the importance of recruiting companies

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What's going on everybody? We are live this morning. And I'm very excited to have a guest with me today. Kyle Allen. Kyle. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. For those of you who are tuning in at us comments, let's know your tune in from. We'd love to obviously hear from you. Kyle would love to hear from you because Kyle loves making new friends. For those of you who do not know Kyle Allen, Kyle heads up the entire Vaco office. And I just got the update on LinkedIn that I'm going live. So we'll let a few more people trickle in right now. But so I wanted I've obviously caught.

I've talked about. Him coming live show. Kyle brings a wealth of knowledge, not only from being just a fantastic human being, but obviously years of experience in the industry. So he is going to bring the heat today as I like to say about some why you should use recruiters from a client side, can't side, but then also a job seeker side. So we got some people tuning in Matthew. What's up buddy? Good morning. It's good to see you. Brandon was going on. Hey, Kyle. Kyle say hey, what's up Brandon? Um, yeah, man. All right. So let's go ahead and dive in because I want to obviously give appropriate introductions.

John. Good morning. What's going on buddy? Again, Addis comments. Let's know your tuning in from Kyle. Give it to everybody. So who you are, what you do. And then we'll dive in. And man, so Kyle Allen, I've been in the, I guess staffing recruiting consulting business 15 years was prior live was a CPA worked in the university for a few years and decided to be in an accountant. Was it kind of my gig wanted to get into it? I can't what I did. I can't see you as an accountant. I don't think I've ever told you that, but I say I get that a lot.

I mean, I mean, the day I love what was great about public accounting. You are around a lot of people and coming out of school, you start with like 30 people your age. So it's like it's a pretty soft landing into the corporate America world. Not very often you get to start with like 30 people that just graduated. So we had a lot of fun the first couple of years. The work kind of gets real dry. If you're not kind of into that, which I wasn't, but I was passionate about people, right? And so I wanted to sales gigs. Anyways, I fell in love, gotten the recruiting 15 years ago, joined Baco almost nine years ago.

And so been rocking a role and kind of finding the accountants and corporate finance folks jobs for a long, long time. So yeah, and give a quick story about kind of how you came to Vaco and kind of what your role at Vaco is now. Yeah, so came over to just still kind of the contracts out of the business on accounting and finance. And then took over the over seeing the office in January, 17. So I got something in your five now that was crazy to think. And so kind of straddle a little bit of sales and still some management responsibilities as well. That's awesome.

That's awesome. Yeah. If you want people to name Baco, what's going on? Good morning. It's good. Love to see you. Jean, good morning from Denver. I love it. Jean, Jean always in the house. I love it. So let's talk about the big question of why you need to use recruiters and recruiting firms in general, but specifically right now in this market, because this market is not so we're talking about before we came on. It's just absolutely bonkers. Bonkers right now. Yeah. So let's talk about it from, let's talk about from the hiring perspective and then the job secret side. And I'm sure we'll probably because they both.

Yeah, it's mine pretty well. They do blend. I mean, it's all the same pool of folks, right? I mean, I always say an individual looking for a job is a good client that's just not happy, right? And so, but I think what you're looking at now is just the competitiveness and the speed to market. And so if you're really finding a good recruiting firm that'll work with you, has a good, you know, you talk about this a lot tailor that has good tenured players, a good pedigree in town can really move the needle for you is in your, they need to be leaning on you, have asked into questions of like not only can we deliver you good talent, but like in my opinion, that's a third of the deal.

It's just finding you talent. The other two thirds is I could get them to the finish line to work in your organization. This man competing offers speed to market. How quickly we're doing interviews. Their process pushing their HR team, the onboarding process. How long are taking an offer letter like, dude, we can't, I mean, clients literally are we're finding people we were doing this. We're restarting searches for a third time because they're moving too slow and they're not listening to us. And so yeah, so I want to highlight on two things you just said it. The first thing is again, everybody who's watching, if you have any questions for Kyle, please post about using recruiters, how to navigate working with recruiters, why you should use your recruiters.

So if you have any questions, again, this kind of goes off the kind of the segment I'm doing this week with recruiters suck. Right. So again, ask me any questions. Ask Kyle any questions. But so Kyle, you said two things resonate with me. The first off is you said a third of a recruiter's job is to find out. Right. So most people think of us as just like, oh my gosh, right. Just a means to an end, I'm using this celery and ranch analogy a lot. You just need the celery to get to the ranch. Right now, like, and that's how people view us. So talk, unpack that a little bit.

