Devyn Mikell [00:00:03]:

Hey, this is Devyn Mikell with the Higher Quality podcast. Super excited to be interviewing you. So could you introduce yourself, your role in the company that you work at?

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Pete Radloff [00:00:13]:

Hi, I'm Pete Radloff. I'm a senior sourcer on the engineering and product leadership team here at Datadog.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:19]:

What is top of mind for you.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:21]:

As a talent leader at your organization?

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Pete Radloff [00:00:23]:

While I suspect that most people are concerned with making sure they can get the right talent for their current needs, I'm also sort of hyper aware of our need to have smooth processes and actionable systems on our end so that it makes our job of finding those people a lot easier.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:41]:

What is something you wish you knew about leading talent that you didn't know when you first started?

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Pete Radloff [00:00:46]:

Leading people is about so much more than just checking boxes and data points on a performance review. It's really about making sure that you know who your folks are, what motivates them. What are the things that get them out of bed in the morning to come to work.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:03]:

What's something unique about you as a talent leader at your organization that makes you a perfect fit for that job?

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Pete Radloff [00:01:10]:

I think at least I'd like to believe that I bring a good combination of both system expertise and understanding. Sort of the back of the house operations, as well as the ability to engage the right people. I think additionally, while I don't necessarily have an interest in management, having gone down that road, I feel really prepared to be able to mentor and guide other people as they're growing through their career.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:38]:

We made it to the last question.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:39]:

And this one's a fun one. What is the worst question you've ever been asked in an interview?

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Pete Radloff [00:01:46]:

I think this is a relatively easy one. I recall hearing an interviewer ask a candidate, who would you most like to have beers with at your current company and why? And I still haven't been able to figure out exactly why that was relevant.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:06]:

What's up, everyone? I'm Devyn Mikell, host of the Higher Quality podcast and COO and co founder of Qualify. I am joined today by Pete Radloff, senior technical leadership recruiter at Datadog. You may not know them. I know them very well because I use Datadog myself. Pete, I'm super excited to have you here today. Thanks for joining in on the show.

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Pete Radloff [00:02:30]:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:31]:

I appreciate it. Absolutely.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:33]:

I want to jump right in and get started. Pete is here now. You've just heard him on the pre interview, the qualify interview that you hear at the beginning of every show. But now Pete is here for a higher quality conversation. So Pete, I have one request before we jump into my questions is, can you add color to my intro view?

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:51]:

I feel like I don't do a.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:53]:

Great job of telling the full story, and you're the only one that has the full story. So why don't you tell the audience.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:58]:

Who you are beyond what I can.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:00]:

Show them with a job title.

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Pete Radloff [00:03:02]:

Yeah. So with Datadog, I sit within our leadership recruiting organization. It's a smaller team, but we're focused on all the leadership roles for engineering, for product management across datadogs. So really anything sort of manager plus for that, and focused on bringing some of those leaders into the organization that are going to help us to scale and grow the company.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:23]:

Awesome. Well, in the interview, one of the.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:26]:

Things that really stood out to me that you don't hear from everyone is you hear the typical stuff when it's top of mind for recruiting. You're thinking about candidate experience, you're thinking.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:36]:

About providing speed and efficiency or things like that.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:40]:

But we don't always hear about the words actionable systems on your end. Right. So tell me about what that means to you and tell the audience about what that means to you when you say those words.

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Pete Radloff [00:03:51]:

Yeah, I think when I think about that, it's about having the right processes and mechanisms set up so that we can get end to end. Right. And part of that is sort of the true back of the house systems that work. Do we have a functional CRM network? Do we have an ats that talks to that? Do we have a way to automate the things that are repetitive or things that we can sort of take the human element out of? Save some time. Right. I'm not saying AI everything, I'll never say that, but I think that those processes are important from a systems perspective. But then also, too, I think having those repeatable processes that the managers that we work with, the leaders that we work with, can sort of know how we operate, what to expect next. And I think that that dribbles down to a candidate perspective, too, and making sure that at each stage they know what's going to happen next.

