Takeover Unfiltered

It.

Hello.

Welcome to Talent takeover.

Unfiltered.

What's going on, Taylor?

Oh, not a lot.

Just recovering from the weekend.

We had, like, a really good

out with friends social weekend.

So I'm like today.

How's yours?

I had the best weekend.

We took a train to Santa Barbara, went to

the Dolphin Dive Festival, had some 80s band.

My mom's in town.

Kids had a blast.

It was just one of those

nailed it, mom weekends for me.

I know what those feel like, where you're

like, you know, the kids had the best

weekend, and you're like, Fuck yeah. Winning.

Had cocktails on the train, didn't have to drive. What?

Yeah, that was fun. That is fun.

You're going to have to tell me about

that experience so you can have cocktails.

We've always wanted to take a train.

Our kids want to take a train.

It's like a thing.

So what are we talking about today?

It's a great question.

So it's from someone, a listener

of ours that had a question.

So, by the way, if you ever have

questions, hit us up on our Social.

Please put it in comment.

Like all those things.

Reviews, we dig.

But this is about assertive communication.

As a recruiter, how do you do it?

How do you do it with care?

How do you do it and not sound like

an asshole and still get your job done?

So what do you think about that?

Yeah, so I think the question and how it was

posed to us was that somebody, a listener of ours

in their review, who's also a recruiter, by the way,

had a review where they were told by, I'm assuming,

their manager that they needed to own the process of

the phone call with candidates more.

So she went on to elaborate and say that's being

comfortable, interrupting the candidate to get the information I need

to move forward with the call, but also having a

balance of care on what the candidate is saying.

And so I was like, that's really interesting.

That's one, really great feedback.

Two, I would love to hear a call.

I would have loved to hear, how

did this manager get to this feedback?

What takes place in these calls?

Well, I go to it probably takes this person a

really long time because I don't think unless you're actually

recording the calls, which I know there are some companies

that are starting to do this just for quality, but

no, I would imagine they're probably not able to get

through that many calls a week.

And they're probably like, well, why is that?

Well, because I'm on the phone

for 45 minutes with each person.

That's what I'm imagining. Yeah.

And I feel like that's very and I don't know

off the top of my head, this person's background and

if they've been in recruiting for a while.

But I feel like it's not uncommon for a

new recruiter to exhibit those behaviors of, like, okay,

well, I've got to make the candidate like me,

because you hear all the time in recruiting, it's

about relationships, and people work with people they like,

and that's even outside of recruiting.

But having a good relationship with a

recruiter is critical with your recruiter.

And so I feel like this is

somebody trying to relate to someone.

I e the candidate, spend a lot of time with

them, probably listening to their life story, thinking, this is

what I need to do for my job.

This is how I'm going to ensure

they have the best candidate experience.

But I think there's a way to do both.

There's a way to be brief, be bright, be gone.

There's a way to get the information that

you need and tactfully move the conversation along.

I don't think you have to necessarily

interrupt the candidate and cut them off

completely as per this feedback.

But I definitely think that there's a

way to do it and be assertive.

And I think we've talked about it before

on previous episodes, how being assertive, especially as

a woman, you're like a bitch.

That's just what even in 2023, which blows

my mind that this is still the case,

that if you're assertive, you're a bitch.

So I think that this person may be

struggling with some of that, too, not wanting

to come off a certain way by telling

the candidate, okay, let's move forward, or whatever.

So I think telling people, our listeners, how to

do that, how to move the conversation along when

a candidate is being long winded, knowing that you've

got an allotted amount of time for a phone

screen, how do you do that?

Get all the information you need and

be really tactful, but drive the combo. Yeah.

So I also think that saying that you're assertive

is a really nice way to say aggressive, because

we try not to say aggressive anymore because, again,

that's the bitch vibe, and it's not okay.

There's this heightened candidate experience, like, oh,

my God, if you don't have the

best candidate experience, you're not doing this.

We talk about it all the time.

There's another report that came out that

that's what candidates are looking for.

