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Jon Brooks: Thanks again to Jacob for sharing his insights and approach. Three things stood out for me. First, his enthusiasm for always pushing the envelope for clients and candidates without needing to know what the payoff will be. Second, Jacob's approach to helping great clients and candidates tell their stories better and stand out from the crowd, whether they're job hunting or trying to attract candidates. And third, how he described the impact of having the right people in a business who can execute. Jacob, thanks for joining us.
Jacob Stripling: Happy to be here. Thank you for the invite.
Jon Brooks: Now it really pleased you here. Cool, so we're gonna kick off with a big question. In your eyes, how valuable is recruitment? This week I'm joined by Jacob Stripling, founder of FutureState Careers who help companies hire better and whole story helping great candidates stand out. Jacob shares how he is constantly adding value for his clients and candidates and his motivations for going above and beyond. We talk about the difficult balance between letting people know how good you are versus quietly doing great work without needing credit for it.
Jacob Stripling: I don't think that there's anything bigger and not because I'm biased in it, but I mean, everyone that, know, especially the executives and the sea level people that you talk to, it's like, you get the right people in the room and things just happen. Like that's internally at our company. We talk all the time where the other day we run on EOS and we were talking about our 10 year plan with our, um, with our implementer.
Jon Brooks: Thank you to Atlas for sponsoring the Value of Recruitment podcast. To learn more about how Atlas is creating an AI platform that helps recruitment agencies generate more placements with less effort, visit recruitwithatlas .com. it execute on any idea. If you found the show valuable, please leave a review and remember to subscribe or follow the show on your podcast app. You can also get more insights and inspiration by signing up to my added value emails on Substack. You can find the link in the show notes. Now go create some value. We also explore the difficulty of knowing when to charge a premium for higher level services and what recruiters value from their clients beyond just fees. Enjoy the show. I hope you find it valuable.
Jacob Stripling: And I was like, of course we have these plans and we have things we're trying to do. But I was like, the team that we have, I don't care if we're doing this or if we're doing installation or if we're doing like, it doesn't matter because I think the right people are everything. So I think that it's, I think it's the only thing. I think without it, everything else falls apart.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, I'm going to call you on that. think you might be slightly biased, but you're right. Other CEO's, CEO's who aren't in Rekumin. read about a CEO of WordPress was saying, yeah, he spends a third of his time hiring. ⁓ you just think, yeah, you're running a massive business. mean, WordPress pretty much underpins the internet as we know it. How does he divvy up his time? It's like, yeah, a third of his time is on that.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Sure.
Jon Brooks: Welcome to the Value of Recruitment podcast with me, Jon Brooks, sponsored by Atlas, the recruitment platform helping you become an AI powered recruiter.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: Everyone is talking about AI powered recruiters, but what does that actually look like? With Atlas as your CRM, it means every interaction with your candidate is automatically captured and searchable. If they mention their salary in an email, it's instantly recorded without you having to write anything. And behind the scenes, Atlas discovers every company that a candidate has worked for. The industries those companies operate in, ⁓ as well as things like company size and description.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think too, like, I mean, even so deep into like, just the philosophical realm of ⁓ is this all even about? You know, like, like, for most companies, it's like, okay, let's say that we, know, I mean, of course, if you're providing jobs and ⁓ a lot of money, and that's helping a lot of people, and you're giving a valuable service, but the people that you talk to are the most happy at their job, just love the people they work with. I mean, of course, they
Jon Brooks: All this means you can do your job much faster and add more value to your clients. To learn more about Atlas, go to recruitwithatlas .com.
Jacob Stripling: typically are passionate about the product they're making or the service they're delivering. But the people being around is like, ⁓ this, feel like it's not even work. And so that's where I think too, it's like, you know, when you can say that about where you work based on who is a part of it, like that's tough to beat. ⁓ those right people are, know,
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I also ⁓ came off listening to a podcast of a sports coach and he was saying, yeah, you get the right people. This was for an international team. So he put the right people in there. And then his advice was just make a decision and then go with that decision and make it work. If you've got a good person in the role, no matter what the role, the decision or the, direction you go in, that person can make it work and make it happen.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's all the time. Like we, you know, it's funny. ⁓ I also like, you see like leaders, you know, I like the, ⁓ the sign of respect to be like, look, it's never a, here's what we're going to do, whether you like it or not. You know, it's always like as much of a consensus as we can come to, but you're right. And that it almost feels like when you've got the right people, it doesn't even, it's like, we could pick this or this. All that we're doing is just figuring out if that's the right way. And then we pivot because we've got
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the right people, whether we're right or wrong, we'll be okay. We'll either hit it right the first time or we'll learn and get it right the second, third or fourth time. So I agree. love that.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, exactly. And yeah, we don't want to be too negative, but you have the wrong person. You've got to spoon feed them. You've got to hand, hand hold them through it. And then, yeah, they make a decision and then it doesn't go right. And yeah, that's where the pain comes in.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And sometimes with that, it doesn't even matter what the decision is, because it's not going to go right regardless, you know, it's just so yeah, I agree on that, though.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are plenty of companies you see competitors in industries and, yeah, two companies try the same strategy and one succeeds and one doesn't. you're like, ⁓ what, was the difference?
