Recruiting doesn't have to suck (with special guest Luke Cassidy)

Welcome to Leadership Sucks. I'm Eric Marsh from Clifton Consulting. Join me and my co-founders Adam Wozniak and Theresa Newton as we dive into the raw realities of leadership. Whether it's leading people or making organizational decisions, leadership could be pretty thankless, but when you do it right, it could be pretty rewarding as well. We're all happy to have you here. Let's get to it. Oh my gosh. How close are we to pivoting away from consulting and just doing podcast recording full-time? Like I think like three million subscribers. Oh, we're just three million subscribers short. I don't know. Yeah, we need a couple more of them at least. I don't know if it's three million's exact number, but yeah, so if we open up a Patreon account, it'd be a lot on each listener right now to keep our families fed. And we all have very much families. That's right. Speaking of which, if I go to some point, it's because I'm relying on my youngest to stay asleep for the next 45 minutes, which to an hour. Any parent knows how that's going to go. So like we'll see. Yeah. So March has to disappear at some point. I hope it happens when somebody says something controversial and I'll get up and storm out and it'll look like I'm just really upset with what I can't believe we said that. All right. All right. All right. All right. So I'll be hosting today, which is exciting. I think it's my first time officially hosting one of these things. And today is a special day, very special day because we have our first guest. We have our first guest to the podcast, which has got to count for something in terms of like us being official in some regard. So today, we're going to be talking about finding talent for your teams, talent, recruiting, hiring. And we've got Luke Cassidy with us. So Luke is HR and recruitment specialist focused on hiring talent for startups, scaleups, and agencies in the tech and e-commerce space. Luke also worked. Luke also works with individuals on the job hunt, offering guidance on everything from resumes, interview prep and networking. He's a founder of careers with Luke and a Mia partner for the exact, focused on identifying, attracting and connecting top leadership talent with mission driven startups, unicorns, and everything in between. On top of that, he's a friend. We all work together at Shopify with Luke, originally in Ireland. And I'm sure some great stories will come up. Luke reported to me for a time being and then quickly moved on to bigger and better things. And by the end of this episode, we're hoping our aim is to equip anyone listening, any hiring managers, with just better insights into how to set up and navigate the recruiting system. And if you're not a manager and you're not a recruiter, well, then maybe it's a peek behind the curtain in terms of like how managers and recruiters think about this stuff. So welcome Luke. Thank you for, thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us. It's awesome. You've recently, I don't, I want to say recently, but you can correct me where I'm wrong, but you've moved to Canada. You've gotten married since the last time I saw you in real life. You have a puppy now. So how are things? You've also transitioned from the corporate world to the entrepreneur world with careers at Luke. So just give, it's been a few minutes, just like sharing where things are at and how things are with you. Well, first of all, thanks for having me as the first guest. I didn't realize I had number one here. So lots of pressure. And yeah, I just don't screw it up. I guess most of my or any success I have can be attributed to your leadership was in the early stage, you know, I, you know, to the listeners. Probably was more optimistic about life than I am now. We'll take it. You still had the same boyish charm, though. Yeah, well, we had some good times and go, we, you know, haven't too many points and haven't too much fun. We'll, yeah. We're going to go away. Highway Hurling Club Jersey today, which is a representative in the back and everything. So you're officially Irish, I think. Now, absolutely. So things are going well. Yeah. So I relocated to Canada kind of in 2021, 2022, I guess. I kind of moved over to lead a team in recruitment after working in a media for, I guess, six or seven years at that point. So I've kind of seen a higher globally, which was always kind of interesting to me because, you know, there's different cultures around the world and different practices. So I kind of got an insight there. You're a bit of a globetrotter for a while, too, right? Like you were, I remember you were in Berlin. I don't know where else you might have hit, but you're always flying over to Canada. Like you were a busy guy in that role. What an air miles. A lot of air miles. Yeah, I didn't put them on my card, which would have been more beneficial at the point. You live and learn. Yeah, I was in, I was in in Wellington for about five months or so. That was fun, kind of higher for Asia Pacific region. Well into Zealand. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Great place. If it was closer, I could potentially move there, but it's just so far away from here. And then, of course, you know, my time in Berlin was kind of interrupted by COVID, but that made higher and even more exciting at the time because all the tech companies decided we need to hire everybody in the planet over the next year and a half or so. So I was busy. And yeah, I guess I just recently pivoted into my own thing. So learning a bit more about entrepreneurship and kind of running my own agency and working obviously with examples like, too. So keeping busy, but it's been good. There's been a lot happening, but you know, it's been keeping interest for me. That's awesome. That's awesome. We have that in common. The dipping our toes into the entrepreneurial space and on this journey of of constant growth and learning and learning from mistakes and failures. So all right. I'm going to kick us off. We're here to talk about hiring the hiring manager process. So Luke, how do you typically work with a hiring manager? How do they work with you? What does that process look like behind the scenes? Yeah. Great question. So I think I kind of define that relationship as a partnership, right? So you're kind of both working as co-chairs of the hiring process. So the hiring manager has an understanding, a deeper understanding of the role, their team, what they're looking for. And then your recruitment partner is kind of your expert in all things hiring from how you kind of craft a job description to, you know, craft in the interview process and everything in between when it comes to closing as well. So I like to work in that partnership model. Now different companies have different ways of operating, but I've always found that that's the most effective way. And you know, there's that push and pull when you're working with a hiring manager, working with a recruiter, you might have different opinions on what's needed or what the most effective process is. But kind of setting up the relationship where you can both push back, be honest, and learn from each other at the end of the day, because you want to get your angle is the same, right? You want to get the best person, the best talent in the team. So you can improve your, I guess, production or your productivity moving forward as well. So I'd look at that as the first kind of definition of it. And then I guess the process itself kind of incorporates everything from the initial intake meeting we call it. So defining what good looks like, what the role is, what the company is looking for, to, you know, craft in that job description and figure out how you're going to attract the right talent into the pipeline to setting up the process from technical interviews or kind of initial screens. If you're going to have any kind of case study exercises or take home challenges, that kind of thing, figure out what works best for the role you're trying to hire for. And then it comes into, you know, the final flows, I guess. So the negotiation of the offer, um, flows in the candidate in terms of, you know, why they would move to this role. First, outside of just the compensation package, I think it's important for the hire manager to be able to step in there. Um, and then in a, in that whole book, I guess, is the candidate experience inside of things, which comes up multiple times. Right. It was in terms of the candidate experience. Great question. I think it's a team effort. Like I always think of hiring as a team game. So outside of the hire manager and the recruiter, the onus is on everybody involved in the process. So that could be any other interviewers that are included to making sure that, you know, they're being respectable and sort of creating a nice atmosphere in the interview. I think we've all heard stories of people trying to break people in interviews and that kind of stuff. That's not super effective. And so understanding, understanding how that kind of upgrades. But people even from, you know, people have been with scheduling, um, people help them with sending out the offers and the admin side of things. So it's all a team effort team game. But I think the hire manager has to be the kind of number one advocate for kind of experience because sometimes when the recruiter does that, it can fall on deaf ears, right. Whereas the hire manager does it, they have a bit more weight behind kind of pushing those things. You see so many, uh, stories posts on LinkedIn have like really poor, um, experiences for the candidate experience. I've like just being ghosted or waiting forever to hear back, right? And like, or like these really cold and personal rejection letters at maybe the end of the process, right? Like, it's, uh, that's, yeah, that's part of customer, or the not customer experience, but the candidate experience. So like, you just walked us through like that process, uh, you kind of had like a five-step process for between the partnership, as you call up, between the hiring manager and the recruiter. Like, which one of those areas is like, maybe most ripe for disruption, right? Like, which one could be improved the most? Which one is kind of operates right now? And is it? What do you see as opportunities there? Yeah, big question. Um, I guess look, every stage of the process can, can be disrupted. Yeah. And when you're building a process, you need to look at as a whole and not just as a singular piece of the pie, right? Because you can have, and you can spend time with craft and the best job description on the planet. But if your interview, interview process is terrible, then it's not going to make a difference, right? In the same way, you can have the best interview