Yeah, just what else we do? Well, I think a third of it's that's, but if you break it, I mean, there's a lot of ways to slide the apple, but you know, if you break it up at third of it's that, here's the biggest thing with finding a really good recruiter that's like, solid in the market. When I get a call from a client and they're giving me news, probably 80 for 85% of the time, I already know the news they're telling me. And so just to amount the amount of information that we consume in the market and that we know that we do not tell people we know is unbelievable.

And that's the secret sauce that people don't realize how much we know what's going on. We know stuff's going on inside organizations before potentially the organization itself knows, right? Two or three people know. And they're already kind of, how do we figure that out? And so if you just using us from a, you know, Intel of like the market, who's, you know, what companies are coming up, who's hot? We know the companies in town that have a great culture. We know the companies in town that have the crappy management teams. We know, we know them all. And we work with some of them. And some of them, you know, we've got to find those folks.

But, you know, it's interesting on that. And then the other side is the other third is just the process, right? That is so, it's just, you know, what we see is obviously there's administrative piece to what we do, but so, so vital to get transparency, you know, downloading of information of like where they are, what's going on. When a client for us, it's, we're working on a really hot deal and they go silent for three days. And they're not answering or re-respond us. We move on like we're just like, you know, like, we got other people that are responding and moving quick in this market.

So that's kind of how I would break that down. But I've had clients tell me which is hilarious. So like, the amount of information you just share with me, I feel like you need to send me an invoice. And it's like, you know, it's a little bit. Just, just, just, I'm our people. It is a little scary how much we know and what's going on in the market, right? So that's that's way undervalued. Jared, turning in from Phoenix first. What's up, Jared? It's good to see you buddy. So, so as people watching this and they're like, hey, listen, Kayla, good morning. It's good to see you as always, sir.

If people are watching this right now, and they're like, hey, how do y'all get to know this information? Right? Like, how are y'all privy to things before? Because I'll tell you this, like again, you tell my patient, Dr. Confidentially? Yeah. I talked to CTOs at companies that want to leave before their entire engineering team knows they're leaving. Totally. So like, yeah, go. Yeah. It's crazy because everybody, this is funny that you're going to be this like everybody that comes to us for looking for a job. Their search is always highly confidential. We get it. We know it. And guess what we're not going to go talk about outside and for walls of our office with camp.

I mean, we obviously talk internally, but like, we're not sharing who's looking for jobs because it's just like that builds that trust, right? And we're like, if somebody calls us and we know, we know the higher manager as well, we're like, we're not, we're not going to do that to themselves. So, you know, we're just knowing the market. So everybody comes with like, handy, this really confidential, like you and everybody else. But so, you know, how would you vet? Right. So let's say hiring marriage watches can't just watch in this. And obviously you've seen what I posted and put out there, but I'm interested through your thoughts.

Again, this topic, while you and I hang out a lot and we talk X and those in strategy, we don't really get to talk about macro level recruiting. So I'm very curious to hear your thoughts. If you're a candidate or hiring manager, how would you vet out recruiting firms in this market or in general? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You know, I think you got to, I think looking at understanding kind of their pedigree and where they're coming from and tenure in the business, you know, how long they've been, are they, are they local or do they have just how is their team structure? Is their tenure there?

Do they have consistency? Do they have a brand presence, right? Online, whatever it may be, content they're pushing out, are they experts in their field, right? I mean, just, you know, you go to a company you're like, I need to get some work done. Whatever the work is, right? You're a consumer of it. And you go to their website and you're like, eh, like, I don't know. I don't trust it, right? And so just online presence matters and what the content they're pushing out, the marketing piece. And so that's one thing I think we do a fantastic job of is just what, you know, you go to Beiko Nashville and Instagram page and our LinkedIn content, our website, our team marketing team is a fantastic job of that.

And so really showcasing who we are. So, but you know, I think in two, honestly, it comes down to it's like, hey, there's a vibe to it's like, there's a vibe. I'm talking about all the time. I'm just saying it. Like, you just, there's two where like, you're like, man, I'm just in my career. I'm like, and we even with clients. I'm like, I'm just too old now. Like, you're too hard to work with. Like, and we, I'm just like, I'm just not working with you. You know, and I think that's a recruiter too. Like, if you're not jiving with a recruiter, whatever it is and like, or, you know, and there's other people out there too.

