Podcasts about jobs2careers

Andela ® Inc., one of the world's largest private marketplaces for technical talent, announced the addition of an embedded dashboard with a complete view of key metrics, including time to hire, existing positions, active talent, total spend, and hiring progress; helping decision-makers better manage and optimize talent pipelines and performance in real-time.  Wonolo, an always-on staffing solution connecting businesses with millions of workers across the United States, today unveiled its AI-powered, end-to-end job management solution. This innovative platform streamlines job posting, improves job matching with real-time insights, and enhances transparency for Wonolo workers. This enhancement leverages industry insights to craft better job descriptions, thus improving worker quality and job matching while streamlining the overall process. Using Wonolo's AI-powered solution, HelloPackage, an onsite package management system, has improved job workflow efficiency by 40%. https://hrtechfeed.com/new-hr-tech-from-andela-wonolo/ Talroo, which runs Jobs2Careers.com, announced the launch of Apply Intelligence™, a new suite of smart features that improve the job search journey to help jobseekers discover, search, and apply for the right jobs with the right employers. They say it will  generates more intelligent applications for employers by improving the job search experience using proprietary AI-enhanced technology. https://hrtechfeed.com/talroos-new-features-aimed-at-improving-the-job-search/ Remote, the global EOR platform and payroll provider, has announced Recruit AI, a new generation of AI-driven tools to help companies address the pressing challenges of today's global job market. https://hrtechfeed.com/remote-launches-candidate-matching-tool/ MONTRÉAL – HiringBranch, a leading AI-powered soft skills assessment platform, announced today that it has raised CAD 5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Crédit Mutuel Equity, with participation from Export Development Canada and Anges Québec.  https://hrtechfeed.com/hiringbranch-scores-5m-in-funding/  

Thad Price is the CEO of Talroo, a data-driven job advertising platform, with over 11 years of experience at the company. He specializes in HR Tech, programmatic job advertising, AI, and product management, driving transformational growth and operational alignment. His career spans leadership roles in talent acquisition software and digital media, including positions at Jobs2Careers and Job.com, with a focus on business development and product innovation. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Mary Washington and completed executive education at Harvard Business School. Talroo is a recruitment technology company that specializes in helping businesses find frontline and essential workers through targeted job advertising. Using AI and consumer marketing techniques, Talroo connects companies with new talent pools and only charges for candidates who view or apply for job postings. Their platform integrates with existing HR systems, making it easy for companies to use. The Riderflex Podcast, hosted by Steve Urban, features insightful interviews with entrepreneurs, business owners, and executives from various industries. With over 400 episodes, the podcast offers listeners inspiring stories of success, leadership, and personal growth. Steve Urban, as Founder & CEO of Riderflex, brings his extensive experience in recruitment and business consulting to the conversations, providing valuable career and leadership advice. Guests often share their journeys, challenges, and lessons learned, making it a must-listen for aspiring entrepreneurs and professionals looking to gain practical insights into business and personal development. Learn more about Steve Urban here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevepurban/ steve.urban@riderflex.com  

How can sales and marketing influence your hiring process? Thad Price is the CEO of Talroo. In this episode of the Talent Empowerment Podcast, Thad talks about why his company focuses on the blue-collar and grey-collar markets, how to craft the perfect job posting that attracts the right candidates, and why asking the right questions is essential when developing a strategy to reach top talent for your organization.

Max: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster, and today on the show I'm delighted to welcome Thad Price, CEO of Talroo. Talroo is one of the leading platforms for programmatic advertising, and please, Thad, correct me afterwards if I'm mischaracterizing what Talroo does. But the point of this conversation is to go over some of the trends in how advertising is being spent in the recruitment space, particularly within the North American market, and how that's affecting the work of recruiters listening to this podcast. Thad, welcome to the show.Thad: Max, great to be here. Thank you for your time and happy holidays.Max: Thank you. Happy holidays. For those who are not familiar with Talroo, could you start with that? Tell us a little bit about how the business came to be, its evolution, and its current state. Thad: Yeah, absolutely. So, a little bit about our brand. As we think about the Talroo brand itself, it really is the intersection of recruiters and talent in helping companies find the right hires and the right talent to drive a business. When we think about the evolution of the industry over the last few years, we've seen a lot of similarities to traditional marketing, and where marketing, where ad tech and marketing have moved. And you know our thought processes is about the audiences that you're attracting to your job. It's about attracting the right talent to your jobs. So, really if you think about how we provide a lot of value to our recruiters and employers who leverage Talroo, it's about finding the right audiences wherever they are. Right time, right place, right candidates, and how we can leverage data to ensure that we're actually doing that. We were incubated in Silicon Valley a number of years ago, over ten years ago, and we moved to Austin, and we call Austin home for a little over 8 years. So, we moved in the first wave of folks moving from California to Austin, Texas, a great town for us.Max: Elon followed you a few years later.Thad: That's right. That's right. But it really has been a great opportunity for us, specifically because Austin is such a great town for entrepreneurship. And if you think about what makes a great town, and there are two things that I constantly hear in research. The first is the idea of creativity and the second is entrepreneurship. And I think we're seeing that in Austin. It's been terrific for us to attract the right talent and to take our business to the next level.Max: All these universities which are producing tens of thousands of graduates in the engineering space but also in business functions. I work a lot in the call center space, and I know that these student towns are a wonderful place to locate a call center as well. So, you don't have to be a Python and LP developer to find a job in these areas. They just attract a lot of productive capitalThad: Yeah, great point. When you think about UT here in Austin, a lot of students don't wanna leave. They call it home. They've moved from other areas in Texas, and Austin is just a terrific town. They get a lot of entrepreneurships, a lot of opportunity, and it's been great to just experience growth over the last 8 years.Max: So, I admit, Thad, that I'm not very fluent on the topic of programmatic and I described Talroo as a platform that does that. Am I on the right track? For those like me who need an education, could you go over what programmatic does?Thad: Absolutely. So, there's been a movement in job advertising, probably the last 5 years, where there's this idea of more efficiency in job advertising investment. From what we can tell, the total addressable market on job advertising is anywhere between 10 and 12 billion dollars worldwide. And so, there's a lot of inefficient investment that typically is in this [unintelligible]. So, the idea of programmatic is to be more efficient and to attract the right audiences so you can drive hires. The Talroo kind of definition of programmatic is this idea of profile-driven programmatic, which is beyond the ideas of the site in which you advertise, but based on the audiences and the people that you're attracting to jobs. So, I think that's a big differentiator when you think of the idea of programmatic in the job advertising world. Again, today, it's more about job distribution and how can I get on a lot of different sites. The key with profile-driven programmatic is this idea of reaching the right audiences at time of search, and how can we ensure we're reaching the right audiences to drive hires. And that feedback loop is what's so important. So, in traditional… I'll give you a little information about how this works in consumer advertising. So, if you take a large advertising marketplace like Google, for example. Google has data on what people are searching, and based on data on what people are searching, they're able to allow consumer advertising companies to attract consumers based on audiences and based on buying behavior. So, an example is, I'm in the market for buying a car. I'm in the market for buying a Ford truck. How can Ford advertise to people based on their data searching for folks looking for a truck? So, it's about the audience and about attracting the audiences that will show this behavior. And so, that's the consumer advertising world in a very basic terms.And I think about it in job advertising. So, in this idea of Ford Motor company who's looking to attract people looking to buy a truck. 