How to Upgrade From Recruiter to Business Partner with Justin Wade

Intro [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the elite recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:19]:

Excited to be back this week with this awesome podcast interview with Justin Wade. And I know in the past few episodes, I promised the community was going to launch November 1st. Well, we had a surprise. Our baby came, oh, three and a half weeks earlier than expected, So the tail end of October. So because of that and wanting to spend more time with him while still working on recruiting desk, and put together a few more episodes of this podcast, I wanna spend a little more time prepping the community, so we're gonna move the community launch to December 1st. And we are still planning on bringing together some of the Top speakers to come back for a make 2024 your best year yet. So stay tuned, and, thank you for bearing with me and excited to be back In the podcast seat and, also excited to be absolutely blessed with a brand new little one. Gabe is amazing.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:13]:

Alright, guys. Check out this podcast with Justin. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast because As a recruiter, you need to evolve to become a profit center. You need to evolve To make sure that you are a revenue generator, you need to be a true business partner to be able to successfully help your clients Grow their organizations and grow their teams. And to talk about that, I have my specialist with me, Justin Wade, to talk about Everything and how to evolve from just a normal recruiter to a modern day recruiter. So, Justin, welcome to the podcast.

Justin Wade [00:01:54]:

Thank you so much. I wanna put you on the spot. I'm so excited that, to be on this podcast. One of the things I, I think I Said this in the past. This is exactly what I was looking for when I first started out, in in recruiting. And the fact that you're just It's dropping nuggets and having some of the most incredible recruiters on this podcast, so thank you so much.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:16]:

Yeah. We we'll we'll talk about that later, but it was I I tried to make the podcast for a person that's looking to grow and looking to change and looking to evolve To to make more placements, make more money, and set their families up. So but yeah. Awesome. Well, Justin, first question as always. How did you even get started in the recruiting industry?

Justin Wade [00:02:38]:

I was a late bloomer or maybe a late incomer, I would say. I originally started in retail sales, And then I remember someone was told me, they're like, you should be selling something more expensive. And, I ended up selling facial plastic surgery is, something that I sold for a while, and I realized that I want to do something with a bit more impact, went in To become a personal trainer and group fitness instructor, and there, I met miss Masa Walker. She was a recruiter. I trained her for years, and for years, she was like, you have to be a recruiter. You have to be a recruiter. You would do so great as a recruiter. And I was like, yeah, whatever.

Justin Wade [00:03:15]:

And one day, life changed. I was going through a breakup, and I called her up. I was like, hey. I think I wanna be a recruiter. The next day, I had an interview. It went that fast. And, from there, I actually went into the health care space, talk about, like, alegious group, like, get getting your teeth knocked in basically over and over. But you learn some amazing fundamentals.

Justin Wade [00:03:40]:

Right? And you get you get hardened is a good way to put it. And what was really cool about it was I've been I've been in in the Seattle area, and I, really wanted to sort of pivot into the tech space And was able to do that after some time. Yeah. It probably was easier than, than you could imagine because it was just a phone call for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:03]:

Oh, I mean, there was also, like, the years of the seeds being planted. Like, you should be a recruiter. You should be a recruiter. And now you are the head of town acquisition At Flawless, can you talk about that?

Justin Wade [00:04:14]:

Yeah. It's interesting. I'll give you a little brief history, but Flawless, it started with us being a contingent firm back in, In a little WeWork downtown Seattle, we were specializing in kind of early stage start up in the ecosystem, I guess, in, in the Seattle Market and COVID hit, like, right around 2020, and all of a sudden, we're like, what do we do now? And so we pulled back. And I think just like with everyone, all of a sudden, business just started booming. And, one of the biggest things that we identified when I say we, I have to give Anders A lot of credit who's the founder of the company. We we noticed that there was a demand for other services besides just the traditional contingent, model. And, so over the last 4 years, we've actually sort of evolved further and further and further to be sort of a a solution for many of our clients, but what it ended up happening let's call it like an embedded model is a good way to put it. So with a monthly Cost associated to it per resource, and then usually on the back end, having some sort of a column account manager or an additional, like, Support system to really get to really build out those, those those companies.

Justin Wade [00:05:26]:

And, originally, we started with, let's call them early stage startups, anything from c through series c. And then as that was building, we started getting a lot of demand from enterprise clients as well, And so I was able to diversify, I guess, my my background.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:42]:

Which is I I think that's just phenomenal what you guys are doing. It's you know, I I always talk about, with people that are in the recruiting space and people looking at the recruiting space. There's a 1000 ways to skin the cat. And I I I probably need to think of another phrase because I have 3 amazing cats that I love. But when it comes down to it, I think, like, the it's the, like, the 19 eighties model of, like, Just a placement fee, and that's the only way to do things. But you're sitting there talking about how your organization builds out solutions For those companies, that way they can build their teams fast. Right?