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Pete Radloff [00:04:42]:

They know what to expect. There's no surprises. There's that 11th hour stuff that comes up like, oh, I wish we would have talked about that. If I know a position requires relocation or something like that, let's have that ugly conversation in the beginning so that we can get that out of the way and that doesn't become this sticking point when everybody's already in love at the finish line.

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:01]:

That's good. I feel like it's stuff that is very simple. When you say it out loud, it's like, oh, why didn't I think of that? But I feel like not everyone's thinking that way. Everyone's thinking like, beginning and end, but not middle is kind of what you're saying.

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Pete Radloff [00:05:17]:

So much of what we do is. I hate to break it down to such a simplistic form, but so much of what we do is just common sense and basic human interaction. Right. And it's the same thing you'd want at a restaurant. It's the same thing you'd want if you're going to a job interview. It's the same thing you'd want from all these other things. Right. And so I think that that's really an important piece of what we do, is making sure we just really sort of capture the basic nuance of the end to end process.

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:45]:

Right. Honestly, yes.

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:48]:

And that's the human and the human resources or. Well, I don't know. Maybe some people think of it as two separate functions, which it is. I think so, too. The dark side and air quotes.

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:58]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:05:59]:

But it's still the human centered organization or piece of the organization. I feel like you're one of the few, actually the only person so far that I'm asking two questions, two follow up questions from the pre interview. So kudos or lucky you. So you said something really interesting, and.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:18]:

I think I have this base assumption as an individual that.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:25]:

I'm always thinking about growth in a very linear way.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:27]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:28]:

And that's been my bias. I've actually had that bias checked on multiple times, and now I've changed a bit. But I'm always thinking, like, what's next? What's the next position? And naturally, recruiters, I feel like people that are listening are thinking, if I'm a recruiter today, I want to be a leader tomorrow.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:46]:

Right. And you actually said, I don't have an interest.

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Devyn Mikell [00:06:50]:

You said, I don't have an interest in leadership because I've gone down that road. Why is that? Why go back to IC?

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Pete Radloff [00:06:57]:

So I think early on in my career, I think there was this very linear, like, got to get to senior recruiter, got to get to manager, got to get to director. And then you get to director, and you're like, I don't know that I love this part of the job. And I think you sort of figure out what are the parts of the job that are most interesting to you are the things that sort of get the hair up on the back of your neck are the things that make you want to continue to go on day to day and sitting in meetings and budgeting and spreadsheets. That was not it. And I think part of, there were parts of it that I liked. I liked developing other people. I liked managing people and growing them and seeing somebody have that aha. Moment, those were the things I really got the satisfaction of.

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Pete Radloff [00:07:45]:

Did I make the Excel spreadsheet trickle down to the number that we need to wasn't exciting? I think that there's a value add there that everybody can sort of figure out. Where is the place where you get the best proverbial bang for your buck in the role? And for me, it's, can I go and find that new person? Can I tinker with this new tool that might help me? Can I take somebody who is really interested in doing what we do and help to sort of train them and develop them to get to that point? Right. I've seen this mentioned a bunch of times in previous episodes and other places. Nobody's walking into this with a bachelor's degree in recruiting, and you sort of figure that out as you go along. And I think that I figured out the parts that really are interesting to me, and it sort of jives with the rest of my life. I'm a Girl scout dad. I'm a soccer coach. I've been coaching soccer for 15 years.

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Pete Radloff [00:08:39]:

I love the developmental piece of it. And so I think that's just a part that I've gotten comfortable with. And maybe when my kids are up and grown, yeah, maybe I'll want to dive back into that. But I didn't find that to be the thing that drove me the most.

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Devyn Mikell [00:08:55]:

I love that.

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Devyn Mikell [00:08:56]:

I feel like it's a super important realization that anyone can come to and just knowing what you want and getting away from what everyone else would tell you you should want and just doing it for you.

