Episode 80: Who Will A Candidate Become? With Joe Mullings

Joe Mullings: 0:00

You should elegantly be touching base with them and saying, Hey, would you mind if we stayed in touch? We don't have anything today. But we believe this is who you could become if you came to us and just spend three years here and here's the upside to you. And listen, if you ever want to chat, do me a favor, keep an eye on our LinkedIn profile our LinkedIn profile from a company. And by the way, feel free to reach out to me at any time you get three to five of those 100 hires over a few year period. It changes the game dramatically.

Kyle Roed: 0:25

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of war, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe, favorite podcast listening platform today, and leave us a review. Rebel on HR rebels. Alright, revolutes our listeners really excited for our guest today. It is Joe Molins, the Chairman and CEO of the Mullings group, he's been building companies and careers since 1989. He founded and as chairman and CEO of the Mullings group, the world's leading search firm in the medical device industry, he's responsible for more than 7000 successful searches with more than 600 companies in the medical device industry. So he's got a little bit of experience. Some of his clients, you may have heard of places like you know, small upstarts like Johnson and Johnson and Google and Medtronic and so on and so forth. recently has been appointed the chief visionary officer of MRI networks, one of the executive search firms that I have used and the third largest executive recruitment firm with 400 offices worldwide. So welcome to the show, Joe.

Joe Mullings: 1:37

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. I love the title of this rebel, right? I mean, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna rile things up rather than be old school.

Kyle Roed: 1:44

That's right, we're gonna we try to shake things up. Although, you know, I do tell people it's kind of an oxymoronic title, right, like putting rebel and human resources in the same title is it's like, you know, it just naturally makes people uncomfortable. But we're all about shaking things up. So I think we're

Joe Mullings: 1:59

gonna have a lot of goals. Let's do it.

Kyle Roed: 2:01

There you go. There you go. So I think, you know, what I really like to do is I like to ask my guests. Okay, how did you get into this space you're in and obviously, certainly in recruiting experts. So what brought you into the world of recruiting?

Joe Mullings: 2:18

Yeah. So so nobody gets into the world of recruiting by design. Usually, it's a crossroads, right? You're, you're either went bankrupt, or you got fired, or you're in between gigs. And in my case, I went to school for engineering, worked as an engineer for a couple years also had a another business on the side that ended up being very successful. I sold it off. And I just took some time off. And I lived on a boat with my golden retriever, went back into a friend of the family's office who was a headhunter, and said, Listen, his name was Sebastian loci said, Sebastian, said, I'm looking for a job. This is what I want. And after he spoke with me for two hours, he said, Did you ever think about headhunting? I said, not really. But what did your top salesperson make last year? He told me, I said, I'm starting, let's go. And that was December 4 1989. So anybody who's sitting across the desk from a headhunter who owns an office or a manager probably is in some sort of major transition in their life. Now, today, it's a lot more of that was December 4 1989, like I mentioned, but now we've got people coming out of university coming in, because it's an entirely different business these days than the old call center, you know, phone time, number of phone calls and sort of telemarketing. So it's a it's a much different profession today.

Kyle Roed: 3:38

Yeah, it's, that's it's an interesting perspective. And I have not worked for a recruiting firm. I've done a lot of recruiting. So I'm, you know, I'm kind of in the customer seat. But it has been really interesting. You know, over the last few decades, as I've been interacting with these, with these firms, I remember, you know, when I was first getting into the career, it was kind of it was like a, this is a terrible term, but it was it was like a, like a market, like kind of like a meat market, right? Like, here you go, here's here, I'm going to give you like, 10 you tell me what you like, you know, whatever, you don't like him, whatever, we'll go find more. And and now it's like, you know, at least I would say the successful ones. It's much more about the fit the match the quality? And I would say my feeling is it's a much more selective process than it used to be. Is that Is that what you're referring to?

Joe Mullings: 4:30

Well, yeah, it's that too. But so dynamics of Technology have certainly changed things. But as an example, so our firm is about 30 people. We've certainly got our Headhunters, but we also have a very large marketing department. We've got a 5000 square foot Media Studio. We've got a full time Rockstar, programmer. We've got research teams, we've got sales operation teams. And so out of those 30 employees I think only 12 are headhunters hmm. And so, you know, the upper echelon organizations have emerged, building businesses that now happen to be search firms versus a search firm. And those are the ones that also are getting involved in consulting, also are getting involved in venture capital. So while granted, it's probably only 5% of the market, that is where the industry is moving to with certain individuals who have that taste for growth.