20 years ago, it would be that you would need to be on cars.com because people on cars.com were looking to buy a car or a truck. And so, people would advertise on cars.com with the hopes of attracting people who are looking to buy a car or a truck. And so, that's what's been happening in the job search industry for the past 20 or 30 years where people advertise on many different job sites, and the idea is well, if someone is on a job site, then they're looking for a job. The next stage of this is how do you then leverage that data to go beyond a single destination and leverage data to ensure that you're reaching the right audiences at the time in which that audience is looking for a job. So, that's what we do here in Talroo, we power over a billion searches per month and we allow companies to attract audiences and match companies to audiences based on job advertising and job ads and based on profile, specifically. So, early on in our company history, we were a job site. Our technology powers one of the top job sites in the US, and that's Jobs2Careers. And so, we opened up our technology a number of years ago, so we could go beyond a single job search and really think about how we can access audiences outside of a single job site, which of course at that time is Jobs2Careers. Jobs2Careers is still a terrific destination, it's one of the top places that people look for jobs online in the US. So, the extension of that was how do we open up our technology to access additional audiences and provide scale for high volume hiring needs for employers looking for essential workers.Max: I remember, this is from many years ago, but I remember that the number one place where people go to look for jobs is Google. They go and type in a job title and then hope something pops up. Obviously, in the last couple of years, that search is a lot better than it was before because now Google is scraping all of this content. Do you access these insights to redistribute ads to the people who are looking for these job titles? How does that work?Thad: Great question. So, when we opened up our technology we power a lot of different sites. We power job alerts. We power notifications. We power a lot of different opportunities where people look to find jobs. And so, from Google's perspective early on when we were investing in our domain Jobs2Careers in that particular career site, job site. One of the things we did was we thought of, “Okay, how can we connect to Google and how we can ensure that we can make essentially searching through marketing more efficient for employers and for, of course, more efficient for jobseekers?” And so, early on a lot of the investment and a lot of the R&D went to, okay, how can we leverage Google from a search engine marketing perspective. So, absolutely, that's when [unintelligible] from a Google, for job's perspective, that's kind of its own marketplace and it has its own characteristics.Max: That's the free traffic and then there's the paid traffic.Thad: Exactly. And one of the things that we're very good at is we're very good in investing in search engine marketing to ensure that we're driving top of funnel candidates for employers.Max: So, it's free inbound separate from Google Jobs. So, there's resources with Google. Google Jobs, inbound, and then maybe paid advertising.Thad: That's right, that's right. And early on we're very good at paid advertising on Google because the thought process is we should be more effective at connecting our employers, connecting our job sites that we may be working with jobseekers. So, if we can connect with search engine marketing, we can be more effective at that. So that was kind of the idea of Job2Careers early on in our history before moving to Talroo, where Talroo is more of an advertising platform. So, when you access the Talroo ad platform, you have access to essentially profile-driven programmatic job advertising events which you can create, and of course our Insights product which essentially what you can do is you can look at the labor supply in a certain area in a certain location and, of course, a certain category.Max: To create searches that will then pull out data from different places, including maybe LinkedIn and places like that?Thad: Good question. Almost. From an Insights' perspective, it's only our data. So, it's data in which we're powering, and we have access to from a job search perspective. So, it isn't third-party data that may be coming from places like LinkedIn. But the good news is, with all of that data, we can help companies be more effective at recruitment marketing by helping them learn the top competitors in their location, the top titles that may be driving clicks, and job views. All of this is important in ensuring that we're creating more of our recruitment advertising practice, if you will, recruitment marketing practice for businesses.Max: And those insights can then be used in LinkedIn or other places.Thad: Exactly, exactly.Max: So, we've been through a rocky ride the last two years with maybe a third of recruiters losing their job in 2020 and then everybody being worked to the bone in 2021. If you listen to what's going on in social media, it's a bit of a story of extremes, but I do believe it to a certain degree. I have seen it on my side of business, some loud swings. What's been your experience from the advertising standpoints.? Who are the big winners in terms of employers? Who are the employers who performed really well during this period? You can categorize them by industry or perhaps by best practice. Who are the ones who won the talent award last year?Thad: Good question. I think that as an industry, there's been a huge shift. It's been transformational in so many different ways. Like you, a lot of our customers advertisers hit the pause button as the country was shut down. Pause button. You don't need to recruit. Now as the country was opening, it was, “I need a staff.” Demands up. “I need a staff, I need a staff.” It's been an interesting dynamic in the last probably 8-9 months as more companies are looking to hire and to ensure that they're meeting consumer demands. Winners and losers, I would say that there are couple things that I observed. The first is that for years, we've been talking about this idea of the baby boomers' impact in the US to the labor market. From what we can tell, everything shows that in the first quarter of, and this is a Pew report. In the first quarter of 2021, almost 3 million baby boomers retired more than the first quarter of 2020. That's a lot of folks, not because participating in the labor market, and there have been further studies on this as well. What we can basically say is, if we think about the Great Recession that we experienced a number of years ago, roughly 2000 and 2009. There was a sense of lack of financial security because of a lot of pressure on 401Ks given the turmoil in the markets. We didn't really experience that in the last year or so, and so there's this idea of feeling this financial, I guess, relief of, “Hey, my 401K is still plentiful.” Also, we've had housing prices, which in many cases from a family perspective, a lot of wealth is tied up in home prices. And so, I think there's a sense of security, and that was the word I was looking for earlier, there's a sense of security that a lot of families are seeing and so they retired. And so, now we have this situation where folks are retiring and let's not also, you know, we can't discount the sense of health and time. We were saying earlier before we jumped into the conversation that time is so important, it's the one thing in life we can never get back. So, I think people are actually looking at this and making that decision. So, that was the first shift that I think is kind of where we are in this tight labor market today. The second is the idea of flexibility. You know, winners, we talk about winners. I think a lot of the winners, a lot of the, what we refer to as the gig marketplace, have been winners. And the idea of InstaCard and DoorDash and other providers in which you can work when you wanna work and have that ability to turn on the ability to deliver or to drive. And we've been seeing this for years as an industry, talking about this idea of flexibility being so important to the labor market, but I think that the pandemic accelerated all of this. And you've been seeing moves, even companies like Target, buying and investing in companies like Shipt, where you could turn on this idea of labor when you need it. We saw this with, a number of years ago, IKEA purchasing TaskRabbit. And so, my feeling is that companies are having to leverage these marketplaces more than ever because they need to adapt to what jobseekers really want and you're gonna see this transformation continue to unfold, I believe.Max: There's this one trend of capturing the marketplace and putting your foot inside these closed ecosystems where everybody is logging into to get an hourly gig or to speak to like-minded people in their profession. I get that that's popular and attractive, but I also feel like these closed ecosystems, they never last. Eventually, they die a quiet death, or they become very specialized and never hear from them. But what always last is an influx of new talents, coming into the marketplace, and sometimes that talent spends its time on Instagram and two years later they spend time on Snapchat and two years later they're spending time on TikTok. Those are the places to be if you wanna attract 20, 25-year-olds, which as you're getting rid of the boomers, maybe you should hire a bunch of those guys. So, do you think that social media has, you know these big platforms, they deliver on their potential for employers in 2021 or still underutilized?Thad: I think they're probably still underutilized. I think it's changing, but at the end of the day I think it's about what a company is advertising, and how they're treating their employees, honestly, and pay. When we surveyed users, jobseekers before, we found a couple things that are important. The first is pay, of course, how much they're making, how much an individual is making, and the second is flexibility, and the third usually benefits. And the flexibility piece is huge which is one of the reasons why I think these marketplaces are providing a lot of value to workers because they create flexibility. Now, what