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Pete Radloff [00:09:10]:

And it's hard to rationalize. Some people don't understand the nonlinear perception of that. But something like when I spoke at SourceCon a couple of years ago, I loved it. It was a great opportunity, but I also felt like volunteering at the conference and being sort of behind the curtain, those were the things that I really liked. I loved seeing all the effort that we put into it come out into this great end product. And I think that was a real moment for me where I was like, okay, I'm validating that this is really what I enjoy the most.

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Devyn Mikell [00:09:41]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess let's go with that back to the very beginning.

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Devyn Mikell [00:09:47]:

Right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:09:47]:

So you mentioned there is no bachelor's degree in recruiting. And I haven't said that word for word, but I pretty much say the same line every episode, which is like, everyone I know in recruiting did not start by saying, I want to be in recruiting. They just kind of found their way into it. So what's your story? I know what I see on LinkedIn. Right. But what's your story in. And you can walk me all the way to where we are today.

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Pete Radloff [00:10:12]:

Yeah. So when I came out of school, I was lucky enough back in 98 to sort of have a job before I walked out of school, which was kind of rare, and it was really nice, but I was working at the time with adults with disabilities, and I was working as a sort of program manager, a program coordinator. I moved down to Virginia on a coin toss in 99, found my way down here, and I'm working for the state, and I'm director of volunteer services and program coordination. Right. So I'm doing that. We're turning this program around, getting hundreds of volunteers where there were none previously. I'm sitting there one day talking to a friend of mine. I'm like, what am I going to do next? Right? Am I going to work for the state forever? Or thinking about, what am I doing? I'll break down.

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Pete Radloff [00:11:00]:

Like, what do you do? Well, right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:11:01]:

I thought about it. I'm like, I'm getting all these people.

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Pete Radloff [00:11:04]:

To come work here for free and spend their time for free as a volunteer. What if I was recruiting people and I was actually paying them for the work that they would be doing, right? Maybe that's a career path. So I apply to a couple of places down here, and I wind up getting a call back from a staffing.

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Devyn Mikell [00:11:21]:

Agency, and I meet with the guy.

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Pete Radloff [00:11:24]:

There, and we start talking about it, and he's walking me through everything, and I'm like, this is it. This is the thing I'm supposed to be doing. And so we're sitting in the back of an office that was not completely built out yet, literally sitting on one of those wire spindles. He slides an offer letter over and he's like, this is going to be a good next couple of decades for you. And took that job, started doing sort of the temp staffing thing, spent a lot of time on that, then realized like, okay, I'm not going to make a ton of money here, but where can I do this? Where's the place where I can chase the proverbial carrot, make my way over to a more traditional tech staffing agency where there's spread, there's commission, there's things like that. So the more you put in, the more you get out of it, the more money you're going to make. And found my way there, and I think there is where I figured it out. This is what I'm supposed to be doing for sure.

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Pete Radloff [00:12:16]:

Fortunate to work with some really smart people there. Kind of latched myself onto. You look at the board and you figure out who's running the show here, who are the people who are really producing and sort of latched onto those folks and had a great run there. Spent three or four years there. And I think at that point I was getting married, I was thinking about having a kid and I was like, all right, I need to know what that paycheck looks like every two weeks, right? Rather than like, oh, I had a bad month, maybe can't pay the mortgage this month. And so decided to take a stab at corporate recruiting. But I wanted to find somewhere like, I didn't want to go and sit in a, these aren't companies specifically, but I didn't want to go sit in an IBM or Fortune 100 and sort of be a cog in the machine. I wanted to go somewhere, I wanted to build something and found my way to a company called Comscore, which was in the ad tech space market.

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Pete Radloff [00:13:04]:

Analytics, marketing, analytics, things like that. And I go into comscore, start building out this tech recruiting engine there. They're in a heavy growth mode. It's pre IPo. I call two of my buddies that I worked with and like, hey, there's some spots here we can build a pretty great team. And we did. We built up a fantastic team. One of the guys that we brought in there, I was like, he's going to be the guy that eventually leads this and I don't need to lead it, but maybe I'll be a director.

