halftime, like, you just wasted your time.

Brad Wilson [00:17:50]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:53]:
Like, how do you, like, you know, on the client side of government contracting? Why is it hard?

Brad Wilson [00:17:58]:
An example. Yeah. What you just said is there's so much information in the government and it's all up to interpretation. So when this information that's supposed to level a playing field is actually up to interpretation and can actually tilt the playing field and other people's advantages, it makes it so that relationships are that much important. So you have to build those relationships within government contracting. But back to the original point, it's so competitive, no one really Trusts each other. But, you know, you got to. It takes years to build a good relationship with a client and to get across because, you know, everyone's just kind of so jaded at that point, so building that trust.

Brad Wilson [00:18:34]:
And ultimately, the best way to build trust with the government contractor, if you're a recruiting firm, is to get them the right people that they need with the right security clearances that are able to start in a timely manner. You know, nothing says in government contractor recruiting, nothing says, I don't really know what I'm doing then submitting candidates with the wrong clearance level. You know, if you're getting a job for a TSCI with a CI poly and you're submitting candidates with the tssci, well, damn, okay, that's a great resume, But I can't use them, unfortunately, you know, so getting through that information and you, the recruiter, becoming the expert on that information, so that way you can be a partner and a value add to your client will really set you apart. But, yeah, just like, gaining trust with those clients is a huge challenge.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:16]:
You took me back to, like, way back when I was an internal recruiter, and, you know, they tried hiring, like, a staffing firm to help us out, and it'd be like TSSA work, and they would send people over without a clearance, and they're like, this is the perfect person. And I'm like, yeah, this is the seventh person you sent over without a clearance. You haven't sent a single person over with a clearance. Like, what is going on over here?

Brad Wilson [00:19:34]:
Yeah, exactly. And it's just like, yeah, like, you said the person would be perfect, but can they wait a year to get that clearance for this all to process? So that's, you know, always been a huge challenge and just getting that information correctly. And sometimes you will find the perfect person with the perfect clearance. And because that person on the government side, coffee was cold that morning, they're not going to approve them. You know, so there's always that random. The government doesn't approve them. The shutdown that we get to.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:03]:
I mean, I've seen so many people over the years, like, lose their security clearances over a paperwork issue. If you want to go math. Like, I actually lost my security clearance one time because they forgot to click a button in the Z. Yeah. And so this entire time, I thought they had it. And then they sent me the notification like, hey, we're gonna have to reinvestigate you from the very beginning because we forgot to do something. It's our fault, but it screwed you Over.

Brad Wilson [00:20:24]:
Exactly, exactly. We hear that all the time.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:27]:
Okay, so when it comes to, like, clients, how do you figure out what a good client is? In our space?

Brad Wilson [00:20:32]:
Yeah, for sure. You know, for us, it comes down to we rank everything. We have tier one, tier two, tier three. And we do this more on a job by job basis than on a client by client basis. Because one thing we've realized too, especially once a company gets to a certain size is not all jobs within that company that you get are created equal. So you might be working with one VP and their jobs might be awesome, and then there might be another director that you're working with and you might not ever want to work their jobs. So really honing in on that, we rank it more about, like, hiring manager and individual positions. But some of the key rules we have is like, okay, am I on a call or text basis with the hiring manager? And I mean, like the person making the decision.

Brad Wilson [00:21:11]:
So can I pick up my phone and shoot you a text and say, hey, Bob, got this great guy coming to you this afternoon. Be on the lookout. So that's tier one or that's one requirement. Two, you know, no more than like three interview processes. Once you get past that, you know, it's not really. I'm not sure what we're doing at that point. You know, that's another requirement we have. We try not to work anything full scope.

Brad Wilson [00:21:32]:
That's just kind of across the board. I'll caveat that we try not to do any software developers that have full scopes, because that's just barking up the wrong tree.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:39]:
It's a good way to stay broke.

Brad Wilson [00:21:41]:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you know what it is? I think a lot of people too. You'll have success on one. And then it's like, oh, I can fill this. You know, we can do this. But those are easy positions to get, very hard to fill. So that, that's another rule we have.

