From Contingency to RPO: How to Build Sustainable Recruiting Business with Suzie Grieco

Benjamin Mena [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. Announcement before we dive in, first of all, the recruiting growth summit is coming back. Make sure you get registered. Hop in the show notes it is going to be one of the most power packed weeks in the recruiting industry. I'm bringing almost all of the best people I possibly can to this event to help you grow and finish your strong. On top of that, the AI recruiting summit is happening in August. Register in the show notes technology is coming fast.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:43]:
It's changing. Get a chance to see some of these demos of AI recruiting tools and also listen to some of the best speakers that are out there when it comes to what is going to happen and how you can make more money using AI. All right, let's dive in. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a special guest that I have looked up to for a good decade. Being around the DC Metro has had a huge impact on my recruiting career and my guess, Suzy Greco has been a pivotal part of that. I've looked up to her for so many different things and I'm so excited that she's going to talk about this on this podcast about going independent, launching your business, things that you could do as a recruiter to fundamentally change what you're doing and how to get ahead. Because we all know that the recruiting market has just been absolutely crazy, like ups, downs, craziness.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:29]:
You know, maybe Govcon is a little bit of a different story, but there are so many things that you could do and we're going to walk through the journey of how you can go independent. So Susie, welcome to the podcast.

Suzie Grieco [00:01:38]:
Thank you for having me, Ben. It's thrilled to be included as part of this, this elite group of recruiters that you've talked to. So thank you. Great podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:47]:
Well, it's been awesome. I've had the chance to know you for almost a decade, kind of just watching from afar. You are a huge influence on the DC recruiting community because of your leadership and involvement in recruit DC. But let's go ahead and just jump right in. We always get started on how you even ended up in the wonderful world of recruiting. And I know this is kind of like a little bit of a second career. So can you walk us into like, how you ended up here?

Suzie Grieco [00:02:11]:
Sure. And it is a little bit of a long story, but I had a job in media advertising, which I absolutely loved. And then they were closing the DC office and said, you can move to Kansas City. And I was like, I love flying over Kansas City. I love visiting Kansas City, but I cannot live there. So I was thinking, okay, it's time for me to make a change. And one of my neighbors was like, I own a stopping agency. Have you ever thought about recruiting? I was like, recruiting? What? Like, to me, in my head, recruiting was sports related.

Suzie Grieco [00:02:41]:
I was like, I'm not an athlete. I definitely know nothing about recruiting. No, no. He was like, technology recruiting, financial recruiting. I was like, okay. And he said he was going to pay me to interview people. Like, unlimited starbucks, unlimited lunch, happy hours. I was like, sign me up.

Suzie Grieco [00:02:57]:
You're going to pay me to do all of that? You're going to pay me to talk to people all day. Absolutely. And that was my first foray into recruiting. But it also happened to be the first time that I was in a role that had zero training. And when I say zero training, he gave me an hour long course on technology, which, it's amazing how much you can learn about technology. Okay, granted, it was 20 years ago about technology. In 1 hour, I was like, I'm ready. I can start.

Suzie Grieco [00:03:23]:
I can recruit these people. I was like, still no, but there's no formal training on tools. It was sales training. That was it.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:30]:
Wait, did they just like, did they just kind of like, hey, here's your phone, here's your. Whatever, and then just hit go, right?

Suzie Grieco [00:03:36]:
Here's the job description. These are your job boards. Go find people who match the job description and then send it over. You have to write a summary and then send it over to your account manager, and they're going to share that information with your client. Like, okay. But the beauty of it is, is it taught me to be honest about how I was in the industry. Meaning I was like, this is my first time recruiting blank skill sets. All right, I need you to tell me exactly what that means, what it is that you're doing, and if they could talk to me about it without being condescending, I was like, okay, you're a good candidate.

Suzie Grieco [00:04:12]:
I'm immediately informed. Because if you could take the time to explain it to me, what you do. I was like, from my 1 hour tech training, you know, I knew what testers and languages need to do. I knew what developers needed to do. I knew what network engineers needed to do. I was like, okay, this is my grid. Where do you fit on this grid? Tell me what you do and how you do it, and if they could tell it to me in the span of an hour, in addition to what their favorite roles were. I was like, okay, you're moving forward.

Suzie Grieco [00:04:37]:
So that's how I learned, and that's where I learned to love, to ask the question so I could learn about the technology. And that's why I knew I love technology because every conversation was different. I was learning something different from every person I talked to, even though they had a similar skill set. I was like, okay, I love it. Fell in love immediately.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:55]:
Okay. So you kind of just jumped right in, started having the conversation, making sure.

Suzie Grieco [00:04:59]:
I was making my calls, you know, making sure I wasn't, you know, you know. But bottom line, that was it. So it was, it was, you know, I wouldn't say old school because it's not like a phone book, but it's, you know, you got, indeed, you got monster, you got career builder. You had to call them. You had to pick up the phone and say, hey, John Smith, or, you know, Kathy Smith. I. Your resume, here's a job. You interested? And you've got 24 hours to let.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:22]:
Me know and fast forward. Like, where did you go? How long were you at that staffing agency? Where'd you go next?

