How To Be A High Impact Recruiter with Andrew Lewis

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. My guests built a search firm from the ground up to $2 million, and then actually sat back and realized maybe this isn't the life that I want to live, and started making changes. But in that story, we're also going to talk about some things, like, what does it take to be a high impact recruiter? What does that look like? The recruiting world is changing so fast. So what are the skills that you need to learn right now to future proof yourself? So I am so excited to have Andrew Lewis on the podcast. Welcome to the show, Andrew.

Andrew Lewis [00:00:34]:
Thanks, Benjamin. Appreciate it. Happy to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:36]:
Well, we always start off of how you ended up in this wonderful world of recruiting. But before we jump there, what are you doing now?

Andrew Lewis [00:00:45]:
Yes, so today I am leading talent acquisition for a B two B SaaS company in the, we'll call it the climate tech space if you want to get more granular sustainability and supply chain. But I'm leading a global recruitment practice within the company and managing everything from the search and the acquisition, the strategy, the tech enablement, and then the training, learning and development for our hiring managers, essentially setting everybody up for success so that we can operate as a cohesive unit within our recruiting and our hiring function. So that's what I've been doing the last few years, have just been in the tech industry the last couple years, and have really kind of leaned into the startup space and really the, if you want to get even more specific, you know, the building of talent acquisition functions that are either non existent or very early on.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:35]:
Well, the building parts, always the fun part, right?

Andrew Lewis [00:01:37]:
For the right person. Yes. There's a lot of people who I'm sure can't stand.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:42]:
Well, before we start talking about, like, the focus of the conversation, let's talk about kind of jump into the very beginning of your story, like, how'd you fall into this world?

Andrew Lewis [00:01:51]:
Yeah, fallen. Falling in is a good way to say it, and I'm sure most of the guests that you bring on here have fallen in. I landed in the agency world out of college, and it was mainly due to I actually graduated with a degree in exercise science, had the intention to go to school for physical therapy, and was just on this massive waitlist for physical therapy school. Couldn't land a, you know, a decent paying job outside of school despite having four years of professional experience and, you know, having the degree, the internships, all the things they said you need. And I just basically made a decision that, look, I'm too qualified to be, you know, playing around in the mud like I am right now. And I just wanted to test the market and see what my value was in other industries and in other spaces. So a little, some of it was, you know, impatience on my part, but also the fact that I didn't actually really love physical therapy. I was kind of just doing it because it was something to do.

Andrew Lewis [00:02:46]:
And so, yeah, I had, I was, at the time, running, running operations at a gym, and one of my weekend employees had recently accepted an offer at a staffing agency, Aerotech. And I had notified her that I was going to be leaving the gym and looking for something else. And she said, well, you should come check this out. I think you'd like it, and you do really well at it. And so I took an interview, had no idea what recruiting was, had no idea who Aerotech was, didn't understand agency recruiting in the slightest. But I saw a bunch of young college grads all hanging out. It was an open office concept. It looked like a lot of fun.

Andrew Lewis [00:03:20]:
And they were willing to hire me, like, after one interview. And so I was like, yeah, let's do it. And, you know, to this day, I joke about it with my family. Couldn't explain to them what I got an offer for and, like, what my role was going to be, but I took it and said, let's. Let's see where this goes. And so that kind of, you know, propelled me into the world of agency recruiting, where that's where I got my start. And then since then, you know, over the last almost nine years, have jumped back and forth between agency and in house. Oh, wow.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:49]:
Okay. So I wanted to kind of talk about the, like, what you did over the last few years before going back in house again.

Andrew Lewis [00:03:56]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:56]:
Like starting a branch. The $2 million, you know, $2 million of revenue in a pretty short window of time, you picked up something that was like 80 new clients for the organization and a short window, like, how did you really go from zero to 100 miles an hour that fast?

Andrew Lewis [00:04:13]:
It's a good question and one I think about, because I actually had no previous management experience of running a staffing agency. I had no experience leading a team or even really driving sales cycles in the agency world. But I knew recruiting really well, and I was a go getter, and I was ambitious. I think for me, I just followed a playbook, and today I adhere by a little bit of a different type of framework when it comes to how I think you can build business and how I think you can get your name out there. Obviously, I'm a big believer in social and building a personal brand. At that stage of my life, LinkedIn was. I had a LinkedIn profile, but I was not active, really hadn't done much on it. And so I was just making hundreds of calls a week.

Andrew Lewis [00:04:57]:
I was doing the email campaigns. I was going out. I was actually going door to door. And keep in mind, I launched this branch. We started building it in July of 2019. We launched in December of 2019. Three months later, Covid hit. We were like, we had lost 15 clients overnight, and we're just like, we were on a nice trajectory, and then out of nowhere, we had nothing.

Andrew Lewis [00:05:18]:
So I was just boots on the ground. And this is a local franchise, so I was making calls in my local area. I was going to events. I was going to business to business, door to door, just trying to make introductions and leave care packages for people, because it was that time during COVID you know, we were just doing anything we could to survive, really. But what was really crazy is all that activity that we had done during that, like, two month period where no one was hiring, right. And everybody was just kind of waiting to see what was going to happen. All of a sudden, once we hit, like, July, we took off like a rocket ship. People started calling us back.

Andrew Lewis [00:05:55]:
People decided to open their businesses again and wanted help. And so, really, a lot of it, a lot of it was credited to just that activity and that tenacity during that first few months of COVID um, and that set us up to where, you know, 18 months later, almost two years later, we had just about cleared $2 million in Billings.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:14]:
That's phenomenal. And let's kind of, like, fast forward to where you're at now. Like, staffing is a lot of work. Why did you make that switch internally?

