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Welcome to The Full Desk Experience, a podcast for leaders in the staffing and recruiting industry. Hosted by Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry Relations at Crelate, this show is designed to provide insights and tips from a highly knowledgeable consultant in the field.
Join us live (or catch the replay) in our Workshop series, where Kortney delivers expert advice and actionable tips for you to take to your firms immediately.
In the Industry Spotlight series, Kortney interviews industry experts and leaders, highlighting their journeys to success and key insights into the staffing and recruiting industry.
Don't have an hour to dedicate to a podcast? Listen in to our FDE Express - where you'll get quick-hit insights and tips in 10 minutes or less.
With new episodes dropping weekly, this is the perfect opportunity to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices in the industry. Don't miss out - join us for The Full Desk Experience today! If you'd like to attend the live session, be sure to visit our website for more information.
Kortney Harmon [00:00:00]:
Is a good rule of thumb. If I don't know what I'm going to do with the data, that I don't need to collect it.
Chris Hesson [00:00:04]:
I think you need to really. How am I going to use this? What's important for me? You also know your team's best. Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to start tracking things like, I think that's where you need to look at what's the culture of your office. But your team needs to understand what that long term benefit, what do they get out of tracking and putting the right information in? So depending on your space, I mean, I always look at what's my niche, what's my focus, how do I then differentiate? Keep in mind your goal is not to run a search and find that perfect candidate that's going to say, yes, that's going to take a job today.
Kortney Harmon [00:00:39]:
Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. Over the past decade, I've trained thousands of frontline recruiters and I've worked with hundreds of business owners and executives to help their firms and agencies grow. This is the full desk experience Krilate original podcast where we will be talking about growth blockers across your people, processes and technologies. Welcome to another episode of the full desk experience.
Kortney Harmon [00:01:15]:
All right, we're here at the show floor of a conference. We're doing this completely different, off the cuff today. Today. And we're doing it based on our conversations that we've had today. What do you think, Chris?
Chris Hesson [00:01:25]:
We've had lots of them. Let's do it.
Kortney Harmon [00:01:27]:
All right, this is the full disc experience. I'm your host, Kortney Harmon. And this is Chris Hessen. And the conversation surrounding our stay here at this conference really revolved around ATS blunders. And when I say ATS blunders, it's what's going wrong today, what went wrong before, why aren't we successful and what can we do about it today? So, Chris, want to talk about the top five?
Chris Hesson [00:01:50]:
Let's do it.
Kortney Harmon [00:01:51]:
All right. The first one that I heard is really revolving around a lot of things we hear from a lot of people. I'm sure you hear it more than I do. It's really about, I can't find my data in my system. What do you think about that?
Chris Hesson [00:02:02]:
It happens far too often. I think there's really two big value adds we get from AP's. One is keeping you organized with rest, being able to understand what candidates are, where what's going on in your process with the other is finding that information and get that already tracked. And I think what we often find is people don't have the forethought to look at. What do I need to extract from my system? What's really important? And I see people doing really one of two things. One, they are tracking too much. They are over complicated, they have forms with far too many questions or their team isn't going to ever fill out. But they have so much data that they can't sift through the haystack to find deals.
Chris Hesson [00:02:44]:
Having a bigger haystack doesn't mean it's going to make your job easier. The other end is they don't capture enough or they don't capture the right things. So looking at what's important for your space, what type of information you need to find out and not building your database around purple squirrels, those types of searches, we know we're going to get them. But if you are always adding and adding more things to track, you'll very quickly get to 5000 keywords and 800 titles you're trying to sift through to really find what's important for you. So be strategic. Think ahead of what's important. What do I need to pull out? What type of data do I need to retrieve? And that's what you really need to have your team focus on entering or tracking inside of your database is a.
Kortney Harmon [00:03:27]:
Good rule of thumb. If I don't know what I'm going to do with the data that I don't need to collect it.
Chris Hesson [00:03:32]:
I think you need to really, how am I going to use this? What's important for me? You also know your team's best. Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to start tracking things. I think that's where you need to look at what's the culture of your office? But your team needs to understand what that long term benefit, what do they get out of tracking and putting the right information in? So depending on your space, I mean, I always look at what's my niche, what's my focus, how do I then differentiate? Keep in mind your goal is not to run a search and find that perfect candidate that's going to say, yes, that's going to take a job today. Your goal is, who are the people that are worth my time to reach out to? Who are the people that are going to be at that ballpark, be in that world, and either be the right person or the right person.