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Pete Radloff [00:13:34]:

We'll see what happens. Built that up, spent about four years there. I think I was a little bit in title chasing mode at that point. Went to an educational institution, like a for profit education institution. Quickly figured out that that was not what I wanted to the, that was not the place for me. And then found my way back into the startup world again. Spent a couple of years at living social, sort of building up that machine while that whole daily deal thing was going on. It was the living social versus groupon, the Pepsi versus coke kind of thing.

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Pete Radloff [00:14:09]:

And that was great. Yeah, I got to help mentor and build up some folks there that were new in their career and I could still do my thing and shine. Got to work with some friends and that became a constant thing like where can I go and work with people I really love working with who are friends, who are people I enjoy spending time with both in and out of the office. Spent some time there. That industry sort of petered out a little bit. Made my way through a couple other things. Spent some time at NPR, did some contract work, did some employer branding work. All things come full circle.

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Pete Radloff [00:14:42]:

A couple of years down the line, I find myself back at Comscore again. We sort of put the band back together there, spent a few years doing that again and then had the opportunity to go one more time into management. And I did that. And a couple of months in I was like, this isn't it. And I had a conversation with my boss and she's like, yeah, this isn't it for me either. So left there, got an opportunity through some friends, you started to see the theme here, know that network started to really take shape. Went over to Amazon for a couple of years and really had an opportunity to focus on leadership stuff, know architects, managers, directors, that kind of thing. Had an opportunity to do a lot of mentoring there, lead company wide calls to sort of train and develop others on that.

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Pete Radloff [00:15:31]:

And then got the call from Datadog about almost a year and a half, two years ago, up and coming company post IPo. So I didn't have to worry that the options I was going to get were just going to be coloring paper for my daughter. It was real money. So came in there, but wanted that opportunity to focus on leadership recruiting and executive recruiting. There's only so many years you can recruit engineers kind of daily engineers hands on. Wanted to focus a little bit more on the strategic stuff, the big picture stuff that you bring somebody in and you're going to be able to see the tangible difference they make to the company. So been there for a bit now, spending some time again mentoring folks. Didn't have that pull to go back to management, but working with some folks who I think really want to be great at what they're doing in this role and if I can help shape them with that, with my experience, with what I know, then that's what I'm looking to.

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Pete Radloff [00:16:25]:

And so far it's been a pretty great fit.

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Devyn Mikell [00:16:27]:

That's awesome. Yeah.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:16:29]:

I mean, right now, are you working with anyone that you worked with previously?

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Pete Radloff [00:16:33]:

I am working with somebody that I knew peripherally from here in the DC area. We were in the same recruit DC community. I actually found out as I was going through the interview process that he had come on board. I knew some folks who knew people there, so I had some back channels like, hey, is this a good move? I'm at Amazon. I don't need to leave hire and got some really good feedback on not, didn't have the same path of coming in to work with immediate friends. But certainly I think if I ever were to go anywhere else, I've got those folks here now.

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Devyn Mikell [00:17:08]:

Yeah.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:17:09]:

You mentioned during the journey, well, pretty early you knew like technical was your lane.

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Devyn Mikell [00:17:16]:

Right? When did you know that you were.

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Devyn Mikell [00:17:20]:

One of the best. I know this is, no one likes to do this.

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Pete Radloff [00:17:25]:

Yeah. When you're on the agency side. Right. It's really easy to tell. The numbers are right there on the board. There's a leaderboard. Right. And I'm competitive.

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Pete Radloff [00:17:36]:

I am type a. I hate to lose. I played sports until I was 40, until the body just gave out. So that competitive piece has always been there for me. And I knew when I was able to kind of go to the table with something and say, hey, here's why I think this is a good fit, or here's why I think this will work. And people are listening to that and sort of taking your advice or your thoughts into consideration and you see those become action. That's when, you know, I think I've hit on something here.

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Devyn Mikell [00:18:09]:

When you have that, I don't know.