Andrew Lewis [00:06:24]:
Yeah, I think recruitment, the beautiful thing about recruitment, at least in the way I see it, in the way I see the world, is it is a very unique skill set. It's a unique bringing together of different skills. And you really, as a recruiter, you can have a very unique perspective on the job market, on what it means to be an employee, on job searching, like, all these different things. What I was missing in the staffing side of the world was strategy. I'm a strategic thinker. I'm also very tactical, and I like to get dirt under my nails and get going, but I felt like I didn't have the ability or the outlet to, you know, be able to kind of think strategically, create actual talent, strategy plans, that sort of thing that I actually really value and I think is, you know, I think is really important. So for me, you know, staffing. Staffing is a very lucrative game, but it was just not the right game for me.

Andrew Lewis [00:07:19]:
And, you know, I I even considered at that point, do I go and start, you know, a search firm? Do I go and, like, go out on my own and just kind of in my bedroom, like, and just see what we can do? But, you know, as I kind of carved out the next five to five to ten year plan of my life and what I wanted, the skills I wanted to build and the way I wanted to impact businesses, going the in house route and going more into the tech space was something that was, you know, most meaningful to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:44]:
That's phenomenal. I mean, and I've been an internal recruiter, too, so, like, I get it. Like, there are teams that I've been able to build that I don't. I would not have been able to build if I just had my business.

Andrew Lewis [00:07:54]:
Yeah, well, and I think totally. I think there's too much linear thinking in the recruitment world. You have in house recruiters who are in house recruiters by trade, and they don't know what it's like to be an agency recruiter. They just think all these people are just harassing, you know, they're sending resumes. They're, you know, whatever it may be on the other side, you have agency recruiters who think in house recruiters are, you know, failed agency recruiters. Right? Like, they're just not cut out for that world of sales. They're not as good, you know, as ambitious. They're not as dedicated to the hiring process and the recruitment process.

Andrew Lewis [00:08:29]:
And the truth is, you know, maybe there's some of that out there, but there's a lot of false assumptions there, right. And so I actually think there's a lot of value if you can see things from both sides. And I feel like that's been kind of the value of my, my career decisions, even though it hasn't been a super clear, linear path. Because I've gone back and forth between agency and in house in a variety of settings, I've been able to kind of see, like, what is important to stakeholders within a business? What are the dynamics of hiring that you don't see when you're on the agency side? Right. Because you're just sitting there, you're submitting a perfect candidate profile for what they said they wanted, and you're not hearing anything back, right. And you're like, why? Like, this is the perfect candidate. Why are they not, you're not seeing people out of the office. You're not seeing last minute discussions about budget, right? You're not seeing, oh, we're going through a massive implementation company wide, and it's slowing everything down.

Andrew Lewis [00:09:22]:
So there's all these kind of unique dynamics that I feel like because I have the in house experience, if I were to go back agency, or even just looking, looking at it for my friends that are in agency and talking with them, I can advise them and say, hey, maybe you're not considering this, right? Maybe you should approach it a different way. And maybe the answer isn't to just keep spamming, spamming the head of talent or the head of HR with emails. Like, maybe think about it a little more tactful.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:47]:
That goes into, like, a few questions that I have. When it comes to hiring a recruiter for your team, do you prefer somebody that's been internal their entire career, or do you see the benefit of somebody that's done agency and internal?

Andrew Lewis [00:10:03]:
I see the benefit of both sides. If I can find someone who's done both, that's amazing. However, to me, it's more about the person. Um, I know some really, really strong in house recruiters that even if they've never worked agency, they are built that way. Um, and then I also know agency recruiters who, you know, have been agency their whole career. They want to switch in house and they just don't have the intangibles that's also needed when you go into a business. Right. Because you're impacting more than just direct recruitment.

Andrew Lewis [00:10:32]:
You're impacting culture, you're impacting onboarding. You have to manage stakeholders a different way. You have to train and educate your hiring managers and be more of an advisor than just a consultant or a third party resource. And so there's some of these different things that have to be learned. And so I'm looking more for, is this person able to be developed in that way? Do they have high eQ, high drive, high passion? You know, I would never necessarily decline a recruiter if they're not active on social, but it is concerning to me. If you're in 2024 and you don't see the value of an online presence as a recruiter because, you know, especially if you're in an industry like mine, which is, you know, B, two b professionals all, you know, we don't do a ton of entry level hiring. So it's like these are, you know, dedicated career professionals. And if you're not out there, if you're not representing the brand or, you know, if you're not putting yourself out there, that's a significant risk that you're putting yourself in, or at the very least, you're closing yourself out from a really, really strong pipeline.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:33]:
Okay? So I'm curious on this because, you know, you are the head of talent now, you've been an agency recruiter. You've helped scale a firm. Like, you have a great background, but you've also, like, been the one sending these emails. You've been the one making these calls. Now, in your. Your shoes, in your world, what? Like, what kind of message actually breaks through to you? Cause I'm sure you're getting 100 plus a week.

Andrew Lewis [00:11:58]:
Yeah, that's a good question. And to be honest, and I'm, you know, I will. I will clarify this statement with this caveat that we use agency recruiters sparingly, and usually it's for very specific positions or very niche positions. So, you know, this might be. I might have a different approach or a different perspective if we were using agencies, you know, more regularly. But for me, a lot of the messages I get are pretty much of the same ilk. Right. Everybody says the same thing.

Andrew Lewis [00:12:26]:
One of the things that drives me crazy is the email that basically comes in and says, we can solve all your hiring problems for you. First of all, you're assuming that we have hiring problems. Secondly, that's a backhanded. That's a backhanded compliment or not a compliment. It's a backhanded insult to me and basically saying, hey, you and your team are not doing good enough, so let me help be your savior. And then three, I've never heard of them before. There's no clear value proposition as to what they do differently than anybody else. I mean, they'll come in and they'll say, hey, we'll come in at 15%.

Andrew Lewis [00:12:59]:
At the end of the day, there are companies that will negotiate down to the last dollar, but there's also a lot of businesses that are like, hey, we don't mind paying top dollar for an agency, but we need to know what you specialize in and why you're worth your value. At the end of the day, you know, working with an agency, that's. That's a premium product, and a premium product demands premium results. Right. And so, you know, the. At the. And again, this isn't a knock on generalist agencies, but, you know, for, if you're going to be going in and, you know, kind of making the assumption that you can save the hiring processes and you can do all these things and add a ton of value. You need to be able to demonstrate why.

