Want the raw, unapologetic realities of reclaiming your life? Then tune into the Takeover Unfiltered podcast hosted by yours truly, Brianna Rooney, The Millionaire Recruiter, and Taylor Bradley, The Humble Hustler. We're pulling back the curtain on our personal lives and sharing the ups, downs, and everything in between. From navigating relationships to juggling self-care routines, we're laying it all out on the table. We're all about taking control and making sh*t happen.
Expect raw, candid talks, seasoned with uncensored language. It's time to own your journey, embrace the chaos, and unleash your inner badass. Buckle up, because we're about to take you on a wild ride to self-discovery and empowerment. But don't worry, we're still dishing out some valuable insights into the recruiting world. It's all about finding that balance between work and play, and we're here to show you how it's done.
Ready to kick ass and rewrite the rule book? Grab your favorite drink, cozy up, and join us for some real talk you won't want to miss!
It.
Hello.
Welcome to Talent takeover.
Unfiltered.
What's going on, Taylor?
Oh, not a lot.
Just recovering from the weekend.
We had, like, a really good
out with friends social weekend.
So I'm like today.
How's yours?
I had the best weekend.
We took a train to Santa Barbara, went to
the Dolphin Dive Festival, had some 80s band.
My mom's in town.
Kids had a blast.
It was just one of those
nailed it, mom weekends for me.
I know what those feel like, where you're
like, you know, the kids had the best
weekend, and you're like, Fuck yeah. Winning.
Had cocktails on the train, didn't have to drive. What?
Yeah, that was fun. That is fun.
You're going to have to tell me about
that experience so you can have cocktails.
We've always wanted to take a train.
Our kids want to take a train.
It's like a thing.
So what are we talking about today?
It's a great question.
So it's from someone, a listener
of ours that had a question.
So, by the way, if you ever have
questions, hit us up on our Social.
Please put it in comment.
Like all those things.
Reviews, we dig.
But this is about assertive communication.
As a recruiter, how do you do it?
How do you do it with care?
How do you do it and not sound like
an asshole and still get your job done?
So what do you think about that?
Yeah, so I think the question and how it was
posed to us was that somebody, a listener of ours
in their review, who's also a recruiter, by the way,
had a review where they were told by, I'm assuming,
their manager that they needed to own the process of
the phone call with candidates more.
So she went on to elaborate and say that's being
comfortable, interrupting the candidate to get the information I need
to move forward with the call, but also having a
balance of care on what the candidate is saying.
And so I was like, that's really interesting.
That's one, really great feedback.
Two, I would love to hear a call.
I would have loved to hear, how
did this manager get to this feedback?
What takes place in these calls?
Well, I go to it probably takes this person a
really long time because I don't think unless you're actually
recording the calls, which I know there are some companies
that are starting to do this just for quality, but
no, I would imagine they're probably not able to get
through that many calls a week.
And they're probably like, well, why is that?
Well, because I'm on the phone
for 45 minutes with each person.
That's what I'm imagining. Yeah.
And I feel like that's very and I don't know
off the top of my head, this person's background and
if they've been in recruiting for a while.
But I feel like it's not uncommon for a
new recruiter to exhibit those behaviors of, like, okay,
well, I've got to make the candidate like me,
because you hear all the time in recruiting, it's
about relationships, and people work with people they like,
and that's even outside of recruiting.
But having a good relationship with a
recruiter is critical with your recruiter.
And so I feel like this is
somebody trying to relate to someone.
I e the candidate, spend a lot of time with
them, probably listening to their life story, thinking, this is
what I need to do for my job.
This is how I'm going to ensure
they have the best candidate experience.
But I think there's a way to do both.
There's a way to be brief, be bright, be gone.
There's a way to get the information that
you need and tactfully move the conversation along.
I don't think you have to necessarily
interrupt the candidate and cut them off
completely as per this feedback.
But I definitely think that there's a
way to do it and be assertive.
And I think we've talked about it before
on previous episodes, how being assertive, especially as
a woman, you're like a bitch.
That's just what even in 2023, which blows
my mind that this is still the case,
that if you're assertive, you're a bitch.