Kyle Roed: 5:33

That's, that's, that's fascinating. And I'm sure you're kind of on the front front edge of some of the, you know, kind of HR tech solutions that are coming out. You know, we've had a couple, couple experts on here about, you know, the Yeah, the, the HR tech space and you know, AI, and how is that going to impact? So I got to believe that you're you get to see some of this stuff firsthand. So what what is your what is the future of recruiting look like for you?

Joe Mullings: 5:59

Well, the one thing that won't ever change is the deal is done on the telephone. But with the sort of onslaught of technology, the telephone used to be the first point of contact for for search. Now, it's still as important, but it's moved further down the line in regards to activities. So you see, especially on something like LinkedIn, you can build a brand in there. So most Headhunters, if they're any good end up becoming subject matter experts, but only on the telephone amongst the five to 700 candidates or people they talk to on a monthly basis. Well, what if you took that subject matter expertise, and developed it and exhibited it online to 10s of 1000s of people, instead of the few 100 into the 10s of 1000s of people who don't even know you yet. So that's where it's changed a lot. The best headhunters have become a voice of their industry on a platform like LinkedIn, which drives inbound business from both a candidate perspective and a client perspective, that has that industry say, okay, like our firm the Mullins group, I don't think we've made an outbound marketing call in seven or eight years, it's all been inbound business. So that's where it's changed. But you know, you mentioned something earlier AI, I have no, no confidence that AI is going to deliver a meaningful solution in the skilled above $120,000 a year, talent pool anytime soon. And what I mean that is that at least I can only see out about five years. So you know, AI, people still write resumes for human beings, right. So, AI. If you follow AI at all, especially narrow AI is what we're talking about here. The only way the algorithm gets really good is by having a massive data set to train itself on. So there's not a massive data set of resumes, and the nuances and particulars in resumes that you can apply AI to in the job field. And then where the courting process usually goes awry in HR, or any process is the human interaction. So you can give me all that well served up let's make a hallucination and say AI could deliver candidates on your doorstep, you put C C++ embedded real time systems, UI UX Python, in Des Moines, Iowa, where you might get 10 or 15 resumes. I don't think so. But let's just say in Des Moines, Iowa. Well, it usually where it falls off is the human interaction, the internal process in organizations have not been properly set up. From everything from I know we're going to talk about this today to engagement, description of who the person is going to become when they come to the company. Instead, they get told what other requirements to work here. And then the courting process itself. Typically, way too many stakeholders are all over the place and not paying enough mind to taking that individual through the journey. And then salary negotiations probably the weakest point in any, especially today in this in this day and age, the weakest point in any part of the process that gets fumbled all the time. And then the onboarding. So AI on resumes are only the front end challenge that is not going to be threatened anytime soon. But then it's the engagement with the other human beings.

Kyle Roed: 9:31

Absolutely. And I know my listeners can they're probably just sitting here thinking of how many stories this has occurred but you know, I can't tell you how many times I've had a great candidate I've you know, I've had that kind of that that connection. You know, the feeling on the goosebumps on the back your neck like okay, this is it. This is the person this is the this is the right candidate. We just found this person and then they go talk to somebody and they're out. They had a bad interaction. I don't know somebody was having a bad Somebody, somebody took an aggressive interviewer stance. And now you're like picking up the pieces of this great candidate. And you're like, great, I guess we're starting over again, let's delay this process another three weeks to just see if we can get another candidate that was that good. You know? So, yeah, I'm with you on that. And I don't, I don't know. I don't know how AI, I don't know how AI understands the intricacies of human behavior, at least not in like he said, like not in the near future may

Joe Mullings: 10:27

wildcard, first of all, the AI is not going to work on resumes, because people are again, not writing resumes for an algorithm, the writing them for the human eye interpretation. So therefore, you can't train an algorithm as effectively, to say, this is a good candidate, because, you know, we're also moving into an area that emotional and intellectual agility is going to end up being even more valuable than skill sets, because you're going to have to reinvent yourself every five to 10 years at the breakneck pace of technology today. So you know, how do you interview for that? Who is interviewing for that?