process in the world. But if your, uh, interview panel is disjointed and looking at different things, than they're supposed to be, it's not going to be effective. Um, so I guess it all starts from that intake meeting, right? That first initial sit down you have with the recruiter and the hire manager. And being very clear on what you need and what the expectations are and ultimately why you're higher for this role, like what's your pitch to the candidate if you're the hire manager, being very clear on that. What success looks like in the role and being very clear on that. And then from a process standpoint, okay, what do we need to find out about this candidate to be comforted and making the decision at the end of the process? And that helps, obviously, alignment throughout the interview or the hiring process as well. The next piece is the job process, which I know, Theresa, we had a chat last week around job posts. So many rants around job posting. It's just so, it's so antiquated. I still don't understand how reading all these bullet points is the best way to find candidates while recognizing that all the following steps are the way to screen out candidates, but I just think it's such an antiquated process. Can you define antiquated? Old me for our listeners. Well, for me, mostly, but I play that role of asking the stupid questions because I know there's other people who have the same question. So it's not really for me, it's forever else. I just like to play that, you know, humble car. It's funny to say that Tito is like looking at, you know, I like to do a whole bunch of job postings and stuff like that and you look through and it's funny because I talk to people and, you know, they'd say, oh, you know, Mark, you're so employable like anybody be lucky to have you. They buddy up big and you're like, I do have many skills. This is great. I'm going to hit the job postings. I'm going to pick the litter. I'm going to look at all these postings are just going to sing to me. It's going to be easy, obvious. And it's crazy how like I've spent hours, you know, at times looking through job postings. I'm like, apparently, I am not good at anything. And there's no posting here that is written for me. How does this mismatch happen when you talk to somebody who has a lot of like nose you well and they're like, you should be shooting for the stars. Like, you know, I mean, go for the big jobs only. I'm so they're going like, I don't think there's any jobs that describe what I do here. Like to Tito and you're talking about like the those bullet points and like that being the best way to sort of say that, hey, we need a person. You know, here's the things. It resonates so deep with me because I think I've been there. Are you just like next next? You know, like, yeah, what how do I not take on any of these boxes? I think that you can take care of this for a salute, right? Yeah. I'll fix everything. I'll fix everything. No, look job postings are so interesting, right? Because I think when you're craft in one and many companies craft them to weed out people who aren't a fit as opposed to attracting people who are. Right. And you can think of the whole process. I mean, I'm sure we've all experienced it right where you craft a post and you get hundreds of applicants and very few are fit for the role that you're looking to fill. So what's the solution for many people? Add more requirements for the job post and for the job description in the hope that that improves the level of candidates that you're getting, right? When in reality, if you're if you're trying to attract the top talent or you're trying to attract talent that's most relevant to the role, the best thing to do is craft the job description that's compelling that, you know, engages people with that skill set so that either they apply or you can use it almost more as a marketing tool when you reach out to people. And I think people rely on job postings too much like if you're a top brand and you're recognized kind of Google or meta whoever else, you know, a really kind of top company. Job postings can work because people are looking out for those big brands and looking out for that job and they'll apply and they'll be one of the first places they go. But if you're a smaller company trying to rival and the Amazon's or whoever else. Right. You're getting talent that's already applied to all these other places and then finds you because they either haven't kind of been invited into you or it's kind of, you know, a longer tail in terms of their search. So I think that's what's broken. The other side of that is, you know, it's been shown and studies have shown that women are less likely to apply if they don't, if they match, you know, less than 100% of the requirements, whereas lads and men will just apply. They can meet one requirement and that's send it on. Right. So the whole process of like trying to refine the talent that you're attracting through a job post and you're actually limited in your kind of code because of these kind of biases that can happen and the more tough you make the job post and you're actually alienating like half the people that apply, right. So I think the whole process is sort of backwards in a way. People are operating that there's a surplus of talent and will just post and they'll apply. Whereas a lot of, you know, the talent sourcing side of things is finding talent that kind of matches what you need and reaching out proactively or maybe three-year-old networks and finding people, you know. So I think that's, that's the, sorry for the rad there, but that's kind of my perspective. That's super informative. My last question. No. So Luke, if you could like leave a magic wand and be the controller of recruiting worldwide from now on, how would you push hiring managers to start this? Because you're saying it's backwards. I think a lot of people can agree that it's like siphoning through, job profiles is like cross-side work. There's probably something better. I would work from what success looks like in the role and post a list of objectives and key results versus a list of experiences that someone might have who could be successful, right? So instead of saying you need to, because if someone has three to five years of experience, that could look very different depending on the company, depending on how what the role looks like, depending on all sorts of different things. Whereas if you define, this is what you'll be doing and this is what success will look like. So you're trying to attract people who have done similar stuff and it rules out all this bias of, oh, this person looks strong, but they don't have this specific requirement that we ask for. That person might not even apply if you ask for a certain amount of years or certain type of industry that they come from, any of that kind of stuff. So I think it opens up the candidate pool and I always bias to networking and sourcing as a great sort of higher quality of I guess time versus reward because as a recruiter when you get 200 applicants, you can spend hours upon hour screen and all those applications. Some of them are very good to be frank like they could just be thrown in and have no relevance to the role. We still need to screen them. Whereas if you spend the same time going to market with now a list of, hey, this is what I'm looking for. So almost like that marketing tool that I mentioned and contact people directly and say, would you be interested in this? Your response rate and the people actually in the door will be more qualified or more aligned, I should say, to the job you're trying to fill, then if you're just waiting for people to apply through a job posted. So why does it that happen? What's the barriers? I think people sometimes equate quantity for quality when it comes to applications and it does take bandwidth as well to source. You need to engage with your network, especially if you're a hire manager, it can be difficult to do that and balance all of your day-to-day responsibilities of being a manager. So it could come down to capacity. But in my experience, it takes the same amount of capacity to screen applications that come in organically. So why not flip it on a TED? But I think that's kind of the idea is, oh, we don't have time to go and do this extra source and stuff. Let's just open a post and then we'll interview whoever applies. I love that. That's interesting. So you know how you fill out cardiac forms and there's like that robot feature? I don't know how to word this question, but it's like hacking a thing in hiring? Bots? Bots applying? Bots? Bots? I think the role of bots are definitely out there for sure, but I feel like they don't go flying for jobs. I've heard that there is some sort of tooling or application that people can click a button and apply to thousands of jobs. I would never recommend that because you should at least know a bit about the company that you're applying for, right? Especially when it gets to, if you get called for an interview, you need to have an understanding of what they do and what the role is and what their culture is like and stuff. But these kind of ATS systems or applicant tracking systems are a bit of a buzzword across kind of job seeker and LinkedIn land, especially recently. Like all you need to stuff your LinkedIn or stuff your resume or keywords to get through these kind of robots. You always hear that. You always hear that. Like make sure you tailor it to match the job posts and you're going. Right. Right. And while that's true to an extent, the idea behind tailoring it with keywords or kind of mapping it to the job posts and is for a human at the end of it who's screening the applications to understand how your experience matches and kind of make it super easy for them to kind of join the dots, right? Of what they're looking for and what you've done. But if you overstuff it, it's not AI technology for the most part. I'm sure it's being developed. But right now, like these systems aren't that advanced where you click a button and it eliminates X amount of people based on keywords or based on scanning your resume. It's still 99% of the time either hire manager or recruiter or HR person looking at your resume and making that call. Really? 