How to Build Credibility with Hiring Managers Before You Even Speak

What's up guys, welcome to another episode of Recruiting Is No Joke. I'm your host Joe Laugie and this is the Ultimate Recruitment Podcast that brings you a blend of entertainment, known on-sense insights and of course the latest trends. Join me as I expose bad takes in the recruitment industry and get real with town leaders to give you an inside view of the industry. Here on Recruiting Is No Joke. Welcome to Recruiting Is No Joke. I'm your host Joe Laugie. I am super excited for the next few episodes. I'm going to be airing content that was shot live at Rackfest 2025 in Nashville. It was amazing. It was a great festival. If anyone that doesn't know Rackfest is essentially a conference that's done festival style. So I'm talking tense, outdoor, everybody is relaxed. Everybody is in their element and it's a really great time to connect with talent acquisition leaders, HR leaders, really anyone who's interested in the people space. I got the opportunity to record live episodes of this podcast. So I've got five great guests in the next two episodes. And I was able to go to Rackfest because of my sponsors for the show for these two episodes. And that is a company called Basic Capital. So if you go to basiccapital.com, essentially Basic Capital has a brand new 401k option for employees. It's a way to actually have your employees more involved in their retirement. It's a lot more customizable, helps them grow their retirement five times faster. And I got to actually sit down in one of the episodes with one of the executives from Basic Capital, along with one of their clients who actually been using Basic Capital as a way to not only attract top talent, but also to retain top talent. So if you're looking for a better way to serve your current employees to candidates that you're looking to recruit, you're going to want to check out Basic Capital.com. They're going to revolutionize how 401ks are done. So massive shout out to the Basic Capital team. You'll see a couple of their team members and one of their clients in one of the episodes. And then we have a variety of TA leaders and HR leaders. Hopefully you enjoyed both of these episodes. We really enjoyed recfest. We had a great time and we think you're going to love this content as well. And remember, if you want to be a guest of the show, if you want to sponsor the show, please go to www.TheRealistRecruiter.com. And you can fill out an inquiry to get on the show and meet me or you can reach out to me at LinkedIn, Joel Laugie. Enjoy the episodes and we will see you guys back in a few weeks with our regular episodes again. See you guys. This episode was brought to you by Basic Capital. You're competing for talent. So why settle for the same old benefits? Basic Capital helps your 401k stand out by investing with your employees, boosting their investing power by up to five times. It's a new way to show candidates you invest in them too. Ask your team about adding Basic Capital and make your 401k a real recruiting advantage. All right, we are live at the purple acorn 10 at recfest 2025. It is great to be here. I want to give a special shout out to purple acorn and basic capital for making these interviews happen. We had a great set of interviews yesterday and today is going to be the same. I would love to introduce our guests. Why do you tell us who are you? What do you do and who do you do it for? That's how I started out. Yeah, my name is Caroline Keesler. I'm the director of human resources at Workwear Outfitters. So under my scope is everything from talent acquisition, business partnering, engagement, learning and development in a global capacity. So everywhere, but Central and South America, we've got an HR director down there. I love it. I love it. You were before this world. Were you in recruiting as well? So what was through that journey? I grew up in recruiting. I got to HR. Did you grow wanting to be a recruiter? No, oh my gosh, does anyone? It's like we all stumble into recruiting. I actually thought I wanted to do sales and ended up in a staffing firm. So my first job was a recruiter in a staffing firm and I didn't want the promotion into sales and I was the first person that didn't want a promotion. I wanted to say there's nothing like changing someone's life by getting them a job. And so I eventually made my way over to corporate recruiting. But I knew that I didn't want to be a vice president of just talent acquisition. I didn't want a slice of the pie. I want the whole pie. So it took timing and the right leadership to finally make the jump over. So I've been fully in the HR space for about three years now. Now a lot of a lot of T a people I talk to obviously it's been a rough kind of few years for talent acquisition. So a lot of them are looking at maybe transitioning into HR. Yeah, maybe some of these kind of similar fields. What advice do you have for somebody who's maybe in a talent acquisition for three to five years and I think, hey, you know, I want to actually switch. I maybe want to try a different area of the business. Yeah, yeah, we'll be the best strategy to get into that type of role. I think you have to get closer to the business to get