EP 207: From Legal Training to Talent Strategy

Raised in a close Italian immigrant family, she grew up fascinated by people and what drives them. After a brief detour into law, she found her true calling in recruiting where she discovered that behavior often matters more than credentials. Now as VP of Talent Acquisition at Human, Valerie Vadala shares how to read real signals in hiring and why so many companies still get it wrong.

Restaurants mentioned: Pianostrada, Roscioli

Books mentioned: Do What You Are by Paul D. Tieger, Bullshit Jobs by David Jaeber

Connect with host James Mackey on LinkedIn!

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Valerie

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have Valerie Badala with us. Uh Valerie is uh currently the VP of Town Acquisition over at Human. But yeah, Valerie, thanks for joining me today.

SPEAKER_04 0:56

Thanks for having me, James. I'm excited for the conversation.

Delaware Roots And New York Life

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yeah, me too. Me too. So let's uh let's start with your background. Where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_04 1:04

I grew up in Delaware, in the suburbs of Delaware. And I grew up thinking I would live there forever. I didn't wasn't like get me out of this one horse town or anything like that. Um, it wasn't until I went to law school at the University of Baltimore that I realized I'm more of a city person. But I grew up like in the burbs.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Nice, nice, very cool. And we were talking about how much you love uh being in the woods with bears earlier before this, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:28

Woody Allen has been.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Everybody tuning in, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Woody Allen, it's like a saying, I am two with nature.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

That's kind of making it just for some context, for everybody tuning in. I'm I'm currently sitting in Tennessee, right outside Smoky Mountain National Park. And so uh Valerie and I were discussing that before recording, and she was like, Wait, are there are there bears outside? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_04 1:53

He showed me the the woods, he turned and I'm like, I can almost see a bear. Like, that is so bear town, bear bear country.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So so anyway, so you grew up in in Delaware, and then uh No bears, yeah, no bears, no bears. Uh and then you moved to New York, right?

SPEAKER_04 2:10

Well, I moved to Baltimore for law school, and I lived in Baltimore for 10 years and loved it there. Then I got engaged, it was like the dot-com boom, and the guy got a job in Seattle, so I lived in Seattle for a year, and like our relationship kind of went the same way as the dot-com boom, and it didn't work out, and then I ended up in New York. Um, uh because I'd been working in Hydrogen Struggles in uh Seattle, and they were willing to move me to New York City. So I've been here for about 20 oh 26 years now.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Okay, nice, very cool.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Yeah, cool, nice.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

So you lived uh you grew up in Delaware, you went to Baltimore for law, moved out to Seattle a little bit back in New York. Yeah, nice. I'm a city girl all the way through. Yeah, what an amazing place to live.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

I know. I like you know, I love it. I always say it's a city of estes. You have the smartest, you have the meanest, you have the richest, you have the most obnoxious. Like it's it's everything is extreme, but it kind of spoils you for any other city.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

So it does. Yeah, yeah. It's uh I'd say New York is probably my favorite city in the States for sure.

SPEAKER_04 3:13

Oh, it's nice to hear. It's a it's a love it or hate it place. When I was moving here, like I was I'd just gotten out of like I was, you know, we were supposed to get married in eight weeks, and we broke up and I was devastated. And I was talking to a friend of mine who lived in New York, and he was like, You'll either like wither up and be like, This is not for me, or you'll just like you know, totally blossom. And I was lucky that it was the latter, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, well, yeah, you decide to stay. So yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Sometimes it's not easy. Like, I mean, I've raised kids and crazy things like middle school, and if my kids went to public school and high school, you wouldn't believe if you weren't from New York, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to live here and go through those things. But then there's also great stuff like your kids don't have to learn to drive, you have to worry about them drunk driving.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Right, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

Very, very nice.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yeah, yeah, that's uh it's a very different experience, I'm sure. You know, I've never lived in New York, I've traveled there many, many times. Um, and uh, but I've never really had the experience of living like a local.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

Yeah, it's it's it's wonderful. I'm I I love being a New Yorker.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I live in Brooklyn now, but still, yeah, I like Brooklyn. Brooklyn's fun. I like I'm so it's sort of like a touristy thing that I do. I like staying in Brooklyn so I can see the skyline.

SPEAKER_04 4:25

Yeah, oh, it's so pretty. Right, we have a better view. You know, it's New Jersey has a great view. I hate to say it, but like because they're looking at the whole Manhattan skyline. But yeah, and I mean Brooklyn, that's nice to stay in Brooklyn. That's cool of you. Yeah, like Times Square or something, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

I well, so last time, yeah, I decided I actually stayed in the city because I had so many visits in the financial district that going back and forth between Williamsburg and uh Yeah, no, that's yeah, Williamsburg is a pain.

SPEAKER_04 4:51

Yeah. The craziest thing about Brooklyn is I live in a neighborhood called Park Slope, and the easiest way to get to Williamsburg is going back into the city and taking it's like absurd. Brooklyn is huge. I could tell you it is huge. Do you know that when when New York City was becoming a city, they asked all a bunch of different like boroughs if they wanted to be part of it? And at first Brooklyn was like, no, I don't know why they finally decided. Yonkers said no, so they they could have been another borough. Staten Island, why did they say yes? I don't know, but they did. But it's interesting how we got this way to be one city.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, yeah, it actually is really interesting. We never really looked into that. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Um well, I was there a few weeks ago during the blizzard, if you remember that.

SPEAKER_04 5:31

Oh, you were there for it?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

It yeah, yeah. So I I was I was initially supposed to go to New York in February, and I canceled my trip because they were the remember the huge uh storm, the first storm that was canceled.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

I was gonna say, were you the first or second one?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, so I canceled my trip for the first one. I had scheduled everything out, bought tickets for you know, all of that stuff, canceled it, rescheduled it. And then on the second time when I actually did go, that's when like the blizzard sort of came out of nowhere and the city was on curfew and shut down.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

Yeah, were you were you stuck here for a while?

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Oh, yeah, I was in Soho at the time.

SPEAKER_04 6:01

Oh well, that's a good place to be stuck at least.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:05

Yeah, this this winter sucked. It's funny because I hate cold weather. And so um, I like I thought that I'd as I get as I get an older, I'm like, I think my tolerance for winter, it's not so bad, but I did I realize this year, no, it's just that we had like five mild winters in a row, and like this winter I was like enough, enough.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Oh, yeah, it was hell, it was terrible, it's terrible. Yeah, anyways, I was there, I was there with you in New York in February. I don't know why I did get the timing right. Um, well, cool. So so I also want to talk to you a little bit about like what were you like growing up? What were you like as a kid?

Shyness Introversion And Social Energy

SPEAKER_04 6:35

I was super shy. Um, like people who know me now and I say I'm an introvert, and they're like, no way. And I'm like, I I am an introvert. And I was very shy and I liked to be inside. My mom would try to shove me out the door. It's again the theme. I wasn't afraid of bears, I just didn't want to hang out with anybody. Um, and and I mean, as I grew up like in high school, I kind of figured out at one point. And if you're like a painfully shy person and you're lucky, you kind of are like sick of feeling that vulnerable. And so you just start faking it, right? To the point where now, like if I like do a kind of a quiz about are you introverted or extroverted, I'm like I'm on the precipice because of just the things that I'm used to and comfortable doing. But um, like I will always be like, I get being peopling is raining to me. Like after today, man, I'm not, I'm I don't think I have any interviews after this, and I'm grateful.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, because like I'm not doing another podcast for the next two years.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah, no, I I I hear you. I wonder if it's like when when people are are are shy and then they get into positions where they're like totally extroverts. Do you feel like it is a lot of it comes down to like just forcing yourself out of your comfort zone when you're a kid and growing up? Or do you feel like it's do you naturally change as you get older?