I think happens is as employers look at this and say, well, how do I provide flexibility within my ecosystem and within my company, then I think that there's a big question mark of making that choice. Am I using a marketplace to find work or am I working for Target, and I have flexibility as an example, or UPS or FedEx or others? So, I do think there's this huge shift that's happening and it's all about what jobseekers really want and you have to ensure that you're aligned with what jobseekers want because there's more opportunity than ever in the labor market.Max: And now is different than last year, right, because last year was about everybody wants security and so, the gig took a hit in a way because the companies refocused their attention and their resources on full-time permanent staff.Thad: Yeah, absolutely.Max: Now is the freedom years.Thad: The other piece of this is kind of the no-contact experience as well that's essentially happening with some of the marketplaces. Now, I'm not saying that there's no contact, but if you think of someone that is delivering for one of the marketplaces, for an example, there's definitely less contact delivering for marketplaces on your doorstep than a cashier in a grocery store. And I think that's another piece of this as well, we have to think about rational behavior. And a lot of these is taking a step back and looking at your company and putting yourself in the jobseekers' shoes and saying, what is rational behavior? And I think if we do that as an industry, we can see a lot of insights into, you know, as people make this choice, this calculated choice, what's really happening.Max: Yeah, it's always a good wake-up call to apply for a few jobs yourself and kind of walk in the shoes of the candidates, for sure. Well, thanks for these great market insights and reminding us that this year is very different than last, and we need to move faster and adapt in order to remain attractive. One question that I love to ask everybody who comes on the show is to talk about recruitment and people that you've hired yourself. Everybody makes hiring mistakes once in a while because of various cognitive biases or bad luck or God knows what. I'd like you to walk us through one of those painful experiences, if you can remember a wrongful hire you've made, some time in your past, it can be a buried memory. But share with me and our audience, what was the mistake that you've made?Thad: Great question. So, I would say that when you're thinking about hiring, the number one key is culture alignment, and when I say culture alignment, you know we spend a lot of time as leaders ensuring that we have the right culture, and we have the right way in which we lead the company in so many different directions. Really, it's the alignment piece that's really important, in one direction. And when I've made a bad hiring decisions in the past, it's usually been because from a cultural perspective. We weren't aligned, whatever that may be. And one of things that we did as a team to ensure culture alignment is we basically created a list of situational experiences that all of us have had, and we went through this situational experience and had our team just talk through how would you handle this situation. And these aren't recruiting experiences, these are actual life experiences.Max: I get that, I get that. Somebody on the show recently said, you found a wallet in the shopping mall, what do you do with it? That kind of stuff. That was for security guards.Thad: One of the ones that we have is, and this actually happened to me, I was at a dinner. I just moved to Austin, probably about 7 years ago. I was out at dinner, and I walked into the restaurant and there was a sign that said, please lock up your valuables, right. And I didn't pay any attention to it because it's a sign on a restaurant that says, please lock up your valuables. So, I had a great dinner, get back to the car, and that my car and my window is smashed, and my laptop bag is stolen in the back of the, it was in my back seat. It wasn't in my trunk, but it was in the back seat. So, one of things that happened to me was I said, “Well this was my stupid mistake because I should've hid my laptop bag.” And so, that's an example of one of this experiences that we talk to our candidates about and say, you know, what do you think about this situation? What's the impact to the restaurant, what's the impact to you, what's the impact to the person that smashed the window? And it's a great conversation to ensure to, you know, not that there's a right answer, but it's a great conversation to ensure how people [overlap]Max: There must be a right answer but maybe you don't wanna share on the show.Thad: All right, my right answer is, I shouldn't have left the laptop bag in the back seat. I'm taking responsibility for it. So, responsibility is important. Those are the types of experiences that we've used to ensure that we're aligned culturally with our team. And we look at all these things to gather and develop what needs to be a part of Talroo and what's important and ensure we're moving the ball forward.Max: Great example, thank you. No matter how great your technology becomes in Talroo, and how advanced our technology with conversational AI gets. They will never replace a good interview question like this with situational discussion about how would you react if this happens. So, the job of recruiters is safe for as long as we live.Thad: I always say to our team, you can't take the human out of human resources, and I think that's a great line to think about.Max: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. That will be your closing statement, Thad. Thanks for coming to the show.Thad: Thank you very much, Max. Thanks for having me. Take care. Max: That was Todd price, CEO of Talroo reminding us that flexibility is a very popular thing these days. In fact, a top three demand from candidates at the moment.So if your company can offer flexibility, make sure to put it front and center in your ads and your marketing, it will give you an edge on the war for talent. Hope you enjoyed it and that you'll be back for more. Remember to subscribe.

Live from SHRM Talent in Las Vegas earlier this week, Chad & Cheese sit down with two of the most exciting companies around today, in two of the most talked about technologies. Thad Price, CEO of Talroo, formerly Jobs2Careers, talks rebranding and the future of job distribution, and Amit Chauhan, CEO of JobAdX, discusses programmatic ad buying. Enjoy.

The boys are still working through hangovers from a week in Ireland, but our pain is your gain. We were able to land a handful of interviews at the Guinness brewery. For this week's episode, we chat with Terry Baker from PandoLogic and Adam Gordon from CandidateID. Enjoy. And don't forget about our sponsors: America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Nexxt, Jobs2Careers and Catch 22 Consulting.

Call it the International Women's Day episode, although it's mostly about Millennial-bashing. This week: United Airlines does a U-turn on bonus lottery Glassdoor sends out conflicting messages about a price increase Burger King torches traditional recruitment advertising Jobu Jobs is the new “Tinder for jobs” player Activision coddles its Millennial employees … and a friggin' bunch more, yo! Like always, go show out sponsors some love. America's Job Exchange, Sovren, Ratedly, Catch 22 Consulting and our newest sponsor, JobAdX rock the house! And special thanks to Nexxt and Jobs2Careers for sponsoring our monthly shows.

March Madness is podcast madness, apparently. On this week's episode, the “badasses” are talkin': Google keeps kickin' ass and takin' names in employment tech Bloomberg says Glassdoor is headed toward IPO country Facebook eyes global market with jobs RealMatch is now PandoLogic, er, pandoIQ The new CareerBuilder looks pretty much like the old CareerBuilder, minus the orange Chucks Monster's new ‘hype' video Cash keeps flowing: Peakon, Nomad Health … and a shit-ton more. Enjoy and give our sponsors – Sovren, America's Job Exchange, Ratedly, Nexxt, Jobs2Careers and Catch 22 Consulting – a blank check.  

The boys recorded this week's show on Veteran's Day in the U.S., so vet recruiting is top-of-mind. Considering Chad is an Army Vet, how could it not? CareerBuilder is partnering with this vet site, and rumors that Monster is making changes to Military.com abound. On to other matters, LinkedIn continues to kickass and take names with a new integration with Microsoft Word. The move should have job sites, and even Google shaking in their New Balances. The company is also making Glassdoor a little nervous with a recent move. Lastly, tons of news items, so the guys go a little rapid fire to cover stories from Sourceress, Entelo and Jobs2Careers' ipply. There's also new research on what kind of videos you should be making to recruit. They end with a PSA that you shouldn't do this to the president. As always, show our sponsors a little love. That's an order! Sovren, America's Job Exchange and Ratedly make it all happen.

You already know job search engines such as Indeed, Jobs2Careers and Juju but you may not know about Montreal based Neuvoo, a global job search engine now operating in more than 60 countries...there is big change going on in the job search world so today we’ll get some perspective from an upstart player in the space, Neuvoo.com (recorded at the 2017 HR Tech conference in Las Vegas) Lucas Martinez is their cofounder. This is your first HR tech show...first impressions? Walk me through the history of your site...where did you start and where are you now? Traffic, countries, etc Why does the employer world need Neuvoo... what makes you guys different? How are you going to take on Google, they are surely on their way to becoming a top job search destination, how are you going to compete with that? What about Facebook? Will you integrate with their new api? 6. Jobs are becoming a commodity...jobs are everywhere what is your take on that perspective?