Kyle Roed: 11:46

That's a great point. I love that term, emotional and intellectual agility. Because I mean, if the last two years are, alright, testament to how quickly the world can change, and it just takes, you know, one one catalyst to change the entire nature of the workforce. For the majority of workers, you know, a great, great example of that, but I tend to agree, you know, it reminds me of the, you know, I have these conversations with, with educational institutions who are, you know, they're, you know, trying to figure out, okay, what do you want? What do you want a candidate? What can we teach someone, you know, what skills? Can we teach someone? And you asked me, and you ask any other HR professional, it's not like, oh, I need him to, you know, score x on this assessment, these skills are, I needed to be emotionally intelligent, I need him to be able to communicate, I need them to be adaptable, I need to be able to learn, you know, those sorts of things, that that's really the that's what matters. Today, and if somebody's got those things, then you can teach him many of the technical skills at to a certain extent, right? Yeah,

Joe Mullings: 12:53

that's true. Look, there's there's a majority of everybody wants to point and say, Well, what about a doctor? And what about a surgeon? And what about an airline pilot, and, sure, they're absolutely careers, and roles that require a high level, a high level of training and precision training, in order to execute on the job with very specific protocols. And usually, they're in highly regulated environments. But a majority of the workforce really needs in its core competency, what you just said, because it's rare that an industry and or a sector is not going to be dynamically turned over 180 degrees on a regular basis, whether you have a pandemic or not, because that rate of acceleration of technology is just flipping everything over. And so the biggest concern is those who do not have that emotional agility. In order to say, granted, I just spent five years learning something to be a, but now it's got to be B, there's a reasonable percentage of the population that eventually is going to get frustrated, or have not been taught how to reinvent themselves, and have not been taught that it's something they should look forward to, and are going to punt. And I'm afraid that those people are going to be left in the in the rearview mirror. Absolutely.

Kyle Roed: 14:15

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Joe Mullings: 16:22

The first thing is if you got to start your hiring narrative before you need any of those people. So, you know, most of the time hiring, we'll look at a 60 day window on who's available, and then it's a fire drill. What if you thought longitudinally instead, okay, the same way you sit down at the end of the year, and you talk about what's our budget for equipment? What's our budget for the sales group? What's our budget for the finance team? Right? Well, what is our budget from both a tactical, economic and spend on bringing in talent? And what are the four or 40 positions or 100 positions that we're bringing in? And then what is our company's hiring brand? And I don't mean the product brand or the service brand. But does your organization have an ongoing narrative that will declare who will a person become once they once they come to your company, that's what people are asking themselves, at the core, all the time, whether they're looking for a significant other a spouse, whether you're joining a club, joining a team, one of the top things are asking themselves is Who am I going to become when I become sociated, with these people, so very few companies put that hiring narrative out there. And then you've got to lay that hiring narrative down over a long period of time. And that starts the courting process, the courting process is you marketing who that person may become, by authentically saying, this is our company. These are the type of people who do well here. And by the way, stay tuned, watch us like we're a network TV show. Because over the next year, we're going to be looking to hire these kinds of positions. Now, somebody grabs their diet coke and their bag of chips and starts watching. And you, you most of the time, you want the A players, you don't want the people who are going to be available, who are looking for a job all the time, or happen, you know, lightning strikes, and they happen to be available at the moment, you've got the posting out for a product manager. So that's the first thing is you start courting, before you even know the person who's showing up for your job. Then you need to make sure that all of the stakeholders once the person does engage, you make sure all the stakeholders understand what is important to the person that they're trying to attract to their team. And I use those words on purpose rather than interview. Because in this market and the market moving forward, if you're not able to understand the, you know, we don't have to go down and Maslow's Maslow's, you know, needs, but you can still use that as a reference point is, what is this person looking for? What are they running away from? And what are they running towards. And then you've got to make sure the head of sales, the head of supply chain, the head of operations, the head of engineering, all are able to explain what that position means to them in their role, not all interviewing off the same sort of template and don't toss in behavioral based interviewing and all these other fancy ridiculous things, millions of dollars are spent on be a human being and understand and say, Listen, as it applies to sales. This is really what this position means to me. Here's the top three problems I'm trying to solve and sales, the ops person will sell. Here's the top three problems. I'm trying to solve relative this and give that person a chance to articulate what they've done that either matches or rides up right alongside of what they're looking for.