Andrew Lewis [00:13:39]:
Because at the end of the, and I think a lot of agency recruiters don't really think about the fact that, hey, you and every other agency is doing this, right? I mean, they know they have competitors, they know that there's a ton of agencies out there, but for some reason we think, oh, my email will resonate with this hiring manager.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:57]:
Right.

Andrew Lewis [00:13:58]:
So I think there's an element of just bad copy and bad value propositioning that stands out to me. And, you know, to be fully transparent, I probably was in the same boat when I was running my agency. This is stuff I've kind of identified more now that I'm in house. You know, if I could go back, I would have been a lot more creative with how I was positioning and messaging. But the other thing, too, I mean, again, this is just one, one person's opinion. There's a lot of other heads of ta that think differently. But for me, I mean, if you go and look at my profile, you see I'm very, very active on LinkedIn. And you see I post primarily about recruitment and talent acquisition, which if I were a recruiter, would tell me I need to, like, get in this guy's ecosystem, right? I need to, like, start commenting on his stuff.

Andrew Lewis [00:14:42]:
I need to send him a message. I need to do something right. And I'll tell you what, the ones who have done that consistently, and not just once, but like, who show up regularly and are, you know, contributors, and they add thoughtful things to the conversation. I have a short list of agencies that at the very least, I'm going to, like, do my due diligence and research if we come to that point where we need help. And it's because I have validated the experience and I validated what the recruiter brings to the table. And as we know, this is a relationship based business. So I want to work with a recruiter that I'm comfortable with and I know, you know, is going to be doing the right things and has the right mindset and is somebody that isn't going to be flaky or weird, you know? So that's another element. I know you can't always do that in volume or at scale, but I think a lot of recruiters, just agency recruiters, just don't do that very well.

Andrew Lewis [00:15:32]:
A lot of times you, you'll get an, I'll get an initial in mail from them, but they don't make any effort to contribute to my content. They don't follow. They don't even follow up with a follow up message, you know, so I just think that there's almost this art now, um, especially in a market like this, when hiring is not nearly as abundant as it was a couple of years ago.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:53]:
I just wanted to ask that because it's one of those things like, yeah, I feel like many recruiters get stuck in the old copy that originally started in 1980 that's been used over and over again. The market is different. You have to think different. And yeah, you've seen all the messages, you've done the messages. So thank you for sharing your input on things that we can do to shift gears a little bit to actually build a relationship and win the work. So. But I want to jump forward to some of the things that we, we want. We really want to focus on.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:25]:
The future of recruiting is changing and I want to talk about, like, what you need, skillset wise to become a high impact recruiter before we start there. Where do you see the future of recruiting going?

Andrew Lewis [00:16:38]:
Big question. Big question. So I'm going to speak to it from more of a, I guess an in house standpoint and then we can kind of dissect it maybe from the agency angle. But, you know, with the rise of AI and, you know, we need to be clear, AI is not coming. AI is here. And I know you post about this, you posted something regularly or a couple of days ago about one company that was doing the no touch hiring. I think we're going to see more of that. And I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of complexity from a legality standpoint, you know, lawsuits, that sort of thing, regulation.

Andrew Lewis [00:17:11]:
But I think that is where especially larger organizations are going to head. So for internal talent advisors or recruiters, what I'm sharing with them and what I'm preparing them for, hopefully, is you really need to be up to speed with this technology. You need to know how you use it, how it's deployed, and the value that it brings to the business. Now more than ever, you have to understand what value talent acquisition brings to the business because for the longest time, and I actually posted about this a few days ago, I think talent acquisition needs a rebrand because we've just done a lot of damage. We haven't done ourselves a lot of favor as far as winning, influence and trust within the business. In a lot of ways, talent acquisition and recruiting is viewed as a linear, process driven function, which is true to an extent. But what we're not capturing is all the nuance and we're capturing the science, we're not capturing the art. We're not looking at what it actually means to build a relationship and build trust with a candidate.

Andrew Lewis [00:18:15]:
And how do we quantify that? How do we measure that? And all that stuff is being not accounted for or not measured. And so in a lot of ways, I think companies are looking at recruiting and talent acquisitions. Like, this is something that AI can just take over. Like, we don't have to have a people touchpoint, even though you and I and every other recruiter feel differently. Like, the people interaction is, is what makes the recruiting process at the end of the day. But I think we need to be prepared for that. We need to be prepared to have those conversations with stakeholders, and we need to be able to, like I said, to be able to understand, like, what is the value that we're providing. Can we, you know, list that out? Can we look at it from a revenue standpoint? You know, so long winded answer, but I would say, you know, probably the number one thing that I would be focusing on right now, if I'm a recruiter in house, is really, and I think, I think this is, this applies to agency recruiters as well, but learn this technology and learn, you know, at the very least, learn, like what? How companies are viewing it.

Andrew Lewis [00:19:14]:
And, you know, if I were on the agency side, it's like, you know, I think in the future, companies are going to be saying, we're using this, this tool and it's managing recruitment for us or it's helping us, whether it's a chat GPT based product or something like that, some sort of chatbot or whatever, and being able to counter that and say, well, here's what we do better, right? And here's like, what you're missing out on by using, by going this route and not adhering to the people touch. So I think you need to learn the technology in house. I see a world where we become much more technical. We have to be much more technical, and our job is more so to manage and integrate this technology, even if we're not doing as much of the direct recruiting, but we're still kind of managing this technology and then doing a lot more. I guess you could call it evangelism, work within the business, the learning and the development, the training, more of the cultural type work versus just like headhunting and direct recruiting. So there's my doomsday prediction, but I think that's something that we can see in the next ten years or so.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:16]:
Well, let me ask you a question. Because, you know, there are internal talent acquisition recruiters that listen to this podcast. It's one of the battles that I had for the good many years. I was internal, was a lot of times recruiting is seen as a cost basis. And I. I argue all day long that we are the revenue generators. How does a recruiter actually, like, help shift that mindset of their internal teams? Like, hey, no, like, you can't produce freaking shit without us.

