Ep. 1: What’s Up With the Talent Market Right Now?

We discuss everything talent market and the unique challenges facing employers in finding top talent.

Transcript

Fletcher:

Today is our first episode of the Hire Talents Podcast.

Stephanie:

Yay.

Fletcher:

So straightforward hiring advice for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.

Stephanie:

Yes.

Fletcher:

It’s exciting, right?

Stephanie:

Totally.

Fletcher:

Totally.

Stephanie:

I’m stoked.

Fletcher:

I can tell by the inflection in your voice how excited you are.

Stephanie:

Yep.

Fletcher:

Well I mean, where do we begin?

Stephanie:

What’s up with the current marketplace? Where are we at?

Fletcher:

I think it’s an interesting topic. I’m 36 years old, I’m older than some of the listeners, I’m younger than many of them. I’m a millennial. I’d like to think that. Maybe the cusper, they call me. It’s going to come from that perspective, guys. It’s a little different. I’d like to think that my generation, our generation, is upcoming leaders in this world. They’re starting to take over leadership roles within businesses and government, politics, all across the board really, frankly. What we’ve seen in our lifetime is great economic boom and great economic bust.

Stephanie:

Huge recession.

Fletcher:

Huge recession. I mean, many of us were affected by it greatly in different ways, and we’re coming out of that. And we’ve been coming out of that for the last 10 years really, frankly. So, 2007, 2008. You know we had the housing crash, the economy bust. Unemployment rates skyrockets-

Stephanie:

What was it, like [eight 00:01:23] or?

Fletcher:

Yeah it was, I believe eights if I recall it correctly. So you know, not good. Foreclosures, people’s jobs, I mean we’ve all heard the stories. Progressively over the last, say, since 2009, 10, we’ve really seen a very steady improvement in the economy which is translated to a very, very steady and solid, robust growth in jobs and employment. During that time however, what we have not seen is any sort of change in wage growth. Minimal at best, and it’s definitely not keeping up with inflation.

Fletcher:

So a lot of times when our clients come to us, many of them are entrepreneurs who run small to mid size businesses, they come to me and the say, “I want to pay somebody x, y, and z.” They’re thinking about 2007, 2008 kind of dollars.

Stephanie:

Yeah, they’re 10 years in the past.

Fletcher:

10 years in the past. Not even adjusting for inflation, right? So it’s more like negative dollars [inaudible 00:02:27]. So that’s a big factor. Currently as of the last job support here in the beginning of the month, 3.8% national unemployment rate.

Stephanie:

That’s like the lowest since, I don’t even know when.

Fletcher:

Yeah I mean it’s at an all-time historic low.

Stephanie:

Decades at least.

Fletcher:

Yeah maybe we’ll pull up the stack here [generalator 00:02:46] and we’ll put that up here. But it’s a historic low. It’s arguably at what they call a full-employment market, which begins to start having some other repercussions. There are currently more jobs open than people looking for jobs. So really, we’ve crossed that path in the last jobs reports numbers. Some analysts will say that there’s a 2.7% wage growth recently. That is encouraging.

Stephanie:

It’s still super far behind where it needs to be.

Fletcher:

Exactly. You and I live it everyday though, right?

Stephanie:

Yep, for sure.

Fletcher:

We are talking to candidates, they’re telling us their stories, their life stories, right? Usually.

Stephanie:

Yeah. They have to. I mean part of it is getting to know them but it also, from a perspective of a job-seeker, bet you’re also getting a lot of personal details too.

Fletcher:

Yeah exactly. If I want to find out how you go to where your at in your professional career, in order to tell that story, you’re probably going to tell me something about yourself personally, right?

Stephanie:

Yeah. Or like reasons for leaving a job, a lot of times that’s very personal too.

Fletcher:

Yeah, exactly. People have a lot of pressure. Costs of living is going way up, they’re really financially stressed. You know, I think it’s going to have for many people, say, an unforeseen consequence on the current talent market. The war for talent here. Because I still feel like we see a lot of interested talent, people coming out. They’re coming out, they want to talk about opportunities, just because they’re employed doesn’t mean they’re not open to new opportunities. In fact, one of the statistics that we’ll probably talk about soon is how many people who are currently employed are-

Stephanie:

Are actively looking.