Suzie Grieco [00:05:30]:
It was probably one of the best experiences of my life. I had such a phenomenal team that I worked with. It was called resolve at it. They have since closed their office here in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. But the owner hired such great people. They are still friends today. I mean, my good friends, we still meet. We have an alumni lunch or brunch every once in a while, but I don't know how to describe it.

Suzie Grieco [00:05:53]:
So I was a recruiter, and then I said, okay, there's only so much of the recruiting as they started shifting into more desktop y skills, which I wasn't learning as much as I wanted to learn from candidates. I was like, you want to be an account manager? I was like, okay, what does that mean? Basically, you go into, and, you know, you go into your client, you learn more about what they're looking for. You get the jobs, so you share them with your recruiter and you recruit for them. And so I got to do not only recruiting, but account management and led a recruiting team. I was like, this is great. I could do everything and made my day a lot more interesting. I realized that was one of the best jobs I've ever had because I was learning from the client, learning from candidates, and getting to sort of share that knowledge, if you will, with new recruiters. And so, great job.

Suzie Grieco [00:06:40]:
But then I realized, you know what? There's so much more to this recruiting industry. And as I mentioned, they were moving more to sort of help desky type staffing, which wasn't either. The client base and the candidate base wasn't as intriguing to me. I was like, well, maybe I want to do executive search, you know? Cause if I'm gonna learn from people, why don't learn from the executives? I'll have an opportunity to do that. I interviewed with soft interviews. Again, no formal interviews. I was like, okay, let's call every search firm I know. Let's have an informational interview.

Suzie Grieco [00:07:10]:
I realized, like, in a millisecond, I was not a good fit for our executive search. I was the loudest person in the building. Like, they were like, I felt uncomfortable being me in that environment. And I was like, I'm not so sure. Executive searches, for me, they're all hushed toes.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:29]:
Was that in the DC Metro?

Suzie Grieco [00:07:31]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:31]:
So one thing I have heard about executive search offices in the DC Metro. Compared to other places, it's very, like, everything's super formal.

Suzie Grieco [00:07:40]:
With honey being formal. I mean, I had transitioned from a corporate environment, so.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:46]:
But I want to take a pause. I want to take a pause. So you thought, like, hey, I wanted to do executive search. And so you are the one that's called up all these search firms. Like, hey, I'm interested in doing this, like, XYZ amount of years of experience, because so often, like, recruiters don't, they wait for the opportunity to come to them. And you just went and start cold calling.

Suzie Grieco [00:08:06]:
Yeah, well. And. Because how else are you going to learn? I mean, the whole point of, at the time, LinkedIn was really growing, and then you had people you used to work with who were moving into more of that, you know, different spaces. So I had colleagues who were working with me at resolve and who moved. Some of them moved to executive search. Some of them moved to corporate recruiting. Some of them went to different agencies. So I had a chance to sort of say, who do you know who is in.

Suzie Grieco [00:08:33]:
I had colleagues at this point for five years, colleagues who had been moved into different areas. I was like, tell me who you know that does executive search. I'm going to reach out to them and schedule a call. I'm not saying there's age bias or anything like that, but I think it didn't hurt that I was a senior person. Like, I was older in my career. I wasn't, like, coming right out of college asking for informational interviews. I was a professional who had, what, 25 years under my belt already in a career and then starting a new one. I had a legitimate interest and a story that they were like, okay, she's not really pitching me to start working here.

Suzie Grieco [00:09:09]:
You know what I mean? She's not calling me up to say I need a job. They saw me as a legitimate informational interview candidate. The ironic thing is they all offered me a position. I was like, oh gosh, I don't think you want me in your office.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:24]:
And move forward to SG two recruiting your company. How did you guys get that started?

Suzie Grieco [00:09:29]:
Okay, so, well, that led me to corporate recruiting. I was working with Booz Allen. I was placed Booz Allen through an agency and someone who I admire, but I didn't know that type of scenario actually existed until he was like, you work for me, but you actually sit at the corporate site. I was like, what? And he was like, this is how it works. You work for me, I pay you, and you go sit and you basically learn about the corporate recruiting. I was like, okay, fine. I had a chance to work at Booz Allen. Totally loved it.

Suzie Grieco [00:09:58]:
And at Booz Allen, I segued from corporate recruiting to consulting for the Navy. And chaos was happening at my house. I had four kids, so one of them was entering high school, one was going to middle school, one was getting ready for college, one was getting ready to go to an advanced academic program. I was like, I can't work all nighters. Like, I can't pull an all nighter. I called an all night, literally at four. I'm 45, I'm pulling an all letter. I was like, what the hell is this? What is going on here? I was like, I can't do this.

Suzie Grieco [00:10:24]:
So I was like, you know what? I'm going on sabbatical. And they asked me after a year to come back from the sabbatical and start logging in my times, even though I wasn't working, like I'd had to log in my 0 hour. I was like, you know what? This is not going to work out. And then on vacation, one of my neighbors said, I used to recruit, why don't we start our own company? I was like, you know, one of the benefits of doing consulting is you learn financial budgeting, you learn how to manage a team, you learn how to be a player coach because you're playing a functional expertise role, plus you're managing and training others. And you are basically doing business development because you have to win that business in a consultative fashion and you have to meet a budget. So you have to sort of manage your P's and Q's, your financial p's and Q's to make sure your team doesn't overspend the billable hours. I was like, well, Booz Allen taught me all of that. Why am I working for them? I could do all this for myself, but I love the fact that I decided to do it with a partner.

