The 3 Pillars of AI In Recruiting with Khaled Hussein

Intro [00:00:00]:
It.

Intro [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with.

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Your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game.

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We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:18]:
I just want to thank everybody for making the recruiting growth summit such an epic event. I dreamed about 25 to 50 people signing up. We had about 650. And for those that went VIP to get access to the replay. And if you want access to the replays, I'll have it in the show notes and the link. I just want to say thank you so much for believing in the event, believing in the speakers. And you guys and everybody just made this an incredible event with the speakers, to everybody tuning in and listening live to the people that are able to catch the replays, I just want to say thank you. One last announcement.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:49]:
Book of the month, stop self sabotage by Dr. Judy Ho. I'm excited about reading this. I'm going through it right now. I think this is one of the things that holds back a lot of recruiters from being the absolute best. So you guys are going to love this podcast. So let's go.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:08]:
I cannot wait for this episode of the it'll be recruiter podcast because we are going to talk about one of the things that is on the mind of every single recruiter out there, artificial intelligence. And first of all, is artificial intelligence going to replace the recruiter? We'll see on that. But most importantly, do you see the recruiters out there still using phone books every day? Do you see the recruiters out there still using fax machines? No, because recruiters take advantage of the technology. They grow, they evolve, and they change to make more placements and take care of their clients. That's why I'm super excited because we're going to do an actual in depth conversation about AI and not just like the surface level AI stuff that we always talk about. I have Khalid Hussein, who is a CEO of Betterleep, which is a pretty killer tool. As a personal fan, I actually invited him onto this podcast to talk about this because all these companies are talking about AI, and I really feel like.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:04]:
A lot of them are just kind.

Intro [00:02:05]:
Of like just a back end GPT API integration. Him and his team are actually making AI happen for recruiters. So I'm excited about this episode, and we're going to talk about what is going on in the future of recruiting. So welcome to the episode.

Khaled Hussein [00:02:19]:
Thank you so much. What an. I'm really, really excited to be here. I appreciate it.

Intro [00:02:24]:
So real quick, before we get started, what is betterleep and how did you get into the wonderful world of recruiting?

Khaled Hussein [00:02:30]:
Right? So I woke up one day dreaming to be a recruiter.

Intro [00:02:36]:
The one and.

Khaled Hussein [00:02:37]:
Only, you know how everybody kind of look at Steve Jobs and Lon Musk's of the world and all of kind of the very successful entrepreneurs. One of the first things they talk about is the key to success was having the right team. So I was in that shoes, kind of building my first company. My first company was a company called Tilt. And later I was very fortunate to sell this company to Airbnb. So kind of very lucky with my career as an entrepreneur. I later built another company called Reddoor, which got sold to Opendoor. And so I was that person.

Khaled Hussein [00:03:19]:
That is my number one thing to do is build the right team. And if you have the right team, magic happens. And so naturally I was thinking through who's going to be my first five people, who's going to be my first ten people, who's going to be my first recruiter? That I'm going to bring, that's going to bring the next 1020, 30, 50 employees into the company. And so in many ways, I've been kind of on the other end of it where I need to build a team, I need to find the right people, I need to figure out how to build the right team, what is the right tools out there? What's the cost and expenses related to all that? And I was paying for it. And so at some point after Redbilling ended up, again, very fortunate. So I invested in a number of different startups, joined a number of different boards, and all of the investments I was in, all the founders really wanted to grow their teams and I was just kind of recommending some recruiters to them and some tools. And then I realized I really want to try to do something for the founders. It's just kind of the career that I took and I want to try to address that very point to them is how do we build a really good team? And that just kind of got me interested in the recruiting overall.

Khaled Hussein [00:04:35]:
There was a really funny meme about started in recruiting and took two steps and just fell. That's exactly what happened with me. I entered, then I realized, oh, my God, this is so not what I expected. And then I'm sure we'll talk about it, but the company has evolved a lot. Typical startup fashion, we started with one product and we pivoted about 17,000 times. And then eventually we got to really an interesting insight. And that was almost like three years in that we got to learn a lot and expand our network and work with a lot of different customers. And then our customers really are the ones that kind of took us in that direction to what betterleave is today, which it is kind of AI powered sourcing platform.

Intro [00:05:19]:
And when it comes to the platform, there are a lot of sourcing platforms out there. I get hit up by them constantly. You guys seem to have really taken it up. I don't want to say maybe like five X or ten X where it's one click sourcing, personalized emails. And also with those personalized emails, like follow ups and candidate details are still like unlimited contacts too. Okay, pause. Why are you guys not talking about unlimited contacts more? Because that's a huge selling tool for us recruiters.

