Speaker 1: 0:00

Where do we start? You know playing with people's livelihoods, keith. They actually reduced their time to hire, I think down to 8.4 days.

Speaker 3: 0:07

Well, that's quick, yeah, cool.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Welcome to the very first episode of Sell Me this Podcast. I'm your host, keith, and today we're diving into a conversation with two remarkable founders from Calgary's recruitment world, al Basiri and Lawrence Lora of Hammer Consulting. So sit back and let's get into the story behind Hammer Consulting. Welcome again to the inaugural episode of Sell Me this Podcast, for today I am honored to have with me Al Basiri and Lawrence Lora, two folks that seem to be taking the recruitment industry in Calgary by storm. Al and Lawrence run a company called Hammer Consulting, which provides a very data-driven approach to traditional recruitment services and provides both contract and placement services, along with recruitment consulting for organizations looking to manage their talent differently.

Speaker 2: 1:00

I've had the honor of rubbing elbows with Alan Lawrence at a bunch of events in town here, and also when I had my first need for a contractor at Deliver Digital. The team here was my first call. So, without further ado, welcome, alan Lawrence, thank you. Thanks, keith, awesome. So before we dive into the wonderful world of recruitment, I'd love to learn a little bit about you both, a little bit about what experiences led you here and what parts of your career helped you to create Hammer. Do you want to start, al?

Speaker 1: 1:34

Yeah for sure. Where do we start? Yeah, my background is all over the place, so my schooling was in psychology. Figured I'm just going to go into the psychologist route. But then just decided that's not really the path for me, so started going into the more of the business world and figuring out how do I use that degree still towards something. And naturally I first fell into HR and then as I kept progressing within the HR world, I noticed I'm liking the recruiting side a lot more, especially in the tech industry.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Went into an agency to become a tech recruiter and that's where actually I went. Lawrence and Lawrence and I started working together and realizing just him and I together we make a tech recruiter. And that's where actually I went. Lawrence and Lawrence and I started working together and realizing just him and I together we make a really good team and there's something there. So we always had something in our heads that we should do something. See what we're made of out there.

Speaker 1: 2:15

But before that I went away from that agency and went into an in-house working with the IT consulting firm Solvera Solutions and at Solvera we helped grow that business. On my side it was 20 ServiceNow consultants. I grew that by another 70 ServiceNow consultants. Lawrence also came along and helped on his end as well, and I think, lawrence, you brought another 100 or so employees on your side. So because of our success and just because of the fantastic folks at Solvera, it grew to a point and to a level of success that they had a successful exit with Accenture and they joined that company. And that's when we saw maybe this is our chance to now go off and can we do the same thing for the small to medium-sized oriented businesses. And so once we helped with the transition to Accenture, we left, and here we are Amazing.

Speaker 2: 3:01

What about you, Lawrence?

Speaker 3: 3:02

Yes, if you talk to any recruiter how they fall into recruitment, it's just that they just fall into it. There's never a career path into it. So very similar way of just fell into recruitment back in Melbourne, australia, and I've always been doing IT. I studied IT back in university but was quite bad at it. So people are always like, oh, you must be very technical because you did it in university. I'm like, no, I actually failed three of my first four subjects and, yeah, I passed, but yeah. So then, yeah, started around. So then I moved over to calgary because my wife's champion, she wanted to move back. And then, yeah, met ala procom and follow the same route with him at solvera and then accenture. But there's always been a want to see what we're made of and bring those relationships to Hammer that we've had previously and create a business that we really wanted to build or create a company that we wanted to build and grow. So that's the way it happened.

Speaker 2: 3:58

Well, you guys are off to an incredible start already. Yeah, when you think about the industry, obviously you have a lot of experience in large organizations, smaller organizations, doing in-house recruiting, et cetera. Is there a specific challenge that you were looking to solve when you set out to start Hammer, or was there a problem in the industry that you found?