closer to HR. So start partnering with your HR director, ask to sit in on their learning and development sessions. I think that recruiters have such amazing gut instinct on organizational design and how the work should flow. So you've got to start approaching HR. You got to start telling people that that's what you want. And having the right leader that'll start giving you the exposure. I ended up giving our total orientation on boarding and a piece of learning and development to my recruitment team to start expanding them to giving them more opportunities because I think they're totally capable of doing more. I think one of the biggest leaps I made is a recruiter in becoming a better recruiter was when I understood compensation philosophy. So today as a recruiter, you just find, here's the range, go, right? Well, sometimes, right, right. But when you know how to evaluate a job for your company, so you understand the accountability, the authority, the decision making, the global nature. You have such a deeper understanding that I think compensation philosophy is such an interesting place for recruiters to really start digging in to understand the why. Yeah, I love that any any kind of resources like what's the best place to go do you think to kind of learn about. I mean, you can just type into any search platform compensation philosophy, the job leveling tools. Yeah, honestly, it's a it's kind of like a five page document. It's very public. We use a on for it. So it's an easy document to procure. It's amazing. This is your first time at Recfest. No, this is actually my third year since I'm local. I've seen it grow year over year over year. I've been here all three old events as well. So like past two years and obviously seen a lot of changes. What's been the biggest change for you that stuck out in terms of like vendor content, like what people are thinking about. I think it's just getting sharper and sharper every year. There's more people that are coming more relevant vendors, bigger players. Yeah, I mean, you think about some of the speakers that we started with three years ago versus the speakers, they were able to attract this year. Like it's worth the time to get on a plane and get to national for this. Yeah, 100%. I mean, last year was raining a little bit. Yeah, you didn't have that have that word. Oh my gosh, it's perfect this year. It's outside hearing a lot of people excited about just the overall vibe, right? Like it's yeah, not as corporate. You can really kind of connect. Yes, that's the best part. I'm in sneakers, not heels today. It's the best part. Get to where the shorts. I think one of the things we're going to be talking about later is we're going to have a fireside chat. Yeah. And it really approaching TA through the lens of HR, which which I'm really excited about. When do you give us a little preview and kind of like we're going to be talking about like why it's important and why we're pretty should be tuning in. When I as an HR leader, I'm thinking about talent acquisition. I'm thinking about the whole pie. So if I have $100,000 to invest, I'm not just thinking about talent acquisition. And I think that people need to hear that. I think that they need to know that there are when you're looking at the full employee lifecycle. Yeah, you have to be objective for what your business needs. I also think that HR has a unique perspective over talent acquisition, how they're underutilized, how they can do more, how they can evolve. So I'm excited for it. I think it's going to be great. What's one area that you think, you know, Hey recruiters, this is a way the up level of skill in 2025. Like what would you what I guess with your team. Yeah, yeah, for me, my team's going to be focusing on development. Yeah. I think about the output of work that I have as an HR director and what the business needs right now is more development in leadership, succession planning, things like that. So I am getting them involved in manager and director trainings, even going to have them run one or two activities during these four hour trainings. But I'm also bringing them to the table for succession planning because they're having the conversations with the employees before as their candidates about what do you want in three to five years. They are so well connected to the business just because they're hiring all over the business that that development piece that succession planning piece. I'm bringing them to the table. Yeah, and it seems like now, I mean, across the board, whatever area and whether you're in marketing, HR, sales, recruiting, whatever, whatever you're doing. Yeah, there's the expectation now of how are you bringing value to the business? Yes. How are you, you know, how are you going to level up next year? How are you data? How are you looking at the activity you're doing? What are the results that's bringing? For TA, that can be a challenge, right? It's that we get labeled as the cost center, which is ROI. So I think using these tools, not to necessarily replace all the things we don't want to do using it to get more strategic. It's huge. What advice do you have for, you know, maybe people who are like up and coming on how they can get more strategic. Like do