Jacob Stripling: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's what I was talking to, to an investor not long ago. And they were telling me about every time somebody tries to approach them with an NDA. And he's like, I'm so bored with NDAs, because none of you are going to do anything anyways. So I don't if you need me to sign an NDA, just go to it because he says so many of these conversations that he has. you know, they sign an NDA and they talk through all these things. And six weeks later, he looks up and he's like, so where is this idea? what, you know, so yeah, it's just the execution is everything. I mean, we, I even know, you know, thinking about a lot of things we've done internally, there's so many ideas that even when you take it to market, it's met with just overwhelmingly positive feedback, but the execution, it's like, it doesn't matter if the execution isn't there, you know, or, Yeah, so I just, think that's everything.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, we agree. Recruitment is pretty important here. So now there is a lot of recruitment. There are a lot of recruitment agencies. So how do you stand out? How do you do things differently from the other, from the tens and hundreds of thousands of other agencies that are out there?
Jacob Stripling: Yeah, yeah, I think so. ⁓ right. mean, recruit as recruiters, we are a commodity, you know, it is a commodity service, but for us, I know, know, we've always talked from the time that I started this and you look around and you start, especially in recruiting as an agency, because you get to see across the board, all these different companies and how they operate and ⁓ see the bones of the operation. ⁓ so I knew early on that as long as we held ourselves to a certain standard, we're going to be fine. Even I mean, as you know, in the workplace overall, now, this is definitely a blanket statement, but I found it to be true that the bar is not very high. And the ones who rise to meet that bar. Once get to that level, that is like, it's like, you know, to be whatever percent of the general market
is not too tough. But then you get to the top level, and now it becomes insanely tough, you know, where it's, it's how are you guys different? Well, everyone at this level.
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: works harder than all the competition. Everyone at this level cares about their customers. Everyone at this level is trying to bring innovative solutions to their customers. Like it's just all of those things, the integrity, the hard work, the we care, you know, those, the, the relationships over transactions, like that's everyone. And so the, the only things that we see time is I think you see it a lot these days where it's a lot of free value. think the free value is a big indicator of, is that value? You know, if it's something that you just threw together and gave it to the client and it's okay, but it's not really moving the needle and that's, ⁓ I think you're seeing it today. I mean, for example, I'm I'm a fan of Alex Hormozi and the stuff that he puts out and ⁓ you go on his website and all of his books are free. And it's that's ⁓ that's, that's hard to beat. And so you, then you look at something like, like that, and you say, if we're, for example, our model is kind of like, you know, we, we do business well so that we can make the money so that we can invest all of that into, into tools and R and D and then be able to bring that to our clients for free and continue to just give them elevated service. And so we're not bringing them these products that we took and then saying, Hey, we want you to pay a premium now or pay extra for these things, even though maybe we should. But the point being that we want to differentiate in that we're always trying to think aggressively, innovate. We always want to be pushing the envelope. And then we want to bring that to you without strings attached. And so for us, or even companies that we watch do that, that seems to be a major differentiator. you know, when you're able to bring those things and new services and new products and things like that. And you say, okay, how much is this going to cost us? And you say, well, actually it's just part of who we are. It's a part of our service offering. And it's like, oh, okay. You know, I think that's a huge one. What about you? What do you see?
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You mentioned, yeah. And that long list of like almost table stakes stuff that yeah, any good recruiter, one of the things is we care. yeah. And everyone says that ⁓ no recruitment website that says we don't care. ⁓ ⁓ that is a baseline there. But what you're doing, the way you describe it is you're saying, hang on, I'm doing all these things for you.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: You're showing you're, you're, you're proving that you want your clients to win. they're saying, hang on. We've firstly is showing how passionate you are about some of these ideas and that things can be done differently. And then you're bringing it to them. Um, you asked what
I think, uh, yeah, I always get twitchy when things are free. I don't like that word. Um, with my, uh, from my background, um, but no, it's super powerful. I mean, yeah, it's, it's all about.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I know that. Yeah.