99% of the time there's not like those automated rejections or so for keywords, not really. There's these kind of elimination questions, right? So if you've seen them on you see them on job posts and it's like, do you have five years of leadership materials or do you have two years in customer success or customer facing roles or something like that, right? Those can be screened out. You can optimize the system to go, hey, if someone answers no to this question, just send them a rejection email. But for it to happen organically just by scanning of a resume and stuff, that's very overblown and a host recently went viral on LinkedIn. It was like 40 ATS systems that recruiters would come and say, hey, this doesn't do that. It doesn't screen out. I don't know. Application is for keywords. So like anything, I'm sure it's being developed. But it's not that common as people would make out, you know. That's crazy. That's so manual. And like reading resumes, I'm assuming, especially with like AI can write everything for you. Like how interesting is it for you these days to call through resume and cover letters? Like does it tell you anything? So cover letters are interesting. I think cover letters you would only kind of look at them if the resume is somewhat aligned, you know, and there's maybe one or two things that are missing. So step one is the resume or review of the resume cover letter comes after. Yeah. And even though it seems, I feel like that's an insight to me. I wouldn't have maybe connected that as cool. Because people spend a lot of time, especially if you feel like your experience is maybe not a perfect match for the role. They spend so much time crafting this essay and why they want this job or like why it's important to them. And unfortunately, if your resume is in sort of, it's not clear from your resume that you can do the role. A lot of times those applications get screened out, right? Right. Because recruiters generally would take seven, 10 seconds to look at doing an initial screen if they have to get through like 100, 200 applications. You're looking at, you know, oh, have this, has this person worked in a similar field? Have they touched on kind of the three or four key main requirements for the role? And if you can't tell that from page one, then it's unlikely going to be on page two. And you have too many, too many resumes to screen through to spend two, three minutes on each resume, right? So that's the first step for anybody is like make sure your page one is like very relevant to the role. So then you cannot the extra with corporate letters and stuff, but that's the key thing. I can imagine it's going to be like there's an element of simplicity and there's an art to making it easy to read and make it a good pop. And that's interesting to me because there's so much crossover between that. Like we're talking about resumes here. But like anything you're trying to communicate, like how many times do you get an email and you open it up and it's a wall attacks and you're like, I don't really care what this is trying to tell me. I'm not going to read this. Like, you know, I mean, if you make the recipient of the message, I have to work too hard to understand what you're trying to get across. Nine times out of ten, you're going to lose them. Anyhow, they're not going to try that hard to understand the message. And I feel like it's very similar with the resume thing is even if you've caught all the things in there, if it's going to be something that a recruiter can't pick up in seven to ten seconds, they're going to miss it. And you're out of luck. You know what I mean? So it's, that speaks to me. I really like the simplicity of something that I'm always pushing for, especially in written documents and stuff like that. It should be pleasing to read, you know? Yeah. And that kind of speaks to the problem with job horse since two, right? Because the quality applications that could be really strong for the role can sometimes get lost in all of these hundreds of other applications that someone maybe just clicked apply and it was a, you know, they didn't look at it fully or maybe I remember screen and applications for like director of marketing roles where people hadn't worked in marketing at all before. And you know, the person is leading the team of 100 marketers. And you're like, hey, I appreciate the confidence here, but this really isn't the role for you with all you respect, right? And that happens so much. So that's kind of where the job posting thing goes back in. It's a bit broken for that one. There's a whole other podcast episode here we can do around the candidate experience and how to how to separate yourself, right? But I've got, I have one question that's kind of touches on that and it'll pull us back into like the hiring manager lens, which is what we're originally trying to like kind of focus on, but yeah, I love the insight. Oh, the insights are really great. It's fantastic. But what's trending in the resume, the visual appeal of a resume right now? Like is it, you know, when I was, yeah, I was applying, you know, it was like a word doc, black and white newspaper, right? And you're like objective at the top or whatever, the like qualifications, you're like, and then I, I've seen ones where it's like very beautiful and almost like a creation, a piece of artwork almost of like this resume, just like picture of them, but it's like holy moly. What's what's the latest right now in terms of what resonates with recruiters and hiring managers would get attention? It can depend on the role, right? So if you're applying for kind of a more creative role or design role, for example, like having a creative resume is actually, it could be really good, right? But for the most part, it's simplicity. It's, you know, make sure contact details are clear. I like to have kind of summary of qualifications at the very top of the first page that links directly with some of the key objectives of the role, right? So as a recruiter, you're looking the first thing you see after the name is, oh, this person is done XYZ, right? Okay, look at the rest of the experience. And to your earlier point, marriage around simplicity and sort of making sure that it's clear and easy to read, like, white space is so undervalued in resumes, you know? Some people fall into the trap of, I need to sell myself with this one document and I need to put absolutely everything I've done into this thing. When that's not case, it's really just kind of highlights, high level. If they want to know more, that's when you kind of share more than an interview setting and you can kind of expand on some of those things. But I think those are kind of two pages. Two pages, I think that's more from when you had physical CVs or print, right? You didn't want five or six pages. Right now, most things are digital. So it doesn't really matter as long as it could be three, four pages, but make sure that first page is like on points. Okay, all right, I'm going to pull us back. Wait, no, I have a question. Okay, you can go. You can go. It's been good. It's all great. So, okay, so your structure of a resume is perfect. Why is it not more normal reality for when you apply, it's just a bunch of fields that like the recruiter can just ask like, okay, in like exit number words, just tell me exactly how you do this and then fill it in. And so you don't have to worry about, just because you can design a nice resume does not mean you're the best fit for a company that you know how to use white space or negative space, right? That's part of a good question. What do you think if you had an application where you're just reading answers to questions, especially with AI and everything as a hire manager, how would you feel about having the screen account of that based on that? Good. Yeah. I mean, I don't read resumes. I hate reading. That's why I hired a recruiter as soon as possible. Default to do the interview, right? I'm with the team. And the thing part of it is this is like, you know, not so the resume is more like cover letters and stuff like that. But like, to me, it's just always so, it's fluffy bullshit. I mean, like part of it has to be. But like, that's one of the reasons why I always hated writing them. I hated doing that whole application thing because it's, it's just like every time I'm reading these things or anytime I was hiring, I'd read through it and be like, I know this guy. And whoever's being described on this page is not the guy that I've seen work for last year. And like that mismatch to be like the, it comes with them like, I've just spelled bullshit and I don't want, I don't want to talk to this person anymore necessarily. You know what I mean? Like, I'd write, I'm really averse to that. And like, again, it's not even just a resume thing. It's just like in general, when you come across something that's just so obviously just overdone, I'm just like it's you know, like I think those questions can be useful, right? Because they create, go back to one of the problems with job posts. And there's so many people apply. So it kind of creates this friction at the front end where hopefully only people who are interested in those roles will actually fill out answers for some of those questions. So it's useful in that sense. Having, having done that and experimented with that, especially for some high volume roles, you still get people that write one word answers for them. So you still kind of get the application through. It's just a quick, okay, screen out. I think that's where again, coming back to using it as a marketing tool. And like, hey, these are the things you're going to be doing. And like, whether it's those kind of fill out questions on the application itself or whether it's, you know, contact this person and answer this or send an email to this with answering this specific case study or thing, you know, changing up the application process a bit could be super useful to improve the quality and reduce the quantity of applications that you might be seeing for sure. I like that. Say that again. Which way? Just the exact word for word. Just the last repeated verbatim. Let's say I've blacked out exactly. You put a guy in the spotlight. Me too. It's all right. I was thinking about the next question. And then I love that. Like, oh, shit. I miss it. I miss it. Just adding friction at the start, like at the front end of the pipeline. Right. Right. Increase the quality of applications. I'm reducing the quantity of applications. Right. Right. It's before the host moves us on to the next thing. Never going to realize it. No, you're never going to realize it. It's good. It's too good. Moby Dick here. The going back to some of you said a little while ago about how experiences looked at you see that on postings of three to five years. It's it's it's interesting. Just as you're explaining that it clicked for me in a different way than it kind of has before. Even though it's obvious, it's just like there's so many of the experiences that I've had over my professional career that like don't map to time necessarily. So like we all met in Ireland. This is the easiest example. I spent a couple of months there and like the amount of like growth or accomplishment or like the amount of stuff I can hang my hat on that happened in those, you know, a number of months