Kyle Roed: 20:07

Love it. Yeah, we're living up to the name. We're gonna start talking on behavioral based interviewing. I'm wasting scam

Joe Mullings: 20:13

of all time. Somebody made so much money on that red pill blue pill mentality that occurs in corporate America today.

Kyle Roed: 20:23

Oh, dude. Yeah, well, we're gonna dive down that rabbit hole. But I do want to I want to circle back to something that you said because I think it's the first time that I've heard it articulated this way and I want our listeners to really grasp this. The question Who will they become You know, and thinking in terms I mean, you kind of rewired how I think about it a little bit because I, you know, I've always, I mean, you know, you always think about, Okay, what's your employer value proposition, right? And you think about, okay, here's your product. Here's, here's the, your culture, you know, and it's it's, it's, but that's very focused on the company. It's not focused on your target market. And, and that the journey that a candidate would take with you if they were to even be interested in working for your company. Right. So I think that that's a really profound way to think about it. I haven't really thought about that way.

Joe Mullings: 21:15

And also, and also, let's be, let's be real, and stop making believe that we have lifelong employees. Why don't we say, Listen, Carl, you're probably going to spend four years here. And if we do our job, we will have helped you become way overqualified for the role that you're applying for, or you're thinking about coming here for. And in those four years, it falls on us to be able to create another role for clearly show you a pathway forward. And if not, if you leave here in four years, because either you've outgrown us, or you've grown so rapidly, there is not one here for you. This is what these are the skills you're going to walk away with. And Carl, by the way, these skills are going to be so marketable four years from now, because this is where the industry is moving. Right? Give Carl that to think about when Carl goes home, not the requirements four plus years experience BS degree, must be able to pick up a package more than 50 pounds. I mean, that and that is what 90% of corporate America is putting out on their job postings. And I understand that there are certain compliance parameters you have to work within. But that should be the fine print that should not be the cut and paste that is put on nearly every single job posting that corporations put out, put a little time in place.

Kyle Roed: 22:39

Yeah, that's is that really too much to ask to actually think about what you're what you're communicating? When you advertise something?

Joe Mullings: 22:46

What do you what are you willing to bet your life on, and that's, you've got to put that level of thought into it, and it will, it will change your win rate. And it will more importantly, change those who eventually lean in and have been watching your organization for six months, nine months, 12 months online, by the way, there's this place called LinkedIn, that's pretty free. That is in your workplace, that you should be telling stories. industry wide every single week, if not every single day, about here's who you will become when you come to work here. And again, for every every old shoe, there's a sock. Yeah, if you tell the story, rather than put out job postings. And then finally, hey, here's something called social media. That means be social, engage with the market, engage with the audience.

Kyle Roed: 23:44

I love that. I think it's, you know, this is kind of hitting on the other point that you made, which is listen, this is not an employer's market. I mean, if you think that you can go out and say, Look at my brand, it's so great, you should be you know, you should be thankful that you even got an interview here, or you know, something along those lines. I mean, you're dreaming, I'll tell you a story of a of an email that I literally just received, I think it was last week, maybe the week prior, and it was for an employer who shall remain nameless, but they're one of the largest employers in the world. Hey, we've got this HR opening. And the, it was clearly like a bot. Right? You know, that's just like, finding somebody on LinkedIn with the, you know, human resources in their title. You know, you can work you have to work at this location, or this location, or this location, you must be available. If you've ever interviewed with us before, you are not eligible for an interview. And you know what I read in that email, I'm like, Oh, you're just a bunch of jerks. I don't want to work for this company.

Joe Mullings: 24:52

Imagine, imagine a high high end player a top 1% are going oh, my god that convinced me.

Kyle Roed: 24:59

Yeah, I know. It's like, like, and you know what, but you know, what they did have in the email, they had this really, really high dollar figure, you can make this much money. And you know what I mean, to go back to your other point, if you're an A player, are you going to go work for a jerk of a boss just for the money?

Joe Mullings: 25:19

No, probably not. No, you won't. You will not and again, this is this is where this is where you get the fatigue and the exhaustion. And most postings honestly have become white noise in everybody's inbox. So you know that that's that that is dropping off the effectiveness of those other than getting somebody who can fog a mirror, you are not going to get game changers with those strategies that have not changed much.

