Why treating recruiting as a task keeps you losing candidates

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I'm glad to be on your show today.

Well, just to correct you, I I still own the franchise. the difference between Maserito Associates and Patricia Associates is Patricia Associates is a hospitality and retail management franchise, recruiting franchise, a great franchise. I would one hundred percent endorse them. and I learned how to recruit from Patricia Associates, but I did not come from the hospitality or retail management. environment. And so, yes, I can recruit those types of managers. But my first my first ever client was a defense company. and so I've worked in defense, I've worked in architecture, engineering, construction, I've worked in manufacturing. So those were three natural ICPs, ideal client profiles for me. And and so at some point it only made sense for branding to create my own company. And so that's how Mass Redo Associates was was born. And like I said, I I still have some hospitality clients that I recruit through Patricia Associates, but for the most part, it's AEC manufacturing, defense, and government.

Absolutely. I I don't know that there's never been a war on talent, and I call it a war on talent because everybody's competing essentially for the same people or the same types of people. But especially in the engineering realm, that's becoming a serious, desperate problem. We're already short, American engineers in the American market more more engineers are exiting the market than are coming into the market. And by 2030 it we will be in a very serious problem. That doesn't mean that the engineers that we currently have cannot be moved around to other companies. But one of the things that that I've noticed and one of the reasons that I got pushed into the recruiting arena was I was a CEO of an engineering company and Not saying that our recruiters weren't doing a great job. We did not have any internal recruiters as all external firms, but they really didn't understand what we were looking for. And in a previous job, it was the same problem. It was always like, well, how come this recruiter doesn't understand what exactly we're looking for? And it goes beyond just experience and education, but there's personality, there's all some untangible. types of things that they need to be able to do as well. But the problem is that we as the company treated recruiting as a task. And so how much effort did we actually place in helping our recruiters, whether internal or external, to find the right person? And so the idea of the recruiting machine started growing with me. As a matter of fact, that's kind of what helped me say, hey, there's gotta be a better way and I'm gonna figure it out. Now I didn't figure it out immediately. It it took some time, but I started realizing that when you teach treat recruiting as just a task to do, not a strategic imperative, that you may or may not get the results you're looking for. Now I'm not saying that if you do everything right, you're gonna you're gonna have the greatest results. There's there's still gonna be tough times out there. But if recruiting is just as important as marketing your products or services, then you're gonna then it you're gonna do a better job at it because it's gonna become more important to you. And I and I'm not trying to say that the HR folks and town acquisition folks that work in companies aren't trying their best. They are, but I do think that sometimes they become too tactically focused. They're worried about that placement, they're not worried about the big picture. And so I'm trying to help companies with the big picture.

Absolutely. So I I have what I call three golden nuggets, and then I also have three strategic imperatives. The three golden nuggets can apply to just about anything. you know, the first thing is clarity of promise. When most of the times when we see post job postings, you know, either on a company's website or on a job's job board, it's usually a long litany of requirements, you know. desired qualifications. But if if I'm recruiting for a mechanical engineer for a for a manufacturing company and another manufacturing company is recruiting for that exact same mechanical engineer, what's going to distinguish between those two companies? It may be reputation of the company, but if they're two small companies or they're two not well known companies, then the reputation really doesn't, there's not really a reputation that you can compare. It may be salary if the salary is posted in both those jobs. So the clarity of promise should be market your job and market your company. You're marketing your company to your potential customers. Well, guess what? Your employees are also potential customers in that you're trying to attract the best and brightest to your company. So why are you not marketing your company first and then market that job as well? Tell tell people why they should come to your company. Tell people why they should apply for this job. That's that's clarity of purpose. The second one is having a Interview fast lane. A lot of times companies may not really know what their interview process is going to be because it may change every single for every single role, which I understand occasionally. But sometimes I've had candidates that have gone for an interview. The the the company says, yeah, we love this person, and then it takes three weeks for them to decide on the next step. Don't do that. Have a definitive process. Again. This is just like running your business. You're you're making, you're producing a product or you're producing a service. Well, recruiting should be the same way. Have a process, defined process. And I call it, you know, having a fast lane. That doesn't mean skipping steps. That doesn't mean doing things faster than you need to, but have a definitive process and try to get through the process as quickly as possible. There's many ways to. Make sure that you're doing everything you need to do, but time isn't one of them. You know, long times between interviews are killers. I've I've had plenty of candidates that have walked away because they got an offer from somebody sooner. The third one is called posting and praying. To me times what we do is we post and pray. We have a job opening, we write a job description, or we cut and paste from another job description, which I see very often. And then we post it, and then we pray that the right candidate sees that and wants to apply and does apply. You got to get away from that. I'm not saying that posting job job boards is not necessary, but that's not the only thing. There are other things that you need to do as well. For example, picking up the phone, you know. I I know we've kind of forgot what this is, but it is a it is a phone first. Yes, it's a camera, and yes, it does all kinds of other cool things. But it's also a phone. Pick up the phone and call candidates. Do deep database searching. Do deep database searching in job boards. Because if you do all three of those things, you're gonna have a much larger candidate pool to find those jobs rather than just waiting for somebody to casually jump on your website or see your job ad on a job board. So those are that's those are the three golden nuggets that I usually talk about to companies.