So I think that this person may be
struggling with some of that, too, not wanting
to come off a certain way by telling
the candidate, okay, let's move forward, or whatever.
So I think telling people, our listeners, how to
do that, how to move the conversation along when
a candidate is being long winded, knowing that you've
got an allotted amount of time for a phone
screen, how do you do that?
Get all the information you need and
be really tactful, but drive the combo. Yeah.
So I also think that saying that you're assertive
is a really nice way to say aggressive, because
we try not to say aggressive anymore because, again,
that's the bitch vibe, and it's not okay.
There's this heightened candidate experience, like, oh,
my God, if you don't have the
best candidate experience, you're not doing this.
We talk about it all the time.
There's another report that came out that
that's what candidates are looking for.
And so it's really on the
recruiters to set the scene there.
But something I recently got, it was our marketing
firm, actually, they gave us actually, the guy that
was in charge of our marketing, he did this
course, but he gave us a sales course.
And in there, I was actually blown away a little
bit, because when I think of how do you build
rapport, I build it by getting personal with somebody.
But in business, that's actually not building rapport.
You have to build rapport by trust and by knowledge.
And so I think what I would say for this recruiter is
that they're supposed to be the ones that set the scene.
So I think when we talk about expectations, then
I would say even in the email before I
get on the phone with this person.
Hey, look, there's a few questions that I have to ask you
because the hiring manager really needs to know XYZ and I want
to make sure that it's a fit for both sides.
So that's how I set the scene.
So I let them know like, I
am in charge of this conversation.
Yeah, no, it's funny you said that because I
wrote down my little notes as we're talking.
I'm saying set expectations for the call.
That's where I feel like it starts.
You have to set the scene of what
you're going to cover in the call.
So, okay, in the beginning, love to get to know you,
love to ask you a couple of questions about you.
I'll tell you a little bit about me and
then we're going to talk about your work history.
And then you have to let them know what's going to
transpire in the call and what all you have to cover.
And this is at the beginning of the call.
So I completely agree with you.
I feel like that's the way you kind of drive and set
the scene and oh, I'm so sorry to cut us short here,
but we've got to move on to talking about your experience.
There's ways to do it where I can say with 1000%
certainty the person walking away from that phone call is not
going to be like, oh, she's such a bitch.
And so I think that I agree with
you that it's probably a timing thing.
And so I would think for steps for this
recruiter, how could we tell this recruiter from step
1234, this is what you need to do to
ensure that you're getting the information that you need
from the candidate, but you're not staying on the
phone with them for hours and hours and hours.
Well, let me ask you this first.
How long do you think a recruiter should
be on the phone with the candidate?
The first phone call, the first intake?
I think it depends on if you're doing full cycle.
I think it depends on if you're just sourcing.
But I'm going to go back to my world.
In my world, we would always spend at
least 30 minutes on a call with somebody.
If it was a more technical role, maybe 45.
But we're talking about a role where
you're like you're talking to the candidate.
You're submitting directly to the hiring manager
to determine if they want to interview.
So it's kind of like you need
to get all of this information.
You need to get resume, salary
and your phone screen notes.
So our phone screen in the beginning is typically a
pretty thorough one, but you've kind of gone back and
forth with them already via email to gauge interest.
Go over here's, the job description, whatever.
So you kind of know what it is by
the time that you're getting on the phone.
And so I would say that the phone call needs to
be about 30 minutes, but for me, that's like a max.
I wouldn't let my recruiters be
on for longer than that.
And I would say you could probably build
a pretty good relationship within 15 minutes.
But again, like you said, you're also talking
to them before, meaning, like, you're emailing them,
you're asking them a few questions.
I think there are some things that are just more logistics
that you can get out really quickly in an email.
And then now it's like, okay, let's set
the scene and let's have a relationship.
But my recruiters, because again, we're contingency we would
be pitching at least two to three opportunities on
the phone, so we were able to do that
and still get what we needed to know. Yeah.
So she has to be taking too long.
Yeah, well, and so what we would do going
back to in house, because I think, if I'm
not mistaken, this person's an in house recruiter.
And what I would tell my in house recruiter to do is
I'm like, block off an hour of your time for the call.
