Future of Recruiting: Technology, AI, and Community with Alex Papageorge

Intro [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.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:19]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:00:57]:
I'm super excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a special guest. I'm so excited about talking with Alex Poppock George because he is so forward moving in some of the things in the recruiting, like he's using AI as a lead gen tool. He's using AI for a lot of the things that he's doing with his recruiting business. We hear a lot about companies and they're using AI, having fun with AI, but it's, you know, Alex is a small business owner that has a growing recruiting team, but is actively using it on the BD and the recruiting side of the house. But I'm also excited about talking about some of the things that he's doing different in the recruiting space based on his background. Like, he's been huge in the sales, huge on the BD side for multiple different organizations. But he looked at 2023 2024 and decided to take a little bit of a different route.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:42]:
So, Alex, I am so excited about having you on the podcast, buddy.

Alex Papageorge [00:01:46]:
Thanks, Ben. That was a heck of a heck of an introduction. If only my fiance could have heard you say that, you know, I might have got some brownie points.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:52]:
We'll make sure that the podcast goes live before you get married so that way she can hear it well, then.

Alex Papageorge [00:01:56]:
You'D have to convince her to actually listen. But I've been a big fan of the podcast. Super excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And, you know, you sounded like a regular greek, just the way that the papa George rolled off your tongue for.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:10]:
The listeners before we hit go. Most of the time I'm like, practicing because I am so scared of like, saying something wrong for the live. But. But anyways, I digress. Okay. You've got a great history in recruiting. Let's take a few steps back. How did you even end up in this wonderful world that we live in?

Alex Papageorge [00:02:25]:
Like normal? Just kind of stumbled into it. I was living in Miami. I graduated from the University of Miami. Shout out, hurricanes. I was working with a small startup, marketing, doing digital marketing, probably before people even knew it was a thing. Running around, tapping on doors, selling social media. That was quite an experience. But after about three years, eight months, a company was acquired by a company down in Coral Gables.

Alex Papageorge [00:02:51]:
And I didn't really know what to do. So I got a call one day from a recruiter, and she said, hey, I got this awesome position that I'd love for you to come and interview for. And I said, awesome? Like, what's the position? Hey, it's doing ABC and D. And had about a 45, 50 minutes conversation with her. And at the end of that call, she said, hey, listen, forget I even called about the position that I was originally calling for you for. I want you to just come in and talk. There's a business development role. And the one piece that really sold me, I don't know if other people are sports fans or have seen this movie, but, you know, she compared recruiting to Jerry Maguire in the sports agency world, and she was like, show me the money.

Alex Papageorge [00:03:34]:
And from immediately, I don't know, something happened. It just clicked. And for the last ten years, I've been in recruiting.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:41]:
Okay, wait. You started on the BD side of the house for recruiting?

Alex Papageorge [00:03:44]:
Yes. That is a good point. Good ears. When I got hired was directly into sales, so they had a strong recruiting team, and they just wanted me to start doing business development. It was with a large company that I'm sure some of the listeners are familiar with. Modis and Adeco subsidiary it. And after about a year, was just bringing in. There's too much business, to say it bluntly.

Alex Papageorge [00:04:09]:
And there was a local company called Tech Partners that was the local dominant in the industry. They had about 35 recruiters that could support a growing book of business, and it was an incredible experience. Love a lot of those people. Still in touch with a lot of them. And, yeah, it was awesome to be working at an agency where a specific office was closing, you know, 80, 90 deals a month.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:28]:
Okay, so you were bringing in too much business. That's a struggle. That like business development and that I know. One of the things that I was looking forward to chatting with you about was the BDS at the house because you've been doing bd for so long, what was working for you to bring in so much bd compared to probably some of the other sales reps there?

Alex Papageorge [00:04:46]:
That's a great question. So at this point, I was rolling off a startup doing digital marketing. So I was pretty familiar with how to set up and run organized campaigns, specifically email content generation. Really figuring out the three different elements, subject line, hook, body, call to action. And to answer your question, MoDIS, as we all know, is like, well, we may not notice. Forgive me, it's a monster company. It is one of those k force Robert Halves of the world. It is a huge global organization and they had all these things that people called data, right.