And so it's really on the

recruiters to set the scene there.

But something I recently got, it was our marketing

firm, actually, they gave us actually, the guy that

was in charge of our marketing, he did this

course, but he gave us a sales course.

And in there, I was actually blown away a little

bit, because when I think of how do you build

rapport, I build it by getting personal with somebody.

But in business, that's actually not building rapport.

You have to build rapport by trust and by knowledge.

And so I think what I would say for this recruiter is

that they're supposed to be the ones that set the scene.

So I think when we talk about expectations, then

I would say even in the email before I

get on the phone with this person.

Hey, look, there's a few questions that I have to ask you

because the hiring manager really needs to know XYZ and I want

to make sure that it's a fit for both sides.

So that's how I set the scene.

So I let them know like, I

am in charge of this conversation.

Yeah, no, it's funny you said that because I

wrote down my little notes as we're talking.

I'm saying set expectations for the call.

That's where I feel like it starts.

You have to set the scene of what

you're going to cover in the call.

So, okay, in the beginning, love to get to know you,

love to ask you a couple of questions about you.

I'll tell you a little bit about me and

then we're going to talk about your work history.

And then you have to let them know what's going to

transpire in the call and what all you have to cover.

And this is at the beginning of the call.

So I completely agree with you.

I feel like that's the way you kind of drive and set

the scene and oh, I'm so sorry to cut us short here,

but we've got to move on to talking about your experience.

There's ways to do it where I can say with 1000%

certainty the person walking away from that phone call is not

going to be like, oh, she's such a bitch.

And so I think that I agree with

you that it's probably a timing thing.

And so I would think for steps for this

recruiter, how could we tell this recruiter from step

1234, this is what you need to do to

ensure that you're getting the information that you need

from the candidate, but you're not staying on the

phone with them for hours and hours and hours.

Well, let me ask you this first.

How long do you think a recruiter should

be on the phone with the candidate?

The first phone call, the first intake?

I think it depends on if you're doing full cycle.

I think it depends on if you're just sourcing.

But I'm going to go back to my world.

In my world, we would always spend at

least 30 minutes on a call with somebody.

If it was a more technical role, maybe 45.

But we're talking about a role where

you're like you're talking to the candidate.

You're submitting directly to the hiring manager

to determine if they want to interview.

So it's kind of like you need

to get all of this information.

You need to get resume, salary

and your phone screen notes.

So our phone screen in the beginning is typically a

pretty thorough one, but you've kind of gone back and

forth with them already via email to gauge interest.

Go over here's, the job description, whatever.

So you kind of know what it is by

the time that you're getting on the phone.

And so I would say that the phone call needs to

be about 30 minutes, but for me, that's like a max.

I wouldn't let my recruiters be

on for longer than that.

And I would say you could probably build

a pretty good relationship within 15 minutes.

But again, like you said, you're also talking

to them before, meaning, like, you're emailing them,

you're asking them a few questions.

I think there are some things that are just more logistics

that you can get out really quickly in an email.

And then now it's like, okay, let's set

the scene and let's have a relationship.

But my recruiters, because again, we're contingency we would

be pitching at least two to three opportunities on

the phone, so we were able to do that

and still get what we needed to know. Yeah.

So she has to be taking too long.

Yeah, well, and so what we would do going

back to in house, because I think, if I'm

not mistaken, this person's an in house recruiter.

And what I would tell my in house recruiter to do is

I'm like, block off an hour of your time for the call.

Use 30 minutes for the call, use the other

30 to get your submittal together, to get them

into the ATS with all your submittal notes, resume.

Because we used to work through the ATS,

and so you would need that admin time,

because people would do when they would wait.

It was like a best practice to do

it right then, because if you would wait,

of course you snooze, you lose with anything.

So it's like, get the submittals in, get your stuff.

So give yourself some time and then some time

to go to the bathroom, take a health break,

whatever, and then get on your next call.

So I would say if they're going beyond an

hour, and that's like, you're not typing up a

really robust, thorough phone screen notes, because ours used

to be probably about two pages long of information.