Use 30 minutes for the call, use the other
30 to get your submittal together, to get them
into the ATS with all your submittal notes, resume.
Because we used to work through the ATS,
and so you would need that admin time,
because people would do when they would wait.
It was like a best practice to do
it right then, because if you would wait,
of course you snooze, you lose with anything.
So it's like, get the submittals in, get your stuff.
So give yourself some time and then some time
to go to the bathroom, take a health break,
whatever, and then get on your next call.
So I would say if they're going beyond an
hour, and that's like, you're not typing up a
really robust, thorough phone screen notes, because ours used
to be probably about two pages long of information.
Okay, that's a whole other conversation. Yeah.
Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
About two pages long via a form of all the
information that you needed to fill out in there.
And so there was heavy admin work.
So it was like, you need to
do your admin work for that submittal. Right.
Then get the candidate over.
So I would say for this person, if you're spending
an hour just talking to them, oh my gosh, you're
going to be talking to a lot of people.
And then also, it's really important to be able to
suss out pretty early if they're not a fit.
Like, you don't need to spend 30 minutes or an
hour on the phone with somebody just because you've allotted.
That when, you know, in the
first 1015, they're not a fit. Exactly.
So that's what I was going to go to.
I'm like, well, there's lots of things that you
could hit and be like, no, thank you.
I think you can be really assertive as a recruiter
if you are really saying like, hey, look, I don't
want to waste your time, I don't want to waste
my time, the company's time, all of these things.
If you do it with that in mind
and you actually say that out loud, and
again, it could be via email, that's fine.
I think that you can really get through some stuff because
that's the respect and care that they need not to just
be on the phone with them for shits and giggles.
I think that's insane.
I pushed things even a little farther.
So we had a very aggressive
firm where I would time people.
So I'm really big into like, look, this is just
going to become habits you can get really fast.
So I had to make sure that people were
taking notes while they were on the phone.
So the way they would also do that is because it
can hear like little court type record over here, right?
Type record.
I call that a fucking computer.
It's a fucking computer.
Welcome to 2023.
I'm telling you, I wonder my past life,
like, who was I in my past life?
Oh my God, like churning butter over here.
Anyways, they would have to type
while they were getting their intake.
Every single monitor had our intake form.
So I really believe in being uniformed because
if you're doing the same thing over and
over again, you can get a lot faster.
So they would have the form on their monitor.
I was stickler as to what went first, like what our
intakes actually looked like and the format it was, because what
I wanted was that any intake, any resume we sent over,
I didn't need to put our logo on it.
They already knew it came from us because we
were very standardized and I could sit in anyone's
seat and vice versa was really important to me.
And so, yes, wow.
And I would lose it if it was 15.
And by lose it, I'd be like, hey, let's get faster.
But I would time people.
I was really big on that.
So I think that in order to be assertive
means you have to be up against the clock.
And then it feels yucky and it feels
hard at first, but I think that it
just makes you more and more efficient.
Okay, so I think then if we're talking to our
audience consisting of both in house and external recruiters, what
are some general themes where there's alignment, which I think
we've kind of gotten one down time.
Like you can't spend whether it's an in house or
whether it's external, you can't spend an hour, but what
the paperwork and then administrative work looks like that could
go with that could differ because I totally get like
in contingency we're up against the clock, but in house
it's more about being thorough, doing it right.
If there's spelling errors, it's like, a whole thing.
It has to be a very polished, professional document that's
going to be circulated around to a hiring panel.
It's kind of a thing where you need to make
sure there's no spelling, like, your shits together in the
document that you're sending over because you're probably going to
have some senior level individuals looking at it.
So I think that there's like, you guys are typing while
you're doing the form, then you're like, okay, maybe glance over
it after you get done, make sure it makes sense, and
then send it on to the hiring manager.
Yeah, but we were also submitting directly to
the hiring manager, so we made sure grammarly,
and we were also, again, like, hey, it
needs to be complete sentences, and we're putting
pronouns or capitalizing, which should be capitalized.
But we trained heavily on that.
We even had like, hey, how fast can you type?
We would have challenges in the office
about how we could do that.
So no, I think we were still really thorough.