Fletcher:

Yeah. Actively looking or completely open to the idea, right? I’m just coming into a different side. So that might be a little bit saving grace for employers in some ways, it means there’s still access to the talent that they need. But in other ways, it might cost more.

Stephanie:

Well it’s a talent market so think about it that way. I mean we have… As a candidate, you have so many more options and less competition really with way more jobs available. So no wonder they’re all open.

Fletcher:

I mean for a common sales job, and we work with a large service-providing company and we’ve done for many many years, and we’ve seen application rates probably drop half over the last five years and we’ve been running jobs for them. And I mean unless we’re getting dumber-

Stephanie:

I don’t think that’s happening, no.

Fletcher:

Right.

Stephanie:

We’re using way more tools now than we’ve ever had.

Fletcher:

Yeah. I mean we’re constantly tweaking the process and getting smarter and smarter and smarter, better and better and better at this. That just the fact is it’s harder to bring to attract more talent. And it’s probably 50% decline in a professional sales job. I know we’ve seen other jobs more in kind of more of the lower level customer service and [inaudible 00:06:03] jobs, where we probably still can’t beat the talent away. They’re just climbing up the walls. But the quality I think has gone down quite a bit. We’ve seen that with a recent client that we’re working with.

Stephanie:

Yes, agreed. You still get a lot of that volume, but it’s few and far between a really good candidate whereas before, you might have not gotten as many, even though you still got a lot. But there are a lot of really good candidates in that pool.

Fletcher:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, what does the current talent market conditions mean to, say, an entrepreneur in a small or mid sized business?

Stephanie:

For me, I would think, “How am I going to find talent? What am I going to do to attract them? I don’t have unlimited resources, time, finances. I need somebody right now.”

Fletcher:

Yeah, yeah. So at the end of the day there’s no silver bullet here. There are a lot of tools and strategies and best practices and processes that make tackling this challenge a whole lot easier, right?

Stephanie:

Yeah. Right.

Fletcher:

It’s still a job, it’s still a task. You can’t just like snap my fingers and be like bring me a magician or unicorn or, you know, is also really tall and friendly.

Stephanie:

Yeah. You get maybe two of those instead of 10.

Fletcher:

Yeah. So I think it has to start with a mindset. And this is why I see [inaudible 00:07:49] ultimately, is hiring, getting the right people on the bus, building excellent teams that are highly effective, are very engaged, talented, just overall winners. It’s just been a passion of mine since I was like a little kid, and I wrote like a term paper in high school graduating, and I wrote about getting the right people on the bus.

Stephanie:

Wow. In high school.

Fletcher:

In high school. Yeah. So throughout my professional career, I haven’t always been squarely in the talent acquisition space like where you are now. I focused on getting the best people on the team, the right players. And more than anything else that I focused on in those businesses, from marketing or sales or operations, or any of the other aspects that distract us in business, because there’s lots of things we need to do as leaders in a business. I put that as my number one priority. That was it. Period. And I focused heavily on that, and that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to do other things. Yes we do, in business we got to deal with all these things.

Stephanie:

Wear a lot of hats.

Fletcher:

We wear a lot of hats all the time as a leader. Whether you lead a department or a division or you lead a whole company. Either way, you’re being pulled in 100 different directions, right? So it’s hard to do in some senses, but that mental block or that focus that you have, it’s got to be laser focused on that this is my number one priority, is finding the very, very best talent for my situation. And if you do that, then a lot of these other problems will go away.

Stephanie:

Just work themselves out.

Fletcher:

Right? Yeah. Your marketing problem will go away. Your sales problems might go away. Your operational disfunction might go away. All these things resulting in higher profits, higher revenues, happier people, too, right?

Stephanie:

So when you look at the bigger picture, like I want higher profits, higher revenues, how do you get there? You have to widdle it down to where do you start?

Fletcher:

What is the number one key component to achieving all of those things? And as entrepreneurs as business people, we don’t say it all the time. We’re people are the number one thing. It’s the most important asset our company has. But are we really treating them that way? Are we really treating… I mean hopefully, we at least treat our people that way.