Jon Brooks: Why are you doing the thing? If strategically you're offering that and you know, you described that circle just then. If that's what drives you winning premium business and repeat business from the clients you want, then that's working. There's, there's always a danger of, you know, I have quite a few agencies come to me and say, we offer, give away a lot of our value.
Jacob Stripling: Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: So I think, I don't know what you, whether you've ever thought that, but I've had people say, on, it feels like we go above and beyond. We're offering way more than let's say the industry standard, yet compared to our competitors. But their problem is they're usually not getting paid anymore. So they're still perceived as a commodity. They're seen as average, even though in their minds they're going above and beyond and they're creating all this value.
Jacob Stripling: Right. Right? I mean, that makes sense. And what you said totally makes sense. And of course, it's not like, Hey, here's this free thing. And we don't expect anything like no greater allegiance, no, no more repeat business. Like, of course, what we're trying to do is ingrain ourselves into your business in a way that you couldn't possibly imagine using somebody else, because no one else would do all of these things for you, which, of course, you know, results in repeat business that hopefully goes for, ⁓ years and years, referrals, spinoffs. So of course these and products and whatever innovations that we're building do result in, you know, hopefully a pretty great return. But even if it didn't, I mean, ⁓ think for us, you know, we want people to know that we're pushing the envelope on all these things and partially just because we like it. Like we, ⁓ would do it even if, even if it wasn't a part of our business, we'd still be ⁓ trying to push forward and move. And so, ⁓ so I think for us, it's, take a return to incentivize us to do it, which helps for us. think if you're doing it only out of what are we going to get back for this, then yeah, it could, it could make it tougher. but I know personally, I mean, I'm sure there's a balance and this is only my personal experience, but, for example, we, we launched, we launched a called whole story. which was a platform built for job seekers and being built for companies. But the beginning, I received a lot of different feedback on pricing as I mean, as you know, pricing is really tricky and it's hard to get right. ⁓ and of the people that were advocating to put it at a much higher price point.
Jon Brooks: Yep.
Jacob Stripling: We're not necessarily doing it strategically as much as just seeing dollar signs and saying, this is an opportunity for a big cash grab. I never wanted it to be that. And what I've, what I've found was like, as I let some of those things seep in, like it actually made it less effective because I mean, again, it's, like you said, it's, it's what's the message behind, like what's the motivation for these things? Like if the motivation is off and so, So that for us, I know this is a little long-winded and I'm getting kind of off track, but in thinking about giving away the value, like, I don't know. It's, it's, it to me almost goes all the way to the core of who we are. And it's like, we want to give you this because it selfishly makes us happy. It makes us happy to watch you, your mind be blown when we bring you this new solution that you didn't even think was possible. Like it just feels good. You know, it's like, it's like some people that, know, who are like, maybe if they're in philanthropy or whatever and it's like, what's in this for you? And it's like, sometimes it just makes people feel good and that's a good life, you know? So I don't know, there's a lot of aspects to it.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Yeah, and again, if I come back to how are you standing out, how are you perceived in your clients' minds, then they say, guys are really, ⁓ you say, you're pushing the envelope, you're good things. I always it's important with kind of, let's put it under the bracket philanthropy. It's useful if you're doing something that you're an expert in. If you're just saying, ⁓ we're just giving some money away or, I'm on the side. do this and it's incredibly unrelated. Then it's hard to understand the why. Whereas, yeah, we, are all people, ⁓ if you have the ability to say, hang on, I can help these people. And, ⁓ I mean, we haven't gone into the detail of what whole story is, but it's ⁓ helping express who are.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: better, right? So obviously there is a there is a win there as well. may ⁓ that beyond with you, they may go directly to a client, they may use another agency. But chances are, they're going to work with you or you're going to ⁓ pick the good candidates there. And they're going to be good at communicating that they're right for these roles.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Yeah. course. Sure. Sure. Mm-hmm. what the idea of whole story was born out of was that we, it's hard to talk to people who are great and who you sit across from. And they're telling you about how they've applied to 200, 300 or more jobs. And they've only had a two or three interviews. And they've just got a resume that looks just like everybody else's. And they're saying, will you just give me 30 seconds to tell you something about myself? And so we just like, those are hard to sit across from, you know, like, and I mean, as recruiters, we only have the positions that we have. And so if we don't have a role, you know, if, our niche is accounting and finance or sales or technology, and you know, you're doing something in the whatever sector.