Kortney Harmon [00:04:16]:
Yeah, I love that. We could probably talk about this forever. I mean, I had so many conversations about, oh, I need to track my KPI's better over this last year because it's a different market and my teams feel like I'm micromanaging them. But in reality, I'm just trying to help them get to the conversation better. I'm sure we could talk about this forever. Let's go on to number two. Number two, obviously, being here as an ATS CRM, a lot of people have the conversation. I don't think I set my data up the right or my system up in the right way to begin with because I was moving too fast.
Kortney Harmon [00:04:46]:
I needed to go, I needed to implement and I'm paying the price now 100%.
Chris Hesson [00:04:52]:
Far too often I see when people make a move and want to move to a new system, they're busy, they have a lot going on. They're managing business development, bringing in new clients, they're running active searches, they have a lot on their plate. And the mindset is, oh, I'll take the time later to go back and set it up. That approach, you will never have the time to go back and say, and what you do is you find yourself a year or two in and realizing you've been so inefficient and wasted so much time and effort because you didn't slow down and think through, how am I really going to use leverage this? So whether it's looking at making a move and coming over and joining us here in trail eight, or maybe it's looking at your system now, how do you operate? What is it that you and your team actually do? What do you need to track and what is the actual data and intelligence you need from it? Again, going back to the complexity concept, people either go way overboard and try to track far too many metrics, far too many KPI's that they have no intention of actually ever using to benefit their business, what are those four things that are going to help you identify? Where's the path that my business is going? Or what is the path or direction individual members of my team are going and how can I help get them to the next level? So take the time, slow down, be strategic. It's that extra week in the beginning is going to save you years of headache down the road.
Kortney Harmon [00:06:15]:
But my question twofold is, what happens if we already went through this process or already endure system? Is it too late? And what do you do about it now? Because so many times people are like, it's official, I need to change the system. It's the only way for me to do this. You have any thoughts about that? Is it ever too late? Can you ever recover from that?
Chris Hesson [00:06:35]:
It's never too late. You can always recover. It might be more complex for you to then clean up and so work through, but it is still absolutely worth that time to streamline your process, streamline the operations. Ultimately you need to keep it simple for your team. We all know recruiters and if it's too many clicks, too many steps, too many buttons, too many screensh, they're gonna find a way to not do it. We really want to focus on how do we make it easy and simple for our teams to do the right thing and track the right thing. You want to unlock the power of your team and adding more steps is not the way to do it.
Kortney Harmon [00:07:07]:
Yeah. Another conversation I heard. I don't know if you heard this one, is too many tools. My people are outside of my system. My people are doing so many things. I demoed five new tools in the last two weeks. What are your thoughts about that?
Chris Hesson [00:07:21]:
I think especially for a lot of business owners, those operations, it's very easy to chase down the shiny, flashy new tool. I talked to one office and they realized they had three or four different sequencing emailing tools and weren't using any of them. They're just now paying hundreds of dollars a month for things they aren't using. It's also very easy to point and blame a tool when you're not having the success you need. Again, it's slowing down and being strategic, looking at what are the investments I'm going to make, what is the ROI I'm going to get, both from monetary perspective as well as a time perspective, I think a lot of it comes down to be planned. Be mindful, keep that eye towards the future. And how are you going to use this? What is the expected value you're going to get? It's very easy to move too fast. You know, decide, hey, I'm going to go grab this thing.
Chris Hesson [00:08:11]:
Without really seriously looking at how is this going to tie into my process? How is my team going to actually leverage and use this, and where are we going to find success? How is this going to lead to more revenue for my team at my firm?
Kortney Harmon [00:08:23]:
I'm going to share something that I don't usually share about our product, a lot. But we were at dinner last night and we were sitting at a table and the right tools matter. Where I'm getting at is the right tools matter because we had someone that actually is a user and they were speaking so wonderfully about us, not because we were sitting there or that we paid them, but it was the idea that they actually are paying for two systems that do the same thing because they couldn't get out of one contract, but they are getting tenfold the revenue using freelate that they were using another system. And it's worth the time and money to continue to pay that one seater to be able to use the right system the right way. And it's making a difference in their business.