Okay, that's a whole other conversation. Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

About two pages long via a form of all the

information that you needed to fill out in there.

And so there was heavy admin work.

So it was like, you need to

do your admin work for that submittal. Right.

Then get the candidate over.

So I would say for this person, if you're spending

an hour just talking to them, oh my gosh, you're

going to be talking to a lot of people.

And then also, it's really important to be able to

suss out pretty early if they're not a fit.

Like, you don't need to spend 30 minutes or an

hour on the phone with somebody just because you've allotted.

That when, you know, in the

first 1015, they're not a fit. Exactly.

So that's what I was going to go to.

I'm like, well, there's lots of things that you

could hit and be like, no, thank you.

I think you can be really assertive as a recruiter

if you are really saying like, hey, look, I don't

want to waste your time, I don't want to waste

my time, the company's time, all of these things.

If you do it with that in mind

and you actually say that out loud, and

again, it could be via email, that's fine.

I think that you can really get through some stuff because

that's the respect and care that they need not to just

be on the phone with them for shits and giggles.

I think that's insane.

I pushed things even a little farther.

So we had a very aggressive

firm where I would time people.

So I'm really big into like, look, this is just

going to become habits you can get really fast.

So I had to make sure that people were

taking notes while they were on the phone.

So the way they would also do that is because it

can hear like little court type record over here, right?

Type record.

I call that a fucking computer.

It's a fucking computer.

Welcome to 2023.

I'm telling you, I wonder my past life,

like, who was I in my past life?

Oh my God, like churning butter over here.

Anyways, they would have to type

while they were getting their intake.

Every single monitor had our intake form.

So I really believe in being uniformed because

if you're doing the same thing over and

over again, you can get a lot faster.

So they would have the form on their monitor.

I was stickler as to what went first, like what our

intakes actually looked like and the format it was, because what

I wanted was that any intake, any resume we sent over,

I didn't need to put our logo on it.

They already knew it came from us because we

were very standardized and I could sit in anyone's

seat and vice versa was really important to me.

And so, yes, wow.

And I would lose it if it was 15.

And by lose it, I'd be like, hey, let's get faster.

But I would time people.

I was really big on that.

So I think that in order to be assertive

means you have to be up against the clock.

And then it feels yucky and it feels

hard at first, but I think that it

just makes you more and more efficient.

Okay, so I think then if we're talking to our

audience consisting of both in house and external recruiters, what

are some general themes where there's alignment, which I think

we've kind of gotten one down time.

Like you can't spend whether it's an in house or

whether it's external, you can't spend an hour, but what

the paperwork and then administrative work looks like that could

go with that could differ because I totally get like

in contingency we're up against the clock, but in house

it's more about being thorough, doing it right.

If there's spelling errors, it's like, a whole thing.

It has to be a very polished, professional document that's

going to be circulated around to a hiring panel.

It's kind of a thing where you need to make

sure there's no spelling, like, your shits together in the

document that you're sending over because you're probably going to

have some senior level individuals looking at it.

So I think that there's like, you guys are typing while

you're doing the form, then you're like, okay, maybe glance over

it after you get done, make sure it makes sense, and

then send it on to the hiring manager.

Yeah, but we were also submitting directly to

the hiring manager, so we made sure grammarly,

and we were also, again, like, hey, it

needs to be complete sentences, and we're putting

pronouns or capitalizing, which should be capitalized.

But we trained heavily on that.

We even had like, hey, how fast can you type?

We would have challenges in the office

about how we could do that.

So no, I think we were still really thorough.

I think that I feel strongly that I could

put an external and internal, and I think that

we should operate very similarly because even companies would

say, hey, I like your guys'intake, but add these

two, three questions because I want you guys to

operate like we do internally.

We were used to operating the same way in some things.

And then when it got really heavy, where there was

just too much going on, then what we did was

we ended up having an admin that would actually send

it out, and this particular person would look through to

make sure it's like, hey, is this Prim and proper?