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Pete Radloff [00:18:11]:

If I want to call it like seat at the table, but when you have that gravitas to be able to say, hey, here's what I've seen. Here's what might work. Why don't we try this? I think those are the things that, you know, you've sort of made it right. And I think that that's not without those moments where you have recruiting is this roller coaster and you're going to have super, super highs and the lows are really low. And those lows, you have to fight your brain to be like, I still know what I'm doing. It's just a bad stretch. This too shall pass.

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Devyn Mikell [00:18:44]:

And then with your recruiting now you mentioned, I feel like staffing is probably pretty fast paced, even in the technical world.

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Devyn Mikell [00:18:53]:

What is like the clip of you.

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Devyn Mikell [00:18:56]:

Like your, like, how often are you actually getting someone hired? When you're doing technical leadership recruiting, it.

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Pete Radloff [00:19:05]:

Takes a little longer. And that's an adjustment. I think when I was at Amazon, you might get two or three of those in a quarter.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:14]:

Gotcha.

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Pete Radloff [00:19:15]:

And when you're used to having a pop every week, you have to get comfortable with that. It might sometimes be a couple of weeks or a couple of months before that, and same way now, if I can pop one or two in a month, great. But I have to know that there are going to be months where that's not going to be the case, whether because the process is long tail or it's just a matter of finding the right folks. And you have to. 90% of the people that I'm talking to, I'm convincing them to talk to me. Right. These are not people that are putting in applications they don't need to leave where they are today. I have to come with that compelling.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:50]:

Message to say least, just get on.

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Pete Radloff [00:19:52]:

The phone with me and let's go from there.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:54]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:54]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:55]:

Yeah, I guess.

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Devyn Mikell [00:19:58]:

What is your scope? Right, so I can guess somewhat, but what is the scope of business functions and levels that you specifically recruit in?

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Pete Radloff [00:20:10]:

So the business functions are all sort of engineering. So product engineering, core engineering, infrastructure, things like that, and product management leadership. The folks are actually driving building the products. And that's everything from sort of frontline managers who have this almost player coach model of you're managing, but you're also 20% of your time still hands on keyboard coding to senior managers who manage managers and then up to director and vp levels.

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Devyn Mikell [00:20:40]:

Got you.

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Devyn Mikell [00:20:41]:

So has your hiring manager ever been the CEO?

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Pete Radloff [00:20:44]:

Yes, it has. CTO. A lot more the CTO usually, than the CEO. Gotcha. But that's okay. I actually like that direct chain because I can have a little bit more of a direct influence rather than sort of going through multiple steps to get that message up to the top.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:04]:

Right.

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Pete Radloff [00:21:05]:

And that's hard because you have to sort of craft the message that they're going to hear. Oh, it's really hard to find people. Isn't going to resonate. It's really hard to find people. And here's why. Here's where they are. Here's what that market looks like. Here's the data that supports what might otherwise be construed as whining.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:26]:

Yes.

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Devyn Mikell [00:21:28]:

So you mentioned one thing that, well, not one thing, you've kind of made it very clear, like I see is the way right now. But also what people might not know is you're no small fish in the world of recruiting. Built a brand for yourself. You have quite a following. And I want to talk about when that started. Were you trying to do it one, and then who's your audience for your LinkedIn presence specifically?

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Pete Radloff [00:21:56]:

The success that I've had is a direct result of having unfathomably good mentors over the years. And I think know the conversation I.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:09]:

Had with a former boss of mine.

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Pete Radloff [00:22:12]:

And the guy that gave me my first recruiting job, Bob Corlette.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:15]:

I still talk to Bob all the time.

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Pete Radloff [00:22:19]:

We touch base every so often here and up until this job, I don't think I'd taken a job in 20 years without talking to him first. Like, is this crazy? Am I right? Part pep talk, part like smack in the face reality, right. And I think that has sort of continued. And I found these other mentors of people who've been doing this a long time who I've seen how they interact with other people. And those are the folks that I want to learn from. And as I got to that point, that inflection point of like, do I want leadership? Or, you know, Bob said to me, he's like, where do you get the most joy center? Where is your centerpiece that you get your joy from? And I'm like, well, seeing other people have the same journey that I had and be able to grow and succeed from that.