Speaker 3: 4:20

Yeah, there were a few problems in the industry. We just felt it was too salesy, sometimes too pushy, and that's not the style of how we work and that's not the style we felt our clients liked or prospective clients liked Even candidates as well Like sometimes people would be pushing candidates to roles that they weren't right, or I push them into just positions where they don't need to be. So we thought we could be a bit more transparent and honest in the approach we took, but also a little bit more and Al can talk more about this data-driven on how we move forward with our candidates and clients. So we thought there was a spot in the recruitment industry be better. Essentially.

Speaker 2: 5:03

I love it. I know we've talked a lot about the idea of being data-driven and I know this is a huge passion of yours, Al. What does it mean to be data-driven in recruitment? Oh, for sure, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Yeah, Just to go back to what Lawrence was saying about the major challenge of the recruitment industry, I think every recruitment agency out there and maybe this is more general to any service-providing type of industry industry is the best way they can sell themselves within recruiting is we hire people quick or we find people quickly.

Speaker 1: 5:30

That's not value. That's the function of what a recruitment agency does. So where we thought there's a lot more value is a that the challenge isn't always about. We can't find enough candidates, so help employers unpack that challenge, go deeper into it, understand where is it actually that you're hurting and then go for that specifically to help them on that side. So that's where the consulting side comes in and a lot of times that's where the data side comes in as well. Within recruitment you talk to every CEO, every company owner, and they'll tell you that their people are their most important aspect of the company. But then why is the recruitment process overall so inherently tied in with like gut instinct or really basically by chance, that they're making hiring decisions? So that's where we want to make things a bit stronger, make things more structured, bring more processes in that are allowing for more evidence-based and science-backed decision-making for higher managers.

Speaker 2: 6:29

So I really like that topic and the idea of adding some rigor and some data behind the decisions that you're making. When you think about doing that in the recruitment industry, are there specific points of data that organizations just aren't gathering? Is there areas that they're just overlooking, or where's the low hanging fruit for companies that are looking to be more data driven in their recruitment? 100%.

Speaker 1: 6:51

It goes all the way back to when you first understand that, yeah, I have a need for a job, I have a need to fill this position.

Speaker 3: 6:58

Right from the beginning.

Speaker 1: 6:59

There needs to be a lot more time spent on defining what success looks like. A lot of job descriptions they describe the person that they're looking for. We need this skill, we need this years of experience and we need this tech stack. Those are things that people have, but maybe go back and understand. What is it that people need to do to be successful? What is it that you're performing?

Speaker 2: 7:19

Amazing. So I love what you're talking about with the data-driven approach to recruiting, but I have to wonder, if I'm an organization that's looking to get started, if I'm wondering how I can actually start to implement a more data-driven approach to recruiting in my organization, what are some of those steps that I can take and what are some of the low-hanging fruit that exists?

Speaker 1: 7:37

A hundred percent. Yeah, you can find places to add data in every step of the recruitment process, but for someone who just want to get into it, I think one of the best places to start is right at the beginning. Do you understand that you have a need to fill a role? Maybe take a little bit longer and decide what the success actually look like on a metric, quantitative measurement side. A lot of job postings out there. They're a really good description of a person, but not a description of what it takes to be successful at that job. So you see a lot of like you need this many years of experience, you need these tech stacks, you need this experience or certifications stuff like that. That describes a person, but what they need to do to be successful in that role, those are performance objectives. That needs to be evaluated a lot more than what it is being done today.

Speaker 1: 8:26

And then, moving from there, the interview process itself. That's data collection. So why not treat that as that? Really determine what are the actual factors you're trying to determine are a predicting factor of success for this role, and then create a structured interview so that you're keeping track of the questions you're asking. You're keeping track of the questions you're asking. You're keeping track of the what answers do you think are going to be the best answers and score those and I keep that consistent across across the candidates within internal. If you have a team already within that role, do a benchmark. What did what does that team have? What they're already successful in your environment? That's, that's great data right there. What is it about their characteristics, their skills, their, their fit, motivation, all that kind of stuff that was, uh, predicting that they're going to fit your company and bring that to measure for the external candidates as well.