I think that I feel strongly that I could
put an external and internal, and I think that
we should operate very similarly because even companies would
say, hey, I like your guys'intake, but add these
two, three questions because I want you guys to
operate like we do internally.
We were used to operating the same way in some things.
And then when it got really heavy, where there was
just too much going on, then what we did was
we ended up having an admin that would actually send
it out, and this particular person would look through to
make sure it's like, hey, is this Prim and proper?
Can we send this to ten clients
and feel really good about it?
Okay, so we ended up having another level of eyes
to look at it when it got crazy, but before
that, it's like, yeah, you send out your own stuff.
Going back to your question, though, in order to
be assertive, I think you have to know exactly
what you need to have the answers to.
Basically like, look, I have 30 minutes and
I need to get off the phone and
I need to have these questions answered.
And it's fine if you can't listen and type.
Not a lot of people can, but take
really great notes and then clean it up.
I think that's what's really important.
And then I want to say something real quick.
Do not record yourself unless you tell them
I have heard people doing this, that they
use their phone to record the conversation because
they don't feel like they're being thorough enough.
That is illegal.
I just want to put that out there really
quick because I have had that question before.
My gosh, I've never heard of that. But yes.
Oh my God, I think so many people do.
Wow, so well then, okay, that begs the question too.
Are they doing their phone screens via actual phone,
or are they using like this, like Google Meets
or teams or whatever, where you can hit recording
and you can obviously let the person right, that's
actually a really good point because I'm used to
doing intakes on the phone.
I do client intakes via video.
But who, I don't know, actually.
Okay, audience, audience, please tell us, are we
doing more candidate intakes now on the phone,
or are we doing the more video?
Because now I'm curious because you're right, it could
very easily say, hey, do you mind recording this?
And it's a lot easier that way.
Yeah, and I mean, it's also like, think of
how much more information you find out from a
candidate in today's world in 2023, if you're using
Google Meets or teams or something where you can
see them on video, you used to have to
wait till, like, what, maybe the third interview. Yeah.
So you've done a phone screen.
Hiring manager has done a phone screen.
Then there's an in person interview.
That's when you can usually suss out body language and all
the stuff that we talked about in our last episode.
But if you're doing a Google Meets first
call with the recruiter, you get to suss
all that out in conversation one.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
I did not think about that.
I'm going to have to think about this later.
I feel like this needs to be like a
different episode or something because I don't know.
I don't know why I didn't think of this.
I feel like it would be a
good best practice to do that.
Like, if you need to record, if you need
to suss out body language, how they're going to
be if they're going to be giving presentations, how
they're going to be when they're looking.
I think there's a lot it's like having an
in person interview in your first phone call.
Like your first RPS recruiter phone screen. Yes.
That's interesting.
Okay, I like it.
I'm going to write that down so that we
can determine get back to everybody what is the
best practice, what should they be doing?
Yeah, I will say, though, I think that
there's something to be said by video fatigue.
I think that is super real.
So when someone's like, hey, sorry, I know we
have Zoom, I'm supposed to call you Zoom, but
can we just talk on the phone?
I'm like, Hell yeah, we can go for a walk outside.
It's fucking great.
I love just getting on the phone. For sure.
I would prefer that if it were me, but I
also would probably like, I see all the benefits of
doing a Google me, but I'm with you.
I would prefer to just call somebody on the phone, but
these days, when somebody wants to just call me and talk
on the phone, I'm like, it's just so strange.
It's just not the world that we live in.
Wait, does this thing work.
Yeah, well, I mean, if it's from a business standpoint,
if they're like, what number can I call you on?
I'm like, oh, okay, well, here's my cell phone.
It doesn't bother me at all, but the
ask never even comes up these days.
Yeah, that's true. That's funny.
Okay, so back to being assertive as a recruiter, because
I know we're starting to run out of time here.
What other advice do you have?
Because what I think is interesting is she's like,
well, I don't want to interrupt the candidate.
Go back to that for a second.
What did you ask them that
they can't stop talking about?
It was probably something personal,
not work related, right?
Yeah, and I think there's also ways to
interrupt and be apologetic about it and it
not still like the person not walk away
like, oh, such a bitch, she interrupted me.
