The Power of Empathy and Relationships in Launching an Executive Search Firm with Somer Hackley

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. Quick 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:40]:
Register in the show notes technology is coming fast. 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 am so excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I've actually been looking forward to this interview for a while because I ran across this book, search in plain sight, and it's probably one of the easiest reads I've read in a long time. But here's the cool thing, it explains the executive search process and most importantly, talk about an awesome business card. So I am so excited to have the author and executive headhunter Summer Hackley with me today to talk about like really like her story, like how she got into recruiting, the things that she's doing, why she wrote a book, and like I said, I've heard multiple times that a book is a new business card and there's a lot of really shitty books out there.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:33]:
This is actually a really good one. So, summer, welcome to the podcast.

Somer Hackley [00:01:38]:
Well, thank you. And thank you for saying that. It was so much work to write that book. So hearing that you like it and other people like it means the world. Because if it wasn't good, it would be a sad thing. So I'm so happy to be here, though. I listen to all of your podcasts and all of your episodes, and then when you invited me to be on, I'm like just listening to all the other ones, listening to all the rapid fire questions and answers. So yeah, let's go.

Somer Hackley [00:02:01]:
So thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:03]:
Well, super excited. I've been looking forward to this interview for a while, definitely ever since I read across the book. But let's start off like we always do. How did you end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Somer Hackley [00:02:14]:
Yeah, so long story short. I wanted to go into sales when I was graduating college. Everyone thought that made no sense because I wasn't a salesperson. I was majoring in economics. I almost majored in comp sci, like a math person, not the life of the party, not the sports person, none of that normal sales stuff. I want to go into sales. And the reason was just like, while I was doing a lot of, I was very deliberate with my job search. It was 2002, so the market was like, eh.

Somer Hackley [00:02:44]:
And I do a lot of alumni networking, interviews, and this woman's like, you should go into sales. And I was like, really?

Benjamin Mena [00:02:48]:
Huh?

Somer Hackley [00:02:49]:
Interesting. So I interviewed for every single sales job I could find@monster.com and found recruiting. And I was like, cool. It's people versus phones or stuff or other things. So that's how I got into it. You know, I just, I like the idea of sales, and what you put in is what you get out. And I just found the best sales job I could find at the time. Everyone thought I was nuts.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:10]:
Chime in. I love that you're an econ major also.

Somer Hackley [00:03:12]:
Mm hmm. I saw that. Yes. Here's to us.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:16]:
All right. So, yeah, I know from your story, from your book, and because I've been following you for a while, like, you started off in contingency search. Talk about that.

Somer Hackley [00:03:24]:
I loved contingency. You know, it was as I wrote in the book, man, it was different than I expected. It was intense, high pressure. There was no LinkedIn back then. We didn't get computers, really, like, there were two computers for six of us. And it was like people would train you by, I don't know if this is how everyone does it, but by you calling people, pitching candidates, we had a candidate written on the board. We pitch, candidate, pitch, candidate, pitch, candidate. Are you hiring? Are you hiring? Are you hiring? And then suddenly someone says, I'm hiring.

Somer Hackley [00:04:01]:
And then you're like freaking out because you don't know what to do. And that was day one. I mean, that wasn't like year one, that was day one. We had a strict schedule. At nine to like 730 to eight, we do this. Eight to nine we do training. Nine to twelve, we do that. And so you get someone who's hiring, you're like, hey, hey.

Somer Hackley [00:04:17]:
You put, you're like, hold on. You get someone to tell you what to say through your ears and through your mouth, but you're listening to them and listening. It's crazy. And I just learned that way. And it was nuts. And every day they print the numbers and you're just trying to get people to interview your people and open doors and all these obstacles and rebuttals and this and that. It was nuts. And I eventually, you know, after a year and a half, I figured out, yes, what I was doing a little bit, even though I was still so young.

Somer Hackley [00:04:47]:
And, yeah, I just took over teams and offices and stuff, but, yeah, it was. It was nuts. It was.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:52]:
You see, they pretty much put you to the fire. Day one, then.

Somer Hackley [00:04:55]:
Day one. Yes, yes, it was. They gave me this book, like, remember, no computer, okay? Like, I had note cards. I wrote notes on note cards. Like index cards. Yes, exactly. They were bigger and. Yeah, every higher.

Somer Hackley [00:05:10]:
Like every person, we had a sheet. You had to talk to 25 people a day and fill out all your note cards and anything. And then the afternoons were candidate based. And, yeah, they gave me a big book. It had all the numbers of the biggest banks in New York City. I was in Manhattan at the time. And you had to call in. There's no names, so you had to get a name.

Somer Hackley [00:05:29]:
So you call the main number. I will never forget, like 921,000, Goldman Sachs main number. Like, I had to dial these numbers forever. And you're dialing, you're like, hi, I need the head of applications development. And they're like, what's that? And so then you start getting better at how to ask and what to ask for and what you're doing. And then when you get someone on the phone, you better not get off the phone. Cause you gotta go right back to 921,000 when you hang up. So you gotta really figure out how to navigate and get names out of people.

Somer Hackley [00:06:01]:
Yeah, that's what I grew up in.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:04]:
So did it take a while for you to get your first placement in that world or did it come easy?

Somer Hackley [00:06:09]:
I was very good at getting leads. People would tell me who was hiring, like, no problem, but I was not good at picking up a job by the definition of the company I worked for at the time, because we weren't allowed to send a resume unless the hiring manager committed to seeing our people and gave us actual times on the calendar to see our people. Like, they're holding time. Yeah, I know. Like, they would say, okay, twelve to two on Thursday, I will see your people then. You were allowed to send a resume. You cannot send a resume until they had that commitment. So I was trained that I had to get that level of commitment.

Somer Hackley [00:06:44]:
I was very bad at that. I was very, very bad at. But I was very good at chatting and like, how are you only how long have you worked there, and who'd you work for before? Oh, cool. How big is your department? How many people are under you? How many peers do you have? I was very good at, like, getting names and keeping people on the phone and my tone and figuring out charts and all that kind of stuff, but I cannot for the life of me get someone to interview my people, at least to commit to that kind of thing. That took me forever. I eventually figured it out, but, man, it was. Yeah, it wasn't easy. I don't know if they still have that business model also.