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths This week Lisa speaks with Bruce Ge and Neil Davis, who join us to talk about what it's like to create an amazing culture at your company. They both give specific examples of ideas you can implement. Bruce Ge, the CEO at Jobs2Careers, gives insight into the most important functions of executives. Neil Davis, the Director of HR, offers ways to integrate company culture into the hiring process. Unlike our usual audio-only interviews, this one was onsite at the Jobs2Careers headquarters in Austin, Texas. If you prefer to watch the full video versions of the interview, they are embedded below. Neil’s Top 5 Clifton StrengthsFinder Talent Themes: Responsibility, Competition, Adaptability, Learner, Strategic Lisa’s Top 5 Clifton StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:   Strategic, Maximizer, Positivity, Individualization, Woo Resources of the Episode If you go to the J2C homepage for job seekers you'll see roles in tons of industries, locations, and companies. Check out their careers page to explore their open positions inside of Jobs2Careers in Austin, TX. Keep in mind, even though they're a software company, their workforce is onsite in Central Texas. Working together in the same location is actually part of their secret-culture-sauce. Finally, if you're a hiring manager, you might be interested in the J2C For Employers page to check out their unique Pay Per Application model. Here's the live interview with Bruce and Neil on camera. class="mce-preview-object mce-object-iframe" contenteditable="false" data-mce-object="iframe" data-mce-p- data-mce-p-frameborder="0" data-mce-p-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ySrQvWkS8-M">class="mce-preview-object mce-object-iframe" contenteditable="false" data-mce-object="iframe" data-mce-p-allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" data-mce-p-frameborder="0" data-mce-p-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZKnloT4zJqE">   Strengths Tools You'll also find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page.   Subscribe To Lead Through Strengths To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published. Here's a Full Transcript of the Interview Lisa Cummings: [00:00:09] You’re listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you’ll learn to apply your greatest strengths, at work. I’m your host, Lisa Cummings, and I gotta tell you, whether you’re leading a team or leading yourself, it’s hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work. [00:00:28] And today you’ll get one of several episodes I’ve recorded that gives you specific examples straight from leaders who have built awesome company cultures, and there are so many direct ties between strengths and employee engagement on your team. So this peek behind the curtain at workplace culture will be a neat way to inspire ideas you can use at your company. [00:00:51] Most of today’s episode was recorded on site at a company in Austin, Texas, called Jobs2Careers, which you’ll hear us refer to as J2C. of course, we’ll link to them in the show notes so that you can check them out all the way. [00:01:05] Now, this show features Neil Davis, their head of HR, and Bruce Ge, their CEO, who also joins us in the second half. In this episode, you’ll hear specific strategies that you can put your own spin on. One of my favorites is an example of how they live out their company values. So one of their top values is providing phenomenal experiences. Bruce Ge (Left) and Neil Davis (Right) at Jobs2Careers Headquarters in Austin, TX [00:01:32] So one way they live this out is by literally rolling out the red carpet to welcome new hires and make them feel like superstars. Can you imagine how that would make you feel as a new teammate? Wow, I love that one, and there are several nuggets like that as you listen through.[00:01:50] If you would like to see the full impact of this interview with video, you can watch the interview portion of the show on the show notes page at LeadThroughStrengths.com/listen. And one note for this episode is that you’ll hear the tone of the audio change a bit as we move over to the on-site recording because we’re not in a regular studio environment.[00:02:13] So, with that, let’s jump over to the interview where I start with Neil, asking him, from the HR perspective, to tell us about their hiring process and how they use that to build their company culture. Neil Davis: [00:02:28] Our selection process, as you may have guessed already, is very different. We look for more than just technical skill or functional capacity; we look for how someone will be able to interact and work on a team on a daily basis. So we look for those interpersonal traits and skills like teamwork, communication, collaboration, and how people generally interact with people on the team. That has equal weight to the technical skill. Lisa Cummings: [00:02:56] Hmm, I love it. So I’m always talking about, anybody who’s a regular listener knows that I talk about the “what” and “how” all the time. So the “what” being the knowledge and the skills and the experiences, and the “how” being all the stuff that you just talked about. Now, how do you do it? Because you have to figure out really quickly how this is going to show up. How do you even get to that? Neil Davis: [00:03:17] It literally starts from the very first interaction with the candidate. We look at how they communicate with us, how they respond, even, sometimes, how quickly they respond, because it gives you an indicator of how they might be able to interact with folks, or communicate with folks, if they came on board here. [00:03:35] And then, when they come in face-to-face for an on-campus interview, we get feedback from every point of contact that that candidate had while they were there, and we take that feedback, we combine it with what we learned of their technical skill. If they’re a cultural fit and they have the technical aptitude, then they’re a great candidate for us to consider moving forward. [00:03:54] I, myself, take each candidate through a pretty extensive and, I’ve been told, pretty fun and unique value alignment assessment where we really assess situational attitude, reactionary communication, behavioral traits, and skills that are really important to preserving our culture here. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:12] I just want to talk about behavioral interviews for one second. I would give people the shortcut of, “Tell me about a time when this…” when you get them to give you examples. How would you shortcut what behavioral interviewing is? Neil Davis: [00:04:23] Very similar to that. We want to know how someone has demonstrated these skills or how their interpersonal traits manifest themselves in the workplace. So we ask about recent situations that they’ve gone through, and some of the questions are very unique, some of them are dead on straight to the point, and they all are very strategic in their format, and that’s to help us gain a better idea of the candidate. One of the ancillary benefits is the candidate gets to know a lot more about our culture and our value system by going through this process with us. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:54] So let’s talk values. Okay, when I first met you guys and we did a little bit of Strengths work, you told me that one of the ways you bring these things alive is every person – get this if you’re listening – every person gets asked the same question every day for one month. So ours would’ve been, “How did you use your Strengths yesterday, or today on the job?” Something to that effect? Neil Davis: [00:05:18] Something to that effect, right. Every time we have management training or professional development classes or training courses, all staff are invited not just people managers. And at the end of the training we institute a post-training question related to the concepts or the techniques that were taught in that course, and we add those to our daily status report, or our weekly status report templates, that managers actually give to each of their staff, the manager gets to direct feedback and it stays in that status report template for about a month, depending on when the next training class is. [00:05:53] The reason we do that is because: a) we know it takes longer than just a day or two for a concept to transform itself into a habit; b) we know that as that employee is focused on this post-training question every day or every week, you could see how their answers go from short to targeted and specific, and that’s when we know it works because it’s now a newly-developed habit, and then, of course, it supports one of our core company values. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:20] And we’re onto values, right. Neil Davis: [00:06:21] And that is the crux of why we do this. It’s “always grow” is the core value that it directly supports. We believe, whether it’s at an individual contributor level or as an organization, one of our core values has been, and will continue to be, to always grow. Push our boundaries, encourage ourselves to learn, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and become better. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:45] And it’s such a practical tip for anybody listening, that you can just take a deep question like that, ask it every day, and you start to see the depth. What are the other values at Jobs2Careers? Neil Davis: [00:06:57] Sure. We have five company values, and they truly all start with “do the right thing.” That, of course, reflects on the integrity piece. And then, of course, creating phenomenal experiences not just for our clients and our partners but also for our internal customers and teammates. That starts truly with new hires on board day one. We roll out this long orange carpet, they’re literally walking across this carpet, we have their favorite drink in hand waiting for them. Lisa Cummings: [00:07:27] And how do you know their favorite drink? Neil Davis: [00:07:29] We ask that in the interview process, and it’s shocking to see their response when they realize we’ve paid attention and they forgot that they’ve told us what their favorite drink was, and then we had it for them on their first day. So that’s a way that we create phenomenal experiences even for our new hires. And, of course, I mentioned “always grow” and how that is one of our core company values. [00:07:50] We also go the extra mile. Go the extra mile is important for us because it is truly a part of teamwork, which is our fifth core company value. So those are our five core company values, and we live them every day. Lisa Cummings: [00:08:04] Yeah, I really see people living them out. And for anybody who’s listening and thought, “Orange carpet?” If you haven’t seen the video on Jobs2Careers, or you haven’t looked at their website, it’s one of their two company colors. It’s the primary color, right? Neil Davis: [00:08:19] Correct. Orange and teal blue. Right. Lisa Cummings: [00:08:22] Right. And then, something I thought was cool that, as I got to know the team, I kept hearing more and more examples of small things that might represent a phenomenal experience that someone else would need. So someone in the customer-facing customer service kind of team said something about how when they saw that their energy was waning, and they needed a little boost on the phone, they would do planks together as a team and it’s one of those ways to support teamwork. [00:08:49] So it seems like, wow, that’s a really deep way of looking at it. It looks just like fun or someone taking an energy break but it was a really cool way to take the values and say, “These things get demonstrated in the smallest ways.” Neil Davis: [00:09:02] Absolutely. Another way we do that, and it might seem small but it really is impactful, we have created values cards. And on these values cards it list each of our five core values individually, but it also list a section where you can fill in what this employee did, and who it’s from, and you check what value you saw them represent, or you saw them personified, and you give them that values card as a way to individually recognize their effort, and also a way to inspire them to continue living our values. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:31] They mean something to them. They receive something that said, “Hey, you meant something to me as a teammate. You did something for me.” Neil Davis: [00:09:38] Right. Right. It’s a point of pride here for sure. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:41] Well, Neil, thank you for giving us a peek of what it’s like here. Neil Davis: [00:09:45] Thank you for talking to me. Appreciate it. Glimpse of Fun Culture at Jobs2Careers Lisa Cummings: [00:09:47] It was a good time.[00:09:50] So, are you filled up with ideas yet? I know I am. My favorite top five from Neil were: one, rolling out the red or orange carpet for new hires; two, surprising a new hire by greeting them with their favorite drink; three, having pre-printed values cards to make it easy to give recognition to each other; four, doing planks together as a team as a quick energizer; and, five, deepening the application of a training class by asking a question from that month’s training in their daily status report documents.[00:10:22] This one, after getting inspired by J2C’s follow-up questions to our Strengths training with their company, my team decided to experiment with this as well, and we started with the question, “How did you use your Strengths at work today?” It was really interesting to me to see the difference in responses. I got everything from detailed and thoughtful answers, all the way through a rushed, “I used my Learner talent today.” [00:10:48] So play around with it to complement your work styles. And the biggest learning for me was to properly introduce the question and what’s behind it rather than just writing it and not explaining because when I did that the answers were way more generic. [00:11:04] So, okay, in the next section of the on-site interview you get to learn from Bruce Ge, the CEO of Jobs2Careers. I thought you’d enjoy hearing about leadership from a founder perspective as well. [00:11:17] Now, he has led this company through extreme growth and he gives you a viewpoint on the most important functions of executives. And some of his opinions might even surprise you, like the fact that he offers management training to every employee, regardless of their current role, because he wants to prepare each person for leadership positions, even if that means they need to leave the company to live into their potential. Lisa Cummings facilitating management training on using your strengths and natural talents at Jobs2Careers [00:11:44] So here’s my interview with Bruce where we pick up a conversation about their company value called “always grow,” and how one way they execute it is this monthly training. Bruce Ge: [00:11:58] Oftentimes we’ll ask employees, “What is your ambition?” They would say, “I want to become a manager. I want to become an executive.” And a lot of them are never presented an opportunity. They don’t even know what are the expectations from them, and how they’re judged. So, in order to be fair, I want to provide an opportunity at least for them to know what a high-level manager should be like.[00:12:24] So the main point is to grow the employees, which is adding value to what Jobs2Careers can provide to their career growth. I also get a side benefit of getting jobs done more efficiently. Ultimately, the education I give to the employees will go with the employees. Well, to be honest, I don’t need all of my people to become managers. But that’s fine, I will be proud if one day my employees become managers or executives of other companies. [00:12:53] So I set a high bar for most of my people and I push them to grow. Eventually, a lot of them will make to the management or executive level in other companies, I’ll be proud of it. So the point is, I’m trying to make a good deal with my employees. Lisa Cummings: [00:13:08] It’s a very mature way of looking at leadership. A lot of times people feel like they want to be talent hoarders. Bruce Ge: [00:13:14] I think you have a very good point. Trying to stop talent from growing is going to hurt both sides. Eventually, if I grow my people to a very high level, they will leave me because there are some opportunities outside of Jobs2Careers and I should be happy for them. It’s a win-win deal. Lisa Cummings: [00:13:32] It is win-win. One thing that I think of when I think of a company like yours is I have a lot of clients who are tech companies or they’re in the Bay Area or they’re fast-growth, and the founder has had a major impact on the culture. What are you doing? Because I can tell you’re doing something to ensure that there’s a culture that’s on purpose and it’s not just your personal personality. How are you doing this? Bruce Ge: [00:13:59] I think the most important value a CEO needs to keep in mind is integrity, especially accountability. Let me take an example of what we do differently from other companies. Jobs2Careers do not impose regular overtime. We require efficient eight hours work, but we do not expect people to work unless there’s an emergency or something really important. [00:14:21] So people can find a good balance of life and work. And this is very well-received because you do see companies who try to push people to work 10, 12 hours a day. I think it tarnishes the image of the employer. It makes your people trust your employer less. So that’s the things I’m trying to avoid. I want to behave with a high integrity, and I also hold other people accountable for high integrity. So those are the small things we do that make a difference. But it’s important that we hold ourselves, employers hold ourselves to a very high level of integrity, and that sets a very good example for the employees. Lisa Cummings: [00:15:01] I think modeling what you expect of people is critical. If you said one thing and then you didn’t hold yourself to it, it would not become part of the culture. Bruce Ge: [00:15:10] It damages credibility and everything will go south from there. Lisa Cummings: [00:15:16] I went back out and peeked at your LinkedIn profile again the other day, and I noticed that you mentioned how important recruiting is in your role as CEO, and I think that’s a rare thing to say, “As CEO, recruiting is one of my top job responsibilities,” and it certainly tells me a lot about why the culture here is what it is. Can you talk about what led you to make that one of your most important job responsibilities? Bruce Ge: [00:15:46] Acquiring and retaining talent is probably the most important function of my job. We have been very selective in who we will bring on board. Not only executives, also we have a very high bar for entry-level people. Why develop so much attention for me? Because one is very hard. It takes so much time to know people and it requires patience. [00:16:13] We have like less than 1% hiring rate from resumes to employees. It also requires a lot of people knowledge. We need good sense to identify the talent. So, ultimately, what matters to an organization is your people. That’s probably the most important element that requires me to invest my time on. Lisa Cummings at J2C management training with the 1% that got hired Lisa Cummings: [00:16:35] It’s a key thing when I talk to listeners, when I talk to my clients, and their leaders are struggling. A lot of times it’s because they’re focusing on the work, but not the people doing the work, so you’re really onto something that is a differentiator I see in the marketplace also. Bruce Ge: [00:16:54] Thank you. Yes, I am very clear on what a CEO should focus on. I’m not focused on any detail-level work. I only focus on people. So once I have the talent, I put them in charge of product, sales, marketing, they handle everything. I need to make sure they’re happy, and I need to make sure they are doing the right management job. My job becomes easy and my organization becomes efficient at the same time.Lisa Cummings: [00:17:19] Gives you some time to play ping pong? Bruce Ge: [00:17:21] I have enough time to spend with my family. I golf every week, play ping pong sometimes. It’s a good life. Lisa Cummings: [00:17:30] Love it. Bruce Ge, thank you. Bruce Ge: [00:17:32] Thank you, Lisa. Lisa Cummings: [00:17:33:] We appreciate it. I know the listeners will love so much hearing all these angles, being able to see a marketing leader, a CEO, an HR person at such a fast-growing company with such a fun culture. [00:17:47] Boy, what a treat to hear from a leader who is growing a thriving company. All his team members are thriving too. [00:17:54] My top five ideas from Bruce were: one, offer leadership training to everyone because it’s a win for everyone; number two, model the behaviors you want to see because you can only be credible as a manager if you’re leading through the accountability and the integrity that you expect from everyone else; number three, the number one role of a leader is finding the right people for the team and developing them; number four, if you make a culture of accountability, you don’t have to create a culture of working 12 hour days, even at a software company; and number five – that’s my favorite one – and that is to never hoard talent, to help everyone grow even if that means some people have to leave the company to live into their highest potential. [00:18:43] And that, my friends, is a wrap. [00:18:46] Neil and Bruce, thank you for the backstage pass. What a cool set of ideas to get the outcomes of the work by focusing on the people doing the work. I feel like that’s such an important statement. They gave us such a cool set of ideas to get the outcomes of the work by focusing on the people doing the work. So big. And now you have at least 10 more inspirations you can use to ramp up your culture, so just pick one. Do one thing this week. [00:19:16] If you’re using our RAMP model to build your culture, remember R is to nurture relationships, A is to create an environment where people can experience regular accomplishment, M is for meaning and purpose, and P is for positive interactions. And this is in perfect alignment with building a strengths-based culture. [00:19:40] If you’re noticing what works at work, you’re going to get more of what works at work. So if you want to recognize people on your team, we made a resource for you. Go to LeadThroughStrengths.com/resources, and one of the documents there gives you 127 ways to offer recognition this week. And it really is possible to nurture all four of those areas of the RAMP model with one sincere recognition, so imagine what you can do if you put that on repeat. [00:20:13] Like we always say, by nurturing Strengths, you’re nurturing performance at work. If you’re putting a lopsided focus on fixing weaknesses, you’re choosing the path of most resistance. So claim your new work culture, and share the positive results with the world.  