they need to be you mentioned partnering with HR? Any other like resources or things activities they should be doing that you kind of would advise them to do. Yeah, it's you're connected to hiring managers, but it's just by the nature of your job. So you've got to go deeper with your hiring managers. You have to understand and be able to help them solve the problem of if they are going to go 40 plus days without someone in the role. How can they reconfigure the work on their team before you hire the person you have an hour with them. You should be going deeper in those conversations to influence them to build your credibility. And that's just going to help you have a better visibility to leadership. It's going to make people start saying your name and rooms that you're not even in. And it's a way to expand what you do without having to burn more time. You're already having these meetings with the manager. So why are we only talking about recruiting in that meeting. Yeah, you have their ear. So go deeper. I think it's it's huge. It's a building of relationships. I was talking to someone yesterday. Obviously there's so many tools, right? Yeah. And I think sometimes we can look at it and go, that's what we need. We need another tool. We need some automation. But the truth is who working with a great hiring manager. If you're working with a hiring manager, you don't have that relationship with you with that credibility. It doesn't matter what tools you have. It doesn't matter what the tech stack is. You're not going to get the roles filled. Do you have like a go to way of kind of connecting with hiring managers or what advice would you have for like let's say someone who's junior. And that trying to connect with a leader in the business. Like how do they approach those conversations to build that credibility. So if they're your hiring manager, then you're coming into the meeting with insights to give them before they're ever speaking, you're talking about this is what's going on in the market. It's certainly this is where I could see internal talent coming into you're bringing the insights before they ever ask for them. Yeah, you know, I don't, I hate. So we're talking about salary location. Yeah, like people are at what companies are what got feel. This is what I'm seeing on LinkedIn, but this is what employment data is saying. I don't think they align. But yeah, and this is why. You know, I hate, I don't love the, if one of my recruiters in their performance review or their goals for the year wrote, I want to increase my time to fill by two days, I would immediately send it back. I want to see I want to have better data insights to influence my managers. Yeah, that's how you build credibility. That's how the manager is going to come back to your office. They're going to give you feedback immediate. They're going to view you as the ultimate professional and make them level up to your standard. I think, I mean, I coach candidates on that a little time when you go in the interview. Yeah, nowadays that's the best use of AI is to gather that data, have intelligence going so easy. And I think if you're not going into those conversations like that. Yes, you know, that first impression. And if you have a bad first impression, everything else is a battle then. Yeah, yeah, how are you going to consult them on who to hire who the best candidates going to be. It's so true. And you have to remember, you're hiring managers are not interview experts. Yeah, they might have to hire someone once every two years. Yeah. So they're just as nervous as the candidates walking through the door. So you also have to build them up. So they feel confident. They're not going to tell you they don't know how to interview you have to assume that they don't know what they're doing here. So what can what else can you provide them you've learned about the role what interview questions can you create for them specifically. I'm not talking a whole booklet like one or two. Make sure you ask these two questions because it'll help you understand this. Good interviewers at the end of the day they need to learn that's why you ended with these processes that are around. Oh my gosh, same question over and I was like, that's like, why are you asking a question with what are you what information are you getting. Yeah. And it's the same from the candidate perspective to a lot of them are trying to prepare questions beforehand. I'm like, no, be involved in the conversation. Let the questions be organic. So where can people find out more about you? Where can people connect with you? And yeah, what's the best place for people to find you? Yeah, definitely on LinkedIn when it comes to my professional self. I've heard of that place. Amazing. And it will be it's inspired stage. I think so. Or is it the end of the day? It's one of one of the stages. I 130. I'm super excited to host the conversation. And guys, once again, a special shout out to purple a corn for hosting these conversations. And we got a gift from our friends. Basic capital. So huge shout out to basic capital, sponsoring, making this content possible. And Carolyn, thank you so much. Looking forward to our chat later. I know. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we'll talk soon. All right. Welcome back to recruiting is no joke. Live. We are live at RecFest 2025. We're pumped to be here. I want to give a special shout out to basic capital for making this podcast episode possible. I got another really exciting. I guess I always start off the podcast by asking, who are you? What do you do? And who do you do it for? Well, Joel. Here's to McGuinness. I oversee recruitment for a GulfCon IT government contractor called Texas out in the DC area, but we are nationwide and in five countries. So we are busy. Amazing. All right. And this is your first time at RecFest. No, I've been here all three years. You've been here all three years. I'm a better. I am a better. This is good because I get a lot of first time. So how is the event changed? Like is it? What have you seen is like the biggest change from like year one to now? The growth, just the growth and attendance, the growth in the extra, you know, I call all the extra stuff. Yeah. The content is changed. Just all AI. It's well, it's all AI, you know, but there's all an AI component. It seems like. But yeah, the growth has just been exciting for for Jamie and team. Yeah, I love that. And I know, obviously there is a lot of AI vendors out there. What are you excited about? What are the things that you're seeing work with your team? How are you implementing AI and what you do? And, you know, is there anything that's going to core your eyes? You've been looking around and, you know, maybe not specific vendors, but just things that they do. Sure. Sure. We are in the infancy phase. Even as a tech company on the recruiting site, we're in the infancy phase. So for me, my goal just today was to sit into sessions with people that have implemented it. And the steps that they took to get from zero usage to how quick can we get to fully implementing it into practices that makes sense within our processes. I mean, that's a big piece where you got to know your own process, know how you can implement AI in. And like I said, it is, it is infancy. Is there anything anything that surprised you about any of the vendors or anything that you've seen where you're like, all right, you know what, I could implement that in my process. The interviewing scares me a little bit, but now is the time to ask those questions to have the conversations to see if it's something for certain positions. Yeah, certain contracts, certain customers or certain recruiters that we might be able to take that from not doing it to, is it something we can entertain. Yeah. And more importantly, well, our customer, the candidate, how will they feel about that? We're in the GovCon space. It's cleared work. And it's a little different than service industry or something else. Yeah, I mean, super, super niche, you're probably relying a lot on referrals, network and who you know. So how important it is for you than in your process to really keep that human that candidate experience in there. So important. We want them to know that they're talking to a person. We try to build those relationships and because it takes time, you know, might take two, three, four emails or phone calls before they pick up the phone or respond to that email. And by then we want to know them as a person. So we went them to know us as a company as well as the recruiter that they're working with. A lot of our relationships start from just a resume on, you know, name a job board and then continue after they've been hired or even months after they have that first conversation where they return back to us and say, hey, I'm ready for a move within the company or I think I'm ready to go here, how do I get there. Or hey, we had a conversation six months ago. Yeah, what do you have for me to have something that might align? What's a, because it's been coming up a lot, obviously, it's easier right now to send messages. It's easy to DM people. It's easier to put out content. What do you think the key is to really keeping those relationships going and like, how do you kind of train your team or how do you kind of keep relationships going long term and kind of balance, you know, those volume of messages that you have to send out to how you nurture relationships. Like what's the key to that in terms of building relationships finding that relationship to nurture because you keep you want to nurture them all you absolutely want to nurture them all and there's ways they're ways that you can do that. Yeah, but for us, it's find the candidates that you've connected with and then figure out how you're going to nurture which way do they want to be nurtured rather, you know, find out how you're going to do that. It could be phone calls, it could be emails, it could be text messages, you know, just simple, hey, just thinking about your how's your week been. Yeah, for a lot, sliding into the DMs and that is such a war in terms for me to use and recruitment, but it makes sense. You have to go to where the candidates are. You can't wait for the candidate to come to you and you have to meet them where they're at. If they want the text message, give them the text message. If they want the emails and the email, yeah, and they want to meet in person, we encourage that, you know, it's