Alex Papageorge [00:05:23]:
But nobody in the office really understood how to use like the CRM for like marketing purposes. So at this point, like email outreach wasn't really a thing. I kind of like hacked it. I don't know if you use Microsoft Outlook tools where you could do like mail merges with like Excel folders and Microsoft Word just from adding dynamic fields. So what I did was I actually took their database of information and I just created various campaigns set up on the different positions that I was targeting for which were technology at the time. And I just ran a bunch of email campaigns and it worked like a charm. And that's how you get in a demand problem.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:03]:
And for the listeners, that was also a time where email worked a little better than it does now. But it's just one of the things, I love that you said that because I remember at a large staffing agency that I worked at moved over to sales. Like you just sat there and pounded the phone all day long. And I'm sure some of your co workers had just sat there pounding the phone all day long, but you decided to utilize technology to work a little smarter.

Alex Papageorge [00:06:28]:
I guess so, yeah. And modus is a massive, I feel like I've said this a few times, but the office itself probably had nine people in it or so, about four or five recruiters to support, you know, about three sales folks. And there were some sharks in the sales side. There was one woman, Desiree Funderberg. Connect with her on LinkedIn if youre not. Shes a rock star. She taught me a lot of what I know and she demanded the most attention in the office. So it was super difficult to grab recruiters.

Alex Papageorge [00:06:57]:
And at this point, thats kind of where my mind started to realize that a lot of recruiting businesses were set up the same. And a lot of these processes that were done are manual focused instead of automated, which I know were going to get into more of that later in the conversation, but at this point was when my wheel started to turn a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:15]:
Okay. And fast forward to the start of super recruiters. You talk about super recruiters?

Alex Papageorge [00:07:21]:
Yeah, super recruiters. We're superheroes that are recruiters. So super recruiter? Yeah. Like I mentioned, I stayed in the industry for quite some time. I was the second highest producer in actually the firm's history, which was awesome. You know, at its peak, we had, I think, like 138 contractors doing incredible business with some of the most amazing companies, including Google, you know, self driving car, Waymo Project, et cetera. And like most you know, who work for a big agency, always had dreams of brighter lights. Imagine driving through Hollywood Boulevard right now, but, you know, really kind of having a dream to creating your own firm.

Alex Papageorge [00:07:58]:
Right. And when I had an idea of super recruiter, you know, when you start anything, it's not just going to be immediate. There's also a strategy involved in a vision of the company. And the goal of super recruiter is to create a recruiting service that, as I say it, so simply isn't googleable. Right? Like, you can find so many different recruiters who can offer relatively the same type of service. But if you're able to productize your recruiting service and actually be a differentiator in the market based on the type of product that you offer your customers, then there's a potential, you know, totally different niche that more of these contingency style agencies can't really touch because 20% to 30% types of fees aren't even really feasible for a lot of companies today. Sitting here. May 17, 2024.

Alex Papageorge [00:08:49]:
So I can timestamp this, but that's where super recruiter came in and wanted to present an alternative to the typical, normal options that companies have.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:01]:
So you've seen some of the large companies, you've seen some highly successful companies. You talked about being different. I mean, at the end of the day, like, you could have just done what you already knew. Why did you truly chase a little bit of a different path?

Alex Papageorge [00:09:17]:
I think you have to be different to stand out. I think that with recruiting, there are solving immediate needs and being a long term partner and depending on what type of value add you can offer your clientele tells a lot of the story. I think that this comes back to identifying who are the right companies for you to work with. You know, what's a common phrase in digital marketing is what's called icps, ideal customer Personas. So you start to realize not every company is necessarily built for the model that you offer, which is totally fine. It just might not be the exact fit for you at this time. So, yes, it is a little bit of a different type of structure that we offer, but we're seeing the pendulum swing a little bit. And in my opinion, a lot of the companies that we have engaged with and have talked with are starving for an alternative to just the straight contingency model.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:07]:
Okay, cool. And so one of the cool things, and I actually had Alex as a guest on a special LinkedIn live that had a few hundred people show up talking about artificial intelligence. So one of the cool things that Alex is using is AI as actually part of a lead gen option. Do you want to talk about that real quick?

Alex Papageorge [00:10:26]:
Yeah. At that time, we were talking about, I think it was more Metaview world at that point that just came out, which I still stand by, phenomenal product. But then we started kind of getting into more of this streamlined automation of like, hey, how far can we actually, like, take artificial intelligence? And I just, you know, even this morning I had a phone call with, you know, I call him the godfather of recruiting, deep Singh. He just started a channel on YouTube. Be sure to check him out. I can even send you his YouTube channel. It's fantastic. So, taking a little bit of a step back, we've been playing with this tool called clay.com dot.