Khaled Hussein [00:05:49]:
We need to talk more about it. I remember at first when I talked and you saw this, I think you guys are not talking about this. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. And we still have it. We keep the team really small. And honestly, it's been okay. So on the other side, when you start in recruiting, you kind of get humbled a little bit. But then on the other side of it is when people love you, they really love you.

Khaled Hussein [00:06:14]:
And it's just kind of, they spread the word. And we've been very fortunate, all of our growth so far, and the company has been inbound and referrals. People try out the platform, they're like, oh, my God, this was really great. And I'm not saying this because kind of founder belly, but it's truly just, it makes us think, even ourselves, we are building this and makes us realize, wow, we thought what we're building is valuable, but it's actually way more valuable than we even thought to do. These recruiters, independent or in house.

Intro [00:06:45]:
Kudos to the love that you guys are getting because trust me, recruiters, we could be a nasty bunch. We could be mean. The software sucks. Trust me, people will say it. But working on another update for another article on LinkedIn, and I was asking like, hey, what are you guys using for artificial intelligence? And people are like, betterleep is awesome. Betterleep is awesome. Betterleep is awesome. So it's cool to see the kudos out there for a product that actually works for recruiters.

Khaled Hussein [00:07:14]:
Yeah. And it's a really good signal as kind of founders to think through product market fit and kind of looking through our customers really talking about this, or are we just kind of, we think we built something useful, you know what I mean? In the beginning, the customers, recruiters were very honest with our first iteration, with the first product that we pivoted away from and feedback was not good. I mean, it was good in hindsight, but wow, we worked really hard on this and recruiters were like, what is this? But then later that just kind of transition into something that's truly from.

Intro [00:07:51]:
And I feel like we're going to probably we've better weave into the conversation. But when it comes to artificial intelligence and recruiting, I guarantee you most recruiters are using chat GPT for important stuff like saving time on emails, writing job descriptions. And I know a lot of times, hey, we're now using AI, and that's a tagline, but when it comes down to it, how should recruiters be using artificial intelligence to increase their output and make more placements?

Khaled Hussein [00:08:18]:
Yeah, and I really was doing another talk on this. AI and recruiting has evolved quite a bit. And I think a lot of recruiters, they may have been using AI in different shapes or forms and they just weren't really aware of that. I'm glad you asked me this question. I really want to create almost a taxonomy for what AI and recruiting looks like. And so historically, what happened is the first evolution of AI and recruiting was related to what we call recommended recommendation system. And so that is recommendation. And the most common application of recommendation systems are give me similar candidates to this candidate.

Khaled Hussein [00:09:01]:
Well, what we see a lot of platforms, like, hey, we're AI platform and recruiting, and you give them a candidate and they give you ten, like, and that was one of the initial applications. And then honestly, that application ran into a lot of different problems, whether it's bias, as we know, and a lot of regulation, a lot of different problems, if it was even accurate whatsoever. And so this was pretty problematic application of kind of AI. It still is alive today, but it is one of those early applications. And then comes GPT and brings in another wave of AI. And we see the second kind of pillar. So you have the recommendation system and the second pillar is the generative AI. And so you see a lot of people using that for writing emails, writing descriptions, outreach responses, or summarizing interview notes.

Khaled Hussein [00:09:52]:
There's actually a lot of, and it's super helpful. And if recruiters are not leveraging that technology, they really should, and with the nuances of like, hey, this generated by a computer. So you have to actually look. And so the third wave of AI into recruiting, and it's one of the things that I think metalite is very kind of uniquely positioned and early on to offer this to all of our customers who kind of call the natural language sourcing. And so that is basically applying the AI technology as a search algorithm within the sourcing technology and the sourcing database that we have. So in many ways, what happens in all of their coding platforms today is you have these filters on the left hand side, then you use the filters. And if you really are trying to be just even a little bit more creative beyond the filters, what the filters are giving you, you're out of luck. If you don't have the filter.

Khaled Hussein [00:10:50]:
You can't use whatever idea you have.

Intro [00:10:53]:
That's it.

Khaled Hussein [00:10:54]:
With natural language sourcing, it kind of goes beyond that and it allows you to use AI to expand on what am I actually sourcing for and get creative. So one of the examples we see things give me engineers within 30 minutes drive of Google HQ. And Google HQ is not an address and the platform has to know what that means and give you a whole kind of radius around that pinpoint and expand on that search.

Intro [00:11:22]:
Break this down like I'm a five year old.

Khaled Hussein [00:11:24]:
Okay. Yeah.

Intro [00:11:25]:
So I can, like now with NLS natural language search, I can type in, find me an XYZ engineer within a 50 miles radius of Google HQ and it will actually find me candidates.