rare that we get to do that nowadays because of just where my recruiters are at and where our candidates are at, but we can make it happen we want to. Yeah, it's funny because I've seen a lot of content recently around Gen Z and maybe like Gen A, I guess predicting like almost like I'm plugging and kind of getting away from emails and social media. And you know, I think a lot of people I predict and that's going to be a push away away from that. Is there a world that you could see recruiting being more like going to events and meeting people? I guess how do you kind of play that into your strategy as well. That's which there was someone with early career sitting here because I would love to know what they're seeing, but having a 21 year old myself, I see the same thing, you know, she used to be very much into social media and now it's text messaging. Yeah, don't email her like she might email me and then say mom, I haven't responded in five minutes, but I wish I knew what the next thing was going to be, you know, people said tick tock for for a really long time. Yeah, no, that's social media, you know, it's it's not where we're going to be. Maybe it's you to maybe it's a podcast. Maybe it's a blog that we set up. I'm not sure yet. How do you obviously there's a lot of noise out there like we're just discussing how do you kind of coach recruiters and how to stand out from that noise. So you're reaching out to a candidate doesn't know you. What are the kind of things that you do to stand out and just really kind of look different from everybody else and reaching out. Set yourself apart and do your homework. Don't send if you will the AI email you know one that gets generated for you for you. So guess that's the personalized message message take it because it's going to save you time, but still personalized it a little bit more figure out where the person's out where did they go to school. Yeah, you have a connection there. Did you see them post something VL link dead or another platform that might intrigue them. Everyone has their own flavor to that. I'm very I get I don't want to get personal. I guess I get personal and email or I get personal in my messages. But not too personal rate and then highlight the why behind your reaching out to me. It's so important like why the why me or why you and why they should choose us or text or that position or even pick up the phone or or have a conversation and build that connection rate. New platform and I've been watching the response rate and word about 50 to 75% on responses on this new platform and I think it has a lot to do which is taking the time after the sourcing piece to really personalize that message. It's really interesting because I know a lot of tools that I've seen out there promise to personalization and usually it's been boiled down to past companies you've worked with. There's something from a profile. What tips would you have for people and like really, you know, how to do that research and like how long should they span like where do you think you just go to the LinkedIn profile like what's your advice for people on like how to dig a little bit deeper and like what's that approach. While still keeping it somewhat scalable so you can kind of keep that volume out company is great. Of course, because that's what the personalized message does if you're on LinkedIn, where have they posted what have they liked. Yeah, do you have a group. Because you can normally see that in some of the profiles very quickly. Do you have a group that you're connected to and maybe you saw something that they may have been interested or they may be interested in from that particular group. Are you finding people are more engaged now on LinkedIn than maybe before or you can see it down like what's what's up in like. Yes and no we I say we the collective we on the team. We use it more as when they haven't reached out to us through another point of contact or another two points of contact a lot of our recruiters are using LinkedIn as that third point and that's where they're getting the connection. Because now they've the names not foreign to them or the company's not foreign to them. Yeah, makes it makes a ton of sense. So third year or rec fast. You know, for people who aren't used to going to conferences or maybe they're considering going to rec fast next year. What's your approach to making a successful conference and like what what makes a successful conference for you just as an attendee. Yeah, so great question. Look at the schedule. Look at who's going to be there and map it out. If you're trying to do that day of you're going to miss opportunities. Yeah, so take the time to look at the schedule and map out who you want to see map out of what you want to visit and kind of get your game plan so that you're not you're stuck in the moment. Not the phone or the where the map and trying to figure out where you're going to be today. No, I got lost. Won't you round in a circle? It's very sweating. No, it's it's what it's two thirty five Nashville time and I just realized there's a fourth stage right here. Yeah, and then like to walk away from it, you can be so overwhelmed after two days. But I used to pick five things that I wanted to do or