Speaker 2: 9:19

So there's a lot of the work that you do then, even before you get recruiting coaching organizations, to think this way, to approach the challenge differently, to define some of those metrics in advance of them actually even looking for that person is that kind of how you would typically get started with an organization 100.

Speaker 1: 9:35

That's what I love to do. We now there are some companies that they're all in and that's what they want, and that's our playground, essentially there are some companies that aren't really ready yet and they just want the recruitment agency experience. So we have different packages to make sure that we're giving the value of how that company sees it.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Perfect and Lawrence, I know that you spear up a lot of the recruiting efforts. What difference does it make when you're communicating with candidates, when you're out in the world talking to people, when there's that data-driven framework in place already in advance?

Speaker 3: 10:05

It helps get a better understanding of what you're looking for. You're basing off explaining the role and the success of what being successful in that role looks like to a candidate, so it gives them a better image of what they're going into and what they'll be doing essentially. Yeah, so candidates really, and there always it's a quick high level overview sometimes when recruiters talk to candidates. But the more depth you give into conversations on your understanding of the role and the client, the more appreciative they are of wanting to go ahead with you as a recruitment agent but come back to you as well and that's relationship building and such. But yeah, it makes your life a lot easier when you have more information than less going into phone calls with candidates and clients if need be and are you seeing any differentiation in terms of long-term success in those roles?

Speaker 2: 10:57

if I think about organizations, example a is they say, hey, you know what I need a business analyst, yeah. Or organization b, where they come together to you with this in-depth package that says here's the metrics, here's the KPIs, here's how they're going to be successful. Are you seeing differences in terms of the retention or performance with those individuals?

Speaker 3: 11:18

That's a good question and I'd be lying if I said yes, the only reason is because we haven't. I mean, we've been doing that package now with our clients but we've only been open for a year and those placements started six months ago potentially now. So they are still there and we don't have a big enough event diagram. But I would like to think so, because why I'd like to think so and why I say probably yes, is they're going in it knowing more again. But the clients are also getting putting success into it.

Speaker 3: 11:48

And what does that 30, 60, 90 day look like? And we're kind of coaching them to have that, those metrics there. So it's not just, oh, after your probation period you didn't hit this and you're like we didn't talk around that. When we're given those objectives and what success metrics look like, then the candidate knows when they start that this is what success looks like after X amount of days. So then the candidate knows when they start that this is what success looks like after X amount of days. So I think so it will prove to be a lot better for retention.

Speaker 1: 12:11

That's a good way to put it, I think anecdotally. Yeah, it's tough because we've only been in business for a year. Yeah, if you bring in the research with it, definitely it is shown to show a longer tenure. For sure, and it goes back to we've all been candidates before. Recruitment's a funny industry that everyone's experienced it. Everyone who's working has experienced recruitment and everyone's going to have their thoughts on it and opinions on it, but the overall process is not a logical one, it's a very emotional one.

Speaker 1: 12:42

So anything that improves candidate experience has been shown to make that candidate more appreciative and, once they become a new hire, stick with that employer. Yeah, and especially if they know the environment, as is. If you're not trying to sell that environment, if you're not trying to just talk about the benefits and not about what the challenges are going to be, what the headaches are, you're already setting them up for success. You're going to give them bad surprises.

Speaker 2: 13:04

Do you see a lot of the industry and I know I know you both know this, but I did do a very brief stint for a couple of years when I was starting my career in the recruitment side and it's something that is incredibly polarizing. When you talk to candidates, when you talk to some organizations, I feel like everyone has a good story. Everyone has their horror story of the one time that X, y and Z happened. When you think about those experiences that you're creating, how are you seeing different organizations approach these challenges in the market? What kind of approaches are really resonating and what are some of the things that customers should be aware of?

Speaker 1: 13:37

I love that question, but what we're seeing nowadays is more effort going into employer branding. Less of these. Hey, we've been voted as top employer, but hey, here's why we got voted as top employer. Like, really define what is it that makes your environment? It can't be for everybody, so don't sell to everybody. So really be more genuine about what you are and what you aren't, who you're fit for and who you're not. For the genuineness I think especially now with generic AI coming out as well, there is that hunger of being like let's just be human, just tell me what I need to know, kind of thing. So we're starting to see that shift a little bit. More. More voices are coming out. I haven't fully seen a company embracing it, but I'm sensing that's where it's going when people are craving those human interactions.