Brad Wilson [00:21:55]:
And then salary, salary has to be within market range. We don't want to lowball anything. So that's how we'll judge if it's going to be a tier one, tier two, or tier three job. And then our rule two is like, if it's a new client and we're excited about it, you know, we'll give them basically five candidates is the rule we have. You know, we're not, not necessarily an offer after five candidates, but if we're not close to some type of final interview stage by the time we send you five candidates, then, you know, we probably have to reevaluate the relationship at that point.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:23]:
Okay. Do you have to like analyze between like sub Ks and primes and all that fun stuff too?

Brad Wilson [00:22:29]:
Yeah, that's a great question as well. You know, a lot of our clients are subcontractors and for those outside the government contracting space, you know, a prime contractor is the company that holds the actual contract with the government, and then the subcontractor is the folks that are helping provide the work to that prime contractor. So working with subcontractors can be very lucrative. But once again, you have to learn what is that subcontractor's relationship to the prime or to the government. You know, are they great tell. Do they have any people on the program already if they're a subcontractor, but they don't have anyone actually working on the program? Well, are they really a subcontractor? Are they just someone that has a piece of paper signed? So if they have people working on the program. Okay, beautiful. That's a great sign.

Brad Wilson [00:23:09]:
What positions are those people working? And do you have any managers on the program or do you have any program managers that are working on that program as a subcontractor? Because that's a great sign. That's a great relationship to have. Or another good way to tell if it's a strong relationship with the sub is like who's managing the process for the sub. Is it like one of their VPs or is it like a VP or director, you know, someone who has some weight, who can pull in the CEO when necessary, who can kind of has some authority to make approvals on salaries and things like that. Or are we working with like more of like an HR oriented person who's just kind of pushing resumes into the portal? So you really have to evaluate. I, I would say the biggest piece of advice is just evaluate the relationship that the sub has with the prime and or government contractor and that'll tell you if you're going to be able to fill some of these positions or not.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:55]:
And one of the things with subcase is it's a terminology that we utilize a lot here in our space called jump balls.

Brad Wilson [00:24:01]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:02]:
And they're, they can be dangerous to work on. And you kind of just like shared some of the reasonings, but you've been having a lot of success with these like quote unquote jump ball positions.

Brad Wilson [00:24:11]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:11]:
First of all, like, can you explain what a jump ball is? And two, like why you guys are crushing it when most other recruiting companies or even government contractors are not?

Brad Wilson [00:24:19]:
Yeah, for sure. Jump Ball position is kind of, you know, it is what it sounds like. So say, you know, the prime gets a bunch of positions. It's a hundred person contract and you know, within the first six months they fill 80 of those positions. But there's still 20 positions that are just really hard to find for whatever reason, skill set, clearance, whatever the reason, location. So what the prime will then do is they'll go out to all the subcontractors on this program and say, hey, these positions are not allocated to any specific company. Whoever finds the best candidates and we interview them and like them will get this spot on the contract. You know, ergo, it's a jump ball.

Brad Wilson [00:24:54]:
So we've had one of our, you know, our best client here in the past few months. A lot of their contracts have been hitting with these jump balls going out and we've been able, you know, there's a couple cases, we've gotten the jump ball notification on Monday and we've had offers out by like Wednesday, Thursday of that week with some candidates. And the way we do this is, you know, every week our team will meet, we'll allocate, hey, these are positions. Every Friday we'll meet and we'll say, hey, the following week these are going to be our positions of priority. But we'll always say one or two spots, you know, for those jump balls. Especially this time of year. It's the beginning of the government's fiscal year, so a lot of these positions are coming out. So we'll save some capacity to work on these additional positions.

Brad Wilson [00:25:31]:
And then once we get the positions in, it's no dawdling around. You know, we're not taking two, three days to make a sourcing strategy and build out a marketing campaign and da, da, da. No, we're looking at the positions. We're making our Boolean strings and we're putting it into clearance jobs and we're hitting the phones and we're emailing. So you know, if we can call 50 to 100 people within that first day or so, chances are three to five of them are going to be a great fit and interested in the role and ready to make a move. And those are the people who are going to get submitted now with these jump balls. Once again, for us as a staffing agency to be successful with them and to be profitable with them, we need to make sure that they're actually a priority for the program and they're actually fillable. Once again, that goes back to the relationship.