Somer Hackley [00:07:14]:
I'm sure they have computers now.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:16]:
So, like, what does you say? Like, is that why you. I know you stayed there for a while. Is that. But is that, like, why you started making a move towards, like, looking at other types of recruiting because of a model that fit you a little better?

Somer Hackley [00:07:29]:
That wasn't the reason. I eventually got good at that and figured out how to do that. And I do understand I could articulate it better now 20 years later. But I do understand that if we're gonna commit to the client who's not yet a client, that we're gonna work on the role. They can at least commit that they will see our people if we put the work in. So I understand the concept of that, but it just took me a long time to articulate how to do that. And I think what happened eventually was people saw my people, and they're like, oh, she's actually good. And then I just started getting all this inbound work, and it wasn't a big deal anymore, so I just had to kind of get over that hump.

Somer Hackley [00:08:01]:
But I didn't. I wasn't really looking to go to exact search or go to big retained search firm. Like, I didn't even know what that meant. Like, my world was my little echo chamber. I loved it. I thought it was so cool and so fun and everything, but I actually. I moved with the company. They moved me to Dallas to run Dallas.

Somer Hackley [00:08:17]:
And I, the person I was with at the time, wanted to move back to New York, to move back to New York. And I came back to New York only a year later. There wasn't a spot for me in tech. There's a spot for me to open a new brand to do accounting. I was like, cool, I'll do that. So I sat with my friend Kristin Sheridan, who's amazing, and you should probably have her in the podcast. So she and I, the two of us sat in a room, were like, we place accountants. And so we just started from scratch, placing accountants, figuring it out.

Somer Hackley [00:08:40]:
And then the company's like, you know what's better? Fees and accounting is I banking. You should place investment bankers. They make so much money. So we're like, cool, we'll place ibankers. And so I was trying to place ibankers, and then ultimately the, and I'm just, I'll try not to go on for too long. But the, the business model of urgency and, like, technology. If someone in technology, and we're placing Java.net, like dbas, like QA, that person leaves the hiring manager's in a bind. Like, they need that person.

Somer Hackley [00:09:08]:
But in ibanking, everyone will work till 02:00 a.m. it's not a big deal. And they hire on yearly, annual campus recruiting cycles. It's not. Our ibanker quit. We need an ibanker. And so I was trying to explain this and my argument, because my numbers were so low, I wasn't placing anybody anymore because it was different. Our business model didn't fit.

Somer Hackley [00:09:26]:
And so I was like, no one really is listening to the logic behind the whole ibanker thing. And so I just need to look externally. And so I had two interviews and, yeah, CT partners worked out.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:39]:
So, yeah, so they take a big bill, someone that's driving a lot of revenue, and sort of like, how do you chase this? How about you chase this? How about you chase this? And, I mean, that's just a good way to kill, like, the morale, the motivation, the billing of somebody that's like, a top performer. Why did they do that?

Somer Hackley [00:09:58]:
Yeah, I think that it's all about growth, probably. Like, and I can see from business perspective, if the company wants to get into accounting or I banking or something, why not take a good person and have them go do that versus starting from scratch with folks who don't know recruiting or know that space. So, I don't know. I was like, 25. I would do anything. I was like, sure, yeah, absolutely. Happy to. Like, I thought it was awesome.

Somer Hackley [00:10:23]:
Like, I. Yeah, I just, I thought everything that was put in front of me was the best decision in the world. So it was fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:30]:
And then, okay, now you jumped over to CT partners, like, talk about the world that was compared to the world that you came from.

Somer Hackley [00:10:37]:
Yeah. Yeah, that was nuts. I mean, there's like, you walk in, there's flowers, there's a lobby. I know that alone, there were conference rooms to have candidates wait in so that they wouldn't see other candidates in our waiting area. I'm like, well, that makes sense. You don't want these execs to see each other. And so just even walking in, you're like, oh, this is different. You know, versus we just have all the candidates in the lobby together, like, basically borderline starting their own consulting company on the side because they were in these discussions when I came out to the lobby, like, oh, y'all met each other.

Somer Hackley [00:11:13]:
Cool. And, yeah, like at CT, you know, I wrote in the book, it was Annie going into daddy Warbucks office. But it wasn't far off, you know, because I was just, you get your own computer. Computer. There's no numbers on the wall every day. There's no, I wasn't doing any bd, you know, so I'm just like, I remember sitting there. I'm like, what do I do? Like, what am I supposed to do? Today I wasn't given a big red book of phone numbers to call. And I was walking around asking people, like, how do you measure my success? I was so used to being measured on these daily metrics, and I didn't have that anymore.

Somer Hackley [00:11:51]:
And I just had to wait. I had to wait a few months, maybe two months for someone to actually give me a search. They brought it and. Yeah, I know. So in the meantime, I'm, like, updating the database and, you know, just trying to learn. I was sitting in on people's candidate calls, and then they gave me a search to work on. And so then I'm, like, starting to call candidates, just looking on LinkedIn, looking through our own database, looking through the resume folders behind me in the filing cabinet to see who we've interviewed in the past and just calling candidates and getting so excited about these candidates. They're amazing, you know, they're absolutely amazing people.

Somer Hackley [00:12:26]:
And I was so used to in contingency. You have an amazing candidate. You send them to the client. This candidate's amazing, but in retained, it's like, hold your horses. Like, we are covering the world. And are they one of the top five people in the world? Because only then will we send them to the client. I'm like, oh, what? Like, how do you know that? So it took me, like, a good three months to understand just what we were doing. It wasn't about the candidate or the resume.

Somer Hackley [00:12:58]:
It was covering the world. And that's just a whole other mindset. It was a whole shift.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:04]:
I've seen people not successfully make that move from contingency recruiting to executive search. Theres a lot of points where you could have easily failed. What was one of those fail points that you had to change your mindset. And is there any advice that you would give to somebody that is actually looking at moving from that contingency engaged world to a truly retained exec search world?

Somer Hackley [00:13:25]:
I think the biggest thing I would recommend to people is just try to understand the entire process of a search end to end and your role in it versus. So when I was at CC partners, and not all firms may be the same, there were multiple partners. I had my dedicated partner. So from what I've seen, once a partner bills enough, they get a person like me. And so I'm their person. Like, they bring in work, I do the work, you know, they bring in work. I find the candidates, I give them the candidates. They own the candidates.