Speaker 2: 14:20

They're craving the real relationships and I don't know if this is still an issue, but I remember that there used to be such a pressure to fill some of these roles that it was much of a sales job for the recruiter to say you're going to be great, trust me. And even if they knew it was going to be a challenge or a fit right off or not a fit right off the bat, is that still a challenge that exists? Is that still happening in the market? Or is that our candidates wised up to that approach? It's wised up to that approach. Some of my experience in the past and I remember this was something that used to happen a long time ago where there used to be as much of a sales pitch from the recruiters themselves to the candidates saying don't worry, you're going to be great in this role.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Trust me, even if they knew it wasn't going to be a fit, they were just so intent on filling it that they just sacrificed the candidate along the way.

Speaker 3: 15:09

Yes, is that still a challenge? That's happening, or have people smartened up to that? Yeah, it is a challenge, I agree, and it's still. I do still think that is a problem. There's two things. So there's the KPIs in a recruitment agency, that kind of push you to push a candidate in, for example, and they are judged by KPIs, and also placements and all that kind of stuff from a larger recruitment entity. Now, I haven't been in a larger recruitment agency for the last four years, so I don't want to speak in turn about them, but that's how it was a couple of years ago only and I can imagine still be very similar. But yeah, that is still a problem.

Speaker 2: 15:42

in short, I think filling bums in seats is basically the way that people it's the professional term?

Speaker 3: 15:45

Yeah, exactly. So I do think that is still a problem in the industry. That's something that we definitely don't do, because I think you're playing with people's livelihoods, keith, yeah, and you're playing with people's yeah, their careers. I think, when you've noticed that it's not the right opportunity for them, you'd be totally honest and be telling them why you think it's not the right opportunity.

Speaker 2: 16:05

And I have to imagine that plays out over the long term right If you're doing the right things for both your customers and the candidates, that over the long term it's going to be more successful. You might have some short-term roadblocks, but over the long term it's going to grow your brand, grow your business, in a much different way, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:23

And it's like that on our business as well, and just even like in research, it shows recruiters and HR folks even referral HR folks they're not the most trusted when they try to sell a job. It's the hiring manager that's the most. So we try to encourage the hiring managers to do postings. Go out there. If you can do like a quick video of what it takes to be successful in your team, do that. That's your employer brand right there Within our business as well.

Speaker 1: 16:45

There was one incident of a potential client wanting a longer guarantee period. There are some clients that want to incentivize recruiters to force essentially the candidate to stay. Guarantee periods are very it's like insurance right. To provide it you need to actually look at the environment. Is this the right environment to provide the level of insurance that you're looking for, that particular prospect? The reason you're looking for it was more of a toxic environment that they had high turnover, so we weren't comfortable giving it to them. Another client came in asking for even a longer guarantee period, but we saw they show up for employees and we can easily sell the manager, not just a business kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 17:24

So for them we were more than happy to give it to them. So that actually leads me to an interesting thought that I have, which is in kind of thing so for them, we were more than happy to get into that. So that actually leads me to an interesting thought that I have, which is in terms of your ideal customer, the one, the customers that you love to work with, that you get excited about. Do you have an ideal customer profile, or how are you picking customers that would be a great fit for you as you grow the business?

Speaker 1: 17:42

yeah, it in our first year, when we first started. That was, I think the first few months were the most stressful, and one of the things I'm most proud of us for doing is we turned away a couple of customers. I think there was three incidents. One of those was the guarantee period prospect. Another one was just right at the beginning, a US-based agency wanted to work with us and the way they wanted to work it wasn't matching our ethics or anything like that. So for those ones, we said no, the ones that we'd love to work with, the clients that we want to work with.