Kyle Roed: 25:48

I'm glad I'm not the only one that uses the term mirror fogger. But, you know, I'm with you. Alright, so I do want to I want to now you really got me going out. Now I'm starting to get irritated because I'm remembering all these things back and like, you know, that I'm like, why are we doing it this way? Another company, one of the one of the companies, I used to work for massive player, when I came out of college, so I was kind of like, recruiting like HR found me, they didn't even have like, HR wasn't a degree when I when I went to school. It you know, I took it was like chapter eight and management class, you know, that was that was about it. So I knew enough not to get sued. But that was about it. And so, so I come out of school, and I go to this employer, and they're like, here's this, here's this interview guide, this is going to help you pick the best talent. And it was like this 27 page document with a behavioral base, you know, like they had the STAR method literally in the guide. And then they had like all these, like, probing questions that you were allowed to ask. And they said, Just don't go off script. But they had a script of like questions to build rapport, but you couldn't go off script. And so it was like, like, you would interview somebody and and then they would like rate you on, like, if you were like, not robotic. And your interview goes. And you know what that did that, that it just completely neutered, the entire interview experience, you know, you never made any human connection. But that was the that was the way it worked. Right. And that was allegedly the best way to hire talent. And then, you know, a few years into it, I, I thought better, but now I'm like, does this actually work? Right? And and the answer was, Well, no, because if you looked at the turnover numbers, we were losing 40% of those people in the first three years on the job, so something's not working.

Joe Mullings: 27:37

Well, you know, it's also. So let's be fair to and this is where I get a little provocative, and I catch a lot of heat in the industry. But it's because I do try and tell the truth. There are certain processes that are good for hiring workers. And then there are processors that are game changers. And that's who you attract them, the game changers. And every hierarchy and every organization has its cohort of workers has its cohort of mezzanine performers. And then it has its cohort of game changers. And there's something called prices law. And your readers or your listeners would be interested in this. So prices law, is the square root of the number of people in your organization do 50% of the work. And when you hire, you should always be playing to the square root number for prices law, no matter what role you are looking to fail. So as an example, this is scary. If you're a four person company, that means two people are doing 50% of the work, that's not a big deal. If you're a 36 person, company, six people are doing 50% of the work, right 30, the other 30 are doing workers work. If you're 100 people, it starts to get scary 10 People are doing 50% of the work, the other 90 are doing workers work. But if you drive yourself with your processes, and even consider some of the things we've just chatted about in the first half of this session, and you drive your processes to address the prices law and throw it out of balance, you can change the face of your organization. But it requires a number of things it requires making sure that you put HR in a winning scenario, HR are not here to find talent, HR was plugged into this 50 years ago, to take care of the existing employees. No HR people have been trained how to invasively and aggressively gone out and attract the top 1% of the players in your respective industry. Because if they were, they would have been given by the C suite enough money to be courting the top 100 people in your industry, you could do that digitally today, and be pounding them in a respectful way. Every single week, with information about your company that eventually has them lean in, I will guarantee you not a single listener yours has got a 50 or$100,000 budget if they've got over 10 million in sales to go after the top 100 identified people in your competitive marketplace as a steady state basis. And try and get them today or three years from now as a team member and that list should be evaluated every year. And you should elegantly be touching base with them and saying hey, would you mind if we stayed in touch? We don't have anything today. But we believe this is who you could become if you came to us and just spend three years here and here's the upside to you. And listen if you ever want to chat do me a favor keep an eye on Our LinkedIn profile our LinkedIn profile from a company, and by the way, feel free to reach out to me at any time, you get three to five of those 100 hires over a few year period, it changes the game dramatically.

Kyle Roed: 30:55

Yeah, I'm just thinking, Yeah, well, no, I don't have that. But, you know, on your comment on, you know, a, an HR person aggressively attracting, you know, that that top 1% The honest answer is, I mean, I just admitted to, you know, no, I wasn't trained on how to do this. And I think, you know, the, as you mentioned that, you know, to me, it's like, well, yeah, that's why I hire, that's why I hire a headhunter. Right? Like somebody that can, somebody that can shake the trees, and they have, you know, they have these relationships built up. But then in the same context, I'm also thinking, Yeah, but part of the biggest challenge of using a third party recruiter is getting them and the candidate to understand, you know, the, what you've already described, which is, who will that person become? What is the value to that person? Like, what is like, it's a sales job at that point, right. And and it's really,