Stephanie:

Yeah, employees.

Fletcher:

Yeah, hopefully we treat them like they’re number one, our most important assets. But do we treat the talent acquisition that way?

Stephanie:

Yeah, probably not.

Fletcher:

Not always.

Stephanie:

It’s almost like, it’s not even intentional maybe. It’s really unintentionally, you don’t even… you’re just like, “I need this x, y, z.” And you lose sight of the details.

Fletcher:

I need to fill this sales role, or I need to fill this engineering position, or I need to fill this administrative role because I can’t move my relationships forward. Or we’re losing money because our process is too expensive, or I’m not capturing enough sales and growing any of my sales to [inaudible 00:11:25] targets, because I don’t have anybody there going to out and knocking on the doors or dealing with the emailese. Or I’m not having enough leads to deal with it.

Fletcher:

But then we’re dealing with so many other competing interests, right? So okay I need to fill this sales position right? Like I can like… My next quarter’s sales goals so that we can get to the next one, get to where we want to be. But you know I got this payroll problem, I got this lawsuit over here, I got this supply chain issue over here. And it’s easy to let those things give us maybe an excuse to shortcut our effort in hiring.

Stephanie:

We see this all the time, too. Somebody is desperate, especially when they’re desperate. They want to forgo some of the more lengthy process of reference checking or… “Oh this guy has great experience, he’s done this before.” But then you look at his resume and he’s a job hopper. He’s been there maybe eight months in each job. And you’re like, no you don’t want to hire this guy.

Fletcher:

How would you follow up with this person?

Stephanie:

Yeah. Well they’re desperate. So they’re looking at it with, what is the term?

Fletcher:

Rose colored glasses.

Stephanie:

Rose colored glasses and desperate people do desperate things.

Fletcher:

Yeah they do.

Stephanie:

They’ll pay for it.

Fletcher:

They’ll pay for it in the end right? Because when you hire that person who’s never stayed in a job for more than… I’m biased, because I think it’s more three years is the minimum. I tell people if they’ve got more than three jobs in 10 years, then you better watch out. Think about it this way, look. If they’ve never kept a job… Let’s just say they’re a two year person. All their jobs were two years or less. What evidence do you have that this person will stay-

Stephanie:

What makes you so special?

Fletcher:

Yeah. Longer than two years. All the evidence says, every single job has never lasted longer than two years. I mean if we were a judge or a jury and had to take our emotions out of this-

Stephanie:

We’d have to look at that.

Fletcher:

I don’t think that anybody could say, “Oh yeah, of course. They’re going to do better for you.” We diverge a little bit. So this is the kind of thing we’re going to talk about during our podcast. That topic is a fun one for me, I like to give them a hard time about these things.

Stephanie:

Job hopping?

Fletcher:

Yeah, all of, you know-

Stephanie:

Emotional. Falling in love with a candidate.

Fletcher:

Falling in love with a candidate is where it comes from. Because I think we’ve all heard this. Any time I bring this topic up to any of our clients, I say, well you know, “You want a job hopper?” They’re going to be like, “No. Of course not.” But then yet they look at these resumes and-

Stephanie:

They justify why they want [crosstalk 00:14:14]-

Fletcher:

Yeah they start justifying! They start going like, “Well you know, there was this going on, or that going on.” Whoa, you just fell in love with that person.

Stephanie:

Well they’re desperate I mean-

Fletcher:

Yeah. I get it.

Stephanie:

So they’re teaching them to do it better.

Fletcher:

We’ve all been desperate before, I think.

Stephanie:

I get it, I understand that, but there’s a better way. For sure.

Fletcher:

So that’s the next part.

Stephanie:

Yes. The better way.

Fletcher:

The better way. Get smarter.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Educate yourself.

Fletcher:

Get smarter okay. Look, you got to make it your number one priority. You got to treat it like your number one priority, despite all of the challenges and other things pulling at your time and attention.

Stephanie:

[inaudible 00:14:52] work cannon. You got to make time for it.