versus, you know, there's years I've worked in in roles where it's like, okay, what's the highlight reel look like for that? You're like, wasn't bad. Wasn't good. It's just meh. You know what I mean? But like when you have to chalk up experience to a number of years, it's like that'll it doesn't equate the same. You know what I mean? Whereas it's it's an obvious thing to think that like not all years and months are the same in terms of like growth or proficiency or what you've done. But on a resume and on an application, if you're advertising for I we only want somebody who's been around for five years. In some ways you're you can skew towards the people who are just like, what've been here? That's the highlight for five years I've been here. You know what I mean? It's opposed to somebody who's bouncing around a little bit more or maybe doing different things, but probably actually acquiring a heck of a lot more experience over the course of whatever that time frame is. All right Luke, don't comment on that. Well, I was going to pull it back to a higher-munder sight. I need a manual buzzer. You know, to just cut people off. It's too cut. It's cute to automatically or drops you. Yeah, hit us. I think I've segmented the guest. Is he is he hosting now? So basically you were saying about you know, you know, define in years of experience versus the kind of requirements of the role we were talking about that earlier. I think that's important to do from a higher-munder perspective is not just rely on, hey, I need someone with three or five years of experience. If I do that extra step and ask yourself, why do I need that? All right, just doing that because it's like the industry standard and I think I, you know, I have someone on my team with seven years of experience and someone with two, so I need somebody in the middle. But what is the actual reason you need that years of experience? And then that can turn back into your key objectives and your results for the role or what success is like. And I really a good recruitment partner will be able to ask you those questions. But from a higher-munder takeaway, it's good to think about those things and, you know, then draw them out and when you're building out a process, how do I ask the right questions or how do I structure a process that dives into those things effectively? So I can make the best hire yet. Right, right. Sorry, boss. Now nobody's saying anything was going to be the next question. Yeah, it's just like, well, you're you're segueing us to there nicely, but and you're speaking to it. But like, what are the qualities that make a great partner in a hiring manager, a great partnership with you? So what qualities should a hiring manager be looking for trying to develop? I think the first one is kind of related as the clarity and the role, right? So it's like understanding and I can't tell you how many times that I've jumped into an intake hall and with a few questions, you kind of realize, oh, this person has a headcount, but they don't know why they're hiring or what they need to hire for the team. Right. Right. So like, understand where the gaps in your team, from an experience point of view, from a diversity point of view, from a skillset point of view, like, what do you need to add? Why are you looking to hire? Do you need some more marketing skills? Do you need extra capacity on answering phone chats or emails? You know, having a clear understanding of what the scope of the role is, what success would look like, which is actually one thing a lot of people don't think about early stages of a hiring process. So I think I need this guy with this girl with three, five years experience. But don't think about, okay, what will they, what will they have achieved in 12 months time? And what will that look like? Right. And that's so important as you go through the processing, you're talking to candidates and you're trying to pitch them on what growth will look like and all that and stuff. So that's number one, I think. The second is probably having someone who's engaged fully in the process, from start to finish, and isn't just waiting at short stage for three or four candidates to talk to, you know, so they're looking at jobs since they're engaged and kind of craft and a compelling job opposite. They're going out to their own networks, asking for referrals, talking to people on their side. You know, they're kind of advocating for kind of experience and they're making sure that all their interviewers are aligned, that their feedback is entered in on time, that they're making time for interviews to be scheduled, that they have a clear understanding of, you know, what they're looking or what they're diving into in each interview. And then at the very end of the process, their engagement helping close the Canada. So they don't just make a decision and say, okay, you go off and figure it out. Yeah. They're engaged and saying, hey, do I need to jump on another call here? Like, do they have any questions? Can I help kind of leave you at any concerns? That's ideal. Because then imagine if you're a candidate and you're kind of 60% 70% hopefully more at that point in the process, but you know, you're, you have another offer, you've encountered offer from your current company. You really like the process. The role seems interesting. But then the higher manager says, hey, let's help on a call. This is, this is how I see your role developing. This is how you're going to impact the team. This is what our team is doing for this product or for this company or whatever. Like, that can be a really deciding factor for top candidates who might have multiple offers on the table to make the decision, you know. So I just realized I'm, I was an average to horrible Irish manager. It's hard to be a horrible one. It's, it's, you know, it's pretty easy to get average one. I was like, God, just give me the shortlist. And I will also say I depended on everyone else in the interview process to compensate for my rock band rock interest. But it's okay to, you know, rely on the other interviewers. Because that's what ultimately why you're building the process. Because what you want to avoid is having the same conversation five times from a kind of perspective. And then you get into a kind of a recap meeting at the end of a process. And suddenly, everyone is the same concerns. But no one's actually specifically asked the candidate about that or doesn't have an example to kind of counteract that. So, like structuring the whole process to be like, okay, well, as you're, you're jumping into leadership here, you know, I'm going to jump into this other factor. You're going to jump into this other one. And then we'll come together at the end and have a better rounded picture of what the candidate can bring. Right. Based again on defining the role clearly at the start, understanding what success looks like, understanding what the objectives of the role are, then you can come together and kind of have a discussion and like push track, well, you know, they didn't seem super, super experienced in customer success in my call. Oh, Teresa, you actually dove into customer success as a focus area of your interview. What did you think? And then you can kind of share your perspectives. Hiring is never perfect. It's always kind of risk, minimizing risk. Right. Mm-hmm. Anyone else lose Luke or just me? Come back. Oh, that's right. All right, we're going to get back on track. Luke, welcome back. All good. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. My laptop just completely decided to restart for no reason. So, apologies for that. So, what would you do in an interview process? What would you do in an interview process, Luke, if a candidate's laptop dropped like that? What would I do as a recruiter? I mean, they're just immediately disqualified from the posting. I'm not that mean you have spotty internet. Spotty internet and remote hybrid environment, not going to fly. You know, you kind of just need to roll with the post, I guess. What I would do is just make sure that they're not super nervous or, you know, it doesn't throw them off and like, make sure that they know, hey, this happens all the time. It's happened to me. So, don't worry about it. Like, let's just, we were talking about this topic or we were, you know, I asked you this, like, let's just get back into the swinging things. Don't worry. If they're gone for like a long time, then of course, we might need to reschedule potentially. But it's not a big issue. Unless it happens, you know, you've tried to connect three times. They drop off after a specific question time or something, you know, then it's a bit more good more. I had that it reminds me of when I actually, when I was going to a new process at Shopify, I remember I put application and whatever and I was expected a phone call interview. And so I knew what the time the call was and I was going, I was on a train to London where my girlfriend at the time, my now wife, her family, that was there. I was going there. I was on my way to London and I knew it would be tight in terms of like timing that there's a chance that I might still be on the train when I get the call. And I was like, that should be fine. It's not the biggest deal in the world. And then like, from, I had one connection. So auto out of Toronto, there's like nobody on the train. It's quiet. I'm like, this is totally at ease. This is no problem. If I get this call now, this is going to be great. Transfer to Toronto. The train from Toronto to London packed like not a seat free. And I have to be sitting. The guys behind me were coming from some like, I don't know, rave or something, but they're telling stories and like none of them are even PG 13. They're swearing like sailors. They're like, it's talking about stuff from like, oh my god. Can't believe you're saying this and public. Like to the point, like people in the front of the cat of our train car, like standing up and turning around and be like, can you guys like cut it off? Like, this is what's going on. Like, right, directly behind me. And I'm like, oh man, I'm totally going to get this call. It's sure enough. I got the call. See the call come in. I'm looking at my phone. I'm like, I can't answer this call. If I answer this, it's going to like, I'm definitely not getting the job because all it is is these hooligans here. Like, so I just like watched it go. And I was like, well, I guess I'll never work there. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I got like email back like, Hey, there's a good, good goodness to each other ball of blood. I was like, what's that? Oh, I guess that was the one. But you know, because that brought us together, you know? So that was it. That was to join. To join. Yeah, first job. First job. Yeah. First job there. So it was like, it was, I was literally, I was like, oh man. Like, I thought for sure I was, I was toast because I was in that mindset of like, oh, this is an interview process. Like, if anything goes wrong, I'm just going to be chopped off the list, you know? All right. But I think what you're saying, Luke, they're probably like, honestly, I've seen somebody just imagine your son lost such a frost. I don't know. That's all good. Yeah. Don't try and interrupt the host or anything. I was, when I was like, first joined the T 18, the shop by I shadowed an interview. And the candidate was legit in the gym, like in between sets, when he got the call. This is a video call. So he's on, he's on Google Meet or whatever. And the recruiter, one of my good friends goes to shout out to him, was like, are you sure? No, this is the best spot. He's like, yeah, yeah, of course. So he's sitting at the end of a bench, like on his phone, you know, sweat off his forehead, just like, it's for this customer support little bit. Was he real buff or something? I think that'd be like a sewing point. Maybe, maybe it was his office shirt. No, it wasn't. No name. It was Adam Wasack. Did we hire them? That's the end of the line. I don't think so. Yeah. I mean, being in games is so important and infusing the, you know, looking around and, like, probably thinking about rest time or whatever the stuff. Right. You guys hold up. I got to get this. I want to talk more about like the actual interview process. I feel like there could be some fun hat there. Like, you talk about what a bad hiring manager might do, you know, the questions, what questions to ask can be. There's a lot of template questions I find, right? That give you really templated, fluffy answers where you can also ask a lot of good questions that kind of hopefully get the person to open up and speak more a little bit. But I'm assuming over your years, you've probably shadowed and sat in on a few of these. You've probably seen some bad hiring managers in action. So like, any stories jump out to you other than this, this gym one with Dustin because that's, that's a head shake. What else have you seen? I think in general, like, most people aren't so bad that they ask completely crazy questions, you know, especially if you're in a, in a decent role, like you've been promoted to manager, you have some, usually have some kind of social skills and you kind of know what's good to ask and what's not. So there isn't like a major terrible ones that I've kind of shadowed but in general, me neither. It's only ever been great questions from my side, too. I'm dying over here. I've got to say this is probably a lot of stuff out of that one too. So maybe that's it. Oh my god. I got to tell you this story. So Luke, you can imagine this. We're higher leads at a time. So at the time, why isn't our both, we're leads. We needed to hire, probably like a lot of leads reports. Yeah. Yeah, exactly a million. So like, those were always pretty, I think was you and I like template questions, not my favorite. Like they're just, I never like that. I'm always a little more off the cuff and interviews. I have a conversation. How do we, was is the most off the cuff. And so we'd be together and like, we're probably a bad duo to interview because like 100%. We just laugh at each other and it's just like, what the hell? That stuff aside, it's still just like, so we're going into the interview and you know, a new person comes in and they sit down and probably nervous and all this kind of stuff. And you know, we say hello, blah, blah. And you know, what's takes the first question? And he's like, what turns you on about leadership? And I was like, oh my god. I just was dying laughing because I think I know what he's getting at is like, you know, Hey, what? But I trust you about the role. But the way I was like, oh my god, we like to have a little fun when we work, you know, she's just, hey, that was the wrong question. Yeah. That was a, that was just crushed. That was years ago for the record. Live and learn. Years. And no longer. Live and learn. Never been sued. I think, but honestly, I think, you know, having that kind of comfortable space where it's more of a conversation is like, the idea. Exactly. I'm the icebreaker. Maybe not like first day, like fifth day conversation was, you know, where you're going to personal. But, um, wait for the third. I think the third. Exactly. To keep it somewhat professional, you know, but, oh, man, that's the fun fun. What excites about leadership? Yeah. Oh, man, that was too fun. Over. Yeah. If you're to use an emoji, which one would it be? Oh, my god. And why? And why? And why? Yeah. The one isn't for us, too. What are the ones that we're coming to mind for you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To you guys some stories. Okay. So when I started hiring, we didn't have, I don't even think we had a career. I don't even know. I don't remember, because I was given a carplosh. And I'm amazed I didn't get to. So you said some shit to me. In my interview time, I think it was like, the, the, the, the pyramid, what the, the, I drew a comp triangle. And then I called it the like vagina of compensation. Like, uh, if you, if you turned it upside down, I turned it upside down. I'm like, it's the phallopian to the ovals. So it's just bad. So there's that one. Yeah. And I was not. That was with me. I could confirm this happened in real life. Two years. Someone kept that drawing. And then like Instagram, DMed it to me, maybe about a year ago. And I was like, oh my god, burn that now. Wait, it was the compensation. Yes. I was very visual. So I would draw this like compensation triangle. And I was like, circles, have your options at the bottom. Many benefits. This wasn't the same interview process. After the tour, what turns it on? It wasn't the same promise. Oh, yeah. Money. That turned on. Money turns me on. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. A lot of people said, yes, after they saw that that tried. Oh, good. Okay. So the other of really embarrassing story was so we were all probably in our early 20s. And I'm pretty sure if my friend will be okay with me saying this story. And so my now really good friend is interviewing. And she is not in her 20s. She's probably double, like, you know, older than us. And so we were having our, you know, just our third conversation. I was on third base by this point. And I was like, I'm like, I just want to make sure that you know what you're walking into. Should you accept this job? Because I love you. And I want you to have this job. But like, where a bunch of like immature 20 year olds, she's like, I know that. And I was like, like, like, we'll just talk about sex and poop all the time. She's like, I love poop. I love poop. And I was like, let's go. I just just talked about like, poop related sex talks. And I was like, you are so higher. And then after I hire, and everything's good. And she was like, by the way, you should never ask that question again. I was like, why? She's like, it's called age is him. And I could assume you. I was like, that's what I was like, she hired somebody to take over. And then Marcy took over. Oh my god. I think I need to take him out. Marcy was great. Luke, that's too funny. Shout out to, to Corkham. I was interviewed with him once, Luke, and I want your take on this question. He had a bunch that were just like so out of left field. But the one that I remember, he'd ask candidates. And he had, you know, he was always the smartest guy in the room and any room he was in. And so he had a method to his madness for why he would like, ask this. If it didn't make sense to anyone else, it made sense to him. The question he would ask was, would you listen to when you're driving in the car? What's your take on that, Luke? What do you, what do you listen to when you're alone in the car? What was the role? A leadership. Probably, we would have called it like a lead of leads, a timely role. I think that's a terrible question. Google used to ask questions like that, right? And I know Tesla is still in some ways there, in a future company. So Google stopped asking those type of questions because they weren't predictive of success or relevance to the role at all. And no shade to Corkham or anything like that. We all learn and Google even did it. So like, you know, it was a thing for sure. But it's more, I think the idea behind the answer, right, or the behind the question is creative thinking, like, you know, communication skills, I guess, and like, go a lot of different ways. But doesn't tell you anything about how they will be as a leader or like tangible skills that they need in the role. And it's, honestly, it opens itself up to a lot of potential bias, right? Because like, how do you fairly judge the answer to that question? And I don't know, maybe there was a clear rubric to answers there. But if I say rock, and another person says, pop, am I going to be like, you know, real dead because of that? Or am I going to be prefer because of that? So it leads itself to too much kind of bias. And I think when I wish I could speak to and articulate like kind of like his, what he was looking for in those questions. But I get this. I don't know. No, I don't remember. This is a year. You sort of say Google used to ask questions like that. Like, what are the bucket that these questions kind of like fall into? It's like, to me, that's a question that just gets people, maybe it puts them on the back foot, but I want to see how they respond when they're on their back foot. I want to see, is it going to be a genuine answer? Like, like, that's up to die, really look for like genuine, who is this person? Not, I try to get through, we cut through all the fluff and all the template responses. And so, you know, that would, you know, we've talked about this, Martian T of like, I don't know what we call it, it's almost like the beer, the beer test, like, could I have a beer with this person? They make qualify for the role, but like, are they a person I want to be hanging out with and working really closely with for the next 12 months? And maybe that's a bias that we should be checking at the door, but I think it's important, in fact, there's in to like, is this a person I want to work closely with? Will I get on with this person to a point where like, it's going to make us better partners in the working space? Yeah, I mean, look at the, would I have a beer with this person? Would I superside them on a plane side of things? Like that, for sure, that was a thing at some point, but I think the problem, the reason it's problematic sometimes is it kind of opens itself up to bias in the sense of if someone answers a question like that in a way that you think is just