Brad Wilson [00:26:11]:
So we already knew that this company, our client had A good relationship on these programs. They know what they're doing. They're a real smart company who wins work. So we feel confident investing our time with them as a partner and making sure we filled those. And we did. You know, we got, like, I said, you know, a couple of them. We got the notification on Monday, had candidates submitted on Tuesday. They did the initial interview on Tuesday, which is huge if your hiring manager is going to give you feedback quick.

Brad Wilson [00:26:36]:
And then they did the next interview on the following day, and offer was out by Thursday. That was for a position up in Massachusetts. And then we just filled another role at the Pentagon. This is my favorite. I love roles. I like the Pentagon or places where a lot of people work. We submitted a candidate on, like, Thursday morning. She interviewed with our client via the phone.

Brad Wilson [00:26:55]:
Interviewing, great. Our client called up the, the prime, which is a relationship we love to see between our sub and the prime. So our, our client called up the prime and said, hey, I have this great candidate. She's working at the Pentagon. Can you just meet her real quick? And they went and they met in the cafeteria, the Pentagon for lunch that afternoon. Interviewed offer letter out that afternoon. You can't beat that. So, you know, if you can really dig into those relationships and make sure, like, oh, okay, this is a winner.

Brad Wilson [00:27:19]:
Let's invest all of our time into this.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:21]:
I, I, I absolutely love that. But that kind of took me back to, like, years ago to somebody that I ended up getting hired. But they, like, used an alias in my email. And I came back to my desk and this is like, when I was internal at the time. I came back to my desk and I had three security officers from an government agency at my desk waiting for me when I got back from lunch because they, hey, just hit me up here. We'll like, we'll meet the lunchroom.

Brad Wilson [00:27:45]:
Exactly. Real quick.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:49]:
And I was just like, like, they sent it an email. Like, I was just cc'd on it. But, like, they used, like, something in the email that I really don't want to talk about. They just, they had to come. It got notified, it got flagged. Government agency came to my desk. They had to, like, oversee the wiping of my computer, my phones.

Brad Wilson [00:28:06]:
Exactly. And then it's just like, wow.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:09]:
Well, you know, jumping back into, like, you know, back to, like, your shifts, your changes, you know, that you've had to process, like, what, what is working when it comes to development now that you've, like, you know, had to make all those shifts and had to learn new tactics.

Brad Wilson [00:28:24]:
Yeah, that's A great question. And what I've realized about BD over this past year or so is like everything actually works. You just have to execute on it. You know, within the past year, past six months probably, we've gotten a new client through our newsletter, we've gotten a new client through like social selling, you know, DMing people on LinkedIn. Basically we've gotten multiple clients through cold calling and we've gotten multiple clients through our email campaign. So everything works, but you have to build those systems around it. Now I will say our most successful is cold calling. So what we'll do is, you know, every day for an hour we're cold calling BD, try to get about 50 calls out.

Brad Wilson [00:28:58]:
And the key is to not sell on that call. That initial cold call is to just set up a meeting, a follow up meeting. And once again, we're just trying to walk people through our process. So we'll cold call them, you know. Hey Ben, this is Brad, the managing partner over here at STEM Solutions. I saw you all looking for a DevOps engineer. We've got a couple great candidates we've been working with. Are you the best person to talk about this with? And you know, we'll see if we can't get a meeting set with them and then once we do that, we'll go to our, you know, 30 minute kind of sales call and that's when we'll try to, you know, we do what we call spin selling, you know, understand their situations, their problems, the implications if they don't solve these problems and then the net benefit of using us.

Brad Wilson [00:29:36]:
So we'll have a 30 minute call around that and doing this too. We're really trying to dig into the urgency of these positions. You know, we're all for signing a client, but at any time. But we want to know like, hey, when are we actually going to work with you? You know, when are your positions actually urgent? Because you know, we might sign a client and they might say, oh yeah, hey, we have a software developer position that it'd be real nice if we could get it filled. You know, you might work on that for six months without filling it because there's no actual urgency and pain there. So during that initial sales call, we're trying to see, you know, who urgently needs our help and who might need our help in a few months or a year or whatever it might be. So yeah, you know, cold calling has been very successful. We join that with like an NPC or an email campaign that we send out every week to business development contacts.