So, I think there's a, there's a personality click. There's some, there's some social interaction type stuff that you're just like, I just really enjoy working with Kyle and I want to work with Kyle, right? He makes it easy. He knows what I want. He executes quick, etc. And I think a lot of clients call me for that because I know what they want. And I'll say, I'm an accounting and finance space. So it's not like I'm asking them definitions of accounting. Like, they tell me a job order and what they like, I can, I can get to zoom it pretty quick and turn it around.

And so speed to market's fast and that. So, I think there's a lot of factors in it. But, um, the vibe piece is probably a big one. So huge. It's huge. You know, people ask me all the time. They're like, how do I, we got recruiters. It's like, well, how do you find a friend? Yeah, totally. I mean, it's, listen, it's, it's just the feel and vibe and it's just being relatable, right? I don't know how to detail you to be relatable. It's just a feel, right? And just you got to kind of do it. And so I think some people treat this very, this job and they can.

There's successful people that cheer to bear robotically. Sure. Right? 100% got their numbers. They got their, they do all this stuff. And, but I think for me, I always had this whole long-term game in this business where I was trying to, I'm not trying to close deals and trying to build relationships and then deliver when I get the opportunity and it's going to work. Um, but yeah, we've got to have the vibe. I love that. So a few people I've, I've joined. So Aaron, I'm glad we can make you laugh today. I feel attacked. I'm laughing. I listen. We never want you to feel attacked, but we're glad we're not for sure.

Um, Muhammad. Yes, the aim of the live stream today, we're just, we're just breaking down how to work with recruiters. Why to work with us? Um, but David, good morning. It's good to see you, man. So, um, so Kyle, so the next question I want to ask is the one thing that the market's heating up, right? So, so to talk about what the market looks like right now compared to what it was, because I'm getting a lot of questions. Hey, Ted, what does the market look like? What does the market look like? Are we at pre-pandemic levels? Like, give some, because again, I'm on the tech side.

You see it not only from the county and finance side, but also as an entire office with what I do. And we're, you know, again, the biggest office, one of the biggest offices in the country with VACO. So, talk about what you're seeing and how, why do hiring managers recruiters need to use not us necessarily, but somebody right now? Yeah, for sure. Well, it's the competition is ridiculous. I mean, you know, there's two sides of our business, right? Perming contract, the direct tire side, the direct tire side right now is absolutely bonkers. Bonkers. This is, this isn't even pre-pandemic levels. This is like historic levels for us.

Yeah. It's crazy. You're like, you're a skis bumps. You're saying that because it's true. Yeah, there's no, you know, there's no pre-COVID talk. I mean, like, here's the reality is nobody hired all last year. Right. I mean, they did. I mean, we had some placement. It's not saying it was zero, but you get where I'm coming from. The hesitation where we're going to go, a lot of uncertainty hit everybody hit the pause button. And then we've come out of this. What we, what I call as a kind of faux recession, right? Whereas really like business, it wasn't a financial crisis. It wasn't businesses were losing money.

It's just like, we just stopped as an economy, right? And now the sudden it's like, holy, I mean, things are turning quick, right? And so I think the media fears, the all that media, all that crap is people are starting to go, it's falling on deaf ears a little bit. And businesses are smoking hot. So I think they're recovering from not hiring last year plus they got a brand new budget this year. And that's why I think the contract market is a hair soft right now, just because people, the workloads piling up and they're just like, instead of calling on the six month project, like just hire two people.

And so, and I think that's going to level out at times, right? That's going to come back to center when project based. I mean, the M&A market is hot right now. You know, the P, the middle mid market space, IPOs are starting to pop. It is just, it's a bifers. It is. It's bopers really is. So, so what so as so we've talked a little about behind the scenes, what we do, right? So let's talk about like a little self-brag here with us here about why make out, right? Because I think people who are watching this, people are going to watch this cross the country over the next, you know, whatever pops up into their feeds.

