TRF in Silicon Valley

[00:00:00] This week on The Recruitment Flex, my dad and Shelly visit LinkedIn in Silicon Valley.

[00:00:06] Indeed lays off 1,000 employees. Canada is importing the wrong skill set. Plus,

[00:00:13] talent acquisition metric that your CFO will care about. TRF with my dad and Shelly starts right now.

[00:00:29] Welcome to The Recruitment Flex with Serge and Shelly. I'm Serge.

[00:00:32] And I'm Shelly. And we talk all things recruitment starting right now.

[00:00:40] Bonjour and welcome to The Recruitment Flex. We are in Silicon Valley in California. Actually,

[00:00:48] like we're in San Jose now in a pretty crappy hotel. Oh my god. Tell the story. Oh my god.

[00:00:55] So had the hotel booked as soon as we knew we'd accepted our invite. We're actually

[00:01:00] at LinkedIn's headquarters in Sunnyvale. And we land and I get an email from the hotel

[00:01:09] saying that they have cancelled our reservation because they're overbooked. And they have

[00:01:16] booked us into another hotel in San Jose out by the airport. So as not much of a good

[00:01:23] shout out here for Hilton Hotels. That's never happened to me. I've never heard that.

[00:01:29] Hours before we're supposed to check in. Never happened to me. And I've traveled a lot

[00:01:35] in my life for business and it's never happened. To make matters worse,

[00:01:39] I had checked in online the night before, made sure our rooms were confirmed,

[00:01:45] had a digital key and for some reason the digital key wasn't coming up on one of the two

[00:01:49] rooms that we'd rented. So I even called Hilton to confirm. Yep, this was like not even 12 hours

[00:01:56] before. I am on the phone with them for 20 minutes on hold to confirm our reservation.

[00:02:02] So to come here and get an email saying they've cancelled our reservation

[00:02:07] as we are at the airport. I tell you. So being on LinkedIn's campus here in Sunnyvale.

[00:02:14] Oh my God, they have seven buildings. It is like nothing I've ever seen before. Every

[00:02:20] shrubbery and every hedge is perfectly manicured in each building. They've got different themed

[00:02:26] restaurants. They even had a band room where you can go and jam. Yes. Oh, you should see the

[00:02:31] gym and a locker room. The locker room was like second level. Like it's the nicest locker

[00:02:36] room I've ever seen. Everything is so impressive. I can see the attraction for young folks working

[00:02:43] for a company like LinkedIn. They probably never leave. All the food that you could ever want is

[00:02:48] free. All the amenities that you could ever want is free. Everything, like literally everything.

[00:02:54] I just hang out here all the time and I think that's on purpose, right? Like it's similar

[00:02:58] to how Google did it. It's like the more people don't have to leave, the more they're

[00:03:02] going to work. And I think this is the purpose. People were just leaving at seven o'clock when we

[00:03:06] were leaving, like the workers. Yes. They're just leaving. Serge, how are you feeling after

[00:03:12] playing pickleball all afternoon? I killed it. I don't know if you watched it. I've got it

[00:03:17] on film. I videotaped it. Yeah. I'm a professional pickleball player, rising star.

[00:03:24] No, it's actually a lot of fun and I've made fun of it in the past. Yeah. But it's a ton

[00:03:29] of fun, right? Like I grew up playing tennis and ping pong and there's a lot of similarities,

[00:03:34] but also very different. You can't go in approaching it like it's tennis because the

[00:03:39] rules are different. The ball is different. The paddles are different, but I can see the attraction.

[00:03:44] And I'll tell you, I broke out a little bit of a sweat there. It was like it was a workout.

[00:03:49] It was more a workout than I thought it would be. So it was a gorgeous day. Do you know,

[00:03:53] I have a theory of who invented pickleball. Who's that? Knee surgeons.

[00:04:01] I was watching because it doesn't bounce like it doesn't bounce as much, right? So there's a lot

[00:04:06] of start and stop. I was just waiting for somebody to roll over an ankle or something.

[00:04:10] It almost happened to me. I slipped, like I'm wearing court shoes and I don't know,

[00:04:15] my feet slipped and I was very lucky while I'm in terrific shape. Of course. Yes.

[00:04:20] I wasn't as worried. I'm a physical specimen when it comes to

[00:04:24] athletic endeavors. So it wasn't really a concern. You know, it was really cool though.