good, the halo effect it's called. So they answer that well, and then you get into like questions about the role, and you have a positive bias because they answered that question well, or an example that's pretty common in Ireland, is, you know, if they're biased. If someone is, you know, accomplished in a certain area, and I said Ireland, but everywhere, accomplished in one area, then you tend to, I guess, look at their performance or look at their capabilities in a different area in a more positive like too. So if someone's a really seasoned and kind of successful athlete, for example in college or whatever, and then you interview them, is your bias, oh, this person was so successful, so driven, so like, you're already going in with, hey, this person's great, and then we're going to talk about the role, versus if someone was, you know, involved in the beer society or like whatever other societies that could be in college, your perception could be kind of impacted there, right? So that's the trouble with kind of the top process of what I have a beer with this person, because you're personal bias or I guess your perception of how they are as a person, and if I would get on well with them, actually impacts your assessment, could they do the role? And that's where culture fit versus culture add comes in, right? So if you have a team full of white guys, right? A female candidate might, you have female candidate, male candidate, culture fit, the guy might fit better based on what the teen dynamics are and their interests or whatever else. What is it the best thing for the team and best thing for the company? Is it the best candidate because there's this kind of similarity bias? Probably not, right? If our things are pretty, yeah, outside of that. Everything, everything you're saying makes complete sense, right? And I guess for my own experience, I've been in that space as the hiring manager where I was deliberately trying to do the culture add thing and maybe to a fault. And Marsh was involved in this hiring process and without going into a ton of, a ton of details like it was, you know, a lot of, a lot of discussion at the end of like, okay, who, we have our final candidates, who are we going with sort of thing? And I was looking for somebody to like somebody who thinks differently from the current team members, right? So we were adding someone onto the team and I was, I was the lead of that team as a lead of leads. We were hiring. So that kind of like really weighed heavy on me, I've tried to like find something different, uh, somebody who thinks different. And I think it ultimately ended up like we found someone so different that they may, if they were a culture add, like they were ultimately not a culture fit for the team, right? And eventually everybody could feel that and, you know, long story short, it ultimately led to, um, you know, they were no longer with the team. Yeah, they very no longer with the team. I guess my question was down the road. So you missed in the, in the process because they could be, they may not have had the skillset to do the role, but this is that because of that cultural side of things exclusively or is there other things that potentially put the job in a process? Yeah, I don't know. It's a great question. Um, hiring's one of those things. It's so hard, right? Like everyone's always trying to find the best people for the role. Everyone's made mistakes. What can we, um, just how listeners, can we elaborate on what culture add versus culture fit? I really like that distinction. Yeah. So culture fit, I guess is, you know, um, will they kind of mesh with the current team? Um, do they have kind of, it can, it can mean a few different things, but I guess the, um, do they, do they match with the current team or do they fit the current team? And that could be they have common interests or they come from a similar background, similar experiences. You see it a lot, honestly, when you, if you get over-reliant and higher referrals for your pipeline, because people generally hang out with people who have similar experiences to them or similar backgrounds to them. Um, and then if you end up hiring too many referrals from kind of the same same people, you end up with an organization that is very similar in terms of background experience. What culture add is, is kind of, I guess, adding to the equation for one thing a bit of work is understanding that there's a positive aspect to people with different backgrounds and experiences coming together to create a product or build a product, create a company. Um, and it's just understanding that just because someone doesn't look the same or doesn't have the same experiences as our current team doesn't mean that they're not, or they can't be great for the role, right? Um, and that's where just the small distinction in language, I guess, is impactful. If you're looking at it from culture fit perspective versus culture add perspective, that makes sense. Can you, um, uh, I'll just say, let's say you don't have a culture fit, but they are a culture add. What do you, what do you do in that snare? Or are you expected to hire culture fit plus culture add? I think first of all, you're just looking for somebody who will excel in the role, right? So that's like key thing for hiring. Put that first. Put it first. Everything else, like sure there's stuff you can do when you're building a pipeline to make sure it's inclusive, right? Make sure your post job post and don't alienate anyone. Um, make sure their language uses gender, um, neutral or kind of even feminine code because it doesn't have the same impact for men, reading feminine post instances, uh, you know, when reading masculine postings, making sure your process is clear, making sure that the interview process is the same or consistent for each individual that applies. So you're not asking a couple of questions to one candidate and not the same kind of questions, the, or at least topics to the other candidate, right? There's consistency and feedback. There's consistency in questions and what you're diving into. Um, so that you can do that to kind of help make sure that your pipeline and the candidates that you're attracting and kind of interviewing are of diverse backgrounds. So when it comes to the process and the higher inside of things, you're looking for someone who can do the role first and foremost, so it will be really good in the role. And then when all things are created equal, if you have this kind of inclusive mindset, I guess, or you value that in your organization, if everything else is completely equal, which obviously never happens in Ireland, because people are different, but you're going to value the different experience that someone brings. Say someone comes from, say your team is full of people who have a background of FinTech. So you have two final, finalists and their equal skills, your possess them, their both top performers. One comes from kind of the same company or similar company than your current team and the other comes from a slightly different industry, maybe in broader e-commerce or from a different avenue. If you bring in that person with that slightly different experience, the rest of the team can learn from that experience potentially, you know, your overall kind of scope as a team to think through ideas and perspective and stuff increases. So it might actually be the better hire versus the other person maybe has similar experience or the same experience and other members of the team. It's not like a perfect example, but kind of just to highlight that you're valuing the different experience versus trying to fit somebody with the same experience into a team that already fits together. Can we use an example of like culture values? So I know a lot of companies, they have culture values, they hire profiles based on whether the person can showcase those values, culture fit, culture ad. What is your take there? Good question. So in terms of culture values, I think that culture fit you're looking for someone who so basically you're limiting your kind of pool to hey, you need to operate in the exact same way we operate, right? So this is how we operate, you need to operate in that way. Whereas really, values are there as kind of philosophies or as tenants on how to build the great company, a great product or whatever else. So your your fit or your your kind of culture ad, you can use it as a vetting point. Let me start there, right? So you know to be successful in this company, this is how you operate. Culture ad doesn't mean that the person doesn't have those qualities or value those same things, but they just offer slightly different experiences than maybe other other folks do. I'm not sure I explained that very well, but it makes sense to me to think where I go is if you think of like, you know, the famous Facebook culture value or with tenant, however they have labeled it with like, you know, move fast and bring things. It's like if you know, to me, from a candidate experience, you know going into that, that like if that's your cool to work that way and like you're going to you like to move fast and all that like, okay, you're going to fit in there and that's going to be an environment you might be able to thrive in. If I'm coming from a background, that's the opposite where I'm like insanely cautious and like moving fast and breaking things was not in my wheelhouse. It's something new for me than like I think that yeah, from a candidate experience, I might look at that and be able to say like, well, I might not fit into that culture. I might not be able to like, they'd be harder for me to adhere to that culture value and from a like hiring manager perspective, I might be sitting there saying like, okay, like here, here is the thing that we're, you know, you're coming from a place that's much more tentative and not going to move fast and break things like, how's this going to jive? You know what I mean? And if they're able to sort of like say that that would be out of my comfort zone, but I think I'd be a value to the team because I bring that like, um, cautiousness to it. Maybe that is what they need at the time. I think it's just like it's an awareness thing and I really like those terms for being able to think in terms of like, okay, I'm not just like, are they a culture fit? Do they, do I want to have a beer with them? But they'll be able to kind of think about it more, more consciously and be like, okay, do they, how do they mesh up? How does their experiences mesh up with our culture values and the way we do things? And do we need to deviate from that in this particular situation? Yeah, so you're basically exactly right. You're trying to assess candidates if they can be successful in the role. I'm proud to that as being successful and how you operate as a company, right? So that's first and foremost. So by the time the culture ad culture fit comes into play, you should have a clear understanding of this person will be able to be successful in the role. Right? So you might have had that backwards in my example. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, because ultimately what you're trying to do is build a process to make sure that the person that you hire has done similar or relevant, similar relevant stuff in a similar relevant environment as a predictor of success almost, right? So that could be very different or look very different, but in terms of, you know, we like to operate fast and break things. Have they done that before? Have they experienced that kind of environment? If not, how have they shown that in like other environments to have been in? And then you can assess that by itself versus somebody who has done that, right? And then at the end of the day, once you've gone through all of this and the technical requirements to the role and kind of loop them back to the intake meeting and kind of defining success, then it comes in at the very end when you're looking at, okay, I know this person will be successful. I know that they've done similar stuff and been successful in with the limitations or kind of the situations that are relevant to this role. Now let's make a decision on who can add most of the team and sometimes that comes down to, you know, the skill sets that they bring. Maybe they do have a college degree and this other person doesn't or maybe this person has five years of experience in a different field and this person doesn't, right? So you're weighing up everything that a kind of can add. So you've already done that assessment on whether they can be successful in the role of from a technical standpoint, then, you know, from a culture standpoint too, I guess. Right. What about when you get the vibe? I don't like this person. When is that because that, you can take away all the vibes. It's real. It's real. Yeah. It's a very real instinctive thing. This is about diving into why, right? So I don't like this person. Why not? What is it about this person? It feels lazy. Right. How does that show up in the conversation or how did that show up in your interviews? Right? And like there's loads of examples like that, but it's about diving into and pinpointing exactly what they said, how they said it, whatever it is, that led you to believe that, right? And you also need to check yourself. I always have a 10 minute rule when I'm interviewing like if I'm finding that I'm frustrated or that the interview isn't going well in the first 10 minutes, it's very easy to have that bias of going, this is a last cause. This person clearly doesn't have what it takes to do a job. He can't tell within 10 minutes, right? So you need to be aware of yourself. And Marsh always says he could tell within 30 seconds. He's passed Marsh. That's why he said we're average to bad high. We're learning. We've already determined that. Sorry for, yeah, I'll go it, but yeah, 10, 10, 10, yeah, 10 minute rules. So you're basically checking in with yourself and saying, okay, what can I, even if the interview is train round and it's going terribly reframe your mind to say, what can I learn from this person in the remaining time? And then you come out with curiosity, right? And you start asking questions. There are some cases where people, like I've been in calls where people are overtly racist, you know, they're not being nice. They're not speaking well about past employers or people that they know or they're being, you know, demanding and how they're talking and stuff like that. They're all real things and real flags you can pick up on. But if you're writing interview feedback and you're like, I didn't like them. They were sleazy, for example, that's not really beneficial and it doesn't really tell the true story of why they're not a match for the opportunity or the role that you're hired for, right? So it's just about pulling that next level deeper and like, why am I thinking of that? Am I potentially having a bad day as an interviewer? Like, am I annoyed or I agree it's something else that happened like an hour ago and I'm bringing it into this conversation? Or is this kind of it really not impressive or not a match for what we're looking for? And why is that the case? It's such a good take because yeah, it wasn't, you know, somewhat spot on where I know when I was doing lots of interviews, I was very, got focused, might be one way to put it. But like, I think that the thing that I was not good at was that articulation piece of being able to say, okay, I'm picking up bad vibes from this person. I don't like what they're saying. I'm not liking their responses. I knew that and I could feel that. But I wasn't always good at saying, you know, I don't like this response because of X. It was always like, I just don't, you know what I mean? And it wasn't, it isn't helpful. And yeah, interview feedback was always challenging if when you have that mindset because you can't put it right, you're like, I don't know, you didn't sound good. The wrong answers were said. Like, it's not helpful at all. Like, asking those questions and how to eliminate some of that bias. We all have bias. We all have different biases. And like, you know, that's just a very human thing that we all carry with us, right? So if you go into a conversation, you're like, this person annoys me or, you know, I didn't like that answer. So I'm not going to hide you. Well, it kind of derails what potentially could be a great kind of maybe they just, you know, answer in a different way than you were expecting or like we said, maybe you're bringing in your own stuff. So we enabled kind of really drill down on this specific thing or, you know, this is what kind of led me to think that way, helps you work through, is this bias or is it actually something tangible? And most of the time your body's telling you something, it's usually tangible. Like, you usually have some examples of things they said, how they frame certain situations that you can point to and say, they did this or they said this. And that's why I'm feeling that. A smart guy, I know from Ireland, he said once like, treat strangers like acquaintances and acquaintances like strangers. That's actually a quote. Now he might have been stealing that from somebody. Luke, who just, yeah, who older? Who's wrote like multiple books on hiring? That's one of the more tenant stuff, kind of how he looks at it, right? So, and it's, it's so true because if you're talking to somebody you know, you're coming in with, hey, let me tell you about this company. Like, let me, let me kind of, you know, your bypass and all of this other stuff around what they've actually done in their work. Yeah, how they've operated, how they operate on how that relates to your company and all that stuff. Whereas with strangers, you're like, it's almost like the opposite. They're like, hey, I don't agree. I don't actually think that you can work here. So, I'm going to grill you. And if you pass that then, okay, cool, then we'll be friends and then I'll be able to pitch the role, right? When it's actually the other, you need to get people interested enough to actually engage with the process. And if you're already friends or you already have a connection with somebody, it's more important that you dive into the kind of tangible stuff because you never know, right? So interesting. So in the vein of like attempting to wrap this up and not let this go forever. In a way, I feel like we've only scratched the surface of hiring managers and hiring. It's really been an awesome conversation, but we're not done yet. But like Luke, let's talk to our listeners around like, if they are maybe a founder of a company and they're looking to hire and like, how do they find the right recruiter is the angle I'm looking for? How do they find the right recruiter work for them? There's big recruiters out there. How do they find like careers with Luke? You're clearly an expert in your craft. You're demonstrating that here today with your answers. But like, how do people find these people that are local to them that can help them in this space? Give you the money. Yeah, sure. Wow. Thank you. That was a kind, um, this is what a sponsor found by careers with Luke. Oh, careers, and exemplify that. No, look, I think honestly, it depends on the role, depends on so many different things, right? Depends on the role you're looking to hire for, depends on the size of your company and some, um, what resources you have, you know, sometimes it just doesn't make sense so you don't have the kind of capital to bring in a recruitment company. And so there's a lot of things that you can do to set up the process yourself. It's going to take more time. It's going to take more energy, but you can definitely do that. I think when it comes to the point where recruitment is taken up too much of your bandwidth and taken away from, say, because of their core response to the needs of your role, um, you see it a lot after companies get rounds of investment that they need to hire, they need to hire quickly and they want to scale. Right. It's probably a good sign you might need some extra hands on that. Um, so it's about, first of all, understanding what stage you're at as a company and understanding, you know, the positives and benefits of bringing a recruitment, a recruiter recruitment agency in. Um, and I think the, the main thing is finding somebody, whether it's myself or whether it's any other recruiter out there who can, who's curious about the problem you're trying to solve, who ask you like tough questions around your culture, around why you're trying to hire or what realistic expectations are there. You know, if you're looking for an absolute unicorn candidate or you're looking for something more realistic and being able to kind of have that push and pull, I think those are all good initial signs that you're working with somebody who knows what they're doing. Um, and then it's about, you know, understanding that, depending on how you work with recruitment agencies or external recruiters, if you're optimizing for, hey, I just want, you know, names or CVs through and I can do the rest. That's awesome, good, we can help with that, but it might not always be the best use of your time because you need to do a lot of the heavy lift in terms of culture, vet and technical vet as well. So I think it's about understanding the stage you're at, it's about understanding the role and having a clear expectation of that. And then it's about just connecting with people and making sure that they understand when it comes to, you know, I guess inclusive hiring practices when it comes