Andrew Lewis [00:20:45]:
Yeah. I think the easy answer is it's a lot of work. And first things first, you have to get in really, really close and really well with your direct leader. Usually that's a head of HR or Chro or whoever is leading your people function because they are the ones who are speaking. You know, they're at the table with the executives and they're at the table with the senior leaders, and they're the ones who have a lot of kind of insight into the people side of the business. So I think you, first and foremost, if you're ahead of talent or you're a senior recruiter and you're, you know, or maybe you're just one recruiter on the team, but you want to, you know, be able to kind of develop these stronger relationships with hiring managers, you need to have that conversation and start building that rapport with your direct leader and say, look, I'm concerned that we're not being viewed in the correct way. Right. We're not being valued in the correct way.

Andrew Lewis [00:21:39]:
And I want to be able to demonstrate the value that we bring to the business outside of just filling seats. So I think that's where it starts. And from there, I would say it requires a lot of business partner work. And what I mean by that is we have people, business partners and HR business partners. And all they do all day is they're meeting with hiring managers on a regular cadence, whether that's monthly or quarterly. You know, they have a pulse on what's happening within the teams. They know when there's potential issues. They know when there's potential flight risks on the team.

Andrew Lewis [00:22:11]:
Right. We need to get to that point where we are that deeply embedded with our stakeholders to where, you know, we're having regular touch points with them. We know what's keeping them up at night. We know, you know, what the pain points are and how the next hire can help solve that. You know, if you get to that level, you become really, really invaluable in a lot of ways because then you have a lot of advocates internally. Right. And you have. You have stakeholders who have a clear understanding at that point of, you know, the value that you bring.

Andrew Lewis [00:22:42]:
And there's a lot of ways to do this, you know, you can, it starts with that checkpoint, but you can also bring market demographic data and, you know, send lists when anytime there's any major layoffs in your industry of companies where, hey, we might be able to go and find some talent from these, from these places. Right. Bring that to your team and say, what do you guys think about this? Should we put together a sourcing strategy to go and talk to some people like, these are little things you can do, but it creates more advocacy and more, builds more trust and integrity for your function with the business. And I think it starts there. It's really hard to just go straight to the top and influence your CEO or your coo to buy into what your vision is. But if you can demonstrate it and, you know, lay it out in action with your direct stakeholders so, you know, get these small wins, right, and start building these deeper relationships. Don't be comfortable with just standard intake meetings and kickoff calls and, you know, whatever else that we typically do in recruitment, go deeper and become a true business partner outside of just, you know, the basic recruitment work.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:46]:
Well, I absolutely love that answer because at least I know in the Govcon space I could just slowly point out and be like, it's a $550 million program. If it doesn't get filled, you guys are going to lose the work and never be able to work with the US army ever again.

Andrew Lewis [00:23:57]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:57]:
So if you don't need recruiting help, good luck. Yeah, your job's gone.

Andrew Lewis [00:24:03]:
And again, you have a clear line you can point to. I mean, even for me, before we joined or before I joined, we didn't have a talent acquisition function. We were relying on hiring managers, trying to fill roles on their own. And then, you know, we were doing a lot of, paying a lot of fees to agencies. And again, I'm not, I'm not opposed to paying fees to agencies if it's strategic and it makes sense for the business. I don't, you know, I don't think there's a need to do that for every role that's open just because you don't have the right person leading. And so the value proposition was clear. Like we're going to be able to save hundreds of year in fees and when we do work with an agency partner, it's somebody that will actually bring value to us and we're not going to just be trying to throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks, you know?

Benjamin Mena [00:24:45]:
Well, I'm going to switch gears. I want to talk about, and we're going to jump to being a high impact recorder after this. But you've done an incredible job about building your brand. When did you decide that you had to do that and why did you decide to go deep on that?

Andrew Lewis [00:25:02]:
Yeah, so it actually lines up pretty well with, when I started at worldly, I in fact, I think I started posting regularly on LinkedIn maybe a week or two after I started at worldly, I essentially started by creating or essentially making myself a case study. And what I mean by that is I wanted to test employer branding and I wanted to test the value or the impact that one person could have if they build a following and build an audience and build some groundswell around them if they can have any kind of impact on the employer brand. And a lot of this is because again, when I joined, we didn't have an employer brand. We didn't have a talent acquisition function. No one knew who we were. We have an incredible mission, we have an incredible team. We're fully remote. We have all the things that make us an attractive employer, but we just didn't have any kind of visibility within the market.

Andrew Lewis [00:25:57]:
And so I essentially started by just like, let me see if I can get a following and see how that impacts our employer brand. And my perspective has always been, you don't need to be talking about your space directly or talking about your work or your industry. Yeah, your industry directly. What I mean is, like, I wasn't going in there talking about sustainability and supply chain and all that. I was talking to the people who do my work, right. Recruiters and talent acquisition and just sharing my perspectives and my thoughts from the recruiter seat. And over time, like, you know, I have a good amount of recruiters and talent acquisition folks follow me now, but also a lot of job seekers and other professionals that have resonated with my content. And we ran the numbers on this.

Andrew Lewis [00:26:38]:
I mean, it's been incredible to see how one person's presence, me, who isn't even directly talking about our product or our industry, is still driving traffic to our career site and to our brand just by talking and building an audience and creating content that resonates with people. So that's how it started. And then to be fully transparent, I also was at a point where I was like, I need to start building some sort of audience in this space because I wasn't sure if in a couple years if I was going to want to go and work for myself or start an agency or whatever. And I didn't want to be starting from zero when that happened. So I wanted to kind of start building trust and validation within the recruitment and talent acquisition community before I got to that tipping point. So that was the secondary reason. And then over time, it's evolved. I've really kind of found this lane of being able to hopefully, I mean, I don't know, 100%, I don't speak to everybody that's in my network, but, you know, just sharing insights from my seat as head of talent acquisition, how I think about things.