[00:04:29] Yes. They told us about, hey, we might have a special guest. The special guest was the CEO

[00:04:36] of LinkedIn, Ryan Rulansky. And I got a couple things to admit. I had no clue who the CEO

[00:04:45] of LinkedIn and I'm usually on top of this shit. Yeah, yeah. But after Jeff Wiener left in,

[00:04:52] I think 2019 or 2020, Ryan took over. That's right. They were telling us the story

[00:04:59] that he took over, I think in January of 2020. And it was like he threw him the keys

[00:05:06] and said, I'm out. Oh, and then there's a global lockdown. That was just coincidence.

[00:05:13] They were planning it for a number of years or so we're told. Absolutely. So really cool being

[00:05:19] here, really cool being in Silicon Valley. We're going to take a little bit of a tour

[00:05:24] because we are five minutes from the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, I believe it says.

[00:05:30] I have to see that. That would be amazing. I don't know if we'll be able to get in,

[00:05:34] but it's that massive circular building. We could just go take a picture out in front.

[00:05:38] If I'm here. Yeah, might as well.

[00:05:41] Shelly, there's a couple of events coming up, big events. So June 4th to the 6th, TA Tech

[00:05:49] in Washington, DC at the International Spy Museum. I'm telling you every industry leader

[00:05:56] is going to be there. So get your tickets, get there. We're three weeks away. But Shelly,

[00:06:02] it's about time we jump into the news and big industry news this week, a little bit of a

[00:06:08] surprise because Indeed is laying off approximately a thousand workers, which represents about 8%

[00:06:15] of its total workforce. The layoffs are primarily focused in the US and this follows up

[00:06:22] 14 months ago when they laid off 2,200 people. Again, mostly focused in the US,

[00:06:28] which is where most of their staffing is. So CEO Chris Hyams announced layoffs and accepted

[00:06:35] responsibility for the company's current situation. Don't you love that when CEOs do that?

[00:06:41] It's my fault, but I'm not losing my job. We see this every time. Here's what he said.

[00:06:48] The layoffs are part of an effort to simplify the organization, making it easier and faster

[00:06:54] to make decisions and more effectively grow revenue and hires. The reductions are concentrated

[00:07:01] mostly in R&D and some go to market team, unlike last year's company wide cut. So Shelly,

[00:07:09] what's your take on this? So sad. It really is, especially when you think about cuts in R&D.

[00:07:16] What does that tell us about the future? When does a company cut R&D?

[00:07:22] When they go in preserve or defend mode, usually is the case.

[00:07:28] Yeah. I don't know. I was saddened because I have a lot of friends out indeed

[00:07:34] and I don't like to see anybody out of work. And I guess what concerned me the most was

[00:07:41] the cuts for their research and development team. I think Elon Musk is the driver of this

[00:07:49] because a lot of companies realize that they are too bloated. Twitter store X is a perfect example

[00:07:57] where they basically laid off 80% of the staff. Nothing has really changed at X as far as how it

[00:08:05] works, obviously different philosophy and different way to approach the market. But the service

[00:08:11] itself has stayed really steady. It doesn't break down. And then we're starting to see

[00:08:16] that across a lot of companies in the tech sector. And Chris Hyams is taking responsibility

[00:08:22] because he over-hired. I think after the pandemic or like in 2021 when we're coming out

[00:08:29] of the lockdowns, there was such a need and there was such growth. So they just started

[00:08:35] hiring as much as possible. And I think everyone's taking a step back saying,

[00:08:40] yeah, maybe we did over hire. I know, I agree it's sad, but I know a lot of people

[00:08:45] are saying out there that this is the beginning of the end to Indeed. And

[00:08:51] I don't think that's the case. I think there's just a little bit of tightening up.

[00:08:55] Who knows, right? Obviously it's a very competitive market, but any company and talking

[00:09:00] to LinkedIn today, being in the industry where hiring has slowed down so dramatically,

[00:09:07] it's affecting all these companies. Like, and we're in this space, like we see it all,

[00:09:12] like we work for companies in this space and we know that it is way tougher out there.

[00:09:17] So I think they're just adjusting to what's going to be happening.

