The Secret to Hiring Top Talent

0:09Today, we have Mr. Walter from HireFinder. How are we doing, Walter?

0:18feeling good uh doing pretty good and you know again cave on thank you very much for uh for the opportunity i'm hoping to yeah and i'm also we're also hoping to learn a little bit about you i know i'm excited because just before the call you were telling me a little bit of what you what you do and i thought oh this is going to be a good one so from what i understand you have figured out a way to help companies recruit, train higher at a cost-efficient way instead of having to pay typical recruiting fees. Before we jump all into that, tell us a little bit of who Walter is. How did you get to where you are?

0:54Tell me a little bit of your story. yeah for sure thanks for uh thanks for asking so uh born raised in new york um a fledgling and then eventually a failing professional tennis player i tried to give it a go i tried to become the next you know roger federer andre agassi didn't happen so i took my my talents into the corporate world, eventually getting into, after some sales leadership gigs, into recruiting and hiring. And I've been in talent acquisition. So I've been in talent acquisition for two decades, big tennis player. I love it. And I'm a big fan of tennis. Talk about that on the next episode.

1:41And you're right now, you're working with venture employer. Is that correct? Correct? Yeah. So Venture Employer Solutions, Kavon, we are the second largest in the world for HR outsourcing. Maybe you've heard of ADP, right? They're the biggest, the 800-pound gorilla, and we're the second largest in the world. So we provide HR outsourcing solutions for all of our clients. So let's talk. Give me a little bit of a breakdown. When you say HR solutions, What do you mean by that? Yeah. So, Kayvon, you are, hypothetically, you're a business owner. You're out there. You're in the world. You're making your widget and you're keeping your head down.

2:27Well, what do you know about HR compliance, about the laws, the regulations? Do you know the best way to get your employees health benefits, let's say, or provide them with a 401k plan? That's all the stuff we do. We will write you a sexual discrimination handbook to have on for your company because unfortunately, there's too many companies out there who are at risk. They're liable and ignorance is not a defense these days in our litigious society. So that's what we do. We provide all the different HR aspects to a company. So we are the subject matter experts and recruiting. Absolutely. So just just take a step back so we understand you come from what it sounds like an outsource HR agent.

3:22I'm going to call an agency, but I think there's probably more of a firm where you handle all HR related items for businesses. Now, what kind of typical sizes of businesses are we talking here? Talking Fortune 500. We talking startup. everything in between? Yeah, it's a great question because it does tie in what we're going to talk about. By the way, we have about 140 ,000 clients. So clients are all over. Yeah, I know, right? It's like a big deal. 140 ,000 clients, but our average size is about 24 employees. So it's a small, our average, now we have fortune 500, we have startups just getting off the ground, but our average client size is 24 employees.

4:10What I would call more of a small business. So again, I'll just say this, if you're a business owner, it sounds like, wow, like if you need HR, you know, anything to do with HR, you don't even have an HR department and you think you're safe. I know for sure in the United States, you are not safe, especially if you have an employee, you need HR. I'm not a big fan of HR. We ain't going to talk about HR today. I just wanted to understand kind of where we're coming from. Because I know today you're excited to tell us about this new product, this new offer you have, which I think is very interesting because I know one of the hardest things right now that I'm seeing a lot of business owners go through, not only are they trying to acquire great leads and convert great leads, it's also talent acquisition, hiring the right people for the right seats, the right butts, and people that are going to stay and be loyal and actually do the job and fulfill the needs of the business, no matter what size it is.

5:04So tell us a little bit before we go right into it. I want to like, what makes you the expert in this? What have you done or what has the company done to say that this is what we've done and this is how we've changed the game? How are you flipping the game upside down? Yeah, sure. So for sure, this is the most fiscally sound approach to finding top talent. And because our client base is mostly small and midsize business, we say that we focus on the SMB sector. So mostly our clients have been kind of complaining to us or distressed about the fact that they cannot get the top talent because the big boys and girls, the big companies out there who can't afford to pay 25 or 30 percent of the first year base salary, they're snatching up a lot of the talent out there.