Justin Wade [00:06:13]:

Yeah. And so you have to think about this. You have to meet the the client Where they're at. Right? Just because I want something doesn't necessarily mean, one, they have grasped that that may be the better solution for them. They may be stuck in their old sort of ecosystem and knowledge and things that worked for them in the past, and so you have to provide them the solutions, but you also don't wanna lose business. I I'll add a caveat to that. You don't wanna do sell something that you don't wanna do or it's not gonna make you enough money. Right? So you have to there's a fine balancing act in those things.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:44]:

So, like, looking at your career and looking at, like, how you've dealt with clients and how you've dealt as a recruiter, As we talk about the shift of evolving yourself, what was the point that you realized that you had to evolve?

Justin Wade [00:06:59]:

Well, that well, first off, that's a tough question to answer, but I actually would say I had 3 different evolutions, 1 as a recruiter, 1 as a manager and 1 as a business partner. 2 of these clients that I work with. And I would say each one of those have their own arcs and their own sort of story line. But one of the biggest things that I found is that at least the clients that we work with, they just need a specific solution, and they want someone who understands the market really well. And so what I was able to do early on well, One of the things, for instance, when we originally started in the tech space, honors would go to a whiteboard and we'd write out the tech stacks for different companies. We just whiteboard it and talk about how they interact with each other, and then we actually started digging in deeper and deeper. I would watch, like, 60 seconds on Kubernetes, 60 seconds on a variety of other things to just learn and evolve. And then the biggest piece is market knowledge.

Justin Wade [00:07:56]:

And I think this is where we, as recruiters, can do a better job to aggregating as much information and then making it digestible and relatable to the clients that we work with. And so many of the times that I would be involved, the first question, a series b, how much equity do other companies give? How do they build it out? Would when do they like, what are their vesting schedules look like? What are the salary ranges looking like right now? And that is sort of the evolution. And the more I got asked those Question. The more I started to retain and aggregate that information, that was pretty cool, at least to then all of a sudden be like, yeah. I'm the guy that knows these things. Come talk to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:36]:

And it's funny, like, once you start knowing those things and once you the word getting out. It really starts helping build your repute reputation too.

Justin Wade [00:08:43]:

Yeah. 100%. And but I will Say this that we also sort of pigeonholed ourselves for a while, and we're really working our way or almost digging our way out of sort of this really niched down, Very specific expensive tax solution to being like, hey. By the way, we did all these other things. You just don't know that we did them, and we're trying to Sort of rebuild that almost.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:06]:

Well, I mean, that's the fun evolution of a business. It's definitely just like, you know, what is the next chapter? What are you doing and and all that stuff? So, like, you know, how are you guys now positioning that, like, that change?

Justin Wade [00:09:18]:

Yeah. Well so I don't know if you know Jesse Tinsley, he may you may or may not have heard of him, but, he is the founder and owner of Job Mobs who acquired us about 5 or 6 months ago And also acquired the Recruiter .com brand, and what that really allowed us to do is really diversify all the solutions that we have. So now we can do payrolling. Now we could do contractors. We could do, you know, EORs. We can do a lot of different things. And, now what we're really doing is going on this, like, sort of, like, hey, on this big tour to past clients. By the way, we have other things, And, sometimes it takes 2, 3, 4 conversations just for it to resonate with them that we're not just that one stop shop anymore.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:01]:

Well and before we, like, dive into something else, I got a question. Like, when you're sitting there talking with your future clients and potential clients, How do you talk about the different things that you do? Because I, like, I know a lot of recruiters only have 1 solution.

Justin Wade [00:10:15]:

Yeah. It's actually It's a crazy concept. It's called listening. And really what we do is we listen for what the problems are, And then we make recommendations. Right? And so I'll be honest with you. They don't always listen when we give them the recommendations. And so but that's really what it boils down to is I mean, we usually have an idea of what we wanna present in those meetings, but Doesn't always mean that that's really what it boils down to. And so being able to have really creative solutions that meet them and being flexible, I think that is really what it boils down to.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:50]:

I absolutely love that because, like, at least in the GAPCON space, you have to, you know, Be flexible with some of your solutions just because the way, like, contracts work and how the government works and funding and all that stuff. Like, the the nuances that, Like, I have to understand that my clients are dealing with on a daily basis, so I absolutely love that. So When it comes down to and I wanna flip gears. The the the focus of this is how to become that true business partner. How do you become a true business partner with your clients?

Justin Wade [00:11:23]:

And, I'm gonna tie this back to this evolution piece. Right. And so when I first started becoming a business partner, I was I was there, and I was, like, on the recruiting side, and I was, like, trying to push process and make sure that the recruiters are doing well. And what I ended up realizing and, well, I was told it's my favorite story to tell, but I was with a client, and the CTO of that company asked me in a in a meeting, in all hands, let's call it that, and said, hey, Justin. How would you solve this problem? I said, this is what I would have done. This is how I would have go about this, and that's the approach that I would push through in the back end. And he was like, that's why I'm paying you to be here, So please start sharing this information with us. And I felt like I got kicked in the face.