Khaled Hussein [00:11:44]:
Yes. Not just it will find you candidates, it's going to show you how it's doing that so that, you know, it's not black magic, it's actually using AI to make this happen where it's going to show you. Okay, within 50 miles radius of Google HQ, we'll have to understand Google HQ location and then it will give you all the cities that are around that. It will give you the breakdown of the number of the engineers within those cities and then it will source them for you and start to show you the results. And also we'll kind of expand on that title because you just said, give me engineers and that could mean 20 different things. So it's going to expand on that for you. And all you had to do is just say seven words.

Intro [00:12:24]:
Wow. So the seven words, like how many candidates pulled up on that?

Khaled Hussein [00:12:29]:
I learned your demo, don't be awful. And it's really incredible to do that. And then filters come in to do what they're actually really good at, which is now filter down from, let's say that result was 5000 people to the 200, 300 people that you may want to contact. And that's kind of the power of combining natural language search with the filters. But when you think about it, we step back a little bit. You think about this application, you think about the generative AI, you think about the recommendation system and the overall picture of what recruiting looks like with the introduction of AI is so different than before. These three where I just have my book or whatever and I'm kind of using LinkedIn or indeed and you're done there. So that's what makes this really exciting kind of next phase.

Intro [00:13:22]:
Just to clarify for the listeners better, once you have that NLS search, natural language search of something basic your system can do what with those people after.

Khaled Hussein [00:13:35]:
Leap we call it is a sourcing and outreach platform. So once you run that search, whether using the filters or natural language, and you get the candidates that you want to reach out to, you create a sequence, you create an email automation and you can use better lead to automate your outreach to those candidates and you can even use the platform. We have an AI assistant that helps you craft out that message and you can personalize it further from there. It will also help you craft out any of the sort of administrative day to day things, whether that is the JD or attachments that you want to send out to the candidate through the sequence. So it's intended to be that combination between let me find the candidates and reach out to them.

Intro [00:14:18]:
That's incredible. I feel like very few recruiting companies are kind of like on that edge of that third pillar of AI. I hate to say this is going to sound like probably a weird question, but why did you guys make that focus on that jump compared to just being good at where you guys were at?

Khaled Hussein [00:14:38]:
So the way we view ourselves is we are building innovation in the recruiting industry by bringing in AI to the forefront of what can do, what it can do for recruiters. And so all three pillars that I mentioned of AI are actually part of the Beverly platform. So we do have a modified kind of our own view of what a recommendation system would look like. We do have our AI assistant that will help you with everything, GPT generative AI related, as well as. Now we're introducing the natural language search that allows you to search this entire database of candidates using just simply natural language or job description and a whole bunch of other things in that kind of search bar. Think of it, we call it the Google overcrowding. And quite literally, when you log in, it's just a search bar, just like Google, and you can expand from there. So we view ourselves, is that our kind of differentiation and edge in the industry is we come from a very heavy tech background and we work with a lot of different recruiters and we partner with a lot of different recruiters.

Khaled Hussein [00:15:44]:
So we build with them. And what we want to do is we want to give them the tools to ten X their productivity and truly ten X, not just as a marketing thing. And we do try to measure that, whether that is cost savings for the recruiting kind of function or improvement on efficiency and performance in terms of how many people you were able to find. And my favorite is when recruiters come in and say, I was able to find candidates I couldn't find anywhere else. And a lot of that is not just that our database is bigger and more comprehensive, but a lot of it is just the search technology itself. And that's what we kind of pride ourselves on is we believe that we built a much better search technology using natural language search. And then we combine that with the filters than a lot of the existing platforms. They may not have the data, but even if they have the data as a competitor platform, the search algorithm may just not show you the candidate that you wanted to see.

Khaled Hussein [00:16:44]:
And that's where we kind of come in as a differentiation model.

Intro [00:16:47]:
That's awesome. Well, okay, so you guys have knocked out the third pillar. What is the future of AI in recruiting? Like, where's it going?

Khaled Hussein [00:16:55]:
I really like this question because as a repeat founder, I always think about, okay, what is this guilt? What's ten years from now going to look like? And it's actually really difficult. It's one of the hardest things to think about. What is tenure going to look like? Especially when you're talking about AI, because it is growing at an exponential rate. And then human being. Yeah.

Intro [00:17:19]:
Is AI going to replace recruiters? I know that's a conversation you see kind of everywhere and I have my.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:26]:
Thoughts on it, but I want to.

Intro [00:17:26]:
Hear your thoughts since you're actually a little more the AI expert.