Speaker 1: 18:11

You know what? At the end of the day, it's the ones that show up for, the ones that actually care about their employees. That's the one that I'm going to be able to sleep at night knowing that a candidate I reached out to potentially pulled from another job that they already. If that's your goal and you're demonstrating this goal of you'll do anything to make your employees happy, you see them as your main competitive advantage, we'll do anything for you. We'll go above and beyond for that client.

Speaker 2: 18:38

So it's less about a geography, a vertical, and more about the demeanor of those organizations and their ability to convey that as you're coordinating them, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 18:47

We've been told to go niche and we go tech. We haven't gone more niche than just the tech industry overall yeah and then mainly the smb type of businesses and startups are where we've gone. But before even going to verticals, one of the conversations that lawrence and I had about okay, how do we do sales, how do we go out there? Yeah, and the one core thing we had was kindness just if nothing else reach out with kindness. Yeah, and everything else will go from there amazing.

Speaker 2: 19:13

So one thing you mentioned I'm curious on your perspective, lawrence, on this yeah, is the engagement of the hiring manager being really critical to how successful someone will be in a role in terms of the visibility, in terms of what that job actually is. And so what advice would you give organizations, as they're going out and they're starting to either work with recruiting firms or firms or higher talent themselves, for the involvement of those hiring managers and what that means for the actual process of bringing someone on board?

Speaker 3: 19:43

I tell them to be as part of the process, as much part of the process as possible, because at the end of the day, it is your employee that you'll be handling from day one, getting on board from the start to the end and just making sure that the candidate's going well in the process, has any questions? I think questions come out of nowhere and they're like who do we ask? Do we ask the recruiter or do we ask the hiring manager? I always go straight to the source. If we do Chinese whispers, I'm going to say something wrong and then they're going to be like oh, maybe not, maybe this. Always tell them to be very a part of the process and just be responsive. At the end of the day, we still have this trouble, to be honest with you, to just get a response after 24, 48 hours for questions, just submissions and just keeping everyone in the loop in the process between candidates and clients. And just being responsive is like a huge thing that we always push on.

Speaker 2: 20:38

And I feel like it must be a little bit of the catch 22, because the hiring managers themselves and a lot of the organizations that I talked to everyone is so busy now Everyone is trying to do 400 different things and they're starved for time, and I imagine that you have customers that try to push off some of these responsibilities and say, when I'm hiring you for these roles or these services, please just deliver via an end product or a person yeah, but at the same time, it's going to end up costing them more time. 100% To not be responsive, yes, to not have the right people engaged 100%. And are there any other pitfalls that you're seeing customers mistake when they're using services? Either it's you or maybe it's one of your competitors where it's created an opportunity for you to come in. What are the common mistakes that people are making when they use recruitment agencies?

Speaker 3: 21:26

I think one of the big ones is and I'll touch on this before is they think we're technical recruiters, right, and they think we should be able to ask questions and dive deep into their, I guess should be able to understand if they'd be a good senior developer or not from that conversation. And that's something that is very hard to gauge because we're not doing a technical assessment with them, we're not like doing anything crazy, we push it back onto them go, do you have any questions? That would be good to get understanding what the answers are. That would be a great fit for your organization, an easy one, just be like how you do object-oriented development and kind of just what's your methodology? I like to write spaghetti code, all right, that's probably not the right person.

Speaker 3: 22:16

You know what I mean. Yeah, it's. That's one of the one of the big fads that everyone thinks that you're a very technical people and understand that there are other pitfalls as well, especially, especially, that need to come to mind.

Speaker 1: 22:30

Essentially, whenever we have conversations with hiring managers and I just outright ask, hey, what do you value in recruiting me? Right, almost 100% of the time they're like oh, just find me good people.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Yes, I can't do that unless you know what good is Right, Find good for me. Did you take that time to actually know what that means? And I'm like, hey, if I'm going to pull somebody from a role that they're already happy in bring to your environment, what's the reason for that? Why would they be motivated to do that? And all of a sudden, when you ask more targeted questions like that, they're like oh, our people, yeah, what about your people? So things like that they struggle. That recruiting agencies just reach to reach out to a candidate, say some level of like magic words that convinces them, or should say that convinces them to just take the offer.