Somer Hackley [00:13:55]:
You know, I'm the candidate finder. I make you look so good. You know, like, that was my role. Like, I can make anyone look so good. And then other partners started getting wind to that, and so then other partners that maybe aren't billing as much don't have a dedicated person. And so then they would be like, hey, do you want to place a general counsel over here? I'm like, sure, not a problem. So. And I would just, as, you know, I just figure it out.

Somer Hackley [00:14:16]:
Like, sure, now I place chief compliance officers or 40 act lawyers or whatever. You know, it's fine. Like, tech is my bread and butter, but whatever. I could pick it up, but it took me a minute to figure out what the partner does, what I do, how I even get these searches. You have to, like, when you're more junior, sure, you can do BD, but who's going to give me a retainer, you know, come on, these are huge jobs. So you have to get the work, and you have to be chosen to do the work. And so your job is to actually treat your internal partners like the end client. You know, like you're presenting candidates to them, you're selling to them.

Somer Hackley [00:14:51]:
The meetings I had with my partners at CTA were similar to the meetings I have now with external clients. You know, you're like, hey, so this week I met this many candidates. These are the ones I like. These ones I'm not so sure about. I think you should meet these three for this reason. And what do you think? And you kind of learn how to have those conversations internally, and you're kind of positioning the candidates and showing and making recommendations. And the thing is, like, I wasn't talking on the client call, so if I had market feedback, I'd have to give it to the partner above me. Like the comp for this thing, like who we like.

Somer Hackley [00:15:22]:
Let me tell you the compensation I'm seeing in the market for this. Or let me tell you what I'm seeing about this, or, hey, I recommend we take this pivot. And so I think, realizing that I'm treating the internal person, because if you just say, here are three resumes, that's not the conversation, you know? So the partners, I think, would choose me to work with them because I was not only making them look really good, because we'd always have candidates, but I was also giving them a ton of insight on the market that they could bring to the clients. So we can pivot if we needed.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:48]:
To, for the listeners. We're going to get into how she started her own executive search firm a little bit still. I'm joining this walkthrough story, but, you know, you've built a career at CT partners, you know, reading and following you. You had an amazing time there. What spurred you to make the final jump from there?

Somer Hackley [00:16:05]:
Yeah, well, I went from CT to Marlon Hawk, and I went from Marlon Hawk to my own thing, and I was not looking to leave CT partners, but yeah, I got recruited by a recruiter for recruiters, and she called me, and actually, it was funny, I said no to her a thousand times. And then finally, the Marlon Hawk, one of the partners in Marlon Hawke, called me directly and was like, will you just go for a drink? I'm like, sure, because I just moved to DC and like, I will go for a drink. I need friends. I'm from new York, I know zero people here. So I'm like, oh, if I can have recruiter friends, I'd be even better. So I legit wanted to have recruiter friends in DC, so I would for a drink, and I was like, this is interesting. Like, being at a company that has like maybe ten people, CT was huge. We were the 7th biggest search firm.

Somer Hackley [00:16:45]:
We went public. It's a huge firm. And I was like, this could be cool. It can kind of combine my scrappiness, my grittiness. Let's build something, let's do that. And I could be a big fish again in a smaller company versus being kind of a cog at a big entity. And so that was the only reason that I made that switch. And Marlon Hogg, we grew and grew and grew, and that was super fun.

Somer Hackley [00:17:10]:
But then ultimately, I just. It's. The interesting thing about recruiting is the more senior you get, the less recruiting you do, and you start being the face of recruiting, at least in my perspective, retained exec side of things and my team under me, I had four recruiters under me and our assistant who works for me now still, she's amazing. We were working on, I think, 30 searches at a time and it's just impossible to have that many update calls. And I think ultimately I have a hard time making promises to all these clients that I can't personally deliver on, you know, and my team is awesome. My team is, they were like, you have no idea how amazing these people are. It was just still physically, like root canal painful for me to see any search not go perfectly well. And I'm this perfectionist, crazy person to work for and I just, you know, and I got better at that.

Somer Hackley [00:18:04]:
I mean, that took some time, but, but just having all these awesome big searches and I can't recruit on them all. I can't physically recruit on them all myself. And I was getting so much work coming in. I was actually giving work away to my peers and I was like, I think I can quit and run one to three by myself and do all the work and do all the recruiting and do what I love. Cause I love recruiting. I love recruiting. I love talking about, I love doing the recruiting. And I was like, I think I can probably make more and actually do the work and not just be the face of the work and have more fun.

Somer Hackley [00:18:41]:
So I decided to quit three years before I quit because I kept quitting every year and I was like, here's six months notice. You know, I had these accounts that were huge. They were like six year relationships.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:51]:
You actually gave six months notice.

Somer Hackley [00:18:54]:
I kept trying to, like, for three years, I was like, how do we do this? I want to start my own thing. I want to give you all the notice in the world. I want these accounts to be in good hands. I love my accounts, huge accounts. Like so many placements at some of these companies. Like, big, big placements. And I cared so much about my team under me, like, who's going to be their boss? And so they were like, don't leave. Come on, get out of here.

Somer Hackley [00:19:16]:
I'm like, okay, fine. So that happened like every year. So I started doing more stuff internally. They're like, why don't you create this internal recruiting training program for us globally? And so I did that. Like, that was super fun. So that energized me. So I did that for a minute and I'm like, nah, I still want to do this thing. So I just kept coming back to it.

Somer Hackley [00:19:37]:
And then eventually my husband was like, let's move to Austin. I was in DC at the time I'm like, cool. So that was kind of the catalyst for, you know what, getting married, moving to Austin. I'm really going to leave this time. I'm really, I really think I want to work on one to three things by myself and do all the work and have more fun. And so I did it.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:54]:
We talked about that, making that jump. You've mentioned two or three times about business just coming to you. Work just coming to you, searches just coming to you. What are you doing different?

Somer Hackley [00:20:06]:
Well, I don't know what other people do to answer that, but I can tell you what I do. I build relationships and I do good work, honestly. I execute searches super well. And like, I fill roles. I get clients I understand. I get what they're hiring for. I get what candidates do. And I don't lie to anyone.