Khaled Hussein [00:17:29]:
Yeah, no, so personally, I really don't believe it will replace recruiters. And I can give you kind of why I believe so. And it's not just the, hey, we always need recruiters. There is a lot more to it. So if we kind of go back in history, kind of beginning to recruiters, 1940s, and my co founder actually had a post about kind of that history, if you are curious about it. But early on, kind of really the explosion of recruiting as an industry and kind of structure of the industry. The recruiters back then, they had this recruiting book and the process used to be where a recruiter goes to find, let's say, a hiring manager or an engineering manager at Dell, and they would take that out to lunch and then they would say, well, listen, tell me the names of everybody that works on your team and what are their titles, what are their skills? And so they build out this recruiting book. They were kind of building LinkedIn without thinking about it, but they have this book.

Khaled Hussein [00:18:28]:
And so when you engage with a recruiter, they would open up the book and say like, yeah, I got everybody at Dell, I got everybody at like, I got you. And then they kind of built the business from there. Then comes the professional networks, comes the LinkedIn's and indeed, and all that. And at the time, everybody said, oh, this is the end of recruiters. We don't need the guy with the book anymore. I can just go there and find candidates. And we obviously all laugh at that right now. We have more recruiters now than ever with the introduction of LinkedIn.

Khaled Hussein [00:19:01]:
And indeed, so what seemed as kind of a disruptive technology that came in to replace that recruiter, what ended up happening is it made the recruiter more productive and efficient and made the industry bigger overall, which made bring in more recruiters and more kind of the function really just kind of grew, which did the complete opposite to that initial fear that people had. And I think we're entering a very similar wave today with AI, where AI comes in and is starting to do a lot of things that the recruiters used to do. It's like I'm taking a lot of time crafting this incredible job description, and I can just ask GPT and it would generate it in two minutes for me, or I'm writing this message, or I'm doing candidate recommendations or whatnot. And so a lot of times people are thinking, here it comes again. We're going to replace recruiters. The truth is, I think we're going to see the exact same result where AI is going to make recruiters even more efficient, more productive, more effective, and the industry will only grow more from there. And people that recruiters that stuck to their book and they didn't use the professional networks, they missed out and they were affected. I think we're going to see the same thing.

Khaled Hussein [00:20:18]:
Recruiters that are using outdated tools or they're not jumping on a wagon with the AI technology or kind of not being forefront with AI technology, they're going to miss out as the industry kind of moves forward. But I'm very optimistic about kind of the impact of that technology on an industry. If anything, I truly believe it will only make the industry bigger. And we're already kind of seeing signs of that. I know on some sectors we're seeing some layoffs, that other sectors are actually growing like crazy and they're hiring these recruiters. So depends on kind of who do you follow on LinkedIn? You might have a very different view on what's happening with the recav industry.

Intro [00:20:57]:
The whole algorithm impact on your worldview is a whole nother conversation for another day. Yeah, and I love that you actually highlighted the history of the recruiter. That was actually kind of fun. I always joke around, at least me personally, if we hit a point where AI actually gets rid of the recruiting function at that point in time, it's probably gotten rid of every other job function, too.

Khaled Hussein [00:21:24]:
Yeah, we have other problems to deal with. We have much bigger problems to deal with.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:31]:
So, yeah, every time somebody says, like, the AI is going to replace a.

Intro [00:21:34]:
Recruiter, I'm like, when it does, there'll be bigger issues.

Khaled Hussein [00:21:39]:
Exactly. And then the same people said, like, AI will replace salespeople, AI will replace business development, AI will replace. And I think as human beings, we have a little bit of aversion to change. And so when we see something like that, the immediate kind of knee jerk reaction is, oh my God, this will change a lot of things and it's going to be bad. But then we wait a little bit and realize actually this was a lot better and the world is a lot better, and productivity and happiness. If you look at kind of the evolution of human beings and our productivity from early ninety s to today, introduction of the Internet, introduction of a lot of different technologies, and now we're getting to the world of self driving cars and space, innovation, and we've never been more productive, we've never been more effective and so forth. And it's kind of, we look at the world, we actually did evolve, and you can kind of see this in many ways, but from my perspective, we did evolve to a much better world in employing this technology in our day to day.

Intro [00:22:45]:
Love that. As recruiters are trying this new AI with your tool, other tools, what are some of the mistakes that they're making that's keeping them from winning?

Khaled Hussein [00:22:56]:
I think if you are kind of buying a Ferrari to go to the grocery store and you're like, oh, wait a second, no, you don't need the Ferrari to go to the grocery store. And so I think you can take this on a track. And I think that's where I do see some of the early mistakes, are you're using the technology in a way that was old way of thinking, and so you apply the same way of thinking on the new technology as it was to reshape how you're thinking. So you see for example, and actually we see this even today. Some people that bullions. Personally I'm a big fan of bullions. I know people kind of bash it all day long, but it is an intellectual property of recruiters, so I have a lot of respect to that. But you don't need seven pages for running a query that you could do today with natural language source for one line, you know what I mean? Quite literally would generate.