Speaker 1: 23:17

You know, maybe a lower offer or might be not a right job or anything like that. So yeah, it's a lot more. Recruiting overall isn't just a recruiter's job, it's an everybody. Sometimes it goes all the way up to the CEO right type of thing. It has a lot of different hands in it and it needs to so from our perspective. When it comes to technical assessments, you need your best technical person on that team to do the technical assessment. There is no recruiter out there. The best recruiter will know all things about personnel selection and the science of personnel selection, not solutions architects.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Yeah, and I love that you said that's always a challenge that I've had with the recruitment industry because I think that there's a lot of misleading, whether it be advertisement or sales language, out there that talks about this idea of the technical prescreen and the technical validation, and I've seen it so many times in customer organizations where they're just misled and they don't get what they want.

Speaker 2: 24:12

They get something that guides them down the completely wrong path and to your point of people being a critical part of those organizations. It's just they end up burning time, they end up burning money and they could be burning their reputation on the market as well, which is arguably one of the most important things.

Speaker 3: 24:27

Just to that point, Keith as well.

Speaker 3: 24:28

I think that's it, that last bit of a burning reputation.

Speaker 3: 24:32

When you bring on a recruitment agency, I think people think just give them the job and let them run with it. I think you really have to understand, firstly, the recruitment agency and give your elevator pitch to that recruitment agency why a candidate should join you. Because at the end of the day, we're representing you as a client and if we're not saying the right thing or it's free marketing for us to give calls to candidates and understand that this is the client we work with, this is what they do. So I think everyone runs at 100 miles an hour just makes it slow down, not get that speeding ticket like some of us get, and then just relax and give a better understanding. I think it's a good way to evaluate a recruitment agency as well as like how they understand your business and kind of understand how to sell your business the best way. So that's something that clients sometimes just get straight into it and just need to give us a better understanding on how to sell what you guys are doing.

Speaker 2: 25:24

And so you've outlined who your ideal customer is. You've outlined some of the process and some of the challenges. If you were to just wave a magic wand and you're in the meeting with a CEO of your ideal customer and you had to give them three bullet points, real quick, what are the three things they need to consider as they're embarking on revamping their recruitment strategy, specifically when it comes to how to engage recruitment agencies? What would those three things be?

Speaker 1: 25:53

Oh, great question. I would say yeah, a recruiting agency that is focused more on data-driven processes, more evidence-based methodologies, recruiting agency that is also working within your employer brand, because they are not just an extension of you, they're a promoter of you as well. And also a recruiting agency that has a good reputation with candidates externally as well, because both your reputations are meshing together at that point.

Speaker 1: 26:20

So you're representing a specific client and your agency doesn't have that right stance in the market. That's going to not be very successful either. I'll add a fourth one as well.

Speaker 2: 26:30

A bonus one. A bonus one.

Speaker 1: 26:31

A bonus one. This isn't even within recruitment agencies, but it could be in the longer term. Add a feedback loop to your interview process, to your overall hiring process. Understand what you're doing right, what you're not doing right. That also gives you an idea of in the longer term how you're defining success in your company, but also what you would look for within a recruiting agency to see if that's going to be a fit as well.

Speaker 2: 26:56

Amazing. So not only did Al use all three, he added a bonus one. Do you have any? Do you have any other bonus ones you wanted to add Lawrence?

Speaker 3: 27:02

No, I think he hit the nail on the head. I think that third one, talking about doing reviews and relations, I think the way that we always chatted Keith beforehand and had a kind of conversation going, but then I think when Jamie Hawker shout out to Jamie sent an email and introduced that, I think that kind of promotes the trust between kind of using that recruiter or kind of at least having that conversation starter. So yeah, referral and network around who's good in the market, essentially, Amazing.

Speaker 1: 27:26

If I could just jump in there for a second Amazing.

Speaker 2: 27:28

If I could just jump in here for a second, al, could you give us an example of what that feedback loop might look like in that interview process?