Somer Hackley [00:20:27]:
I don't make anything rosier than it is. And I think the second, and I did write that example in the book, the second I realized that our job is not just to make people happy, you know? And I define making people happy. When you think about hiring managers or HR folks, that was the other thing with contingency. You do not talk to HR with retained, like, HR is on the phone. I'm like, we're talking to HR. What, what do you know? They're on the phone and, like, they're my biggest client. They're my ally. I get, I need them.

Somer Hackley [00:21:00]:
I love my internal recruiters so much. You can. So it was, that was another transition I had to get out of my head. I digress. But, and so anyway, I think it really just comes down to telling a client that they should not hire their top candidate is the hardest message to deliver. I know you all love this person. This person is not the right hire for you. Let's pull them from the process.

Somer Hackley [00:21:25]:
We're going to have to start over. I know. It's so painful. I was, like, shaking. It was one of these searches we worked on for like months, maybe six months. Like, all the candidate, their bar is so high. All the candidates were nosy. One great candidate.

Somer Hackley [00:21:37]:
You want to hire this person? This candidate became super condescending, like, super condescending to me and to the internal recruiter. And they asked me what to do and I said, don't do it. And then ever since then, they just gave me so much work, you know? And of course, we filled that role with an awesome person. But then it was just, they knew I had their back, you know? And I think back in the day, I likely would have been like, you know what? Let's just cross our fingers and hope this candidate is fine, and let's just place the candidate because they want to hire the candidate. This is someone they want to hire. Like, we are making an offer to this person. And we were like, no. And me and the internal recruiter said, no, do not do it.

Somer Hackley [00:22:11]:
And ultimately, it was me. And that is so hard. But I think having that long term mindset and caring, like, I really care. Like, I really, really care about that, it just comes back. You just get a reputation for doing the right thing, and you've.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:25]:
You've been incredible with relationships, too. How do you keep track, and how do you keep up with all these relationships with all these high level people for such a long time? Like, we're talking, like, well over a decade for some of these people.

Somer Hackley [00:22:35]:
Yeah. So whenever I kick off a new search or whenever I have a new idea, like, I want to start my own thing, I want to do a podcast. I want to do a video series called two distinguished minutes, or I'm working on a head of marketing and developer relations search. I don't know what that is. Like, that was a few months ago. I first ask people their advice, people that are past candidates or clients or any. I first go there, and that's my network. And as you do that enough times, like every quarter or every year, you start realizing, you know what? This is a relationship.

Somer Hackley [00:23:12]:
Like, people. People said, like, wow, your website is terrible. And it was. It was. I'm so glad you can't find it on archive.org dot. It was terrible. I was like, distinguished search. Penguins are distinguished.

Somer Hackley [00:23:24]:
So I had, like, this arctic tundra. So bad. I'm not a graphic designer. It was so bad. I did it all myself. It was Covid and nothing else to do other than write the book. But. So whenever I kick something off, I first think, okay, you're like, my 20 people.

Somer Hackley [00:23:41]:
I could ask about this search. Not only who do they know, but what can I learn? You know? Like, how has data evolved in the past few months? Like, what should I be looking for in a. You know, in a candidate? Like, what would you look for? What have you seen in the market? Yada, yada. So I just approach those conversations with a lot of curiosity, and then I can bring that back to the client, too.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:03]:
Okay, so, like, when you get a search or a new project, you're reaching out to about 20 people that are many times, like, last, previous candidates.

Somer Hackley [00:24:09]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:10]:
And that almost, like, I hate to say this, like, people love helping people.

Somer Hackley [00:24:13]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:14]:
Like, I feel like they're empowered in this journey. They've bought into you with a search assignment. When it comes to like an executive search, that makes sense. Should recruiters do that within contingency searches and that kind of stuff like across the board? That's a killer relationship.

Somer Hackley [00:24:29]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I had, in contingency, again, no computer. We had two shared computers for six people. So you can store files on it or anything you could, but they weren't really yours. So I had a folder of took a job candidates. It got very large after a long time, but whenever I kicked off a search, I would call my took a job java people and say, hey, who do you know for this thing? I just kicked it off with this company, you know, and so you're kind of keeping up with all the people who took jobs and maybe a year later, two years later they call you and all of a sudden, you know. So I've always gravitated to that because I do find it, it's honestly also easier.

Somer Hackley [00:25:06]:
It's easier to fill a job. A, like I want my pitch to be solid before I call the placement. You know, I want my, my inmail approach. Like I need to understand the hook. I need to understand the motivation for anyone to quit their job or if they're not working, whatever. Like you're not just going to take any job. Like I need a hook. I need the perfect inmail.

Somer Hackley [00:25:24]:
Like my in real response rate is pretty good. Cause I'll spend a good two weeks tweaking it and understanding, like what does this specific candidate base, like, what motivates them, you know, and it's usually company culture, autonomy, like stuff like that. And so I'll start my approaches with that. But I learned that from the market. I learned that from the took a job folder. I learned that from the people that I've been talking to. The other thing I wanted to add though, about relationship is when people are out of work, like I'm an inbox zero person and in male zero person, which is so I write back to every single message that isn't spam, like every single one. And it's not easy, but when people are out of work, I chat with them and I help them and I care and, you know, like there was one woman in particular who my last company placed.

Somer Hackley [00:26:13]:
She's awesome. And then she was out of work for a little bit. We kept in touch, and then she took a job. We kept in touch and then she's making a decision to go to another company. She was kind of running ideas by me, and then she landed somewhere else, and then ten years later, she's a huge client of mine, and it's just keeping in touch with great people through all of the ebbs and flows of their career and kind of being a sounding board for them, too.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:36]:
Do you have a system program that helps you with this?

Somer Hackley [00:26:39]:
No. I wish I did. It's all in my head now. It's 22 years in, so now it's a little late to start, I guess. No.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:47]:
Let's talk about jumping into your own business. Let's talk about you deciding to finally, you know, make that jump into your own recruiting business. What finally made that decision? I mean, you said you moved to Austin. I'm sure they probably would have loved to keep you on from.

Somer Hackley [00:27:01]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:02]:
Like, why'd you finally pull the trigger after years of talking about it?

Somer Hackley [00:27:06]:
Yeah, no, it was the root canal. Like, it was legit. The root canal. It was. I was sick. I mean, this was before, baby. Now I'm sick every month because I have a toddler. But back then I was a healthy person, and then I was sick every month.