SPEAKER_04 7:55

I mean, you know, I think it's comfort zone. I think I think you just it's like there are certain things about personalities that can be um molded. It's like muscles, right? And you just kind of use it enough. And I also, I mean, another thing I will always say about myself, I mean, uh I at this age I've just accepted it's who I am. I am a people pleaser. I like people to like me a lot. And I, you know, I mean, which does not always serve you well, but it's my reality. And so it that made it easier to kind of come out of my shell because the less shy you are, the more people gravitate towards you, right? And so that made it easier. Um yeah, so they say shy people are really good and introverts are really good recruiters because we do like to like watch. And I mean, I have like a crazy imagination. I like stories and I like hearing people's stories, and I like like I enjoy that. So I think that really lends itself well to recruiting.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yeah, I guess so. You take more time to listen and just take it in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And probably I I would say introverts are are they typically more introspective, more time to those probably are traits that go in the hand.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

Yeah, I mean, I would never describe myself as quiet, but I do want to I want to hear people's stories, and I also kind of want to read bel between the lines of the stories because the truth is like people always spin in in interviews, and I, you know, so it's it's nice to try to figure it all out.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Oh yeah, yeah, it is nice when you can get to down to reality, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, cool. And so what what else like what were you into when you were kidding? Like, what were your favorite uh topics in school, or did you play any sports?

SPEAKER_04 9:35

Like what was No, I would say I'm so unathletic, it's terrible. I'm old enough that like um, I don't even know if they they the ad campaign still exists, but it was a Nike campaign with girls, and it was called If You Let Me Play Sports, and it was very inspirational. And I mean, I remember I almost like broke into tears when I saw that the first time because I was like, I wasn't very athletic and and I was never coached to be more athletic. I was like, I mean, my dad didn't help me. And like I I just never, and I do feel like it's um to this day, like I go to the gym four days a week, I try to stay in shape, but I've never wanted to do teen things. Like I've never, it's always like a just let me do my own thing because I suck at it. This is my joke that I used to make that's actually true. I wasn't just the like in the neighborhood games, kick the can or whatever. I wasn't just the last kid picked. I was a kid that they used as like negotiating tools to get the better kid. Like, okay, we'll take Valerie if we get Richie too. You know what I mean? Like, because they want it, like I was bad. So yeah, I wasn't the least bit athletic. I I mean, I read a lot. I I have like a wild imagination, so I kind of lived in my own life. I mean, I had friends, I wasn't like, you know, totally out there. I had an under an interesting childhood, I have to say, James. It wasn't, I mean, my parents were Italian immigrants.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yeah, yeah. Tell me about that. So where where did they immigrate from specific?

SPEAKER_04 10:52

Yeah, so so nobody knows that like Delaware has like a pretty big at least two generations ago, they had a real big Italian immigrant population. And um, so my mom came from Abruzzo, and my dad came, his family was Sicilian, but he grew up in in Genoa, which is uh northern Italy. They met in the United States, they met, and my dad worked at a bank, and my mom was coming to get travelers' checks because she was going back to Italy to see her fiance. And my dad was like, Oh no, you're not. And so that's their love story. And um, yeah, and I grew up there and went to like the Italian Catholic school, Catholic St. Anthony's, and I went to Padua, which is an all-girls Catholic school. I then I went to University of Delaware, like I never thought I'd leave. That was just where I was. Yeah, it was like, oh, this is fine. I had no idea. Yeah, people's people's like lives are so narrow when they're young. I feel like it's so different now with the internet. Like they're probably like young kids probably dream about other things because they see it, you know, day in the life of me in in Manhattan or whatever, you know. But I didn't have any of that. I was like fine with my life.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Yeah. And then you you ended up uh I did so you left Delaware to go to law school?

SPEAKER_04 12:00

Is that yes, yes. So and I thought I'd be right back. The reason I stayed, honestly, was because I passed the Maryland bar and the bar exam sucks. It's like really stressful to take. And I'm like, I don't want to take the Delaware before, so I'll just stay here. That's why I stayed. And then I fell in love with Baltimore and ended up living there seven more years. Great, great city. Um good. But yeah, I mean, up until I like graduated, I thought, okay, I'll be back. And then I didn't which makes my parents really sad. They're still in Delaware and they still miss me.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Oh, how far is it from New York to Delaware though? It's not too far of a trip, is it?

SPEAKER_04 12:35

If if traffic isn't bad, it's like two and a half hours. It's a very boring drive. It's the New Jersey Turnpike, but it's fine, like, yeah. So we go there every couple of months and spend some time with them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Gotcha. Okay, cool. Nice, nice. Do you ever like go back to Italy or visit where your family's from?

SPEAKER_04 12:50

Yes, yes, I do almost every year. That's like our one trip. My husband is he he's it's it's very embarrassing. He's got like a little Italian in him, but like one of those mixed kind of bags, and but he's he's fluent in Italian, which I am not, which is very embarrassing. We go, Rome is like like you know how I told you there's no other city better than New York. Like, I Rome is probably where we'll retire. That's the only other city that I love as much. And so we go to Rome. This year we're gonna go to Rome for two weeks. We usually go a week somewhere new and then a week in Rome. But I was like, let's just go to Rome. We could do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

You just know what you like, right?

SPEAKER_04 13:23

I mean, yeah, yeah. And and the train system's so good, you can take like day trips and do your thing. So, yeah, so we're going to Rome. I love it. Have you been?

Italian Immigrant Upbringing And Rome Love

SPEAKER_01 13:31

I have been, I've been a few times. Uh, I went when I was a kid, uh, and I did all the yeah, touristy stuff, yeah. Um and I'm usually not big on touristy stuff, unless I'm like in Rome or a place like that where the history is just so rich and amazing that it's like, okay, let's do this stuff. Um, but uh yeah, I I I really love the city. I went back a couple times as an adult just for weekend trips. Um, yeah. I I was living in Europe at the time, that's why I was like, Oh, cool. Yeah, were you in Romania?

SPEAKER_04 14:01

Uh yeah. Are you Romanian by the way?

SPEAKER_01 14:04

No, I'm not. I'm not. I opened uh uh a subsidiary there about 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 14:10

Well they have good tech people in Romania. When I was in Shatterstock, we had an office there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Yeah, so so my uh yeah, my daughter's half Romanian.

SPEAKER_04 14:17

Okay, nice, lucky her.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

So there's lots of yeah, so it's uh it's a yeah, I so I lived in Bucharest for uh about a year and a half in total. Yeah, I didn't have a visa, so I would we had an office in Bucharest, so I would be there for a few months and then I would leave for a few months, come back, go back forth, and and so um I also got to live in like Prague and Budapest and oh that's lovely. Traveled a lot, which is pretty much yeah, it's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 14:45

Like you don't realize because the United States is so big, like Europe is not so big, and you can easily travel places for not too much money. And you know, my daughter just did a semester in Florence and she went to so many cool countries, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Florence is awesome. That's uh you know what?

SPEAKER_04 15:03

So we visited her. It was my first time in Florence, weirdly. I liked it, but what I didn't like is is that um it's very like not that not that Rome's not touristy, it is, but like it was so catering to both these international students as well as just tourists that um like if you heard somebody speaking Italian, that was unusual. Like, you know, because everyone's like speaking English, they're all like it's just very touristy. It's beautiful. I mean, it's it's just like it's an outdoor museum, like Rome, their ruins are more things that like 2,000 years old, whereas Florence, it's like you know, 500 years old, it's very different, so it's beautiful. But like I spent like three days there and I was like, that's that's good enough.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

You're ready. Yeah, this is one thing with like a lot of the touristy areas is my maybe this is the introvert coming out. I just sort of like I I've hit I hit a threshold with yeah, be having a lot of people around where I'm like, okay, like I'm I'm good.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, yeah. I totally get it. I'll use I can hang in there for a while, but then I'll just hit a point where I'm like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to not be around a million. All these people, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:09

And so you go to a wood the woods in Tennessee and you're happy.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Exactly. So you got to counterbalance. Well, I did you know, I did trips to San Francisco and to New York and you know, all these places. And and that's like I think just also being in the tech industry and just being glued to computer and then doing all the travel to like the big cities. It's like in recent years, I definitely have started to gravitate more and more toward like the woods, like yeah, just to counterbalance a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Yeah, where do you live?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Northern Virginia, out like in Reston.

SPEAKER_04 16:37

Okay, so right by DC.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah, it's like 30, 20 minutes outside of the City.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

Baltimorean. I got you. I know where you work.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah, you know, DVD. Yeah, same similar area. So yeah. Yeah, Rome. So okay, in Rome, do you off the top of your head, not try to put you on the spot, do you happen to have any good restaurant recommendations, like favorite places to go in Rome? Sure.