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: we're probably never going to have anything that would align and be able to help you out. But what we can give you is this resource that you can take and use however you want to. So whether they use it with us or a competitor or for themself to go straight to the customer is irrelevant to us. was like the heart was just like, it's hard to see those people feel like they have no advocate. And so it's like, well, here, advocate for yourself, lead with who you are and not the paper. then, know, so the, that definitely could happen.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. I mean, as an industry, I think we get tired with the brush of we're transactional or we don't care. And especially a lot of candidates have negative experiences. I mean, in a competition for jobs, not all of them win, not all of them get the jobs. Sure. But also if they feel let down or that horrible phrase ghosted ⁓ an agency, once they're not relevant.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: that makes it a worse environment for all of us. So yeah, if you can be the one giving them care and giving them attention, that then creates potential advocates. I think most recruiters would agree that jobs and clients can come from anywhere. You help this kid and their dad comes back to them and...
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: says, by the way, I need to hire a new team. And you help my kid out and you're like, hey. you don't, ⁓ you say, I don't think many recruiters do with an ROI measure on. ⁓ But you make the world a better place, there are that come back to you. Nice. I like, ⁓ ⁓ we're up picture of you. ⁓
Jacob Stripling: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, you're driven with, with kind of innovation. You want to bring new things to your clients. So give us some more examples of, things you've created or built for your clients or candidates, and maybe some things that ⁓ worked and ⁓ you've done with them or how, how you've ⁓ beyond that.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's whole story has been an interesting one because this, the it's been on a, on a pretty large scale from coast to coast in the States. And, ⁓ but there've been a lot of lessons we've learned from that. for example, like one of the things that we wanted to do with that was, and to give context of what whole story is, it's like a video based platform that just gives far more context than a resume does. It's, not rocket science. This wasn't some platform that you could have never thought of. Like we just wanted to give people a place where there's an about me, there's a video, there's references. And with references, we know what references are. People are just going to get whoever liked them. Who's going to send a bad reference? But so we got in front of that and we're like, look, a reference could be a spouse or a parent or a friend or an employee or an employer or your kid or your coach, you know, or your teacher. It's we want to know what people say about
you. And then there's an aspect of video.
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: with that as well, where somebody can send a video reference to carry a little more weight. There's also a key moments portion of the whole story where like, you know, say if you took off for three years to take care of your mom or dad, somebody was sick. And so you have this big gap on your resume that you can't explain for, but well, now we've got that place. Or like, even if you just want to give context to, you know, in this year, this big thing happened or in this year I got laid off, which caused me to take a total detour and go over here. So it's that, and then you've got your resume at the bottom because we want people to be viewed through who they are by the time you get to the resume, as opposed to let me look at your experience and maybe I'll never even get to who you are as a person. So, and then you've got all your socials on there. Everything is totally optional. You can make it exactly what you want. It's all about being for the candidate and then you get a link that's yours. But I say that just to give context around what it is. One of the really interesting things with it, has been that we thought people are so tired of being boxed in to these, know, these subcategories of who people are in their career as a candidate. ⁓ And we wanted to make sure that there was minimal prompts, minimal guidance on what to say or how to say it or what to do. And what we've found actually from a lot of feedback over hundreds of people that have used it is, It seems that the more autonomy we have, actually creates more paralysis giving some form of structure or ⁓ rails or something actually allows for more creativity, ⁓ was something I didn't expect. for example, like if I, if you just showed me a white screen and I'm wanting to create our website and I'm having to start from there, I'm like, yikes, this is ⁓ okay. have so much that it could be as opposed to a designer brings me, you know, a template. And now I'm instead, I'm making tweaks. so we're building some stuff with whole story around that. Um, we were trying to make sure right now the balance is everything is AI. And with whole story, we were trying to go up current with that to say like, look, this is all about you and we're not using a ton of AI in this. Of course we used a ton like in building it and things like that. But, um, but there've been some interesting things there. Like for example, some of the things that we're doing right now, like take resumes, we don't want to even deal with resumes anymore. Like we don't want to take them. We don't want to send resumes to companies. We don't, we just want to be done with them altogether because we know, especially at the scale that we all deal with ⁓ resume is just, it doesn't suffice for giving me a picture of who you are. And so things that we're trying to build right now is our own proprietary recruiter intelligence system.