Somer Hackley [00:27:21]:
Like, I missed Valentine's day, I missed Christmas. I missed so many things. And it was just the stress. It was the stress of being the face of the work and being, I guess, also, you know, there's a lot of internal pressure and numbers, pressure and pressure to bring in new clients all the time. And now you've gotten to know me through the book and through just LinkedIn posts and through talking. Now, I'm not the kind of person to go get a flight to San Francisco, get drinks with all these people, get dinners with all these people, butter up heads of HR ctos. I've done it because I've been told to and joined folks on those trips. And it's like, the meetings are the worst because I'm just like, what do you want to talk about? I'm not good at introducing myself from scratch with someone that doesn't know me because I'm an execution person.

Somer Hackley [00:28:11]:
I'm a recruiter. I'm gritty, I'm scrappy. I'm not the high heels. Like, I can do it. I can play the New York City nice suit, dress situation. But then I sit down for wine with someone. I don't know what to talk about if I haven't worked with you before and we have nothing to talk about yet. And so I felt this.

Somer Hackley [00:28:29]:
This conflict of pretending to be someone and just being who I am. And all I wanted to do was fill the jobs I'm staring at, like, 30 roles. I'm staring at, like, if only we filled all these searches. Like, oh, my goodness, what an amazing thing. And there's money in that, too. So why do I need to go introduce myself to new people and try to bring in more, especially when I'm turning away work and giving it to peers? Like, I just. There's this pressure to bring in so much work. It was hard for me to balance all the things.

Somer Hackley [00:28:56]:
And so going off of my own, the coolest thing, which I didn't really realize, is I only work with nice people. And it sounds silly, I know it does, but I didn't realize that now when I work with a client, it's all people that are choosing to work with me, not my firm or not with someone else who brought in the work. They're wanting to work with me. And I'm not making any false promises or setting any weird expectations or, like, I'm setting all my own expectations. And it's like, true partnerships. There's none of this, like, pressure to find candidates by a certain date. But I'm fast. Like, I'm on my own now.

Somer Hackley [00:29:35]:
So, of course, like, I'm like, oh, shoot, I already have three candidates for you. I know, we just spoke. Can we talk about them? So anyway, I felt like it would be a big relief to work on fewer searches all by myself and do the work I love. Like, I was talking to Zen Mack, who I run the podcast with, about, like, which point of the search process gets me most excited. It's actually the candidate finding part. It's not the offer acceptance. To me, that's just kind of like, it's coming. It's not a surprise, you know, we know that things coming, we know it's getting accepted.

Somer Hackley [00:30:03]:
But when you talk to a candidate and they're not interested and you're like, oh, man, what a good candidate. Like, come on. Oh, they be great. And then they send you an email, like, thought about it, I'm interested. You're like, get out of town. Yes. Yes. Like, that's the part I'm so excited about because that was me.

Somer Hackley [00:30:17]:
Like, that was my voice, that was my message. That was whatever I did, that was the conversation to make them at least consider learning more about this. I'm not going to oversell or fool myself into thinking that's the placement, but at least a baby step. And I'm like, that's skills. I'm pumped about that. I kind of want to go back to that. Finding people. Anyway, there are a lot of reasons, but that's what I love.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:40]:
So you lost your business. How did you get your first few clients?

Somer Hackley [00:30:44]:
It was all inbound. I've still been inbound. I've done probably like 3 hours of BDS since I started again. Now, I guess my philosophy is kind of building everything in public. And so I just put a video on LinkedIn, and I did wait out my six month non compete. I care a lot about these things. So I did. And so then when six months was up, it was February 2020, February 7.

Somer Hackley [00:31:06]:
I was so excited. I know it. I was like, February 2020, here we go. I put a video on LinkedIn. I've launched. Here's my firm. I sent messages to my fan club, all my favorite people, and said, hey, I launched. Then I just started saying, hey, I'd love to chat.

Somer Hackley [00:31:24]:
I launched my firm. Love to know what you think is missing. An exec search. And I have some ideas of how I want to do things, just having those conversations and catching up with people. And then, lo and behold, business comes from that. But, yeah, it was interesting timing.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:41]:
February 2020, which turned into a book.

Somer Hackley [00:31:46]:
Which turned into a book. Thank goodness. You know, I'm glad I wrote it.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:50]:
Talking about the book, how has the book affected with your business?

Somer Hackley [00:31:54]:
I don't know. All I can say is, it doesn't hurt. It's been awesome. I did have our son a week after the book was published, and I didn't know which was going to be first. I was putting polls on LinkedIn, like, which is first, the book or the baby? Here are the stats of both. You know, I was just typing and writing, and then the books published, then we had the baby. So then I basically went away, no promotion of the book whatsoever for three months, you know, and now I'm just like, hey, I wrote a book, folks. So I'm grateful the book's good and people are telling other people about the book.

Somer Hackley [00:32:26]:
That's the only way it's finding its way. But I did physically mail a copy of the book to anyone I pitched with in the past few years. That's awesome. I send it to placements. I send it to clients. I do think it's part of maybe my inmail response, right? People check me out on LinkedIn. They're like, oh, she wrote a book. Oh, the reviews are good.

Somer Hackley [00:32:43]:
She's legit. Let me write her back. So I think it makes everything easier. It gives credibility. Especially I'm a two person company up against some pretty big companies, so at least I have that. And I don't think it hurts, you know, but in terms of Roi, I have no idea. And I'm glad I have the audiobook now because people were begging me for that. A lot of people don't want to read a book anymore, and I wanted to do the audiobook myself, and it just took me so long because I had the baby and, yeah, I mean.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:11]:
I know now how much time a baby takes.

Somer Hackley [00:33:14]:
Congratulations. Yes. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:17]:
I will never take advice on time management from somebody that doesn't have kids ever again.

Somer Hackley [00:33:22]:
That's the thing. You know, I read these posts on LinkedIn. I'm like, so nice that you wake up at that hour and do those things, but guess what? I was doing. But anyway, it's all good.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:35]:
One thing that you mentioned in the book that I want to kind of, like, dig into a little bit because I actually did this a few years ago and just haven't picked it back up. But you have these dinners that are like, invite only. Has that affected your business, or was this more like a fun thing that you did on the side?