Alex Papageorge [00:11:03]:
Clay.com is a platform that allows you to integrate all different types of data sources. You can pull things like websites, LinkedIn profiles, company profiles, how many people they're in it, what's their annual revenue, what type of industry in there. We're all familiar with these types of data sets in those long CSV type of file formats. But what Clay allows you to do is actually take that data and start enriching every piece of the data to create logic from the information that you're feeding it. So, for example, now artificial intelligence is able to read people's profiles on LinkedIn and say the snap of a finger, right? Well, when people reach out and actually send out their communication for business development, the more personalized you can actually get, the higher chance the likelihood is that that person will respond. I think that's pretty safe to say. But a lot of our personalization is so bland, it's so terrible. It really just does not satisfy this need for digital marketing and actually business development in the outreach standpoint.

Alex Papageorge [00:12:13]:
But now with Clay, you're actually able to pull information off the web, such as news articles that is related to their specific industry. You can now identify if someone left their company within the last three months and list them by name and ask how the back fills going. You can now make these types of custom, outreach like messages so personalized that there is absolutely no chance that you even think it's an AI at the end of the day. And that is pretty scary when we start to think about it. Given how early we are in this.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:49]:
Process, I feel like we can go down some major rabbit holes with AI. And I think one of the things that recruiters are overestimating what AI can do at the moment, but underestimating what AI can do in the future.

Alex Papageorge [00:13:01]:
No, I mean, the tools are so advanced in clay. I saw a post by someone today who said they opened up a full stack developer role that had 847 openings. Then he started combing through the data, and he's like, hey, okay, we can't have this. Hey doesn't have this. And you kind of whittle it down. We've all been through that process, right? But with something like Clay, you can literally, at the snap of your fingers, have every one of those candidates stack from one to 800 immediately and tell them why they're a fit, and then have another row right next to it as, like, an actual generated outbound message that tells that candidate why, specifically, based on their background, they are a fit for this exact role. And then do that 100 times with the top hundred candidates you have within, say, five minutes. And that's the type of power that we have with artificial intelligence now at our fingertips.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:52]:
I mean, it keeps on getting better and better. It's one of those things. Now I feel like anytime I see an AI written post, I'm just like, that's AI. But what you're saying is, because of all the data sets they're pulling in, it's now, at the moment, feels like.

Alex Papageorge [00:14:05]:
It'S very human, extremely human. And with chat GPT 40 coming out, it's cheaper than ever. It's about half the price to run these types of API polls for chat GPT. You know, if the messaging is right, concise it down. One of the first things I did when I started learning AI about nine months ago is I jumped on an online course and finished the course on Vanderbilt online, and it was prompt engineering. And you start to learn through prompt engineering that, like, hey, the output, as silly as it may sound, is really just determined on your input. Like, what prompt you're generating with it is going to determine so much. So depending on what tone of voice, how you want them to speak.

Alex Papageorge [00:14:44]:
All these different elements come into it. But now, as the machine's gotten smarter, it understands this information at a much better level. And if you're decently good at problem engineering, you can really have it sound very human.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:56]:
So a recruiter listening to this wants to jump on clay or wants to do more true AI business development, like what kind of steps? Or where can you learn? Or how do you even get started on this, this kind of stuff, like.

Alex Papageorge [00:15:09]:
Where all great things are found today? Ben, that's YouTube. I am a genuinely curious person and I watch a ton of YouTube videos. It's just like on my screen all the time. So I'll be zoning in and zoning out. But if you really want to learn clay recruiting, you'll be able to tell super quickly that other recruiters are using it. In my opinion, one of the biggest use cases that Clay has are actually for recruiters. So if you just went to YouTube and you're typing recruiting clay, you're probably going to have ten to 15 videos just pop up and you can kind of start to see what types of implications this can have.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:43]:
Are you using any other AI tools when it comes to recruiting or business.

Alex Papageorge [00:15:46]:
Development outside of Medaview now with Clay? No, no. Metaview. Yes. Still think Metaview is outstanding. Like we talked about in the AI recruiting show we did, I like products that work. They don't need to do all this stuff. They just need to do one really important thing really, really, really well. And Metaview does that.

Alex Papageorge [00:16:13]:
So these aren't any endorsements for clay.com, comma Medaview, any of those. These are just kind of personal tools that we use internally that we've had super success with. But Metaview is another one. And I highly recommend checking out some type of outreach system we use instantly. IO one of my favorite tools out there as a digital marketer at heart, it really does everything that you would want it to do on cold outreach. So definitely would highly recommend checking out that platform as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:40]:
So outside of AI, outside of being different, what else are you seeing that works when you're sitting there talking with clients? What is working right now on the BD side?