Khaled Hussein [00:23:55]:
So one of the things we actually want to do is show people, here's this line, and here's the equivalent volume. And so if you're using natural language search, we see this today where people copy their boolean into the search bars work. But it just kind of still thinking about the old way and then you're trying to apply the same thing in the new technology. And I do think it needs a little bit of, kind of. Let's step back a little bit and think about how to use that technology in its new way that it's designed for. There is definitely backward compatibility, if you will. But I do think it will require a new way of thinking.

Intro [00:24:31]:
I'm glad I asked that question. I actually didn't even think about that because there are times where I'm using my good old boolean string into something and it's just one of those things. Like every now and then I'm like, I know the computer is smarter than this, it's smarter than me.

Khaled Hussein [00:24:46]:
The muscle memory is like, we're so used to just copying my boolean here, it's a muscle memory, and you see the search bar and you kind of want to do the exact same thing, but that will get you 50, 60% of the way there. But you're missing out on that additional 40%. That really makes the big difference.

Intro [00:25:03]:
Awesome. Before we move to the next part of the podcast, is there anything else that you would love to share about? One, AI in recruiting and two, better leap.

Khaled Hussein [00:25:12]:
One of the things that kind of message I really want to send home with the audience and our customers and all the kind of prospects as well is AI is coming in to make you really productive and very efficient. And you will see this in a lot of different tools. Whether it's Berley or others, we happen to be as of today, and we really say this in a very humble way, that we try to push this innovation as far as is ethically possible, to kind of give you that apple like magical experience when you try some of their products. And so it's here to make you much more productive and much more efficient and effective. At your job, but it also requires a new way of thinking and it's one of the areas that I'm very, very passionate about. I'm happy to help everybody think through and try the platform at any point.

Intro [00:26:09]:
Awesome. Well, jumping over to the quickfire questions and they don't have to be quick answers.

Khaled Hussein [00:26:14]:
Awesome. I'll try.

Intro [00:26:15]:
And I think this is going to be interesting. One, because you've been a multifounder. Two, you've actually hired recruiters. Three, you've hired recruiters, third party recruiters too. And then now your platform. Betterly, what advice would you give to somebody that's just starting off their recruiting career?

Khaled Hussein [00:26:36]:
I think for somebody you need an edge. You need an edge. You need an edge against everybody else. And so that edge could be either focus on a specific niche in the industry, so don't hire any role for anybody. Just kind of carve yourself, dominate a specific niche and then expand from there. Or the edge could be that. Honestly, it could be the technology that you're using and kind of, I can't help myself, but you got to use the right tool for the job and you need to use a tool that will make you ten x better than the next person pitching recruiting services. So you need to think about an edge one way or another.

Khaled Hussein [00:27:10]:
It could be the way you're pitching. Whether it's the customers or the candidates, you need to think about an edge. Some differentiator.

Intro [00:27:19]:
Awesome. Same question before the people that 510, 15 or like myself, almost 20 years in the space, what advice would you have for long term recruiters to stay successful?

Khaled Hussein [00:27:31]:
Man, 20 years in the space, did.

Intro [00:27:33]:
You start from your 540?

Khaled Hussein [00:27:37]:
But I would say kind of the flip side of that coin is the technology has evolved a lot. The space have evolved a lot. The industry has just gone through a lot of different changes and you need to catch up with what's the latest and what's the new, and you need to be aware, learn the new tech. You don't have to use it right away, but you have to kind of keep up to date with what's happening. It's shame.

Intro [00:28:05]:
And I got another question, mostly because you've been a multifounder and this could help the listeners on how they're approaching things. Some of the pitches that worked to get into your door over the years, what were those pitches that actually turned into placements with you and your team?

Khaled Hussein [00:28:25]:
Sincere and sincerity. And there is one recruiter. So an example, one recruiter comes to mind, and as soon as I got her email once, one email was not a sequence, one email. And I said, yes, let's engage with her. And I remember very vividly and then fast forward, what, 1213 years now from that company to other companies. And we're still in touch about recruiting. And that's it. And that recruiter, her message was so sincere about my role.

Khaled Hussein [00:28:59]:
And she said, listen, I have this candidate. Here's the candidate. Here's the info. If you reach out to the candidate and you hire them, you don't have to pay me anything, that's fine, but I really think this candidate would be really good for you. And that sincerity right there next to another email from another recruiter that was like, here's a resume and names are hidden and this is whatever. And there was all kinds of. And I was like, that is just night and day difference between those two recruiters reaching out and then obviously references and all that kind of stuff is very important. But that sincerity, it was like, I really want to help.