Somer Hackley [00:33:49]:
They're not invite only. They're open to the masses, and it's just a fun thing on the side. So every time I've moved, which would be from New York to DC and DC to Austin, I've launched this table for six meetup, and it's inspired by cruise ships. I love cruises, and I love how on cruises you sit with sometimes, like, five people, and so it's a table of six. And I feel like that's the right amount of people to have one conversation because if it's a big table, I've been to so many meetups where it's a big table and you just talk to the one person next to you or two people next to you, and then you're like, ugh, where's the one to talk to all these other people? So six is kind of nice. And when I moved to DC, I found it really hard to make friends. I found that you laugh, you're like, I know DC. And I moved to Falls church and I moved into DC.

Somer Hackley [00:34:40]:
I found that I wasn't dating. I wasn't into any particular thing, like a sport or a thing. I just wanted to make friends. And I was like, there's all these groups for things, but I just want to make friends. It's really hard. And so I started my own. I just put on meetup, and the thing grew to, like, 950 people. Was nuts.

Somer Hackley [00:35:01]:
So I called restaurants or I went on open table, and I had all these different fake email addresses that I use to book multiple tables all at the same restaurant on the same, you know, on, like, 15 minutes increments. And then I would post on meetup, like, hey, we have this event at this time, this day, you know, dying with strangers, any age, people would message me, can I sit with 20 year olds? No. There are thousand 20 year old meetups. This is table for six. You can be married, you can be single, you can be 20, you could be 60. You do not know who you're sitting with. That is my group. So it was awesome.

Somer Hackley [00:35:33]:
And so I would have, like, six tables all at once. I'd run it like a tight ship. I would have, like, name cards, and I would send out messages. And if you didn't show up, you were totally kicked out of the group because that was not fair to everyone else. And it's how I made so many friends and how I met my husband, which was not intentional, but that's how it happened.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:51]:
I mean, that's another relationship builder. I know that's one of those things that just, like, you can throw energy into. But has it also brought you work?

Somer Hackley [00:35:57]:
No, no. I mean, perhaps I could have done it that way. But, yeah, I legit just wanted to make friends. Like, I just get energy from people, and, yeah, it was just fun. And then I moved to Austin, started it up, but as you know, it was. We had, like, three of them, and the group got to, like, 200 plus people. And then Covid, so I'm like, that's how you get. Covid is dining with strangers inside, so.

Somer Hackley [00:36:17]:
Sorry. And then I had the baby.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:20]:
I was gonna ask her. You still doing?

Somer Hackley [00:36:21]:
Yeah, no, no, I just. I don't know how to do it with him. It's honestly a lot of work. You know, how much time you used to have? So I would do that. Like, that's what I did with my time. I did so many things with my time, but that was something I would do on the weekend, like, print little name tags, you know, and send out messages. No time anymore.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:41]:
Yeah, the podcast was, like, my, like, evening time. And now I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Somer Hackley [00:36:46]:
You're like, now it's stories and bath time and have a good time, and, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:50]:
Before we jump over to the other side of the podcast, is there anything else that you want to share about your story of getting into recruiting executive search? Your book?

Somer Hackley [00:36:58]:
I don't think so. I think if folks want to pick up the book, it's geared toward job seekers, like that. It was inspired by. So when Covid started I decided not to do business development, like, proactively because I didn't want to bother people in a pandemic when we didn't even know what's happening. And I just didn't feel good about it. So I just caught up with people and was like, how are you? And people are like, let me tell you about recruiters, because I didn't have. Usually when I talk to someone, I have a job, I'm pitching a job, and I have an agenda. But when I'm just like, how are you? People had a lot to say and a lot of frustration, and so I started answering their questions, and then it was just LinkedIn posts, and then I was like, I'm just gonna write a book about how all of it works.

Somer Hackley [00:37:39]:
So it's inspired by those conversations. But I have heard that recruiters learn from it because I do tell it. There's a lot of me in the book. That's what my editor helped me out with. How much me do I put in the book, and I told it from my perspective, like, how I just did here, right. With contingency retained. And there's a lot more detail here than in the book, but I do feel like folks might find it relatable or funny or maybe just a little validation for how it all works.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:04]:
I got done with it. I was like, this is like a master, like, business card. You give it to somebody you're working with, and I just said, here's all the answers that you need to do. The things that you need to do.

Somer Hackley [00:38:13]:
Yes. Yeah. It makes me feel good. I get messages every single day on LinkedIn. I'm doing the think of me when I already got. Someone messaged me yesterday. I sent it to 50 recruiters, and I have three interviews next week. And I was like, cool.

Somer Hackley [00:38:27]:
That's so cool. And I was like, I've updated it. So here's how I think about it now. But, yeah, it just makes me feel so nice. It's been really fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:34]:
That is awesome. Well, jumping over to the quick fire questions, and you could take this either the exact search way or contingent. I know most people getting started in this world are typically contention. What advice would you give to a recruiter that's actually just getting started in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Somer Hackley [00:38:53]:
Yeah. So what helped me out, which might. I don't know if you've heard this answer before, but I was very deliberate with how I sound and what I say and how much I speak, and I thought about that for a good year, and I think that helped the reason why was I wasn't taken seriously. I came across probably too bubbly and, like, too just hyper and too jokey. And I was getting a lot of. I was in Manhattan, right, which I told you about calling 921,000 and getting someone in tech at Goldman Sachs on the phone. And, you know, and it wasn't that bank, and I don't remember what bank, but people would curse. You know, people would be like, who are like, they were not nice.

Somer Hackley [00:39:35]:
And. And I was like, what can I. And maybe they weren't nice, but I was like, what can I do to be more respected on the phone? And also, you know, some candidates, like, and this is, again, a broken thing. Maybe it's a female thing. I was getting a lot of, like, winky face emails from some of the candidates. Yes. You know, and it was not good. And I was like, I need to come across a certain way.

Somer Hackley [00:40:00]:
And I know, again, it's, like, not on me, but I put it on me. And when I speak, I end my questions on a down note, like, hey, how was your weekend? You know, versus, like, a bubbly way to ask or to giggle through it or stuff. Like, and it's been ingrained in me, but I was so. I would test things out. I was so deliberate with how, like, I have a double mute on my mic. There's mute on Zoom, but I have a mute button here. I physically mute myself. Like, physically mute myself when people are talking so I don't interrupt them and so that they can keep talking because I'm so excited to say something or comment on something.