Andrew Lewis [00:27:43]:
Not everybody agrees with my perspective, but, you know, for me it's, that's the best thing I can do is just share like, what's working for me, what's not what. How do I see the market? How do I see what needs to be changed or updated within the industry? And so it's led to this kind of space where I'm now doing a lot of work speaking with talent acquisition folks and recruitment folks. And that's actually where, aside from the work I do at worldly, that's where I get a lot of, I have a lot of passion and I get a lot of value out of supporting the recruitment community because I think we've been hit hard over the last couple of years and I think we're going to see, we've seen people leave the industry, we're going to continue to see it. And we're in this process of evolution right now. In house talent acquisition is going to look a lot different. The relationships with agency recruitment firms is going to look different. So everybody has to evolve, everybody has to upskill, and everybody has to be prepared for what's coming. So I'm trying to kind of create resources to help people weather that storm.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:38]:
If, and if somebody is listening to this and they really haven't spent any time building a brand, what are the first few things that you would recommend them to start doing?

Andrew Lewis [00:28:47]:
Yeah, I'm an, I'm a classic overthinker. And I'll say, like, there's no overthinking that's going to help you in building a brand on LinkedIn. You just have to start talking about stuff. Right. If you have the resources, maybe invest in a course on writing if you're not a good writer. I didn't do that. I did a bunch of trial and error and tried things and saw what types of templates and what type of topics resonated with people. And that doesn't really determine how I present myself or what type of content I talk about because at the end of the day.

Andrew Lewis [00:29:21]:
Like, I'm not trying to go viral. I'm trying to build a meaningful audience and somebody that, you know, and a really engaged audience that actually cares about what I say. But, you know, it's been a learning. It's been a learning process. You know, it took me probably about a year to get really comfortable on LinkedIn. Like, I was trying a bunch of things. I had stuff go viral the first year, and I was like, I didn't really enjoy that experience because, you know, it was constant notifications, random requests from people that I'll never talk to or work with. But I tried a bunch of things and just kind of found what worked for me and what my lane was.

Andrew Lewis [00:29:56]:
And I think if you put too much pressure on yourself to build this big audience or become this influencer in your space, or even if you're an agency recruiter and you put all this pressure to build a strong network and be able to get all these inbound leads, just know that it's going to take a long time. Right? Like, you had Brent Orsuga on here. Brent was an early mentor for me. I worked with Brent back from, like, 2016 to 2019. Incredible recruiter, as we all know. But he has been on LinkedIn the whole time I've known him. And this was back before, like, LinkedIn was even popping off from, like, a. From, like, a influencer perspective or, like, social media perspective.

Andrew Lewis [00:30:34]:
He was doing video when it first came out. He was, like, doing all this, all this stuff, and it really helps separate him. And, you know, we see his results today. He's a seven figure agency owner, but the guy has been putting in work for a decade. And so I think that's how I'm viewing even just my personal brand. It's got it. You gotta fall in love with the day to day, like, aspect of it and the work, and just know that the result will be a benefit down the road. But for me, it's like, it's just something that you gotta do.

Andrew Lewis [00:31:04]:
You gotta jump in, you gotta try it, and you have to give, you know, create consistency for yourself. You don't have to write every day like I do. Start off with two to three days a week. Pick your days, set up some time, carve out some time to, like, think about some things to talk about. Um, and anybody on here, feel free to, you know, message me on LinkedIn if you want my perspective a little bit further or some ideas. But I think it's just, you gotta jump in.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:27]:
Cool. That's awesome. Taking notes myself, as I make made a few posts this week. They like two likes and I'm like, yes.

Andrew Lewis [00:31:36]:
Algorithms pool.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:37]:
Okay.

Andrew Lewis [00:31:39]:
Oh, I know.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:40]:
So what does a high impact recruiter look like?

Andrew Lewis [00:31:44]:
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure, you know, there will be different definitions if you talk to different people. To me, it's somebody that plays a large role in influencing people within their organization and in their industry. So let me unpack that a little bit. We have already talked about the value of being a true business partner within your business. To me, a high impact recruiter is somebody that is excellent and excels at that. Right. Somebody who they can, you can go and ask anyone in the organization, talk to me about so and so. And they're not going to just say, oh, yeah, they're a recruiter here.

Andrew Lewis [00:32:15]:
They're going to tell you what they do well and they're going to tell you how they've made an impact on them. They can tell you like, oh, this person, this is what they excel at. Here's how they've impacted our culture and our onboarding. Someone like that, you know, and if you can take it a step further, if you can have leaders or, you know, hiring managers saying that about you as a recruiter, that's a pretty good sign, you know, because it's clear at that point, again, we talked about value proposition. You're not just somebody filling seats. You're not a process pusher. You're somebody who is making a true impact on the people there. And I think that's where a lot of recruiters struggle.

Andrew Lewis [00:32:49]:
You know, we're a part of the people team or the HR team, but we're not doing all of the standard HR and people work right after someone is hired. We're typically just getting them in the door and then moving to the next one. So I would be looking for ways. If I want to be a high impact recruiter, how can I impact that further along the talent cycle, right. Not just, or the talent life cycle. Not just talent acquisition, but thinking about onboarding, thinking about learning and development, thinking about engagement and culture. Like, are there ways that you can contribute to that? Right. So that's from an internal standpoint, I think, you know, from an external standpoint, as an agency recruiter, high impact, somebody that is well known and well respected and well recognized in their industry and, but also somebody that has the skills to back it up.

Andrew Lewis [00:33:34]:
Because, as you know, you're on LinkedIn a lot, we see a lot of people that talk a big game and they, you know, they're, they're the superhero to the world. Um, but they don't have any results to back that up. They don't have any referral. They couldn't give you a referral. They couldn't give you a reference point. Like, you wouldn't, you know what I mean? They're just, they're legends in their own mind. And so I think it's, and this goes back to what we talked about, building a personal brand. It's just over time, you know, as you invest in your content and as you invest in your, your brand and people start to see you for an expert in your industry and in your space, over time, you start to build this really strong validity, right.