6:07So what we've done is we created a very, very cost-effective solution, which will help small companies who don't have those huge budgets for recruiting and talent acquisition to be able to compete. Now, let's talk about that because I know what you're talking about, but I don't want to assume that everybody that's listening understands what you just said. Specifically around the, you know, they take the 20 to 30 % of the first year budget. So how do typical recruiters usually work? Yeah, I'll break it down for you, Kavin. So a typical recruiter will charge, on average these days, 25 % of the first year base salary.

6:49So hypothetically, if you want to hire a graphic designer, okay, a graphic designer typically is, you know, in the United States is typically making around$80 ,000 a year. Okay. So if I go out and search, I find you that graphic designer, you interview them, you hire them. The first day that graphic designer starts work, you now owe me$20 ,000. That's for one hire, 25 % of the$80 ,000. That's a$20 ,000 fee. You write a check and you send it over. The person starts work. Hopefully, they make it, they last, and life is good. Occasionally, we all know things happen, but it's really costly. And by the way, I have been a recruiter, again, for a long time.

7:46I've been paid many, many, many, many times that$20 ,000 check. Sometimes I think my largest placement was$54 ,000. That's one check for one hire at one time. And no guarantee. As you said, anything can happen, right? Hire slow, fire fast, and you don't get that 20K back, I'm assuming. You don't. So look, we will offer a 90-day replacement. You're not getting the 20K back. And on top of that, as you mentioned, really a lot of business owners, they don't have$20 ,000 in cash. They can just fork out so they can hopefully hire the right employee to do the job that will deliver the cash three, six, nine months later.

8:34And like you said, unless you're the big fortune, your big top, you know, top company that snatch them all up. They have the bigger playbooks, you know, and the bank, you know, dollars that they can afford that. So how are we flipping this upside down? So now, first time ever, bring it to the new entrepreneur, the small business owner just trying to make it happen, wanting to grow stuck with, you know, I'm going to say the Upwork type people and want the real absolute A players in their business today. You got a new product. You got a new service. Let's break that down. Tell us what's happening.

9:17All right. So Venture Employer Solutions, the big parent company, we listened to our client base who was, you know, who was upset, complaining, having trouble growing. So we created our solution called HireFinder, Kaven. And HireFinder provides our clients with a team of three recruiters. So if you're a prospect, a client, and you're looking to grow in some ways in your company, you want to hire some people, you would receive three recruiters to join your team. Now, they would be working from our offices, but they would recruit for you exclusively for the amount of time that you choose. We also will provide you with a project manager to help handle all of the logistics, everything that, you know, like a liaison between the recruiting team and your company.

10:17We provide you with all the resume databases. Like, for instance, not all. Okay. Not all the job boards in the world because there's millions of them. We'll provide you with Monster.com and CareerBuilder and ZipRecruiter and Indeed. And we provide our recruiters, the ones that will be working for you, with LinkedIn recruiter seats, which are ungodly expensive. So you get all that. We create customized dashboards for you. So once a week, we could look at these dashboards and this way, you know where you're at always would track the KPIs, you know, the metrics of how many people we called, how many people we presented to you, how many submittals, how many people you hired.

11:05And on top of that, on top of that, and this is really where, Kayvon, this is where I think we really separate ourselves. We're not just going to put up postings on the job boards. We're not just going to send nice messages over LinkedIn. We're not just going to send Facebook messages. We're going to do all that. And I know this is radical. This is revolutionary. Yeah, and actually have some calls. home and and and we call candidates we we do what we used to do in the old days head hunting so we pick up the phone and we call people yes at work we call them at home we call we find their cell phone and we ask them hey are you open to a conversation just a conversation with a great client who has a great offering just take the meeting and then you never know you put two smart Yeah, I love it.

12:03So I've seen a full done for you recruiting kind of hiring bespoke kind of service that you've been able to offer to like, I'm going to say the little guy. Now, are we still offering the same type of pricing structure where you have to pay 20 % of the first year salary? Or is that changed to? Yeah, great, great question. Before I answer that, let me just share. We actually have some Fortune 200 clients. We have some companies, some clients who are utilizing us. They have a big recruiting team. So it's not only for the little guy. It's why we created it. But some of our clients use us for a portion of the hiring process.