Fletcher:

Subsequently, you’ll make the time for it, right? If you treat it like your highest priority, you’ll put the time and effort in it. Then you got to get smarter. Because yeah it does take a lot of time. It does take a lot of effort to do it right. The silver bullet is to do all the best practices that have been taught to us generation after generation. You know it’s actually not a whole lot different now. There are some different strategies, particularly on the marketing side of it, and there are a ton of new tools out there that make all of these things-

Stephanie:

Super easy.

Fletcher:

Super easy.

Stephanie:

Time saving.

Fletcher:

Time saving, efficient, streamlined processes. Think about it this way, right? I kind of like this example. McDonalds. The greatest franchise ever basically, right? How’d they do it.

Stephanie:

Have you seen that movie by the way? It’s a great movie.

Fletcher:

I have. What’s it called, again?

Stephanie:

The Founder I think?

Fletcher:

Something like that.

Stephanie:

About Ray Kroc.

Fletcher:

Yeah. So how’d they do it? What did we learn in that movie?

Stephanie:

I don’t know, how did he do it? He-

Fletcher:

Processes. Process.

Stephanie:

Yeah, streamline the process-

Fletcher:

Everything just-

Stephanie:

Just duplicated it.

Fletcher:

Yeah, everything is a process.

Stephanie:

He found out what worked and then-

Fletcher:

As long as I plugged the right, more or less the right person in, high school student, into the machine, and created a process that a high school student was capable of executing over, and over, and over and over and over again. And in fact, who does it better is In-N-Out Burger. I was in the drive thru this weekend, as a guilty pleasure once a month I get In-N-Out Burger.

Stephanie:

In-N-Out. Who loves In-N-Out.

Fletcher:

And I’m sitting there and looking in the window and the girls there are just like cranking down on the potatoes. It’s just a process. You could teach a monkey to do that.

Stephanie:

An attainable process that produces the same result every time.

Fletcher:

Yeah. Over and over again. So that’s what we’re going to teach you how to do in this series. We’re going to teach you a process that’s easy, that’s duplicatable. It’s going to take some practice. It takes a little bit of effort, like cranking down all those potatoes at In-N-Out. After a while, I’m pretty sure your arm gets tired.

Stephanie:

But in the end your candidates are going to be as good as-

Fletcher:

Those french fries. I mean that might be-

Stephanie:

So do you want In-N-Out [crosstalk 00:17:30]-

Fletcher:

That might be [inaudible 00:17:31]. I think those french fries are amazing, but maybe others maybe not. Maybe the others like Five Guys.

Stephanie:

I’m not im- I mean french fries are… I’ll eat all of them.

Fletcher:

Well some french fries are superior to other french fries.

Stephanie:

McDonalds, no?

Fletcher:

Well yeah, no. But In-N-Out is at least on the upper [eshing 00:17:52] along of all french fries out there, right? And you know it’s down through a duplicatable process that anybody can do with a little bit of effort and just following some basic work guidelines, right?

Fletcher:

So you’re going to get smarter by following a better process at the end of the day. And by using the technology and the tools in those processes, or to run those processes, to ultimately make it a lot easier. Back in the day, we were a recruiter, I mean these guys had to have like [rolladex 00:18:30] and index cards.

Stephanie:

Like paper resumes.

Fletcher:

Yeah. They were getting mailed resumes from newspaper ads. And they had index cards and they were calling people at home at night at the dinner table. Yeah, forget that. It’s such better… There’s so many better ways, right? So the other thing that we didn’t talk about too much, but will have to be part of this conversation is, look. Smaller businesses, we are at a disadvantage ultimately.

Stephanie:

How so? How would you… I mean, if you could say it in like a sentence. What’s the disadvantage?

Fletcher:

Resources.

Stephanie:

Financial?

Fletcher:

Yeah.

Stephanie:

Or just everything?

Fletcher:

Well-

Stephanie:

Time, people?

Fletcher:

All of it, yeah. Look when small business has a need, that hurts that business more than it hurts a large business.

Stephanie:

Because you have one person doing five things versus five people doing five things right?

Fletcher:

Being streamlined in their processes. Somebody else has to pick up that slack, right? And that hurts productivity in both roles or all the tasks associated in what both the two people should be doing, right?

Stephanie:

Right.