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: where every conversation that we've had in this buttoned up privacy and there's no identifiable, you know, things from these conversations when we're using it. But everyone that is put into our database from the transcripts, from the conversations we have, from the tone they used, from the things they said were important to them, as opposed to us just going into Loxo or recruit CRM or ⁓ of the, ⁓ know, any of the databases people use. creating our own database with all of those things. And we're able to pull from those conversations. So nobody ever falls through the cracks. So we're not doing a Boolean search or an advanced AI search or an agent to like, give me software developers, you know, on the East coast, looking for this pay. We're able to take a conversation that we had in great detail. Maybe it's an hour long conversation with the company and we're able to go and pull from that database, not just from the criteria, but from the actual transcripts.
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: So we're able to match people that we think based off of all the points that we have, the data points that it pulls from, it's a much faster system. It's a much more accurate system. makes sure that, because I mean, know, recruiters, it's, is easy for people to fall through the cracks when you're talking to as many people as we are. And ⁓ so like that, you know, ⁓ we're, that we're building a
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: ⁓ system where the way that we submit candidates is different and it's pulling again from all of those key points about somebody where, you know, if I'm a hiring manager and I say, would this person want or not want this job? Well, now you have all of these data points and key points as opposed to just our notes from a call and the, know, well, the pay matches up. They said they want a good culture and haven't job hopped. So they're a good candidate. Be like, well, we know there's way more that goes into it. So. What we're seeing from that and what we project is much better retention rates, fewer interviews, theoretically, fewer interviews, even in the process to be like, look, by the time you have your first interview with somebody, you've got a really clear picture on who they are and how they match. So you're starting from a place ⁓ of, already knowing them as opposed to starting from discovery. Like, tell me about yourself. It's like, well, we already know a lot about you. Now we want to see if this is actually a fit as opposed to let's do the first call with HR kind of tell you about our culture. And then from there, what we're going to do is we're going to have you come and meet with us and we're going to see if we, you know, if we mesh, then we're going to have a more technical conversation. Like, why are we spending all that time doing all that when we already took a lot of time to get really deep with this candidate? Same thing with the company. So there's a lot of things that we're trying to do with that. think that recruiting
companies have always been one of the biggest offenders when it comes to having really valuable data all over the place and us not utilizing it correctly. So those are just a couple of the things that we're working through.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, I like that. think, yeah, the phrase that just comes to mind is just the richness. ⁓ ⁓ problem with a CV is ⁓ all seem the same. And I what you said about great candidates. find it the hardest of all.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: to stand out on a page. And actually that's not dissimilar to what I help recruitment agencies with. Yeah, everyone's using the similar language in terms of resumes. trying to stick to two or three pages and they're kind of hemmed in by having ⁓ having to look the same, having to use the same format and they can't get that richness across. ⁓ I really like that.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: You said from a, I heard you talking to Benjamin Menna his podcast about how you get the richness of information from the client. So just talk us through that. Cause for me, that really stands out and illustrates a point that I want to talk about as well.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, this is one, if you've been in recruiting for any amount of time, and when you ask, it's the same way if somebody asked, asked me to them a little about myself, like, I'd probably say things like, you know, I ⁓ finding out new ways to do things. I love my family. love my, you know, I, I'm not for excuses. want to, but those are probably going to be, and we've seen it through whole story, you know, ⁓ again, you get to a certain level, kind of everybody has very similar high level things. Well, the same is true for these companies that will go and talk to them and say, look, if somebody is getting an offer for $20,000 more than you can offer, then your budget will allow. And there's no way you could make that happen. What are you going to tell them to get them to stay here or to come choose you? a lot of the answers that we get, people don't know because they're not a recruiter going and having ⁓ 50 conversations in a month with companies across country that their answers are very similar to all the other ones that we're hearing. And so they're very similar to a candidate. So when a company says, we're like a family and we like to joke around with each other and you know, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We work hard, but we play hard and we ⁓ happy hours and we do, you know, these parties and whatever, but you're like, Yeah, those things are all good. I'm in no way am I saying that that you know, those things sound great, but those things in themselves don't don't differentiate you almost at all. And also talk is cheap. So the example that I like to give like we Ben's podcast, we were talking about a tiered system. But it's like, think of that as the tier one, like we treat people like, or, we're a family here, whatever, or a team, what what could the ⁓ the Semantics don't matter,
but then you continue to go down the line to, for example, I was sitting in a boardroom with a co with a client of ours and not a huge company, maybe 3,500 employees. And when I asked them this question across their sea level, it was like, it didn't even register what I was asking because way they operate every day was like these things they're doing for their employees don't even stand out because it's core to who they are. And I'm sitting there watching it and I'm like, ⁓ you guys have no idea what you even have here. And so this is them. For example, there's a story that I like to tell where there was an employee of theirs who was showing up to work with a, with a flat tire. Like over the course of several days, like it just kept showing up low. team just immediately quietly didn't tell the person went and put four new tires on their car while they were at work. And they just walk out to that thing. No, nobody needed credit.