Suzie Grieco [00:11:19]:
So her name, my business partner's name is Susan Groh. At the time she's still my partner, but we've added another one, Susan Gro. So Susie Grico, Susan Gro, the creative name that, wow, so creative. Sgt. Recruiting was born sort of at the outer banks on the beach while we were sitting there with all of our kids.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:39]:
Was it over a glass of wine too, on the beach?

Suzie Grieco [00:11:41]:
You know what I wish I could say? I drink wine. I'm not a wine drinker. If anything at the beach it was either Corona or vodka. So, you know, it is what it is.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:49]:
It's amazing how many good decisions happen over a drink, especially life changing ones, right?

Suzie Grieco [00:11:56]:
And to be honest with you, I want to say I was sort of nervous and excited. It wasn't the most nervous I'd ever been with a career choice, but I was like, we can do this. I mean I've been given all the tools in terms of, you know, training to be a recruiter. I know how to manage a recruiting team and I have the financial wherewithal because I was given that training. So it made total sense. But I didn't think I wanted to do it alone. I am a people person. I know that sounds crazy shocking, a recruiter who's a people person.

Suzie Grieco [00:12:23]:
But I like the fact that I was able to bounce ideas because sometimes when you are thinking about doing an idea, whether it be logo or strategy, like which price point, you know what is, you're going to be your differentiator in the marketplace. You think you have a great idea, but then someone says you've got to be kidding me, you know what I mean? Like realistically think about how that looks. So having someone to balance it out was really wonderful for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:45]:
So I think a lot of people run into an issue with having a partner, whether it's commitment level, energy, all sorts of things. What advice would you give to somebody since you guys have had a successful partnership for a long time? Like what do you look for in a partner for that success in your recruiting business?

Suzie Grieco [00:13:03]:
To be honest with you, it had to be that commitment to put in the time. I had never stopped working, even despite the fact of having kids. I was always a working mom, I had never taken time off just to be at home with the kids. She had taken the opposite track. She had decided, you know, I'm gonna take the time off for my professional career, raise my kids. And she was re entering the job market after a long break. So the reason why we meshed was despite the fact that she was a stay at home mom, she was always active at fundraising events. She was coordinating and organizing volunteers.

Suzie Grieco [00:13:37]:
There was never a time where I didn't run into her, where she was actively giving back to the community. So she had initiative and the motivation to constantly work even, you know, despite the fact that she couldn't have just stayed home and watched television all day. That was not her. So she matched my energy level. Despite the fact that she was not in the professional space, she was always giving back to the community. So I knew she could do it all. Like, if she can organize event that raised millions of dollars. Yes, yes, please.

Suzie Grieco [00:14:06]:
And there's also something to be said for, you know, my connections are different than hers, meaning, you know, she was in that, you know, stay at home scenario, but because she was volunteering for the PTA, she was volunteering for all of these school activities and fundraising events. She had a network, and she brought that to the table. I brought my recruiting network. She brought in her professional network of people who might be our future business. I also had known her for 14 years, so I knew her work ethic. So it's not a partner that I randomly said, hey, Kathy, I don't know you, but you're in recruiting. Let's start a business together. No, it's someone you work alongside with, someone whose work ethic mirrors yours because you have to put in equal amount of work.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:46]:
Awesome. Yeah, it's one of the things I've been. I love that you also said that you've known her for XYZ many years before that, because a lot of times, like, you see, like, a recruiter just getting started, another recruiter that's just getting started, they're like, hey, let's work together. And I've seen it go sideways so many times. So, like, you talking about the long term relationship you had, the work ethic and the commitment, I think is super important to hear. All right, let's just jump into going independent.

Suzie Grieco [00:15:10]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:11]:
The way that this job market has been for recruiters has been absolutely brutal. And, yes, getting business has also been tougher this year, after a few years where you could literally snap your fingers outside of Govcon and get business. So what is some of the things that a recruiter should even think about before, like saying, hey, you know what? Screw this. I'm going out of my own.

Suzie Grieco [00:15:33]:
Yeah, well, it's something we definitely thought about. One of the things that I knew was the cost of entry into this business was very low. Like, it's low barriers of entry. There's really literally anyone who has a different career path who wants to start recruiting in their space. They have all the tools at their disposal. And at the time, a lot of those tools were open source. So you essentially get your whole technology stack for free, relatively free. You know, you pay by getting all those ads, but it's for free.