SPEAKER_04 16:56

Um, so there's one place that you you should get a reservation, but it's not super fancy because I don't like fancy places. Um, it's called Piano Strada, which means slow street, and um, it's it's really good food. Um, I can send you. I have Rome notes and I have like all kinds of places to go because we we're very big on. I mean, like piano strada people know about. There's another place called Oshooli that people know about, but they're both really good. But there's also some like littler things because we don't like to go to touristy places, and like there's fun things like there's this great little, it's like a cafe, it's like a kind of a dumpy place right near the Pantheon that has um they do a gelato with uh a little bit of um espresso on top that is so good. And like I like finding places like that. So I have a whole paper if you're going to have to go to the city. Oh, yeah, yeah. Send it over.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, send over one of your some of your top uh recommendations. We can put it in the description for everybody tuning in too.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

Oh, I would have be happy to, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, yeah. That's always like it's always really nice, particularly when it's like in a really touristy city, yeah, to find the places that the locals love.

SPEAKER_04 17:59

Totally. You know, it's funny. So when I'm in Italy, it's kind of like being in New York, you can get bad to mediocre food pretty easily because there's so much stuff that's targeted to tourists who kind of don't know better or don't care. And whenever I have like if I'm in Rome and I have like mediocre food, I'm pissed off. I'm like, no, no, no. You I want because I know you can eat well. And so if I accidentally got suckered into a place that doesn't really serve it up, and it's the same with New York, you just have to do your research and you can eat so well, like really yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

It's uh when I was living in Prague, it's like very touristy, right? Yeah, yeah. But I also knew what streets to go down to get off, like you know, the touristy areas, and that's where the good food was. It was also the prices were like one fourth, or what they were like one block of yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 18:45

It's crazy, right? As soon as you see a menu in English, you're like, this is not the place for me.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, no, like absolutely not. So so you went to just getting back to to law school. Um, what why did you end up going to law school in the first place? Because uh I I know you mentioned that you ultimately just decided that wasn't for you. Like, what was that?

SPEAKER_04 19:03

Yeah, so so the thing about having um Italian immigrants as parents, or at least my Italian immigrant parents, is the good thing is you didn't I it wasn't like tiger mom, it was like the opposite of tiger mom. Like there wasn't too much, like there's pressure to to work hard, you know, all these things, but they didn't give me any direction whatsoever. So my first big mistake is that I went to undergrad at University of Delaware and I was like, let me be a business major because then I'll get up business job. Like, what the hell is that even? And there it was a Bachelor of Science. So I was taking like calculus and and statistics and even accounting was hard. And and I'm bad at that. So, like my GPA wasn't great when I graduated. I like like if you're taking um, like my advice to anybody that's going undergrad, unless you know you want to do STEM, like you know you're gonna go to medical school or you know that that's your brain, just take what you like because it doesn't really matter too much what your undergrad is, right? Just take what you like, get the high GPA, and then if you want to go to grad school, you you've got the high GPA and you can do what you want to do. So anyway, I had this whole thing. I was graduating. I have lived through four real recessions. Like that, like I mean, they they've just come at me, right? And it was a recession when I graduated, and I was just like, I didn't know what I was gonna do. So I'm like, well, I like to read. Maybe I'll go to law school. Like, really didn't give it much thought. Um, so I ended up at University of Baltimore and I kind of knew, like almost immediately, that I didn't like it. Um, it's it's deeply boring, it's deeply detail oriented, which I don't like. And I mean, there are a lot of like a lot of assholes go to law school. Like they're there are the kind of people like I didn't like a lot of people. Like they're very, very competitive. Like you'd have study groups and people would like just just kind of be jerky about it and hide things, like not share notes. It was just like not my jam. But I had borrowed money to do it. So I was like, I'm not a quitter. I'm gonna just do it. If I pass the bar, I'm gonna give it a year. I graduated, I passed the bar, I gave it literally a year, and then I was uh I I left and became a recruiter.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

And so you um what kind of law were you in?

SPEAKER_04 21:05

It was I was um, so it was again kind of a soft market. I was in a general practice firm. So I did I did estate work, I did um some collections work, I did um like uh personal injury. It was a little firm, this general practice. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Well, so what was that story you said you were in uh you in Annapolis? Is that right?

SPEAKER_04 21:29

Oh yeah, so I had to do a jury trial by myself because they knew it was like a losing trial and they were still.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

So you were like in court in front of a jury?

Law School Disillusionment And Leaving Practice

SPEAKER_04 21:37

Yeah, like yeah, a little 25-year-old me. Like I didn't know anything. Like it was just like and they just like less than a year of experience? Uh yes, you know, the whole thing, like like it was crazy. Um, and so before the the trial, because I got there early, and I mean, I just first of all I remember, and this sounds much bleaker than it it really was. It's it was more funny than bleak, but like I was crossing the street and I'm like, I like forgot to look, and and it was fine, but I'm like, I don't know that I would have cared if I got hit because I wouldn't have to go do this thing, you know. And then I went into um Nordstrom's, which I like, I like shopping, and I, you know, Nordstrom's is kind of like a you know, go in the cosmetic section. Yeah, exactly. Very comic. And they were they were playing the piano. It was back in those days. I don't know if Nordstrom Nordstrom still does that. And it's a song um from My Fair Lady called The Street Where You Live. And it's like people stop and stare, they don't bother me for there's nowhere else on earth that I would rather be. And I was like, I this is I don't want to do this anymore. I want this is not what I want to do. I I need to do something else. And that was like it for me. I ended up uh changing careers. I I read a book called Do What You Are, which is Essentially the Myers Briggs. And it says it's not as much what your interests are, but what your personality is. And so I did it. And at the very end, it'll it kind of gave you ideas of careers that would be good for you. And as an aside, at the end of mine, I was an INFJ, and it said you'd be a terrible lawyer.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

And I was like, I love like that's the first recommendation against you. Look like I we can throw what you wanted to do. Well, you don't want to be as a lawyer. And I'm like, this one thing.

SPEAKER_04 23:14

I don't want to be a lawyer. And and like this is my memory of it. Like, I swear, I'm pretty sure this is how it happened. I used to call it on Sunday nights the 60 Minutes Blues because I don't think people watch 60 Minutes too much, but there's that tick, tick, tick, tick, tick tick. And like when you heard the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, you knew you had to go to work the next day, and you were just like, oh God, just can't wait. So I finished the book on a Sunday. I closed the book. I it was newspapers back then. I opened the paper and there was this little tiny ad and it said legal recruiting. And I ended up getting a job at um it was very innovative at the time. It was called attorneys per diem and it was uh legal staffing, which now is like a whole industry, right? But then it was very new. Um, and I always tell people, like when they're trying to break into recruiting, if they are, that try to get a job temp staffing, because the learning curve about figuring people out is like, phew, like you learn really fast, right? And it all goes fast. So that was how I started my career. And I the I will tell you this the preface of the book, Do What You Are, it says, like, write your name with your dominant hand and then write your name with the non-dominant hand. You can still do it, but it takes longer and the results aren't as good. And that's what it's like working in a job that your personality isn't suited for. Yeah, you can do it, but are you gonna be that good at it? Are you gonna have fun doing it? And that's how I felt when I started recruiting. I thought recruiting was easy when I started. I actually thought this is like the easiest job in the world. It's so much fun. It's but it over the years, I'm like, it's not easy because I see a lot of people who suck at it, right? Like you you realize that it just was that it suited me, you know, like it was the right job for me. So I got very lucky, very lucky.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Well, I think the writing your name in the dominant versus non-dominant hand, that's a really good uh analogy.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yeah, analogy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

That's smart. And so you uh so you went into recruiting, and it seems like you it's like just very natural for you. And you sort of talked about like you feel like you uh the way the way you've moved up and been promoted was not necessarily uh intentional, right? It was more so just getting pulled into leadership roles, uh going and doing a good job. So what was what's that been like?