Justin Wade [00:12:07]:

I was so embarrassed almost. Right? Because I felt like I didn't really provide the service that they were requesting, but it also flipped my mindset in that moment That I do have something to offer, and the reason that I am working with all of these clients is because of very specific knowledge in which is why me and my me and my team are there. And so at that moment, I have watched other individuals also be sort of bull like, in China shops. They're like, this is what we need to do. This is how we do it. And what I really started to do is use anecdotal evidence to actually tell a really good story based on what I'm seeing in the market for other clients. Also, one of the things that I've identified specifically on the early stage start up side was that a lot of these leaders are under very, very intense pressure. They're under just incredible pressure from their their VCs, from the boards, Just from every single angle that you can imagine.

Justin Wade [00:13:03]:

And so what I started doing with my recruiters is really using data to empower our stakeholders and empower our champions With as much information on the progress and process that we're implementing so that they could constantly share that back when all of a sudden they're like, Hey. We're spending money on this. I'm like, yeah. We're spending money on this, but guess what? By the time we're done, you're gonna hire 19 engineers, and those 19 engineers are gonna get you your next funding round. And so I really kind of evolved on my language on how we how we how I approached it. And the other piece that I did is I thought about, What are the business challenges that they're going through, and how can I turn that language to the recruiting side to make myself more valuable to to them And then be an asset more so than a liability?

Benjamin Mena [00:13:50]:

I I absolutely love that. Like, when you're sitting there building these reports out for These clients, what are some of the things that you're highlighting? I I know you mentioned talking about, like, getting close to your next funding round, but, like, what are you highlighting to be able to help share that story?

Justin Wade [00:14:04]:

That's yeah. Great question. So, by the way, this actually evolved with me sending an email out back in the day that would be like, This is who we have. This is where we're at. This is where we're going next. These are our challenges. And I used to send it out every Monday and then 1 at the end of the week, Really to cover my ass, to be honest with you. That's kinda how it started.

Justin Wade [00:14:24]:

And then one of the things that we found is that we needed to add other components into it. Like, Where are we getting hung up on? Where are we struggling with things? What's your current cost per hire? The other thing that I do nowadays That that I've evolved into is beef when I go into an engagement, I look at our financials. I look at our budgets. I look at our sort of Stack ranking of racks and, you know, what we need to do, and then I offered my advice. I also then look at, hey. This is a salary range you're going This is what I know that's happening in the market on the interest rate. If you have no brand, it's gonna be an uphill battle. How are we positioning ourselves? You currently only have 10 engineers.

Justin Wade [00:15:01]:

You wanna hire 15. That means you can only realistically do 2 or 3 interviews a week. So I actually reverse engineer all of those pieces, and then I build that into a metric system. But fundamentally, the what I found is that for the boards and the CEOs, they wanna just know how close are we getting to these hires. And so it's really just funnel metrics in that sense. And then on the back end, I do a lot of other, budgeting and and metrics and conversions and spreadsheets that we send and work through.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:33]:

Well, so are you ever do do the clients that your team is dealing with, are you ever pulled into those board meetings and VC meetings? No.

Justin Wade [00:15:41]:

But I get to prep a lot of documents for them. And so oftentimes, that is on where are we falling short, what has been the market response to the product that we're building, so we capture Should that usually on the recruiting side? Also, where do we see the challenges? And then oftentimes, on what do our comp packages look like, and are they competitive? And so that's usually the conversation that I get to aggregate for them. And usually right before board meetings, all of a sudden, it'll be, like, 10 PM. I go to bed early just so you know. At 10 PM, they're like, could you get us this information by tomorrow morning? And I'm like, yes, of course. Because, you know, it's so important to them in those moments. And Recruiting is such a small function, but it's so crucial for them to really get to the next funding round, but also think about, we were working with a seed stage startup. They're looking to bring in a multinational conglomerate to build out a proof of concept.

Justin Wade [00:16:32]:

Hey. These people that we're hiring, they're gonna allow you to make another 2,000,000 like that. Right? And so it's When you pull yourself back just out of the recruiting piece, we have a huge impact on the bottom line of what's happening in an organization, but it isn't always perceived that way.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:50]:

And I I I love this. There's just so much advice that you can, like, pick up on this because I see too often recruiters just They're order takers, like, even rec management, even, like, you know, the intake calls. We we all did, but it's And the you're looking at yourself as consultant, and I believe whether you're, you know, external recruiter, internal recruiter, agency recruiter, your own search firm, Like, you can easily learn to be a solution provider like what you're sitting there talking about and at the level of service where, like it it sounds like you've Embedded yourself into their teams, and you've become such a vital part of the process that, like, they can't survive without you.

