The Ultimate Hiring Masterclass from 3 Hiring Titans! - Peter Clarke, Jeff Markowitz, Jessica Neal.

13:39Jeff Markowitz:I don't know. I don't know. I was just like a young kid at Netflix, you know? Yeah.

13:49Jessica Neal:Little did you know, I had no idea what I was doing, but you played it off really well.

13:55Jeff Markowitz:Thank you.

13:56Jessica Neal:I stayed at Greylock for a while. I met somebody from Google. They asked me to come meet Sundar. I was fine doing that. I didn't know what the intent was, but I quickly found out what the intent was. and Sundar wanted he basically the first meeting he said can you tell me what you did do at Greylock and I sort of mapped it out and he said well would you come consider doing that for me

14:32Jeff Markowitz:well yeah what did you tell him like map it

14:36Jessica Neal:it's

14:38Jeff Markowitz:I want to know

14:40Jessica Neal:it's basically I have the diagram I just want to pause because

14:47Jeff Markowitz:by the way okay you're downplaying things a lot so this is like one of the biggest companies in the world and the ceo is calling you and wanting to well yeah but you but he did he wanted to meet you yeah and like that's a big deal did you think it was a big deal at the time or you really went over

15:10Jessica Neal:no i mean it was i told my partners i said at graylock i said i was meeting him and was there anything that um they thought would be beneficial for me to cover with respect to graylock i mean i really didn't know what the purpose of the meeting was other than a general

15:27Jeff Markowitz:introduction right um and so you map it out for him what you do what do you say yeah it was simple

15:34Jessica Neal:It's like we have portfolio companies and we have the firm and then we meet people all the time and they could benefit portfolio companies or they could benefit the firm. And you just leverage every single conversation that you have with people to somehow benefit either the portfolio company or the firm or the person that you're talking to. You can benefit. It was just a thing that you maximize every discussion you have. you understand who your stakeholders are and you figure out how to, you know, extract value for each person or for each group. Uh, that's long story short. Um, but he liked it and I, he said, well, you know, I could see doing that for my team, you know, for him, for Sundar and for, um, you know, the broader Google.

16:26Jessica Neal:Um, and you know, long story short, they asked me to, you know to come um i actually didn't go at the time uh i just didn't feel it was i was i wanted

16:39Peter Clarke:to do it um i just told him he told him to call me instead to see what happens so i probably yeah he did yeah and did he yeah they called me yeah the death told us to call you and then huh

16:55Jessica Neal:yeah i just loved graylock you know in all honesty so much i love the experience yeah Yeah. And I just didn't want to leave. A year went by actually, and then it came up again. And it got me at a moment in time where it was like, I've only worked with venture-backed companies. I've never seen what a large company is like. So why not? and I did it. And that was that. And I grew up for six years. And now, fortunately, Greylock was willing to bring me back as an advisor. I mean, it's a very light advisor, to be honest.

17:42Jeff Markowitz:You have a lot of time for golf?

17:45Jessica Neal:A lot of time for golf. Yeah, a lot of time for golf. So I'm available when they need me, but they don't really need me that much. Um, but, uh, I love, I love the firm. So happy to help in any way.

17:58Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. And I know they love you. Um, okay. So you go and take this, this role at Google and you're not part of like the regular recruiting team. Like from what I understand from you, like you reported into SIDAR, right? Like you, you had your own kind of thing going on. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a very big company.

18:21Jessica Neal:um i think some of the you know the eye-opening things are you just you don't really you have this sense of like what is it like to be in a big company and then you're just like oh my god it's i mean it's so big that like oh my that it's it's hard to understand it and know it before you get in so yeah you know sundar had a team you have to be in it and see it and feel it and yeah Yeah. He had a team of people that supports him. I was the person that did that on the talent side, not the HR side, because he had somebody that did it on the HR side. But on the talent side, and essentially, for six years, I was just on call for things that hit his orbit around senior leadership.

19:10Jessica Neal:it.

19:11Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. And what would he turn to you for? Was it more like, can you help me diagnose whether this person's going to be successful here or not? Was it more that or what kind of role were you playing?

19:27Jessica Neal:There was some of that. I mean, to be honest, I think it takes a fair amount of time to gain his trust, which is understandable. But it's like rethinking how the board make up, because it was an aging board and you have to get new board members in. When Ruth Porat wanted to take on a new role, it was like, how do we map out bringing in the right CFO for Alphabet? right um same thing on hr um you know hr never reported to the ceo of the company um always reported into the cfo yeah so um you know i had to talk him through bringing fiona in right yeah yeah but talking him through like that and the fact that you're never going to get a really good person not reporting to you.

20:23Jessica Neal:I mean, that was during COVID too. So that was kind of brutal, but it was, uh, you know, the, what I quickly found out is, you know, Google has this massive recruiting machine that recruiting machine, you know, didn't love when I would get involved with anything other than stuff for Sundar. And they, they actually wanted to do the stuff for Sundar because obviously it was the highest level for company. Yeah. So it was just a very, you know, sort of political kind of thing where I found myself. Yeah. Which wasn't great.

21:01Jeff Markowitz:Kind of a hard place to be. But fascinating.

21:05Jessica Neal:Fascinating. I would choose venture every day of the week, by the way.

21:10Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think, you know, the three of us, we've just seen so much, especially around hiring. So I want to talk about that a little bit because I'm one, I'm passionate about it. But two, I think, and this really fueled me when I started at Netflix because I was in search. And I just looked at all of these companies running recruiting so poorly. making terrible decisions on hires because they were afraid they're going to lose the budget so they're just going to hire anybody. They would lose a great person because they had to do the process of them meeting 20 people versus being a little faster and quicker.

22:00Jeff Markowitz:Or they'd lose people over a couple thousand dollars because of the budget or whatever. But I saw this over and over again and then I sort of had this, I don't know, Well, I wouldn't call it a mission per se, but like I just was like, I kind of want to solve this. And that's when I met Netflix and they were like, we want to do this differently than anyone. And, you know, they were a client of mine and they were like, we think you can do it differently. Right. And we don't want you to build an internal recruiting team. We want you to build like an internal search for, right, that is boutique, that puts talent first.

22:45Jeff Markowitz:We will do anything to find the right people. And, you know, at first, you know, similar to you two, I'm sure I'm like, no, no, no, I'm good. I'm good. You know, as many things as we get put on our, you know, offers put on our plate. But then they kept coming back and I, you know, obviously I ended up doing it. but I ended up doing it because they had this desire to do it differently. They understood that talent was the most important thing that mattered. They just didn't know how to get it. And so I want to talk about why is it, you know, and I don't know, that was in 2006, and now we're in 2026.

23:25Jeff Markowitz:And the same things that were messed up then are messed up now.

23:32Peter Clarke:you know

23:34Jeff Markowitz:it's all fixed now everything works great yeah it all works great so why is hiring so hard guys why is it what do you think

23:44Jessica Neal:why is it so hard I don't or why do most get it wrong

23:50Jeff Markowitz:how about that

23:51Jessica Neal:what are they doing I think a lot of people you know look at it from like they actually they don't diligence they don't assess they just like try to recruit yeah um and you know i always found that and saw that from more from the venture side where there was such a competition to get people and to get the right people that they almost uh you almost forget that you have to assess and evaluate as well. So you spend all of this time trying to get people in and then you're like, well, where was the diligence side? I mean, we always, and I know Pete does the same, we always caught that, but I think a lot of companies don't.

24:45Jessica Neal:And they just do everything they can to get people in what they believe are the right people in. And they forget how important the assessment side of it is, the referencing side of it is, like all that stuff is critically important. Yeah.

24:59Jeff Markowitz:Yeah.

24:59Jessica Neal:And when you get it wrong, it's terrible for the bottom line,

25:05Jeff Markowitz:especially, you know, as you go higher up in the organization, right? You know, from a bad CEO to a bad CFO. I mean, there's years lost sometimes and lots and lots of dollars and, you know,

25:20Jessica Neal:revenue we talked about it just before we got on like even if you use um you know the the big period of like dei hiring and i mean i saw it you know at google a lot where there was just you had to get um certain numbers of people i mean that's kind of what i was seeing across the organization that were dei hires and it just didn't happen at you know google it happened a lot of different companies. And essentially, you were risking putting people that weren't qualified for roles into roles. And because they were DEI hiring, I'm not saying anything negative about DEI hiring, but it was just the process itself put people potentially in bad situations where it just didn't work out.

26:11Jessica Neal:And that wasn't the person's fault.

26:13Jeff Markowitz:They just weren't

26:15Jessica Neal:ready for it. Right.

26:17Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. Again, you know, the attention behind it, I think, was good. Right. But then the process or policy that folks put around it was flawed.

26:28Jessica Neal:It led to mistakes.

26:31Jeff Markowitz:Right. Exactly.

26:33Peter Clarke:Yeah. You kind of lost sight of the point, right, for the process.

26:36Jeff Markowitz:Right. Well, why do you think it's so challenging, Pete? Like, what do you think?

26:41Peter Clarke:Well, I'll use just the early stage building lens, but, um, I mean, I don't know, variety of things. I think we generally just operated extremes anyways, because to Jeff's point, I think a lot of what was happening in certain cycles was, you know, move as quickly as you can and your short circuit process, you know, and you just try to get your, the war for, I mean, probably one of the biggest things is we call it a war for talent, right? which puts people in a different mindset, right? And, you know, it's not really an all or nothing thing, but we tend to be very win-lose in terms of from a company perspective, right?

27:19Like, I must win the war.

27:22Peter Clarke:Sort of like, well, now the war became the thing, right? Not just let's get a great person on board. But like we've seen a pretty extreme swing into over-referencing, right? And then a lack of decision velocity because there's a fear of hiring. I mean, I will tell this to anybody who will listen. My little mantra is like, you know, everyone's heard that a bad hire is the most expensive decision you can make. And I say that's incorrect because you can make a lot more expensive bad decisions. But it's definitely the most expensive bad decision you can keep. Right. If you don't act on it. So when you know it's not working, do something about it, because ultimately, if you make a decision, you go with the information you have, you get somebody on board and it's for whatever reason, just not working out.

28:12Peter Clarke:Usually if you did the work, there's just something else. It's a fit thing. There's some other extenuating circumstance. But don't let it sit, you know, like actually move on it and say, like, we've got to make a change. because as you know i mean it's it is like a you know not a great analogy but a cancer in the organization in the sense that like a bad hire starts to impact the rest of the organization too then you've got people questioning leadership right because they're hanging on to this obviously bad hire that's not where you know i get into like performance management all these things there's no question ever in an organization who the top performers are and who aren't right and And, you know, we tend to try to find tools and everything, but it's like you just ask people and everyone knows, which means then they know, right, when somebody is not a great hire.

29:03Peter Clarke:So then from a leadership perspective, if it's like, well, we'll just, you know, try to deal with this delicately and I don't want anyone to think I made a bad decision. I think some of that is what also hangs people up is like it's admitting to a failure, right? Like, hey, we did make a bad hire. Yeah. But you got to own that and you got to move. So you need, you know, I think we've gotten to a bit of analysis paralysis again, these some classic consulting terms of just like overthinking hires now too, where, you know, like I'm going to do 25 back channel references, right? Before I even get them into round one of the process.

29:39Peter Clarke:And it's like, I understand the desire, but like, that's not a very efficient process. Yeah, it's true. And the whole thing is, I totally agree with both of you. You have to have a very good diligence process.

29:58Jeff Markowitz:But as much diligence as you do, it's still a bet at the end of the day. And the goal is to get as much thoughtful information so that you're making a thoughtful bet, but not to get into analysis paralysis. Because you don't ever really know until you start working together.

30:22Jessica Neal:Yeah. Yeah. I also think part of that is, you know, through the analysis that you're getting and the diligence you're getting, I always used to tell people you're getting, you're basically getting the playbook for how to manage the person. And then you can make a decision as a manager or as a board, you know, in the case of hiring a CEO on, you know, do you want to manage this person basically based on what you know and what you learn through the interview process, through the referencing process. and you can then make a decision you know do you want to take this on or do not and um i don't think enough companies do that i don't think like even alphabet doesn't do that google doesn't do that and a lot of young companies don't don't do that they don't understand the playbook well enough um because oftentimes if it doesn't work out i mean sometimes it's just because the person can't to do the job.

31:19Jessica Neal:But a lot of times it's just, it's, it's sort of the, the higher, the leaders don't understand where the person's strengths are, where the person's weaknesses are and, and, and manage to that. Yeah. And you have a lot of lost opportunity.

31:39Jeff Markowitz:Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about that for a second. So how, how does one get to the strengths and weaknesses of a person. I have my techniques, but I want to know your two techniques in terms of really digging. Because I think the difference between good diligence and not so good diligence is that you're going deeper. And I think a lot of companies are just kind of on the surface. They're like, okay, that was a good enough answer, but they don't really dig and go like, how did you actually make that decision? Right. How did you, how did you get from here to here? Who else was involved?

32:20Like, and there's, there's a level of digging and curiosity that I think one has to have.

32:27Jeff Markowitz:And I think a lot of folks stop at the, okay, that was good enough. I don't know. What, what do you guys think? What's your technique to get deep?

32:38Peter Clarke:well let me just start by saying we have a proprietary set of questions only available

32:44Jeff Markowitz:to excel in the excel portfolio no i'm really do tell

32:52Peter Clarke:well he's joking i think there's generally um i think and i'll just use early stage founders I think there's the perception, right, that somehow there's like some special set of questions that will get to the right answer versus just have a conversation with.

33:13Jeff Markowitz:Everybody wants a magic wand. Yeah. Yeah.

33:17Peter Clarke:To de-risk it, right? And I totally understand that. But then, you know, ultimately, if you've done the right work on the front end of it, and it always seems to me like interviews generally devolve into, okay, I'm in the room with this person, I must somehow figure out that they're not really who they say they are. Right? And it's like, well, why are you even doing that? Like this idea that I'm going to somehow trip them up or I'm going to ask this special question and I'll expose them for the fraud that they are.

33:45Jeff Markowitz:A brain teaser about the manhole and cover. Right.

33:49Peter Clarke:like what is like usually what i am saying is like you know in those discussions yeah you maybe never have hired a cfo before does that mean you need to be better than the cfo with the job absolutely not because that's why you're hiring a cfo so you know generally speaking what you want to be doing is you know thinking about the person's work style even that jeff was alluding to right in the process of referencing and talking to folks you're sort of building understanding of who they are and how they operate. Right. Because what I could say is you shouldn't be talking to someone at that level about a job if you have not at least done the front end work to say they've done the work.

34:26Peter Clarke:They're technically capable of the job.

34:28Jeff Markowitz:Right.

34:29Peter Clarke:How do they operate? And does that actually fit well within the organization? So yeah.

34:34Jeff Markowitz:And what you're going to need. Yeah. What you're going to need for the next year to five years. Yeah.

34:40Peter Clarke:And that requires transparency and openness. Right. Yeah.

34:43Jessica Neal:Yeah. If you take, it's interesting just to use two specific examples, both at the Alphabet level, you have the head of HR who we brought in, the CFO who we brought in. You know, in the head of HR I mentioned before, Alphabet never had the, Google never had the head of HR report to the CEO before. And so that was new. And the person that we brought in, Fiona, came from AstraZeneca, and she had a very strong relationship with her CEO at AstraZeneca. And there were lots of questions that she had about what will it be like now working for Sundar. one because you know she had never worked for him and two because the role never reported to him and so we had many conversations around well you just have to both sides both to Sundar and to Fiona it's like you just have to have very direct unfiltered conversations about what concerns you right and you have to talk about what worked well in your role reporting to the CEO at AstraZeneca and what you need from a manager and see if he's amenable to that.

36:00Jeff Markowitz:Right.

36:01Jessica Neal:And you basically put yourselves into – people can't be afraid to have the hard conversation around like what can make this not work.

36:10Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. because I think at the end of the day,

36:14Jessica Neal:you know, if you get to a point where you really want the job and you're a senior person or any person and you're the CEO or the hiring manager and you want that person to come, you're going to, there's an element of where you're going to be on your best behavior and you don't necessarily want to be on your best behavior. You really want to just be unfiltered and say, look, this is kind of what my, the buttons that will set me off are. and let's have a conversation about it. And we did the same thing on the CFO search because, you know, Anat was stepping into really big shoes from Ruth Porat.

36:52Jeff Markowitz:Big role.

36:53Jessica Neal:Yeah, very big role. And her relationship with the CFO at Eli Lilly was great. And, you know, there was some amount of nerves coming into a new environment, like what would it be like? And it's like, well, you have to have very direct conversations about what works well for you, what doesn't work well for you. And the same thing with Sundar. It's like what worked well in your relationship with Ruth, what didn't, and have these very direct conversations with the person you're going to bring in and see if it goes off the rails or see if there are flags that you need to dig into further. People don't do that, I don't think.

37:32Jeff Markowitz:No, they don't. And it's something that I encourage people to do as well, because it's almost like once you've gotten to this point like yes they're they're technically able they wouldn't have been a cfo at eli lily or she wouldn't have been a chr astrazeneca like she's technically capable but it's like can you work together like these are such high stakes roles and um and it's almost like you want to simulate working together because working together is it really about the technical craft? I mean, sure, you have to do your job. But really working together is solving problems together, going through ups and downs and how you react to those things, how you are with feedback, how you are able to be honest.

38:23Jeff Markowitz:And so can you, in the interview, somehow simulate what that dynamic might be like is is something that i encourage people do but you're right people most people don't yeah and they don't talk about the hard stuff yeah you have to yeah you have to you know i mean public public company has constraints you know but i

38:48Peter Clarke:think early stage companies you know there was always in certain functions you know some sort of working session, right? Where they bring you their 30, 60, 90 day plan. And that's great. They said, you know, I always advise is just like, do that with everyone, like functionally in terms of like, sit down and talk about what you're trying to solve for, you know, and say like, here's what we're up against. Don't give them a made up homework project, right? Or something that's just, you know, again, there's manhole covers or whatever, some abstract idea that does nothing, You don't get to the heart of, okay, this is what's going on.

39:26Peter Clarke:And then, by the way, if I'm coming in from the outside and I start poking at your business, start saying, hey, maybe the baby's not as cute as you think it is. What's the reaction? What's the response? How do we work through that to make the business successful, not just sort of manage egos? And there's just a lack of investment in the relationship building, I think, at times.

39:51Jeff Markowitz:Yeah.

39:51Peter Clarke:This goes back to then the velocity. So I think there's also this sort of mistake of, well, if I do a bunch of activity, right, then it'll feel like I'm moving quickly and making decisions. But if I'm basically just doing activity for activity's sake, you know, trying to show that I'm moving fast on a hire, but I'm not actually moving fast on a good hire, you know, I think that's driven by a lot of odd metrics that are out there too on just, they really don't matter. but it's like what you wanted the high quality person in the role like how long that took you know just the number of people that you spoke to and all these other things it's irrelevant but we get wrapped around the axle with a lot of that stuff some of the best um hiring that i've

40:39Jessica Neal:seen like even like at graylock if it was a ceo that that ceo basically um did strategy sessions with the team came up with an assessment of where the company was, where they thought it needed to go, and then would sit down with the board and say, look, this is my view of where things are going to be going. Poke holes into it. Let's either agree or disagree, but I'm hoping we disagree on many things so we can work through it. Anant at Alphabet did the same thing with her trying to understand different aspects of, because she didn't come from tech, trying to understand different aspects of the role and what needed to happen, and then trying to form as much as she could a picture of it, and then having that conversation with Sundar saying, look, poke holes into it.

41:40Jessica Neal:Let's see where we're off.

41:42Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. And isn't that, like when you, I'm guessing this is true for you too, but when I see someone like that, that's willing to come to the table and just be vulnerable and say, hey, poke holes in this. I want to know. I want your feedback. You know immediately that's the difference between someone who's good and someone who's great because that like that like self-awareness that it's almost even like humbleness but they're curious they're not defensive mentality yes learning yeah yeah

42:22Peter Clarke:and that's on both sides that's the candidate and the founder ceo hiring manager right um i mean the best founders are arguably the best recruiters yeah um which you know i usually disappoint people with, you know, a lot of founders of ours who are like, well, bad news. You know, you thought you started this really cool company, but you're just a recruiter. That's all you are. Right. Yeah. But that's the battle.

42:46Jeff Markowitz:Half the battle is getting the right people.

42:48Peter Clarke:Yeah.

42:49Jeff Markowitz:Maybe more than half.

42:50Peter Clarke:I think that you start to short circuit things as well in that context, because, you know, I do believe and I get it. Right. I mean, it's hard. Recruiting is hard. It's not like rocket science, not complicated. it just takes an effort, a level of investment and relationship building. And, you know, I think there can be a time where some CEOs and founders are like, well, I'm like, I'm running the business, right? I don't have time for recruiting. I just need to get that person in the seat. And then I don't have to think about it anymore. It's like, well, I mean, you're never not going to be thinking about recruiting.

43:23Jeff Markowitz:They want it to be, they want it to be over.

43:25Jessica Neal:Yeah. Yeah. I remember I was pretty early into Greylock. Scott Dietzen, who you probably both know, he was the first CEO at Pure Storage. And they were just going gangbusters and they knew they needed to hire a CFO that would be a public CFO. And Scott asked me one day, he said, can you introduce me to four to five CFOs? And I said, well, are you looking to hire somebody? He said, no, no, I just want to learn. I need to learn what a public CFO does.

44:01Jeff Markowitz:Yep.

44:03Jessica Neal:And we're not ready yet, but I need to be prepared for when I am ready.

44:07Jeff Markowitz:Yep.

44:08Jessica Neal:And, you know, that was great learning for me because I was so early in my, you know, career at Greylock and I was like, okay, well, this is a smart CFO who's trying to, a CEO who's trying to learn how to hire well. Yeah.

44:22Jeff Markowitz:And that stood out because most of them weren't asking you that way.

44:27Jessica Neal:I was so new. I mean, we started to push that on our companies. It's like, look, if you're going to go hire this person or that person, why don't you meet as many as you can to learn what great looks like?

44:40Jeff Markowitz:Yeah.

44:40Jessica Neal:But I give Scott credit because I was so early that he kind of showed me that that was a good recipe.

44:48Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. No, I mean, the really good founders, the really good CEOs get that this is a big part of their job and that they have to learn, they have to get good at this. And the ones that don't end up having lots of trouble with their teams for long, long periods of time. Yeah.

45:09Jessica Neal:Yeah.

45:11Jeff Markowitz:And I would argue also lots of problems with the whole company itself. Yeah.

45:17Jessica Neal:Yeah. It's interesting. The other thing great CEOs or great hirers do, that doesn't have to be the CEO, is if somebody doesn't work out, they don't blame it on the person not working out. They actually question where they went wrong in their process and what they may have missed.

45:35Jeff Markowitz:So true.

45:37Jessica Neal:And then they get better the next time.

45:41Jeff Markowitz:Absolutely. I hate it when they're like, oh, that person was, it's all that person's fault. They're terrible. that it's like, no, you're terrible. You made the call. Like, look in the mirror. Maybe they're not terrible.

45:55Jessica Neal:Maybe they just missed a few things. Yeah.

45:58Jeff Markowitz:I'm being dramatic for the podcast. You need to add some drama to the, yeah, controversy, edginess to the show. All right. Okay. Well, we got to talk about AI then.

46:10Peter Clarke:Oh, we're gonna.

46:11Jeff Markowitz:But I want to talk one thing, because I will say, you know, even though I grew from recruiting and then into HR, I, you know, recruiting is in my bones. And it's, you know, I think I'm very good at it. I think you two are very good at it. But most CEOs and founders really struggle to find good recruiting talent for their organization. and I want to know what you guys say and think, but CEOs will often ask me, how can I tell if this recruiter is good or not? And I always say, when's the last time they told you not to hire someone? And they're like, never. And I'm like, there's your answer. They're not very good.

47:01Jeff Markowitz:And I don't know what your answer is, but let me hear it.

47:08Peter Clarke:how do you how do you know are there bad recruiters no but how do you know when you

47:12Jeff Markowitz:get because we know there's tons of there's tons of great ones there's tons of okay ones there's tons of terrible ones but how do you know when you have a great recruiter

47:23Peter Clarke:um well and funny enough i think it's it's a really simple equation of like the same way you know you have a great anything else right like you've got a method and process in terms of figuring that out for whatever reason, recruiting, um, because apparently, you know, you could just throw a job rec into a room full of a hundred blind monkeys and they'll come up with a candidate because I mean, it's recruiting. How hard can it be? Like if I'm going to try to hire a recruiter, I'll just go on LinkedIn and find somebody who has recruiter in their title. Cause like, you know, it doesn't matter. It's low risk.

47:56Peter Clarke:I don't know. Anyway. So I think there's just a complete lack of respect for the industry and generally speaking, driven by the zero barriers to entry. Yeah. And so there's a lot out there. But then, like, most companies, founders, CEOs are not doing themselves any favors by actually being diligent about that hire, too.

48:16Jeff Markowitz:Right.

48:17Peter Clarke:Right. So, you know, like you can figure out if someone's a good recruiter for a variety of or in a variety of ways, you know, just in terms of what have they done. And to your point, are they a business partner? Are they business-centric? Are they just responding to metrics, requests? And then ultimately, too, the reason most recruiting teams churn all the time is because recruiting becomes the excuse for the hiring manager. right like if it's not getting done oh you know most hiring managers like oh great i got a recruiting team that i can blame when this isn't going well because i'm putting zero time and effort into it i'm just throwing job wrecks over the wall and hoping something comes back and then complaining about it right right so yeah i don't know if that answers the question as to how i mean and then when people lock on to a good recruiter they don't let go right but like that takes a bit so anyway yeah yeah that could go on ranting but go ahead jeff that's okay you know

49:19Jessica Neal:it's funny because uh as pete knows both my my kids are in uh recruiting now which i love by the way i'm extra sensitive to like trying to see how they're getting trained and are they getting trained to be great recruiters. Are they? I hope so. No, they are. I think there was one very prominent venture capitalist that was in venture capital during the heyday. And I said this earlier, I learned recruiting through getting beaten up by great venture capitalists. and it was not pleasant at the time, but that's how I learned. And I think as venture capital has changed and the art of venture capital has changed and the art of being a great board member has changed, so has the art of great recruiting.

50:15Jessica Neal:And I do think what I've seen is there's so much salesy recruiting and it's not about that. and unfortunately it you know recruiters react to um you know what their clients want and what their clients demands are and so much of it is flow flow flow of candidates flow of candidates and there's not enough on like stepping back and saying like let's really make sure we're getting the right candidates in yeah i just don't see it i don't see enough of that no me neither and that's

50:51Jeff Markowitz:um that's why i always ask that question it's like when have they told you not to hire someone because it's just like they're pushing anybody that you have an inkling of you like they're pushing that person oh yeah okay let's get them let's get them yeah they're not they're not being um they're not helping to to advise or influence them to make a really exceptional decision they're just trying to to get the process done and get somebody in the seat and and and i think that um You know, that's part of the incentive programs around recruiting are also broken because it really is like, how fast can you do it?

51:33Jeff Markowitz:How fast can we get someone in the seat? And you're looking at the numbers of phone screens that they did, the numbers of interviews, how long they took, time to fill, all those things. And it's like, who gives a fuck if they're terrible? Like, you could have, like, the best numbers on the planet. But if you're hiring all people who are bad for the company and who don't scale, like, that's not good. And so I never, people always ask me, like, how do you judge your team's performance? I'm like, not through that. I judge it by the quality of hire. And I also judge it by hiring managers saying to me, if you take this person away from me, I'll never forgive you.

52:17Jeff Markowitz:I can't do my job without this person. They're more part of my team than your team. I was like, then I have a winner, you know?

52:24Jessica Neal:Yeah.

52:24Jeff Markowitz:Because they're helping them hire. Also, you two know this. None of these people know how to hire. And so you have to have people that are going to teach them how to do it.

52:35Jessica Neal:Yeah.

52:36Jeff Markowitz:You know?

52:36Jessica Neal:Yeah, great.

52:37Jeff Markowitz:I think that some folks on here are going to learn some stuff from this. So that's really helpful. And I just have to say that you two have been so important to me in my career because you two are often the first people I call when I'm thinking about something, when I'm struggling with something, when I'm considering something. You two are at the top of my list because you're so good. and you've always been there for me. And so I just want to thank you two for that because you are gems and I want to know you and have you in my life for decades more. If you'll have me.

53:21Jessica Neal:Thank you for saying that. Yeah. I don't want to speak for speed.

53:24Peter Clarke:That is a career confession then maybe.

53:27Jeff Markowitz:That is a career confession. And I will just say, You two have given me great advice over the years, and you've helped me think through some difficult decisions. So thank you.

53:40Peter Clarke:Well, right back at you.

53:42Jeff Markowitz:And thank you for doing what you do, because I know not enough people thank us. So thank you.

53:49Peter Clarke:Well, thank you for doing this podcast to talk about it, whether it's just a therapy session or it's helpful to other people, you know, either way.

53:56Jeff Markowitz:Yeah. Well, therapy's good.

53:58Jessica Neal:I've never done a podcast before. This is great.

54:01Jeff Markowitz:This is your first podcast?

54:02Jessica Neal:It is. Oh, wow.

54:04Jeff Markowitz:I'm glad I was your first. Thanks for listening to TruthWorks.