EP 34: Dealing with job candidates that are inconsistent and out of touch w/John Shreve

John Shreve, Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition at Airspace, joins host James Mackey to discuss the challenges with candidates being inconsistent, the importance of presenting data from your ATS, how talent acquisition needs to evolve when going from 50 to 500 employees, and much more!

Episode Chapters:

00:15 Who is John Shreve?

02:43 Challenges with candidates being inconsistent with what they want throughout the recruitment process

06:49 Junior-level talent can have misplaced confidence when it comes to the interview process

10:38 How a talent acquisition department evolves from 50 total company employees to over 500 total company employees

13:22 Gathering data from an ATS can help you convince executives to make changes in the talent acquisition process

18:12 Nuances with recruiting candidates from Europe

19:49 The 4-day work week

22:13 Dress codes

25:43 When leaders create terrible work culture and experiences

30:35 San Diego job market

33:50 Wrap up

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Today we are joined by John Shreve. John, welcome to the show, man. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Great. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yeah, for sure. And uh before we we jump into um the topics we want to discuss today, could you share a little bit about your your background and uh

Who is John Schreve?

SPEAKER_02 1:01

perspective with everybody?

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Sure. I've been recruiting for about 15 years in various capacities. Um kind of cut my teeth recruiting tellers at Wolfs Fargo and um turned that into a career. Um it's been really fun. And I I love finding people for jobs um in a way that can help um help kind of improve their quality of life through through a career opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

For sure, for sure. And uh right now you're at airspace, right? Correct. Cool. What what it just real quick, because I actually I I would just I'm just I would like to know what what does Airspace do?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

So we're a tech enabled third-party logistics company. So we we can do high speed routing and give full transparency for orders from um from their start point to their endpoint. We move a lot of organs for transplant and airplane parts, just things that are very okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And this is uh a SaaS product, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Um, it's um it could be considered that, but we're technically a third-party logistics company, so we offer a full-on service, just not not just the software.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Okay, gotcha. And I noticed it looks like in in May you all raised a 70 million dollars series D.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, absolutely. That was exciting. I got I got here for series B and helped um helped through two scale-ups already. So cool. Gonna have my hands full here in the coming months.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

How how many employees did the company have when you started and where are you now? Employee head count.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

There was about 50 of us, and we had small offices in Carlsbad, California and Dallas, Texas. Um, now there's over 300 of us. So we've got larger offices in those two cities, and then we're in um Amsterdam, nice, Frankfurt, Germany, and uh Stockholm, Sweden, as well as we um continue our global expansion.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Nice, nice. Are you uh do you get to do any traveling out there? I haven't yet. Um you gotta do it, man. That would be great. I know I gotta get my passport, otherwise I'll never get to do it. Uh yeah, yeah, definitely. Now that uh you know COVID's like, I guess we're kind of getting through that. Um I'm really pumped about getting back to traveling. I got my whole like all fall, winter, I got something like every month going to visit clients and going to different events. I'm I'm really psyched.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

That's awesome. Yeah, I successfully avoided flighting, flying with a mask, but um I'm down to do it if I can get out of San Diego for a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Gotcha, gotcha. Uh well, yeah. So I, you know, one of the things that you mentioned is is sort of a challenge right now

Challenges with candidates being inconsistent with what they want throughout the recruitment process