Speaker 1: 27:32

Oh sure, so, with the feedback loop, what you can do is if you're creating a structured interview and you have specific factors that you're measuring within candidates and now you have the same questions and same scorecard answers that you're asking every single candidate that's data Hold on to that data and even bring it back into their performance review Once you hire that candidate. A year later, go back and be like okay, we thought you were going to be great at the team collaboration part, as we defined it, and sure enough you are. Or if you're not, then maybe you measured it wrong and go back and recalibrate that line of questioning. Same thing with the candidates that were rejected. Did we reject you for the right reasons or were we just measuring it wrong?

Speaker 2: 28:18

And this actually brings up a thought, which is how much of that data that you have during the recruitment process, especially as a contingent or sorry, I want to rephrase that so this, so one of the things that that actually brings up is the idea of the data loss potential between an external party and the company itself. And so do you see a lot of organizations that you, even if you have those KPIs and you have all this data as you're recruiting for these roles. Is there a mechanism organizations have to get those interview notes and those things that you can then later measure on back into their hands.

Speaker 1: 28:48

I think that's our advantage of being a boutique agency. That's within our decision to do Bigger agencies probably not. It's a lot more controlled that way. They tend to send over a presentation. I don't really send over presentations. I ask a series of questions and whatever they answered that's what I sent For that other package that we actually create the structured interview. We talk to the hiring manager and create something that's specific to their environment. They get the whole thing, including contact info and all that. We already know we're representing the candidate, but we have trust in the client to know that's our candidate. And here's everything we did which actually brings us to a nice point with one of our clients. They've been fantastic, they've been so lovely and they love the process that we did with the structured interviews. It actually reduced their time to hire, I think, down to 8.4 days.

Speaker 2: 29:34

Well, that's quick, yeah. So now, and what would the average be Like if I was just to go out and do it myself tomorrow?

Speaker 1: 29:41

If you're doing yourself anything between 30 to 45 days, you're okay.

Speaker 2: 29:44

Okay, so 8.4,. That is an amazing step.

Speaker 1: 29:46

That's an amazing step, yeah. So they were so impressed that tomorrow I'm having a chat with them and they're going to ask if I can train them on what we did. Oh wow and more than happy to. Yeah, this is a growing company as well. We want to see them succeed.

Speaker 2: 29:58

We just want to be supplemental Incredible. So my last big question is really around, I'd say, one of the things that is contentious in the recruiting agency and I think a lot of people don't fully understand, which is the fee structures, and it seems like everyone has their own interpretations of how the economics of the business are built, and, especially if you're hiring lots of people, those numbers can add up really quickly. What's your take on how you're disrupting that space and how are you making it fair for customers as well as yourself and knowing that you have to run a business with the economics of the business itself?

Speaker 1: 30:35

Yeah, the whole fee structure in the recruitment industry. That's a bad reputation. I feel like the recruitment agency industry has burned. Yeah Right, today it's a lot easier to just type in Google what's the average? Oh, it gives you like a range of 15 to 25% or something like that. What we've seen in the past with the other agencies and stuff like that is they're like, oh, just throw out 25%, they're going to come back with something else and then just work it down to like 20 and don't go with less than that.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Yeah, that still doesn't make sense to me. What we did is we just created different tier structures and we specified exactly what we're doing, what is our effort at this level with our guarantee, and then what is the more enhanced levels, kind of thing. So there's actual structure, something that makes sense, and honestly, I can't blame before that kind of a more structured approach to it. I can't blame any employer that is looking at agencies and constantly pushing down the pricing, because, going back to how recruitment agencies sell themselves, I can find you people quick. Every agency is coming out. I still get recruitment agencies. I'm talking to an agency and if that's the only sell you have, I have no way to compare you to, like another agency to another. So the only thing, the only factor that I have to compare you to is your price. So of course, I'm going to drive down to the lowest price agency, because you all sound like you do the same thing.

Speaker 2: 31:50

So what questions could a customer ask if they're in a meeting with you or some of your competitors to help to identify what customers are serious about adding value to those services and what are just truly trying to turn people around very quickly.