Justin Wade [00:17:29]:

That's that's what I try to accomplish, just so you know. I mean, for instance, we just I just had a new engagement that just kicked off, and The VP and the CTO were like, oh, just bring Justin back. He could actually help us with those things, and I sat down with this new hiring manager. And I'm like, hey. This is your process. This is how we do this. This is where we've fallen short. This is and I then we talked about comp ranges.

Justin Wade [00:17:50]:

I was like, if you have this comp range, we're gonna fill this fast. This comp range is gonna take us a little bit longer. And so we just I just set up the foundation and the baseline right at the beginning so that we all know what to expect, and I think it's a good time. You know? What is it? Under promise, over deliver, but I actually just being be the you're there for a reason and tell them why or why not or what will be the problem. Just forecast stood a bit. So that way, there's true like, a true ex expectation that I'm here for you, I'm here to support you, and I have your best interest didn't mind, and I will save you time if you work with me and let me help you.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:26]:

I love that so much. Well and I wanna kinda flip it into gears, like, talking about a tech So, yes, yeah, you're you're sitting there building out the you understand the business. You're helping the leaders, you know, move forward with their organizations. You're helping with funding. You're helping with hiring. You're helping with this. But on the recruiting side of the house, you gotta have a good tech stack

Justin Wade [00:18:44]:

to succeed. Right? 100% accurate. And I'll start this conversation with, I've gone into so many environments, and I always work with the tech stack that they have, but I also believe in having a secret sauce on the back end. And I will tell you and this is actually, again, back at when I joined Flawless. Flawless originally believed that automation and, And sort of it's called a pre AI, but we try to increase our output significantly with doing less work. And so at the time, I was doing a lot of output, but not always as successful. And, really, what I've then learned is to hone in my strategy to be more strategic. So now my outreach is a lot less, but more fruitful.

Justin Wade [00:19:28]:

Right? But when it comes to a tech stack, it's I believe in tools like SeekOut or other or other, sourcing tools. And I also think the biggest challenge I find is that many recruiters that I've worked with, I've been fortunate to Train, like, close to a 100 recruiters in these last 4 years at Flawless, and there's sort of like a divide. It's people who are really good at doing their Boolean search And, like, hey. This is, like, called Boolean bingo, I guess. And then there's people who are who can kinda grasp this idea of being more of a strategic, sourcer, that actually looks at a of variables like what product did they build, when did they grow, who, What funding round where they're at at x amount of years? Are they direct to consumer brand? Are they a back end component? And really then changing your sourcing strategy based on some of those market mappers, I guess. I don't know if that market what is it? Markers, I guess, or market markers, Let's call it that. Mhmm. And, and so and then some people, as soon as they get stressed, they'll fall back into their bullying bingo thing, And then they ask themselves like, hey.

Justin Wade [00:20:33]:

Why am I not producing? Why I'm not getting the right candidates? It's because they haven't quite evolved to think about sourcing a little bit differently. So that's 1 piece. I also am a huge fan of Teamable. If you've never used Teamable, and they used to be called, top funnel, And one of the cool things about them is they've evolved significantly since they started using them, but you can actually create these different projects, And you can use an AI sentence. So it actually reads the LinkedIn profile and then actually says, hey. You've been at Oracle for 2 years working on distributed systems. Would love to chat with you about what we're doing, and then you have your standard text. It generally increases my response rate significantly.

Justin Wade [00:21:16]:

But, also, what I get to do is sometimes I go into an environment, and they're like, we want someone from Facebook that has worked on blah blah blah, ideally, if they've come from Google. And I'm like, okay. Cool. We'll find you those people. I drop those into a bucket, but then I will also add, my Thoughts are, like, my sourcing strategy into another one. What I can then do, I can actually break it down to the, like, to the company that they they work at, What their open rate, what their interest rate is, what their response rate is, and I can actually then go back to my hiring managers and the leadership team and say, I know you want these people, but they don't want you. And so you get to have a really good conversation around that because you have to be able to, I mean, we have to work fast. Right? And so I was like, okay.

Justin Wade [00:22:01]:

So what trade offs can we make in this search? And, that's one of the reasons We love it. They're building lots of other cool features that I'm a big fan of. I have ADHD. I wanted to add also Rewind AI. If you don't if you've never used it, you actually it records everything just on your hard drive, and you could be like, what did I what did I talk to Benjamin about? And then we'll pull it up.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:25]:

Oh, I love that. So, yeah, I'm a I'm actually a huge fan of SeekOut myself. They have this data set for the cleared space that is just absolutely amazing. But I'll check out Teamable. That just sounds amazing. And, as somebody else that also has ADHD, and I'm constantly like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. I'll I'll look into Rewind AI also.