Can we send this to ten clients

and feel really good about it?

Okay, so we ended up having another level of eyes

to look at it when it got crazy, but before

that, it's like, yeah, you send out your own stuff.

Going back to your question, though, in order to

be assertive, I think you have to know exactly

what you need to have the answers to.

Basically like, look, I have 30 minutes and

I need to get off the phone and

I need to have these questions answered.

And it's fine if you can't listen and type.

Not a lot of people can, but take

really great notes and then clean it up.

I think that's what's really important.

And then I want to say something real quick.

Do not record yourself unless you tell them

I have heard people doing this, that they

use their phone to record the conversation because

they don't feel like they're being thorough enough.

That is illegal.

I just want to put that out there really

quick because I have had that question before.

My gosh, I've never heard of that. But yes.

Oh my God, I think so many people do.

Wow, so well then, okay, that begs the question too.

Are they doing their phone screens via actual phone,

or are they using like this, like Google Meets

or teams or whatever, where you can hit recording

and you can obviously let the person right, that's

actually a really good point because I'm used to

doing intakes on the phone.

I do client intakes via video.

But who, I don't know, actually.

Okay, audience, audience, please tell us, are we

doing more candidate intakes now on the phone,

or are we doing the more video?

Because now I'm curious because you're right, it could

very easily say, hey, do you mind recording this?

And it's a lot easier that way.

Yeah, and I mean, it's also like, think of

how much more information you find out from a

candidate in today's world in 2023, if you're using

Google Meets or teams or something where you can

see them on video, you used to have to

wait till, like, what, maybe the third interview. Yeah.

So you've done a phone screen.

Hiring manager has done a phone screen.

Then there's an in person interview.

That's when you can usually suss out body language and all

the stuff that we talked about in our last episode.

But if you're doing a Google Meets first

call with the recruiter, you get to suss

all that out in conversation one.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

I did not think about that.

I'm going to have to think about this later.

I feel like this needs to be like a

different episode or something because I don't know.

I don't know why I didn't think of this.

I feel like it would be a

good best practice to do that.

Like, if you need to record, if you need

to suss out body language, how they're going to

be if they're going to be giving presentations, how

they're going to be when they're looking.

I think there's a lot it's like having an

in person interview in your first phone call.

Like your first RPS recruiter phone screen. Yes.

That's interesting.

Okay, I like it.

I'm going to write that down so that we

can determine get back to everybody what is the

best practice, what should they be doing?

Yeah, I will say, though, I think that

there's something to be said by video fatigue.

I think that is super real.

So when someone's like, hey, sorry, I know we

have Zoom, I'm supposed to call you Zoom, but

can we just talk on the phone?

I'm like, Hell yeah, we can go for a walk outside.

It's fucking great.

I love just getting on the phone. For sure.

I would prefer that if it were me, but I

also would probably like, I see all the benefits of

doing a Google me, but I'm with you.

I would prefer to just call somebody on the phone, but

these days, when somebody wants to just call me and talk

on the phone, I'm like, it's just so strange.

It's just not the world that we live in.

Wait, does this thing work.

Yeah, well, I mean, if it's from a business standpoint,

if they're like, what number can I call you on?

I'm like, oh, okay, well, here's my cell phone.

It doesn't bother me at all, but the

ask never even comes up these days.

Yeah, that's true. That's funny.

Okay, so back to being assertive as a recruiter, because

I know we're starting to run out of time here.

What other advice do you have?

Because what I think is interesting is she's like,

well, I don't want to interrupt the candidate.

Go back to that for a second.

What did you ask them that

they can't stop talking about?

It was probably something personal,

not work related, right?

Yeah, and I think there's also ways to

interrupt and be apologetic about it and it

not still like the person not walk away

like, oh, such a bitch, she interrupted me.

Okay, wait, I'm going to stop you right

there because I have some more questions.

This is really good information that you're

giving me and I want to make

sure that I'm capturing that accurately.

Can I ask you some more

questions so you can elaborate further?

I think there's ways to interrupt

people that is not rude.