[00:09:21] So closer to home, Canada's job numbers were out for April. And it does appear

[00:09:29] that Canada did add 90,000 jobs, which was better than expected. A lot of the job gains,

[00:09:36] though, were in part-time employment, which is not unusual for this time of year.

[00:09:40] You know, summer hospitality, part-time, we're always going to see a spike this time of year.

[00:09:46] But despite that, national unemployment rate still remains steady at 6.1, which is unchanged

[00:09:54] from the month before. That is slightly different than March. But the thing I'm watching most

[00:09:59] closely is what the Bank of Canada is going to do because we know our housing market is on

[00:10:05] fire right now. And there is some talk that in June, the Bank of Canada will reduce their rates,

[00:10:13] which is going to, in my opinion, going to trigger even higher housing prices.

[00:10:19] So it's going to put a lot of pressure on just how many people are new to Canada,

[00:10:25] looking for somewhere to live. But even closer to home is just the sheer number of people

[00:10:30] coming to Alberta, like on a daily basis, whether it's in-country migration or new Canadians.

[00:10:38] So it's going to put a lot of pressure on our housing market.

[00:10:41] Yeah, the equivalent of 550 people move to Alberta every day. So if we look at it in

[00:10:48] the last year, 202,000 people have moved into Alberta, which is an extremely high number.

[00:10:56] There's a couple of things that I saw. I'm always trying to figure out these job numbers. What do

[00:11:01] they mean? And it's challenging because where are those jobs being created? And in this case,

[00:11:07] more than half were part-time jobs, which is good. We need part-time jobs for these students

[00:11:12] that are coming in. And also what was a little bit different from all the months before is

[00:11:18] these were private sector jobs. All our job growth in Canada has been really focused on the

[00:11:26] public sector. I found an interesting article talking about the CRA. So the CRA is our version

[00:11:33] of the IRS here in Canada. And in the past four years, we have doubled the amount of people

[00:11:41] that work for the CRA. The number is now 70,000 people. How many people work for the IRS?

[00:11:49] I have no idea.

[00:11:50] 90,000.

[00:11:51] No.

[00:11:52] And we're talking about Canada's population, 40 million and the US population, 350 million.

[00:12:01] So what concerns me there is we're just creating government jobs, which are good paying

[00:12:07] jobs and everything, but economy can't be sustained with just public sector jobs. So

[00:12:13] good to see that the private sector is ramping up some of the hiring.

[00:12:18] So Shelly, you talked about the housing market. I want to jump into the next news item. There

[00:12:24] was really in-depth research of Canada's immigration plan, including students. And there

[00:12:32] was some pretty concerning elements. In Canada, data shows that nearly 800,000 international

[00:12:39] students got permits to study business, far more than healthcare or trades. So this equates to

[00:12:48] around 27% of all study permits from 2018 to 2023 were business. And if you look at where

[00:12:58] the needs are, and like, I don't know what your personal viewpoint, but we don't need

[00:13:03] more business people. We need trades, we need nursing, we need a lot of different roles.

[00:13:09] Business is the one that we're not lacking. But also unfortunately for these folks,

[00:13:16] they can't find a job.

[00:13:18] Afterwards, yeah.

[00:13:19] According to this study, trades amounted to only 36,208 study permits. If you look at health

[00:13:29] sciences, it was 142,780. And these are study permits for foreign students. That is a very

[00:13:39] concerning number. So few are here to study trades and healthcare.

[00:13:44] How are we going to build these houses if we don't have people building them? Right?

[00:13:49] The thing is I've been a big proponent of immigration, but like common sense be like,

[00:13:56] how about we bring in the people that we actually need, especially our healthcare system

[00:14:01] is collapsing in a lot of ways because there's just not enough nurses, doctors.

[00:14:06] Where are those folks? There is some steps taking place in last little while to hopefully

[00:14:12] alleviate this issue moving forward as far as putting caps.

[00:14:17] So there's been recent federal regulations that have placed a two-year cap on new

[00:14:21] international student permits. In Ontario, our biggest province has temporarily barred

[00:14:27] international students from enrolling in one-year business management programs,

[00:14:32] pending a review. Here is the challenge. We have public, we have private colleges.

[00:14:37] The public colleges have really seen a significant surge in international students

[00:14:43] and we know why that's the case, right? They pay a lot more tuition and it's a business.

[00:14:50] And the bar is lower.

[00:14:51] The bar is lower.