Suzie Grieco [00:16:02]:
And we really had the luxury of time, meaning, you know, I wasn't the major breadwinner at the time for me and my kids because that would have been a little bit more difficult. But we had enough of a bandwidth or financial leeway to be able to take the first six months and set up our infrastructure. So it's not like we jumped into it and had to do, you know, build a website, build a brand, go get customers. At the same time, not really knowing what our brand and our website looked like, we had a plan to build out our infrastructure, understand what our costs were, and then go out and figure out how to, you know, sort of market that, if you will. So we had the luxury of time. I'm not saying everyone has the opportunity to do that, but if you are working, setting, putting, laying the foundations for going independent is a little bit less stressful when you don't have to worry about where my next mortgage payment is coming from. So if you're thinking about doing it, you can start doing the groundwork whether you're working or not. Evaluate the tools you're using.

Suzie Grieco [00:16:58]:
What are the free versions of those tools that you might be interested in? You can start building your infrastructure while you're working. We had the luxury of being able to do that full time.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:08]:
How did you guys get your first few customers?

Suzie Grieco [00:17:10]:
That was the benefit of having been in the industry for ten years. So my first clients really were referrals. I'll be honest with you. My very first client was someone my daughter played soccer with. Father, like, someone on the sidelines who we used to be screaming at our daughters, win, win, kick that ball all the time. He was my first client.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:31]:
So, like, how did, how did, how did that conversation go?

Suzie Grieco [00:17:35]:
What do you do? I have a recruiter. What do you do? I sell security to the government. I was like, guess what? I've hired security people for the government and then we had our first client. It was contingency. Granted, it was contingency, but we segued. And easing into it, we segued from contingency into RPO. We wanted to have enough consistency to add people to our team. And the only way you can do that is through contractual means where you think about, I need someone to sign a contract for a year so I know how much money I'm going to make so I can bring on a recruiter who can help me.

Suzie Grieco [00:18:06]:
Contingency doesn't always allow for that. Contingency is better for a solo professional who just wants to do the work themselves.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:12]:
From the time point that you guys started, you first started doing contingency. When did you guys make that full move into an RPO organization?

Suzie Grieco [00:18:20]:
When we realized we, we wanted to have a more stable income. That's it. We're like, this is great good money. Again, neither one of us were the majority breadwinners in our households, so we were making good money, but we were thinking, it's random and contingency, you have a 90 day period. You're like, please stick, please stick, please stick for 90 days. You can't even spend that money. So you earn that money and you're like, yay, I got my $16,000 check. Boo.

Suzie Grieco [00:18:47]:
I have to wait 90 days, and you hope and pray nothing happens. That's situation where you can get your 60.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:53]:
I think one of my first contingency freak out moments I had in the govcon space is the company needed help filling a position for the end of the contract because the government was pissed. And then my initial contract window of the guarantee was like, wait, the contract doesn't even last that long. What are they going to do?

Suzie Grieco [00:19:12]:
I did not do this right. And we also quickly learned that Govconde in that space, they can afford the big outlay for the contingency hires. Like, so we were constantly having to adapt. Okay, we'll spread out your payment over a blank number of months. At that point, you might as well just be a recruiter. You might as well hire a recruiter, or you might as well. It just didn't make sense for us to constantly have to figure out the best ways to work. And eventually we realized we can lower the cost per hire by doing rp up.

Suzie Grieco [00:19:44]:
Like, contingency is always, what, 25, 35% of the person's first year salary, two or three placements. You are essentially bringing on a full time recruiter. You might as well just pay me to work for you all the time. And you get all my work product. For me, it made the most sense and it was a win win for us and the client and the candidate. Cause I wasn't, you know, eliminating them from consideration just because they were contingency.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:09]:
When it comes to like, for somebody looking at doing like an RPO type model, like how do you approach a customer for that? Is it like the same way that you approach as a contingency recruiter? What is the best way for a recruiter to think about that as part of adding that to their sales toolkit?

Suzie Grieco [00:20:26]:
I think there's some primary differences between contingency and RPO. With contingency, the entire risk traditionally falls on the recruiter, the financial risk, meaning I'm going to put in all my work and I'm going to do all the search. If I do pay for resources, I'm going to pay for all of that and take the risk of my time and my money to find the right candidate. We learned how to pretty much ask the questions for contingency hire. Are you a prime? Are you the primary decision maker? Are you going to be the only ones interviewing this candidate to make that hiring decision? Like if it's a long process, the answer is no. If I have to wait for the government client to make a decision, the answer is no. If you are not the prime and you don't get to make that hiring decision again, the answer is no. I will not put all that time and risk and money.

Suzie Grieco [00:21:08]:
You only do that once and you realize it's never going to happen again.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:13]:
All right, pause. Pause of this. So for most people that don't understand the government contracting, government contracting is really just a super complex staffing industry with tons and tons of rules. But here's the thing. For the listeners, the prime is the one that wins the work. But they have like the teaming partners, what we call sub k. And many times those are like jump balls. So really think of it as like a bunch of staffing agencies trying to fill positions that the big staffing agency gives them.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:37]:
And many times those sub case really stink at recruiting. So then they try to bring on staffing agencies to support the sub k work. That's really just jump balls. So it's really, it's like 20 staffing agencies attacking one position.

Suzie Grieco [00:21:49]:
Perfect. See, see, I can learn technology in an hour. You can just describe Govcon in 5 seconds. Great job, great job path. But that was even true for when people wanted to hire us on. If we were not working with the CFO or, you know, CEO who can actually sign the contract. Then again, the answer was no. If you can make the hiring decision, we will support you.