Somer Hackley [00:40:34]:
And I know that that's not great. And so I've learned that about myself. And I think actually being very deliberate and thoughtful about how you speak, how you come across, how much you listen, how much you're talking. Is it. Your agenda helped me a lot.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:49]:
That's powerful. Absolutely powerful. Same question, though. But for people that have been around the block 510, 25 years, what advice would you have to an experienced recruiter to keep on seeing success?

Somer Hackley [00:41:01]:
Yeah, I would say to have tremendous empathy for everyone you're talking to. And I think that comes down to the relationship piece that we were talking about earlier. But most of these relationships come from candidate interviews. Right. That I was on. But when I interview someone, I'll spend. The first call is a half hour, the second call is an hour, and I'm asking questions and I'm listening intently, and I'm digging and digging and digging and asking how and asking why it was hard and asking what they had to overcome, and I'm truly understanding that person. And then when we get down to offer, if I do with that person, I can feel if this is the right move for them.

Somer Hackley [00:41:41]:
And if it's not, and I'll ask them, like, why would you even possibly take this job right now? Because this, you know, this other thing that you were just talking about, like, have you even talked to your boss about potential for this thing to happen? And I'm trying to talk people out of things, but I'm genuinely curious about it. So I think having empathy and being able to relate to people comes from really understanding and taking the time to listen. And then you can prevent the surprises, because I think that our role as recruiters boils down to setting expectations and preventing surprises. And I've thought that for a long time, and that's all I try to do. And as long as you prevent surprises, you're fine. You don't get the root canal. The root canal is from the surprises or the expectation setting, one of the two. So I think truly listening and having empathy helps a lot.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:33]:
Yeah. And you've written a book, but has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Somer Hackley [00:42:38]:
Yes. So I recently did a podcast with Dan McGuire, who I'd placed before, and I was catching up with him a long time ago, and this was right after a woman who worked for me told me she didn't want to work for me anymore because I was a pain, and I was very sad because she's awesome. And I was asking Dan. Yeah. I'm like, you manage a thousand people. I have four, three. How do you manage people? Like, what advice do you have for me? He's like, read this book. It's called the effective manager by Mark Horstman.

Somer Hackley [00:43:08]:
I'm like, cool. I will. I read that book. It was amazing. It taught me how to do one on ones, how to take feedback, get feedback, how to run my team. So then she has to come back. Like, I became less. I became a really, really good manager.

Somer Hackley [00:43:19]:
Honestly, as a recruiter, as you get more senior, you start managing people. I don't. Now I have Lauren, who, of course I manage her, but we're more partners, and she doesn't do recruiting. But when I was managing recruiters, being a good manager is critical, and I needed to spend time on that, and I was kind of just thrown into it, and that book really changed me. And then she asked to come back, and, you know, that was awesome. And then when the folks directly under me hired their own people under them. I gave them the book. I'm like, here's how you run one on ones is how I learned how to do it.

Somer Hackley [00:43:47]:
Cool. So, yeah, I really got a lot out of that book.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:51]:
That is awesome. Now, with your search firm, is there, like, a rec tech tool, or what's your tech stack?

Somer Hackley [00:43:57]:
I use clockwork recruiting. I don't know if you've heard of it, but, yeah. What I like about it is it gets the data from LinkedIn. Great. So I've had tools that parse, and you're like, come on. So you just don't want to spend five minutes uploading a person, because that's a lot of minutes. But what I really, really like about it is the client facing capability, which some login, some don't. I don't oversell that, but it makes really nice reports, because in retainsearch, it's not just about resumes.

Somer Hackley [00:44:26]:
It's about, you know, the market. And the more data you put in, like, you can actually upload your target list of companies, and I use it after every single phone call. I will mark, like, not interested. Or. And you can even customize all that. And so I can have graphs. Like, here's how many people are on the surge. Here's how many people aren't interested.

Somer Hackley [00:44:41]:
Here's how many people I disqualified. Here's how many people you disqualified. So you're gonna have really nice graphs, a really nice overview. And then all the photos from LinkedIn, it dumps from, you know, can data domp, name, title, company photo. So I just needed a way to not spend a whole day making these reports, because that's what we used to do. It was all manual, making pretty reports, and now it's boom. As long as the data is in there. So I really, really like it.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:03]:
I mean, that's awesome. That's. You're doing all the work, and it shows it without having to, like, yes. Everything.

Somer Hackley [00:45:10]:
Yes. Yeah. Because those reports, you know what it's like to move a bullet in word or excel, and you're like, come on. And you're doing the painter thing, and it's not working. You know, it's like, there's got to be a better way.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:22]:
Like, my wife is like, grade with high canva. For me, it's like 45 minutes. And I'm like, how did I move this picture?

Somer Hackley [00:45:29]:
It's the worst.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:31]:
What do you think is, like, you were successful as a contingency recruiter, you're successful CT partners, you're successful at the next firm. Enough that business has just constantly come to you. What do you think has been a big driver for your own personal success?

Somer Hackley [00:45:46]:
I think I have this relentless optimism, but also mixed in with some reality, and I just keep going. But I think the biggest thing is getting energy from my fan club. And I talk about that in the book from a candidate perspective when folks are looking. I heard one of your recent guests, I forget which one, they said they were like, you tell me I can't do something, I will prove you wrong. I will do it. I am the sole opposite of that. If you tell me I can do something, I will do it. If you tell me I can't, I'm like, you're right, I can't.

Somer Hackley [00:46:19]:
I cannot do that thing. And so it's very important for me to surround myself with people that tell me I can do things. And whenever I feel this confidence strain, I just remember that because it's a logical decision of, like, I just need to talk to people that are rooting for me. I just need. And so, like, the podcasts I'm doing, like, all these people I've been in touch with for so long, they just give me so much confidence and I just get so much energy from that. And so I think just remembering to talk to people that are rooting for me just keeps me going. Whenever I have to learn something new or whatever it is.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:54]:
How can somebody create that fan club?