Andrew Lewis [00:34:14]:
And this, like, trust and even, I guess you could call it impact, right. Within your community to where people will refer to you as the go to person in your industry and in your niche, even if you've never worked with them or even if you've never, you know, done any like, direct placements or anything like that with them. But I know three or four agency recruiters right now that I've built relationships with over the last couple of years and I know what space they're in and I know that they're excellent at what they do because they've demonstrated that through the free content that they've shared and the value that they've instilled and like, contributed on my post and my content. You know what I mean? So I think high impact in today's world means you're somebody that can absolutely, absolutely own a space and back it up with your skills and your experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:02]:
Absolutely love that. So, Barry, to jump over to the quick fire questions, but before we do, is there anything that you want to share and cover or expand on that, on any of the topics that we covered already?

Andrew Lewis [00:35:13]:
I don't think so. I mean, I think, you know, we could maybe talk about this in the quick fire, but I think I just would encourage, if you're a recruiter today, just know that we are in this state of evolution, right. And we can't be comfortable with the status quo. I think that's a trap that a lot of recruiters fall into is this is how we've always done it, hiring and recruiting, even though we've had like, new tools and indeed, and Ziprecruiter come on the scene right over the last 1015 years, like that hasn't really changed fundamentally the work that we do as recruiters. I think AI is going to change a lot of the fundamental work that we do, at least in how, in what the workflow processes look like, from a touchpoint standpoint, are we going to be interacting with nearly as many people or is it going to be more selective? Is our access to the people in our pipeline going to look different? The speed and the efficiency at which we move is going to be a lot different than it has in the past. So I just want to reiterate to recruiters out there, just know, like, I'm not trying to scare you, but we are in a state of evolution and I think for the first time in a long time, recruitment and talent acquisition is going to be impacted. And that's not necessarily a negative thing, but we are going to need to be prepared to pivot and hone in on the skills that are valuable. Now, again, there's always the chance that this AI thing is a bubble or a bust and it just doesn't work out.

Andrew Lewis [00:36:41]:
But I find that highly unlikely. I think we're already in the midst of some pretty massive changes, and I just want to reiterate that we need to be upskilling, we need to be learning. We need to be educating. You don't need to become an AI expert necessarily, but you need to know what is happening and how you can use these tools and you can adapt to these tools so that you can, you know, stay relevant in this space.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:04]:
Love that. Well, jumping over to the quickfire questions, you've covered a lot of amazing advice. What advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's actually just getting started in the industry in 2024?

Andrew Lewis [00:37:15]:
Well, first of all, if you're a brand new recruiting recruiter starting in 2024, props to you. It's very hard to get into this space right now. So congratulations. You just got through the Hunger Games and you're now a recruiter. But what I would say is start learning from the people who are doing and are at the level that you want to be at. And I would strongly advise you to build your network on places like LinkedIn. It doesn't have to be just LinkedIn, but that's obviously going to be the easiest place to go and start surrounding yourself with top recruiters, people who are putting out really good content. If I were in your situation, I would be pretty aggressive about reaching out and saying, hey, love your content.

Andrew Lewis [00:37:55]:
I'm early in my career. I would love to just pick your brain and, like, better understand how I can develop and what skills I need and that sort of thing. That's something I didn't really do early in my career. I, you know, I was, we were still in office back then. I'm fully remote now, so it's a little bit different. But so I had, you know, in, in office mentors that would help me and guide me. But I know there's a lot of people now in recruitment that are working from home by themselves, and you don't have the opportunity to be around top performers and people that are doing things really well. So I would strongly advise that you start building a network of peers and ideally, mentors that can speak into you and help guide you.

Andrew Lewis [00:38:35]:
I would become an absolute expert and a subject matter expert on my industry in my space. Whether that's light industrial, whether that is technology, whether that is finance, whatever space you're playing in, just become an absolute master in that space. And again, the way that looks like is you can bring resources to the table for hiring managers and for even business leaders to say, hey, have you thought about this? Do you know what's going on in the market? Do you know what's happening with our competitor over here? You can bring this business intelligence that really changes the dynamic of how talent is viewed and how the recruitment process is viewed. So get mentors and invest in your mentors and invest in your learning, in your industry. Become an absolute go to pro in your industry. And then the third piece, we've already talked about it, but, like, I don't see a world where you can be a high impact recruiter and not have a strong social presence. That's just my opinion. Now.

Andrew Lewis [00:39:32]:
Again, not every industry, you know, you don't, you don't always have people in your industry that are on places like LinkedIn. But maybe it's not LinkedIn. Maybe it's Twitter, maybe it's Facebook. Maybe it's just, you're a go to person in your community, right? Like, when I was running my local agency, you know, go to that. Go to these events, like, become the person that people talk about and the person that people are like, hey, I'm really interested. I've never used a staffing agency before or a recruiter before, but I'd really like to just maybe kind of, like, learn about this person and understand how they operate, what they. What they're great at, you know? So just, I think if you. If it's not social, you know, you need to invest in a space where you can become that.

Andrew Lewis [00:40:10]:
Go to professional or like that go to leader.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:12]:
The next question, I'm just, for the listeners, I'm probably a little jaded. I started my recruiting world. I started my recruiting career at a agency that was incredibly great with training but did not have the best commission plan. So when I made the move from agency to internal, even with like, you know, a gross margin, I think it was like 550 or 650 a year. Like, I actually made way more money as an internal recruiter than I did as an agency recruiter. Yeah, but the question I want to ask though is if you're an agency recruiter and you're thinking about going internal, what advice would you give?