[00:14:52] Yes. To get into the sciences, whether it be nursing, any sort of health sciences,

[00:14:59] the bar is a lot higher and it's about money.

[00:15:03] What's your take on this? Like how do you feel about this?

[00:15:07] I do believe that it is because the tuition bring is a significant injection into the economy,

[00:15:15] the economy of education.

[00:15:18] Yeah, not our economy because these students are then having to go to the food bank.

[00:15:22] Yes.

[00:15:23] Once they get here because they're limited on the number of hours that they can work

[00:15:27] and if a spouse came with them, they can't find work.

[00:15:31] So that's usually the plan that you come as a couple and one's going to school and the

[00:15:37] other one's working. If the other one can't find work or they're doing menial jobs,

[00:15:42] it's really a lose-lose situation.

[00:15:45] That's what we're seeing and hopefully this report is so damning that this is fixed.

[00:15:50] We figure out a solution moving forward because we can't keep up this pace.

[00:15:55] So Shelly, do you want to jump to the tip of the week?

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[00:16:30] With the sad news coming in this week about 1,000 people being let go from Indeed,

[00:16:38] I thought I would offer a couple of ideas for careers if you're leaving the recruiting or

[00:16:43] the staffing world and you don't want a job in HR. So there are three roles that there is

[00:16:50] high demand across various industries. One of them being sales rep or an account manager,

[00:16:56] a project manager and customer success manager. So for example, if you're a sales rep or an account

[00:17:04] executive selling technology, healthcare, medical devices, financial services or consumer

[00:17:11] goods, all of those are high demand and really stretch across every industry sector.

[00:17:16] For our friends at Indeed that are finding themselves on the unemployment line this week,

[00:17:23] be sure you're not going to stand there long. There are other choices out there for careers.

[00:17:29] Having Indeed on your resume, I think they'll be okay and most of them are not recruiters,

[00:17:36] but I love where you're going with it and I think it makes a lot of sense when

[00:17:41] we as recruiters are looking to fill roles like all of these that are listed, sales rep,

[00:17:47] account executive, project manager, customer success manager. Why not look at recruiters as

[00:17:54] potential fit for those roles? Their skills do flow very nicely into those types of roles.

[00:18:02] Absolutely. I think there is a fit there. There is a lot of recruiters that have been laid off

[00:18:07] in the last two years so I think this is a really good place for them to start looking

[00:18:12] because the skills are so transferable. Absolutely. Someone said this to me and

[00:18:17] I want to know what you think because a lot of people have said to me that sales is way

[00:18:20] harder than recruitment. I think they're wrong because I've done both for most of my career

[00:18:27] and the one factor that is extremely challenging in recruitment is you're dealing with

[00:18:34] personalities and people on both sides, right? Yep. That's right. It's very challenging.

[00:18:39] It is. It is. All right. Let's jump into the recruiting insights brought to us by our friends

[00:18:45] at Matova. Shelly, are you tired of the same old outsourcing woes? Well say hello to nearshoring.

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[00:19:09] midnight conference calls. Hallelujah. Plus Latin America's growing tech ecosystem,

[00:19:16] strong educational institutions and a pool of skilled IT professionals make it the perfect

[00:19:21] region for recruiting talent. I have the perfect company that does this. The company's name is

[00:19:27] Matova. They have local experts who handle everything from recruiting to HR support.

[00:19:34] So why settle for the same old outsourcing blues when you can have

[00:19:38] the nearshoring party with Matova? Look them up at Matova.com and let's get the fiesta started.

[00:19:47] So the first thing I wanted to talk about, the concept of direct sourcing

[00:19:51] and the thought of using a managed service provider sometimes called a staffing agency.

[00:19:58] If we start first of all by understanding what do you mean by direct sourcing? So

[00:20:04] direct sourcing, it's the practice of using the company's employer brand to fill a candidate pool

[00:20:13] or use other sources such as alumni, referrals, retirees. But essentially

[00:20:20] direct sourcing would be when you are recruiting for a company but you're recruiting

[00:20:25] as them. You're a managed service provider in-house. And so great article here in the

[00:20:32] HR Daily Advisor that just talked about why would you want to do that? Why would companies

[00:20:38] want to use third party staffing for direct sourcing? And quite honestly, it's really simple.

[00:20:43] Once I thought about it, I'm like, of course. First of all, staffing agencies can bring in

[00:20:49] expertise and resources who already have experience in recruiting. So there's less uptime. They can

[00:20:54] also scale really quickly. And they have the technology and the tools. And here's the biggest

[00:21:00] thing is if you're going to say reassign current employees on your recruitment team,

[00:21:07] they will always be pulled in different directions. Bringing in a third party is just

[00:21:12] it's laser focus. It really is. They're there for one purpose, one purpose only,

[00:21:17] and that's to fill these roles. And they take on your persona and use your brand to do that

[00:21:23] rather than their own brand. So what are your thoughts about organizations that bring in

[00:21:30] managed service providers? It depends on how you're leveraging, in what case, right? And

[00:21:36] I'm always a little bit concerned of leveraging third party representing your brand, which is

[00:21:42] what they're doing here. But there's a couple points there. Skill ability. There is no way

[00:21:49] a recruiting or an HR team that maybe has one recruiter, two recruiters that they can scale

[00:21:55] and have the ability to hire a lot of roles. So if you need to hire a lot of roles quickly,

[00:22:00] you need to go out and source them. The thing is too, let's be realistic about internal

[00:22:06] recruitment or HR teams when it comes to going out and getting the talent.

[00:22:11] The majority rely on posting a job, post and pray as we used to say, and the candidates

[00:22:17] come in. And I don't think that's a bad thing, right? If you're doing it really well,

[00:22:22] you're doing your recruitment marketing, your advertising, buying, you're really targeting,

[00:22:26] you have a good message and that drives candidates to you. That's great. But if

[00:22:31] you need to scale really quickly, hire a lot of people, there's a good chance that your

[00:22:35] recruiters and your HR folks don't have a clue how to really source, especially if they

[00:22:42] worked in internal recruitment their whole career or an HR specifically,

[00:22:47] they really don't know where to start. Do they have the tools? Then you have to go out,

[00:22:52] acquire the right tools for them to be able to do this. And Linton Recruiter is not cheap.

[00:22:57] Seek out is not cheap. Hire easy. All these tools are not cheap, right?

[00:23:01] And then they want to do an RFP. Oh my God, it's a year later. You're right. It's speed.

[00:23:08] Yes. And you think about here is how we plan recruitment. So instead of every year,

[00:23:14] like let's use 2021 recruiters were the most, was it 2021 or 2022?

[00:23:21] 22.

[00:23:22] 22 were the most sought out roles in the world. 2023, they were the most laid off roles

[00:23:30] in the world. And you've been in these cycles for your whole career. You've been

[00:23:34] recruiting for 82 years now. So you have probably seen this

[00:23:38] Smart up

[00:23:39] 35 times, right? It happens a lot. So is this a better solution than ramping up and then

[00:23:46] laying off?

[00:23:46] Of course it is. Yeah, of course it is.

[00:23:49] But it's expensive.

[00:23:50] It is expensive. And I think you need to have a core team of recruitment professionals

[00:23:56] and you use this to elevate or to add to your existing team.

[00:24:01] All right. Let's move on to the next recruiting insight. And this was an interesting article

[00:24:06] because it was targeted for CFOs and CFOs have maybe a different perspective on recruitment

[00:24:15] and what they want to measure. And I'll tell you, they ask really good questions.

[00:24:20] I've dealt with a lot of CFOs when it comes to recruitment and they really dig down and make

[00:24:24] you question if what you're doing is actually working as cost efficient. It's the best way to

[00:24:29] use the company's money. But in this article, they basically go through the key metrics

[00:24:35] that CFOs should look at. The thing is we've talked about these so many times,

[00:24:42] time to fill costs per hire, acquisition funnel metrics, time to find a candidate,

[00:24:47] time to engage, time to interview, time to offer, time to onboard.

[00:24:53] But the one that really stood out to me and I can see why CFOs would really give a

[00:24:59] shit about this is the cost of the vacancy. And this should be a metric that recruiters

[00:25:06] should care a lot about TA leaders, recruitment managers, because it really showcases the value to

[00:25:12] the business. Cost of vacancy, you've heard about it, right, Shelley?

[00:25:17] Absolutely.

[00:25:18] Have you used it in the past?

[00:25:20] It's probably the most powerful metric. And quite frankly, all the rest of this is honestly,

[00:25:26] it's just smoke and mirrors. You're right, like the acquisition funnel metrics. Sure,

[00:25:32] you may instinctively know that but you also know that getting your recruitment team

[00:25:37] to fill in every part of this along the way, it just doesn't happen. And what does it

[00:25:41] really matter? What really matters to a CFO is the cost of the vacancy because they're

[00:25:47] looking at overtime costs. They want to know about potential revenue lost and operational

[00:25:54] efficiency. If your core business is something like let's just use auto body repair,

[00:26:01] and you are short three technicians, what is the revenue per technician? It's really probably

[00:26:08] the only metric a CFO would care about. It's probably one that the CEO, the CRO should

[00:26:15] care really deeply about it, just to break it down. So the cost of vacancy serves as

[00:26:20] a profit and loss statement for specific position. This metric quantifies the financial impact of

[00:26:27] having a position remain unfilled for a certain period, considering factors such as loss,

[00:26:33] productivity over time costs and potential revenue loss. And it's a really hard one.

[00:26:38] It's a hard one because there's a lot of understanding of the business that you need

[00:26:43] to have. But this is where you become really partners in asking the right questions to the

[00:26:48] business. To your point that you just mentioned, Shelley, like the time to find a candidate, time

[00:26:53] to engage, time to interview, that is not the CFO's concern. And pretty much all of them are

[00:27:01] only recruitment concerns. I as a TA leader and you probably as well, those metrics like the

[00:27:07] acquisition funnel metrics are really important to me because it tells me where the process is

[00:27:12] breaking down. It tells me, okay, we're not getting enough candidates top of the funnel.

[00:27:17] We're losing them out after the first interview. This is critical for us to run our department

[00:27:23] correctly, but for CFO, why would they care about that? Like they don't care. No. So I'm

[00:27:29] glad this was brought up because cost of vacancy is one that we need to put our business hats

[00:27:34] and really start to show to the business. What do you think about employee churn? Do

[00:27:40] you think that's a concern for a CFO? We know what it means. Like churn means increased recruitment,

[00:27:47] training cost, reduced productivity. Really, how do you put a number on it? Unlike overtime costs,

[00:27:56] right? Or lost opportunity. I don't know too many CFOs that really believe that your employee

[00:28:03] churn rate belongs in his department. Is it something they really care about?

[00:28:09] I think they should. If it's really high, yes. Yeah. You think about recruiting in this world is

[00:28:15] very expensive overall, right? Like internally or externally. So yeah, actually let me take a

[00:28:21] step back. This should be the CEO. The CEO should care very deeply about employee churn.

[00:28:28] This should be almost their number one priority. If you're losing a ton of people,

[00:28:31] there's something really broken with the culture unless... You over hired.

[00:28:39] Good point. Yeah, yeah. What's our last? Okay, so our last one, you know, I've got a professional

[00:28:47] crush on Hung Lee. You have a crush on everyone, Shelley. No, I don't. Literally everyone.

[00:28:53] That's not true. There was a wonderful article in HR Executive which summarized

[00:28:58] his presentation at the European Conference in May and he talked about a global talent shortage.

[00:29:06] What I loved was how he so succinctly summarized what do we mean by a global talent shortage.

[00:29:16] There's reasons for it. First of all, the demographic crisis, which is an aging society,

[00:29:22] mismatch of skills that people hold compared to those that employers need.

[00:29:27] The other one, I know you're gonna love this. He called it elite overproduction of university

[00:29:33] graduates that has depleted the labor force for essential jobs. I know that's something

[00:29:37] you talk about all the time and a geographical imbalance leaving roles open in places where

[00:29:45] the bulk of people don't actually live. And then the last one was an increase in mental

[00:29:51] and physical disabilities that are removing people entirely from the workforce. So good.

[00:29:57] He's just the smartest guy. That's why I have a crush on him because he's so smart.

[00:30:01] He's a good looking guy too. So it's okay. You can admit that.

[00:30:06] He's really fit too.

[00:30:10] It's interesting because wherever, whoever we talk across the world,

[00:30:17] it seems like the problems are exactly the same. We're all complaining about the talent

[00:30:22] shortage in our case here in North America is probably more a talent mismatch, but it's a

[00:30:26] little overwhelming if you think about it. Let's fix the global talent shortage. I'm like,

[00:30:33] we better start having more babies or something.

[00:30:37] Well, I mean what we can do today, one of the things that I really love that he pointed out

[00:30:41] was talking about talent density. And I know you've talked about it. We just didn't call it

[00:30:46] that, but you've talked about it a lot where if you've got a senior developer, they can do

[00:30:52] the work of 10 juniors. And so unfortunately companies then become hyper competitive

[00:30:59] for highly skilled individuals who can do the work of multiple people. That in itself creates

[00:31:07] more problems because you've got this war going on where companies just keep upping the ante

[00:31:15] to get that talent in here. And it makes sense that you would, if they can do the work

[00:31:19] of five people, you're going to pay them an awful lot of money.

[00:31:22] Yeah. Talent density is one of the topics that I've been doing a lot of research on

[00:31:28] because studying companies that become extremely successful, especially to start and LinkedIn

[00:31:34] is actually a perfect example. Indeed is a perfect example. Their first 50 to 100 people

[00:31:41] were the best and the brightest in that particular timeframe in their skillset.

[00:31:47] And that is what really caused the massive growth of those companies. We see it in a lot

[00:31:53] of smaller companies that have gained big success. The challenge is as you grow,

[00:32:00] it's really hard to maintain that talent density and having all high level A players or

[00:32:06] I know you hate A, but the best possible employees with a high level of knowledge

[00:32:12] that can do multiple things becomes extremely challenging. And it's to use the word elite again,

[00:32:19] it's generally elite companies or companies with the best and the brightest ID that attract

[00:32:25] those folks. One of the things that we've been talking about is distributing the work.

[00:32:31] So working anywhere in the world. And this was a big topic of conversation in 21, 22,

[00:32:38] we just want the best talent no matter where they are. Really it's the reason that deal became a

[00:32:46] $20 billion valuation overnight because they offered this for employers, right? Like a

[00:32:54] quick easy solution to hire anyone in the world. I don't care if you're in China,

[00:33:01] in India, in Australia, wherever you are, if you have the talent, they're going to try to

[00:33:05] figure out a way to hire you. So to me, that is the only solution that I can come up with

[00:33:11] that really is actionable and could work. True, very true. Because the talent is out there.

[00:33:18] But if you are restricting yourself geographically to your time zone or within a 50 mile radius of

[00:33:25] your office, yeah, you are going to struggle. The other thing that I really love that he talked

[00:33:31] about and that was talent diversity. And that is becoming more open-minded and inclusive when

[00:33:38] you are designing your jobs to attract a broader range of candidates, AKA skill based hiring.

[00:33:47] Right? It is breaking the mold that they can only come from certain universities or have

[00:33:53] worked at certain companies, but we've got to think bigger about how we design the job itself.

[00:34:02] Really good point. Hung has always delivered so definitely check out this article.

[00:34:09] And anyone listening that is not subscribed to recruiting brain food, you're missing out.

[00:34:15] That is a must have for any recruiter. But on that note, that's it for recruiting

[00:34:21] insight. So Shelly, we have a full day at LinkedIn tomorrow. Are you excited?

[00:34:26] I am so excited. We're going to come away with lots of learnings,

[00:34:31] stuff we can share with the audience. I already checked. They're not going to

[00:34:34] tell us anything that we can't talk about on the show. Yeah, I'm actually really excited.

[00:34:38] So am I. It's pretty amazing being here

[00:34:41] in Silicon Valley at the LinkedIn headquarters. Pinch me. It's pretty cool.

[00:34:46] Very cool. Very cool. On that note, the audience, thank you for listening. We really appreciate you

[00:34:53] and I promise we're going to stop traveling soon enough so you'll have more regular shows. But

[00:34:58] these are a lot of fun. We're actually recording together. Like Shelly, do you like recording

[00:35:02] face to face or over like video that we usually do? Oh, this is way better being in person.

[00:35:07] Absolutely. Yeah, way better. Thank you, audience. Au revoir.

[00:35:12] Shelly, let's face it. Texting candidates is the easiest way to hire quicker today.

[00:35:26] But your cell phone doesn't connect to your ATS. You're sharing your personal

[00:35:29] number with strangers. That's pretty scary, right, Shelly? And it's not even legally compliant.

[00:35:35] This is where our friends at Rectex come in. They've created simple yet powerful text

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