Joe Mullings: 32:04

no, it's a facilitators job. So it's not a sales job. And, and I will be nuanced about that. So our best clients are required to spend time with us, and one of the firt, that we asked two questions that have to be answered. One is, what is the problem you're trying to solve with this role? And the second is, who will this person potentially become when they leave, they're in four years. And nearly every person who's not accustomed to getting both of those questions, is dumbfounded when I asked them, when they think about it, and we explain why those are important. Suddenly, the lights start going off. And then what happens there is I get a better messaging set from that client, and each of the respective hiring managers are involved in that hiring process. Who go Hmm, I've never thought about it that way. I'm like, Well, gosh, yeah. So it's really important that you understand we have a role as a facilitator, you cannot talk somebody into taking the job or a good person into taking the job. Because you have retention issues, right? It's like the I call it the the timeshare sell. Right? If you live down here in Florida, they take you down to Bahamas, give you a Bahamas, Swizzle, get you drunk, get you to buy a condo, you can go to three times a year you get home and you're like, WTF did we just buy? And so it's the same thing a lot of times in the hiring process is they talk people into things rather than facilitated decision in an elegant fashion.

Kyle Roed: 33:33

That's an important distinction, I would argue with that. I've, I've seen that, you know, the, and the way I think about it is it's like, you know, it goes back to the the whole idea of a realistic job preview. I mean, if you're, if you're trying to bring someone in, and they're gonna have to clean, clean toilets in a retail store, you better not tell them that they're gonna be in an executive level position. And you know, they're gonna have a lot of people that report to them and get to make, you know, high level strategic decisions, but go clean that toilet. No, when I tell you, like, they've got to understand that, you know, they've got to understand what they're signing up for. And and, yeah, the good ones won't. The people who are desperate will will do whatever you ask them to do.

Joe Mullings: 34:14

Who the hell wants to hire a desperate person? This comes back to the interviewing and hiring for workers versus game changers. Right.

Kyle Roed: 34:21

Right. Right. Yeah, that's a great point. So all right, I got it. Noted. Noted. I won't I won't call you a sales salesperson.

Joe Mullings: 34:30

Well, most headhunters are salespeople. The great ones are facilitators and educators.

Kyle Roed: 34:35

There you go. There you go. So the key so for all you HR people out there, the key is to identify the difference, right and find the partners that work. And I've worked with a number of recruiters over the years, I've been very fortunate to find, you know, a handful that that fit that mold, you know, that they're there, they're there for the relationship for the long term success. And they know, if I just plug a gap in an organization with no thought for what the culture has to provide, or what that person is really looking for. And and I have turnover issues, eventually, you know, this relationship will deteriorate. You know, we've

Joe Mullings: 35:13

been we've been noodling for a couple years now of saying, you can give us 25% First year earnings on the fee, or how about this? You give me 35% If they're there for four years and then you start to adjust your fee and now you collect your fee and for most search firms, that type of annuity is very interesting if you really will put your work behind your mouth. And if you say Okay, so you're gonna pay me over four years 35% divided by four, and you're gonna give me that percentage every year that they're there. I'm willing to bet on that a few are. That's where you have aligned interests right now the search business does not have aligned interests. It is thank you very much. 30 days got my guarantee, I really don't care what happens to that person.

Kyle Roed: 36:06

I love that. You know, I'm usually I'm usually the guy that's like, like, his 45 day guarantee the best you can do like, yeah, like, you know, and I mean, I've seen like, I want at least six months, you know, but

Joe Mullings: 36:21

the problem there though, is you can't hold it recruiter liable for what they can roll. Right? So So if all of a sudden you go to a 35% fee, but you're just deferring your money, and then you give me the opportunity to stay engaged with that individual. So I can call in every quarter and be okay, Sally, how's it going? What's going on anything I can help you with? Right now I have a vested interest in making sure in the beginning of the process, but then my pay is determined on how long I keep Sally there with your help. And now you've got an ear and a voice to Sally, because I have a vested interest. That's a model that I believe is going to have legs. Because if you play the long game, an organization would be more than happy to pay almost double the search fee, if they knew that it was tied to four year tenure at a company

Kyle Roed: 37:13

100%. Yeah, sign up on that all day long. I mean, that's it. That's it simple ROI. No relation, that's a no brainer.