Khaled Hussein [00:29:34]:
And adding value, she added value to us right away as sincere, full value, not value with a string, you know what I mean? Not redacted resume. It was like, sincere, full value to the company. And I remember I was thinking, yeah, we should definitely engage her.

Intro [00:29:53]:
Awesome.

Khaled Hussein [00:29:54]:
She did a great job for us.

Intro [00:29:56]:
And another question, kind of like, still in that thread. Your first recruiter that you've hired for multiple teams, what were you looking for in that first recruiter to help you guys grow and scale?

Khaled Hussein [00:30:07]:
It was somebody who understands our company really well, who is very passionate about our company. A lot of recruiting besides finding the candidates is convincing the candidate to actually join. And the best way to sell is when you're passionate about what you're selling. If you're not convinced about what you're selling, it's just not going to work. And that was really important. I remember on our first company tilt when we hired our recruiter, we wanted somebody who just lives and breathes kind of why we're building this and what's the impact of this and where this is going to go. And they would pitch the company better than me. And I was like, this is the person.

Khaled Hussein [00:30:46]:
And he did a great job for us, understanding our product, understanding what we're actually about, and then kind of the hard skills that's going to give it. Like, you need to know how to source and you need to know how to reach out. And so those were kind of the hard skills. But the other one was we just really needed somebody who just fully, fully passionate about our.

Intro [00:31:13]:
I love that. And you can really just see those recruiters that are just passion driven versus the recruiters that fell into the space.

Khaled Hussein [00:31:22]:
And still hate it.

Intro [00:31:24]:
Yeah, and I know that those people probably aren't listening to this podcast and.

Khaled Hussein [00:31:30]:
They do get the job done, but it's different and it was a different scale. And I think my first recruiter, that's how I thought about it. If we got to a point where I'm hiring my recruiters, number 78, maybe the story would have been different then. If you're joining a startup and you're early on and start kind of hitting this hypergrowth phase, it needs to be in your DNA, that startup.

Intro [00:31:58]:
And I see that with the top billers and even some of the top internal TA professionals, it's just the passion just bleeds through in the conversation. Awesome. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Khaled Hussein [00:32:10]:
Oh, two. As an entrepreneur, I was not answering your question directly, but I'm going to give it two instead of one. But truly these are very some of the best books I've read, the compound effect, and I strongly recommend reading the book because of the stories in a book and kind of what the message is about. And it just shows you that you don't need. We always think about this major changes of our lives where I'm going to go from all this direction to this direction, you really don't need to. It's just a tiny little change just going to keep doing every day. And it has a compound effect significantly on the long run. Bill Gates, where we always overestimate what we could do in a short period of time and underestimate what we could do in a long period of time.

Khaled Hussein [00:32:59]:
And so we always think we can make this big change. And the compound effect is about, don't just think about the small change that you could do, that you kind of maintain doing for a long time and that will have a much bigger kind of impact on your life. And then the second book I also recommend for a lot of kind of founders and agency owners and whatnot is the predictably irrational book. And it's about behavioral economics in a way, and an understanding humans behaviors that we don't make decisions in a rational way. And so a lot of the questions that you ask is like, hey, how would that recruiter convince you to join? And if you were to just say, here's all the rational argument of why you should hire me to be your recruiter. We don't make decisions that way. And human beings, we react in a very irrational way. And now you have to understand in what directional that irrationality is going to be.

Khaled Hussein [00:33:56]:
But the one thing you can bank on is we are predictably irrational. And that's literally the name of the book. And I love that book.

Intro [00:34:04]:
That's awesome. Now, you've exited multiple companies. You've actually worked because you got acquired at some incredible companies, you've been around some incredible teams. Whether you've invested in all that stuff for you personally, what do you think has been a huge driver of your own personal success?

Khaled Hussein [00:34:25]:
Probably my dad, honestly, and this kind of may be a personal thing, I grew up in an environment where my grandfather was an entrepreneur and my father was an entrepreneur, a lot of it kind of manufacturing type businesses. I went into the tech route, but I remember I grew up in our house where one of the questions my dad always asked me is, and actually that became one of the things we do, and I still do this with some of my founder friends, is if you were to start over again, you only have what you have on you today, what would you do? And it just kind of implanted that entrepreneurial skill of, hey, if I were to start now, I'm looking always for opportunities and kind of ideas around this and all that. So I grew up thinking about this and I was fortunate to have moved from Egypt. I'm originally from Egypt, moved from Egypt to the US. I went to school in Virginia Tech and that just kind of opened a lot of other opportunities for me. And I'm very, very lucky. And part of that luck is born in a family that supported this entrepreneurship.