This Episode’s Focus on Strengths This week Lisa speaks with Samantha Smith, who joins us to talk about what it's like to create an amazing culture at your company. She gives very specific examples of ideas you can implement, no matter what your current title is. Unlike our usual audio-only interviews, this one was onsite at the Jobs2Careers headquarters in Austin, Texas. You also get a bonus interview with Suong Luu. She gives the cultural overview from the employee perspective. Her first job out of college was with Jobs2Careers. She has already progressed through several roles from intern to marketing coordinator. And she has been able to experiment in functions from IT to marketing. Resources of the Episode If you go to the J2C homepage for job seekers you'll see roles in tons of industries, locations, and companies. Check out their careers page to explore their open positions inside of Jobs2Careers in Austin, TX. Keep in mind, even though they're a software company, their workforce is onsite in Central Texas. Working together in the same location is actually part of their secret-culture-sauce. Finally, if you're a hiring manager, you might be interested in the J2C For Employers page to check out their unique Pay Per Application model. Here's the live interview with Sam and Suong on camera.   Strengths Tools You'll also find lots of StrengthsFinder, leadership, and team tools on our Strengths Resources page. Subscribe To Lead Through Strengths To subscribe and review, here are your links for listening in iTunes and Stitcher Radio. You can also stream any episode right from this website. Subscribing is a great way to never miss an episode. Let the app notify you each week when the latest episode gets published. Here's a Full Transcript of the Interview Lisa Cummings: [00:00:08] You’re listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you’ll apply your greatest strengths at work. I’m your host, Lisa Cummings, and I gotta tell you, whether you’re leading your team or leading yourself, it’s hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work. [00:00:27] And, just the other day I got a new idea for the show. I got in the mail this magazine that had the best places to work. And even though it’s an Austin, Texas publication, I’m thinking, “Oh, cool. Strengths and great company cultures and employee engagement, they’re all so intertwined so it’d be really cool to get some great ideas to share with listeners.” [00:00:50] And, you know, I was so disappointed. I opened this thing up and, as it describes each of these award-winning companies, it gives some bullet points on what they do to make their culture great. And do you know what the answers are? Oh, gosh, let me give you a sampling. Number one: generous retirement plan. Number two: charity involvement. Number three: rewards program. And number four of your sample: a health and wellness program. [00:01:19] Oh, my gosh, I was so bummed out when I read those, because I thought it would be full of inspiration and ideas, and although those bullet points are fine enough words, it’s just like when you see on a resume when someone says they’re a motivated team player. It’s like, “Well, yeah, that’s the same thing everyone else is saying. Give me something different. Give me something specific and inspirational.” It was lacking all of the telling details. And that led me to the idea of what the next couple of interviews are going to be about. [00:01:48] Today you’ll get one of several episodes I’ve recorded that gives you specific examples straight from leaders who have built an awesome company culture. There are so many direct ties between strengths and employee engagement on your team, so you’ll get this peak behind the curtain at workplace cultures that can give you an inspiration to come up with your own ideas that are riffing off of the one you’ll hear here. [00:02:14] The bulk of today’s interview was recorded on site at a company in Austin, Texas called Jobs2Careers. So you’ll hear us also refer to this company as J2C. Of course we’ll link J2C in the show notes so you can check them out all the way. [00:02:32] Now this show highlights Samantha Smith who runs their marketing team. And then in the next episode you’ll hear from their CEO and from their Head of HR. That way you’ll get specific examples that are unique from each angle inside of the business. And at the end of this episode, you’ll hear a recap about how Sam’s examples fit right into our RAMP model for nurturing team culture. [00:03:00] So as a quick teaser, the four RAMP factors to always be nurturing on your team are R relationship building, A accomplishment, M meaning and purpose, and P positive interactions. So RAMP makes it an easy acronym to think about your culture. [00:03:19] You’ll hear the tone of the audio change a bit as we move over because it was an onsite recording, so if you do want to see the full impact, with video, you can also watch this interview portion on the show notes page. Just go to LeadThroughStrengths/SamanthaSmith and it has everything except for that recap at the end. [00:03:38] So, with that, let’s jump over to the onsite interview. [00:03:43] We have Samantha Smith, you’ll hear me refer to her as Sam, and she runs their marketing team. And I thought it’d be fun to give you all of these different angles of people and different roles around the company because people start to say, “Oh, yeah. Culture, that’s an HR initiative,” or, “Culture has nothing to do with HR. That’s only what happens out in the business.” [00:04:07] So, no matter what side of that fence you’re on, you get to see lots of different angles at J2C. And I’ve been Jobs2Careers but J2C. Is that internally your name? Samantha Smith: [00:04:18] Internally that’s the slang. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:19] Yeah, that’s your slang. And you have to have team slang to have a team culture. Samantha Smith: [00:04:23] Yeah. Lisa Cummings: [00:04:24] So what’s your favorite thing about culture here? Samantha Smith: [00:04:26] I would say that we try and do things differently. We’re very opposed to, “Oh, we’ve always done it that way.” And one of the things I like is that Bruce (Ge), our CEO, and management team really want to hear what the employees have to say. I believe that Bruce’s philosophy would be that you hired good people and that the success of your company is mostly dependent on your team. [00:04:48] And one of the things that I like is Bruce does a CEO Circle program. And what that is, is every quarter he will give us a business challenge that he’s facing. It could be what to name a new product, or it could be how to brand us in a creative way, and it has to be easy to implement and inexpensive and solve a problem. [00:05:08] And every quarter somebody wins it. Three people, actually. And when you win it, you get to go to a family event with Bruce and his wife and two kids, you get a $1,000 bonus, and you get a chance to implement your program. And one of my favorite examples is our social ambassador program, and that was the answer to a question of, “How do we maintain our culture as we grow?” because we’ve just about doubled employee headcount year-over-year for the past four years. So how do you keep the culture of a small company when you get big? [00:05:41] And so the social ambassador program is run by one of our client success analysts, and basically when there’s a new person that starts, it’s you get a schedule to have lunch with a new person. So they get to have lunch with somebody from a different department every day so it’s not you’re just going to a lunch. Here’s there’s 80 people like that you don’t know exactly. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:01] It’s like high school again with a tray where you’re walking around going, “Where do I sit?” Samantha Smith: [00:06:06] Yeah, exactly. And so we don’t want anyone to feel that way, and we want them to know us, and we want engineers and marketing and sales and HR to all eat lunch together and not get too cliquey. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:16] Oh, I like. And when you first said it, I’m thinking, “Marketing,” I’m thinking, “Social,” as in social media, so I expected your answer to be about something to the external world. I love hearing that this is an internal, how you get to know each other and work with each other. Samantha Smith: [00:06:31] Definitely. One thing I thing is cool is that when I started with Jobs2Careers we had 40-some people, and now I think we’re 90 plus. And I think I still pretty much know everybody’s name, which I’ve worked with companies much smaller I can’t say that about. Lisa Cummings: [00:06:48] It says something about people really caring about each other and you can’t make somebody care about each other. What are the things that happen here that allow that environment to happen? Because I could certainly see that in a room of essentially every employee, there are really deep relationships that you can tell it’s different from those who, “Oh, that’s that guy in accounting who I don’t know.” Now how does that happen here? Samantha Smith: [00:07:14] It does feel different than other places, and I’ve thought about why. And I think a big factor is that we all eat together every day, and every afternoon at 3:30 we have tea time which is a 20-minute break to not let your blood sugar dip too much, and you have to mingle outside if it’s nice with people in other departments. [00:07:33] And so we really all do know a lot about each other and that helps when you need to ask for someone’s assistance with something, or somebody comes to you. And it also helps