I definitely think if you're because I'm imagining

worst case scenario that we've talked about, we've

seen where somebody is just interrupting someone continuously,

you can't get a word in, you lose

your train of thought, and that is rude.

So I totally get where our original

poster that poses question is coming from.

It can be rude if you're just

doing it continuously, but also it shouldn't

be happening unless somebody's long winded.

You shouldn't be interrupting them

unless they're long winded.

And, you know, you need to keep track of time.

But I think it goes back to what we said.

You've got to set those expectations very early on.

Hey, I know we've got 30 minutes allotted for this call

and I have a hard stop at X, so I want

to make sure we cover your background, your experience.

I want to tell you a little bit about me.

I want to hear a lot about you.

I think you've got to set the scene of what you're

going to cover, the time you have to cover in.

You have a hard stop, and I think as long as

you set the scene that way and set those expectations, even

if you do have to interrupt them and say, I'm so

sorry, I'm going to have to stop you there because I

have a couple more questions to ask you.

We've only got ten minutes left.

There's ways to do it, love.

So I know I get anxiety if I know that

we haven't finished what we're here to talk about.

And I see that there's like

five minutes left, I'm like, shit.

And then all of a sudden, I'm not even in the

present anymore because I'm worrying so much about time that I'm

actually now missing out, and it's kind of ridiculous.

What I also say is I would always say you have a

hard stop even if you do not have a hard stop.

I actually think that's best practice at this point.

And I don't remember if this was a podcast, if we

were just shooting the shit, but you said something that you

saw something that it's actually rude to go over time.

I don't know what podcast that was, but

yeah, it's actually rude to go over because

it means you don't respect their time, your

time, and just you're not respecting efficiencies.

Exactly.

And so we were talking about it that we were

like, oh, we would have thought that that would have

been a nice thing to do, is to stay past

the time and listen to them and carry.

But everything I read. Yeah.

When I was researching that topic,

was like, no, it's rude.

It shows you don't respect their time if you

have a meeting after you don't respect their time.

And so, actually, it's not rude to set the scene

on the time that you have allotted for the call.

That isn't rude.

What I would recommend to our person that posed

the question, our listener, is I think you really

have to allot the time for yourself, too.

Say, if you've got 30 minutes, then it's like,

okay, I need to spend the first 15 minutes

covering XYZ, the last 15 minutes covering ABC.

You have to make sure that you're allotting time

for yourself, knowing that you've got 30 minutes.

How am I going to capture all the

information that I need to so allot different

time to different subjects and make sure if

you're going over I just wouldn't go over.

I would cap it hard.

I would make sure I got the information that

I need and then don't go over those allotted

15 minutes that you have to talk about those

subjects, because it's inevitable you'll go over.

So you can have 30 minutes blocked on

your calendar for call all day long.

But realistically, if you're going over and your calls are 45

minutes, that's not an accurate picture of how long it takes

you to finish a call or complete a call.

I also think that you need to start from what's the

most important and what are the nice to have questions.

And I would love to see actually, I would

love to see the questions, because perhaps the way

you're asking the questions aren't assertive enough.

Yeah.

So maybe it's like they're too open.

And so the other person on the other side

is having a hard time being direct with you

because you're not being direct with the question. Yeah.

I think that's really important.

I was watching it was Tony Robbins talk.

What was it for?

I don't remember, but he was saying that your

value are the value of the questions you ask.

I thought that was, like, super interesting.

So it's like you really got to pay attention

to not only what you're asking, but how you're

asking then, and then rock it through that.

And again, this takes practice.

And so I do love going back to the

actual what the hiring manager said in the review.

I love I'm the hiring manager.

The manager.

I love that that person said that

to this individual because not a lot

of good feedback comes through those reviews. I think.

Sometimes it's like, why do we have reviews?

Because what is this for?

So that was really good feedback, and you

can get better, and you can practice.

And again, I would time yourself. Yeah.

How quickly can we do this? For sure?

And this seems to me like constructive criticism.

