w/amanda hughes from vaco technology

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

What's going on everybody? We're alive this morning. And it's not, it's not just me. It is not just me. I have my dear friend and co-worker, Amanda Hughes with me. It's what I'm going to take you for joining me. I appreciate it. Absolutely. A little bit of a celebrity. Well, nevermind. Hey, we're going to get through it. Listen, you know what? It's all it's all fake. It's all the internet. Don't, you don't believe anything on the internet. So for those of you who are tuning in at me, let me know your tune in from, I know Amanda would love to see you as well. So please add us, calm it up.

I haven't gotten the push notifications on the live on LinkedIn yet. So that may become your soon. So we're going to talk today. So before we dive in, again, as always, want to get some shout outs to the team around me. So Brandon Arvey, brain is 78 kind of doing this whole content mindset creation thing we're doing. No Allen, here's all my video stuff, Bianca, who does my video editing stuff. Alex, Polar Design, who does all my copy. So thank you all again for everything you do. Becky, what's up? Good morning. Thanks for tuning in. So this morning, so I've had some conversations with people internally.

And the conversation was like, man, I want to, I want to be able to show you the show, the internet, to show the world, the three people who watch my team. And why I truly believe that Vaco Nashville is the best in the entire country when it comes to the bake-o-off is this. And so today, Gene, what's up, man? Good morning. He's sure good morning. So today I'm having a man on. So let's go ahead and dive in, Amanda. Give the people what they want. Give an intro. How do I need? You look so like here and beautiful. I, I, I, I, I swear is on a 4K video.

Cause I need it to help in any way. I can't. So tell the people about who you are and then we'll kind of dive into some questions. Yeah, absolutely. Um, Amanda Hughes, Taylor already intured me a little bit, but, um, originally from the San Francisco Bay area and relocated to Nashville in 2019, along with half of California. It's coming with me. So it'll be California 2.0 here. Pretty soon. But so grateful, so happy to be here. Found a vaco. Via the internet and I did the same job in, in the Bay area. I worked for a competitor company and, you know, fell in love with the job.

fell in love with being able to really impact people on both sides of the fence. Um, you know, he started in the recruiter seat, which was a fantastic learning experience, very, very challenging. Um, career and ended up going into the sales side being more client, engaged, client focused, um, in San Francisco. And then I ended up doing some internal recruiting as well. Uh, in San Francisco before I made the move over here to Nashville and, um, found vaco always been in the tech space. Um, always done, um, either recruiting or sales within the staffing industry. And, you know, it's been, it's been a, it's been a fun ride.

It's been a wild ride. I think, um, when I, when I started the job, I didn't really know what it was. And to be honest, even my first day, I came in and like, all right, now what am I supposed to do today? And it wasn't until I really got into training and, um, meeting with peers and getting engaged with, with other people in the industry, seniors and veterans that they really understand. So what the job was, um, I was really just attracted to the people I got to work with, kind of the overall vision of it, being able to really help people really impact, uh, you know, besides your family, what you do for living is probably the most important part of your life.

Uh, for a lot of people. So being a part of that is, it's really fantastic. And, um, I've been lucky enough to do this for a little bit now and have a good, so how, how many years now have you been doing this? Probably six six years? Yeah. I want to say six years. So, so let's go back to kind of getting started the industry, right? So the, the tip of, so you've been out of for six years. I've been out of for 10. A lot of our team has been out for over the industry average. What do you think? If for those of you are watching, if you have any questions for Amanda about the recruiting industry or whatnot, definitely ask us what Amanda, when it comes to, when it comes to recruiting industry, why do people quit, right?

And you're my why do people flame out after 18 months, which is kind of our kind of the traditional tenure? And, and, and what, what has made you stick with it? Right? I know you, I know you mentioned it, but, but why have you stuck with it? Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's a lot. I think part of it is to the point I made, right? A lot of people don't really understand it until they really get into it and understand on the day to day what it takes and how challenging it is. And, you know, we hear no, we get hung up on. We, we have really a ton of value to offer people and it takes a lot of closed doors.

It takes a lot of grit and determination. You kind of have to push through this. I would say first year to two years maybe that you're really going to, it's really going to be hard. You know, you're, you're meeting people you never know. You're learning new skill sets. You're learning a new career. You're engaged in a technical world from kind of the outsider's view, right? You're not actually doing the technical work, but you really have to learn. So there's a lot on the front end that needs to happen in order for you to be successful. I think you have to, one, you have to be very determined.