that we know what everybody does because sometimes we’ll talk about work at lunch and people know what everyone’s role is. It’s never like, “Oh, I don’t know who you are. What do you do?” That doesn’t really happen. Lisa Cummings: [00:07:54] “That’s just that lady with brown hair over there. I’ve seen her around but I have no idea.” Samantha Smith: [00:07:57] Right. Lisa Cummings: [00:07:58] Right. So when you were talking about the CEO Circle – did I get the terminology right? Samantha Smith: [00:08:02] Yes. Lisa Cummings: [00:08:03] Okay. You mentioned the brand as one of the examples of maybe how you bring the brand to life. I looked that there were constraints in it too. It’s cheap to implement those sorts of things, that’s cool. That made me think about branding and how many companies I work with are trying – I’m sure listeners are feeling this way – “Oh, we want to have an employment brand. We want to be known for something to candidates. We want to be an employer of choice. We want to be a place that people want to come work.” [00:08:31] Then there’s the other side of branding that the typical marketing person would be focused on – your company brand and the brand personality traits. They seem very aligned here. So how does that all come together from your perspective? Samantha Smith: [00:08:42] Well, our mission statement is, “Innovating the way employers effectively find talent, and the talent effectively find employers.” So, we’re helping both sides of the coin there. And there’s the key word of innovating, which is that we want to do employee branding differently and we also want to do searching for a job and hiring differently. [00:09:03] This company is only five years old, so it’s not a legacy brand that you have to give a facelift to. We could start something new and it wouldn’t affect any existing business. And even, for a simple example, expense reports, they’re really easy to do. We’ve got software to do them. It’s not a lot of cutting and pasting and it works quickly, and that’s just an example of something that doesn’t get bogged down in red tape. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:30] And if you’re going to make simplicity a key part of your mission statement you want to live it out and model in everything you do, and you really do it. Samantha Smith: [00:09:38] There is efficiency all the time. Even as simple as dishes are piling up next to the sink. Let’s put a basket there if the dishwasher is full. And it sounds silly but in a big office little things like that help. Lisa Cummings: [00:09:53] And I would imagine they would start to be the small things that create a culture because just like when you walk into a public restroom and you see trash all over the place, similarly if you start to see dishes all over the place then people don’t care about the space as much. And so coming up with solutions for things and being efficient and being simple, it does feel like it’s really built into what you do here. Samantha Smith: [00:10:16] It does. Lisa Cummings: [00:10:17] Another thing we’ve talked about outside of the interview is perks. Let’s actually talk about some of the perks you actually have, because this is a typical go-to for culture. People go, “Okay, it’s a tech company. Let’s make some cool company perks. Those do attract people, and it has to go beyond that.” So talk a little bit about what perks you do have. You’ve mentioned lunch every day. Samantha Smith: [00:10:40] Yeah, that’s pretty good. Lisa Cummings: [00:10:41] And tea time is pretty cool. What else, and then how do you go beyond that? Samantha Smith: [00:10:46] Well, we have everything we need here. We have lunch, we have tea time, we have coffee. Its purpose is to make us work more efficiently. So we have everything we need, and we don’t want for anything here. But I would say that beyond the perks, there’s the cultural perks too, like to always learn and to try new ideas and to communicate. [00:11:08] And one of my favorite things that Bruce says is to allow for interruptions. And so what that means to me is like a C-level officer, you can just go in her office and ask them something. And if somebody comes to you, it’s sort of the same expectation. So really being transparent, I think that says a lot about our culture beyond, you know, we have a ping pong table and we have a beautiful office space in the hill country, and we see rainbows out there. Lisa Cummings: [00:11:37] That’s a great view. Samantha Smith: [00:11:38] Yeah, and we grill steaks out there sometimes. And there’s these moments like, “Well, this is…” Lisa Cummings: [00:11:43] Like every Friday? Samantha Smith: [00:11:44] Yeah, mainly. And so there’s these moments, like, “Well, we’re really well taken care of.” But I think the part that I feel luckiest about, is that I work with such a smart group of people. I mean, the process is rigorous to be hired here, but it’s worth it because there are no weak links, and it’s really amazing to work that way. Lisa Cummings: [00:12:05] That makes a big difference in culture. Let’s end there with a little more specific look at people and how they come into the role that they’re doing, and even how work is assigned? So something I noticed, for example, working with Callie that she’s just so energetic. It seems like everybody I interact with, they love what they do. [00:12:28] And it’s not just I want to make the cliché comment about passion because I feel like there’s a lot of explanation that needs to happen beyond that, but the energy that people bring. What happens from you being a people manager when you’re trying to imagine, “How do I take this person, know their skills and interests, and align them to what puts them at their best so that kind of energy connection show up at work?” Because it’s showing up all over the building. Samantha Smith: [00:12:54] Well, one thing that’s neat about how fast we’re growing is it gives you room to change your job. For instance, we had an account executive who became a sales manager, who then became a sales operations manager; we’ve had people transfer departments. And so because we’re growing so quickly, these new avenues open up, and if you really jump on them and own them, then you can have that and then somebody else will do the other part. [00:13:20] So everyone is passionate because you’ve kind of get to choose your job to a certain extent. There’s always support from management, but there’s not necessarily, “Okay, this is what you need to do every day.” So when I started my job nobody told me, “Okay, so for marketing materials, we’re going to focus on doing case studies, and doing content marketing, and get our blog redesigned.” No one told me that. It’s just you see a need and you go for it and then you see that there’s value to it. If you go into your manager’s office and have an idea that’s going to bring value, they’ll let you do it. Lisa Cummings: [00:13:52] Yeah, I love it. We have a lot of listeners who are at tech companies and that’s an environment they’ll be able to really touch and feel. And then, I also have a lot of listeners who work for big companies and add maybe a couple or a few zeroes to the headcount. If, for that person, just to go out on an idea of what could they do so it’s going to feel more bureaucratic, a little less able to just say, “Oh, my gosh, I can craft my job”? What advice would you give for somebody who’s a manager at a company where they’re a little more mature in the business so things don’t change as fast and they’re trying to blaze a trail as a manager and create their own team culture? Samantha Smith: [00:14:34] I would say don’t underestimate the power of going out once a quarter for a department event. We just did that recently with marketing. We did a “Build your own terrarium,” which is a thing in Austin, and there were about 12 of us, and we built our own little plants in this jar. And we thought, “What an interesting idea, what’s that going to be like.” And it was so fun. [00:14:55] But that something that simple which just shows you care about getting people outside the office, and I think that really says it all, it’s just that you value somebody more than what they’re producing. One of, I think, the best benefits at Jobs2Careers is management training. It started with our CEO Bruce doing a management training session every two weeks and, of course, that’s how we met you. We have guest speakers once a month. [00:15:20] And there’s something about being in a room with all of your colleagues, during company time, where that’s an hour and a half or two hours where you’re not producing work for the company. There’s something about feeling that value that’s very flattering and very motivating. Lisa Cummings: [00:15:35] It really intrigued me. It’s the only company that I worked for where they call it management training. You use that terminology because you hear that, and any other company that means people managers only, and it gets referenced a lot by employees, by managers, and it really is like the personal leadership development that everybody here wants for everybody else. I love the tone that it sets, and it says, “This is an exclusive way of thinking. This is how we can all grow the company together.” Samantha Smith: [00:16:08] I think Bruce sees everybody as future managers. Lisa Cummings: [00:16:11] That’s a beautiful way of seeing people’s capabilities and then letting those programs start to bring that on people. Samantha Smith: [00:16:19] Definitely. Lisa Cummings: [00:16:20] Sam Smith, thank you for the backstage pass. Yes. So to all of you listeners, gosh, wasn’t it great for inspiring ideas that you