Fletcher:

None of those tasks get done as well as they should. Or it slows you down for moving other projects and processes or business goals or initiatives forward, right? Because you can’t go onto maybe this other initiative or tackle this other project, because you’re too busy just with your day to day. [crosstalk 00:19:59]-

Stephanie:

And then-

Fletcher:

Head out and wonder why.

Stephanie:

And no lashing on-

Fletcher:

Yeah, you know that feeling right?

Stephanie:

So what’s the process? Where do we start as a small company? What’s the first step?

Fletcher:

With unemployment rate being so low, you got to get more competitive. So the job, the opportunity ultimately is measured by how much this role is going to engage and challenge somebody, plus the compensation factor. And that then equals the step up value to the client or to the candidate. So at the end of the day, if you’re going to win the war of talent, you’ve got to create a significant step up opportunity for people.

Stephanie:

From where they’re at currently.

Fletcher:

From where they’re at currently-

Stephanie:

For them to be interested.

Fletcher:

And that means in their life, their standard of living, that means in their quality of their work and then how interesting it is to the environment that they’re in. But at the end of the day, it’s basically half and half. It’s half environment, challenge, quality of work, career advancement, learning. All of those all lumped into one deal. The other half is really tied strictly to quality of life, standard of living is the way I like to put it. So people talk about compensation for this market rate, for this job, this is what everybody else pays. You know, we’re average of this compensation range. So we’re in the market rate for that. But at the end of the day, compensation directly affects people’s quality of life. Their standard of living and do you want to take a step back-

Stephanie:

No.

Fletcher:

In your standard of living?

Stephanie:

Absolutely not.

Fletcher:

And would you do it for a job that was just like-

Stephanie:

Any other.

Fletcher:

Yeah, any other? Right? Like is your job really more interesting than the next guy’s job?

Stephanie:

Yeah, for less money.

Fletcher:

Think all of the employers that we deal with, which is probably closer to thousands over the years. You think any of them told me that their job and their environment sucked and that they’re a terrible place to work and-

Stephanie:

For the most part, I think on the spectrum they’re all pretty much the same in one way or another. I mean they are very similar in their structure, they share a lot of the same characteristics. So to pay somebody less to do something that is pretty lateral is, yeah.

Fletcher:

When at the end of the day, we have families, we have lifestyles and we don’t want to see that go backwards. The American dream is to climb the ladder.

Stephanie:

Yeah there’s like an inherent need to grow continuously, right? Financially, emotionally, spiritually, all of that. I want to keep moving up.

Fletcher:

Yeah, we all want to grow. Right? So larger companies have more growth opportunities. You come in at one role, you can grow to another role. They probably have more professional development opportunities. They reimburse for educational experiences or they just flat out provide them. They’ll train you on how to do something that you’ll know how to do before. They will have quality of life type benefits, so like better health benefits and a 401k retirement benefits. Might even have firms benefits, like stipends for traveling or company cars.

Stephanie:

One of those perks.

Fletcher:

Perks. Discounts on your cell phone bill, you know. All sorts of like crazy-

Stephanie:

Gym membership.

Fletcher:

Gym membership.

Stephanie:

Massages and stuff.

Fletcher:

Lunches. Gift card bonuses for employee referrals. I mean lots of little things that you know, make your quality of life better. And then throw the cash compensation on top of that too. So some of those things will be really difficult to compete with, but we definitely have to start getting over the concept of paying market rate. You’re not. You first of all have to understand what market rate is.

Fletcher:

So we have a pretty interesting example. So maybe a client paradigm [Belvers 00:24:31]. They engage with us using our pre-hire assessments tests. They began to use them a little bit, we did some kind of life consulting that we normally do on just how to use them in the process and just sort of guide them on the hiring process a little bit. It was great, really engaging conversation, then he decided okay, he wants to get serious. He wasn’t really attracting any candidates, he didn’t have anything to test or to use the assessments on. So again just in our full service, rapid recruit system. Got him onboard with a full service rapid recruit system, so we kind of aided him. We accelerated his onboarding using an applicant tracking system which you got to have this day and age. They’re so damn inexpensive.

Stephanie:

It makes it so much easier.