Alex Papageorge [00:16:52]:
Also, this is a hot topic, right? Because I think a lot of people feel the same way. At least the conversations I've had with people who own agencies for quite some time and at least my feeling. I'm curious to hear your thoughts too, Ben, is it sounds like a lot of the same strategies that were used before aren't having as much success as they once did over the last few years is what, is that what you're hearing too?

Benjamin Mena [00:17:16]:
That's what I'm hearing. That's why almost everybody that comes on, I'm like, what's working? Like what do you see that's working for you personally? Also for the listeners? If you try somebody else's thing, it might not work for you, but you can find a route that becomes your honey hole.

Alex Papageorge [00:17:30]:
Absolutely. So if AI just sounds like, like not my things, get back to basics. NPC's. I think NPC's are absolutely still the goat, the godfather of business development in recruiting. I think figuring out what are those positions that ar open that you have a great candidate for but also beyond that that people are willing to pay for. You know, I think that's an element people miss sometimes is that, hey, just because you have a great candidate doesn't mean that they don't have ten other great candidates. But if you're able to use your candidates as reusable, I hate to say this but you know reusable assets, right. Like your greatest product is that person, right.

Alex Papageorge [00:18:14]:
And if that person is a killer person, then use the NPC's. That would be my suggestion for even people going in the industry is definitely use that as a little bit of a navigation light.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:28]:
Okay. And before we jump into anything else, Alex is going to be a future speaker at the AI event coming up later on this year. So just a heads up, keep an eye out for that. But you know just with everything that you're seeing, what's your thoughts on the future of recruiting? Like one to three or five years out?

Alex Papageorge [00:18:45]:
You might have to shrink that down. For me, the future of recruiting in what sense?

Benjamin Mena [00:18:49]:
Like how do you think AI is really going to impact recruiting?

Alex Papageorge [00:18:53]:
I think it's going to impact it greatly. I don't think that there's any denying that. I think that, I hate to say it, maybe this is controversial, maybe it isn't. But if you don't necessarily see that AI is happening around you, you got to open your eyes a little bit wider. It is happening. And to be honest with you, it does do the job at some level much better than people can. At super recruiter. We don't use AI for everything.

Alex Papageorge [00:19:18]:
It's really highly focused on top of funnel sourcing and business development. So once there is interaction and interest stemmed, we have in human, we have a person thats actually screening them out on a personal and on a cultural fit which we found companies absolutely love. Because if youre just able to do everything from end to end. I dont think the technology is good enough today, probably within the next few years. But if youre able to add that type of human element to the whole process, I think that companies have really enjoyed that. I think that we have to understand that AI is, in my opinion, going to reduce jobs. One job, one year may take five people, but when five years from now, that may take two people. And that job might not be necessarily eliminated, but it is reduced.

Alex Papageorge [00:20:06]:
And the point of that story is that be one of those one to two people who are left over, who has embraced AI and who has learned it at the capacity that you can, because things like writing personalized messages at the blink of an eye, it's just going to do it better than you can. And this business has always been around people. And the more time you can spend talking with people, then in my opinion, the more that's like the actual time that you should be spending.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:36]:
Absolutely love that. I know some people keep on talking about how the human element companies aren't going to get rid of that. And I'm like some of these companies that have a billion dollars, if they can save $100 million on a recruiting function, trust me, they'll pull the trigger. And AI as much as the process as they can.

Alex Papageorge [00:20:53]:
100%. 100%.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:56]:
We've definitely seen, at least with the tech space, the layoffs over the last year, unfortunately, are many times a number on a spreadsheet. And even if they have the money, they'll just make a cut to afford more stock buybacks.

Alex Papageorge [00:21:08]:
Yeah, going back to being different and that burn that exists. But in the technology sector specifically over the next two to three, to say like five years in more of that immediacy, I dont think its out of the world to say that technology sector might be affected mostly by AI. A lot of data driven positions, a lot of data, creative designers, product engineers. There are some pretty scary, crazy stuff out there right now. Its going to affect it, which I talked to other buddies who are more in the accounting space and the civil engineering space, and theyre like, dude, there was just a $500 million bill that was just passed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It is kind of an interesting paradigm shift where things like building buildings are going to be much, much more farther down the line when it comes to actually being nervous for jobs.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:05]:
Love that. One thing. I also want to jump in. Youve also been building a community. I really think one of the most powerful things going into 2024 and 2025 is going to be the community that you build and working on one with the elite recruiter community. But talk about talent Topia, too.