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Devyn Mikell [00:23:06]:

And he's like, well, then do that.

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Pete Radloff [00:23:08]:

Do those things that make you feel good. I wasn't trying to build a brand, but when I started to write six or seven years ago too, well, maybe I've got something to say. Maybe there's something out there. And you have to fight a little bit of this imposter syndrome of like, well, this guy wrote like five other things. What am I going to say that's different? And you sort of have to get out of that mindset and just kind of take the leap right now. Part of that is having good editors who can say, yeah, I hear your voice here, but let's flip it around a little bit. And the other piece is just sort of relating to people in a way that they can understand. They can say, yeah, I've experienced that on my journey too.

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Pete Radloff [00:23:45]:

I think that's an important piece. Again, I don't need to build an empire speaking at conferences, great, I'm an extrovert. I'm comfortable with sort of being on my feet and being alive, but I'm just as happy being behind the curtain and sharing what I need to. So for lack of a better term, I don't do it for the clicks. If somebody reads it, great and they get something out of it, fantastic. If they don't, that's okay. There are plenty of other voices that they can get that from too, right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:24:14]:

No, for sure. And when you're writing, are you writing for the job seeker or are you writing for the recruiter?

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Pete Radloff [00:24:20]:

I think it's been both. Probably with a heavier slant towards the recruiter. Right. Because this is an industry, this is a profession where we sort of constantly have to change. And I think you talked a little bit about before, engineering and tech is sort of where I found my niche.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:24:37]:

Right.

‍

Pete Radloff [00:24:38]:

And I like that because I have to learn something new. Every couple of years, Kubernetes comes out, I got to figure out what the heck that is and how to spell it. I've got to figure out AI and why AI is not going to take my job and which parts of AI do I want to give my job to. You have to constantly learn something. And I think if I was doing that early on in my career where I was doing accountants and paralegals and like, okay, well, not saying it doesn't change, but it's not as sort of deftly changing as technology is. And it's way more fun for me to talk about code all day long than it is to talk about general ledgers.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:25:16]:

Yeah.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:25:17]:

As a recruiter that works with a bunch of people that can speak the language and you obviously probably can speak the language, can you write?

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:25:24]:

Can you code?

‍

Pete Radloff [00:25:25]:

I mean, I've hacked up some pretty bad HTML to make my website go poof in the night, but that's about it. If I had a stronger aptitude for math back in the day, my career path might have been a little bit different, but I need a calculator to use a calculator.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:25:41]:

Yeah, me too.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:25:45]:

I've come to accept it.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:25:47]:

Exactly. You've alluded to this change, like recruiting is changing constantly, especially in your world. When you go into and you even say you're experiencing the seat at the table, people are listening when I'm saying, hey, things are changing, we maybe should try this. What are some of those things? Let's say you stepped into a new organization.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:26:07]:

What are you evaluating off the top.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:26:10]:

And what is the likely thing that.

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:26:11]:

You think chances are?

‍

Devyn Mikell [00:26:13]:

I'm going to suggest a change here.

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Pete Radloff [00:26:15]:

I don't know if it's an inclination or whatever it is, but for a guy who's bad at math, I have a pretty kind of native intuition around systems and recruiting systems. Is it working? Is it not? Two examples with this. When I was back at living social and we were a startup, everything was moving 1000 miles a minute. We had an ATS and I was talking to one of the business systems guys, I'm like, hey, I think we can do this system better. What changes can we make? We went to the vendor and the vendor is like, wow, we can't really change that. And so I said to him, I was like, well, what if we strip this thing down to bare bones? Like, put a parallel universe in with a new system that's stripped down to bare bones? Let's rebuild it for the way that it works for us. And it took us six months, but we got it up and running, and it sort of transformed the way that we were able to work because we weren't in this sort of walled off jail of, like, you only can push these buttons now. We could sort of make it work to our flow and things like that.