SPEAKER_04 25:25

Yeah, so I I overall kind of lack ambition, which is kind of funny. I once had a therapy therapist that said, I don't know if that's true. You were the first person to graduate college of your family. Then you went to law school. So there's there's some ambition, but I don't feel like I'm that person that's like like it all matters so much. Like, you know, I mean, I I want to be successful so I can make money and whatever. But like I I don't know, I just I never wanted like really big jobs. It's funny, when I was at Credit Suisse, um, uh an HR business partner told me. And at that point, I could have still probably made a pivot. And he's like, you know, if you want to be a chief people officer someday, you have to be an HR business partner at some point. You have to do that. Two things there that happened to me. I was first of all, like, I have absolutely no interest in being a chief people officer. And I would be a terrible HR business partner because first of all, they have a lot of very hard conversations with people. Um, and also I'm just a gossip and I would be like, oh my God, I got I got dish. I just it would not be the right job for me. So I wasn't interested in it. But at that moment, and this is kind of going in a different direction, but I did realize at that moment, I always thought of um the people partners of the HR business partners as as my peers. Like, I'm a subject matter expert, you're a subject matter expert. We, you know, work together. But we kind of have a dotted line to them, right? Like, and it's good to remember that. Like, no matter how close you are to them and how good of relationships, they're the ones that if they have the right relationships with their internal clients, if you don't keep them in the loop, they could get ambushed where, like, you know, the head of the department's saying, What the hell's happening with this recruiting or whatever? Like, you really have to treat that relationship with a little bit of deference isn't the right word, but like they're not exactly your peers, right? And it was a very important kind of lesson for me just in corporate America. Um, but anyway, yeah, I had no interest in being a chief people officer and even like a head of talent acquisition. I I mean, I didn't even think of myself as necessarily a natural leader, but it turns out like I'm I'm not bad at it because when I first like my first big job was at Experian where I had a team of nine, and I called a friend of mine who had had big teams before, and she said, Be the manager you always wanted to have, you know, and so that and like about about like five years later, I I said something to her. I'm like, you know, you so inspired me. And she's like, I said that bullshit. I'm like, listen, it meant a lot to me. You did it every time, yeah. Yeah, because you know, I I try to um like for me, and this is where being low ego is really good as a manager. Like, I have always been like, if you leapfrog me, God bless. Like, I am fine with that. I don't like I would love to develop people. I want like the team to like love recruiting. I want them to be able to be whatever they want to be. And I I want to put them out there and put them as as far in front of the as they want to be. Um, and I just don't want them to hate their job, right? And sometimes a bad manager can make that happen, right? And so I try really hard to always remember what it's like to have to have somebody there.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And so now you're working at Human, and Human is a growth stage cybersecurity company, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:49

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

How many employees does your team have?

SPEAKER_04 28:52

It's a little over 400 globally. Okay, yeah. Um, and we're headquartered in New York, although the team is, you know, probably in New York. I don't know, we have about 50 or 60 people. It's a great office. I go in a couple days a week. Yeah, so I was very lucky. Like my I I'm not a hashtag blessed kind of gal, but I do feel like I got super lucky. And I don't know if I'm zigzagging too much, so you can pull me back if I am.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

Yeah, yeah.

Recruiting Clicks And Leadership Without Ego

SPEAKER_04 29:16

Yeah. So I got laid off from Shutterstock, me and like half my team, they did decimated the talent acquisition team. And I got laid off at the end of 2023. And that was like, you know, it wasn't technically a recession, but it for recruiters, the market correction after the great resignation was real. Like, I mean, I'm sure you know there were so many recruiters that didn't have jobs that like, and to this day, right? It's still hard in talent acquisition. It is. So yeah, here I was, like I was a recruiting leader. And it was kind of jarring because I did feel like I was kind of at the top of my game then. I'd be doing podcasts, I'd be like speaking at things. Like I, I mean, like I got my notice, and then I had I was at the LinkedIn Talent Connect on a on a panel like that, like that week. And I just it felt really it's it's like it's so amazing. Like you have to remember that from the top to the bottom is not that far, right? Like I so anyway, I was I didn't have a job and it took me 14 months to find one. Um, I, you know, I did what I could, but I was very picky about what I was applying for because I'm a recruiter, right? I and we could talk about that a lot, just how like when you're interviewing as a recruiter, you kind of know what's going on behind the curtain, right? And and it makes it like much in more interesting. Um, but anyway, so I thought my career was over. I mean, ageism is real. I was like, it's done. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'll have to figure out some sort of side hustle. I don't know. And then the chief people officer at Human, who I worked for at Experian 10 years prior, reached out to me. And I had always liking for her, and I was really touched that she remembered me and she told me about this role. And I went in, I spoke with like, I don't know, the CFO, the general counsel, the CEO. But it was the kind of thing where as long as they like, it was more like, okay, you know, I I trust you, you're vouching for her. She did fine in the conversation. And I I would have never gotten this job. Like I would have never gotten this job if it was just me, like some person, because I didn't have super tech experience. I mean, a little, but not a lot, right? And it was a younger company. And, you know, it wasn't, it's not a startup, but it's like 14 years old. Um, but I do find that I always wanted to go into a startup, like even when I like was working in financial services and everything, but it's very velvet rope-y, like younger companies are very much, they're always just like, I don't know, they say you don't know how to scale or you need prior startup experience and things like that. And so I got this job and I feel so lucky to be at this company, right? But what I learned is that I was right. I'm actually really like this is the kind of place where I flourish. Because I think that the mistake young companies make is they they screen for experience signals instead of like behavior signals. And experience is kind of an imperfect proxy, right? Like people, like I was in corporate America for most of my career. I did fine, obviously, but I never was happy. I never really flourished, right? And I think like over-indexing on where someone has worked and under-indexing on like how they operate is a mistake a lot of young companies make, you know? Um, because I think I think personality matters more. Like, I think what you as a young company, you shouldn't just be like, oh, they don't, they haven't had prior startup experience. What's more important is like, are you comfortable working with ambiguity or does it make you crazy? Can you move fast with without like perfect information? Do you default to action or to process? Like, what's your preference? You know, are you low ego? Because like I do a lot of like low-end stuff and I I don't care at all, right? Um, so I I feel like I learned that I was right that like it personality is more important than where I've worked before. Um, I interviewed a woman about a job and she'd only have been in big companies, and she said something like, I flourish in matrix environments. I'm like, girl, this is not your I did not flourish in matrix environments. And like people who do, it's a whole different kind of operator, right? I mean, and God bless, I always like respected people who were able to, but um, it wasn't for me, right? And if somebody had asked me that question, I would have been like, yeah, it's not not where I'm happy.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Where do you how do you think you like get that out of um to make sure it's the right behavioral fit for a startup growth stage, scale up tech, whatever, right? Because I I I when I ask people point blank, like that that never worked for me. Yeah, no, yeah. Like, hey, how do you like just so you know we don't have XYZ built out, we don't do that.

SPEAKER_04 33:48

Like, oh great, fine. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Like, oh yeah, like I've always wanted to work for a startup. It's like okay.

SPEAKER_04 33:53

Yeah, okay, like there are signals like this one that said I flourish in a matrix environment. Um, ask what frustrates them in their current role. Like, you know, if they say too slow or bureaucracy or decisions take forever, that's a good sign. Like it's not enough structure or roles aren't clearly defined. That's not a good sign. How do you feel like when priorities change quickly? Like, how does that make you feel? What's something you've done at work that technically is not your job? Like things like that will give you an idea if somebody is comfortable with you know, you have to be kind of low ego, I I think to to well, I think, yeah, like what frustrates you about your current job is a great question.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Right, because it's like it's not leading, like it doesn't feel like a leading question where they can kind of catch on to what you're doing, right?

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Exactly, exactly, where they're like, Oh, I'm a perfectionist. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Like you can right, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 34:45

Um I hate that that in interviews, like you're not supposed to say anything negative, like like you don't have to be a jerk about like where you where you've been, but like I feel like what you don't like is like so important, like to know what was bad, you know, and and nobody everybody's like always trying to dance around it. I'm like, can we just be real?