Joe Mullings: 37:21

And a search firm double could double its fees with the same amount of work.

Kyle Roed: 37:24

There you go. Oh, yeah, I love that, that. And from, you know, from the customer standpoint, it's like, I mean, you just you just talk about interest being aligned, like you just told HR, we're going to help you with retention issues. Yeah, you pay a little bit more upfront, we're gonna help you in the long run, and like,

Joe Mullings: 37:40

you have to pay twice of it. Because odds are, you're going to probably have to replace it when you have to replace somebody, we all know the math on that, by the time of downtime, cohesion of the team, right? Esprit de corps, all that stuff.

Kyle Roed: 37:53

Yeah, we ran that, you know, by a former company, we ran that analysis for the organization. And we use a really, like, really conservative estimate on how much turnover cost us I mean, like, probably ultra conservative, the accountant signed off on if that tells you anything. And that number was still like $20 million. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's huge. And the, you know, that doesn't even take into account the, the morale issues and the and the headaches and the and those, you know, that that top 1% That eventually gets just burned out, because the 10 people are doing the work for, you know, hundreds. And yeah, I mean, that happens. And those are the those are the warning signs. And I think that's, you know, that's one of the things that as we talk about, like the great resignation, is the those people that are doing the majority of the work one of those leaves, the whole thing can come crashing down, right?

Joe Mullings: 38:50

Absolutely. The Headhunter should be happy to be engaged for maybe twice the fee over four years, because the headhunter then gets to stay engaged with the company, and with the hiring manager, and his line of sight into HR with report to the HR person three or four times a year. And now all of a sudden, you're picking up other J o's and opportunities that HR is like, you know, what, Carl, you did such a good job, and you're connected, and you really do get us I got these three other searches. And so everybody gets their interests aligned there.

Kyle Roed: 39:22

Absolutely. So, absolutely. So I do want to talk about one more topic that, you know, it's definitely a hot topic right now. We've We've, I mean, I just saw something in the news, something like 6% inflation, you know, wage inflation is through the roof. You know, we were like looking at our merit budget, or like, yeah, I don't know that a 3%. You know, merit increase budgets, necessarily going to keep us up with the market. So, you know, companies are facing this issue right now. And I had a conversation with somebody who was preparing a job offer the other day, and and, you know, they haven't, they had an offer in mind. And the candidate came back and was not on the same page. And so this, this hiring manager came to me and said, you know, what do we do? And I said, Well, do you want this person to work here? Yeah, well, then you probably have to pay it. So, I mean, so that's one tactic to get candidates is you know, pay to play if you will, but you know, I want to I want to kind of pick your brain a little bit on you know, what, what does a good offer look like? And And as that part of that process, and as we're seeing some of this, this noise in the candidate market, you know, what are you seeing that works?

Joe Mullings: 40:35

Yeah, so this is by far the most effective HR people get your pencils and pens and crayons. Once out, this is by far, the most effective way. First of all, start early and often with offer discussions. In some states, Massachusetts, California, you're not allowed to purportedly ask what the current salary is, which is the most ridiculous law of all time. But we won't go there in this session, because it actually ends up costing you more money. Both both parties. When you start, once you get a candidate in the slot, and let's call in the slot for this conversation, you're starting the face to face you had a TI a telephone interviewer zoom, and now the candidates in the slot. Or if you hire virtually, and you're not in PERT and in person, the very first time you appear, either two dimensionally three dimensionally in front of each other. And you say, Fred, alright, look, I really thought this went extraordinarily well, I want you to think about it want you to come back to us. It's a little early Fred in the conventional mindset to be talking about an offer at this point. But let me tell you in our organization, we know everybody has different needs at different times in their lives. So what we've got is we've got a number of levers that we can pull, I got to tell you upfront fret, I don't have all 10s on my levers, but I have a combo thereof. I've got base salary, I've got sign on. I've got options, I've got RSUs, I've got vacation time, I've got relocation budget, and I've got those levers to pull. As we go through this process, I'm going to want to chat with you along the way, every time we finish one of these gates, I can give you the ranges on all those by the way, sign on, we can go up to 10% of base salary, our bonuses anywhere from 20 to 30%. The base on this is 120 to 140. The RELO on this is 25 grossed up, you get the idea. And the options are 1000. I can't pull all 10s on those levers, but I can pull a combination there up. I don't know what your personal needs are. And I don't need to whatever you want to share with me. But as we go along, I want to be able to pull the right levers for you. Boom, when that guy or girl hangs up the phone there, first of all, their mind is blown that this is a collaborative process, rather than a jack in the box at the end of the process, you know, pops up and here's your offer. Right. Right. Right. And so that tactic right there has worked extraordinarily well for our clients.