so for on the sourcing side, I use AI to to help source my candidates. But I will tell you, I've used a lot of different AI tools and most are not up to snuff. I mean, I I used one tool where they brought me tons of candidates, but they were not necessarily all the best qualified candidates because there's a governance problem where, hey, I'm looking throughout the universe to find this candidate. And no matter how well you've trained your AI, there's still a difference between you know, I I I've been a plant engineer in a manufacturing company. So if I if I have a manufacturer that says, Hey, I'm looking for a plant engineer, I can pretty much tell them what they're looking for. Because I've done it before. Or I've been a COO of an engineering company. Same thing. I can pretty much say, Hey, these are the things you're probably looking for, right? AI can't do that. now I'm not saying that it will never be able to do that, but it's not smart enough yet to be able to distinguish to read between the lines because unfortunately most position descriptions that I've read over my last nine years are poorly written position descriptions. In fact, I've had clients before where they've sent me a position description. I'm now am talking to the hiring manager and he's like, just throw that away. That that position description's Horrible. It doesn't mean anything. That's not what we're looking for. Well, that's what I'm looking for. That's what everybody out there that is reading your position description thinks what is what you want. So if we if we give AI garbage, they're going to produce garbage. But I do think that AI can can definitely accelerate a lot of the processes in sourcing. I will tell you this. If I was looking for a job and my first encounter with a company was an AI bot, I would not interview with them. to me, you know, for you know, we should be treating recruiting as a customer service engagement. First impressions or lasting impressions. If I show up and I you know, I I've had a c I had a candidate one time that was supposed to go to a final interview and he shows up in his PT gear, he's sweating. He's late for the interview. It was a it was a video interview. He was late. What kind of impression do you think they they he last left them? Not a good one. They did not hire him. So the candidate should be showing up thinking this is a customer service engagement. The company should be showing up thinking this is a customer service engagement. And if there's not that customer service engagement, then you you don't have a reason to even do business unless it's completely transactional. If you're a company and you don't care about your employees, absolutely do the worst things that you can do. Treat your candidates horribly so that when they become in your employees, you will treat them horribly. Absolutely. But that's not the type of clients that I want. That's not that's not who I pitch to companies. I want, I want my candidate to be as prepared for an interview as the company is. And I want to help the company with the interview process as well. I want to make sure that they're finding the right person because it does me no good if they hire my candidate and six months later they come back to me and have to hire another candidate for the exact same job.