Okay, wait, I'm going to stop you right
there because I have some more questions.
This is really good information that you're
giving me and I want to make
sure that I'm capturing that accurately.
Can I ask you some more
questions so you can elaborate further?
I think there's ways to interrupt
people that is not rude.
I definitely think if you're because I'm imagining
worst case scenario that we've talked about, we've
seen where somebody is just interrupting someone continuously,
you can't get a word in, you lose
your train of thought, and that is rude.
So I totally get where our original
poster that poses question is coming from.
It can be rude if you're just
doing it continuously, but also it shouldn't
be happening unless somebody's long winded.
You shouldn't be interrupting them
unless they're long winded.
And, you know, you need to keep track of time.
But I think it goes back to what we said.
You've got to set those expectations very early on.
Hey, I know we've got 30 minutes allotted for this call
and I have a hard stop at X, so I want
to make sure we cover your background, your experience.
I want to tell you a little bit about me.
I want to hear a lot about you.
I think you've got to set the scene of what you're
going to cover, the time you have to cover in.
You have a hard stop, and I think as long as
you set the scene that way and set those expectations, even
if you do have to interrupt them and say, I'm so
sorry, I'm going to have to stop you there because I
have a couple more questions to ask you.
We've only got ten minutes left.
There's ways to do it, love.
So I know I get anxiety if I know that
we haven't finished what we're here to talk about.
And I see that there's like
five minutes left, I'm like, shit.
And then all of a sudden, I'm not even in the
present anymore because I'm worrying so much about time that I'm
actually now missing out, and it's kind of ridiculous.
What I also say is I would always say you have a
hard stop even if you do not have a hard stop.
I actually think that's best practice at this point.
And I don't remember if this was a podcast, if we
were just shooting the shit, but you said something that you
saw something that it's actually rude to go over time.
I don't know what podcast that was, but
yeah, it's actually rude to go over because
it means you don't respect their time, your
time, and just you're not respecting efficiencies.
Exactly.
And so we were talking about it that we were
like, oh, we would have thought that that would have
been a nice thing to do, is to stay past
the time and listen to them and carry.
But everything I read. Yeah.
When I was researching that topic,
was like, no, it's rude.
It shows you don't respect their time if you
have a meeting after you don't respect their time.
And so, actually, it's not rude to set the scene
on the time that you have allotted for the call.
That isn't rude.
What I would recommend to our person that posed
the question, our listener, is I think you really
have to allot the time for yourself, too.
Say, if you've got 30 minutes, then it's like,
okay, I need to spend the first 15 minutes
covering XYZ, the last 15 minutes covering ABC.
You have to make sure that you're allotting time
for yourself, knowing that you've got 30 minutes.
How am I going to capture all the
information that I need to so allot different
time to different subjects and make sure if
you're going over I just wouldn't go over.
I would cap it hard.
I would make sure I got the information that
I need and then don't go over those allotted
15 minutes that you have to talk about those
subjects, because it's inevitable you'll go over.
So you can have 30 minutes blocked on
your calendar for call all day long.
But realistically, if you're going over and your calls are 45
minutes, that's not an accurate picture of how long it takes
you to finish a call or complete a call.
I also think that you need to start from what's the
most important and what are the nice to have questions.
And I would love to see actually, I would
love to see the questions, because perhaps the way
you're asking the questions aren't assertive enough.
Yeah.
So maybe it's like they're too open.
And so the other person on the other side
is having a hard time being direct with you
because you're not being direct with the question. Yeah.
I think that's really important.
I was watching it was Tony Robbins talk.
What was it for?
I don't remember, but he was saying that your
value are the value of the questions you ask.
I thought that was, like, super interesting.
So it's like you really got to pay attention
to not only what you're asking, but how you're
asking then, and then rock it through that.
And again, this takes practice.
And so I do love going back to the
actual what the hiring manager said in the review.
I love I'm the hiring manager.
The manager.
I love that that person said that
to this individual because not a lot
of good feedback comes through those reviews. I think.
Sometimes it's like, why do we have reviews?
Because what is this for?
So that was really good feedback, and you
can get better, and you can practice.