Speaker 1: 32:04

For sure. I just recently had a conversation with somebody at an event and holy cow, he asked amazing questions. I wish I could remember all of them, but yeah, he went deep into it. We had a banner that said data-driven recruitment, better employer branding, but it's okay. So what sets you guys apart? What do you actually mean by data-driven? What do you actually mean by this? Yeah, go nitty gritty. When somebody asks me that kind of stuff, I'm excited because I you nerd out about it.

Speaker 2: 32:29

Yeah, I get to nerd out, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 32:32

But yeah, a lot of recruitment agencies they say, oh, we have our hiring process, we call it whatever the best fit.

Speaker 3: 32:38

You know I trademark it a lot, so I'm like, okay, what is the best fit?

Speaker 1: 32:41

And it turns out oh, we interview candidates and we send them to you. That's nitty gritty into calling out exactly what they do. What is your actual process? What is your actual approach to candidates? How are you doing this If they're selling the size of your database? So how are you reached? What are you actually doing? That kind of stuff helps, and then maybe also pay attention to the questions that agencies have.

Speaker 1: 33:04

That also indicates. What you measure is what you care about, right, so what the recruitment agency is asking, that might indicate what they're actually trying to get to as well.

Speaker 2: 33:11

Amazing. I feel like I could pick both of your brains for the next four hours in terms of this topic. So I did promise you the opportunity or maybe curse to pitch your services here. So why would someone and I don't know which one of you wants to be the brave tribute here, but why would someone want to work with Hammer Consulting? And really, what sets you apart?

Speaker 1: 33:36

That is so I guess I'll start with. We don't really do pitches because we go so specific to whatever challenges we can unearth and then, based on those challenges, sell ourselves. That way, if I give a generalized pitch and I'm going to try and do this off the top of my head here is Hammer Talent Consultants. We named it Talent Consultants for a reason, not just an agency. We are for employers who understand that nothing is more important than hiring the right people for their team, and they see their employees as the best competitive advantage that they have. These are employers who value a more science-based approach and data driven approach because they want to get away from the gut instinct of making hiring decisions. Through our recruitment, we inspire and empower those employers to focus more on their data-driven processes, their employer branding and their candidate experiences. If a client is willing to show up for all those, we're willing to show up for them and go beyond.

Speaker 2: 34:26

Amazing. So, last but not least, I don't know, lawrence, if you wanted to do it from a candidate side of things.

Speaker 3: 34:34

Yeah, that's tough to be. I had something funny going in my head and I was like that's true.

Speaker 3: 34:39

I was yeah, with faces for radio and kind of mediocre personalities, it makes it very hard to justify why going with us. But we are relationship-based at the end of the day and we want to give a candidate and client experience the best possible way, by being transparent and honest is how I like to put it. But also Owl's been on the data-driven recruitment and bringing these different processes in which kind of makes us a very unique and different way of recruiting, and we'd love to continue to show clients and candidates how we work.

Speaker 3: 35:08

So, that's the quickest pitch on my end.

Speaker 2: 35:10

I love it. So if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what would the best way for them to do?

Speaker 1: 35:14

that be oh man. Feel free to reach out to LinkedIn. Email is albasseriathammercom. Join our Hammer LinkedIn page as well. We have our website, hammehrcom Yep. Feel free to go through the contact us section. Reach out to us there.

Speaker 2: 35:31

Perfect, and I'll put these all in the notes as well, but thank you so much for both of you for coming out today. It's been a blast. Like I said, we probably could have talked for four more hours. You're both a wealth of knowledge in this area and I just really appreciate the time that you've given for world of recruitment. So thanks a bunch and have an awesome day.

Speaker 1: 35:48

Thank you so much, Keith, yeah cool.

Speaker 2: 35:50

Thanks for tuning in. If you found value in this episode, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. We've got a lot more conversations coming up with a whole lot of inspiring business leaders who are redefining what it means to succeed. Until next time, I'm Keith and this is Sell Me this podcast.