You have to work very hard and I think coming in, it's not something that people know about the job, you know, that's not something in the interview process that talked a lot. I think people quit because we hear no more than we hear yes. You know, it takes 100 conversations to have a win or it takes 300 interviews to have a win. And especially when you're starting those, that is probably heavier on the front end. So it's a lot harder than you anticipate. I think for a lot of people, I think burnout is a real thing too. You know, we're having to do a lot of tasks that aren't necessarily really hard, but we're doing it a lot.

And you have to be very disciplined and you have to do it every single day. And so I think burn, you can get burnt out pretty quickly. And probably it's like a lot of people don't stick around. I think for me, what's cut me here again is just the overall impact that I get to have on my candidates that I get to work with as well as my clients. We're really helping them solve their business problems and being engaged in very large organizations that we can bring value to them that they can't find internally. So it's really great to come in and just be able to add value to them while impacting the lives on the other end of our consultants and candidates that we get to work with.

For me, when it's hard, I've been surrounded by some really fantastic peers, mentors, coaches that have kept me kind of visions, you know, I on the prize type situation, understanding that this career is up and down and you could have the best day of your life. And the next day could be the worst day of your life. You could have that you could have that in the same day. You could have like the best day and the worst day in this industry one day. It is an absolute coaster Lee Lee with the jokes this morning. So the job isn't spamming tech people who have words on the resume that matches your requirements.

Sometimes even if they don't, Lee, we try not to spam people. Thank you for being the jokester on this Monday. But yes, that is obviously the traditional industry, which is Lee things. My next question, Amanda, I need you to brag on yourself. Right. And as a one on the any gram, for those of you who are watching, the man is a one on the any gram. Yeah. Amanda is a perfectionist. And I as somebody who works beside her day and day out, I see that. And she is one of the best, if not the best we have. Amanda, try to brag on yourself here for the people who are watching and people who will watch down the road.

They're like, you know what, I want to use Bea Kota higher. Like Amanda seems great. Like just tell people why they should use you. Then like maybe going down the road to somebody else. Sure. I appreciate the humor and you know in our industry, we have to own it because there's a lot of people that that do that. You know, and there's a lot of recruiters that don't do some of the things that Taylor does and that we do here at Bea go. And I think, you know, being different in an industry where there's 100 people that you can go work with is really truly what differentiates us here at Bea go.

And for me specifically, you know, I really don't like to be transactional. I really like to be relationship based. I really like to be engaged. I like for my clients to think, hey, Amanda is an extension of my business. She's an extension of my team. Does she not work for me specifically? No, but you know, my goal is always, if there's a board meeting or my clients are meeting around a table and people don't know me, I want my my my main choice to say, we can't do this without Amanda. Right. That's my angle. We can't do this without Bea go to have somebody on my behalf say that we're in an integral part of their business.

They go help, you know, their internal teams work more efficiently, more productively. That's my goal is to really be a partner, be a branch of their existing team, whether that be just the team itself or working in tandem with your HR and talent acquisition team. There's a lot of ways that we can partner. So I'd like to say away from the transactional type relationships, you know, that might be a longer runway a lot of times. You know, maybe we're not closing deals in the first, you know, few weeks, but I think it ultimately leads to stronger, more consistent, longer business partnerships and in turn, you get better candidates.

You don't face as much attrition. And we can really truly problem solve, right? We oftentimes we throw bodies at at problems, especially software problems. We think just throw someone else in it and fix it and let's get it done. But being able to sit back and say, Hey, let's look at bigger picture here where the gaps, how can we how can we close them? Is it a person? Is it a technology? Are we talking about it being maybe more of a managed service? Let Bea go own a piece of that for you. So you're not thinking about it. So just saying away from transactional being very relationship focused you know, building trust over time, you know, I think our industry unfortunately struggles a little bit with that piece that we're not always trusted.

And that comes from people getting burned from our industry, not being honest. And that's another thing I think that my clients would say about me is, you know, you can trust me. I will. I might steer you away from something that you might not want to do and being able to have those business conversations as well. I think it's integral in being successful and having good partnerships. So let me ask you this and I didn't send you this question before. So I'm sorry. I was not the best at keeping to a script. So for those of you watching this again, thank you all for tuning and we appreciate it.