Suzie Grieco [00:22:11]:
In Govcon space, there were too many layers. We learned to eliminate them. You have to be the prime. Whether you're big or small, the decision is yours and yours alone. Not a teaming partners, not a government client, not no one. So those were the criteria. But we realized what we did really well and what we could offer from an RPO standpoint. Again, the key differentiators here is the RPO is I get to give my client all of my work product meaning in contingency, they get the one candidate, maybe two candidates for consideration.

Suzie Grieco [00:22:41]:
But all of that other previous work, the candidates, the contact information, all of that work that comes into it is lost to them. After paying what, 60k? They get nothing except for that one candidate. Fantastic. It's a great candidate. They get what they want. But in RPO, you get people who are doing sourcing. You get the candidate's resume, you get their contact information, you get pre screening information. So it's stuff that you don't get off of a resume.

Suzie Grieco [00:23:06]:
So we found that the RPO model best aligned to teams who are trying to grow their teams. If you were hiring more than three people, it made sense for you to outsource your recruiting the way that you would outsource your accounting or outsource your payroll. It doesn't make sense for you to bring that in house because you just won't meet it for a very long time. And so RPO allows them to scale. So the flexibility of scaling to add two or three recruiters for surge recruiting at a lower cost per hire, definitely.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:34]:
When it comes to government contracting and how proposals are chasing proposals and all these things that, like, people outside the space are just like, wait, what's, what's going on in your guys world? And I'm like that. It's so complex. That's why you don't come over here.

Suzie Grieco [00:23:47]:
Well, and surge recruit, there's an odd layer for surge recruiting because they're internal recruiters, they rarely get credit for people who sign any letters of intent because it doesn't qualify in the hire, so their internal recruiters won't support it. Form like, okay, call an RPO. We don't care what you do with them. Our goal is to give you qualified people that you actually want to hire eventually. But whether you bring them on or not, it doesn't count against me. You just need to, you know, again, you pay for my hourly rate for.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:15]:
The RPO structure in the govcon space. Are you having the companies pay for the tools or are you guys still covering the tool costs?

Suzie Grieco [00:24:22]:
I don't want to say pass through. In some ways, our rate covers all of our tools, so they get the benefit of that. The only thing that in our situation, the only thing that we don't cover is any external marketing costs. So if I pay, let's just say, a LinkedIn marketing campaign for a particular role, not a job posting, but a campaign where I'm targeting specific individuals in specific marketing for a LinkedIn post, they have to pay for that.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:48]:
So is there any other things that somebody should think about to make that move, to go independent themselves?

Suzie Grieco [00:24:55]:
Well, they have to be prepared to really leverage their network. If you're a recruiter and you've done a great job supporting your internal clients, and it's a little bit harder, I would say, for sourcing recruiters than client facing recruiters. And I use that term because it was a term we used at Booz Allen, client facing, meaning I engaged with my internal clients directly, and I engaged with my candidates because I was putting them through the process. I didn't actually source candidates, so I had a dedicated source or had sourcing support when I needed it. My business was really initially started from referrals from the people who I supported internally who moved to a different firm, and they were, like, thinking, oh, who supported me? The path that I liked. Let's bring them in. Thankfully, they called me some of my candidates. Again, best to be honest and have integrity when dealing, and human, if you will, being human with your candidates, if you're human with them.

Suzie Grieco [00:25:48]:
Most of those candidates, again, because I'm hiring at a more senior level, senior individual performers, when they decided they wanted to make a move, or when they became in positions of leadership, who do they think of? Well, the person who recruited them. So the network that you build both as a client facing recruiter for as a corporate recruiter, as well as someone who's dealing directly with candidates who will eventually be in those leadership roles. I'm still doing business with those individuals today. Like, I'm eleven years into it and there are still people calling me back when I was at resolve it.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:22]:
How are you keeping track of these, like, these relationships? Like, is there like a CRM structure that you guys have, or it's just like your mental rolodex?

Suzie Grieco [00:26:29]:
No, no, no. Oh, God. I have. I'm old. My mind just went. Never ever. I can't remember anything unless it's reminded. I had my pop up reminders come up.

Suzie Grieco [00:26:37]:
We started using, again, free tools. And this was free back then. We started with smart recruiters. When it was free, we used it both as an ATS and as a, you know, a CRM to keep track of our, our clients. We switched to ziprecruiter when smart recruiters made me pay $300 a month. I'm like, no, you went for free to 300. No, no, thank you. So we went to Ziprecruiter, which was free for our time, and then we invested in PCR, PC recruiter, which was a tool that I had used in my agency days.

Suzie Grieco [00:27:05]:
So it was half CRM. I mean, it's not the best CRM, but it's primarily an ATs, specifically for agencies.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:12]:
Awesome. I want to do a quick jump.

Suzie Grieco [00:27:14]:
I mean, oh, my God, I want to say hate LinkedIn, but I can't. I love LinkedIn. It is what it is.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:21]:
I can't keep track of everything on LinkedIn. I think I've been on the platform for almost two decades. So I'm like, it's all over the place now and relationships and this stuff. But, okay, before we jump in the next part of the podcast, like, I want to talk about recruit DC. Why did you get involved on the leadership side of recruit DC?