Fletcher:

Yeah they pay for themselves in the first minute you even use it.Yeah but we’re going through this like we’re integrating HubSpot into our world, right? It is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it’s like trying to figure out how to use the slice bread machine. I have no idea, I’m going to like cut someone’s fingers off or something trying to figure that out. But we got accelerated for that. Well we’re experts in this area so we help them accelerate that process. Got him up and running, got him a couple of candidates. Following the process. We got smarter. And we also took him from A to W in the process of learning. And all he had to do was learn whatever it is, x, y, and x. I did my alphabet right I think. So that’s all he learned. And that made it super easy for him.

Fletcher:

And then, he came to the conclusion that now he’s going on vacation. He’s going out of the country for two weeks. Just got a bunch of new business. And I mean, I can get everything good to talk this guy out of paying big fees. But he’s like, you know what, look. He goes, “Know what the hell you’re talking about. I trust you. Everything is great, I get it now. But I’ve gone out, I’ve interviewed a bunch of people.” And I said, “Great. What did they tell you they want to be paid?” He’s like, “Oh well,” he’s hiring a construction project manager, he’s like, “Well, between 100, 110,000.” It’s like, “Okay. Are you ready to start paying that?” I swear we deal with so many home builders. They all want to pay like $60 to $80,000 a year. And I tell every single one of them, “Dude, forget it.” You’re not even going to-

Stephanie:

Not going to happen.

Fletcher:

Not if you want a good one.

Stephanie:

Which they all do.

Fletcher:

Or you want to teach one how to do it. You want to hire a guy or gal out of college and teach her how to be a construction project manager. Then you could do that. But they want somebody who’s experienced, who’s dealt with luxury master homes, who can-

Stephanie:

Do all of it.

Fletcher:

Do all of it, yeah.

Stephanie:

Carpentry and project management.

Fletcher:

So the best thing I can recommend any business leader to do is when they want to decide how much to pay someone, is go out there and just simply ask 10 semi-qualified candidates, or even halfway qualified candidates. Because you probably have a hard time finding one really qualified one. So just ask them, just have like a 15 minute phone call with them. Learn a little bit about them and then ask them what they’d like to be paid. And then just write it down and put it all right next to each other. And tell me what that number is, compared to what you initially thought you would be able to pay somebody for that job.

Stephanie:

That’s what you got to pay them.

Fletcher:

That’s what you got to pay them.

Stephanie:

Especially if that’s what their experience matches up. That’s what they’ll get.

Fletcher:

Yeah. I mean at the end of the day, yeah. If they’re worth that, then you should pay them that.

Stephanie:

To be competitive.

Fletcher:

Yeah. To be competitive. You might also find that your perception of what somebody is worth is vastly different than the reality of what’s available on the market. That’s the conclusion that Abraham came to. Now, he’s a good sport. He’s a very humble dude, he’s all very successful. He’s got some money to share with other people. It’s not a bad perspective to hav. If you’re doing well, then the other people working for you should be doing well. Especially ones in key roles.

Fletcher:

So at first he didn’t believe me when I told him. I told him this right off the bat. And this is like six months helping. And now he’s telling me that’s how much he should be paying these guys. I think it’s a great example of just one of the things that you have to do to make recruiting your highest priority. Go out and find out for yourself. Don’t rely on anybody else, because you don’t believe anybody else.

Stephanie:

Yeah, fact check for yourself.

Fletcher:

Yeah, do the work yourself. It’s really not that hard. Talking to 10 people. For somebody, for some people, I guess.

Stephanie:

I mean maybe sometimes they don’t even realize that that’s part of what they need to do though. They’re like, “This is what I want to pay, this is what we can afford to pay. This is what they deserve, the market says…” You know.

Fletcher:

So in our next episode, we’re really going to tackle this-

Stephanie:

The steps.

Fletcher:

This dilemma. So the first step ultimately in this process is, you got to create a really clear job description that defines what success looks like in the job accurately and concisely. And also it doesn’t cloud the waters with unnecessary aspects. There’s always lots of aspects to a job description in a job, right. So clearly focused job description, clearly defines the key activities related to the job and how success will be measured right.