12:49In other words, we're fully customizable for whatever you need for us to do. So do you do interviews as well? Hiring paradigm. Yeah, okay. And it seems like you would create the onboarding documentation, the SOPs. Everything. I mean, realistically, all things HR, very bespoke, kind of tailoring to the needs of the business. Now, in recruiting and hiring HR firms like that, there's usually two sides, right? You either represent the client or you represent the people. Who do you guys represent? Well, we represent the client, number one, because they're paying our bills. but there's no placement fee here.

13:36It's a whole different model. So because of that, because of that, most recruiters who are driven by the placement fee, okay, you know, they sometimes try to force a square. He's calling out the competition here. Oh, I was. Yeah. So, so I'm just saying we are incentivized to do a great job and provide a flow of candidates and we will let you, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner, decide who do you want to hire because we're not going to charge you a dime besides our fees, okay, per hire. So part of pitch me, right, is me working on your pitch. And I usually wait till the end for the elevator pitch, but I love what I'm hearing here and I want to help out even when I see it before I forget.

14:27So there's two things I wanted people to understand. If you saw what he did, which I loved and you did brilliantly. Number one, I gave him a price. I asked him for the price. And did you notice he handled that objection? Well, before we get the price, let me show you X. He didn't give us the price yet. He started to still sell right a little bit of the features, but kind of the value. But here's the one thing I always tell people, you never, ever put down your competition. and you indirectly did. Now it's a little different here. We're on a podcast. We're not on a sales call. We're not taking, you know, we're not really in that sales cycle yet, but how can we learn from that?

15:05I would just say in that, instead of saying, oh, you know, these, you know, recruiters, they just, they cared about, uh, uh, their commission. Basically they only cared about their commission. So they would put, you know, a round peg and a square hold, all that stuff. There's an opportunity for you to give me a little bit of a history a little bit of stats, a little bit of who you are as a person and how has you evolved. So things like, so we could have went like that. You know, it's interesting you say that. That's all the reason why I'm here actually, Walter. After being in the recruiting game for 20 years, I watched so many people focus on the wrong things, like caring more about their commission instead of the mission of the business.

15:45And I remember as I went through it, I got caught up in all that too. And what I realized was that's not what I want to be. It's not who I am. actually what I do here is I really where I get my jollies off right is connecting the right people to the right businesses because when that happens two people win and as a result of that I get paid handsomely for that so what we've done is we flipped recruiting upside down we don't actually charge a recruiting fee we charge what I'm going to assume you never told me this but more of a monthly fee there's some other fee we charge another fee so we're not actually motivated by getting you a hot candidate and just sending them your way and hoping they stick and moving on.

16:23We're actually motivated for sending you the right candidate who will stay a lifetime so that we can do business long-term.

16:33Kayvon, what are you doing later? Because I mean, you're looking for a side gig here? No, that's phenomenal feedback. And I really appreciate it. That was great. A great added value there uh that you just threw my way and by the way yeah i know i can tell i have that yeah yeah for sure so you you really hit it right on right on the nail uh and that approach is just 10 times more professional yeah well it is also bimmer story right story facts tell story sell right so again and then that was one approach right the other way you can do it if you have stats, right? Did you know that 90 % or 40 % of most firms, whatever it is, like whatever the stat might be, right?

17:16Like in this case, 60 % of most firms who actually place their candidates in businesses fail. And the reason for that is this. So now you're not putting down the competition again. You're just saying what the problem is. And what we've done is we were tired of being that statistic. Do you know what I mean? After working, here's now, after working with a hundred or having, you said, what was it again? 140 ,000 after working with probably more than that, but currently working with 140 ,000 employees, employers, let's call it. There's a reason why businesses work with us. I would think so. 140. Okay.