Justin Wade [00:22:41]:

I'm like, well, yes. You have to look into it because I'll tell you this. I will forget things. I remember That's just like that. Like, I was like, I think we talked about this, and this is what we talked about, but I can't always remember exactly what happened. And you can look in the other pieces. It will pull up, meetings and even slides in those meetings, which is really cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:02]:

Well and one thing I wanna also talk about is, like, a lot of times in a company or if you're working for a company, you're given a tech stack. This is a tech stack that you have. I sometimes believe that you have to I I hate to say this. Either go find or maybe you can go fund your own tech stack for your success. Like, you have I want you I want you to kind of you've you've played with everything, It sounds like in the conversations that we had before we started, how do you design a tech stack that works for you?

Justin Wade [00:23:27]:

Well, so I wanna start by saying with a tech stack that works for me doesn't always work for everyone who works for me. And so there's been a few tools that I've used in the past I was like, oh, this is incredible, but my adoption rate from my recruiters was next to none. And so I think that it's also important to then identify, to think about your business model, And then say, who are my end users, and how can I get them to use it? And so there's sort of trade offs that you have to consider. I personally we always show up with our own tech stack on the back end, and then we implement our tools into theirs. Sometimes it's a manual sort of upload of a CSV file. Sometimes we can connect it directly. It really depends on sort of the, let's call it, like, the data governance that those companies have. And so you have to then also decide, is this a high volume, play? Is this a very specific sometimes I go into GitHub and I do, you know, profile matching with public profiles to make sure I hit the right people.

Justin Wade [00:24:28]:

Then you have to think about, like, is this a government's play? Is this do I just need, like, high volume salespeople? And we we get to do a lot of these different things, and those acquire different tools, in my opinion. And I would also say is I've also gotten many clients to change their tool stack. And then the other pieces, I've built many of them out. Built out greenhouse. I've built out Workday. I've built out lever. I've done them all at this point because You just have to help them, and they don't know what they don't know.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:58]:

That's so true. That is so true. Well, before we move on to the next part of the podcast, Is there anything else that you would love to share about, you know, being a true partner and a true consultant?

Justin Wade [00:25:08]:

Yeah. And I think that is really kind of Trying to figure out what the business needs are and really learning sort of what the the The pressures are that the client is facing and then figuring out how to provide those solutions and learning how to translate those things. And I think one of the my biggest superpowers oftentimes is not actually being really good at recruiting, but it's actually telling a good Story about what needs to be accomplished and what they're trying to achieve, both on the recruiting side, but also for the stakeholder management component. And the last piece on the stakeholder management piece, learn how to work with people, learn how to give them what they need, and meet them where they're at. So sometimes, you know, I'm a big slacker. Sometimes people need text. Sometimes they need to be phone call. Some only wanna do email, But set those set that expectation right at the beginning.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:01]:

Awesome. Well, absolutely love this. Well and we're gonna move over to the quick fire questions. And real quick, when I say quick fire, it doesn't have to be a quick answer.

Justin Wade [00:26:11]:

Okay. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:14]:

What advice would you give To a brand new recruiter that's just starting off in our industry.

Justin Wade [00:26:20]:

Don't pretend like you know thing. I I don't know. My evolution was, like, pretending like I knew what I was talking about, then to being, like, I have no clue what's going on to now just asking questions when I don't know. And I think, it's so we we try to posture Sure a lot. At least I did when I first started in recruiting, and, it didn't necessarily make me a better recruiter. And then learn, Talk to as many people as you can. Talk to other recruiters, and then just have really good conversations with people and tell them Tell him to explain things to you. I'll tell you this.

Justin Wade [00:26:58]:

I've learned so much going into a call and be like, I have no idea what it is you actually do. Could you explain it to me? And are you the right person that that I should be talking to? And they'll tell you. They'll just tell you. It's crazy.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:12]:

It's awesome. Well, same question for, like, recruiters that have been around the block for a few years. What advice would you give to them to, you know, have success or continued success?

Justin Wade [00:27:22]:

Evolve and iterate. I think that, some of the more senior recruiters that I've had the pleasure of working with, who've worked on assignments with me, Again, there's 22, 2 versions. 1 is they're just kinda stuck in their ways, and they tend to not always perform at the same level as some other ones, Or they're the ones who pick up some tools and maybe make them their own, figure out different sort of nuances to them, and they'll end up running circles around everyone Because they have just such deep knowledge combined with tools that make them more productive and more precise, they just become absolute monsters. So that's probably my advice.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:59]:

Great advice. Be an absolute monster.

Justin Wade [00:28:02]:

Yeah. Exactly. I was like, yes. Yes. You gotta hit it hard.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:06]:

Show that one more time.

Justin Wade [00:28:07]:

Oh, you wanna do it one more time. So just so you know, you gotta do a flick. You're gonna be like, oh, it's the wrong side. You're gonna be like, here

Benjamin Mena [00:28:13]:

you go.