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: They didn't post it on their social media. They didn't do a big like, hey guys, look what we're doing. It was just the way they operate. And when they told me that story in a way that wasn't that it was like, they weren't even sure if that story was what I was talking about. And I was like, this is the T this is the lower tier of we're a family because if your kid's sick, I'll let you off early to take him to the doctor. versus we had someone coming in with a flat tire and we took up a silent collection on the team and put four new tires on their car without ever looking for credit. are two very, very different stories. so with them, when we talk to those companies, it's the type of place that you think like I'd send my family to you and, work it's kind of like what we talked about at the beginning where people are everything that type thing allows people to be far more, or far less strict on what they expect from their actual, like what they're going to be doing in those things, because that carries so much weight that they get a lot more flexible on like, okay, I can see doing that because if I'm supported like that here, that is a different, so in differentiating, feel it's, true for recruiting companies, you know, and what I think is really hard about these things, especially for a company like I'm referring to is I think they do it from such a true sense of who they are. that nobody ever finds out about it because to them, feels gross to advertise it, which is the trickiest balance. We talk about it all the time internally where it's like, well, as soon as we tell people that we did this nice thing, now it doesn't feel so nice. Now it feels, you know, it feels motivated by, I don't know, us letting people in. And that's a hard thing in business. But to answer your question about the differentiation like that, that the two things between,
Jon Brooks: Yeah. you
Jacob Stripling: Hey, we're adults here. You can take off early if you need to, to go do your thing. Or the tire story are just, when you hear it, so obvious.
Jon Brooks: to bring it back to recruitment is very much like your every recruitment agency website saying, Hey, we're different or we're consultative. I think you said earlier, yeah, words are cheap. but actually, you know, we go down those tiers, as you described it, how are you consultative? All right. Your example ⁓ you've just given us you sit down with people who are so nice. They don't know they're nice. ⁓
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jon Brooks: you took the time to get down to that point, and then you helped them reflect and help them understand that they were that they had something to offer beyond a salary and a job, right? it's another good point that you kind of ⁓ kind of come out of all of this is We have overview. We have the ability to see people context, people and companies in context. So for example, ⁓ the or the behind the resumes, they don't know ⁓ how much they are. So we can them that platform. And again, firms don't know that ⁓ not everyone is nice. or that they're offering something that others don't or can't. So it's really powerful for us. I don't know quite how we put that into words, but yeah, ⁓ can hold a mirror up and then say, well, this is actually what you look and also this is what everyone around you looks like as well.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Right, right. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, I just, mean, even like there's a there's an internal example that we were talking about yesterday. And one of our one of our guys was talking about somebody the how had started talking with the candidate a while back and we didn't have roles for him and he up with them and he was kind of having like weekly coaching calls just, you know, for just trying to help. And the person landed a job. And he was talking about how excited he was for that person. The job wasn't through us. And it's like that when I see that, and we, I'm not going to go, I guess I'm telling you here on this, but like, we're not going to go, we're not going to go post this thing. It's like, that's just a really not, you know, and you see those things. And so even when I see it is just a good, it's good to be introspective, like, and I know it's hard, it's really challenging and recruiting, or even as a company to say, look, Like our time is valuable. And so when you're giving things like your time for free, it is hard not to. To look back and be like, can I afford to give this time or this advice or this money or this help or whatever it is? And I think that's where it just goes to again, like the company, because it does feel one of the questions that we ask the lower you get in finding out who someone is or a company is, is like, what's the cost of the sacrifice? that you're making to provide this thing. Is it money? Is it time? Is it expertise? Is it that you're giving something that could potentially be stolen as an idea and used for somebody else? Cause you're just trying to help them in the moment. but you know, for