Kyle Roed: 43:14

You know, what you just gave me you just gave me like a menu. Right? Like, now I have a choice. And that's, that's what's so genius about that approach is it's like, you know, usually you're just thinking, you know, what's the base? What's a vacation? Is there a bonus? Right, as opposed to what are the Yeah, what are the levers? So I really like that. And you're you're also setting expectations that you can't, you're not going to get the world you're going you're going to get a combination that fits your individual needs. The other thing? I mean, I would and I've I I agree with you, first of all, on the compensation like the like I asked it in the first discussion, first phone discussion. And unfortunately, what I found, especially working with third party recruiters is a lot of times they'll tell me that this person will take what's in the salary range, but when you talk to that person, they're like, oh, no, I told him 150 You're talking 115? No, no, I need one. You know, like, I mean, I've been there. And the last thing you want us for that to happen in the last interview, or God forbid, when you extend an offer. But, you know, setting that expectation right up front and just, you know, even just asking what somebody needs, is also just building a connection. It's building some adult respect and the relationship with somebody that you're going to be transparent and authentic through the process. And that's, I mean, I, I've heard that feedback more times than not is people just like it when everybody's upfront. Mm hmm. So that yeah, I love that. So hopefully, you know, I got it. I got my big green crayon out. I wrote that down on a post it note, you know, we're good to go. So

Joe Mullings: 44:54

use it. Let me know how it works.

Kyle Roed: 44:57

Sounds good. Well, it's it's been just an absolutely wonderful conversation. We're ending the time here together. But I do want to go through the rebel HR flash round. So we got three questions we ask every guest and and I'm curious to hear your your your responses ready to go. Let's do it. Alright. Question number one. What is your favorite people book? Uh,

Joe Mullings: 45:23

gosh, my favorite people book is Bob shell Dini influence

Kyle Roed: 45:33

Alright, question number two. Who should we be listening to?

Joe Mullings: 45:36

Jordan Peterson?

Kyle Roed: 45:39

Jordan Peele What is Jordan do?

Joe Mullings: 45:41

Jordan Peterson is probably one of the world's premier psychologists in my opinion. And public speakers. He's Canadian. PhD, give yourself one straight month of Jordan on YouTube. And you will never think the same.

Kyle Roed: 46:01

I love that. Yeah, and that's one of the things you know, as an HR practitioner, so much of the job can be very, very gray. Very difficult, very hard. If you don't, if you forget that you're dealing with humans, ie, you're just dealing with a series of brains. So if you can understand how the brain works and understand psychology a little bit, it just makes your life easier. So alright, he's got on my list queued up. Jordan Peterson. Perfect. Thank you. Alright, hard hitting question here. How can our listeners connect with you?

Joe Mullings: 46:35

Oh, gosh, that's an easy one. So Joe Mullings on LinkedIn. Joe mullings.com is my webpage. And those are and then by the way, we we we so I told you we're an unconventional HR company for headhunting company. We also have a docu series called True future.tv. It's an award winning Telly award winning Docu series. So no other search firm has a production studio and a production team. And its own Docu series, we've got one. So check out true future.tv And then chuck, check out Joe mullings.com and Joe mowings on LinkedIn.

Kyle Roed: 47:16

Awesome, we will have all that information in the show notes. So open up your podcast player, check it out, click in Get Connected, you know, I just think the you know, the content just this discussion today, you know, the maybe challenging some of the paradigms of how we think about recruiting and human resources and and, and business in general. It's worth the fall. It's worth checking out and so really appreciate the time here today, Joe, and appreciate the work keep keep pushing the boundaries.

Joe Mullings: 47:46

Always will and appreciate sharing with your audience. Thanks very much. Have a great weekend.

Kyle Roed: 47:50

Thanks, you too. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter at rebel HR guy or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe