Takeover Unfiltered

Brianna Rooney: Welcome to talent takeover,

Taylor Bradley: Unfiltered.

Brianna Rooney: Great to have you all back. We are on every Tuesdays and we're gonna get right into it with recruiting essential ingredients. Ooh, I like this episode, welcome to talent takeover

Taylor Bradley: Unfiltered.

Brianna Rooney: When it comes to working hard and keeping it real, we know our, self care, happiness, inner peace and time. I'm Brianna Rooney, and this is Taylor Bradley. Hey y'all and we have thrived in chaos and turned it into in art form. So, Taylor, what are we doing here today?

Taylor Bradley: We're here to give you a raw under the hood view of all things recruiting and finally give credit where credit is due to a long underrated industry. That's full of quote unquote experts.

Brianna Rooney: All right. Well then let's take this show to the road. Taylor, how you feeling today?

Taylor Bradley: I'm feeling good. I think this one's gonna be really controversial for some

Brianna Rooney: People, you know, and I think the, the interesting thing is, you know, we can tell you what it takes to be a good recruiter, and then we can kind of dissect it and kind of narrow it down into the whole, you know, it's all about work ethic, but I think you could probably do that with any kind of industry we have here, but I think let's get into it, uh, because we can definitely talk about the habits of a recruiter, which we will do in a different episode, but let's talk about all the essentials that, you know, they're very, um, they can, you know, go into any different industry in, in general. Help me out here. oh, go for

Taylor Bradley: It. Oh, were you okay? So they're very okay. They can

Brianna Rooney: Translate. There you go. That's what I was trying to do translatable. Well, I couldn't think of the word

Taylor Bradley: well, and that's a part of Renaissance recruiting. Well, plug there is that they have to know various industries. I mean, you guys specialize in tech, you have to know tech, they have to know marketing, HR, even TA um, we find oftentimes that as we've talked about before that TA's typically the, the catchall where you've got people from marketing that have a little bit of bandwidth or people that are in accounting, have a little bandwidth, and they've now gotta go and pretend to be recruiters. But that also goes back to what we've talked about is that there is a strategy in art to it, to being a good one, right? There's this essential ingredients that every recruiter needs to have. Mm-hmm and not everybody that's in accounting or finance or, you know, any department for that matter necessarily has this or sexy

Brianna Rooney: Tech.

Taylor Bradley: Yeah. Well, but it's it differentiates you as a recruiter? I feel like if you have these essential ingredients.

Brianna Rooney: Okay. So are you saying that anyone that has these essential ingredients that we will talk to about in just a bit can be a great recruiter? The next millionaire recruiter,

Taylor Bradley: If they go through diversity? Yes.

Brianna Rooney: excellent. Plug again. okay. So, so hit me with one of 'em what's. So we've all worked with really amazing recruiters, again, worked with ones, but the amazing recruiters let's really focus on that. Uh, what kind of personality have they had? What kind of, you know, ingredients?

Taylor Bradley: So they're typically very competitive. Ah, I think that's really important, competitive and resilient, you know, they do not just throw their hands up and defeat, you know, mm-hmm we know that we're not gonna get every candidate. We're not gonna get every hire, but what is going to incentivize and motivate them to keep going.

Brianna Rooney: Interesting. Okay. And the, the hard part against, because I come from a commission based agency is that was always money. So when you are internal, what can that look like?

Taylor Bradley: Yeah. Well, I mean, you can get bonuses, right? But it also looks like pay increases for performance. Cause at the end of the day, you're still paid for performance. Sure. It's just a different type of compensation structure, but I feel like the focus internally is so much on hires and time to fill that. You're actually, I feel like there's more notoriety in being corporate, if that makes sense. So it may not be a financial dollar, but at the end of the day, that'll come with it. You'll get promotions, become team leads, things like that. If you want to. Yeah. Um, most people that are, have been managers or now are individual contributor that's cuz they want to be right. But I feel like in corporate or in internal recruiting, it's really just those critical hires. It's like, oh, I hired the new COO mm-hmm , you know, it's the notoriety you get with that because you're not going to be incentivized for every hire.

Brianna Rooney: Yeah. And that's also like success driven numbers driven mm-hmm uh, and then I think that success driven is different for everyone. And so I know in my career, and now I'm, now I'm curious here, I'm gonna pass it over to you. Uh, at first you're gonna go back to money. It was all about the money. It was all about how much money could I make as young as I was and could I make more money than the counterparts? I went to college, for example. And so I had a lot of good friends of mine who were going, you know, getting their bachelors and masters. And we had a great debate and honestly, a lot of hard feelings and I've, I have lost friends because of it because I was more successful. Didn't go to school. I went to fashion, the fashion school. Awesome. Uh, and uh, I, I made a lot of good money and that was kind of my motivation. And basically like, how dare you tell me that I had to go to school to be successful. Yeah. So what was your path like? How did, how did you find this?

Taylor Bradley: How did I find recruiting? Yeah. Oh

Brianna Rooney: I know now I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but now I can't help myself.

Taylor Bradley: No, I mean very much like anybody else recruiting kind of fine. You mm-hmm, like you don't go to school or back then you didn't go to school for recruiting. So it was like, I graduated college. Um, it was, but

Brianna Rooney: You got your degree in

Taylor Bradley: Business management. Okay, cool. Um, and I graduated college and it was like, okay. I moved to Dallas. My sister was living here. My, the rest of my family was in Odesa and okay. Who's gonna accept a recent grab with no experience. Mm-hmm cause that's that that gets us all hung up. Right?

Brianna Rooney: Yeah. You go to school and you think like, I've arrived.

Taylor Bradley: Well, they want you, how are you supposed to get experience if they won't give you experience? Exactly. So it was like, who will give you experience? Okay. Recruiting will sales, any kind of entry, entry level sales mm-hmm . And um, I started at Robert half, which I it's the equivalent of like door to door sales in recruiting. It's that like I have done sink or swim go. And I feel like that's really, I don't know the best way. I, I feel like I could have gotten my start mm-hmm is learning an environment like that, where you run a full desk, but yeah. I mean I've, I think when it comes down to recruiting it's do you have the grit? The hustle

Brianna Rooney: Mm-hmm I was gonna say right there with Robert ha for example, where it's like sink or swim. Yeah. All I hear is hustle. Yeah. All I hear is be resilient. Yeah. So all I hear is that you are just driven to succeed and no one's standing in your way.

Taylor Bradley: Yeah, exactly. But it's you it's like you're your own little one man show mm-hmm because you have to bring in your own sales, you have to fill your own jobs. You have to make your own sales calls. You have to make your own candidate pool calls. Yeah. I mean, it's doing everything. So it's a kind of like the bootcamp equivalent, but like the job, this is like where you go to the hard knocks mm-hmm right. This is training camp before you're actually get out into the real, like you play the first football game, you go to training camp. Yeah. That interesting. And that's kind of what it was, even though it was your job and you probably were getting paid peanuts to do it fresh outta school, but it's

Brianna Rooney: Your job, Robert half

Taylor Bradley: It's really

Brianna Rooney: Hard. Yeah, it is.

Taylor Bradley: And, uh, it was actually funny. So Diana and I were talking, um, earlier about just kind of what can make you a great recruiter, like what can set you apart and what's different in our industry

Brianna Rooney: Between top performers and yeah. Just getting by.

Taylor Bradley: Yeah. And in our industry kind of what we look for in the full package and the full package to me is somebody that, um, and I was actually telling her that it was you. I was like, but don't tell her I was bragging on her but I was like, Brianna's kind of the full package because she knows the tech and can speak the language, but you're also a people person mm-hmm . And so, and you can review contracts and close sales. That's like the perfect storm. In my opinion, I was telling her that's rare to find somebody that can do it all. Even though you can have great, amazing recruiters. It's like, why do we think they're amazing? What about them? Oh, they can source. But if you had to just put somebody in your shoes or I had to put somebody in mind that could do it all by themselves, like run that full desk. How many recruiters do you think fill that bucket or fit into that bucket?

Brianna Rooney: Yeah. So, okay. Now you're putting me in an interesting place because that is what I was taught to do. That is what I've taught my recruiters to do. And so a, a lot of agencies, a lot of, uh, internal, they, they silo roles. They say, all right, your account managers, your sources, your recruiters, meaning you've take them through the can experience. That's definitely normal back then. It's really normal now. And it actually kind of scares me. Cause I don't think those roles should be siloed, but, um, I, I see why they do it. And so what, what I was taught to do is that you actually learn the client first. So you become a good client manager, meaning like you go get your own clients. You UN you like, um, you're then taking the, the intake, right? Mm-hmm like the hiring manager, client intake.

Brianna Rooney: And then now you go and not only tell yourself, cuz you're also a recruiter and sourcer, but then you go tell your whole team, Hey, this is what we're searching for. This is what we're gonna do. We're gonna fill our own roles. So they caught taught client first, which is crazy. So I didn't even know really what a good candidate was first. Mm. I only knew how to get the business. I only knew how to close sales. And I remember being 22 years old and you know, got it rather quickly. And then they weren't paying their bills. And my boss brought me in his office and I'm thinking I praise my. And he was like, Hey, your client, hasn't paid your bills. You need to call the CEO. And I'm like 22 years old. I was like, Ugh, can we just call it a wash? Like, are we good? He's like sit right here. And he made me sit right in front of him and make the pick up the phone and call that CEO of this freshly venture capitalist funded company and ask for our money, ask for a hundred K on the phone.

Taylor Bradley: I kind of love that though. No,

Brianna Rooney: Again, hard knocks, right? Yeah. Like you talk about the hard knocks and throwing you in you they're sink or your swimming and that's cool, but it's not sustainable. No, like it's cool. And again, like I was like super lucky that I was able to embark on that and succeed

Taylor Bradley: Mm-hmm

Brianna Rooney: but you know how many people fail at that? And that's scar as. Like that's, that's the hard part. And that's why, you know, we go through diversity and we train people and everything, but we're talking about really, you know, the essential ingredients and it's sometimes it's just like, you fake it till you make it. Yeah. But you have to find that drive. And however, I've been just like you you've seen so many great ones and so many like average mediocre ones mm-hmm and some somewhere in between. And I think that just the difference is is how much they want it. Yeah. And the work ethic, like, I don't really know what differentiates them even more than that, you know, because there's all like you could have a, you know, a great conversation with all sorts of recruiters and think, man, they got people skills. They have drive, they want X, Y, Z, like this is great. And then when it gets down to it, they just don't hustle enough. Totally. They're not quick enough. Yeah.

Taylor Bradley: Agreed. I mean, we've talked about this as it relates to, to people that it's like, they're capable, they're capable of doing the job. They're just lazy or they don't want, they don't wanna put in the work because it will be work. I mean, every, I feel like we talked about earlier about it. Um, just completely oversaturated industry. That's everything right now. It's like, if you wanna be the best you wanna be the goat, then you have to be willing to do things that other people are not.

Brianna Rooney: You, you threw out an acronym, what's a goat.

Taylor Bradley: Well, welcome to 2022. Brianna. The goat means greatest of all time. Thank you. It actually is. I'm not the only one. The dictionary

Brianna Rooney: Scrabble.

Taylor Bradley: Oh my gosh. Oh. I was like, no way does it, we're gonna have to

Brianna Rooney: Have a list. Every single acronym I have to ask, because trust me, I'm not the only one that's trying to Google this while we're talking. I'm not the

Taylor Bradley: Only one. It's a society acronym. It's not an industry acronym acronym. It is like very widely used in sports. But um, yeah, you basically have to do the that nobody wants to do. And I kind of look at it. That's like being a manager too. Oh, you have to do the that nobody wants to do or is willing to do. You have to, you know, there's always gonna be people that report to you that make more than you. So I don't know why people always think that I'm the manager. I need to make more than everybody. It's like, I feel like when you become a manager or get to a certain point in your career, it's because you care more about other people's success and helping them grow to get to a certain mm-hmm like, it's not about just chasing money. It's not just about chasing, um, whatever it is, no notoriety in the industry. There's other, I feel like more emotional things maybe is how I can describe it. That motivate you.

Brianna Rooney: I actually feel you're onto a couple really good episodes that we'll talk about later. Cuz I would love to interview some managers, anyone who wants to please message us for sure. Our contact info is below. Uh, but you know, managers is like, that's, it's definitely a different type of beast and you don't do things for the money for sure. Uh, I know that, uh, well I balled my eyes out, but like I, I used to, you know, live in the sales pit, right? Yeah. With all the other recruiters, uh, for a really long time. And honestly it was just a couple years ago that I put myself in the office because I was like, I can't do this. It was too distracting. But you know, to take yourself out of an IC role, individual contributor role, uh it's, it's hard and it's traumatizing and it's like, you know, if I could live in a source of role my entire life, maybe I would, you know, so that's, what's interesting.