Suzie Grieco [00:27:40]:
Thanks to Kathleen Smith and Derek, when I was at Booz Allen, he introduced me to Kathleen Smith. I did a job fair, and we had won a recruiter award from clear, you know, clear jobs. And I was like, this is really great to be recognized, to be great to candidates. I was like, who wouldn't want to be great to candidates? But it seems like people did differentiate, which was really super nice. Kathleen at the time was the president of recruit DC, and I was like, what do they do? And they're like, well, we help recruiters network, and we help elevate the profession through training. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I had at some point, Google, I think anton do this. I had Google's recruiters r and everything that came up was so nasty.

Suzie Grieco [00:28:19]:
They were, I mean, it was. I was like, that can't be me. I'm too good for that. Like, there's no way. Recruiters are horrible. They're liars. They're cheap. So I was like, I cannot be affiliated with that.

Suzie Grieco [00:28:31]:
I was like, okay, so what do I need to do? I need to train other recruiters to perform better and to be better recruiters to elevate the profession. So I attended my first event, fell in love immediately. I started helping them with marketing, doing their newsletters, and then at some point, I want to say about seven years ago there was like, you know, we have an opening on the board. Do you want to contribute from helping organize these events? Hall's like, yes, yes, I do. Yes, yes, yes, I do. And now I get a role in identifying speakers who will talk about relevant topics to both junior mid level and senior level leaders in the TA profession and have loved, never look back, love every moment of it.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:10]:
That's awesome. Well, thank you. Definitely. Thank you for giving back to the recruiting community on that. Well, before we jump over to the quick fire questions, is there anything else that you'd love to share about going independent or anything of that nature?

Suzie Grieco [00:29:21]:
Don't be afraid to ask the questions. And there are, you know, if you use your network for business development, use your network for also business acumen. So don't think you need to do the accounting thing by yourself. Do what you need to do to ask the questions and you stay out of legal trouble. Set up your business properly. Like, you can't be an LLC and, you know, a partnership. There's some tax liability issues that you need to understand that's different from a solopreneur versus a partnership. Those things you have to ask the right people for.

Suzie Grieco [00:29:53]:
You can't be afraid to pay for the right skill sets, the free tools, use them all day, but don't skip on the stuff that can get land you in jail.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:05]:
Okay, definitely good advice. Good advice and definitely with the IR's now implementing their own AI and LLMs, they're, they're going to catch more things.

Suzie Grieco [00:30:14]:
1000%. 1000%.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:17]:
All right, we're going to jump over the quick fire questions and they don't have to be quick answers.

Suzie Grieco [00:30:21]:
Okay, good, because I don't know if I have that mental capacity, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:26]:
What is your advice to a recruiter that's actually just getting started in this industry this year on how to be successful?

Suzie Grieco [00:30:33]:
Don't do the lazy way out. So sometimes you can be very successful doing the spam mail and not responding to everyone or, you know, sending out a thousand emails. Although I think technology is going to limit that activity. You can be successful because the volume and sort of staffing and agency recruiting, but that's not going to benefit you in the long run because there are going to be so many people out there who, like I was, ended up in a black hole because I dealt with, you know, Susie Grico, she never answered me. That's not the reputation you want. So you may rely on sort of the volume spamming to spammy type of thing. But don't do it more than once. I know you're gonna do it.

Suzie Grieco [00:31:13]:
Just don't constantly lean on that as your method of success.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:19]:
It's the same question. But for somebody that's been around the block, 510 2025 years, what advice would you give to them to see success or keep seeing success?

Suzie Grieco [00:31:27]:
The one thing that's really defined the changes in our industry has been the technology, the tools. Yes. Could you, in theory, still use a phoneville to make your phone calls today? Absolutely. But would you? Hell no. The tools have changed. So whether you are a junior or an experienced recruiter, the tools are free. So just learn. Keep your mind open to all the different tools that help you at every stage of the process.

Suzie Grieco [00:31:51]:
If I had to pick one tool that I thought changed my life significantly. Don't laugh calendarly. Like, I felt I wasted so much freaking time. Are you available on Tuesday? Tuesday at one, Tuesday at two. I was like, oh my God, shoot me. Shoot me now. But calendly is just like, you know what? I don't have time for this. I don't have to look at my calendar.

Suzie Grieco [00:32:09]:
Just here's a link. Find it yourself. It has helped me at so many levels, both with business development and with candidates. It's a tool that, you know, you didn't have back then. So constantly keep an eye out for new technology that helps, whether it's AI, if you want to call it generative AI or something that. I don't call it that, but can you use the tools that make your job easier?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:31]:
Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career and success?

Suzie Grieco [00:32:36]:
I saw that in your question, and I want to say yes, but that would be a lie. Dean DaCosta had a book, probably the only recruiting book I've really read from start to finish. And his book was sort of about Osint technologies. And we again, don't laugh at me because we tried it and we failed miserably. We did the whole set up a Unix box on our Mac machines so we can do sort of the dark webby type of links of data, set up an AWS. And we were following all of his instructions. But it was so complicated and it wasn't as fun for me. We had to outsource someone who was really technologically more savvy than either one of us to do it.