example, with the tire, it was money. It was, it was inconvenience. was time ⁓ all those things together. then, for, my teammate, my partner, he, if for it was, look, it's all this time. like, he, nobody has ever going to know that he did that. And like the way that I saw him light up when that person got the job was just as excited, if not more, than you see when we play somebody. And so it's like, like you said, I don't know, call it whatever you want karma or whatever, but those things do seem to come back around. It's just a good, you know, don't know. It's just good, good vibes.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. But you've got to run a business off it as well. Like, ⁓ how'd, I think just on that example, you're right. I think we've all probably seen posts on LinkedIn where someone then that they've done that, which completely breaks the spell. ⁓ it's like, ⁓ wow. You were so kind. And now you've boasted about it. ⁓
Jacob Stripling: No doubt that's the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, does. It's hard though. Yeah, so hard though. I, ⁓ so hard. It is so hard.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Well, it helps that it's like selling stuff. mean, a lot of recruiters have problems selling themselves. So an individual consultant saying, I'm great. But if you ask a consultant, tell me about your teammate who sit next to you. They're like, ⁓ they're amazing. This is how they've gone above and beyond. So again, you're able to talk about your partner. I assume it was your partner. I assume it wasn't you just being incredibly humble in there. It was actually you who did it.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No, no. And it's, funny you say that because that was one of the other things we found with whole story and why we did the reference section for the videos. And we even thought about potentially doing the thing is that the video for the person kind of qualifies them in or out for a lot of companies, you know, wanting to see how somebody talks, but,
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: But we thought we were like, man, we're running into the same, cause we know that to be true. You know, like I said, for me to say that about him, I say it and I'm excited to say it. I'm like, ⁓ I want to brag on him because he's like, he never would. And the same thing with the whole stories. And I think recruiting in general, sometimes it's like, Hey, could, if I could hear six people talk about you, I don't even need to hear what you think about yourself. Cause I just got the true picture. Like, ⁓
Jon Brooks: Yeah.
Jacob Stripling: There's an aspect of that where, you know, and ideas of being like, what is the best way for us to hire? What is the best way for us to qualify in or out? Is it that, or is it for us to take, you know, hey, I want like, for example, one of the best whole stories that we, that we've seen was somebody who had like an influential person they knew from the community, their, their preacher from church, their pastor from church, whatever,
an of theirs. So they had such a spectrum of different facets of their life. So by the time you listen to what each all three of those people said, you got three different versions that all made this one core person. And so like you said, I think there's a lot of that that ties into recruiting to say like, is there a better way to do some of these things than even for us to get it straight from you? You know, I don't know, I don't know. I know that's why we did references, but the reference system is broken. You know, the way that please.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just think about my own behavior. When I look at, you know, a recruitment leader, you know, who I'm either interested in or they've contacted me and I'm like, ⁓ I want to find out more about them before I talk to them. I'll look on LinkedIn. I have some issues with LinkedIn recommendations, but they provide a little bit of that, that picture. And you look down and sometimes it's like, ⁓ yeah, there's two references.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: from two candidates ⁓ back in 2014. And I'm just like, yeah, it's not a perfect system. It's like, if I could see five clients and how they've worked with you over the years, ⁓ yeah, and maybe, and some candidates as well. I wanna see that. That gives you that picture. But yeah, we miss out on that. Again, it's not always easy to ask, but it is valuable.
Jacob Stripling: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, right.
Jon Brooks: I was saying earlier, you kind of, you hold a mirror up to your clients and say, look, you may not know you do this, but, you're doing something that others aren't. stand out. I'm going to play that back on you. I'm going to say you're more innovative than most recruitment agencies. ⁓ and I actually don't know what, what fees you charge. but I'm interested like.
Jacob Stripling: ⁓ thank you. Appreciate that.
Jon Brooks: Do you charge a premium? And if you don't, how do you feel about agencies who are charging a similar amount to you who aren't going the extra mile or the extra three miles as you are?