We're going to wrap up here the next few minutes and then again, Amanda, thank you for coming on. But let me let me ask you this if you're a hiring manager and you watch this now or down the road. And you're like, all right, this sounds great. You know, that, you know, you want to be a problem solver. I understand that, understand that. What is the biggest thing that like, you know, talk about how vacos different? Right? Because my thing is, is you've spent time at a tech company, you spend time at octa and then you've spent time at another corporate recruiter or agency recruiting firm that's huge like us.

And so you've seen business done on both sides. And so my question for you and before we jump into this question, my question for you is what makes us different? Vaco and again, Kathy, I think you great info, Danny, great info. So Amanda, your question also, Lee is your customer, the employer or the candidate both? Both. And so real quick, Amanda, let's talk about what makes vaco different. And then we kind of break down what Lee's question real fast too. But talk to me about real quick, what makes vaco different? Yeah. Vaco is a company that really values all the things I just talked about.

You know, we can't be the things that I talked about. We can't be a relationship focused. We can't be problem solvers. We can't be solution oriented partners. If our management, if our leadership, if our teams at vaco don't support that type of mentality. And I've been places where that's not necessarily supported. For example, you know, we're we're measured our success is measured upon how many meetings are on versus the quality of the meeting that we're on. You know, if we don't hit 15 meetings. That'll freeze. Yeah. We don't hit 15 meetings. You know, we might be looking for a job next week where at vaco we're allowed to really focus on the depth and the quality of those meetings and those partnerships and relationships.

You know, we're not micromanaged to a level that we are, you know, looking at day to day activity on such a micro under a microscope. It's really, hey, what are the value of your relationships? How strong are your partnerships? Instead of always wanting more and more and more more, we want to get deeper. We want to be closer. We want to be more trusted. We want to we want to be better partners to our clients and our consultants. And I think that goes on the recruiting and the sales side. I've never been a part of a recruiting team that has such great relationships. And that are trusted so highly.

Right? We need someone. We call them the answer. They're right there. They come to our office. They come to our happy hours. It's great to be able to do that. And I think you know, vaco is always going to be a company that supports that. And if you're looking to use vaco on the client side or on the consulting side, know that we're set up to truly be good partners to you to be honest, to guide you through the process, whether that's buying, whether that's interviewing, and we're allowed the freedom and the flexibility to do that. And it's really coming from a good place, good intention.

And I think that's what makes us really different. I love that. And we listen for those of you who are watching, we don't always get it right. I mean, listen, we we bond and we send candidates over that don't work sometimes. I mean, we're not sitting here saying that like, we're some silver bullet because again, I mean, we send candidates that bomb interview sometimes that we do our best to not, but at the end of the day, like we work with people and people are unpredictable. Like we have seen. Yeah. I think that's important to that upfront. You might miss it a few times, right?

You might send somebody that's wrong. The interview process might not necessarily be known. But you know, this is for any hiring anyone on the listening in or we'll be listening in in the future that's in a hiring capacity. You know, let us in. Let us know more. Let us be engaged. That's only going to help you look down the line. If we know more, we're going to be able to screen them, qualify them, align them better to your environment, your teams. You know, if we're kept at an arm's length and hey, just throw resumes over the fence. Let's just interview and then see it's only going to be a longer process for you.

It's going to focus right your team. You're going to be pulling the interviewers out of production, wasting time and trust me as much as you hate it when we waste your time, we hate wasting your time too. As much as more in our clients in our candidate. So let us in. Find someone you trust. And you know, we can help. Are we perfect? Never. But I think we do a pretty good job. I love that. I love that. A few other things Renee, thanks for joining. It's good to see you. Becky goes, I love that y'all focus on relationships. There's a person behind the job.

Sometimes a humanist gets left out or pushed to the side. Yeah, absolutely. Becky, again, I mean, I think you're right. And I think that's something that we try to work on here. I think we as an industry, I talk about this a lot. And I know Amanda and I think very similarly with this is that in this industry, we're taught and Amanda came back to me. I was we're taught wide. We're not taught deep. We're taught meet a crap ton of people. Meet everybody. Shake babies and kiss hands. Right? Like we're told to do everything. But then what happens is that that literally what happens is that people under people realize are people don't know why recruits are so bad at what they do is because we're pushed all the time to go wide.