And again, I would time yourself. Yeah.
How quickly can we do this? For sure?
And this seems to me like constructive criticism.
Like, this is the person trying to set the scene for
this or set the expectation for this person to be better.
Because regardless of who you are, where you
work and recruiting, that's not going to change.
You need to be able to get the
information that you are required to get within
a certain allotted amount of time.
And you're doing yourself a disservice if
you're giving every candidate an hour.
Like, you got to figure out and suss out in the first
15 minutes if it's a good fit, if they're interested, if the
salary, you got to get all of that sussed out.
You can't be spending hours on the phone with
somebody that ends up that you can't even send
that phone screen over because they're not even qualified,
and you've just spent an hour with them. Yeah.
What do you think about the gatekeeper thing?
Because technically the recruiters are the
gatekeepers to the hiring managers. Right.
And I think sometimes and this
can be the internal versus external.
Externals don't get paid unless it works out.
Yeah, I think internals need to
think about that as well.
And not that I don't get paid, but it's
not the business initiative for me to do that.
It hurts the business if I
am not having productive conversations.
If they put that hat on, I
think it could be really powerful, too.
Well, and if, you know, because I know that
some organizations do this, you know, you have to
submit candidates in a slate of three, for example,
so you can't just submit one off.
There are certain hiring managers that I've worked
with in my life, my career, that my
recruiters have too, that they require slates.
And so it's like, how long is it going to
take you to get that slate of three qualified candidates
if you're spending an hour on the phone with everybody?
Interesting perspective.
It's definitely all about efficiency.
Whether you're an internal external recruiter, whether
you're tenured, whether you're just starting out.
You need to get your timing down on phone
screens, and you need to be able to get
off the phone with somebody if you know that
they're not a good fit within the first 15.
Minutes that has to happen.
That is a good best practice.
So I would say going into our broke
to boss tip is that you can be
an assertive communicator without being a bitch.
I don't know if that's the tip that we want
to put, but you can be an assertive communicator.
But I think setting the expectations for calls
is just such an important thing to do.
Whether you're talking to candidates, whether you're talking to clients,
always set expectations for what the goal is for the
call and what you need to get out of the
call in every single call that you're on.
And that doesn't make you a bitch.
I feel like being assertive, that's being the host or
assertive excuse me, that's being the host of a call.
I think that's actually
being definition of professional.
You're professional, you have a job to do and you
need to do it in this amount of time period.
Yeah, great.
And by the way, have fun with it.
That's the whole point.
As we're sitting here as hosts, especially
me, I tangent all the fucking time.
So there are so many people who are like, hey,
Brandon, look how many times you told me to rope
that shit back in and I'm so thankful for it.
I'm like, oh yeah, thank you so much.
I was going to get off this call and not
actually have it be productive because I'm like just telling
stories so I know when I get a storyteller on
the other side I'm like, hey, I could talk about
this all day long and let's do this another time,
but I really have to get this done.
It's just so simple.
Just be honest, transparent and just get her done.
And people appreciate that.
If somebody walks away from that I appreciate, then
they're just a fucker because nobody is offended.
They're not a good fit anyways.
Yeah, I mean, if somebody's offended by you having
other obligations and you telling them that on the
front end and driving the conversation forward, then I
mean, think about how that interview is going to
go if they're really long winded with you.
Think of how it's going to go with
your hiring manager and is that the vibe
of the organization you're trying to recruit for?
Yes, I am not going to tangent because as I'm
going to respect our listeners, we are out of time.
But I will say for another episode, let's
talk about how we give constructive criticism to
candidates in order to pass their interview.
Because I was going to tangent on I have
had to tell someone basically you need to shut
the fuck up, otherwise the hiring man is going
to hate you in the very nicest way.
I think that's a great one to talk
about because that happens all the time and
people ask us that all the time.
So we'll definitely talk about that one.
But as always, it was great chatting with you guys.
Well with you, Brianna.
But having our listeners be here with us, I
feel like they're here with they they're the ones
that asked this question, that drove this topic today.
So you are here. I know.
I love it. I love it.
And as always, we will see you next Tuesday.
Thanks y'all. Bye.