Like, this is the person trying to set the scene for

this or set the expectation for this person to be better.

Because regardless of who you are, where you

work and recruiting, that's not going to change.

You need to be able to get the

information that you are required to get within

a certain allotted amount of time.

And you're doing yourself a disservice if

you're giving every candidate an hour.

Like, you got to figure out and suss out in the first

15 minutes if it's a good fit, if they're interested, if the

salary, you got to get all of that sussed out.

You can't be spending hours on the phone with

somebody that ends up that you can't even send

that phone screen over because they're not even qualified,

and you've just spent an hour with them. Yeah.

What do you think about the gatekeeper thing?

Because technically the recruiters are the

gatekeepers to the hiring managers. Right.

And I think sometimes and this

can be the internal versus external.

Externals don't get paid unless it works out.

Yeah, I think internals need to

think about that as well.

And not that I don't get paid, but it's

not the business initiative for me to do that.

It hurts the business if I

am not having productive conversations.

If they put that hat on, I

think it could be really powerful, too.

Well, and if, you know, because I know that

some organizations do this, you know, you have to

submit candidates in a slate of three, for example,

so you can't just submit one off.

There are certain hiring managers that I've worked

with in my life, my career, that my

recruiters have too, that they require slates.

And so it's like, how long is it going to

take you to get that slate of three qualified candidates

if you're spending an hour on the phone with everybody?

Interesting perspective.

It's definitely all about efficiency.

Whether you're an internal external recruiter, whether

you're tenured, whether you're just starting out.

You need to get your timing down on phone

screens, and you need to be able to get

off the phone with somebody if you know that

they're not a good fit within the first 15.

Minutes that has to happen.

That is a good best practice.

So I would say going into our broke

to boss tip is that you can be

an assertive communicator without being a bitch.

I don't know if that's the tip that we want

to put, but you can be an assertive communicator.

But I think setting the expectations for calls

is just such an important thing to do.

Whether you're talking to candidates, whether you're talking to clients,

always set expectations for what the goal is for the

call and what you need to get out of the

call in every single call that you're on.

And that doesn't make you a bitch.

I feel like being assertive, that's being the host or

assertive excuse me, that's being the host of a call.

I think that's actually

being definition of professional.

You're professional, you have a job to do and you

need to do it in this amount of time period.

Yeah, great.

And by the way, have fun with it.

That's the whole point.

As we're sitting here as hosts, especially

me, I tangent all the fucking time.

So there are so many people who are like, hey,

Brandon, look how many times you told me to rope

that shit back in and I'm so thankful for it.

I'm like, oh yeah, thank you so much.

I was going to get off this call and not

actually have it be productive because I'm like just telling

stories so I know when I get a storyteller on

the other side I'm like, hey, I could talk about

this all day long and let's do this another time,

but I really have to get this done.

It's just so simple.

Just be honest, transparent and just get her done.

And people appreciate that.

If somebody walks away from that I appreciate, then

they're just a fucker because nobody is offended.

They're not a good fit anyways.

Yeah, I mean, if somebody's offended by you having

other obligations and you telling them that on the

front end and driving the conversation forward, then I

mean, think about how that interview is going to

go if they're really long winded with you.

Think of how it's going to go with

your hiring manager and is that the vibe

of the organization you're trying to recruit for?

Yes, I am not going to tangent because as I'm

going to respect our listeners, we are out of time.

But I will say for another episode, let's

talk about how we give constructive criticism to

candidates in order to pass their interview.

Because I was going to tangent on I have

had to tell someone basically you need to shut

the fuck up, otherwise the hiring man is going

to hate you in the very nicest way.

I think that's a great one to talk

about because that happens all the time and

people ask us that all the time.

So we'll definitely talk about that one.

But as always, it was great chatting with you guys.

Well with you, Brianna.

But having our listeners be here with us, I

feel like they're here with they they're the ones

that asked this question, that drove this topic today.

So you are here. I know.

I love it. I love it.

And as always, we will see you next Tuesday.

Thanks y'all. Bye.