And we're not taught to go deep. And I think what Amanda, I'm going to firm you here in this call. One thing you do well is you go deep. Right? Your intentionality behind your hiring managers and your companies. You really get to understand you do checking calls and you do. I mean, that's what we have a whole another session about how you structure your business about checking calls and sending little gifts to people. And I mean, you just go above and beyond. But the thing is, is we're not as an industry taught that. And so again, thank you for doing that. So well, Lee with the joke, I'm going to change my phone number to yours.

And then you can screen out all the recruiters that call me. Listen, Lee, my brother used to do that as old company. He used to give my number to the front desk of another recruiter calls in. Amanda, let's wrap on this question. Yeah. Because this is something or statement or whatever that I'm speaking a lot about right now. And I know people are tired of hearing from me. Talk about the market right now. Talk about what you're seeing in the market for somebody who's worked in San Francisco in the Bay Area for somebody who's worked for tech and non tech, somebody who's here in Nashville, who's now recruiting and selling across the country.

What are you seeing in the market right now? And what's your biggest advice for companies and hiring managers? And we'll end on this. Okay. I mean, the market right now is, there's no boundaries, right? I think we're all used to working within our regions and our networks and our little focus area. And what we're seeing post pandemic is that the boundaries have been busted open on both sides. You know, a national developer can go work for a New York company or a San Francisco or Seattle company. And on the other side, hiring teams can take talent from anywhere across the country and the world. And so it is extremely fast moving and highly, highly competitive, probably more competitive than I've ever seen it.

I think we naturally flip between a hiring market and a candidate market. And we're in a highly highly candidate driven market. You know, we're competing against five, six different offers money that we've never seen before. Offers of just insane salaries above market. You know, I like to come in with data. I mean, Dave Taylor knows, I'll give you a spreadsheet, a pie shop. She will. She will. you want to see. I'll give it to you. But those numbers are almost becoming irrelevant because things are just very different. And so it's ever changing. It's very quickly moving. If I were to give advice to hiring managers or clients at this point, it would be to move quick, make decisions quick and rely on your partners to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Focus on what you need to do. Have your team focus on what they do on a day today. Have someone do a lot of the heavy lifting, move quick, make quick decisions and know that as much as you're interviewing the candidate because there's so many opportunities, the candidates are also interviewing you and your team. So make sure that you're focusing on interview process, interview quality, engagement, empathy. You know, a lot of work we're facing to. I see a lot of people turning offers down because they didn't like the interview process or they didn't feel comfortable with the team. Where before people we're taking jobs because they needed jobs.

And now it's so nitpicky that someone joined late and I didn't like that. It didn't make me feel like that team was moving quickly enough or that they were respectful of other people's time. So make sure that you're paying attention to your process. Move quickly, make decisions and trust your partners. Absolutely. Lee's got a question. Serious question. California Tech companies offer lower salaries and lots of stock. What negotiating room will there typically be? Listen, I think right now all companies, not California, all companies need to be aware of the war on talent right now and the salaries that are coming out. Yeah. Equity is great.

But I know a lot of our equity and stock is great. But I know a lot of people who don't even view it that way. And I think California and I mean, I'm here, you know, again, we can go and wrap up here with Lee's question. I know, but we keep getting questions. I know you got to go meet a client, but real quick, any quick thoughts on Lee's comment and then we'll wrap up. You know, I think companies do that in a lot of ways. I think focus on the intention of that. Sometimes they're giving you more stock because they want you to be there for five, six, seven years.

So think about how long does that vest for? That could be a better, a better financial decision to make. If you're not thinking you're going to be there five, six, seven years and talk about the vesting cycles. Maybe have it vest a little bit quicker on a shorter cycle from a stock perspective. And you know, you can negotiate that as well. And if there's different packages too, just to give you insight, you know, if you're working with most internal teams, there are salary bans in which somebody might value a salary versus stock more. So make sure to dig in. And if you feel like you're looking for one way or another, and don't hesitate to ask for that, most likely you'll get what you want.

I love this market specifically. Yes, yes. Well, Amanda, I know you got to go run to me. They client because you care about your client. So go run. Thank you again for coming on Amanda. I appreciate you with time. And I'll thanks for tuning in and I'll see you all tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye for being.