Suzie Grieco [00:33:14]:
It turned out my partner's son, no problem, set it up in 5 seconds. So it was a great resource because it really showed you that information that's out there publicly, like, it was because of that folk that I started looking at open source tools like true people search, and I kept track of all of that, which I thought was fantastic. I would show it to my kids. I'm like, don't post on social media because look what I can find for you, but look what I can find for all of your friends. Don't do it. So I would say it opened my eyes to all the information that's available publicly and for free. As a recruiter, how do you say no to that? So that would be the one book. I wish I could say there's more because there's so many out there.

Suzie Grieco [00:33:53]:
There's so many great books that have been published out there. I wish I could say I read them all, but the answers I have, not yet. What was it?

Benjamin Mena [00:34:00]:
Awesome. I feel like that book would be hard to listen to. An audible.

Suzie Grieco [00:34:04]:
Oh, you can't. I literally was turning the page. Step one. Step two, click here. Okay. There's no way that is not an audible book. And I think he's updated since. And now he's done it, where you have all of those resources on a link that he offers.

Suzie Grieco [00:34:18]:
Again, I know it's one of my tabs, where it just has all of the resources paid and for free that he recommends. Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:24]:
Dean, what do you think has been a contributing factor for your own personal success?

Suzie Grieco [00:34:29]:
I know my kids would hate me for saying this, but I ask a lot of questions about everything. I genuinely want to know whether it's about my clients information, because what sets me apart, I think when we're hiring candidates, and I hate the word cultural fit, but for some of my clients to be technically curious, I'm in the text, you know, clear tech space not to sit on your laurels, because I'm really good at development. I only develop in Java. Okay, good for you. If you're not technically curious, then you're not going to fit into some of my candidates profiles. I ask the same questions, so constantly asking questions, constantly wanting to know whether it be about what makes me, you know, how to be a better recruiter, what makes you as a developer, a better developer, what makes you as a systems engineer, what makes you different, you differentiate? I think I just constantly ask questions. Not the surface questions, really?

Benjamin Mena [00:35:21]:
I love that.

Suzie Grieco [00:35:22]:
I don't know. I don't know if that's. Like I said, my children hate that because I asked too many questions. But I think I ask my client the questions that I think that they find hard to answer sometimes, or they don't expect to answer it. When we have those conversations and I ask my candidates the questions as well, I think my favorite to ask them is, if I were to give you $5,000 of professional development training money, how would you use it? And they're like, if they have to stop and think, then they haven't given it a lot of thought. Like, off the top of my head, you give me $5,000, I know exactly how I'm going to spend that money. Like, I know which conferences I'm going to go to. You know, if I just had the time and the money, those would be the things that I go to.

Suzie Grieco [00:35:59]:
That question makes them stop and think about what their area of interest is. If they say, you know what, I want to get my theology degree, I'm like, uh huh. All right, well, you know what? I'm hiring for a developer here. I really want someone whose passion is lying in the forwarding a solution. That is, you know what I'm saying? So it really gives you insight into the candidates mental next steps. Where are they in their head, and where do they want to grow professionally if they want to invest their time and their money? That, you know, that's the direction in their head.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:30]:
Man, talk about like a good question that really throws people off.

Suzie Grieco [00:36:34]:
Well, it makes them stop and think. I like it.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:36]:
No, it's a great question, this next question I'm going to ask two ways. First of all, when you started your recruiting career and also when you started your company with your co founder, if you had the chance to go back in time with everything that you've gone through, the ups and the downs, and you got a chance to sit down with Suzy at the very beginning of her recruiting career, what advice would you give to yourself?

Suzie Grieco [00:36:55]:
I sort of live my life with no regrets. I would have said, I'm going to tell you, I wish I had found this career 20 years prior to when I found it, just because it fits my personality, it fits my quest for information. Hmm. That's a really great question. What advice would I give? You know, don't be afraid. If it makes you hesitate, do it anyway. That's the only advice I can give because I would be afraid. There were times that I'd be afraid.

Suzie Grieco [00:37:20]:
I was like, this is a new technology. Can I talk to the senior level executive who had this experience? Can I call him and sound intelligent? And I'd hesitate to make that phone call because I'd be embarrassed about what I didn't know. But the bottom line is, take that leap, you're going to end up learning what and for the next call. Okay, here's my advice, now that I'm thinking it through, is call the candidates you're not afraid to lose. First. Before you exec, if you have any hesitancy, you have a list of ten. Call the candidate you are least likely to love and want to put forward because you'll practice on them and then you'll get to the one you want. There you go.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:00]:
Love that.

Suzie Grieco [00:38:00]:
And would go for clients. Practice your pitch with clients you're less likely to stress out over.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:06]:
Well, this kind of the exact same question, exact same kind of thread. But let's look at the beginning of, you know, SG two. I feel like having a business is a lot more there, so many more moving parts, a lot more things. You're working with a co founder. If you got a chance to, like, almost like coach yourself, you and your co founder, the very start of your recruiting business, what advice would you give as a coach to your own company?