17:53You've got my attention now. Do you get what I'm saying? But you never bragged about it. Again, you just slid that in indirectly to prove a point that the current model or the old model, let's say, is not working. It worked back then. you know when you even just said we used to uh head hunt head hunt right that model works we've lost the model that once worked which was we'd actually pick up the phone and just start having normal conversations with great people and asking them if they're looking somewhere along the way we've become complicated over online people put safeguards up oh did you actually know because i just heard this that which i was waiting for you to ask to ask about more about this i just heard that in the recruiting industry right now, the way it was said in the last podcast, I didn't understand it, but what they were saying was the replacement rates or the level of people who are actually leaving jobs.

18:52So in this case, people who are open for a new opportunity has dropped over by 50 % because of the current market. People are scared. We don't know what's going on. We're uncertain. So people might get something sexier, but they're just, you know, they're afraid to move. My question to you is, are you seeing that the same thing in your market? Is that, you know, a correct stat? Is that what's happening today? Why are people afraid to go after something bigger, better? Why are we playing the safe game with our careers, our finances, our family, our health? And most importantly, I would assume our happiness.

19:33yeah wow i mean how much time do you have came on because there there's there's a lot to unpack there um and a lot of this has to do with at least the timing of covid so post immediately post covid a lot of employees said you know what yeah my happiness my the culture the my work-life balance. There's nothing more important. So they were giving the middle finger to the employer a lot, searching for their happiness. And there was a trend. I mean, there's lots of the great resignation. There's lots of cute names for everything. So people were leaving. They were leaving at all the time high. Okay.

20:20So now we're talking, that's what I thought. So we're going back a little bit to what I was just saying. Okay. So I love it. So in COVID, I get everyone because the stimulus was the stimulus. I mean, we don't want to go down that road, but we get it. There was this idea that I can make money, not work and live this high life because I was stuck online watching everyone else. And nobody's seen me do everyone else. But right now I'm using the quotations for you guys are listening. Everyone else making all the money and online. I can just go home and do it. I love it. We're on the same page here.

20:51So there was this huge uproar of people going, I mean, some of them being faced to actually leave their jobs, but a lot of them just thinking, hey, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not doing the grind. I'm not working Monday to Friday. I'm not going to, I'm not sitting in the car. This is a blessing for me. And then now here we are. So now we move forward and a lot of people have found a better career, a better opportunity. Companies are a little more hesitant to just hire fire, bring new people on willy nilly because two or three years, three or four years ago, it was the Wild West out there. I think what you're seeing in the decrease of people leaving is a little more of a level set that employers and employees are starting to settle in.

21:48I mean, even just think about the whole hospitality industry. You know, that was 100 % shut down in Coke. 100%. So a lot of those people never went back. We know that. I mean, hospitality, I don't know what is in the States, but in Canada, it's down. by 20 percent like people don't understand how big of a number that is that's a massive number like for a whole industry to be down 20 percent we're not just talking about employees here we're not talking about people who are willing to work at the restaurants we're talking about people who are willing even to walk in and eat at the restaurants yeah yeah you know again nothing really came out of COVID.

22:31However, employers, employers, in my opinion, are starting to listen more and more and better. They're better listening to their employees. They're hearing what the employees are saying instead of, oh, they're working. They're working for me. Where are they going to go? Instead of that now, they're like, oh, wait a minute. We should take care of our people because they have other options. They can leave because they were leaving at great rates. So now the employers have taken note of that. And I feel they've made some good changes to their culture, offering better benefits, maybe better pay. So, you know, again, there's that level set.

23:16Yeah, I hear that. So how is this new offer going for you guys? Like, what's the market saying about it? Are people excited about it? We still haven't gotten to the price of it. I love that. We'll get there. And I'm not expecting, I know the price is very different for different services, but I'm just wondering what's the pricing model about it? If we're not charging a commission, are we charging a monthly? Yeah. Sure. We are. You know, and I'll bring it up. You know, we're not shy about this. Again, our goal is to help our clients, to help companies out there grow. Because guess what, Kayvon?