Alex Papageorge [00:22:19]:
Topia is a community for recruiters to come in vibe, learn what we say, talk around the cooler. That's our main channel there. We're going to start to do a lot more cool things with it, too. A lot more product demos. I know we have a couple lined up already for the community. So anything within the recruiting software tool landscape, we're going to bring on founders, product engineers, things like that, to talk to the community, to kind of open up their eyes and see how they can use some of these futuristic tools for themselves.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:48]:
Awesome. Well, before we jump over to the quick fire questions, is there anything else that you would like to share about, like AI business development or kind of your background or super recruiters?

Alex Papageorge [00:22:58]:
I think we covered a lot. No, I think that as long as you enjoy people, it is still going to be a good business for you. And just because the game changes and, you know, nothing stays the same as reality, everything evolves. And if you just let your curiosity take over, I think you're going to be pretty impressed with what you find awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:20]:
Well, jumping over to the quickfire questions with everything that you know. Now, if you got a chance to talk with a recruiter, which I'm sure you're doing that in Talentopia, somebody that's just getting started in the industry, what advice would you give them to succeed?

Alex Papageorge [00:23:33]:
Best part is just talking to people. You know, I think so much of this business, whether you're on the BD or on the recruiting side of it, is people, right? And I think that's the most important part, especially with all these technology advancements. You know, there's a reason why your podcast rocks, Ben, right. And it's not, I hate to break it to you, it's not only because of you, it's that you have rockstar guests on here, right? Like, it's not some like, boring accounting firm type of like, podcast, right, where it's like scratching your eyes out. But, you know, there is a reason why a lot of good recruiters are personable, and it's just because they develop people skills. So I think the more you actually talk with people and just learn, when you start off, just stop talking and just learn and ask questions, the faster you're going to pick up in the industry and whatever vertical you're in.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:20]:
So same question. But for somebody that's been around the block for a bit. 510 2025 years.

Alex Papageorge [00:24:29]:
Watch YouTube. Just watch. You watch YouTube. Chances are, if you thought of it, it's been done and chances are it's on YouTube. Just get curious if you think that something's possible. Like I said, it probably is. So that would be my best suggestion to people who have been in the game for longer than I have, is just watch a lot of videos.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:49]:
Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Alex Papageorge [00:24:54]:
Maybe I shouldn't watch as many videos and I have a better answer for this question. The one that stands out in my mind is linchpin, and it just talks about being irreplaceable. With all this chaos going around, how are you that centerpiece, keeping it all together. So strive to be different, be irreplaceable. And no matter what you're doing, whether that's work, family, friends, it's important to keep in mind that work is one part of our lives. We don't live to work, we work to live. So let's keep that in mind also.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:28]:
What do you think has been a big personal driver of your own personal success?

Alex Papageorge [00:25:32]:
Personal driver is just internal motivation. To be honest, just wake up every day with a good attitude, understand that you can control only what's in your power to control, and things are going to happen out of your control. But if you can continue to keep a positive attitude and just outwork people, things are going to happen. There's literally no formula, there's no secret, there's no form of AI that's going to save you this. Just put 1ft in front of the other and make progress every day and stay positive.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:06]:
And if you had the chance to go back to the very beginning of your recruiting career and have a conversation with yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

Alex Papageorge [00:26:15]:
I would say quit the staffing agency earlier. In all reality, that probably would have been it. But if that's not what we're thinking about necessarily, I would say stay in contact with people no matter what. I think it's always enjoyable to hear from people that you recruited with or you worked with ten years ago. When you share the story of where you got them that job at blank company, I would say keep a really good rolodex of just people that you've interacted with throughout your entire career and just stay in touch with those people. Start a newsletter, just kind of continuously stay in touch with everybody who you talk with, because, you know, that is, at the end of the day, the job of a recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:57]:
If you could also go back and talk yourself at the very beginning when you launched super recruiters, is there like, any advice that you'd give yourself changes in direction or anything.

Alex Papageorge [00:27:09]:
No changes in direction. Every step of the way. We've learned something if we would have talked a year ago. Today I have 80,000 emails that have all been analyzed. So I tell people that we work with, we have a crystal ball. Like, we know what works. What is the hook? What interests people? What time of day should the, should the email be sent? What is the subject line in email? Two versus four. So I don't think that there's anything we would have changed in the process to get to where we are.