Brad Wilson [00:30:20]:
You Know, it's just an initial campaign with a few follow ups. And then we also have a newsletter that we push out every month. And then just on LinkedIn, you know, we see people hiring or new connections might need our help. We'll just shoot them a quick dm.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:31]:
Awesome, awesome, awesome. I know we were chatting about this, like, offline. We actually were chatting about this at a conference. And I know it's one of the hottest things everybody talks about, but Artificial intelligence?

Brad Wilson [00:30:40]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:40]:
For you as a recruiter, what's it useful? What's not useful? What's overhyped?

Brad Wilson [00:30:45]:
Yeah, that's. That's a great question for me, as I was like a. I'm like a. I'm like an AI AA right now. I'm like a recovering AI aholic. Oh. When it first came out, I was like, oh, dude, it's gonna change the game. This is gonna be the best thing ever.

Brad Wilson [00:31:02]:
We actually went and built our own AI resume generator for the clear community. And all this stuff is awesome. And it does have the ability to change things, but it can also be a distraction potentially. And that's kind of what I found, is you have to find that sweet spot. So when it comes to, you know, my favorite AI tool, it's just good old Chat GPT, we use it to make julians. What I found out is, like, the best way with chat is to make a boolean is not to just, like, throw in the job description and say, give me a Boolean. You know, you kind of have to, like, tease its way there. So I might do something like, hey, GPT, give me a list of all the AWS certifications.

Brad Wilson [00:31:38]:
And it'll say, these are all the AWS certifications. Okay, great. Can you also, you know, give me a list of all the Docker technologies that Department of Defense, all the container technologies that the Department of Defense might use as well. It'll list out all those. And then it was like, you know, can you also give me a list of maybe the three biggest government contracting hotspots in the US and it'll give me that. And then you say, okay, great. Can you put all this into a Boolean search? So you really kind of have to break down the different parts that you want, or else it'll just kind of give you something very generic. We also use ChatGPT to just to send.

Brad Wilson [00:32:12]:
It makes really good interview preparation. And what I've realized with GPT is like. It's like special effects. You can spot bad AI from a mile away the same way you can spot Bad special effects in a movie, you know, from a mile away. So like LinkedIn posts or like even candidate outreach emails, we kind of shy away from using AI for that type of stuff just because it sounds a little generic. Ish. But for things where it doesn't really matter if it sounds like AI, we just need to get the knowledge across like candidate interview prep emails or interview prep guides. That's great for that.

Brad Wilson [00:32:43]:
So, you know, we've been uploading candidate resumes and job descriptions and potential questions into GPT. We've been making really thorough interview guides and we'll send it to candidates and then we'll give them a call afterwards and go through it with them. So it's been great for that. But I'm kind of leery of using AI for anything that actually has to interact with a human. So for like candidate sourcing, I'm a little leery to use it just because I think if we're all using the same tools, we're all going to find the same candidates and you're going to lose that specialty that can make a recruiter great. I also shy away from using it for like any type of direct contact with candidates or anything like that just because I think it's kind of easy to spot. So. But yeah, it's definitely powerful, can definitely optimize people, but I think there's a lot of snake oil out there around it too.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:24]:
Awesome. So jumping over to the quickfire questions, what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's actually just getting started as a recruiter, like this year?

Brad Wilson [00:33:34]:
Yeah, the advice would just be it's hard at first, it's a lot of grinding upfront, It's a lot of upfront investment. But if you can get through that, then you know, it's a great way to provide for your family and to make a good career for yourself. But, you know, just be confident, know that, you know, recruiting is one of the most important parts to every organization. So all the negative feedback you might get there, you know, you just kind of got to tell yourself, okay, that person's probably not a true business person if they don't understand the value that recruiting is bringing. So yeah, just embrace the suckiness and, you know, find out what numbers you need to hit and hit them every day.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:05]:
What advice would you give to like somebody that's been around the block, like we'll say 10, 20 years on, you know, continued success?

Brad Wilson [00:34:12]:
Yeah, for sure. You know, I've only been doing only had STEM for like three years. So I Might not be the best person, but I think, you know, once I get there or once I'm starting to realize is like, you just have to double and triple and quadruple down on the things that work during, like, Covid Benjamin. I'm a big sports guy, so, you know, there was no live games on. So I went back and I. I don't know, I probably watched like, 20, 30 old Michael Jordan games on YouTube just because I was like, I was a little younger when Michael Jordan was really doing his thing. So I was like, all right, let me just really, like, see what the goat was about. So I'm watching all these games on YouTube and like, late 80s, early 90s, Michael Jordan is, you know, taking off from the foul line and just so athletic.