23:52there's a little bit of a double-edged advantage for HireFinder. When we help our clients grow, guess what they need more? Well, I was already going down that road. So let's talk about the business. So I'm going to just bring it up because I don't know how to ask the question around this, but I already see it. Whoever the CEO is or the board, I'm sure there's a board, they're sitting there going, okay, how do we be different in this world? How do we exist? How do we start, just like the banks do? How do we get kids into our banks when they get old enough to get a bank in? And what sounds like the board, the smart board over there kind of was starting to look at what you guys were doing and said, okay, how do we help the little, not just the little guys, but how do we help even some of these growing businesses here?

24:37How do we stay in, get in, and stay longer? And what it sounds like, hey, instead of charging these enormous one-time fees in and out. It's we help them at every stage, no matter what stage they are, and offer the full suite so they stay longer. Why wouldn't they? If you find me employee number one, why wouldn't I get you to get me to employee number two? Now guess what? Now I have two employees. The employees are calling us and complaining that they don't understand what's really going on in the business. They don't have SOPs. I don't want to write SOPs. Oh, guess what? Don't worry. We got you covered.

25:12I could see it. Smart. Very smart move. Yeah. And thank you. Thanks for saying that. So something that's keeping our clients around is our customizable. No, it's your ability to offer a la carte. But here's what we do. We offer our recruiting team and the project manager, the job boards, everything on a customizable basis. In other words, when you're in growth mode, maybe you want to hire us for 40 or 50 hours a week because you need to hire 17 people by next Tuesday and let's get going, right? We really need a tremendous amount of recruiting horsepower. And then over the next couple of weeks, months, whatever, we hire you 16 out of the 17 people.

26:06And you are saying now, you know what? We're in a good stage right now. Let's lower our hours. Let's Let's have a maintenance plan where we'll always be finding good candidates for our pipeline, put them into our software. We want to contact them over the time. So we'll lower it to 20 hours a week. So all you need to do is tell us, hey, you know what? We want to go down from 50 hours a week to 20 hours a week. Done. And maybe you are a seasonal business. Then the business is going to take off in November, December. you want to add hours we can do that so we scale up and down as your business yeah i i love it like i said you guys are custom you said it's customizable plans and again long term working with the employees so no matter where they are no matter what their needs are you'll be able to adapt and you're not stuck in and i don't care i'll say them like those oh i'm afraid to say those salesforce guys i'll tell you they lock you in and you're screwed for life right so i love it So it's easy for people to say, yeah, it's easy for them to like walk, walk before they run with you.

27:17And then there, and you guys then have the whole gamut of, of offers and services. Yeah. You know, Kayvon, you know, talking about, right. Locking clients in. We're so confident that we're providing great value at a tremendous cost savings. Yeah. It's a yearly agreement. With a 30 day out. if it's if you're not if you're not agreeing with us if you if you're saying you know what or maybe the value is done we're never gonna hire again in the history of the world then uh you know we will part friends uh just give us 30 days notice because we want to find our people a new client you know so we'll place them uh you know somewhere else but we don't want people we don't want our clients sticking around if they don't they don't perceive that so i'm I love it.

28:10So we're at that point in the show where I'm going to ask you to give me the elevator pitch. But before we do that, I want to make sure we understand what we're dealing with. We are dealing with a, well, I'm going to say a huge HR solutions company, specifically in a recruitment opportunity for businesses of all ranges, from small businesses all the way up to Fortune 500, flipping up the recruiting fee upside down and doing a more of a done for you, customizable plan that suits your business's needs depending on where they are and grows with you or slows with you depending on those needs. Is that what I hear?

28:53You know that, I mean, that was too long of an elevator maybe, you know, maybe we're going to New York City to the 48th floor, but you summed it up very nicely. Yeah. You know, the customizable part, I definitely, I love that you put that in there. Seems like it is. So tell me, what's the elevator pitch? What do you say? If someone says, hey, what is it you do? Walter, what do you do? Yeah. Thanks for asking, Kayvon. So my company, HireFinder, we offer a fully customizable recruiting solution, whether you're a small business and have no recruiting department, or you're a big company and you have a big recruiting team.

29:35What we do is we help you find top talent at the most cost effective way possible top talent that will stick with your team and okay how does that go how do you think that sounds