Brianna Rooney: That's, what's cool about, I think the recruiting role in general is that we are making places for everyone that just, you know, maybe there's a hardcore sourcer. Maybe they love the clothes. Um, you know, who there's even a source of researcher, which I think is super interesting. Mm-hmm and that's a newer role that we don't talk about. Um, enough. So we'll definitely have an episode for that. But you know, back to the essential ingredients is you also have to be fairly organized, which is crazy because I'm not organized, but I have a method to my madness, how

Taylor Bradley: You that's what I was gonna handle that a method to your madness. Yeah. But that was gonna be, I was gonna actually frame it to you. Like what are, what is one of the biggest obstacles you see for recruiters from being to being good? Like what is a differentiator? And I think you hit the nail

Brianna Rooney: Organized, organized, it's huge. A hundred percent. Yeah. So it's like, you start at your career and you're like, okay, I know, you know, 10 to 15 people that I'm talking to at any given moment. And they don't realize that in order to be good at what you do it snowballs. Yep. And now you're at 30 people, you're at 45 people. And then now that 45th, fifth person you've talked to is now in, when you're at 90 people and they came back because they're on vacation. It's like, you can't remember all of that. There's no way. So it's really interesting. And we've seen it throughout the years. I'm sure you have too, you know, we have candidate trackers and it's technically admin. Right, right. Like, trust me, I hate admin. I'll be the first to tell you. But if you're gonna be a good recruiter, a badass recruiter, the next million recruiter, you have to know your numbers. You have to keep track of. There's just no way you cannot automate that.

Taylor Bradley: Well, and to your point too, I mean all recruiters for the most part, whether it's a track or an applicant tracking system, mm-hmm , they have to update that information somewhere. Always it always, for clients we work with for compliance reasons. Right. You have to legally have that information in there, how somebody interviewed and whatnot. And so, um, I really think what we've gotta normalize to is we've gotta normalize that recruiters. I mean, we've always had to do admin work always. So why we all hate it and pretend it's going somewhere. It's not, it's been a part of our job since day one. And you know, I think it's like, okay, 16 years later, I'm waiting for it to go away. The admin work isn't going away. I mean, it's always gonna be there. And so, but 98% of recruiters hate admin work.

Brianna Rooney: Yeah. And for sure. And then like we, all, this is drives me nuts, cuz I've trust me. I have done it. But the high performers hate it the most. Yeah. The higher performer, the, the most, they, they hate it and they're like, get me in, you know, whatever. We try to automate it as much as possible. And then we make excuses, oh, well they're a high performer. We don't have to have them track it. But that's ridiculous at any given moment, a recruiter should know how many phone screens they have, how many first interviews they have, how many final interviews they have, like that should just be off the top of their head. How much outreach have they done a week? I mean, again, we talk about this, you know, we don't want it to be a sales job, but it's still about the numbers. It's still very data driven. And we've seen a lot of tech go in and out, um, you know, throughout the recruiting world. And, but there's nothing that has solved this problem. Maybe you and I should solve it. But I don't know if it's gonna be solved because even if you have tech on it, you should know this off the top of your head. This should be a thing for you.

Taylor Bradley: Absolutely. Well, and then it, when we go back to soft skills, stay humble. Right. Humble yourself enough to know that, okay, you didn't mind doing admin work three years ago. Why do you mind now? You know what I mean? It's like, we all have to do some admin work, so stay humble

Brianna Rooney: For sure. Well, we had a lot of recruiting, essential ingredients for sure. Um, grit, hustle, agility, resilience. Uh, there's just so many work ethic really I think is gonna encompass all of it. Mm-hmm um, but you gotta keep, keep digging no fat cat syndrome. you gotta keep bushing. Gotta keep snowballing. So thank you all for listening for sure. We will be on every Tuesday and do not forget. Let's do this. Let's do the broke to bus with Taylor.

Taylor Bradley: Yeah. So broke to boss tip of the week is communication. So it seems so simple, but you wanna know what will set you apart from other recruiters is communication. Have the tough conversations with not only hiring managers, but have the tough conversations with candidates, provide the tough feedback. Get on the phone, pick up the phone.

Brianna Rooney: That's what I was gonna ask you. Can we do that over email or in or recruiter?

Taylor Bradley: Well, we could make an episode about that. There's certain, there's certain steps within the process that they get in where certain levels of communication are best practice, but we'll save that for another day.

Brianna Rooney: Okay. So right now we're gonna say let's do that on the phone. Yeah. Get on nothing lost in translation.

Taylor Bradley: Get on the horn, get

Brianna Rooney: On the horn. all. Bye. I'll have a great week. See you next.

Taylor Bradley: See you next Tuesday.

Brianna Rooney: .