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Pete Radloff [00:27:13]:

So that was interesting, was a big undertaking. And there were a lot of times I really thought I bought a bit off more than I could chew, but it worked. And then coming here when we implemented a CRM, and I was like, all right, hey, if I'm going to have to use this, I want to be on the early team that breaks this thing, and I want to know how to break it every which way to Sunday. And so we did. We got on the early team. I was able to sort of flag a couple of things that they were like, wow, that's actually a bug that we didn't know about. But then even beyond that, as our team got to use it, I was like, we have this system, and we can search in hire, and we want to be able to sort of quickly be able to surface people who fit that maybe we talked to six months ago or a year ago or what have you, but they're now in the nebula of this CRM system. We have to find a way to do it.

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Pete Radloff [00:28:02]:

What if we implement a tagging system that's unique to our leadership team that we can put in and say, okay, we need somebody who's at x level, who has x skills, who has worked in certain environments. How do we pull that together? And so I worked with our operations team to kind of map out for them. Here's visually what I'm thinking was not any sort of pretty design or anything. It was a couple of bits on a Google sheet that I thought I could sort of give them the picture of it. And we did implement it. We've had a couple of quick hit successes on that, of digging out folks that we talked to some time ago, but the right thing wasn't there or just didn't match up and been able to bring those folks aboard. So that's been really nice to see. And I think that that piece of it, from a systems perspective, my brain just sort of thinks like that.

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Pete Radloff [00:28:51]:

I don't know how much of that is OCD. I don't know how much of that is just being really organized, but I think that it's part of doing what we do. I want to work smart, not hard.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:02]:

Right?

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:03]:

I love tagging things. It's always been like a weird, satisfying feeling when you can filter and get.

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Pete Radloff [00:29:11]:

What you want and it bleeds out everywhere. It drives my kids crazy. They're like, dad, where's this thing? I'm like, it's in that closet, third shelf down on the left, underneath the red blanket. And they're like, how do you know? Just. I just know where stuff know. I don't want to work hard to find something.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:28]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:29]:

So if a company came to you and was like, hey, Pete, I am recruiting in the same field as you, but the answer is usually like, we.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:40]:

Don'T get enough applicants.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:41]:

That's like everyone's answer in the first thing that they realize, right. What is, like, your first response to that? Obviously, we're not getting enough applicants anywhere, or at least even in the good. When people are getting applicants, they're getting lots of disqualified applicants.

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:57]:

So what is the first place that you think people can optimize in when they're trying to recruit?

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Pete Radloff [00:30:06]:

I mean, I think part of that is kind of establishing a process. Like, what are the things that you're going to do to find these people? Are you going to go out and you search on LinkedIn? You're going to search on tweak out or hire easy or something like that? Or you're going to create these elegant, boolean strings to go and find somebody. Right? But also, don't forget to check the applicants that come in, too. I think everybody's like, oh, we got to go out and search. We going to create this nifty stuff.

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Devyn Mikell [00:30:26]:

I'm like, what if the really great.

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Pete Radloff [00:30:27]:

Person shows up on your doorstep? Right? But that's not always going to happen, right? A store doesn't open, put an open sign on there and people will flood into it. They have to advertise, they have to have a brand that makes sense to get people in the door. Sort of off work topic for this is like, I love going to live music shows, right? It's one of my favorite things to do outside of work if I'm not with my kids or whatever the case is. But it's hard to find something. Like, there's a million venues in DC. It's hard to find who I want. How am I going to do this? But there's this app, there's this song kick app, and I give it all the artists I'm very interested in and peripheral artists that could be there too. And it notifies me and says, hey, by the way, here's some stuff you.

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Devyn Mikell [00:31:10]:

Might like to see.