Brad Wilson [00:34:47]:
And there's that famous scene of him going through his legs like five times on Larry Bird and hitting the jump shot. But then you go to, like, 97, 98 Michael Jordan, where this dude has, like three moves, like crossover left, crossover right, pump fake. And that's all he does every game. And he scores 35 points and wins MVP and leads the league in scoring. And it's just like, that just comes with wisdom. He was like, okay, these are the three moves I need to be the best player in the league. Let me just do this every single time. And I think that can apply to your recruiting career.

Brad Wilson [00:35:16]:
Like, there's only really four or five things you need to do to be great, but you got to do those well. You have to be world class at those. You have to do those every day. So, you know, just double and triple down on those things that work and block out everything else, and the success will follow.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:29]:
Oh, I love that. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your personal success?

Brad Wilson [00:35:35]:
Yeah, yeah, I'm a big reader. I got a couple. Probably from, like, an operations standpoint, there's two books that are kind of the same. One is called the Phoenix Project, and the other is called the Goal. The Phoenix Project is like where, like, DevOps started. It just was this concept of, like, not letting work wait, knocking things out as they come in, not letting your work in progress build up, and just being really agile in how you approach things. So after reading that, you know, I read it originally just because I wanted to understand the people I recruited better. But it really changed my perspective on just the logistics of work and how you handle workflow and administrative items and making sure you're timely with the way you do things.

Brad Wilson [00:36:12]:
And then, you know, probably, like, on the personal Side or professional development side? I would say extreme ownership by Jocko. That book. I just love that concept of, like, everything is my fault. Like, in a good way. Like, my success is my fault is because of what I did and my failures, good or bad, is my fault. There's no one else to blame. There's no market conditions to blame. There's nothing to blame.

Brad Wilson [00:36:32]:
It's just what I do every day is success or failure. Whether that's from the relationships you have with other people or, you know, the amount of money that you're going to make or anything you do in life is you have full responsibility and control over it, which is actually. It's scary, but it's also really empowering to know that, like, oh, shit, I can just wake up and be great every day and choose to do the right things and good stuff will happen, and there's literally nothing anyone can do. Whatever anyone does, there's a way to overcome it if I take extreme ownership over it.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:03]:
Do you have, like, a favorite tech tool that really helps you move the needle?

Brad Wilson [00:37:06]:
Favorite tech tool? For us, it's probably just our email campaign tool. It's called Woodpecker, and it's more of, like, a marketing tool than it is a recruiting tool. But, yeah, for email campaigns, it's a really good tool to make sure that our emails hit the inbox, which is a huge thing. So that way you're not going into spam. It configures all your backend email stuff, DNS, dkim, all that stuff that I don't really understand. It does for you. You get all the metrics, too. You can see what emails are resonating, how many times people are opening it.

Brad Wilson [00:37:33]:
So I'm a big fan of that. And then, yeah, I'm like, you know, the iPhone, pretty much the best tech tool there is, just calling people and texting and, you know, communicating as much as possible with folks.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:43]:
Do you have, like, an office line or do you do all your phone calls from your iPhone?

Brad Wilson [00:37:47]:
Yep, all of them from my iPhone. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's probably not technically, it's probably not the most sound thing, but it's just, like, it's the most streamlined, easiest thing for us.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:56]:
Sweet. All right, so you've worked at the greatest recruiting training company out there that many of us had. You worked internal. You worked, like, your way up the leadership ladder. You saw you wanted to make a change, you went and did it. Ground, you worked. Then the market shifted. You had to make even more changes.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:14]:
Like, what do you think has been a huge contributor to your personal success once again.

Brad Wilson [00:38:19]:
Just going back to the jocko thing. Just take a responsibility for it, man. Just like, even when the market downshifted for a lot of us, you know, a lot of people were like, oh, we're in a recession. What are we going to do here? And all of those factors might have been true, but, like, you look out and you're like, okay, people are still being successful, still making money. They're doing something I'm not doing, what am I not doing and how do I do that asap? So just knowing that, you know, no one's going to hold your hand, no one's going to do anything for you in life, and you kind of got to do it yourself. We talk about pro athletes a lot and you know, you're like, oh, this guy was the number one draft pick and he just didn't put the work in. He had so much opportunity and they just weren't willing to work for it. And I almost had to have a moment with myself.