Jacob Stripling: Sure. Right. Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, do I think we're charging a premium? No, not proportional to what we're delivering, but the way that we think about it, and it's probably flawed, it's probably naive, but everything to us is just what's the signal that we're getting back from the company. So like we could charge, you know, 30 to 40 % fees all day. And if we're working with people who ⁓ aren't coming back or are just, you know, not, not treating us as a partner or any of these things. so in our, like, for example, you know, we have a retained, a retained fee basis and everyone that we're retained with, it's almost, it's almost like as soon as they choose that route. Everything else is almost assumed. Like you see the value in us. You're going to meet us in the middle on this. This isn't going to be us dragging you up a hill because you're uncertain if you want to do this. Like, so, so could we charge more? Yes. Should we probably, well, we may be, I don't know. Um, but for us, like we, cause we've even had customers before say like, Hey, is that, is this fee enough? And what we tell them is we're like, look, as long as you're here and you meet us in the middle, like the, that becomes almost within reason irrelevant because what it ends up being when they're doing that is like, our actual take home by the time that we're, we've been doing business with you for several years is far greater than one or two large fees might've been if we came in and, you know, helped you fill a couple of roles. So Again, I know there's probably a lot of flawed logic in that, but that is the way that we kind of think about when we're, you when we come in at a price that might be a little lower.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I can give you all the pricing theory in the world and best practice and whatever else. But yeah, the joy of running your own business is decide. And not just pricing, it's product development. ⁓ It's you work with candidates, how we work with clients, what KPIs you have, how strict or how tough they are. ⁓ All of those things, ⁓ it's up to you. ⁓ And
Jacob Stripling: ⁓ Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: I think I work with a lot of the agencies I work with, their leaders say, we feel undervalued and I'm not getting that from you. Yeah, I was slightly kind of asking the question I just asked to kind of probe and prompt you to see, but yeah, you're clearly happy where you are. mean, there is a huge flag. If your clients are saying, hang on, shouldn't we be paying more? ⁓
Jacob Stripling: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, the hard thing is, I mean, you're the expert on the matter, it's like, there, I know, like we know clients who choose which recruiter they go with based off of who has the higher fee, like the associated premium level service. You know, it's kind of like, look, I can sell you two pairs of shoes. It's almost the same shoe. mean, these are, it's like cliche examples, but it's like, I don't know if I want that one that's $50 less than that. makes me think it's not as good. Be like, no, we use the same. We just wanted the price at fair. And they're like, ah, I'll go with the more expensive one. It's an interesting, it's such an interesting, the actual logic behind it. So you're right. You're right. But yeah, it probably is a giant red flag if we've been asked. Are the fees high enough? Yeah.
Jon Brooks: Yeah, yeah. yeah, ⁓ mean, I, I am a cheerleader for not high prices, but yeah, the right prices, but getting paid for the value you're creating. And I think you are creating a lot of value. but price is challenging. There are some clients who are put off by price. There are also clients who love working with great recruiter and work with them a lot.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah, sure. Sure. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: And then those fees stack up and the CFO comes in and goes, sorry,
why, uh, why have we just given Jacob that amount? And it's like, ah, cause he's really good. He's like, yeah, but is he really good and worth quarter of a million dollars in fees last year? Which I believe we are good recruiters are. yeah, it's, yeah, it's important to take a holistic view on it.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. I agree
Jon Brooks: Awesome. Well, really appreciate you ⁓ how you see creating all this innovation, going the extra mile for your clients. I appreciate me you a bit of a dig at the end about how you price and making you think. Any final any kind of final message you would give people who are listening based on your experience and what you've seen?
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. ⁓ And I think right now, and this is its, its, its entire, own conversation, ⁓ but the that we're seeing come out, the tools that we're using, ⁓ the that we're seeing be created. I think the next six months to two years are going to be so. Black and white from where we are right now that for most people, I just, if, if you think we're not there yet. We're a lot closer than you think. And I just hope that people are aware or at least looking into that. I'm not advocating that somebody, you know, lose sleep and just, you know, have a panic attack and go look at what's being created. But I think there are a lot of people that we're hearing from who think we're still 10 to 15 years away from where we are today. And I think that that's a scary place to be. If when you find that out is the time that you're looking for a new job and you you're trying to retroactively create that, you know, value that right now, if you could just start looking into those things. So I think that's really important. That's, that is the one piece of advice that we're giving everybody is like, don't bury your head in the sand on this stuff. And I know you might not like it, a lot of it is what it is. And so that's, I think that's a major piece.
Jon Brooks: Yeah. No, it's good advice. And yeah, I mean, it's almost, I was going to say we could come back in two years, but it feels like we could come back a lot sooner than that. And so much will have changed. think the, to avoid that kind of panic attack response. Think my advice on this is think of what, you always wanted to do. And it is probably so much easier to do it.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon Brooks: So all those things, if only I could do this or if only this worked better for me. So it probably can, or pretty soon probably a way you could make that happen, which is exciting.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. ⁓ yeah. We've, I mean, we, the, thing that we say now, I mean, it's not, if it's not only us saying it, but it's the, the, one of the only barriers now is just your imagination. Like, can you think of it and then go get it? Like the, the excuse of we don't have the budget we don't have the head count or I don't have the expertise is And so I think ⁓ that's that's a cool place to be if you receive it right. You know,
Jon Brooks: Yeah, Well, we'll come back in two years because I want to hear where your imagination has gone next. Because you've already gone a long way. Awesome. Jacob, thank you again. It's been a real pleasure.
Jacob Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank you.