Intro [00:35:35]:
I love that. Let me ask this question twice. So, you know, a lot, you've gone through a lot, a lot of up and downs. You've hired a lot of people. If you got right now a chance to have a conversation with yourself straight out of college, first week cup of coffee, what advice would you give yourself?

Khaled Hussein [00:35:58]:
Hiring starts now. Let me elaborate. When I started building my first company, tilt, I think a few months in it was my co founder and I, and I was kind know building the product with him. And we needed to start hiring a couple engineers. And some of my really good friends at the time, they were just a text message away and I texted them like, hey, guys, building this thing, enter up. They were like, no, we love it. We're in. And that was it.

Khaled Hussein [00:36:25]:
It took me less than a day to build our first engineering team. And that team stayed all the way to kind of the acquisition and they were really great. That was only a result of I had worked with those people and we built the relationship, and we just knew we're going to continue building things together. Recruiting starts now and you end up in college, in high school. The people that you're surrounding yourself with are going to be people. You have to choose who you're going to surround yourself with. And that in itself is recruiting skill. And then from there, if you're going to be a founder, you're going to be building something.

Khaled Hussein [00:37:06]:
If you're going to be an employee joining a company, those connections will really matter in kind of the future or the rest of your career. Careers at least my career was defined by a network and connections that I was able to build throughout kind of the years. And if I give myself advice and start building that network as early as you can.

Intro [00:37:29]:
Awesome. And digging a little deeper on that, what did you do with those relationships that you literally just sent them a text message saying, hey, I'm going to build this. You guys want it because that's an in depth relationship there, that they're trusting you. How does a person build those kind of relationships?

Khaled Hussein [00:37:48]:
I was. Man, thank you for asking these questions. I'm kind of digging a little bit deep. I was, the way I would describe it, the one thing that I did is I was always authentic and sincere with them. I didn't connect with them because of an agenda. I connected with them because they were really good people and I wanted to surround myself with really good people. And they kind of saw my passion and my drive and I wanted to do something in the world. It was one of those things where I just felt like, this is incredible.

Khaled Hussein [00:38:26]:
I can't even believe that, hey, I'm in the US. Awesome. Oh, my God, I can't believe that. I have an opportunity and there's an investor that wants to give me money. Oh, my God, I can't believe that I'm doing this thing. And it just kind of life kept building on top of that, and I just have this zest of life where I want to do something. And so they saw that and it's infectious. And you kind of build this trust with them and sincerity.

Khaled Hussein [00:38:49]:
And I was there for them as much as I could, and they were for me as well. And I continue to do that till today with people that I meet honestly, even to be even more kind of honest and vulnerable in this podcast, just meeting you, we met, we connected, we started to learn about the industry, and we continue to support each other. And I don't really have any other agenda, really, whether I'm not trying to sell you better leaf, use better leaf or you don't use better leaf, or if we do this podcast or we don't do the podcast, it's more of a, hey, you seem like a good person, and I follow you on LinkedIn and I wanted to strengthen that connection. And then there we go. Here's a result from it. But whether this came as a result or didn't come as a result, it's kind of almost irrelevant. I get to just choose the people that I surround myself with.

Intro [00:39:47]:
Definitely think that you've got a thread in the conversation, that authenticity has been like a key thing over the years for you. Absolutely love that. And yeah, got a few questions when it comes to actually building rectech tools, because we do have some other founders that do listen to this podcast. And I think a lot of people have thought about doing something on the technical side, too.

Khaled Hussein [00:40:13]:
Yeah.

Intro [00:40:15]:
What was some of the biggest challenges or lessons learned that you wish that you never had to learn when it came to building a tech tool in.

Khaled Hussein [00:40:24]:
Recruiting or in general?

Intro [00:40:25]:
In general?

Khaled Hussein [00:40:26]:
In general, a lesson I learned is. So besides the fact you definitely need to hire the right team, that's kind of given especially the context of this podcast, it really does make or break it, but as a result of making it iterating fast. So Sam Altman has this kind of quote where he know, try to build the fastest iterating startup in the world and then that startup will probably do something good because you take the learnings and then you go back and then you iterate on that and you adjust and you eventually build something that actually people want. And so the fastest iterating startup, and I actually had to learn that lesson multiple times, not just once, where you do the iteration and you kind of get some initial feedback and then it's almost the founder dilemma, whatever it's like. But I believe it should be this way. And you kind of push it in this way and customers are like, yeah, no, I don't like that, but no, you should like it. This is really good. For some of those iterations, I took longer than I should have and I should have just iterated faster.

Khaled Hussein [00:41:34]:
And in retrospect, it all worked out. But that's definitely a lesson that's costly from your own time, costly from capital, costly from the morale of the team, costly from the customers. They start to lose trust in you because they're giving you feedback and you're not incorporating that feedback into the product. So it's a very costly lesson than if you can mitigate that cost or at least reduce it as much as you can, that will have a much bigger compounding effect on the company.