Chris Hesson [00:09:04]:
The right tools make all the difference in the world, but it's really being strategic. And they made that decision to say, let's go evaluate the landscape, let's look at what's out there. They want to certainly excited, always glad to have them. But it was able to simplify and streamline what their teams are doing, how their operations is, understanding their business, planning for growth, and they're able to thrive in a market where some people are struggling to survive.
Kortney Harmon [00:09:29]:
So I think that leads us to the next where we talked about tools and automation is the topic of conversation here, not just AI. AI is a buzzword and it's helping people. But automations is where I'm hearing I'm not doing it the way I need to be doing it. So I know you and I have had this conversation and honestly, it's going on like a year from like the first time we've had this podcast about automations. So we can actually link that in the show notes about that, where you should start for automation. But I'm hearing I'm not doing automation the way I should. Let's talk about it.
Chris Hesson [00:10:01]:
I think automation, it comes down to planning and being strategic. I mean, ultimately what automation can do is take a process and help ensure your team are hitting the stats without them having added work. Now step one on that is you have to have a process. What are the steps my team should be doing? What are the actions and events and what is the sequence my team needs to run and operate through? I talked to far many, you know, too many offices where they hear automation. They love it, they're excited, but they don't actually have a process or any plan. And that's really the first step is determining if this is going to be an automation around, uh, youre following up on, following up on placed candidates. Well, what should that process be? When are the reach outs? What am I doing? What is the purpose and goal of each one of those connections I make? And is this something where I want it as an automation of planning where its going to notify a team member, say, hey Kortney, its now time to go fall out. But this person here is what youre trying to achieve whereas an automation execution where its going to trigger send that email automatically.
Chris Hesson [00:11:01]:
Slowing down, understanding your process of business, looking what am I getting out of each step? Having a tool like sequencing, having automation is absolutely incredible, but you still have to slow down and think about how to use it. How is this going to impact my business? And what are those things that my team isn't doing or doesn't do enough? That's a great place for automation to come in and give them either that kick in advance or do those steps for them behind the scenes.
Kortney Harmon [00:11:28]:
What's our fifth one? We have fifth one.
Chris Hesson [00:11:31]:
Well, we hit on it a little bit. Okay, well it's come up a lot and I think in general it is over complicating things. Ultimately. I think success in any platform group space is keeping it the old kiss analogy, keep it simple, stupid. And that is so incredibly true. When you're looking at your tools. How can we keep it simple? And how can you have a simplified tech stack? How can you make sure you're effective, you're using things correctly when you have a process? How can you keep your process simple when you have your AP's, your database, how do you keep it simple? And simplicity does just happen overnight. We live in an entropic world where over time things will get more complicated, turn to disorder and get crazier.
Chris Hesson [00:12:12]:
It takes a lot of effort to keep things simple and clean, but ultimately that's how you keep your team moving fast. That's how you're able to unlock new revenue streams, that's how you're able to get to that candidate when you need to placing them and quickly turning things around. So be strategic, plan, keep simple.
Kortney Harmon [00:12:30]:
I love it. We've had so many conversations and I know people are like, oh, we need to get with Chris and his team because we went into these sessions and I realized we're not doing something that we should be or we could be doing something different. And I think the first step in any good concept or any good association is realizing you have a problem. And I love that the conferences are shedding light on these items and these owners are taking takeaways to say, how can I do better in the market we're in today? How can I? It's not necessarily shift my business, but it's how can I pivot to do better with what I have today? So I love it. I think this has been great. We've had so many good conversations and I can't wait for the next one.
Chris Hesson [00:13:08]:
We're ready.
Kortney Harmon [00:13:09]:
We're going to be speaking at staffing World. If you haven't seen on social media, come join us at Staffing World Wednesday at 1030. I think it's 1030. We're going to be talking about sourcing America's Got Talent, and we want them all super excited about being able to be at the next conference with you guys. And stay tuned. Listen in and have a wonderful day, guys.
Chris Hesson [00:13:30]:
See you in Nashville.
Kortney Harmon [00:13:31]:
All right, bye.
Kortney Harmon [00:13:34]:
I'm Kortney Harmon with Crelate. Thanks for joining the full desk experience. Please feel free. Feel free to submit any questions for next session to fulldesk@crelate.com or ask us live next session if you enjoyed our show. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen, and sign up to attend future events that happen once a month.