Andrew Lewis [00:40:49]:
I think you need to really think about that and think about what your long term goals are. I've had, I've had this conversation with many agency recruiters and if you're driven by money and you're driven by the ability to like, not have a cap, necessarily a cap on what you can earn as a recruiter, in house is not the place for you in many cases, right. Unless you are, you know, you're able to join some, some startup that's really healthy and has a great equity plan and then they sell and, or they go to IPO and then you're able to cash that out. But that's a long term play, right? If you are motivated by money and by your ability to kind of write your own checks, so to speak, and, and if you like the world of sales and like, just that, you know, I just need to, you know, get a wreck, uh, or, yeah, get a rec, fill a wreck, that sort of thing. That mindset agency is probably the best place and I would advise you to maybe start considering like looking for other models that are better suited to what you want to achieve. If you're somebody that says, I want to have more impact on, you know, talent strategy, on employer branding, on like the full aspect of recruitment and hiring from like a company standpoint. And I want to, you know, be able to have maybe more of a direct impact with stakeholders and managers. You know, I think at one point you could maybe argue that stability was a calling or like a benefit for the in house recruiters, but that's not, not the case anymore.

Andrew Lewis [00:42:16]:
But if you're more interested in maybe the more cultural and like, you know, wide, wide ranging aspects of recruitment and hiring, then yeah, in house might be a good option for you to pursue. But just know, I mean, you're, you know, you're going to be in a salaried role. Some in house recruiters do have bonuses and commission plans and things like that depending on the volume and the type of work you're doing. But for the most part, you know, you're going to be moving into more of kind of a standard corporate role, and so you just need to be comfortable with that environment. There's some agency recruiters that have made that transition and love it. There's others that go back, right. And say, like, it's just not for me. In fact, one of the recruiters I hired early on here at worldly was she had some experience in agency.

Andrew Lewis [00:42:55]:
She came in house after school and she did well, but she was motivated to get back into the agency world, and so she made that decision to do it. So just knowing what your North Star is and what's most important to you is actually probably the biggest determining factor.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:10]:
Love that. Do you have a favorite rec tech tool at the moment?

Andrew Lewis [00:43:14]:
So there's a couple that I think are really interesting. There's a lot of them out there right now, and I actually am interested to see. I think there's going to be some consolidation over the next few years, some of these companies being bought up and swallowed up into ats and things like that. One of my favorite tools right now is it's a company called Speak, and they have created basically an AI assistant to kind of help on the front end. Internal recruiters are receiving ten times, five times more applicants than they were a couple of years ago. And that's causing a lot of delays and why people aren't hearing back. They're not hearing back for months, if at all, right? Or they're just like, not. It feels like you're throwing your resume into an.

Andrew Lewis [00:43:54]:
Into the abyss. So what speak is doing is they've created this kind of AI assistant to help segment and sort resumes in a way that makes it easier for internal teams so that they can be able to hopefully contact and find the best people first, you know, and then also. But it sets it up to where you can communicate much better with, with all of your candidates that apply. So that's one tool that's really interesting. There's another one that's looking at called Juice Box AI. It's essentially a GPT platform for the recruitment space. It's a search engine, and so you can do things like source and a variety of other things. So that one's really interesting, and I think that one is really interesting because I haven't seen a ton of use cases for it yet.

Andrew Lewis [00:44:35]:
Essentially more AI throughout the entire lifecycle of the process of hiring. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there. Then I've been playing around, and we've actually integrated some of these automated interview note taking tools into our process that I think are actually really beneficial because it saves recruiters a ton of time. I don't know about you. For me, the way I've always done it is as I'm doing a screening, I'm jotting down notes and capturing the summer. Yeah. And there's times you just feel like, oh, man, I know I missed something that was really important. So these tools are really strong.

Andrew Lewis [00:45:07]:
I don't want to commit to one because there's actually a few out there that I think do it really well. But those types of tools actually, it can be an incredibly efficient way, in a more beneficial way, to get notes and feedback to your hiring managers. So those are the three that I think are most exciting to me, but I'm always looking and trying, trying out new ones.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:25]:
So you've done internal, you've been an agency recruiter, you help scale organization, like massive scale. You know, you're doing great. As a director of talent, what do you think has been a huge part of your own personal success? Like, what's, what's an internal driver for you?

Andrew Lewis [00:45:43]:
I think, you know, I look at this and I always try to, like, calibrate because to me, I'm like, I don't think I'm smarter than anybody. I don't think I do anything necessarily like that other people don't do. You know, I don't think about things that other people don't think about, other than I'm incredibly curious. And what I mean by that is, like, I'm always looking at parallel professions and saying, what can I learn from them and apply to talent acquisition? So I want to learn from really great salespeople. I want to learn from really great b, two b marketers. I want to learn from great executives and people that are doing things that maybe are in a different space than me, but they have some ties to what I do. And so, I mean, a prime example of this is treating candidate experience like the customer experience, right. If you talk to any, anybody in customer success or account management or whatever, I mean, they are all about what kind of experiences our customer having.

Andrew Lewis [00:46:45]:
And so ive learned that and applied some of those principles of just being obsessed with how the customer interacts with the business. I want our candidates to have a very similar experience. Now, again, is it going to be always a direct correlation or exactly the same? No, of course not. But theres nuggets that can be pulled and leveraged and implemented within your processes. And so I think that's something that I do. And so because of that curiosity, it leads me to have some interesting perspectives, some interesting questions to ask. I don't always have the answers. Not everything I talk about is tried and true.

Andrew Lewis [00:47:20]:
Sometimes it's theoretical and it's, you know, like a nice to have or a pie in the sky. But at the end of the day, I think there's not a lot of talent acquisition people and specifically talent acquisition leaders doing this. I think if I were a recruiter, just an independent recruiter or somebody, I would be looking to learn from as many people as I can, whether they're an agency recruiter or not. How can I sharpen my tool belt? How can I add things to my skillset that the average agency recruiter doesn't have? I think for me, that's always been something that I think has benefited me, and it's led me to a lot of unique opportunities. I think a lot. I attribute a lot of my success as far as, like, my career decisions and the opportunities I've been given to thinking that way and always being, you know, that person who's trying to learn and grow and implement new things to advance the profession.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:14]:
Do you think the mentors that you've been able to have in your career have helped make an impact?