Justin Wade [00:28:14]:

And so, Yeah. If you ever come to an indoor cycling class with me, I'm like, yes. Yes. With the beat. So that way people know when to to to hit.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:23]:

Wait. So you're also a cycling instructor?

Justin Wade [00:28:25]:

Yeah. I actually started that during so I've been doing you know, I started training, doing group exercise classes, and I was like, okay. So listen listen to me. I wanna be on stage with a microphone and everyone has to pay attention to me, and and they have to listen to my music. What could I do to make that happen? And so I was like, indoor cycling instructor. That's, that's how I got there.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:46]:

I love that. That's awesome. Mhmm. I think I you actually shared one of your videos recently on LinkedIn. I was like, that looks fun.

Justin Wade [00:28:51]:

Yeah. It was yeah. It It it's another thing. I was like, I you know, I'm pretty fun to be around when, in in those classes, but when you're around people who are really, like, this is their craft, Just incredible of an experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:06]:

Well, that that's a kind of segues into a a question that I have for you. Like, We're all very focused on what we do for loving as recruiters. How important is it to have something like high level outside of recruiting, and has that helped your career?

Justin Wade [00:29:20]:

I have to have it. I'm a bit of a workaholic if I don't have something else to take me away from things. I'm also the guy that will just, Like, have his phone always kinda ready just to, like, answer things. And so having something outside is or outside of recruiting is super, super crucial. I also catch myself. I'm always listening to, like, market updates. I'm a big believer of listening to what's happening in the market, what our business is doing. I listen to equity podcast.

Justin Wade [00:29:46]:

And so I get so, like, 247, like, involved. Your podcast, as soon as it drops, I'm listening. Right? And so I'm just, like, always Thinking about it and having something that forces me to listen to music, to create an experience, to take me to other places, it's been really good for my soul.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:05]:

Awesome. I I I love that. So what is a a book That has had a huge impact on your career.

Justin Wade [00:30:12]:

I was so afraid of this question because, I'll tell you why. So I've been an Audible member since 2016, teen, and I listen to books nonstop. It's just like, you know, you just kinda do it. And so the there's always There's different times in my life with different evolutions, and, what was interesting, as things got really hard in the market, there's the book called Hard Things About Hard Things from Andreessen Horowitz, and it was just like a good reminder, like, hey, Life ain't always rosy, and you have to really identify opportunities and make some tough decisions to really persevere. And the question is, you know, how how willing are you to really kind of grind through some of the downsides? And so I just thought it was a really interesting book for the The current times that we're in.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:04]:

Yeah. I'll definitely check that out. And, man, I am I am the biggest fan of Audible. Like, I'm a runner Throwing that into my, sunglasses. I have, like, the Bose sunglasses that play music on Yep. On them. Throwing a book onto my watch, go run and listen to a book. Good 5 miles, good reset of the day, great learning opportunity.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:21]:

I I think I have, like, something like 400 or 500 books on Audible. Kinda sick.

Justin Wade [00:31:26]:

Yeah. And, you know, it was interesting. There's some management books, like, when it came to, like, remote how do you manage remote teams? It was so different. And our like, I'd never met some of these people. And so there's some incredible books that and there's, like, I think, like, 5 or 6 that I'm not gonna rattle them all off, but It's just like in the moment, you can find something that will resonate with you, especially when you have those credits racked up.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:48]:

For the future of recruiting, what's your thoughts on Recruiting and artificial intelligence.

Justin Wade [00:31:55]:

1st off, I love AI. I think it's one of the coolest things ever. I u I try to, like, Build as much automation into my life as possible because the more real conversations I get to have with people, The more of a consultant I can be. Right? And so if now I can get it transcribed and I have my whole write up ready, And I know exactly what I wanna say. Like, that's phenomenal. The same with reclaim. I all my calendars are gen generally have 4 or 5 different calendars that I manage that are just mine. Those will all get combined into 1, and I can build my to do list into that.

Justin Wade [00:32:29]:

We'll also move my to do list into openings, based on my my due date, so it allows me to stay on top of things specifically with my ADHD. And I think what I've been seeing, and I've been in some really cool Enterprise conversations with TA leaders. I think, you know, we have our traditional TA outsourcing that I think will somewhat be of a boom in 2024. I think we've also sun saw the kind of evolution into, like, talent operations, and I think we'll see another layer into the talent analytics side, Just sort of a combination of the things that we've been doing already, but I think we'll start seeing very strategic, recruiting strategies being implemented and more so than just this it's called willy nilly that we've seen in the past. And so kind of saying like, hey. If who you know, if we're reaching out to people at x company, What's the likelihood that they will do well in our organization? Are they interested? And then what is the quality of hire going to be in the long term of those things? And so I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more metrics because of the new tools that are being, introduced to become more important. And I think it's exciting, but we gotta always remember that metrics, tools, and all those things don't really replace a great Experience and a great human connection. Mhmm.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:51]:

I absolutely love that. And real quick, you mentioned this thing called Reclaim. What's that?