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Pete Radloff [00:31:11]:

And so I don't have to go out and sort of click it every day and see is there something in there? I can sort of set it up to do a little bit of the work for me. Right. So whether that's a saved search that I set up and then just have it running every 48, 72 hours, is there anything there that I should be looking at? Making sure I'm going through applicants, making sure I'm sort of thinking of different ways to do this. I was trying to figure out for a manager role, like what do they call this at other companies? And so I went into Chat GPT and said, give me all the variations of this job title at a tech company with the size of 1000 to 5000 people, and in 3 seconds it spits out 25 different job titles. And now my search parameters have gone from this to this. And so it's about sort of setting up those mechanisms that allow us to do the job a little bit more efficiently than we did yesterday.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:04]:

Got you. No, I love that.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:09]:

Anything I was hoping for? Know one bit with chat TVT. But no, it's a perfect segue. We could go forever. But I want to move us to the last segment of the show, which.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:22]:

Is the question of the week. So for those that are listening, Keith.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:27]:

Is going to get first pass at.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:28]:

This question because he's here.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:31]:

He deserves to get first.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:32]:

Right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:32]:

But you can also participate in the.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:35]:

Link, in the description, and you'll get.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:38]:

A qualifi interview where you can answer this question. And if your answer is selected as.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:42]:

The best, I will send you a.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:45]:

Gift card from my personal email.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:48]:

So, not that my personal email is.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:49]:

Special, with a gift card is more special than me, but just so you know. So go ahead and jump in on that.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:55]:

But Pete, first, let's get you the.

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Devyn Mikell [00:32:58]:

Question of the week. So what is your number one sourcing strategy that you're willing to share?

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Pete Radloff [00:33:05]:

I love to nerd out and spend time in GitHub, right? And I'm not the first guy to say this, right? I'm certainly not the best one at know. They're the mark Hamills of the world and things like that that I know are just way better at it than I am. But I think just when I go in, have you have GitHub.com, but then you also have like GitHub IO right. And GitHub IO is like sort of the personal side of GitHub.com is like, this is the code I write, this is the job that I do. Check out my stuff, blah blah blah. GitHub IO is more of the, here's who I am, here's how to talk to me, here's how to reach out to me, here's what I do when I'm not spending 8 hours a day with headphones on, writing syntax. And that part is really where, that's what I love to see. How do I then figure out, this is where the undergrad in psychology that never got used comes into play is how do I know what is going to be that thing that I should talk to that person about right off the bat before we even dive into what kind of code they write or what products they build.

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Pete Radloff [00:34:12]:

So for me, that's where I like to spend that time because it gives me just a different angle of that person and it sort of avoids them getting yet another. I hope this email finds you well. Right? Like, I came across your profile. No, you didn't. You found it on purpose. You didn't just turn the computer and be like, oh, boom, look at that. You went and found it. And so I think that the research before the reach out, that's where the gold is, because that's what gets everybody's like, how do I get people to respond to me? Treat them like you're human and they're more apt to respond to you.

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Pete Radloff [00:34:47]:

And so I think something like that, where you have this more personal angle of the, that's where you figure out the gold.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:55]:

I love it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:57]:

Research, research and unique ways to. Don't want to. I don't even want to try to give an answer to that one. And I usually don't, as I shouldn't. But Pete, it's been great having all this knowledge come out of your brain, all this experience for the audience. I'm sure they're going to want to keep up with you. What are the ways in which people.

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Devyn Mikell [00:35:17]:

Should or could follow you to stay.

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Devyn Mikell [00:35:20]:

In tune with what you're up to?

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Pete Radloff [00:35:21]:

Yeah, I mean, my LinkedIn is great. I can't say that I tweet or x much anymore because it's just a hellscape on there. Or when I do put new content up on the site, I've got a couple of new things going up to my website relatively soon. It's recruitingin 3D.com. I'm working on a few things that are all about 60% done. I just need to spend a football Sunday hacking the rest of them out.

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Devyn Mikell [00:35:44]:

Nice.

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Devyn Mikell [00:35:45]:

Awesome. Well, you heard it there, folks. Make sure to follow Pete. Even though I forced it out of him, he's still probably underselling the knowledge you can gain by just following his page. And if you like this episode, make sure to subscribe so that you never miss a beat. We're going to keep coming out with these every other Tuesday as promised. But Pete, it was great to have you here. Great to connect.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:07]:

I hope we can do this again soon.

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Pete Radloff [00:36:09]:

All right, thanks, Devin. Thanks.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:14]:

Our channel.