Brad Wilson [00:38:56]:
Like, as a business owner, we put ourselves in these amazing opportunities to provide generational wealth for our family. And it's like, dude, are you working hard enough? Like, are you bringing it every day or no? Like, are you going to be a bust? You know, that's almost how you kind of had to look at it, you know? So I think that was just a key driver for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:13]:
I absolutely love that. Like, if you're listening to this, hit the rewind 30 minutes and listen to that again. But jumping over, like, you know, recruiting is hard. Like, it's like running yourself into a brick wall. Especially in govcon recruiting and clear recruiting, like, day after day. Like, how do you get through those hard days? Those days where it's just, excuse my language. It fucking sucks. It's hard.

Brad Wilson [00:39:30]:
Yeah. Yeah, it does. Just knowing what I need to do every single day, Having those metrics as my guiding light to where if a placement falls through and a candidate no shows an interview and a client fires me on the same day, I can still, at the very least, I can look back at my little metrics notepad here and say, I did my 17 calls, you know, at least I spoke to my 17 people. At least that went right. At least all that other stuff I couldn't control. Yeah, like you said, that did suck. But at least I controlled the parts that I can control. At least I got on the phone with those hiring managers.

Brad Wilson [00:40:03]:
At least I got on the phone with those candidates. At least I tried to, you know, make some Interviews happen and eventually that's going to pay off, you know, and just my mindset coach, you know, a few months ago she told me she's like, dude, every day take two seconds and look at your notepad and be like, good job. You know, I hit my mark. Good job. And that really does get you through the sucky days where it's like, damn, I've had a placement in like three, four weeks. Like something needs to happen here. And at least you can look back at your metrics and be like, well, I'm actually putting the work in so the success will follow. So that's kind of what I tell myself.

Brad Wilson [00:40:33]:
And then, you know, there's even those really, really sucky days or when you don't have it, when you're just like, this phone weighs a thousand pounds. And sometimes, you know, you got to take an afternoon off or take a couple hours off or check out for, you know, whatever. Reset yourself, you know, do something that'll flircate back up and then make sure you get back at it. You can't let a bad day turn into a bad week, which will turn into a bad month and turns into a bad year. Nip it in the butt. You know, when you notice you're starting to get into a funk or whatever you want to call it, when you notice that downturn happening, just really, you know, kind of do a quick self assessment. Hey, am I doing the things that bring me joy? Am I reading? Am I working out? Am I spending time with my family? Or am I doing things that just drain me constantly and you know, just kind of reassess it and go from. From there?

Benjamin Mena [00:41:14]:
You've talked about sports a few times. Like, were you an athlete in high school?

Brad Wilson [00:41:18]:
Yeah, high school, yeah, yeah, I played basketball, football, all that stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:21]:
Well, you did like the multi sport thing.

Brad Wilson [00:41:23]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:24]:
Do you think that's had an impact on recruiting?

Brad Wilson [00:41:26]:
Oh, for sure. I mean, I think that's like the number one. What? I don't know. 80% of recruiters are probably high school or college athletes. Right. It's just such a parallel between like it's a meritocracy. Like it doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, how you talk, you know, how pretty or not pretty you are, whatever it is, like if you can make those calls and you can close the deals and you're going to find success and same thing with sports. Hey, if you can listen to the coach and you can be coachable and you can do what they say and you can add value to a team and do your job, you can find success.

Brad Wilson [00:41:54]:
You know, I relate everything back to, I think football is the greatest life teacher in the world. Where it's like, you know, there's other sports like this too, but football, it's like cool. That first day you play football, you get pads on, or that first week someone is going to hit you in the mouth and knock your mouthpiece out and knock the snot out of your nose and you're going to lay on the ground and you're going to think to yourself, damn, what did I just get myself into? And you have two choices. You could take your helmet off and never show up to practice again, or you can get back up and say, all right, let's go dude, I'm going to punch you back in the face now. And you know, that's recruiting and that's life. You know life's going to knock you down and you can say, damn, guess I got to go update my resume and do something else. Or you can get back up and say, all right, life. That was a good hit.