Justin Wade [00:33:54]:

Oh, yeah. So it's Reclaim dot AI, I thing, and it's a scheduling tool. It's kinda like Calendly, but what I can do is you know, I work with different clients, sometimes 4 or 5 clients, sometimes more, sometimes less, But you actually can combine all of them so that you just have your 1 master schedule. And when someone's busy, when you if someone is scheduled on one of your calendars, It will only show availability based on your master calendar, so it all funnels to 1. I don't miss anything. Nothing gets double booked. No one can schedule over things. And then the other piece for me is, like, I've tried everything on to do lists.

Justin Wade [00:34:29]:

Like, I've write it out. I've created the little thingies. I forget as soon as I write it down. I'll be honest with you. And so what I found is I needed, like, something so it actually connects into my calendar, like, a to do list, And it then drops them into openings. And if I don't complete it, it moves it to the next opening. So I don't have to move anything. It just does it for me, and I'm a big fan of that.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:53]:

Awesome. Well, that kinda goes into the next question. Like, you can you can say that it was already one of the tools, though. Do you have a favorite rec tech tool that you that you love?

Justin Wade [00:35:02]:

I love a few of them for different reasons. So I'm a big fan of teamable. I would Say that's probably my number one thing. I love SeekOut just for the ability that allows me. Also, I wanted oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The data that I get to pull To go into meetings, super important, to have that access.

Justin Wade [00:35:20]:

I also love a tool called Honeit. Honeit is an audio capturing tool, and what it does is you can, one, it's good for when you're doing larger scale components, But, also, if you're working, like, with really technical things, you could say something like, hey, hey, hiring manager. Give me, like, a really technical question that will let you determine whether or not this person's worth talking to. And I actually then say in the interview, I'm like, hey. Can you I was like, I'm not gonna know really the answer to this, but I'm gonna send this to the hiring manager. So please, this is who your target audience is, and I click record. And then it records that segment, and then it use AI to summarize it. And I can send that recording and that piece to them.

Justin Wade [00:36:02]:

And what I can do now is I can save my hiring manager Those 30 minutes for someone that could potentially be good, or did they really answer that question the way that you want to? And so when it comes to saving, hiring manager time, very specific things. Also now you got me going. Also, what's kind of cool about it is you can create these, these call guides. And what you can do with that, you can actually then send them out to your different teams, and so that way it stays consistent, and you're not missing anything. For high volume pieces and for very specific niche things, it's pretty powerful. Awesome. Absolutely love that.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:36]:

For looking at you personally, Justin, what do you think has been a huge contributor to your own success?

Justin Wade [00:36:43]:

Well, on the superficial side, I've been very fortunate to be, getting acquainted, connected With some incredible, TA leaders, I guess. People who have had vision, who had foresight to really kind of help me grow and allow me to to mess up at times. But when it comes down to sort of, like, on the personal side, you know, I moved to United States when I was 15. I didn't, you know, my mother And is still in Germany. She was, has her own issues, and I ended up leaving my father's house at 16. And so I really never had A choice, I guess. Right? There was only 1 option, which is you either work and you make shit happen, Or you don't eat or you don't have a place to live, and so you kinda work your way through those things and really looking at opportunities and then taking them And not being afraid to just kinda jump in and see what happens.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:37]:

I absolutely love that. And it looks like you definitely jumped on a a great opportunity with, flawless.

Justin Wade [00:37:44]:

Yeah. I I mean, you there's also I mean, the list is long of the people who I've gotten to work with here, but it's also just being like a sponge. Right? Like, just absorbing. And And I think the other thing is every time I do something, I'm like, how can I take this and then either improve it? How can I take this information, Take it to the next environment? What would what would have changed about it? Right? And then also talking about it with other people. Like, hey. What would you have done? What did you what how do you approach this? Because I don't have to know all the answers. I just have to, like, come back with some solutions.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:19]:

It's kind of funny that you've mentioned that. Like, I have people like that reach out to me because of the podcast. Hey. What's your thoughts in this? And I'm like, how about you check out Justin Wade's podcast? How do you check out Crystal Parker's podcast? Like, I I I'm always like, these are the experts.

Justin Wade [00:38:32]:

Yes. But, you know, it's so hard because, like, I I'll say, like, specifically, not so I think the the community is starting to build in the TA space, But it was always like it was like a you versus me thing for a long time. And when you come from an original agency background, it was like, Be careful. Someone gonna steal your money if you're not careful. Right? And that was the other thing that I loved about when I joined Flawless. It didn't matter. We're all just gonna make money anyway, and we're gonna support each other. I keep saying giving me a think, but that's really what what refocused on, And that's what I

Benjamin Mena [00:39:05]:

think is super important now, and, you're doing such a good job about of bringing people together. And I I think that's So cool where you guys are all working together because I remember my 1st experience in the agency world. Like, I I never went to sales. I stayed in the recruiting side of the house, but I opened up this large account, Yeah. In this account, we ended up pulling in 1,000,000 of dollars in AeroTech, and they completely, like, redrew my district and cut me away from that account that I found. I staffed up and now and then I had to train a recruiter on how to do everything with that account. They made all the money. I was like, I'm over this.

