In the “12 Days of FDE” special, we revisit the most captivating moments from The Full Desk Experience of 2023. From industry insights and expert advice to award-winning episodes, we’ve got it all. Listen in as we explore topics such as leveraging AI for recruiting, driving process and growth through data, the significance of change management, and the magic of digital transformation in staffing.

Join host Kortney Harmon and a lineup of industry leaders as they unpack the highlights of the past year and share valuable takeaways to help your talent business thrive in the coming year. So sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in the best of The Full Desk Experience.

Links:

1. Industry Spotlight | Jen Meyer – SVP and GM at Govig – Driving Process and Creating Growth Through Data: https://crelate.com/blog/industry-spotlight-jen-meyer

2. Industry Spotlight | Tom Erb – President at Tallann Resources – Proactively Planning for Success in Any Market Cycle: https://crelate.com/blog/tom-erb-success-in-any-market

3. Workshop | Exploring the Future of Recruiting with ChatGPT: Insights, Challenges and 10 Use Cases: https://crelate.com/blog/insights-challenges-use-cases-chatgpt

4. Workshop | Get Off the KPI Hamster Wheel: Why Your Metrics are Keeping Your Recruiting and Staffing Business From Growing: https://crelate.com/blog/kpi-hamster-wheel

5. Workshop | The Not-So-Scary World of Staffing: Creative Solutions for Your Talent Business: https://crelate.com/blog/creative-solutions-talent-business

6. Industry Spotlight | Aaron Grossman – CEO at TalentLaunch – Expert Tips for Scaling Your Staffing Business: https://crelate.com/blog/aaron-grossman-growth-in-staffing

7. Industry Spotlight | Jim Stroud – HR Influencer & Content Creator – The Pros and Cons of ChatGPT and AI in the Talent Industry: https://crelate.com/blog/jim-stroud-pros-cons-chatgpt

8. Industry Spotlight | Lauren Jones – CEO and Founder of Leap Consulting – The Magic of Digital Transformation in Staffing and Recruiting: https://crelate.com/blog/lauren-jones-digital-transformation

9.Workshop | Redeployment Strategies to Increase Revenues for Your Talent Business with Sarah Gossin: https://crelate.com/blog/redeployment-strategy-sarah-gossin

10. Workshop | Tips for Successful Change Management in Your Talent Business: https://crelate.com/blog/change-management-talent-business

11. Workshop | Mapping Your Talent Organization for Future Growth: Career Pathing and Succession Planning with Dan Mori: https://crelate.com/blog/dan-mori-future-proofing-talent-businesses

12. The Changing Face of Recruiting: Discoveries from the Staffing World Show Floor: https://crelate.com/blog/podcast-changing-face-of-recruiting-discoveries-from-the-staffing-world-show-floor

Kortney Harmon [00:00:00]:

On this week’s episode of the full Desk Experience, we round out 2023 with a review of the year’s greatest hits. You’ll hear snippets from industry leaders in executive search, staffing, and even our most popular live workshop episodes. Check out the show notes to get the links to listen to complete episodes. And as always, feel free to send us an email at fulldesk at curlate with any questions or ideas for upcoming episodes. Happy listening. Hi, I’m Courtney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. Over the past decade, I’ve trained thousands of frontline recruiters and have worked with hundreds of business owners and executives to help their firms and agencies grow. This is the full desk experience accrilate original podcast where we will be talking about growth blockers across your people, processes and technologies.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:54]:

Welcome to another episode of the full desk Experience. Comes with an industry spotlight with Jen Meyer titled Driving Process and creating growth through data. Take a listen to this clip.

Jen Meyer [00:01:18]:

I do think that there’s going to be a little slowdown, and I think the most important thing is that the recruiters are going to have to just lean in a little bit more. But the business is out there. I mean, for sure, have you shifted.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:30]:

Even with your teams to, I mean, I’m sure this is already part of your daily process, but have you pushed the selling the merchandising talent, the MPC concept within your teams right now with a slowdown?

Jen Meyer [00:01:39]:

Yes. And I go into it a little bit different to where I give them and say, like, look, you may not place that person. It’s just mainly giving you a point of conversation to go into and opening the dialogue. And I think that that’s a different mindset because it used to be taught to us, like, you got to go out and place this person. So you were just like real slick and you were one trap to say, like, I got to place this person and you weren’t listening to what the client was saying. But I really just tell my team, like, look, you’re probably not. I mean, you have a 1% chance of placing this person, and that’s fine.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:14]:

Go play the lottery that day if you do, because you’re onto something.

Jen Meyer [00:02:19]:

But you’re right.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:19]:

Exactly. Listening what it sounds like, you’re teaching your teams, it’s really actively listening. It’s really pushing those conversations in the right direction, not just the, hey, do you need a guy? I got a guy kind of concept.

Jen Meyer [00:02:30]:

Exactly. So I have a lot of young people on my team that came in for fulfillment because we had so many job orders and we’ve shifted to where they’re business developing. They’re MPC. That’s awesome. I meet with them for 2 hours every week. We do call reviews. We sit. I need them to hear the buying signs.