Fletcher:

Now once you’ve got that, then you can begin to create a candidate profile. And so this goes directly back to the compensation question. So depending on the key, core accomplishments needed and required by the job, and the candidate profile required to be the most likely to achieve those, will dictate how much you should pay someone. And often times there’s a misalignment that you were leading to.

Stephanie:

Yeah, so I think understanding your candidate, who you’re looking for, is a whole nother episode probably. How to-

Fletcher:

Yeah well for… Yeah. I mean ultimately we’re going to come back to the compensation factor in a question later on. First we’re going to create a job description. Second we’re going to create a candidate profile. Then third, we’re going to learn how to market that description. Create a job advertisement. And if we keep-

Stephanie:

[crosstalk 00:31:46]. I can’t wait for that episode.

Fletcher:

Which one?

Stephanie:

The job advertisement. God there’s so bad job descriptions. I get them all. No offense, I love all you guys. But the job ads, you know, need some work.

Fletcher:

Super boring.

Stephanie:

Tune in to that.

Fletcher:

Super boring, yeah.

Stephanie:

No bullet points, everybody has attention to detail.

Fletcher:

Yeah. They’re all the same. Because you know what they do, what people do, is they just go… They got to hire a sales guy, they go on Indeed and they type in “Sale Professional,” and then they pull up everybody else’s job-

Stephanie:

Well yeah-

Fletcher:

They just copy each other’s shitty job descriptions.

Stephanie:

They don’t put the time in because they’re busy, they’re in a hurry. They need that person as you said yesterday.

Fletcher:

Shortcutting it.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Makes sense.

Fletcher:

So in our next episode, we’re going to talk about that. And kind of as a conclusion to our introduction to the talent market, there’s a war on talent out there guys. We got to make it our number one priority in our businesses. We need to get smarter. We got to become process-driven in how we deal with this. We employ the best tools that are out there. Listen to this podcast.

Stephanie:

That’s the most important.

Fletcher:

Yeah the most important part. And then the other part before we end is I’d just like to, for all our entrepreneur friends out there, or ones that we’re not friends with yet, or other hiring experts, recruiters, software developers, anybody in this space that is interested to come out and have a conversation with us, we more than welcome you to have you on. Talk about whatever you like when it comes to talent acquisition. If you want to talk about HR related, please no. Sorry. Wrong guy. Stephanie maybe, you and her can chat about it. But-

Stephanie:

Or questions even. Questions you guys have, challenges-

Fletcher:

Oh yeah.

Stephanie:

That are going on. Send us comments, emails, whatever works.

Fletcher:

Yeah comments, emails, info@thehiretalent.com. That’s info@thehiretalent.com

Stephanie:

H-I-R-E.

Fletcher:

Yeah. H-I-R-E. It’s amazing how many times people spell it the other way, which I don’t know, maybe we should have spelled it that way. I don’t know.

Stephanie:

Then they would have spelled it H-I-R-E.

Fletcher:

Yeah I know. Of course, right? Or, if we’re putting this out there and you normally charge $250 an hour for these full on kind of power consultation sessions to deal with problem that your having in your search process. So if you’re like in Timbuktu and you can’t find anybody-

Stephanie:

It happens a lot.

Fletcher:

What, that they’re in Timbuktu?

Stephanie:

Timbuktu. We have no job market. Help.

Fletcher:

Yeah, we’ve done work in Alaska, Hawaii, all over these crazy places.

Stephanie:

Oh yeah.

Fletcher:

Yeah so whatever your problem is, and no matter how unique it is, there are going to be best practices that will at least help take the edge off a little bit. Something that’ll make it a little bit easier, more efficient, or the execution of all the best practices well help you get to an end result better, quicker, faster. They’re still applicable. So if you have a problem like that, please call us or reach out. We can do a whole session with you live. So yeah, we’re looking forward to hearing people reach out, having conversations with you. In the meantime, Stephanie and I will yell at each other.

Stephanie:

Just another day at work.

Fletcher:

So thank you for listening to The Hire Talents podcast.

Stephanie:

Our first one, can you tell?

Fletcher:

Straightforward hiring advice, for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.

Stephanie:

Yeah, signing off.

Fletcher:

Signing off, peace.

Stephanie:

Peace out.