Andrew Lewis [00:48:22]:
For sure. I think it's more in the moment, right? Like, as I look back now, I mean, I'm further along in my career now. I can see the impact a little more clearly. At the time, it was just like, I want to be doing what you're doing. I want to be like, you know, like, how do I do this in this industry, with this type of professional, with this tech stack? Right? Like, I just. How do I get to what you're. To the point you're at? So I think inadvertently they've helped me. I haven't recognized the value of that until, you know, a few years down the road.

Andrew Lewis [00:48:50]:
I'm like, man, I really learned a valuable skill set during that time, and I've kept it with me. But I do think mentors play a big part. You know, even if it's just mindset and perspective, I think it's really easy. You can get around a lot of negative recruiters, right? And a lot of people that are just very, you know, they hate everybody. Even though we're in the people business, they hate everybody. They hate their industry. They hate the market. There's always an excuse to go around.

Andrew Lewis [00:49:13]:
But if you can be around people that are like, hey, all I can control is me, right? All I can control is my skill set, my education, the value that I bring each day. Those kind of people can go, can do a lot for you without you even knowing it, you know, and they can help you maintain a positive mindset in a market like we're in right now.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:31]:
Love that. And I'm gonna ask this question twice in two different ways. The first 1st one's gonna be like, with everything that you know now, if you got a chance to sit down with yourself at the very beginning of your recruiting career at that one agency way, way back when, what advice would you give yourself for your career?

Andrew Lewis [00:49:50]:
The advice I'd give myself is, do not put a ceiling on what you can do in this industry. And the reason I say that is because there's been multiple times in my career where I've said I don't even know if I want to stay in this industry. Because there's basically two paths, right? There's the agency path. And you either go and work for someone else and you work these long hours and you're just always stressed, or you go start your own agency and you're doing the same thing. You're making more money, but you're still stressed. And you know what I mean, dealing with all that crap. Or you can go in house and you can follow this kind of linear career path and you may have a little bit more comfort or stability, but you're not going to make as much money. And you're playing all the politics of being internal within a company.

Andrew Lewis [00:50:33]:
And there was times when I almost left the industry because I was like, I have to basically choose one of these paths, and none of them really sound particularly interesting to me. In each time I was in that boat, I luckily decided I'm going to stick it out. I'm going to keep growing, figuring things out. But what I've seen over the last couple years, specifically as I've opened up my eyes and been on social and done more, is there's a lot more work to be done in this space. And you can be somebody that contributes, whether that's starting an agency. Maybe you want to do something a little bit different. Maybe you want to be a fractional recruiter. Maybe you want to start an RPO business or an embedded recruitment business.

Andrew Lewis [00:51:14]:
Maybe you want to start learning an education for recruiters and in coursework. I think there's a big gap there. There's a lot of recruiters that just are learning on the job, right, but they don't have a resource to tap into to, like, further their skillset, and they're not thinking about certain things. There's still a lot of work to do, right. And there's still a lot of ways to impact this space. And so if I could go back to myself, I would just give myself the forewarning look. There's going to be times when you're disappointed or this industry, you know, beat you down and just know that there's a lot of opportunity here. You just have to find the path that works for you.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:51]:
Love that. And it's the same question, but, like, we're going to sit like your current role, if you got a chance to sit down with yourself, because I'm sure you've learned a ton over the last few years developing a whole program for your organization, what advice would you give yourself if you got a chance to sit down with yourself? Like the first month or two with.

Andrew Lewis [00:52:10]:
Adwordly, I would say, hey, this whole plan that you've mapped out is, is subject to change at any given moment. You're in a startup. And also at that point, you know, the economy hadn't necessarily gone the route that it's gone now. So again, it's just this, this idea of historical ways or like conservative ways of approaching talent acquisition. You come into this opportunity, you know, it may not look like the way you think it's going to look, where you're going to come in and be able to build out a high performance team of five recruiters and, you know, scale this company up. I mean, it may require you to ride the wave and take a step back, and maybe you have to rethink the model. You have to think about the metrics. You have to think about, you know, what are some different processes, what are some different technologies that you're not anticipating? So, I mean, I think every recruiter knows this.

Andrew Lewis [00:52:56]:
We're in the industry. Things are always changing. Right? A pivot's coming around the corner at any given time. So for me, it's just, you can have a plan, you can, you know, build out a strategy. Just know that strategy is going to be refined and optimized every day. It's going to be changed every day.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:11]:
Awesome. Well, for the listeners, if they want to follow you, how do they do that?

Andrew Lewis [00:53:15]:
Yeah, so you can follow me on, I'm most active on LinkedIn. You can find me Andrew Lewis. It might show up as Andrew L. But you'll see head of talent at Worldly, that's me. You can follow me on x Twitter if you're interested in that. I'm not as active there, but I am slowly but surely building a following in the network there and then I am releasing a newsletter if you're interested. It's called the talent operator and it's intended to be a resource, a go to resource that I wish I would have had as a solo producing recruiter to kind of growth, hack and find success and build the skills necessary to be an elite recruiter in today's world. Really want to piece together case studies, educational resources, frameworks, blueprints, that sort of thing for anybody that's wanting to develop in their career.

Andrew Lewis [00:54:05]:
So if you're a recruiter or a talent acquisition professional and you're interested in furthering your own personal development or professional development, I'll be launching that soon. You can follow me for more information. There. There is a link that I believe you're going to share in the show notes where you can go and subscribe early, but that'll be coming live soon.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:22]:
Awesome. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. You've had just the absolute incredible journey. Recruiting. Like, there's so many different things that you could do in recruiting, even though like, it seems like the paths are not that many, but the impact that you get a chance to make on people's lives, whether you're internal, whether external, is absolutely huge. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story because I know there's going to be a recruiter that's listening that you know is sitting in the shoes that you were sitting in many years ago. If he, if Andrew did, did it, guess what? I can do it, too. And for you guys listening, I want you to keep crushing it.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:01]:
Make 2024 your best year yet. Thank you, guys.

Andrew Lewis [00:55:04]:
Thanks everyone.