implement as I got back or or take a deeper dive into and then I heard another session today. She said, pick just three. You're going to accomplish three and I was like, that makes sense. Normally I get to four. Sometimes I get to the fifth, but I always get to three. What advice in terms of like maximizing those connections as well, right? Because you mentioned like this so many people like you get overwhelmed easily. So do you have like a way to connect during the conference and then like what's your kind of game plan afterward to like kind of keep those conversations going. So when I sit in a session, I'm connecting with someone on LinkedIn and sending them a message immediately about something I saw in their presentation. Yeah, because that reminds me what I later what I heard, especially if I'm still doing that messaging through LinkedIn. And in some cases, you're exchanging phone numbers. You might be exchanging emails, but setting that time to make sure that you connect with them the next probably seven to 14 days. You know, let it all digest. And then that momentum going. Yeah, it's it's true. Like I think my first conference in person was like three years ago at breakfast. So that was the first one I went and I remember that time was it was like you're overwhelmed. There's a lot of people. And just even taking that time after each day to decompress and look at, okay, what have I learned? What have I taken away? Who did I meet that was impactful and then just making sure that you follow up. Otherwise, I think you just, you know, you can get lost in there. What about with vendors? Like what are the things that you're looking at like when you go to a event? Yeah, obviously is I think they got over a hundred vendor sponsors, which is huge, which is awesome. It's great. But like what are the types of things that you look for? You know, in choosing a vendor like where to spend time and like how do you kind of decipher between what each vendor is doing to really figure out? What solution is going to work for you? Sure. Sure. So last year, we thought we were going to be shopping for an ATS. So that's where I focused. I want to talk to the ATSs that were that were present this year. I took a little bit of a different approach and it's what do we not have? Because the moment you need it, you have a lot of homework ahead of you to get from point A to point B. And then you have a approval and then implementation. So this year it's what do we not have? Yeah. And just go in with an inclusive mind. And then you work in with like your internal tech team as well to kind of get an idea of what needs they have. How does that work internally with the company? Yeah, a lot of collaboration there. A lot of collaboration with our IT team with HR, of course. And then this year direct fest we brought two members of our marketing team. Oh, wow. Because there's so much that they can take from this. So it's collaboration with them of, hey, I saw this vendor on the list. I would love for you just to go to have a conversation and see if it's something that makes sense. That's amazing. Over to another booth to say, look at that setup. Like, you know, we've been doing some things with a lot of video and audio equipment. I was like, you're going to love that. Yeah. You're doing a lot of content within the recruitment process as well. Or not yet. Okay. Not yet. We're getting there. We're getting there. We're getting there. We do a monthly team chat, if you will. And I think we can expand on it from there, but it's, it's coming. I love it. So where is the best place for people to connect with you? Is anyone who's listening? And they want to connect with you? Where's the best place? Absolutely. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I am the only Kirsten McGuinness on LinkedIn. So I'm very, very, very easy to find. Yeah. I can't find it. You and not are real recruit. The trick is to spot Kirsten. But that's the best place. Let me know how you found me and would love to connect. I love it. I mean, are you planning on being here next year as well? It's the plan. But it's a plan. Travel schedule allows absolutely. I love it. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us today. I hope you have a good rest of the conference. And guys, thank you for listening and tuning in. If you're listening live, great to be with you guys at Rackfasten. If you're listening afterward, it's great to have you on the podcast as well. Recording is no joke. And I would give a special shout out as well. The Purple Acorn and Basic Capital as well. And speaking of which, we do have a special gift from Basic Capital as well. Thank you. Can't get, can't go wrong with a gift. Always remember that. Gifts are great. So thank you so much, Kirsten. It's great to meet and hopefully we'll talk soon again. Thanks. All right. Thanks guys. Bye. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Recording is no joke. If these conversations resonated with you, don't forget to hit the follow button to stay updated on our latest episode. To stay connected with me, head over to therealistrecruitet.com. It's your go-to place for more content, connections, and a deeper dive into the world of recruitment. See you next week.