Somer Hackley [00:46:56]:
I think everyone has one. You just need to talk to those people, right? Like, think about who have you touched? Like, who have you helped? I mean, if you're new at this, like, start helping people start doing the right thing, and then you just stay in touch with people. But, you know, for me, it just comes down to, you know, like, I. The thing about a fan club is it's sometimes it's hidden, you know, I got a message this week from a person saying, hey, I just want to let you know I took your advice you gave me a year ago. I tried to recruit her for a role, and she wasn't interested. And I saw that she was at a company for like, 30 years, and I just gave her some advice. Maybe I give a lot of unsolicited advice, but I've been doing this for a long time. So I'm like, I'm sorry for the unsolicited advice, but I was like, look, you've been at one company for 30 years, and the thing I've seen when people have been at one company for over 1520 years is they make a jump, then they make a mistake because they realize that they assumed way too many things about how their old company worked and how this new company works, and every company works differently.

Somer Hackley [00:48:00]:
So I advise you to take your time, do a lot of interviews, maybe do consulting, do not take a quick offer, because almost everyone I talk to, and they've been somewhere for over 20 years, that next jump is a year, and then they find their home, and she wrote me a message the other day. She's like, thank you, and she's telling me how that advice really worked out. So she's a fan, right? But, like, I don't know. I don't know where ifanclip is, but it's like, that kind of stuff, right? So it's interesting because we know things that we don't realize. Not everyone knows, but we see so much. We have this cool perspective because we're talking to so many people all the time, and so, you know, starting to share trends and share that kind of advice. Like, now that I'm, you know, 43, I'm like, I guess I know some things, but it's taken me a minute to. To get there.

Somer Hackley [00:48:45]:
But even if you're more junior, you know things, you know. So I think just telling people what you know, you kind of create your fan club, and you see the reaction you get.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:53]:
The next question I'm gonna ask two ways. Looking back at your first few months in recruiting, when you first started off, if you had the chance to have a cup of coffee with yourself or a glass of wine with yourself, what would you tell yourself?

Somer Hackley [00:49:05]:
Mm hmm. I think it goes back to what we just talked about, plus what you talked about earlier. If only I'd written the fan club down or had the technology to track these people. I feel like, wow. Not just in my head or not just a gut feeling, but imagine if I had a list of every single candidate that I really like, or there's an indication that they like me or every client for 22 years. I can't even imagine what that would be. So I would tell myself, like, hey, write this stuff down. Don't just have to took a job folder that you will leave behind you, you know, when you leave, because everything is just.

Somer Hackley [00:49:38]:
You know how it works. You leave a company, you're usually walked out, you know? So I wish I had. Wish I had a list of every single person to have this awesome, huge fan club right now versus just folks that I tend to remember because we stay in touch and it's more organic. So that's what I was telling myself. It's kind of tactical, but I think it would be really cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:58]:
What about the same question, but for back in fast forward to February 2020? Or actually, let's take a few months past that. Yeah, people started doing things again. But, like, with you starting your own business, your own executive search firm, with everything that you know, now, if you got a chance to go back and talk to yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

Somer Hackley [00:50:17]:
It's going to be really tactical, but I think I could have done more research, and I'm still on that journey of pricing. Again, it's a very tactical answer, but I don't know if I'm leaving money on the table. You know? I don't know if giving discounts is the right decision. I value long term relationships. Maybe too much. Right? I think it all works out. But I would love if I had started out just being very thoughtful about pricing, like, doing research, maybe somehow figuring out what everyone was charging, especially what people like me are charging. Solopreneurs, folks with less than three people.

Somer Hackley [00:50:52]:
I ask my friends, and I know what we used to charge at big firms, but, yeah, it's super tactical. But, like, in terms of all the big stuff, like, I'm so pumped about how it all has worked out. I guess what I'm debating now is, you know, how do I market myself as both a specialist and a generalist? I think everyone is like, you need a niche. Niche, niche, niche, niche. But the other day, I do anything. But it's not a good thing to say, you know? Yeah. Like, and I don't be cocky about it, but, like, you know, like, I tend to place a person, they're like, can you place this other person? I'm like, sure. Yeah, why not? Like, it takes me two weeks.

Somer Hackley [00:51:27]:
Like, just two weeks of, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then I'm like, cool. Now I know what I'm doing. Like, when I. And I started working with this, I put in the book, like, that, more of that, like, hardware company. I'm like, I have no idea about motors. Like, no idea. Like, zero.

Somer Hackley [00:51:42]:
Like, how to build an engine, you know? Anyway, so I guess that's my journey now is, like, how much do I lean into articulating how I can pick things up quickly because it kind of falls on deaf ears. So I guess I'm looking for future advice from my current self at the same time.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:58]:
Well, for the listeners, if they want to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Somer Hackley [00:52:02]:
Yeah, so it's Somer Hackley, s o m E r on LinkedIn I'm obsessed with LinkedIn, so you can find me there. I have Instagram and other things for distinguished search, but I'm, as we talked about with canva, I don't know what I'm doing. So we try, try my best.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:20]:
Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Somer Hackley [00:52:24]:
The biggest thing is I feel like recruiters get a bad rap. I see a lot on LinkedIn every day. I don't comment on it. Everything I say and do is very intentional and needs to have, needs to be helpful and have some sort of positive outcome for whoever's reading it. So I don't get mixed up in all this stuff, but I think it's a shame. Like, I think it's a shame that there's a lot of negativity and there's a lot of negativity coming from candidates about not getting feedback and being pressured into taking offers and all this kind of stuff. And I feel like as a collective, every single person has the power to elevate the game and to make it a really respected profession across the board and to have everyone have a great experience. And so I feel like I don't know how to fix that.

Somer Hackley [00:53:16]:
I truly think it comes down to how recruiters are paid. People are going to do what they're going to do, but if you align incentives with outcomes, then people will do what they're paid to do. And if you reward feedback, giving, for example, or reward who knows what. So just take a moment, I'd say, and like, I'm one person, I can't change the world. But I think that's why I get a lot of business is I do those kinds of things. And so I do think it is beneficial, but also I think it can just raise the bar for everyone if everyone just pays attention to that kind of stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:45]:
That's awesome. Well, summer, like I said at the very beginning of the podcast, I've been so excited and looking forward to our conversation. Read the book. The book is made for job seekers, but it is a masterclass of creating a business card, creating a leverageable asset for your business. I've been dreaming about writing a book. Maybe one day I'll actually do it. But once again, thank you so much for coming on, and I look forward to definitely continuing the conversation over the years.

Somer Hackley [00:54:11]:
Absolutely. You too.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:12]:
And for the listeners, I want you guys to crush it. I want you guys to make 2024 your best year yet. So let's grow together, guys. Let's go. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.