Alex Papageorge [00:27:37]:
I think that we're actually way farther along than I would have ever imagined us to be with super recruiter. I think kind of when we started out, like, just understand that things aren't going to happen overnight and a lot of us come from being big billers and we're used to having some of those months that you literally make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a month in. And when you're starting on your own, it's not going to be that every single month. Right. And to just enjoy the little wins that you have along the way. Ignacio Humberto, who is the UX designer or lead designer at Home Depot, taught me that much earlier. And I have to remind myself all the time is just enjoy the wins. Life is so challenging and there's so many times that you're faced with an obstacle that if you just don't actually enjoy and celebrate that moment when they happen, you're missing a lot of the ride.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:31]:
What if you can go in the future and talk to yourself? Can I give yourself any advice? I'm working on this new question, so just deal with me on that.

Alex Papageorge [00:28:38]:
I was like, I like it. We're spitballing. Hair bound.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:41]:
Yeah, totally spitballing. If literally future, you could sit down right today and have a conversation, like five years out, what would they say?

Alex Papageorge [00:28:49]:
It's something that I struggle with all the time, Ben, and I applaud you for this, sir, but just get your butt on camera more and just document what you're doing. Screw the setup, right? Like, just turn on the camera and just start, like, talking about what you do and people are just going to start to learn and find you and things like that. And I think my future self is going to regret not getting on camera more frequently as well as early as I should. It's been on my New Year's resolution list for the last three years. So like I told myself in January, this is the year. So hopefully a YouTube channel is going to be dropping here soon. But I'm also going to be recording what we do on clay, how we use chat GPT in today's recruiting landscape. So the YouTube channel is just going to be about cool shortcuts, hacks, and ways to improve your overall efficiency in recruiting.

Alex Papageorge [00:29:42]:
So I'm excited about that, and hopefully that's something that happens here soon.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:47]:
You can share this interview on your YouTube channel if you haven't started it by then. Like, this could be your first video for listeners that want to follow you. How can they do that on LinkedIn?

Alex Papageorge [00:29:56]:
There's not too many Alice Papa Georges out there. There is one individual, actually, and I hate that. But no, I'm just kidding. She's actually awesome. We actually talk on DM's. We're like, hey. Like, we didn't even know that there were other people walking around this planet with our names. But, yeah, find me on LinkedIn if.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:11]:
You want a good laugh. There's another Benjamin Mena who I get calls for constantly. He's a doctor down in Tampa. And before I left Tampa, I actually made him my primary doctor. Walked into their office and they thought it was, like, a fake setup. Like, I'm Benjamin Mena, and I'm here to see Benjamin Mena. And they were just like, bullshit that I showed up my id card, and they're like, oh, my God. So sat down with the doctor, and he's like, I'm a runner.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:33]:
He's like, I've been using your times, like, telling my friends how fast I am. What happened to you? You got slow. I was like, that's the last time I see you as my doctor.

Alex Papageorge [00:30:44]:
All right, Ben, here's a question for you. You're a runner, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:30:48]:
Mm hmm.

Alex Papageorge [00:30:49]:
Favorite running shoe?

Benjamin Mena [00:30:51]:
The Asics Keanos. I've been wearing them for over two decades.

Alex Papageorge [00:30:56]:
Good shout out. I'm a Brooks guy myself, but I'll need to check that out.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:00]:
It is my happy place. It's my go to Asics. Sponsored my college cross country team before they switch to Adidas. And anytime I wasn't wearing Adidas for race day, I was back in my keanos.

Alex Papageorge [00:31:14]:
A six r are pretty good, but, yeah, just out of curiosity, the running shoe conversation is a hot one. Always.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:21]:
Well, Alex, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Alex Papageorge [00:31:25]:
No, just thank you, Ben, for having me on. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you enjoyed this. And, yeah, that's really it. Just stay curious. Keep putting 1ft in front of the other good things are going to happen.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:36]:
Alex, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. You're one of probably the few recruiters that are more AI forward, and you're always ahead of the game based on every single time that we have a chat on LinkedIn, you know, chat here. So excited that you got to share and also excited that you're going to be part of the AI event coming up. So for the listeners, guys, keep crushing it and make sure that 2024 is your best year yet. Thank you.

Intro [00:31:58]:
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