SPEAKER_02 3:29

that you're working through is people like just from a candidate standpoint, people changing their mind toward the end of the interview process. Um, and so I thought like maybe we could start out with a few examples of what you're seeing in terms of like challenges there, where you're seeing kind of some kind of inconsistencies of you know what you hear from candidates on the first conversation to when you get to the offer stage, then people are kind of singing a different tune. So, what do some of those challenges look like? And then I thought we could kind of just riff on just different solutions and ways to to try to eliminate some of those problems. Um, so so yeah, I'll kind of let you kind of start us off. Like, what are you seeing out there? Like, what are the kind of biggest discrepancies you're saying from screening call to offer stage right now?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, the biggest things I see are people kind of not being transparent about what they expect to make. They'll say one thing on the first call and then all of a sudden their tune changes at the end, or they'll they'll let me know I really want to work for airspace because you guys have this beautiful office. I live 30 minutes up the road, it's an easy drive. I know it's a hybrid role. I'm like, great, they'd only want you on Tuesdays and Thursdays to come into the office, anyways. And then I get up, well, I don't want to be expected to come into the office. And it's like, why did you say that you want to come to the office then if you don't want to be expected to you just want to come and go as you please, I see. Um, so those are those are kind of things like people don't realize that's our red flag. Like, what is this person going to be doing when they're not in a meeting or on schedule time for something? Um, beyond that, um I've I've had people with crazy expectations about time off. Um, we had to change. We used to say that we have unlimited time on PTO. Um, we had to change that because people would literally make the argument, hey, it's uh you said it's unlimited, right? I want to take a week off every month. That's not how it works. Um, so just things like that that are kind of logical based. Um, beyond that, just you know, I'm as transparent as I can possibly be in calls, um, regardless of what the person's asking me. Um it's it's a two-way street though. Like if I'm if I'm telling you everything and you're withholding information from me, like how that's one of our core values. How am I supposed to pass you through the process if you're not transparent?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Right. And just so everybody kind of gets a sense of like your perspective, could you tell us like, are these is this primarily like entry-level positions? Is it, I don't know how much you can share in terms of like salary stuff, but like just try to give us a sense for what types of roles you're encountering in these challenges. Because for instance, right, when we're working with a, you know, for like a SaaS company and we're helping them hire like engineers or you know, high-level salespeople, like we don't really encounter these issues uh quite as much. So it'll just be helpful for people to understand, like, again, like that specific point of impact. So we know, okay, for what types of searches does this become more problematic and where can we look out for this to avoid it, that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, absolutely. Um, our operations specialist roles, basically logistics coordinator role. That one gets tricky because it's kind of shift work, um, very entry-level, although some experience um can help you go a long way. Um, run into a lot of issues with that. And then with um people that are in like account management type roles, they have different expectations on what they'll be doing and um you know what their commission plan is gonna be. I'll say, like with specifically sales reps and software developers, those are pretty black and white, um, for lack of a better term. Like the software developers know exactly what they want and they know where their flexibility is, and they'll they'll give me a range and they'll they'll be straight up like up. I'm gonna be at the bottom end of the range. I want a nice equity package. It's like, okay, we can do that for you. We're not publicly traded yet. Um, and then some people don't value equity at all. They just want you know, $2,000 extra dollars a year, which is like, you know, I mean, the you know, equity could turn out to be worthless or it could pay off all our houses.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

The thing it's like you wanna have to pay that capital gains tax if we go public.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

So yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's that's like

Junior-level talent can have misplaced confidence when it comes to the interview process

SPEAKER_02 7:35

so. I think that that's kind of hitting. So that's that's helpful, right? It's it's to the extent we see those types of problems, it's more so with like SDR searches, sales development, junior level roles. I feel like most of the time these types of issues are encountered with junior level talent that maybe just have less experience interviewing, less experience kind of expectation setting, or they don't know exactly what they can get out there on the market. So they they initially will say some things and then they'll interview more, and then they'll see, oh, there's other options, and they'll start, they're kind of like adjusting as they're going through the process, which can make it uh sort of sort of frustrating, right? Where you you ultimately need a bigger funnel of candidates, you have more drop-offs at every stage of the interview process. You probably have more drop-offs between offer acceptance and and their start dates as well for those types of positions. So, so so that said, like I think that's a pretty common problem for people spanning across several industries when they're they're working with junior level talent. So what like getting into kind of solution mode, what are some of the things that you implement or do uh in order to minimize that as much as possible, knowing that it's never gonna be perfect, but how do you try to avoid some of those problems?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Um, the the thing that's worked the best for me is knowing um, knowing the companies that these people have worked at when I'm doing searches on LinkedIn or indeed. Like if they're working for a company that's gonna, you know, that has a career path and has a clear vision of what's gonna go on for them in the first five years, that's a little different from if someone's coming from a call center where they they hit the ceiling four months in. Um, so really knowing where the talent lies locally and um and regionally, that's been the most helpful thing for me. Um and just understanding, too, like if someone says, I can make a dollar an hour more working at the brand new Amazon hub that opened a mile away, like that's great. What is what does your career path look like there? Um, and have you seen what's going on or what has gone on in San Diego in those hubs and news? Um, you know, a quick Google search will show you crazy lawsuits and really poor conditions. So it's just a matter of what people see for their future and what they want out of the company. Like, does it make sense to go work for an Amazon in those conditions if they're gonna pay for college for you? Yeah, of course it does. Um, but if that's not the path you're trying to take, there's a lot of different uh there's a lot of alternatives for that where you can go a long way without having to go through getting that degree. Um, for instance, I was going to school to be a double major in music composition at two book performance. I didn't finish, but you can't tell me that I would be a better recruiter had I had those two degrees. I would just be in a lot more debt.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Right, right, absolutely. So I think it's like that's a good like from a vetting perspective, really trying to understand like somebody's career path and what they want to accomplish, which again is can be difficult when somebody is is junior in their career because maybe they don't they don't know yet, right? Um, but yeah, I think just just trying to get a pulse on what they care about, what they value is probably you know very helpful because then it's you know, as you kind of approach the end of the process, you well, even at the top of the funnel, you get a pulse on if if what you have to offer is aligned with what they care about, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah, absolutely. And it's it's interesting too to hire entry-level shift workers in an area like North County, San Diego. It is not cheap to live here. Um, but that having been said, it doesn't mean that you coming in first day, you're gonna make a mortgage. Like it's there if you want to earn it. Like the money's all out there to earn, but um, it's just a matter of getting to the point where you're qualified for it.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, so what is I would love to hear a little bit about just like how you the town acquisition department

How a talent acquisition department evolves from 50 total company employees to over 500 total company employees

SPEAKER_02 11:24

has evolved from going from 50 people to what did you say? I think around 300 now. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, a little over 300.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

So yeah, so what's what's like been the biggest shifts, right? Like from technology to process to the size of the team. Kind of walk us through that development. That'd be really helpful for people that work in hyper-growth environments.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Yeah. So when I started and we were a series B company, um, I reported directly into the operations team to find the operations specialist shift workers. And I came in just knowing the benefits package and what the company was about and wanting to kind of seize the opportunity and make it my own. There was no HR department. I came in on my first day and said, What ATS are we using? And they laughed and said, Have you ever used a Trello board? Try to figure that out. So, you know, I was doing that for basically two and a quarter years, like just putting notes in different Trello boards, posting through different means. And then um finally, when we got up over 150 people, it was time to get a real ATS. Um, still didn't really have an HR department, landed on job vites, and then we hired a head of people that was very adamant about getting um greenhouse, which changed my life entirely.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

I don't know how I sustained um doing manual processes. Like just I had email templates and a Slack channel to myself, and it was like do the email, do the Google Calendar meet, add someone Zoom link in, and now it's just like boom, boom, boom, you're done. Um, and it saved us an FTE because we needed to hire an assistant for me, and greenhouse is that assistant.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

For sure. Hey, what was job jobvite, right? You said you used job byte before you moved over to greenhouse. I I don't think I've ever really spent much time there. Is that like more of an SMB solution that's just kind of out of the box but not highly customizable? I mean, is that my is that assumption correct? Or what was your experience?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Very accurate. Basically, it job vite can do pretty much everything greenhouse does, but it looks like it's in a beta stage.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Yeah, and I'm sure the reporting and data is not nearly as good in terms of what you like what data you can absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

It's not the reporting and data was a little more tricky to pull, and then on top of that, the scorecards weren't as cut and dry. It was more about like open text boxes where you can just put a bunch of notes in versus just giving it a rating, which is, I mean, that's one of the best parts of greenhouse is being able to objectively see a scorecard on someone and compare it apples to apples versus reading the story of how in half an hour played out.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Right. Yeah, for sure. How how did you um so how have y'all implemented like greenhouse? Are you do you have any different integrations

Gathering data from an ATS can help you convince executives to make changes in the talent acquisition process

SPEAKER_02 14:09

or like uh anything interesting about how you set up the interview flows, plans, um anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, um, we've adapted it quite a bit. Um, we can, I mean, it's fully customizable, so that's been cool. Um, this year has been a real big um big time for me to shift what we've been doing in interview processes, like eliminating take-home assignments, um, eliminating meet and greets, eliminating the amount of people um people have to talk to. Um, like especially if it's some kind of like if it's an entry-level role, why would they have to go through three rounds of interviews and talk to five people? That's insane. So now, like for those roles, they they talk to me, they talk to the department director, they get a hiring decision within one business day. Um, like the software development roles, it was a matter of like, hey, you guys are having people do a take-home assignment. I can objectively show you through statistics that you have a 90% fallout rate on qualified candidates when you send them that take-home assignment. Why not just do a pairing exercise as part of your final round panels? It solved everything where all of a sudden we were hiring quickly versus just why people were falling off.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah, it's like these simple adjustments can make such high-leverage uh outcomes or you know, differences in terms of uh, you know, uh speed or quality. Um, so that's I mean, that's and that's pretty simple stuff, but it's it's you need an ATS to be able to prove the data story, yeah, a lot easier, right? Because otherwise it's just like, I mean, yeah, you can still collect data, but it's you're just like you know, throwing it up on a Google Doc, right? And it's not, you know, it's just not as uh not as not as easy to convince executives if you don't have it in a nice report.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah, the one thing um that nothing can collect is how many profiles did you look at? How many people did you reach out to on LinkedIn and indeed in order to get the applicant flow that we have? So that's always a big piece where they're like, Where are you finding these people? It's like I'm doing Boolean searches and finding them, or I'm going into these different forums and reaching out to them, and they're like, Well, how many people? It's like I can count them all and tell you, but then it's like, Well, I want to I want to report on that. It's like that's something that they can't do for you, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Well, what about like did are you working with a LinkedIn recruiter pro or what what yeah? There's like some reports there, right? Like you can look at response rates and um like email acceptance rates and that kind of stuff, at least.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

A big part of that too is just telling them, like, look, I'm gonna reach out to 75 people a day until we fill these eight account executive roles, and then you know, lo and behold, it works. It's just a matter of executing it because it's sourcing isn't fun, it's very tedious. Um, you feel like your eyes are gonna fall out of your head halfway through the day, but that's how you find people and don't involve agencies, so it's just comes from territory.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Definitely you gotta put in that work. Um, well, how how so how much has the Ton acquisition team grown? Is it still like pretty small, or have you added recruiters? Like what's the structure and how many people do you have now?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

It's me. Still, yeah. I'm really good at managing my time. Um, I'm actually really good at looking at profiles and resumes while I'm doing a conversation. Um, because I just I've done so many interviews here in three and a half years. I think I've done like 5,000 or so at this point.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Um, so I get on my talk track and I can just kind of send that train down the tracks while I'm typing and like looking at profiles and reaching out to people. So that was definitely a um a learned skill here. Um and when I show when I've shown recruiting friends like at happy hour, they're like, So how are you doing this? And I'm like, let me let me let me source 10 people while we have this conversation. And I just open my computer and I'm looking at them, talking and looking down, doing this, and you know, however long later I'm done, and they're like, What was that? Like, what were you doing? It looked like you were just messing around on your computer like a kid playing on a typewriter, kind of. And it's like, that's that's what I do, that's how I'm able to keep my days down to an eight-hour maximum and um operate with efficiency without having to use too many agencies or hire someone to come in and source for me. Um, because there's a lot that gets lost in that. You get different like philosophies on how to do it or what's effective. And some sometimes if you want things done right, you got to do it yourself. So we haven't added anyone yet. Um, I can see someone being added here in the next year, especially if we are gonna scale up even more. Um, there's one person that handles it in Europe at least. That was, I mean, when we started expanding in Europe, I was getting on calls with people and they were asking me questions that I had

Nuances with recruiting candidates from Europe

SPEAKER_00 18:58

no answer to. Um, like what in terms of benefits or yeah, like what's my gas allowance gonna be if I live 17 kilometers from the office? I'm just how many miles is that? And then you know, at that point, it's like I don't even know. So having that presence out there really helped a lot.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Yeah, there's actually there is a lot of nuance for recruiting in Europe. There's you know, some agencies have tried to that I'm familiar with the recruiting, you know, recruiting agencies have tried to expand into Europe and just failed, ultimately just closing down the offices. I've seen a vice versa too, where it's like UK, Europe-based agencies that are trying to expand in the US market, um, don't seem to do that well. And I, you know, I don't know if it's like I guess it's just nuanced in terms of I guess a lot of things, right? To to process to cultural, um, I don't know what it is, but it does seem pretty difficult for uh it's a it's a different skill set. You can't just like copy paste exactly what you're doing in one market and apply it to another.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yeah, and it's it's weird too because you'd think like, oh, it's all European Union for the most part. Um, so they should have the same laws. That is not the case, like specifically in the Netherlands. I think last month they passed a law that all workers have a right to work from home when they want to. And it's like that is there's no nuance to that law that is pretty much like let people work from home, period. Um, right. You know, I can't ever see a day where that gets passed in America. I can see California happening, let's face it.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

You know, it's just a it's a weird thing to

The 4-day work week

SPEAKER_00 20:35

wrap my head around. That in the four-day work week I keep seeing a lot about in California, and it's like, are they just gonna try to drive every business out of California? Cause that's gonna be really hard to run a shop like that.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, I I mean I I think it that's so situational in the type of business. Like there might be types of businesses where they can thrive. I think you know, in my business where we basically companies borrow recruiters from us, I feel like that'd be pretty hard to pull off. Like, for instance, right, like a lot of offers are going out on Friday. So, I mean, if you're gonna attack on another day to the weekend, that's probably gonna be pretty tough. Mondays are always super busy, right? Like Fridays, a lot of act offer activity happens, and there's just so much activity, like ongoing activity in recruiting, right? Um, but you know, there's probably some I don't know, tech companies. I'd just be curious, are there any like really high performing companies right now operating on a four-hour work week? Like scaling rapidly, good, you know, hopefully good life work life balance, but I wonder if there's any like I'm looking forward to seeing more data surrounding like performance and growth of you know the top four four four-day work week companies versus five.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Absolutely. I would see any data on that. What was that?

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Have you seen any data on that?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I haven't. I haven't. Um I thought it would be more efficient

Dress codes

SPEAKER_00 21:59

to keep it five days and go to six hours a day, but you know, that was just me.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Yeah, probably. I think again, for a lot of companies, um, that would actually that would be better. I mean, uh, you know, there's a million ways to kind of slice it up, right? Um, and I think it's it's just gonna vary from company to company. So it's I find it kind of annoying when someone like comes out with advice like this is the way, the best way to do it. It's like, how would you know? How would you know in a completely different industry, completely different company, what's best?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, absolutely. Um, it reminds me of when I worked at Wells Fargo, they like the board in Minnesota decided that in San Diego, all these people that had never been tellers were like, the way we're going to increase customer service is we have to stamp a smiley face on the people's receipts before they leave. People hated it, especially if it was going to be in their books for the year. It's like, I don't want that. Can you reprint this without the stamp? But it's like literally, if you handed someone a receipt without a stamp, you could get written up if someone came through. So it's like, how is someone from Minneapolis telling us what's going to work out best for our customers in Southern California?

SPEAKER_02 23:06

That's just such a weird thing to like to add as something to help with customer success. Yeah, it has zero value to the customer.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah. And all it all it does is get people, I mean, you wind up with ink on your nice clothes because you have to wear a suit for a retail job. So um, yeah, it's wild. That was one of the big things here. Like it sounds kind of silly, but one of the biggest attractors to work at a tech company like Airspace was there's no dress code. It's like, whoa, I can I can mothball all of my ties. Like that's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Right. Yeah, I kind of like how culture is going. And I mean, I guess it's in tech, it's been like this for a while, but you know, there's a much bigger emphasis on on hopefully like the outcomes you can produce and not you know what you end up wearing for work. And I think I think just like the remote trends help with that too. It's like less of an emphasis on where you're doing the work and more of an emphasis on outcomes. And I just think like that trend in general is is is good, it's healthy. It's like let's focus on what matters and let's agree that what matters is the actual work that we're getting done. And you know, of course, like some roles are going to require an office or might require a certain dress code, I guess. I'm trying to think there's like few and far between in which they would, but you know, particularly in tech, like I just don't see much of a purpose in tech for a lot of positions, right? To have some kind of like these kind of requirements that have nothing to do with performance.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Yeah, that's when I'm talking to software engineers and they have questions for me about dress code or expectations on hybrid work. I'm like, hey, if you're interviewing at places that want you to wear a tie, they're not a real tech company. And then they're like, oh, that's actually good insight. It's probably a good question to get out of the get out early. Um, because if they all of a sudden are like, well, we want you to wear pleated pants and you have to have a collar and all this, like, who are you really working for?

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah, I don't that's kind of reminds. So I'm in northern Virginia, which is like all the GovCon stuff here is really big, so it's like just super like from a work culture perspective, conservative, right? Like people wearing like suits ties to work, like I so my office at Securvision, everybody's remote at the company. I have a little off ye office, like as you can see, and it's like kind of doubled as a studio, so I do all the recordings here. And like people will straight up wear suits to their Regis office. Whoa, what are you doing? Like, why? Like, you're not, it's not, it's not a customer-facing office, like you're you know, it's like a small business, right? Like, and you're wearing a suit and a tie to work. Like, why why are you doing this to yourself? I mean, I don't have anything against it, like I just find it like you know, whatever you know, people like or feel confident, great, but it's just kind of interesting. Like, you would you prefer to go to dry cleaning every week, you prefer to take like an hour to get ready, and like meanwhile, like I'm just showing up like in a t-shirt and jeans, and that's like that is my you know, that's what I do to work. Like, I'm not gonna spend time doing this other stuff, like there's other things I'd rather be doing with my time, right? Yeah, uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

I mean, I with no dress code, I went full dad mode. I just went to Costco and bought cargo shorts in every different color for 13 bucks a piece. And it's like, well, that part of my wardrobe's good for three years, you know.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. Yeah, it's it's it's really interesting being in tech in the DC market because it's just like there's just it's so old school, and there's just all this there's still, I feel like, a culture of like

When leaders create terrible work culture and experiences

SPEAKER_02 26:31

people feel like you have to be, you know, managers feel like you have to be right in front of them in order to get work done. Right? Like there's and it's my response to that is like, why don't you just have like metrics and data and technology, right? Like you don't if you're visibly looking at humans to know if things are getting done, that's probably that's probably a bad sign, right? You know, you should have you should have data and tech to to to be viewing this stuff. It's not it's not so much about when you know when somebody is coming into the office or like how many hours they're logging, even. Like I honestly, I could I don't really care how many hours people are working, I care more so about the like the work product that they're producing, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's nothing like thinking back on my past and having a manager or a team lead walk up to my desk and say, Hey, what are you doing? And it's like, what response am I supposed to give you other than working? What are you doing? You know, because then it's like, what is going on right now? Like, what are you trying to uncover if you're asking me what I'm doing at work?

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Like, holy moly, it's like you should just be looking at whatever performance metrics at the end of the week. Like, how is that a way an effective way to manage people?

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yeah, it's like, wait, how many interviews did I do? How many offers went out? Like, that's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

Right. Like, I so I I used to work at like a big publicly traded uh staffing company at the beginning of my career, and it was like, you know, suit, tie, whole thing. I'd be like in the middle of August, like 100 degrees humid, and I'd have to wear like a you know, a big like suit and tie. And it's like one of those cultures, like it doesn't, it didn't matter what you produced, like no matter what outcome you produced, like you had to like be sitting in front of your computer from like you know, before 9 a.m. to after 5 p.m. Just staring, like even if you're you know, sometimes like we're humans, right? Like sometimes, like, you know, you have a day where you get more done, and sometimes like it's 3 p.m. and you're just done, you're just shot. And it's nice to have that flexibility, but it was like one of those environments you just had to like, no matter what you had accomplished or anything, you just had to sit there in front of the computer and just keep going, keep going and hitting like these activity metrics. And that's like to me, that's death. I don't know how people do that, like throughout their whole career, like work in that type of environment.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah, I like I I elect to just eat my lunch at my desk and work through it so I can go home earlier every day, um, which is nice being exempt. Um, but I remember days when it was like, hey, you need to make sure that you go to lunch for at least an hour and a half because you need to be make sure that your face is seen at 5 30. It's like, oh, there goes dinner with the family. You know, it's it's a really interesting thing. And then, you know, meanwhile, the boss is gone at two every Friday because, but you can't go because just in case right, it's appearances.

unknown 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

My my um my brother actually used to have a boss that was like dude was like insane, right? Like he uh he so first off, everybody, everybody in the company had to wear a suit and tied work, right? And then like you had to get there, people were getting there at like 7:30, taking like 30 minutes lunches and leaving at like 6 or 7 p.m. It was like a really abusive culture. Um, and he would like the the CEO would just randomly go around to people and like and basically just verbally abuse them, right? Um just put a ton of pressure on people, and it was like one of those things where if you like left the office at five, everybody was just kind of you know, it created a culture where like everybody was like kind of crabs in a barrel almost, like everybody would just judge you if you left at five.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Yeah, nothing like the crab bucket analogy. Um, I've worked at places where we called the call center floor like the crab bucket, and you know, the owners of the company didn't appreciate it, but it's like yeah, well, it's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

It's like that it's leadership that creates that type of culture, like it's just I don't know, man. Like, as a leader at a company, I don't know why you'd want to create a culture where people are like micromanaged and miserable. Like, doesn't like you would just think somewhere on people's value system would be like, hey, I kind of want people to be better off as a result of my time here on this planet.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Like I will say, a culture like that is what helped me quit smoking cigarettes because I got so sick of hearing people complain at the smoking table that it was like I can't be around these people if I want to have a good life, and then I just quit cold turkey, no problem. It was right, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Yeah, if you're gonna get a lot of judgment too for leaving for like you know, for a few minutes, yeah. Yeah, I definitely can see that. That that's definitely I've worked in that type of environment where it's like every yeah, every minute is basically micromanaged, right? Yeah, not not the way to live life. Um, well, yeah, cool, man. So so I'm just I guess my last question for you, I I wanted to talk to you a little bit about just what you're seeing in the market right now, obviously, kind of

San Diego job market

SPEAKER_02 31:22

down down market overall. How is that impacting town acquisition for the open roles that you're working on? Are you seeing is it is is is recruiting getting easier? Is it getting harder? Have you noticed any shifts? What's uh what do you what are you seeing out there?

SPEAKER_00 31:36

I see way more no shows to interviews like really now that I'm really thinking about it. Yeah, like the the fallout rate is over 25 for initial screenings where people go through getting reached out to, responding to me, coordinating a time to get on the calendar, and then it's like they poof never existed. You call them and their numbers disconnected, or they just don't call you back, and then they may email you something like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Number disconnected?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

That's that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

How is that again? That that's gotta be like nuanced for like I guess some of the roles that you're working on, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Like yeah, or the wrong numbers on their resume, and they they email me back 10 minutes after the my voicemail, like yeah, I'm sitting here expecting your call. It's like I called you at this number. Oh, that's not my number, it's this, and then it's like, oh boy, like I really do need to consider you for a finance job with your attention to detail.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Right. Right. Wow, wow. So so more more fall-offs, like I think that might be calls because there's a lot of people that feel like they need to be keeping their options open right now, just due to the market conditions, but maybe they're also at the same time they don't really want to leave, or like they don't necessarily want to leave, but they want to continuously kind of put their resume out there, yeah, just to just to ensure that they always have options. So so maybe that's just like it just turns into having a lot like less serious people at the top of the funnel, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Yeah, it's either that or I have a feeling part of it is in California, if you're on unemployment, you only have to prove that you've applied to two jobs per week, which is that should be their biggest kept secret, but it's the first thing they'll tell you. Um, so you get two confirmation emails a week for an interview and just say, hey, these places weren't the right fit for me, and you get to keep your back. Wait, like if you but do you have to complete the interview, or you just have to say you prove that you engaged with the company and were trying to pursue an interview. And if it's like, hey, look, here's my confirmation email. I got the interview they passed on me, or I didn't like what they had to say, it didn't pay enough, and they just take your word for it.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

It's not it's not like they're really gonna dig or would have the time or the bandwidth, or oh no, not I mean, there's too many people.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Wow, yeah, I think that probably is a huge influencing uh factor for for some of the roles you're working on.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah, and in some of it, like if it's shift work, I mean, I get it, people don't want to work overnight necessarily, they don't want to work on a weekend, but then they have to look at the industry they're in and decide if it's a sacrifice they want to make.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

You know, very on I'm very open with people when they ask me those questions. Like it's like we have a 24-7 operation in that department. What's your availability? If they say basically banking hours, I gotta tell them this isn't gonna be the good up good, this isn't gonna meet your expectations. You're probably gonna be working weekends when you start. Some of them are fine with it, some of them are like, it's just a preference. I'll work my way up to it. Those are the ones that usually stick around a long time and move up.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

For sure, for sure. Well,

Wrap up

SPEAKER_02 34:36

look, this has been a lot of fun, John. I appreciate you joining us today. We're coming up on time. Uh so I just want to say thank you so much for joining us. And um, you know, if people want to engage with you, follow you online, where can they where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Um, I'm on LinkedIn, um, John Shreve. I think my URL is John C. Shreve. Um, beyond that, if anyone wants to reach out, it's just joh at airspace.com. I'm more than happy to answer any questions.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Cool, cool. Well, thank you, John. We appreciate it. And for everybody else tuning in, thank you so much for joining us. And we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Thanks, James.