But what would you say like, why would you want to use the echo? Well, as a, I'm going to take it from a consumer standpoint of like us finding a job. I mean, here's the reality and you're doing a good job, but kind of sharing behind the curtain of kind of our business, right? I mean, reality is we don't create jobs, right? And so I think we're not, we're the middle man. And so we got to go find the people and the jobs that put them together. The reality is we've got to do a lot of that to make them magic work. And so, you know, we don't, we can't place everybody we meet, you know?

And I think the difference in us is obviously being upfront and being aware of resource and we want to work with you and also trying to give them resources outside of just, hey, come work with don't talk to anybody else. Just talk to us. This is what we're going to do. Like if we said that to everybody and people evaluate it us on did bake a family a job or did they not, we'd lose nine out of 10 times. So real quick, and explain that. So I talk about too, we only really place how many, what percentage of people we meet in a year? One out of 10.

One out of 10. Maybe a little higher, but it's a lot, right? And so, and then here's the thing too. I mean, we spend a lot of time with people that are outside of our space that are our core, our core perspective, but you know, what we're trying to give is some really good resume tips, some LinkedIn tips, some interview tips. And here's the reality. Like, I'm, I've been this 15 years. I may meet somebody and they find a job in six months. I'll place them in three years. Do you know what I mean? So I think the bigger piece is, you know, if I don't know who you are, I can never help you, right?

And so I think finding a couple good recruiters just for, from a career standpoint and they have a really good pulse in the market. I think everybody thinks, oh man, I don't want to talk to a recruiter. I do not really find a job. I'm like, that's the exact wrong time to be talking to a recruiter because I had so many people that I've like known for 15 years and I've never placed that they may be turning to clients. I could be a resource for them, but the long game look of a career like people never want to network unless they have to. People never want to talk to a recruiter unless they're changing jobs.

And so having a good relationship with one or two and that know the market really, really well is like a total, ace of pocket aces, right? Of the career. It's crazy. And then also too, when you're giving some insight to them, of changing your organization like, dude, that's that's gold for me as far as helping me understand that. And so it is total, you know, instead of seeing us as just a, you know, means to an answer. And they go, yeah, what should I make? You know, yeah, totally. And so we can totally be a really good career, um, navigator for you. So that's all I love that.

So, so there's a question from Paul Paul. It's good to see a buddy. Again, Paul Gower and his career at Little Rock Tech Fest, spoke out there two years ago. Go check them out. Paul goes more in Taylor with remote work having less of a stigma now. Do you think remote is becoming mainstream? If so, how does that affect people picking a recruiter? Yes, this is a great question. Very good. So go ahead, Kyle. Well, I just think remote is here to stay, right? But it's like anything in America. It's never is on the far extreme, is it really seems, right? I mean, I'm not saying there's not companies that go fully remote.

I just think it's really, really hard for an organization to scale fully remote and have people totally buy into the culture and buy into the organization as a whole. And it's hard to have really truly meaningful relationship. So, um, you know, I think that they go, we'll have a balance of it. Um, but for us and our culture, we're better together. And we're better at the amount how hard we've had to work to communicate away from each other. We forget how much we talk and we hear and not even communicating and what's going on in the situation. We're now we have to set a 15 minute meeting or we have to have an intentional phone call or having a retailer.

I mean, you're just, you're looking at your team. You guys are a team of, we'll call it 20 and you're boarding up twice a day because we have to, we're not together. So like, there's some, there's some flexibility with it. And I think, you know, I just think organizations, you're going to find in two years that the fully remote thing is people will just leave the lawsuits down. Um, if things happen or they're broken, they're, they're siloed and they're like screw it. I'm leaving. There's just no, it's just, I personally think I think it's going to be a strong balance. But I do think it's here to stay.

Definitely on the IT side of things. That was, that was, remote was, they were doing remote before remote was cool. Right. So nerd, typical nerd level stuff. Um, so for this, so, and then if so, how does it affect people picking a recruiter? So Paul, it's interesting you posted this. And I don't know if I tweeted about this this morning already yet, but I, but I, I'm literally tweeting about this today when it comes to fire recruiter, I think it's a blend now. Right. So for me, when you talk to a recruiter, ask, am, you know, is that recruiter recruiting just in their local market?