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Like, you know, like honestly, I think good kick strong communicators and like folks that they can get there. I think they're still a little like hesitant, but if you like level set with people, like yeah, I get in. Like, and I'm you know, not to call anybody out specifically, just it said like in terms of the environment, like walk me through because I do want to I do like for me, I do want to get a sense for how well they understand the challenges in their own and their current environment.

SPEAKER_04 35:31

Right, yes, yes, very important.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

I ask similar questions, but I I do try to get a sense for like what's going well, what isn't going well. If they were in charge, what would they be doing? Why?

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

I ask a lot of questions about that to just try to like understand their business and strategic acumen and problem solving and behaviors. And I kind of do thought experiments and I talk to them about their current environment.

SPEAKER_04 35:57

Are you um a behavioral question person?

SPEAKER_01 36:00

I I I like almost exclusively at this point. So so for I own two companies, and one of them that I I hire the most for is uh Secure Vision, it's an embedded recruiting and RPO firm for the tech industry. And so I interview a lot of recruiters all the time every week, because that's we have to be great at that, right? Because that's our business. And so by the time they get to me, it's the final round. Yeah. But it's it's I have a handful of questions. I have like three to five questions I ask. It's the first question I ask is uh, and to me, this is behavioral. I don't know if this is a traditional behavioral question, but I just say, okay, look, you know, if they're internal, if they're at an agency, it varies a little bit. If they're at an agency side, it'll be like, okay, look, if you were promoted to CEO of the company tomorrow, right? Tell me your strategy. What would you do? What would you double down on? What would you change?

SPEAKER_04 36:50

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Because I like to, these are recruiters, right?

SPEAKER_04 36:53

Yeah, see, I don't consider those behavioral. I like those questions. I don't like to tell me about the time when, like, I know we're supposed to like those, like, tell me about a time when you had to, and there's some complex thing, you're like, well, that's never happened. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

I like that kind of question because I like that because I I can extrapolate though, like from there, because it leads to follow-ups where I can get a sense they like their how they behave, like behavioral uh situations or their business strategic acumen, like how well did their awareness of like how their role impacts the North Star and how the the company is working together and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

That's you know, but see you're going more for that how they operate, which I like, and and also like a strategic mind, and and you know, how macro can you be about thinking about things? Those are important questions.

Layoffs Ageism Fears And Landing At Human

SPEAKER_01 37:38

I think so. I and I because for whatever reason for us, it it having those people who can that have a certain level of business and strategic acumen and can see outside of the tactics of their role and can see like okay, here's an outcome that needs to be accomplished, and here's the most direct path from A to B. Right, regardless of what my JD is. It's not the point, the point is is the solution. Right, exactly. I I ask I look for that. I ask like a lot of those types of questions just to get a sense for how they operate. I one of my questions, like, we have a great onboarding was like hypothetically, if you didn't have any onboarding, yeah, like what would you do day one? How would you ramp and be successful?

SPEAKER_04 38:16

That's a great question. I like that one.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

I like just kind of getting a sense for how they would operate and operate, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:23

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

I guess yeah, you're right. So that's the first way to put it, but I I did that one kind of and I like I ask some I like to ask questions that they've never gotten before because they can't respond to an autopilot.

SPEAKER_04 38:33

Right, exactly, exactly. Like that's the thing. And and you know what, you know, it's driving me bananas lately. Like everybody got the advice where you're like, Do you have any questions? And as a recruiter, I understand why people in the business feel like if they don't ask questions, that's not good. But for me, I'm like, I I try to explain a lot to them during the conversation. So if they I don't want them to feel like they have to, but I hate they all ask, is there anything I haven't explained deeply enough that you have deeper questions? You know that one that there's that cliche question. Is there anything else that you need to? I'm almost like, oh god, that's such a tagline now. Just stop it.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

You know, I so I am big on questions. I so I do I will judge somebody some of the quality of their questions.

SPEAKER_04 39:14

Now, will you judge if um they don't send you a thank you email?

SPEAKER_01 39:17

No, I don't care. I don't know why I can't tell you why exactly I don't.

SPEAKER_04 39:21

Um because it's old fashioned and and just stop it.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

That's yeah, and now I if somebody sends me like a follow-up that's like truly feels like relevant or impactful, like hey, I was giving more thoughts to X, Y, and Z, and there was this one situation where hey, I'd be curious to approach it like this, or you know, would I would love to have another conversation about like something that's like guiding, leading, and value driven. To me, that's really cool. Yeah, every once in a while you'll get that. I agree. Yeah, but no, I don't I don't need them to follow up and say thank you. I I but I do expect, like by the time you're on the call with me, like I expect you to have some good questions for me.

SPEAKER_02 40:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Like I expect you to be intellectually curious, right? Um, I expect you to be problem solving with me on the call. I expect like to me, it looks like I see the interview process, it's like the first project we're working on together.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

It's the first time we're working together, it's not we're thinking about working together, we're working together now, and and that's how I see it. I see it as like kind of this like let's see how we work together and how we can collaborate and learn from each other.

SPEAKER_04 40:26

You're the last stage, and I I'm I do think that intellectual curiosity is one of the things that I but I find that just the way I usually uh navigate uh like I am I'm not very structured structured in my conversation. I try to make it as as conversational as possible. So we're kind of like the last questions in the middle, like well, it's so by the end, I don't really care. I I you know I just it it doesn't it doesn't but I I do think as you know at the end of talking to people on the interview panel or the hiring manager that then you should have questions.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Yeah, and and sometimes though, like sometimes there's um candidates like depending on how much I know going into it, where I'll I'll switch over to like what questions do they have, like yeah, almost at the beginning of the interview, like really soon, because it again, like I'll a lot of it I'll base off like I'll try to get a sense for their behavior and how they think and how they approach like just based on their own questions, like yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:19

I feel like that I think do you feel like you've done well choosing your recruiters, or do you have you had like I always say human beings are a volatile commodity, so we all get it wrong sometimes, right? But like generally speaking, do you think you like make good calls?

SPEAKER_01 41:31

I generally speaking, yes, and and definitely over the years it's gotten better. I think what I've learned, and this is actually goes along with what you said, is that I just like you cannot compromise on a behavioral fit. I can I can do anything else, like skill sets, what backgrounds, years of experience, experience, I agree. But if they're not every time that I haven't like trusted my gut or just stuck to a really high standard fit when it comes to behavioral skill set, it doesn't work out, like yeah, it's just tech is too demanding, it's too challenging, and it's uh so yeah, I think it's the old gate, it's like when it's urgent, you need to hire, you need to move because you got you know your customers. But like you have to hold your ground and just maintain that your high standards and wait till you get yeah, the great the right person.

SPEAKER_04 42:20

So you've learned I think you've learned the right lessons, James.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Behavioral fit. I think we're aligned. It's it's um it's by far the most important thing. I I have this um list of like what success looks like at Secure Vision. It's like a list of 10, 13 things, and it's all like you know, being proactive, 100% say do ratio, uh, you know, all of these different little things that like just show yeah, it's good.

SPEAKER_04 42:45

That's good to know. Like what they it's funny because I have this um like talking about like company values and everything. And um, I feel like um like my company has five values. I really think you could just have three, like because I what I think like, and most people don't give like uh this is a funny story, actually. Yes. Um, I shouldn't name the company, but anyway, I worked at a company that had a terrible culture, and I even helped them um rewrite the value, like like they we kept the values, but they just it was too corporate speaky, and we and you know, the the chief people officer is like excellent, every like the CEO's like excellent. We and then they had a leadership meeting, and the guy asked, so it was all the like the the senior leadership team, and he asked, name one value that the company has. Nobody knew one value, not the CEO, not the chief people officer. He sat there for two minutes and nobody said a word. And so I I feel like like choose your values well, wisely, like what you really what's really important there to be successful and what is important just in terms of like the existence of the company, and make sure everybody knows it, right? Because I think that it should say something about a company. Um, so I feel like uh like Lehman Brothers was very good at that, to be honest. Yeah, um, yeah. So I think it's an important thing to make sure that people are aligned with what's important for the company.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Yeah, I I I definitely agree. You know what's interesting is I don't know if this is uh if I should be embarrassed about this, but I I don't think like I can't think we don't have like a list of values at Secure Vision of like three core values of the company.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

Yeah, don't be embarrassed, that's cool because it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

We have this list of like behavioral traits that like or or here's what it takes to be successful. And I think just generally, like we have a there's a culture where it's like we we know our culture, we know how to explain our culture, and we we're all very aligned, but yeah, we don't have like a No, I don't be embarrassed.