Justin Wade [00:39:40]:

See yeah. And then and then you even when you bring something in there, like, well, this should actually be part of telecom. This should be part of this. And so all of a sudden, you only get allocated a fraction of it. And you're like, what the you know, like, we're anyway, it doesn't matter.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:52]:

Yeah. That's another day for another story, and that's why we are growing our own our own journeys.

Justin Wade [00:39:58]:

That's right.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:58]:

Well, in This flipping gears, Justin, this is actually one of my my favorite questions. You know, if you could go back And, you know, actually, I'm gonna ask this 2 ways because you're, like, a a late bloomer to the recruiting role. If you could go back to, like, shortly out of college or your first, By entry into your career, sit down with yourself, have a cup of coffee, what advice would you give yourself then?

Justin Wade [00:40:23]:

Don't take yourself too serious And, find your own voice. And I think, all too often, we have very when I work with younger recruiters, They're very rigid in the way that they think they need to be presenting themselves. And so and people like to do business and work with people who feel genuine, and that takes time to get comfortable, into that material skin, I guess. And so I always tell people, when I write an email, I sound just the way I talk because I don't want you to be confused that that I'll sound different. It's a chill conversation. I think that would be the biggest thing. Oh, the oh, and one thing that even in my recruiting, it took me a time to learn, time blocking. If you could've figured out time blocking in the 1st, like, 2 or 3 years of doing this, I would've bet my life would've been way better.

Justin Wade [00:41:19]:

And so and it took me by the way, it took me, like, 5 different people to tell me the time block. We're all very senior in this ecosystem. Do you think I Could do it? No. And I was like, the faster you could figure that out, the more productive and the more efficient you're gonna be.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:36]:

It took you a few years. I think it took took me about 12 to 15 years in recruiting before I realized it. Because, like, my problem is ADHD. Like, You you a scroll goes by. It sometimes takes me, like, 20 minutes to reset.

Justin Wade [00:41:48]:

But you know what I also found is you you have to be specific in your time blocking. You can't say source. You have to say, I'm gonna source on this, or I'm gonna close out this. I'm gonna write that contract. Because if I say contracts, I ain't gonna write any contract because then I'm gonna be like, what contracts do I have to do? How do you write contract? You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't work otherwise for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:09]:

Alright. And we're flipping the same same question, but if you're sitting in your down with yourself at the very beginning of your recruiting career, What additional advice would you give yourself?

Justin Wade [00:42:22]:

Appreciate the fundamentals. Appreciate the fundamentals and, and try to hone them a bit better at the beginning. There was a time where I think there's an arc At least, I don't know how most people but I was like, WTF. What did I give myself into here? Why am I doing this? Like, this is weird. Choo, wow. I'm God's gift to the Earth. I'm phenomenal at this. Choo, I don't think I know what I'm doing, and that's okay.

Justin Wade [00:42:51]:

Right? And so I think there's this weird arc that sort of happens. But one of the biggest challenges that I find with People that I've worked with, that don't have really strong fundamentals back to the basics tends to have a bit of a harder time no matter what environment you go into. It doesn't matter if you go to an early stage startup, if you go to a high volume, If you could do whatever, you have to know your fundamentals because that's what's gonna carry you through to the end. And so, honing in on those a bit better would be my advice to myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:27]:

Awesome. Phenomenal. Well, Justin, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with listeners?

Justin Wade [00:43:33]:

Yeah. I do, actually. And I think, really, is be a student of your craft and hone your skill. Things that work today won't work tomorrow, And you continuously have to evolve, and you have to learn what other groups are doing, what other people are doing, what other service offerings there could be, because we get so stuck on this 1 idea, and this is how we do it. But in reality, there's how do you say you can slice a cat Thousand ways. And so and, also, one of the other things is look at maybe not things in your niche. How are they solving those problems? And that is something that I think is super, something to look into further.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:14]:

I think definitely great advice. Well, Justin, I just wanted to say thank you for coming on the podcast. I've been seeing the what you've been doing online, you know, like help helping level up the community. And wanted you to just kinda share that just because, my god, if I learned if I learned how to be a true business partner early on in my career, probably could have Fast forward in my career so much farther, so much earlier, and, you know, and It's not something that they really teach you in your, like, 2 week onboarding training when you become a recruiter. So nope. But yeah. Once again, Justin, I wanna say thank you for helping level up the entire community. And for the listeners, hey.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:52]:

Let's crush it this year, guys.

Justin Wade [00:44:54]:

Thank you so much.

Intro [00:44:56]:

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