can use at your company? I promised you a recap to align the interview to the RAMP model, so you can apply Sam’s examples to your company. So let’s jump into that. [00:16:43] First, the R in RAMP is for relationships. So her first example under the relationship category is her social ambassador program. So when you’re onboarding new employees, formally link them up with someone else from the company, so that there’s a comfortable lunch buddy, some built-in networking right from the very first day. So get inspired from her idea, and think about what your version of the company welcome wagon can be. [00:17:09] Now in another example, Sam mentioned hiring great people through a rigorous process so there are no weak links in the cultural fit. So find people who will love working at your company. So to apply this in your workplace specifically, be sure you spend as much time on cultural fit, and values fit, as you do on matching their past experiences and their past skills with the role. So usually people obsess over a candidate’s background during the hiring process, yet you can actually make a huge impact on your team culture if you’ll also obsess about the interpersonal fit. [00:17:50] All right. Next in the RAMP model we have A for accomplishment. So Sam told us about their CEO Circle Awards. That was a great example you could apply at your company by creating a competition for people to come up with an idea that solves a specific business challenge. I love the business relevance of this idea. So J2C gives a monetary award, and a social event out with the CEO, and the ability to actually implement their idea. So, of course, you can come up with your own awards, make them big or small, make them work for you, but that notion of the CEO Circle award is a great one. [00:18:27] Another example she gave under accomplishment is their monthly management training. So, for them, it’s open to every single employee. I had a great time being part of a delivery team offering this training to their employees and it was highly attended. They want to show that everybody can be a leader, and there’s a dedication there to nurturing that potential and helping people accomplish their big career goals. [00:18:50] So if you think about your company, you might already have an existing leadership development program that you can just open up to a wider audience as a way to show team members that they have the opportunity to make a big impact, regardless of what their current job title is. If you don’t have the budget or an existing program, you could even setup some sort of panel interviews where you take internal executives and team members who have success stories and case studies so that you can offer some level of inspiration around that future that they might have at your company. [00:19:28] So we’ve covered R for relationships, A for accomplishment, and now we’re at M for meaning and purpose. Sam’s first example was about simplicity and innovation being part of their company mission. So they live it out in the smallest daily actions and I thought that was great, how connected the big picture and the small picture were. She even mentioned things down to the detail of the basket that would contain messy dishes, or the streamlining of expense report processes so they could live it out. [00:20:01] So to implement this at your company, think about your mission statement or your vision statement. Then, challenge each person on the team to find one small process; I’m talking tiny. One small process or workflow that seems out of alignment with your mission or vision. Keep it super small so the changes isn’t daunting, it doesn’t require approvals and it doesn’t get all bogged down. And then get it aligned so that you’re modeling your mission through just the tiniest daily actions. [00:20:31] In her other example on meaning and purpose, I’m thinking she made everyone listening drool. Maybe you feel a little jealous about the fact that at J2C the job that you’re hired to do isn’t necessarily your job for long because if you have an idea, and it’s really using your strengths, you can contribute that to the company, then you can shape your job to make the most of your talents. [00:20:51] Well, I know not every corporate culture is that flexible, yet apply her idea at work by thinking of a task, or a responsibility, that you’ve really been drawn to, you’ve really been interested in or you thought, “Oh, I would like to try that out. I’d love to spend time doing that.” And then apply that interest by spotting a need in your actual business and filling that need. [00:21:13] So if you can solve a business problem while you’re also in your zone of genius, I’m talking your personal zone of genius, then you’ll become known for the thing you love working on. So even if it’s an act of voluntarism and it’s an extra duty you’re taking on, what a great thing to build a personal brand around the things you love doing because then they’ll become the core of your job. Even in the most rigid of workplaces I’ve found that people can shape their jobs this way over the long term. [00:21:44] Finally, in the RAMP model, we have P for positive interactions. You know, Sam said it so beautifully, that notion that if you value people more than the work product, value people more than the product, it will make the work product shine while people are also feeling valued for their contribution, so you actually get both by focusing through the people. [00:22:09] In her first example she talked about the value of communication. Now they live out their version of communication by just being so transparent and open that you can even interrupt a senior officer at the company just like you do to your buddy in the cube next to you. So, to apply these concepts to your company, think about behaviors or traditions that highlight the hierarchy in your organization, the things that build walls between people. Yes, I know this sounds like opposite world, and it is, because you’re going to do something that tears down those walls. [00:22:39] So, for example, if you’re a VP with a reserved parking spot, give it to the winner of your new CEO Circle Award for a month. Or if you usually only have one-on-ones with your direct reports, go on a listening tour by holding one-on-ones with every person in your department. It doesn’t cost money, it’s just time and interest and what makes them great. Just go out of your way to connect at a human level. You don’t even have to be a manager to do this. [00:23:05] So, for example, if you’re a marketing coordinator and you have a new intern on the team, offer your mentorship. Do something that makes the line of communication seem very open and natural regardless of level. [00:23:17] Now, other examples of positive interactions were just plain sprinkled all over the interview. You heard her talk about the “build your own terrarium day” in Austin. I’m sure those are around, lots of interesting ways to do team building. You heard how they eat lunch together every day. You heard about how they break at 3:00 p.m. for tea time. And this consistent interaction with different people around the company helps them know a lot about what makes the other person tick. That gets them business results because it makes it easier to collaborate when they actually need things from each other. [00:23:54] So, now, think about your team. Can you add a Taco Monday like Jobs2Careers? Will your team take plank breaks? Yeah, like workout planks. This is something else I learned about J2C later, that their customer support team does planks together so to get an energizer. So pick something that’s small and easy to start with, just something that does break the typical pattern of interaction even if it’s three minutes a day, just something that feels like it really jives with the groove of your team. [00:24:24] Okay, so with that, you’re off to the races. Now you have at least 10 inspirations for how you can use the idea of RAMP, relationship, accomplishment, meaning or positive interaction on your team. Just pick one. Do one thing this week to nurture your culture. And this is in perfect alignment with building a strengths-based culture or a strengths-focused team. If you’re noticing what works, you’re going to get more of what works. [00:24:56] So, like what we always say, using your strengths makes you a stronger performer at work. If you’re putting a lopsided focus on fixing your weaknesses, you’re choosing the path of most resistance. So claim your new work culture and share that positive result with the world.

Ben White has seven years’ experience in talent acquisition. He has worked as a headhunter and a corporate recruiter for two fortune 500 companies. Today he is part of the recruitment process insourcing team at Titus Talent, a talent strategies firm with several offices throughout the midwest, New York and the UK. http://www.titustalent.com/ Topics discussed in this episode: -What is recruitment process insourcing? -Typical day like? -Lets talk tech...you dont use an ATS? How do you keep track of candidates? -What other tools are part of your day to day recruiting? -Effective inmail writing...whats your response rate? -Describe a typical inmail...subject line, what do you say? -Phone sourcing? -Engaging candidates who may otherwise pass on initial dialogue -Your last 3 placements...where did you find them online? -Advice for new recruiters? Sponsored by Jobs2Careers.com

On this podcast, Thad Price, VP of Product & Engineering at Jobs2Careers, stops by to talk about their new app called ipply which is designed for Craigslist users who want more of an ATS like functionality.