And how much of a national presence do they have? In my opinion, I think now, so my original pre COVID, I thought you should only work with one to two recruiters locally. That's it. Anything else would get a little hairy. You'd be submitted around town. It would just be, it would be nuts. And so now, I think you need two recruiters still within your local city that you live in if it's a major metropolitan area. And then another two or three like across the country looking out for you. Kyle, I'm interested again, a little bit more tech specific here. It is. Yeah. I'm curious to hear your strategy.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it just depends on what you're looking for, right? I mean, if for a mode is where you want to go and you're on the tech side, obviously, there's going to be a lot more opportunities in accounting and finance. Not saying there wouldn't be on that side. Um, but if you're going national, right, and not willing to travel, you know, obviously, you're putting yourself in a remote bucket a hundred percent of the time. So I think to reach outside of a local market. And that's what you want to do. You're like, Hey, I want to nerd out. I want to develop in and that's awesome.

So I think that's definitely a good strategy if that's the case. Yeah. So Rob, Rob Dempsey, Vaco consultant. What's up, buddy? It's good to see you. Thank you for all the work you've done with for Vaco. Well, we're remote raised compensation. So again, I saw I had Josh Cypher on, um, he's an engineering manager at Webflow out. So the Webflow is based in San Frafran. Cypher is in Nashville. And we had a live show conversation about this. I will tell you this much. It's it's definitely causing companies to reconsider Nashville's very behind. Um, but it's causing people to wake up. Um, so yes, it is raising comp.

I don't know what you've been seeing on your side. I, because again, I know if this is San Frafran. It's more, it's more techy. I mean, obviously, I mean, you tell me, I mean, the information you give me as far as like the Amazon, this is national specific, obviously, but Amazon's coming to down or it will just announce 8500 jobs. I mean, you know, and other, Google's coming to national just to have people work remote for some stuff out in the Silicon Valley. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's I think so. I think over time, it's a positive for the compensation piece. I mean, I think you also got to watch out, you know, when just moving for 10 or 15 bucks, like what are you really getting?

And so some people always talk about all the time. Yeah, so people a lot of times like, oh, the grass is always greener. And most of the time, it's not like have a really valid reason of what you're looking for and what you want to go to. If it's an extra five or 10 bucks, I promise you that that's what you're looking for. Like, into the day you're not going to be happier with five bucks. And five, 10 bucks an hour. Right. So let's let's not want to find that. Not like jumping like $10. Well, you know, it, but even if it's a significant jump like 2025, like, I don't know, I mean, I mean, personally, I love my job.

I love it. I like doing this. And but what I go do something for more money where I'm miserable. No. Well, and you know, you know, you may not know that going in, but just just be careful on the value of your true reason behind making a jump like that. But yeah, just rock on the surface. Will remove me. Yeah, I think so. Yes. Yeah. But I'll tell you this too. Companies like Webflow, again, I talk about this because Josh opened up to me on the live show. So it's it's public for everybody. Webflow struggling a San Francisco based company because pre COVID, it's like, I'll say before it, they were doing it for everyone was cool for it before it was cool.

Yeah. Is that they had pay bans. Right. So San Fran, New York, my Atlanta, etc. all had like tier one bans and then like Nashville and some other tier two. And so they'd have cap out. Well, now what San Francisco Francisco is having to do with at least Webflow is holy crap. We have Google and Amazon and Facebook now recruiting across the country with no pay bans, zero pay bans. And so that's something now that a lot of companies HR. I've been DMing with some HR folks over Twitter about what they're seeing and they're dealing with the same thing. Yeah. And they just got to be cognizant of the, here's the end of the day.

I mean, if you've got people that are rock stars and they're really critical to your business, you need to be talking to them. Yeah. You need to be given them a plan. You need to be given them a future like what does it look like for six months, 12 months? Here's we see you growing, giving them a path because if you don't do that for folks, you know, whether it's compensation, whether it's, you know, raising their title or their profile or giving them new projects to work on or something, what they want with their desire. Like they're going to go find it elsewhere. And so.

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, Kyle, thanks for joining me, man. This is a lot of fun. I think we should do it often. I love it, man. This is a good time. So well, yeah, thank you again for tuning in. The guys got to 2.0 this morning. Again, my whole point of this is to develop community. So if anybody has commented, go connect with them, go slide to their DMs, make friends and you'll have a great Thursday. Again, I'm off tomorrow. But I'll see you all next week. I appreciate y'all ton. Kyle, thanks again, buddy. All right, bye. See you. Bye.