SPEAKER_04 44:42

I think that's great.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

If we do on the website, it's old, I'll be honest. Like it's been there for a while, long time. But yeah, yeah, it's that's uh so one of the things we were talking about too was before we hit record was just like let I mean we're already talking about culture, so let's just let's lay down there, right? You mentioned something we were talking about, how like how how do people get it wrong? How do people get culture wrong? And it's just sort of an interesting thing to think about because I don't think any executive team is like, you know what, I want to have a really bad culture, like let's terrible culture, yeah, or lackluster culture. Nobody wants to do that.

SPEAKER_04 45:21

Yeah, they all think and any they know that like culture eats strategy for breakfast. They're they're willing to say those things, but not live those things, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:29

What do you think the disconnect is?

Hiring For Startups Using Behavior Signals

SPEAKER_04 45:30

Like, why do you think so many companies struggle with it? This is like something that I'm actually like really passionate about because we work a lot, right? Like, you know, whatever. Let it let's even say it's just 40 hours a week, it's a lot. And so you should be the threshold should be you don't hate it, right? It's not soul sucking, right? Um, but that's not even really enough. It should be like it's okay to be there, right? I mean, like I and and that's so rare to find. Um, and I I do think that it's it's a little bit about I I think that in a bigger company, the CEO and the chief people officer influence it a lot. Bad behavior should not be rewarded. When you're in financial services, there'll be some person that's like a screamer, like a giant, horrible person to work with that makes people cry all the time, but he's a rainmaker. It's like, no, you know what? Like uh I I read um or I listened to a podcast about assholes in the workplace. And um the the the uh CEO of uh Duolingo said, I'd rather have a hole than an asshole. And I I like that. It's like get rid of them, don't worry. Like nobody's irreplaceable. Get rid of them. That's not good. It's cancer, right? And so I think part of it is like seeing bad behavior and calling it out and getting them to where they need to be or just getting rid of them, right? Sometimes it just means like when I was at Oppenheimer Funds, which was a lovely culture, I really liked it a lot. And they they kind of like manage people out. Like if they were like border, like they just didn't have good behaviors, they kind of like made it like life not pleasant, but made it like you don't belong here. And a lot of times they leave on their own. Sometimes they got them out, but they they did pay attention to that. And so I think that's very important. When I was interviewing, uh it turns I'm not really a good interviewer, as it turns out, like myself as as an interviewee, because I'm I am who I am and I'm very honest.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

And so yeah, but that in a way that makes you a great interviewer again. It's like when like people who aren't like salespeople sometimes salespeople, you know.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Yeah, I I agree, but like you know what I mean. Like because it's yeah, like I think like talking, like I think that my candidates, when I'm talking to candidates, they they they would say I'm good. But I think as me, like if you were interviewing me, because I'm just so real. And and so when people were asking me when I was, you know, unemployed just before this job, and they said, What do you really want in your next job? And I was like, I I want to have some colleagues that I can have a laugh with now and then. I want to have people that I kind of just enjoy. And it sounds ridiculous, but God, it matters so much, right? When you think about jobs that you have liked, it's generally because you actually like most of the people. That that's really what it is, right? Like, you know, that person that you're like slacking on the side while there's some conf like some big conference call going on, and you're like, you know, just joking, whatever it is. That's a human. I like everybody. And I really do. There's nobody that gets on my first two miles. And that's like so. I think that that's like a superpower. That's that's yeah, I know, I know. I feel so lucky. But I I think that it's that's a really big part of culture, is like what kind of behaviors are like okay. Like anybody that's like too am like that machinations and like backstabbing, it's like time for that, right? And even like like I don't I'm not a big fan of corporate speak, and like anybody that's like, you know, those people that they say things in corporate America and it sounds really important, and you're like, I don't know what they said, and they always have like these big decks, and you're like, I don't even know what's going on there. And it's like all this, they don't get things done, but somehow they get further and further in the in their careers because they make it talking. Yeah, I don't like that, you know. So I think that makes bad culture.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Yes, the talking person.

SPEAKER_04 49:13

They flourish in a matrix. I mean, that's a thing, right? You just you become the best at like talking about potential, and then that you never it never really I I think about that a lot because um there's a book called Bullshit Jobs, and it talks about how there are like are so many corporate jobs that are are really kind of created. Like, what what do you do really? Like it's like what is that job, right? Like some spreadsheet. I don't know, just like certain jobs where you're like, what is that? And it's kind of like this theory that I don't want to say universal basic income because you have to work, but like we need to have jobs for people, and these jobs just come. And I feel like there are people that just operate in big corporate environments where it's like, what are you getting done? Like, what are you getting done? You know, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Well, I agree. It's it's we can talk a lot about that too.

SPEAKER_04 50:05

Um that's what I like about. I mean, there's a lot I like about being a recruiter, but one of the things is it makes sense, right? Like I that I had a t-shirt at the Indeed game, and they just said I help people get jobs. That's what I do. I'm a connector, right? And and you look and we build cultures, right? Because we're the gatekeepers and we're the first people. We have like asshole filters, right? You know, and you you decide who does, and that's like I get what I do, like it, you know, anybody can understand it. It's not like that. Oh, I consult on whoa, you know, whatever. Like, you're like, I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

Yeah, yeah, what does that even mean? Yeah, I I think one of the weird interesting things too, and I mentioned this to you before we hit record, was I've been in tech now for well over a decade, and I I know a lot of repeat entrepreneurs, CEOs, people that have built incredible companies, and and and sometimes what's interesting is like all even like one of my advisors, like I've spoken to some of like ex employees, and they're just like, oh that guy, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

He's like the nicest guy though.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Yeah, you know, I and it, you know, and it's just like weird when you start to see sometimes disconnects too, because it's like I do think that there's also sometimes I don't know where where something goes wrong, but every once in a while I've met somebody who they're like like genuinely like a pretty good leader, or they appear to, I mean, when I'm but but it's not always what's perceived by the team, the team doesn't feel like the culture is the company successful, yeah. Like the company scaling, uh, and and is getting the big valuation or the big exit or whatever. Yeah, the people don't like the culture, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:43

Like I um, and again, I I would love to name names, but it just seems inappropriate, so I won't. But I work for a company where the CEO, oh my god, he was such a jerk. And like, like he there was one time where he like called me out on this one search, like on a call, and it was like it was like abusive. It was actually abusive. And I felt so and and I was it's a I was at a friend's house because I was getting some work done in my apartment, and I remember I was leaving, and the the the husband, the guy was like, he wouldn't even look at me because he was kind of embarrassed because he'd heard like this hell I'd just gone through. And I I was told by people who kind of knew him that he was like a great guy, like a dad and like likable. And I'm like, no way, no way, how can that be the same person? I I I don't have an answer for you because I don't understand it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah, yeah. Strange. Yeah, it's also strange, like what aspects of culture are necessary for companies to succeed versus like what aspects of culture we should have just because there are values and how we operate as people.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Um, and are they always the same?