Jen Meyer [00:02:49]:

I’ve also leaned in a little bit to say, like, look, just get the person open to a discussion with us. I’ll come in with you. I do think that that’s another thing too, is that we don’t do enough of this. It’s always like, what’s in it for me? Attitude. And I think that people feel like, well, I don’t want to step in on that person’s toes because I want them to have the authority or whatever the thinking is. I don’t think that way. I always think two heads are better than one. Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:03:14]:

The second best episode of 2023 takes us to an industry spotlight with Tom Herb about proactively planning for success in any market cycle.

Tom Erb [00:03:25]:

The best way to gauge if you’re doing something right or not is go, would my competition want me to do this? And what the competition wants you to do is to give up, throw your hands up in the air and say, there’s nothing I can do about it. Panic, make bad decisions primarily around internal staff. Oh, let’s hold off hiring that person. Oh, let’s go into hunker down mode. We hear that where we’re going to bat in the hatches. I hear that from time to time. I go, that’s exactly what your competition wants to do. By the way, when I went through the great recession of 2008 2009, that’s what I was hoping every single one of my competitors was doing, because I’m going to go take their share.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:08]:

This next episode won honorable mention for educational single episode from the prestigious Marcom Podcasting Awards. It’s a live workshop where I dove into AI best practices for recruiting and recruiting leaders and even has an accompanying ebook to download with prompts for our industry. Now it has the power to automate tasks previously done by humans that involves thinking and decision making. But don’t panic. While it might raise concerns about job displacement, it’s about leveling your skills up. It’s designed to augment and empower recruiters rather than replace them. The future jobs won’t be that you won’t have a job in the near future, but you will no longer be able to do a job without AI assistance. Coming in at number four on our list of live workshops with me titled get off the KPI Hamster Wheel.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:03]:

Why your metrics are keeping your recruiting and staffing businesses from growing. I covered the hidden reasons why so many firms are focusing on the wrong metrics when trying to scale. Most of you are having your teams run what I like to call a shadow process outside of your system. You haven’t truly defined what your process is, so to make sure your workflow or your methodology matches what’s in your technology. So when I think a shadow process, it’s the idea that you think your teams are running your playbook, they are following your lead, but you’ve added outside systems that bolt on or into your ats, but they don’t talk to each other. They don’t give you the actual metrics that your teams are completing on the daily. So you only have half the picture, half of the data, and you have half of the decision making abilities to run your business the way that you want to because your metrics don’t come together for a clear, integrated, actionable, let alone execution. Staffing was a big topic for us this year, and this episode with Chris Hesson highlighted how staffing can allow talent businesses to stay flexible through any market cycle.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:15]:

This episode also has a downloadable checklist.

Chris Hesson [00:06:18]:

Contract staffing gives you a way to balance that out. So you’re taking and almost have an annuity from your business where you are getting regular payments over an extended period of time. So the biggest thing I can say as a benefit from a firm is that financial stability and maybe even financial sanity for those who are running a desk, leading a team, managing an entire firm, as far as you’ve got this steady income that’s always coming through and giving you that value, add to your business.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:49]:

Sitting at number six, this episode with Aaron Grossman also focused on staffing and even won a gold award for podcasting in Markham’s 2023 awards. Take a listen to this snippet and you’ll see why this episode was so popular.

Aaron Grossman [00:07:04]:

I think the natural response, obviously, is to manage profitability and manage your financials during a time where you see a softening in the market. I have seen companies grow during this time and I do recall actually during 2020 and 21, there was a firm that I had some people that I knew, not my firm, but a firm that’s talking to, and they actually really looked at what industries are actually scaling up during a downtime. And in that case, I think it was like last minute mile delivery. So when you think about COVID what happened? People are at their homes, they’re shopping Amazon or whatnot. Things are even delivered. So they saw an immediate need. They thought there was immediate need, and so they proactively engaged in moving into that vertical, and they saw extreme growth during that time. So I think it’s really being smart about understanding.

Aaron Grossman [00:07:57]:

Okay, where are we at in this moment, and what industries are either coming up or are going to grow in a down market like this? If you can be proactive enough and strategic enough, you can capture a lot of growth opportunities by pivoting into those spaces.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:16]:

If 2023 taught us anything, it was that AI is here to stay. In this episode with Jim Stroud, we cover the pros and cons of AI in the talent industry.

Jim Stroud [00:08:28]:

I think it’s a good tool that adds value, but it’s not a replacement for human interaction. Nothing replaces human interaction. Human beings crave human interaction. It’s just too many things to program. I don’t see it happening, but I do see humans working with AI to get jobs done.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:46]:

Number eight for 2023 brings us to the insightful episode with Lauren Jones. Lauren talked about all the magic of digital transformation and staffing and recruiting. Her insights, like the ones you are about to hear, were eye opening for our listeners.

Lauren Jones [00:09:01]:

One of the big problems is thinking that technology is going to fix all things. Technology is not the answer to everything. The application of the technology is where the magic is, and so how you apply it, how you configure it, and that means you need to know what you want the technology to do, and you need to have your process ironed out. If you don’t have your process ironed out, spend time doing that first before you go out and start shopping for technology that you think is going to be the unicorn of all things that will now make you a profitable business, because I assure you, that’s too much pressure to put on one level technology.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:33]:

The next most popular episode was with our very own Sarah Gossin. This episode brought key takeaways and a checklist of redeployment strategies to increase revenue for your firm.

Sarah Gossin [00:09:45]:

Today, technology is not the end all, be all for making your redeployment processes work. Right. And Corey, you and I were talking about this earlier. People often think, oh, I’m going to buy all this technology, and then I’m going to be really good at redeployment. No, if your process sucks, your redeployment is going to suck, right? It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. It doesn’t work. It’s still a pig. So you’ve got to focus on your process first and then use the technology to just take you one step further and to bring that process to life.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:15]:

It accelerates your success. It doesn’t make your success.

Sarah Gossin [00:10:19]:

Absolutely. I mean, you think about it, right? You’ve got a huge call center project. I’m going to use that because that’s my world. I have 150 people on assignment. I know they all end in a month, in 30 days. So what if I could use technology to throw them in a journey or in a sequence, whatever you call it, and I can automate that first reach out. Hey, I know your assignment is ending in a month. Let’s chat.

Sarah Gossin [00:10:42]:

I’d love to put you back to work. Right. You’ve just automated a process that you’ve already put in place. I already knew 30 days before the end of assignment I wanted to reach out, but I’m going to use my technology to help me with that, to automate that initial reach out.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:57]:

So essentially what you’re telling me is you set up your system to do it for you so your teams aren’t getting lost in the day to day to figure out what their to Dos are for, the day that they have to go send that email or send that text message, it’s just going to happen where we then can be reactive to what their response is.

Sarah Gossin [00:11:14]:

Right? Absolutely. Focus your time on what matters most. Right. Don’t write out 100 individual emails. Let technology do that for you. But you better believe when they respond, you get to be the people element. Right. And that’s the fun part of the job.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:28]:

2023 brought a shifting market and the need for process improvement and change across many staffing and recruiting businesses. In this next episode, I covered the best practices for change management for your talent business. Take a listen to this clip. There was around 142% increase of gross margin within the first three months of production of new hires if they went through our training. So teams that were hearing a consistent message with training that included the technology that they worked with daily, and they were having quicker ramp up times, higher production for the company earlier on. And you honestly don’t have time to do this wrong. You’re spinning cycles and wasting time and money if you don’t do it right. The future and career pathing was on our listeners minds this year, making this episode about career pathing and succession planning with Dan Mori, number eleven on the list.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:21]:

Take a listen.

Dan Mori [00:12:22]:

You just ask the person like, what is it you have interest in doing? And then you kind of build around that. And it seems a bit backwards because people would be like, why would I build my organization around individuals? That’s all it is. A company is just a collection of people, and how good your people are will determine the height of your own organization.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:41]:

And last but certainly not least, our episode where I interviewed attendees live from staffing World show floor rounds out this list, we heard about the industry’s latest trends and perspectives from the trenches. Listen in to this snip.

Tirrany Nettles [00:12:56]:

So at my company, one of the biggest problems we faced was operating out of two different systems, SDRM system and an ATS system. So our sales team is on one end and recruitment is on another. And as everyone who’s in recruiting or staffing may know, that means that there’s a manual process in between that cancels out continuity. It really messes up metrics. You really don’t know what’s going on because there’s access and opportunity for human error. So staffing world has given us the opportunity to come in and dig into other full house models. That would be a good solution, a good one stop shop to help us cancel out all those other issues.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:34]:

I love that. I love that. That is amazing. And not only are you going to save time, you’re going to save money. It’s definitely going to be a game.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:41]:

Changer for you guys and a great experience for our recruiters, our sales team, the entire enterprise, and more importantly, a better experience for our talent because they kind of got stuck in the shuffle there when information is not correct.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:53]:

Absolutely, I get that. Any other aha moments as you were attending sessions, walking through the show floor, any other aha moments or things that you’re going to take back to your offices?

Tirrany Nettles [00:14:01]:

Yes.

Tirrany Nettles [00:14:02]:

I think for me, one of the big aha moments as a recruiting leader is the importance of building a social media strategy and really and truly pushing our team to be trained on that strategy and creating checkpoints to make sure that it’s happening in between. I mean, when I joined recruiting, it was really that smile and dial mentality, and things have changed so quickly, so I have to also move forward with the industry.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:27]:

I love that. Tarani, thank you so much for joining us.

Tirrany Nettles [00:14:29]:

Thank you so much for having us.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:30]:

I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.

Tirrany Nettles [00:14:31]:

Absolutely awesome.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:33]:

That wraps up our twelve episodes of 2023. We hope you all have a happy holiday season and an amazing new year. I’m Courtney Harmon with Crate. Thanks for joining the full desk experience. Please feel free to submit any questions for next session to [email protected] 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.