to their networks, their specialties that they match what you're looking for as well. Well said. Love it. We also have to reserve 30 minutes to talk about Luke's story. Hi. I've been not really too. Oh, my goodness. So no pressure. Is this the tutorial? The story has told by Luke. So I think it's better told by somebody else. Set it up. Set it up. Set up why we're having this story. Okay. Let me set it up and then you can correct the details because this is one of those fish tails that gets, you know, told and retold and your large fish at this point. Think fish. So we're at an offsite and we got all the leads from from the company and everyone's got a cabin. This is a pretty bougie sort of setup. There's like one road. It's like 60 people. There's like a ton of people. Each team's got a cabin is the first one. The Irish folks are over four and they've got, so we got a cabin with the Irish folks and then that's was as early as the time and everyone loves the Irish folks because, you know, just yeah. Exactly. But yeah, so like, you know, lots of fun being had. The crack is not the crack. It's not the crack. It's just good time. Good time. So everyone's having having the fun. Yeah, we're working hard. We're having some beers and playing hard also and it's a great time. And so I'm at one, I'm at a different cabin and a very senior, one of the top senior guys is he's over there and he's walking down the street. I ended up walking with him up to another cabin for where we're gathering. And so he's actually the one who tells me this story. And he says, you know what, you hear what happened to Luke? I said, no, I don't know. I said, well, you know, Luke is, you know, the Irish guy in the Canadian wilderness here, like comes out of the cabin, gets turned around, gets lost. He's a shortcut in the woods says, I can take middle of the night. Middle of the night, black, we're in the woods. He says, he's going to walk across there. He can see I'm going to walk through the woods, gets turned around. He's lost. Starts panicking thinking, oh my God, like Canadian winter set bear is going to eat me or something like that. See the cabin in the distance. Doesn't connect that it's, you know, doesn't think it's one of ours. He thinks he's like way lost. It thinks to himself, like, okay, it doesn't matter who it is. Like, I'm, I'm a goner if I don't go to this cabin. It's cold. It's cold. It's cold too. You're missing a piece. Hopefully somebody will like have mercy on our soul. He has to the story is that there was a line of these cabins and then the road kind of looped up up the mountain a bit more. Oh yeah. BC Cabin, right? Shout out to Vamo and Marcus in the crew there. And the BC. Yeah. Predictably there at the right, the radio parties. After a hard day of our sites and team building stuff and everything, we all ventured up to the BC cabin. And I can't remember much of what happened actually at the cabin itself. I just remember there was a lot of good times had. The brain was full from one of my self and another lead. I reslead Mark made a decision that instead of walking home because it was there to walk him back to our cabin. We just rest in the sketches. Wake up the next morning and we've walked back because we had a busy day the next day. Yeah, early start. We were. And I guess another point of this that I should know is the director of support, Marcy, have bought like these baseball tops for everybody, these white sorts of tops. Oh yeah, sure. It's a nice shirt. They're great. They're great. So I was wearing that and you were supposed to wear it the next day and I'd come back to that, right? So I fall asleep on the couch and I wake up. I don't know what time I fell asleep. I don't know what time I woke up. But I suddenly had this realization. I need to get back to the cabin. So I don't miss all of the stuff that was planned for the next morning. I don't know. We might miss it. So I'm so committed to was. I'm too much job. I'm like, okay, I'm going to walk home. So I leave the cabin knowing that the road loops around. So instead of walking the long way around, past three or four of the cabins to get back to ours, I'm just going to make a shortcut. The line to the tree. Call that bush wagon. Unfortunately, I didn't see the first thing I didn't account for was there was a small fence at the top of the hill. So I kind of tripped over that rolled around a couple of times. Oh no, those are myself off. And I was like, okay, I know where I just need to walk straight because I'm going to hit this in the cabin. I'm going to hit the Irish cabin and then I can go back. So I was walking that direction. Kind of foolproof land, right? Yeah, totally checks out. And all I remember was thinking that the lake that was really far away when I started the walk was getting a lot closer. And it was a lot closer than I remember it being to the cabin that I was supposed to be at. So like, okay, something's gone wrong here. I've been walking. Yeah, there's a sign there for what feels like 30 minutes. It's pitch black. It's cold. I'm not dressed for the Canadian probably don't have a goat. Yeah. So I turn back and I'm walking for what feels like 45 minutes, walking back. And I haven't seen anything. I haven't seen anybody. I haven't seen any cabins. I haven't seen anything. So that's terrifying. So it's cold. It's dark. I'm like, okay, maybe I'll just sleep in the woods. So I'm like, cuddled off by kind of trying to make myself warmer. And then I think I see a bear and I think I see a moose or whatever in the darkness that I'm like every Canadian animal. I'm going to die. Okay. So I make a decision. I'm like, there's just hold on. Did you curl up in the woods? Did you like the hunts down? Wow. Holy well, this is the inside. This is the never before told story. All the details. Actually pretty traumatic to read here. So I decide, okay, I just need to get inside here. It's like freezing. I don't know if I'm going to catch hypothermia at this point. I don't know if I'm being chased by a bear. What's going on? I just need to get inside. So I walk for another five minutes and I see a light in the distance of a cabin. I'm like, okay, this is it. I'm just going to need to go into that cabin and expand to the family that are in that cabin, that in the morning when they wake up and see me on the couch that I don't mean any harm. I just got lost. So I go up and I slide the door and it opens and I go on the couch. What look? And then I see the first thing I see is the couch. So I run over and I go on the couch, thank God. And I lie down and then I turn around and Mark Kerry is in the other couch. So I basically had walked for two hours almost and came back to the exact same cabin I started in. And I'm tired of this fight. So I fall asleep, kind of confused, kind of embarrassed fall asleep. I wake up to Mark, kind of kick in the couch and go on, hey, look, we need to get up, we need to put a back to our cabin. Yeah, 45 minutes later, probably. Right, half an hour, we'll be shifting to pause. And I'm walking back to the cabin and I have my coat zipped up and it's like a black coat. And I'm telling Mark and it's done and on me, I don't have any mod anywhere on me. And I'm pretty sure I fell down multiple times. Did I dream that whole thing? Like, did I actually dream getting lost in the woods and we taste by bear? It sounds like a dream. What? Who knows? And by the time we got back to our cabin, I convinced myself that it was a dream. Until we get inside, we step inside, was I think you were making breakfast so you maybe saw us come in. I'm not sure. I met you at the door because I was probably like, what the hell? We start five minutes. So I'm like, oh, yeah, crazy. Like, you know, got lost in the woods in a dream. And then I on zip my coat and I'm wearing the white baseball shirt, but it's just covered in brown and everything else. So then I had to explain to not only the director support Mercy, but explain to the VP Roy and Toby Shannon. Shaya wasn't in my baseball gear, but thankfully, Tom Powell were to got round already. So Roy was telling me the story before I finished. So that was my first Canadian experience. I've learned a lot since then, but it was it was yeah, you had to walk the dog in your neighborhood or is he where you get lost exactly. I have the air. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's it. That was my favorite. And then you settled in for a nice day of hard work or was opened it up with asking everybody what turns them on about leadership. You didn't miss a beat. You didn't miss a beat. Luke, you delivered that day. None of us were feeling our best. I feel like I even got like 45 minutes to sleep that night. But my tactic and then Roy Roy knocks on the door to our cab and the VP's like, I feel I'm going to join your your session today. I was like, Oh, oh, good. Come on in, Roy. Let's see what we can do. I do remember making the executive decision that for the first half of the day, for the first session, when it was just the Irish team, that I'm going to be the most engaged person there has ever been at any of these things. So it's like answering questions. I was doing all that starts like, I'm fine. I wasn't I've drinking or anything the night before. And then we got to the wider cabin and about half an hour later, I just completely crashed. And I don't think I said one other word. I think wise you were just walking around Hanami cups of water, making sure I was like still alive. Should I just let you go back to rest? We live and learn. That was a great thing. That was it was worth it. Well worth the weight. That delivered. Martian stepped out. It's probably the right place to end it. Martian stepped out so the kid is waking up. Thanks to Ada for for letting Martian participate for the amount of time without interruptions. Thanks to you, Luke. This was an awesome. We'll definitely have to have you back because I know there's more to get into. Oh, there's a sweetheart just waking up from nap. Yeah, this was great. Before you go, Luke, we'll wrap it up. But like, just where can people find you? And then we'll end it there. Yeah. So careers with Luke LinkedIn page is probably the easiest place to go. And then I have a link to all my other stuff. I have a newsletter as well on substack careers with Luke. So check that out. I have a TikTok that I'm trying to do, but I'm not a big TikTok guy. So let's just stick the LinkedIn and the newsletter for now. And then we can hopefully get the TikTok. The TikTok will be posted there. Yeah, exciting. Thanks so much. Awesome. Thank you so much. This was amazing, Luke. Like, absolutely spectacular. And I think part two will absolutely need to happen. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks, everyone. Thanks everyone. See you folks.