Again, the recruiting machine is an is partly an education process, but it's also a little bit of a way to look to the future. The future of AI, at least in my mind, is the company side will have an AI bot looking, and there will be these AI recruiters, such as job boards or databases. They will hook together and there will be simultaneous exchange of information of data. And so the human recruiter, not saying that there would be no reason for a human recruiter, but the human recruiter will will gradually lose importance. The recruiting machine, on the other hand, is still important because, again, if you if you're not doing the right things, you're not going to get the results you're looking for. And that means You know, s having a strategic look at who you're trying to hire. You know, most companies are in one mode. They either hire full-time employees only, they hi hire a lot of stag staff augmentees or contractors, or a variety of different things. But very few say, Hey, I only need this engineer for the next six months. Do I need to hire a full-time person? Can I get away with a staff augmentee that Highly qualified, he doesn't have to relocate, he can do all, he can work from home, or you know, he can travel occasionally to the office to do whatever he needs to do in the office. But many companies don't don't look at, hey, there's a variety of ways that we can engage with with people to to hire them. And so if there's no strategic look, you know, if if your talent acquisition strategy isn't tied to your corporate strategy, then to me, that's a loss. Doesn't, again, doesn't mean you're not going to be successful, but you can be much more efficient, much more effective if you have that actual talent strategy. And a talent strategy doesn't mean, hey, I need to hire 10 people this year. That's a goal. A talent strategy is I need to hire these critical people at these critical times. And how are we going to do that? Right. So that's the strategy part. The second part is what technology and tools are you going to use to help you gain this talent? that could be AI, that could be other tech you know, other tools, that could be using the right types of job boards. Now, if you're looking for IT and software people, you know, DICE is the king of IT and software, but there may not be as at Finding mechanical engineers for a manufacturing company. You know, so having the idea of where how do I f how do I how do I solve this problem is important as well. And then finally, recruiter, recruiter training. Can your recruiter pick up the phone? Can your recruiter do a database search? can your recruiter look inside of your ATS and find talent there? And then how How good are they at discerning what you're actually looking for? If you're looking for a lead electrical engineer, but you've been a recruiter all your life, you may not know what a lead electrical engineer actually does. So train them so that they're they're looking for those nonverbal cues, they're looking for those things on a resume that are different rather than, well, this guy says he's an elite electrical engineer. But has he ever done any lead has he ever led anybody? You know, he's a lead. He should have led some people. the all those things people need to learn, understand. And that that helps you develop a a healthy recruiting machine. You know, you you want that Lamborghini recruiting machine. You don't want the Ford Focus recruiting machine.

I to me the the key thing would be having that very strong strategy on how you're going to find the people that you need, you know, you know, what's the timing? What are the tactics and techniques you're going to use? Because, you know, we can all wish that things are gonna happen or hope that things are gonna happen, but that's not really a strategy, right? So if you sit down and really think it through and say, Hey, how are we gonna do this? And I will tell you, you know, make I I make it sound like there's no company doing it right. That's not true. I've met several companies that they have they have their recruiting. I I I had I had a corporate talent corporate director of talent acquisition say to me, Hey, I'll sign a contract with your company, but I'm just gonna tell you you're not gonna make any money off of us. And I said, Well, why not? And he said, I haven't used an outside recruiter in three years. And he said, and when I do, I have a couple of recruiters that are are well known in this niche and I will use them first. And I said, Well, what do you do to to make, you know, to to be able to recruit the the amount of people? And they're they're hiring two or three hundred people a year because they're a large civil engineering firm and so they get large projects and they need more engineers and more project managers, more tradespeople. And he said, I've trained all me he he He basically talked about the recruiting machine. And I was impressed because I was like, wow, I thought that, you know, I, you know, I'm a I'm an engineer. I'm a you know, I've always been an operations guy in the military. And I thought, I I thought, well, this just makes sense to do. He was actually doing it. He was actually doing it. So there are companies out there that, man, they've got this they've got this licked. Now, they still have, they're still competing for those positions. But they're not doing this haphazardly and they're not going, well, you know, you know, we gotta do you know, it's like every year, you know, well, I gotta do the same thing. Well, if you develop that strong strategy, then it will make a lot more sense than if you just hope that it works.

Absolutely. So I'm on LinkedIn under my name. I'm also I also have a company page, Master Vito Associates on LinkedIn. I have a website, MasterVeto Associates dot com. I'm on Facebook. And someday I might be on Instagram or other places as well. But yeah, I mean, if you search for if you search my name, you'll find me. if you search for an AEC recruiter or a defense recruiter or manufacturing recruiter, you may find me there as well. But it's it's easier just to search by my name or search by my last name associates and you'll you'll find me.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Glad to again, glad to be on your podcast as well.