Brad Wilson [00:42:34]:
My turn. You know, love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:36]:
And real quick, you showed this notepad, like what is this notepad thing? This magical tracker sheet that you like flipped in front of the camera real quick.

Brad Wilson [00:42:42]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. This is from, from my coach and the recruiter. You. I have like a bunch of these now. So literally every day it's thrown off cuz we were off on Monday. But yeah, you know this top row, this is how many hiring managers I'm talking to. Bottom row is how many candidates we've talked to. These are just my random little notes from calls that we've done.

Brad Wilson [00:43:00]:
So you can track everything. You track your FTIs, how many submittals you do. So I track it on this. That's kind of like my instant gratification. You know, fill in the box when you get a call and then we upload them into our metric system and you can see your metric reports and you know, look at your 4 week, 12 week reports, year to date reports, all that stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:17]:
Would you have like an Excel spreadsheet for your metric system?

Brad Wilson [00:43:20]:
Yeah, it's like through the recruiting you. I pay for their metric service.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:23]:
Okay, nice.

Brad Wilson [00:43:25]:
Yeah, I don't do the full blown coaching anymore, but I have like a smaller package where I can still like access their video library and pay for their metrics and all that stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:33]:
Awesome. Well, jumping over, you know, one of my favorite questions and we're going to ask this two ways. If you can go back in time to the very beginning of your recruiting career. And like, with literally everything that you know now, like, getting kicked in the teeth multiple times, the successes you've had, what advice would you tell yourself back in those early days?

Brad Wilson [00:43:51]:
Building relationships is not hard. I used to hear this term, building relationship. Build relationship, build relationship, build relationship. And I used to think it meant, like, you have to be the most charismatic guy or girl at the party, and you have to always have the right thing to say, and you always. And, you know, you just have to be the social butterfly. And I was like, that's not me. And I think it kind of made me fall into more of a transactional recruiting. As you get older, you realize, oh, building a relationship is really just doing what you say you're going to do.

Brad Wilson [00:44:18]:
So, you know, Benjamin, if you're my client and I tell you, hey, I'm going to have two candidates for you to review by Friday. And I have two candidates for you to review you by Friday. Boom. You now deposited into the trust bank. You know, if I keep depositing into that trust bank, eventually we have a great relationship. And it doesn't matter if I'm, you know, super charismatic and stuff like that, you know, it helps. It definitely helps to be liked. But if you can be counted on, that's the best way to build a relationship.

Brad Wilson [00:44:42]:
So just kind of learning that building relationship's not very hard. Just do what you say you're going to do, and you're going to be ahead of like 80, 90% of people.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:49]:
Okay, same question again. Let's take this back into, like, you starting stem, like, you know, gangbuster, golden era of recruiting. Things have changed. You had to make a ton of changes yourself. If you can literally go back in time, you know, we'll say the first few months, sit down with yourself, maybe grab a beer, glass of wine, cup of coffee. Would be the conversation you have with yourself.

Brad Wilson [00:45:09]:
That's a great question. The conversation I would have with myself would be that this is not as easy as it seems right now. You're winning because you're getting lucky. That's what I would tell. If I'm being a future person, I'd be like, dude, you're getting lucky. That's why you are billing this much. This was also in, like the work life balance, golden era stuff too, you know? So it was like, oh, man, I'm working like seven hours a day, six hours a day and killing it. So I would just be like, hey, this is not going to last forever.

Brad Wilson [00:45:35]:
This is the standard you need to be held to. And if you're not willing to do that, go find something else to do. It would probably be a very, very tough conversation, but a real conversation.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:43]:
And you know, it's one of those things, like we've had conversations, I've seen you actually speak at like summits. You have recruiters that come and reach out to you. What's the real question that you wish a recruiter would ask you and what's that answer?

Brad Wilson [00:45:54]:
Yeah, the real question I wish a recruiter would ask me would probably just be like, what's the one thing that if you couldn't do anything else, what really matters, what really moves the needle? Because I think there's a lot of talk around, like what tool is best or what process is best and what system is best. And while I think those are important conversations, I think those can also be, you know, activity disguised as productivity. You know, looking for a new recruiting tool is a lot more fun and a lot easier than making 60 cold calls. So I wish someone would just be like, hey, what's it really take to make it in this? And you know, the answer would just be you gotta be willing to be kicked in the teeth for a little bit. And then eventually the good times will come. And it doesn't get easier, you know, you just get better at dealing with the crap. Once you take the mindset of no deal is easy. I used to get really upset when like, you know, something might blow up in a deal or, you know, some curveball might get thrown my way.