Suzie Grieco [00:38:31]:
It would be to don't forget about the team building where we were always remote. We lived in our separate homes, but nearby. I really enjoyed the collaboration that comes from working side by side. Yes, you have your Google Meets and you have your Zoom meetings now. But don't forget the in person activities which sometimes builds and strengthens relationships and maintains those relationships. So I would say, especially with a small organization that's primarily remote, don't forget to do and maintain the in person activities and do it more frequently than you ever think you needed to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:08]:
Great advice. Actually, that's on point. Well, that's awesome. Before I let you go, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Suzie Grieco [00:39:17]:
Well, I'm. I hate to say I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. I really don't. Do you know what? And I would say, you know, join if you're in the recruit DC market and you don't have to necessarily be in the recruit DC market. Cause, you know, from Philly down to North Carolina and beyond, we've had people attend our events in the past from as far out as Oklahoma. So you can find me there from the recruit DC website. But in terms of most of my activities, it's gonna be on LinkedIn.

Suzie Grieco [00:39:44]:
I'm active, fairly active on Facebook from a link, from a recruit DC perspective. But LinkedIn is probably the best professional way to follow me.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:53]:
Before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Suzie Grieco [00:39:56]:
No, no, I would say we have that whole fight. Is recruiting a profession. And I say, hell yeah, it is. You know, you can train, you can earn a living. It's a business where you can thrive and grow. And again, it's a multibillion dollar industry. It's a profession. Are there unprofessional recruiters? Absolutely.

Suzie Grieco [00:40:16]:
But our goal is to change that. Don't be afraid, because it's not like a lawyer or a doctor or, you know, Pa. It is something that you can definitely do as a professional. If you're thinking about it and wondering about it, even as a second career, you can earn a profitable lithee.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:30]:
I love that. Suzy, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. I've looked up to you the entire time I've known you and you've had it.

Suzie Grieco [00:40:38]:
I'm surprised, but thank you. That's awesome. Do I get to ask you a question? I know you've asked it before. Do I get to ask you one question?

Benjamin Mena [00:40:46]:
I'll let you ask one question.

Suzie Grieco [00:40:48]:
I know you had already answered the question about what is it that having set up this podcast, how are you in terms of, have you thought about, like, your business, your industry? Are you thinking about an exit strategy? Are you just doing what you love until you figure you can do it no more? Or have you thought that far out? Because as individual recruiters with our own companies, our own businesses, you know, especially with contingent recruiting, you're only as good as your last deal. How do you think about, like, what's happening in our industry changes in five to ten years from now?

Benjamin Mena [00:41:20]:
Well, there's two questions there. You know, looking at exit strategy and looking at the changes, one of the things I love about this podcast is getting the chance to empower recruiters to help prepare for those changes. Like, we're hosting the AI recruiting summit in August. That's going to have a bunch of AI speakers and AI tech demos to prepare recruiters for that. And then in September, it's the finishing your strong summit, where I've pulled together tons of industry speakers for over a week of just power packed information to equip recruiters. But when it comes to exit strategy, I really don't know that this podcast, I think, might end up being part of that, but you just never know where the future is going to go. We have ideas and we have plans in place, but what do they say about when you make plans? God sometimes laughs.

Suzie Grieco [00:42:05]:
I haven't heard that. That's interesting. Good to know.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:08]:
But we are actively moving towards a few different things. And some of that is even potentially shifting away from Govcon.

Suzie Grieco [00:42:18]:
Do you use outside consultants? Is that something that you think? Because I know that that's something that I've been for. My peers have always said, you know, I need to be thinking about like five years from now, how do I shut down my agency in a way, you know, in a way that I can still earn possibly money after I leave, or especially with contingency. So I just thought, I thought I would ask if that's something that you've ever given any thought to or if you've had any recruiter speak to that.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:41]:
Oh, yeah. I've had a few people on the podcast that have talked about how to set up and to structure to sell your agency, which is, you know, definitely great ones to go back. But, you know, a lot of us solo recruiters, it really, it's hard to sell. So it's really just looking at figuring out how to, like, diversify your income and different things that you could do. And I'm kind of like, I hate to say this, kind of blown away at some of what we call recruiting influencers now that are now making money on sponsorships and paid posts. And I think one influencer recently just shared that he's making like thousands of dollars a year or thousands of dollars a month just from TikTok.

Suzie Grieco [00:43:13]:
That's incredible. That is. I love that. I love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:16]:
So, like, you know, there are ways to do it. I think a lot of it is to make sure you're setting up yourself financially, structuring your finances, getting out of debt, figuring out different investment opportunities. And I think recruiters need to get super smart with their money fan.

Suzie Grieco [00:43:31]:
Great advice. Great advice.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:33]:
So. Well, Suzy, I am so excited that I had you talking about making that jump, talking about RPO, talking about training recruiters, helping them become the best they could be, and the influence that you've had on the DC recruiting community. So for the listeners, I want you guys to keep crushing it this year. Make sure you make 2024 your best year yet. Thank you.

Suzie Grieco [00:43:51]:
Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:53]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.