SPEAKER_04 52:51

I mean, I think there is a lot of crossover, like, but it's it is interesting to kind of think through like yeah, it's it's it's a good point because you know, if it's always happy, happy, joy, joy, nice, nice, nice, maybe you don't get stuff done that you need to get done. So I I I don't feel like it has to be that. Um, I don't know. I just we could go on a whole other podcast about like human decency and where the hell is it? Like what happened? You know, where did that go? And I think it's pretty simple. And and again, like I do feel like one of my goals as a as an employee is to make work more pleasant for other people. Like my colleagues, I want to I want to be nice, I want to be funny, I want them, I want to be a good collaborator. I don't, you know, like those things because if people like working with me, that means that their job is better, right? And I think that if we all thought about that as like part of our job description, maybe maybe people would be a little different.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

Yeah, for sure. I don't know what you think about this, but I think it's like because I'm like as we're having this conversation, I'm trying to think, I'm thinking through like how I define like my culture or like how I what I'm doing to actually influence the culture. And I think it's there's just such a big emphasis that I put on performance and competency and uh folks being able to be like proactive, color, collaborate, but also be self-reliant and to like self-manage, yeah. And just not no no drama, no bad drama. Like be good at your job, work hard, yeah, and and you know, we we'll help each other, but like, but everybody here is a strong performer. I I think I I talk about like a high performing team a lot. You know, it's like I I look at it as like a professional sports team, it's like we care about each other, we're here for each other, and everyone here earns their spot on this team, right? And that's the dynamic. And and I those are the types of like values though. It's like more is like around performance and competency and no kind of you know, we don't want to deal with with any drama, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:50

Any drama, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

And it it's creates and ends up like creating like a really genuine good culture where I feel like all these other values come out about like people really talking about each other and like being really supportive, and all of those things are almost like, but it almost feels like those are like more of a byproduct of like yeah, people that think that actually emphasize those things.

SPEAKER_04 55:09

Like, I just want to do the best job I can, I just want to get my work done. I just want to and they end up not being because it became it's not about like Game of Thrones stuff, right? It's just about let me just be really good at this thing.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

Just get like really, you know, like competent that's it, just do this, like find like really competent people, and we all get along just fine. I mean, I it was but it's interesting. We didn't start with the end of mine of like having like okay, a fun culture where we all like really like each other or this that the it was it really frankly, like I can't say it was like that part wasn't intentional as much as it was just like okay, here's like our you know, the competencies we're looking for, the behaviors that we're looking for, and then it just sort of like naturally it naturally happened. We've had people that worked here like 10 years, like five years, like you know, along with the that's a testament.

SPEAKER_04 55:53

That's good. Yeah, I mean that but you're you you're looking for those people, like the questions that you're asking when you're interviewing people will get you the right people, I think. Usually, like we get it wrong, we all get it wrong sometimes, right?

Culture Values Hybrid Work And Decency

SPEAKER_01 56:03

So, what do you like? What do you think are like the most important aspects to a good culture at a company? Like, what would you say is most important there?

SPEAKER_04 56:10

God, that's it's it's kind of hard to articulate, but I do think that there is this val, okay, like valuing people, like really valuing them. Like when I think about the places I've been happiest, like Oppenheimer and Human, it's not like you need the trophies or the awards. I mean, that's nice, but like they make it clear that that I'm doing good work, that I'm contributing. Like there are ways to kind of let employees know that they're valued. And I think that that's really important in a culture and appreciated. Like we're glad you're here. That that's just it's a little thing, and there's different ways you can do it. So I think that that's really important. As I said, having people of similar, like I mean, like like human is is very professional, but it's also like not very corporate feely. And you know, like it it that's a whole vibe. So, like kind of getting people that are like the same sort of mindset, not exactly, you know, but just uh for sure. Yeah, again, it's it's about that idea of like liking the people you work with. I think it's such a huge piece of culture. And I'm not really sure exactly how you make that happen, but it it it makes a big difference in places that you like to work versus not. Um I do think um a little bit like I mean, it's not the pizza party thing, but I do think uh having some sort of like whether it's like a cocktail hour or like potlocks, it sounds silly, but like things like that where people are kind of bringing another piece of themselves to work so you get to know them a different aspect of them is is also a nice thing for cultures. I don't think I'm answering this question well though.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Oh, you are, yeah. I so this gets into like the being in person or having hybrid flexibility. Like I so I'm a huge in-person advocate. I've gone full circle. I was all for an office, and then when COVID happened, I was like, Oh, wait, we could do all this stuff remote and we don't have like the overhead of an office, and like that's super cool, and you know, it it yeah, and it it is cool, yeah. But just like I feel like there's so much value in in-person collaboration and team building culture, um, speed, uh which I know a lot of people say it's like less productive. Like, yeah, as been my experience. I for some people I think it's different, it it's very situational to be clear. Like, I don't think that there's one yeah, but that's a we we we do that.

SPEAKER_04 58:28

Like, are you are you five days a week?

SPEAKER_01 58:30

So I'm so my go-to-market team is five days a week, nine to six in office. Wow, or in it, and and you you don't have problems finding people, like honestly, like like no, no, I mean it's so for my go-to-market team, they're junior folks, right?

SPEAKER_04 58:44

So I think there's also junior for I would say it's most important for junior folks because that's how you learn. I I do agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

And my senior recruiters are remote, yeah. One of the reasons they're remote, I mean there's there's a few reasons. One, it's like it's been that way for years, and so now I have people all over the place.

SPEAKER_04 58:59

Like that's you know, you find your talent where you will and you hire it, right?

SPEAKER_01 59:03

Yeah, but I would like to, and the other thing is that they're on screen calls all day, so it's like yeah, like what are they really doing in the office? Isn't necessarily as collaborative in nature, like but the go-to market team, I'm building it from the ground up. Yeah, it's like a new team, so it's like we're building something from nothing, right? And the skill set I need is the behavioral fit, yeah. Smart people that are right behavioral fit. So I got some junior folks that are just gonna like they're you know, really they're gonna grind, they're gonna work hard, they're gonna build a foundation for themselves, and we're gonna build a company. Like that's sort of the motion. So in-person makes sense. I would say that I think like I see a ton of value in in-person for for all levels of seniority.

SPEAKER_04 59:38

I I'm a hybrid fan, I like and I go in the office two or three days a week, and I I look forward to it. I enjoy it, and I like I love the New York office on a lot of levels, but I don't think I could go back to even four days would be hard for me. I do like like today, I'm in my sweatpants, man. I don't have a waist right now. Nice, it's all good, you know. Um, yeah, so I I I totally agree with you though.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm calling from Tennessee.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:03

I'm like, I'm remote today, so you know like that's you know, one of the good things about COVID is that you realize like, how about interviewing? You remember when all the candidates had to come in?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:11

What were we thinking all the time?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

You know, they all like like you know, we can do so much via video. Although I had have you had any fake hands? I haven't had any that I know of, like fake hands.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:22

What what we do and a couple of our customers we've seen some stuff, but I mean we have lots of checks and balances in place. There are yeah, I know some tech companies seem to be targeted more than others where they're getting yeah, I think so too.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:35

Like most of our um like tech people, I think, do come into the office. So I think it's more when it's fully remote jobs that you are more vulnerable to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

Like, hey, put your hand up and wave.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:45

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, have you heard of it? That's so crazy, isn't it? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Yeah, yeah. That's that's wild. But uh yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I hybrids hybrids. I mean, I guess technically I'm hybrid because like there's times I'll do trips and yeah, won't be an office. It's nice to be able to like go out with and I I just genuinely from a quality of life perspective, like I do think that being able to meet up with the people you work with and enjoy time like it it makes if if you like the people you work with, it's uh it makes life better, I think.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:17

Yeah, it's like I and and when I think about like I said, the two places that I've been happiest, like we would sometimes go out together, like and do on our own dime, like, oh, let's go out, right? And like there, there was like the younger group, they called themselves the millennials, and now they'd be the older ones, but back then anyway. So uh and and they'd go out, but like they liked each other, like they actually genuinely liked each other, right? And and uh that's nice when you get that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Yeah, it is, it is. Is everyone that you hire right now like hybrid in New York or are you? No, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:51

Like we hire like we hire, especially like when you talk about tech talent, where and even the go to market, like we need very specialized. So I don't I don't care if you live in Indiana, like that's let's just get you on just like wherever you mean we do have you know people like, but the other thing about new New York is it's also expensive, right? Like you have you generally have to pay more, so um, you know, a little bit New York, but all over the place, really.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Yeah, all over the place.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:16

Yeah. The CEO, our CEO like likes it likes people in person, so there's a lot of traveling. Like he, you know, he lives in North Carolina, but he comes to the office very often. Oh, that's great. Um, and all of the the executive leadership team is in the New York office a lot, so we get a lot of FaceTime, which is good.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:31

Yeah, you know, North Carolina's a good market. Charlotte is really up and coming for talent. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:36

Yeah, we have a lot of um leaders in the Carolinas for some reason. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