Brad Wilson [00:46:43]:
I'd be like, why does this always happen? Like, you know, what the heck, Once you just go into the frame, like something is going to go wrong, just be ready to deal with it. It makes it so much easier because now it's just another check on the box in the process, you know, so just knowing that it only takes a couple of being good at a couple of really good activities to be great and just expecting things to go wrong and reacting to them well is what really makes all the difference.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:06]:
And you know, it's one of those things like working on these cleared positions. You're like that accounting position without a security clearance in the commercial space. Just looks so much easier to work on. You could make so much more money. Why are you committed to this space?

Brad Wilson [00:47:18]:
Every time I try to get out, just keep pulling me back. No, it's twofold. I come from a military family. Dad's a marine, brother's a marine, sister's marine, brother in law's marine, grandpa was army, other grandpa was Army. So national security, supporting that mission, it's kind of just what I knew. I joke that, you know, you grew up in D.C. and it's kind of just. It's a government company town.

Brad Wilson [00:47:40]:
You know, I just figured, all right, I'll graduate college and go work for Booz Allen or something. That's just kind of the life path you suspect. And that's not exactly how it worked out, but that's kind of how it worked out, you know, just change the names of the companies. So, Yeah, I love GovCon. It's really interesting, too, to see, like, the work we do directly affects people on the front lines, directly affects the stuff happening in the news. I mean, it's really cool stuff we're doing here and the really cool stuff we're working on. And we're freaking recruiting people that are like, that are building the. The walkie talkies and the communication systems for Navy seals when they're out doing, you know, epic shit, like, we're really making the country better.

Brad Wilson [00:48:18]:
And yeah, you know, while that accounting position that's unclear does sound pretty nice some days, that also has its pitfalls. And, you know, the grass isn't always greener on that side. There's stuff that I don't know about that probably sucks about recruiting for stuff like that. So it's what I know. I really enjoy it. Got a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge around it. It's kind of what I want to spend the next 30 years doing. Honestly, love it.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:39]:
Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Brad Wilson [00:48:42]:
Yeah, you know, just over the last few years, I think there's been a real emphasis on the recruiting industry as a whole to better ourselves and take it up a level. Like we talked about, that upper limiting stuff, you know, I feel like the recruitment industry as a whole, you know, despite what the naysayers had say, I think we've really tried to incorporate, you know, getting better and educating. And, you know, Benjamin, I think it starts with you. You're really kind of one of the glue pieces of this, holding it together and especially with the podcast and, you know, dispersing that knowledge. So just keep getting better and keep following that process and embrace the suckiness, because eventually you get better at dealing with the suckiness. Doesn't get any less sucky, but you get a little bit better at working through it. So love it. That'd be the last words.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:22]:
And for any of the listeners, if they want to follow you, how do they go about doing that.

Brad Wilson [00:49:26]:
Yeah, for sure. You can find me on LinkedIn, Brad Wilson, PMP, our company website, stemsolutions.net and then we also have a newsletter that talks about all things, you know, government contract and cleared recruiting. It's called the SF86, which if you don't know, the SF86 is the form you have to fill out to get a security clearance. So you can find that@thefs86.com love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:46]:
Well, man, I'm so excited that, like, you know, you came on shared. I know you spoke at a summit recently. You've been getting out there sharing the things that you're doing. So that way you can make an impact. But most importantly, just for the listeners, like so many people have gone through the market shift, they felt it and they've had to sit there and literally look themselves in the mirror and like, what am I going to do? And I think this is an important story. Like, you know, what you, not only what you saw, but the changes that you made and how it's impacted your family, how it's impacted your business, how it's impacted your future. So I know we're coming on the tail end of 2024. If this goes out in 2024, it could be out in 2025.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:23]:
But I truly believe those that are putting in the work right now, like Brad, are 2025 is going to be the year of personal abundance. So let's go crush it. Thank you.

Brad Wilson [00:50:33]:
Am.