Intro [00:42:06]:
I love that. And when it comes to companies that looking at investments and getting investments, what is that thing that investors are actively looking for to make that move on an organization?

Khaled Hussein [00:42:20]:
Yeah, some of, again, the hard things in that are big market differentiated, kind of offering product, all of this kind of stuff. But let's say you check these boxes, what's more important is that they, again, remember, predictably irrational, they want to see somebody who, yes, this is a really big market, but there is like a founder market fit. Why are you building it and why do you want to build it? Startup is a ten year journey. And let that sink in for a second. A startup is a ten year journey. And if you think about your life in ten year buckets, there is a few iterations you got. And so a startup is a ten year journey. And in venture capital, when an investor is investing in a company, they want to make sure you're going to be committed for the next ten years.

Khaled Hussein [00:43:14]:
And you want to do this for the next ten years. So many founders, they enter a business because it's a really hot and exciting opportunity. And then two years later the market shifts and they're like, yeah, I don't like that anymore. And then they shift to something else and there's maybe merits in doing so. But then as a venture capital, you might be thinking like, well, as a venture capital, am I investing in this sector? Because I believe the sector is going to be here ten years from now. And I believe this is the right founder to win the sector and they're building the right differentiated product. And so when you're fundraising as a founder, you need to build that story. You need to show that why you're the right founder, why this sector, why you want to build this, and what makes your product differentiated.

Khaled Hussein [00:43:55]:
And if investors see this, they're more likely to invest in you.

Intro [00:44:00]:
I love that. And also, just for the listeners thinking about that, when you're looking at your recruiting career, think about the next ten years too.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:09]:
What do, whether you're founding a tech.

Intro [00:44:11]:
Startup or founding your recruiting company or even internally, what is going to set your career up for the next ten years? What are the things that you're going to do with the skill sets? How are you going to be a market fit within your organization or within the market? So you should have everything perfectly fit for recruiters, but also for the tech side of the house.

Khaled Hussein [00:44:28]:
That's exactly, which is why I kind of earlier saying you start with building the network and recruiting now because it's a ten year journey and so you got to start today. It takes time. And because it's a ten year journey, you're not going to do it on your own. You need people with you and so you kind of build your team.

Intro [00:44:51]:
That's awesome. Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Khaled Hussein [00:44:58]:
Thank you so much for really bringing me on this and also your questions. I've done a number of other podcasts and I really like this one. It kind of a little bit deeper on the personal side of things and kind of made me think a little bit. I really appreciate it. If anything, I would say being successful professionally is about also kind of maybe tagging on this point is about just kind of really wanting it and being very authentic in these relationships. Build the trust, it pays dividends. The compound effect is a great kind of book to reference this as well is starts early on. Build a trust, build the network.

Khaled Hussein [00:45:33]:
It has compounding effect. I have this quote that for the founders that are listening, I have this quote where it takes ten years to fundraise in 30 minutes. And it very much kind of sums up the professional career of any professional, whether you're a recruiter and you're sourcing or you've been building your agency or your in house, and fast forward all these connections that you've been building for the last 1015 years and they just open doors for you whenever you need them. And that matters. And so those connections are only going to be there for you because you're authentic and they trust you and so be authentic.

Intro [00:46:13]:
Well, bet. And for the listeners that would love to follow you, how can they do that?

Khaled Hussein [00:46:17]:
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn, Kelly Hussein and yeah, if you can kind of maybe share the link in the description, that would be great. And yeah, feel free to message me or follow me. And I would love to be a resource and add value and be helpful for all the listeners.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:34]:
Awesome. Well, I just want to say thank you for coming on the podcast. First of all, a few different things. We're getting AI thrown at our face constantly from every direction. So it was good to kind of give a breakdown on how AI is working, what AI is working, and really the future of artificial intelligence when it comes to recruiting. Secondly, this is going to sound funny. I'm so excited about the second half of our conversation because so many of us, when we're sitting there looking at whether we're starting on our own or landing within an agency or even internally at a company, there's a possibility that we're going to spend the next ten years of our life on that, focus on that mission. So how are you going to do it? How are you going to do it?

Benjamin Mena [00:47:21]:
I just want to say thank you so much for coming on.

Intro [00:47:23]:
And actually, like I said, I'm a fan of betterleep.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:26]:
Definitely check them out.

Intro [00:47:26]:
I'll have them in the show notes, too. But this has been awesome conversation for the recruiters out there. I can't wait for you to make 2024 your best year yet. Thank you.

Khaled Hussein [00:47:37]:
Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of.

Intro [00:47:40]:
The elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed hit subscribe and leave a rating.