Yeah, I I my my COO is in uh Charlotte. Yeah, and I've been we've been uh thinking about possibly opening up a hub there. Oh yeah, actually for yeah, for our recruiters, but again, like I think hybrid at most for recruiting because it's yeah, you know, like so much of their time is just heads down. Yeah, exactly. They're really senior level people, like they know what they're doing. Yeah, but I still feel like there are these, there's there's like creative problem solving collaboration, like culture, like getting folks together in person once in a while would be awesome. So yeah, thinking about it, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:14

It's funny, like a place that I went where the job itself I was like miserable was um Wells Fargo, because I I was hired during COVID, it was 100% remote, and that is a big bureaucratic company, like everything I don't like, and and we were crazy busy, it was executive recruiting. Um I was literally there a year, like from start to finish. I I I my last day was the same, like my one year anniversary. So, from a cultural perspective, it was not a fit. But the strangest thing is that like I even though it was fully remote, I still have friends from them. Like I really bonded with my team and one of my colleagues, Karen. Like, I just like still keep in touch with them. Like, there is a little bit of that like back in Nom thing. Like it's like it was we were in the trenches, like doing hellish work. And somehow we like really bonded. So I feel I feel like you can connect well via remote, but it kind of just depends.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's uh it's interesting stuff. Yeah, I'm I'm with you though. I think hybrid, at least like hybrid, is nice. Yeah, it's nice to be able to get a good wear sweatpants, but it's also nice to be able to get out of them.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:20

I know, right? Yeah, and we're I'm really lucky because we're in a cool neighborhood. We're in um in Union Square, which is an easy cool for getting in another city, too. Yeah, Shutterstock was in the Empire State Building, which sounds sexy and it's like Harold Square neighborhood, like oh, it was like the worst neighborhood. You couldn't get a good cup of coffee anywhere, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

Yeah, yeah. Union square is like that's usually most of my meetings that are like I'll have um like uh financial district.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:48

Yeah, financial district's not bad now. It used to be, but now I mean it it's not as cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:52

It's hard to get to though, like if you're yeah it's harder for some folks to get into.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:56

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Union Square's got all the yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

Yeah, yeah, it's an awesome location. Um, well, cool. So I, you know, I there was one other um I I did want to talk to you. You you gave me some really good advice about how you think about be building TA programs. And so I think for like the final kind of topic of today, I would actually love to just get your advice. Like, you know, you had talked about like one of your top takeaways as a talent acquisition leader is like don't overbuild.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

So could you explain to us what you mean by that?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:27

Yeah, I mean, I I really learned it. I've been laid off twice. I was laid off when Lehman Brothers failed. I made it to Barclays, but then I was like their first round. Um, and I was out for nine months because that was a recession and nobody was looking for an equities recruiter. So um, and then the other time was um, you know, what I would call the soft recession, which was after the great resignation um when I was a shutter stock. And especially when I was the shutter stock one, I I realized like I I will argue to anybody, and I I mean this very sincerely, I think that what we do is one of the most important things in the company because we do build companies, we build cultures, right? That's what we do. And I think it's so important, but it's not really a very respected role, talent acquisition, because it's like they just get rid of you when it's slow. Like I love my boss, she's great because she's like, I we're gonna need you. Like she she gets it, but a lot of companies don't get it, right? And and so I I think that overbuilding just means you're gonna have to slash, and there's nothing worse than letting people go. It it's gr it's horrible, right? Like I could go on this whole thing about Jack Welch destroyed corporate America with shareholder value because they don't care about employees anymore, right? I mean, why don't they just make As contractors, like the way they they kind of treat talent acquisition. So for me, I would rather like just have my team like work as hard as possible and I'm in there doing, you know, whatever and like we're all doing it versus say, oh, we're having a surge. We need another headcount. Like I don't ever like, you know, unless unless you're scaling to be like two times your size or something like that, where you definitely need somebody. Like I just don't want to do that. Um and I don't, you know, I don't overbuild, I don't overpromise. Like I'm always um, I always get to the yes, but like I think you have to be very um kind of direct with um, you know, with with your internal clients about like like what they can expect in terms of the candidates and things along those lines. And I think that that that goes a long way. I'm not a yes person necessarily. Um and then I just I don't panic when things change anymore because they always do. Like, you know, right now I do you think I think the market's kind of soft still. Do you feel like that? Like I feel like you're still able to get decent talent. However, the really good talent is pretty expensive. Is that has that been your vibe?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:51

I mean, it's it's um, I would say the market at early stage is pretty strong right now. I mean, there's a lot of um startups and scale-ups, uh, growth stage companies that are hiring.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:03

Yeah.

Do Not Overbuild TA Teams

SPEAKER_01 1:08:03

Uh so there is a lot of growth. And yeah, I would say salary ranges are either particularly they're getting pushed up in New York City and San Francisco because there's a hiring surge for early stage plus a requirement of return to office, which is really hard right now because so much talent has moved out of those markets. So it's like you look at SF and you see all those folks that moved to left California with you know, called problematic, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

I feel kind of bad for them. They all like went and now they're like because there's not many remote jobs now.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:39

Well, well, yeah, and they these companies now they're paying people so much in SF and then uh in New York like there's a a bigger talent shortage, yeah. Because of, I mean, all the talent that moved out. So um, yeah, I mean, we're definitely seeing there's a lot of competition. There's still, I think it's it's what's interesting about tech is um, I'm curious to get your perspective on this, is like it's it's it's interesting that there's sometimes the overall economy, you know, maybe isn't doing as well. And that's when it's like startup and scale-ups are just like flourishing, which is what I would say is like right now, like at this moment, I see a lot of startups and scale-ups, there's a lot of money being invested right now.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:20

So the VCs are are digging in. That's good to hear. I would have thought they were fruit would be frozen right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:25

No, no, they're they're not, and it's but it's interesting. Then you go back a few years ago, 2022. You remember with all the Silicon Valley Bank and all that happened. Yeah, and you know, the overall economy was great. Like macro, you turn on the news, it's like, you know, overall US economy is really strong. Right. Tech was blank.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:41

I know, I know. It was like we were living in and yeah, it was it was crazy because you're like, this is a recession. Why is it not being called a recession? It was weird, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:51

Yeah, it was just it was just for tech. Like, I don't think it was really outside.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:54

Yeah, no, you're right. Financial services did ultimately like tech is almost like the the bellwether, you know what I mean, to kind of show a problem. But it was it was really bad. And and it's funny, you know, that something I learned when I was at Shutterstock was um, I I'm not one of those people that I need a seat at the table. Like, I'm not that kind of person generally, but like we do need a seat at the table, and people have to listen to us because I was like, we were hiring like gangbusters, right? Like all these uh software engineers, like like crazy like headcounts, right? And I was reading on Fishbowl that like the fang companies were hiring freezes on any engineers except like very senior level. And I told like my boss, I was like, we maybe should slow down because something's going on here. I don't know what it is, but like maybe we don't need all these people. Are you sure we need all these headcounts? And it never went anywhere. Like I wasn't noisy enough about it, and we kept hiring and hiring and hiring, and then like four months later, they're like, Oh, whoops. So I feel like TA really does need a seat at the table in terms of like our ear to the ground and what we're seeing, because I I do feel like we we see patterns that that you know a lot of senior people in different roles don't don't see.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:07

No, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:08

So I'll be noisy. It was 20, no, it was 2023, like 20, like 2022 was when I read about it, and then like it all crashed. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, because you know, what during the pen after the pandemic, things were the great resignation. That was like the craziest time to work, wasn't it? I mean, yeah, man. Uh it was fun though. I didn't mind. Like we had our feet to the fire, but it was fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:29

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, well, look, this has been a really fun conversation. I'm I'm so happy you were able to join us today and share more about your story and and everything.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:39

Thanks for asking me too. It's always fun to talk about. I I love talking about what we do. We but it's the coolest job, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:45

Yeah, yeah. And this is a nice little break, too. You know, we get to record a podcast, it gets to switch it up a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:11:51

Yeah, yeah. So I really enjoyed the conversation. Please, we've got to keep in touch. I want to Oh, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

100% for everybody tuning in. Thank you so much for joining us today, and we'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:01

Thanks. Take care.