Joel Lalgee [00:00:00]:

Candidate Experience is just so bad right now. And so it hurts everybody. It hurts the job seekers, it hurts recruiting brand as a whole. Which is why there's Reddit channels like recruiting hell, which is why when I post on LinkedIn anything that's like, recruiting centric, I get hate on those things. Similar to content, one of the big questions people ask, what's ROI? What's ROI? And people don't get that there's an ROI and just brand new reputation. And it's not something that you can just write on paper like it's worth this amount. And so it's the same with candidate experience.

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Devyn Mikell [00:00:35]:

Hey, I'm Devyn Mikell, and this is Hire Quality, the show where I sit down with the movers and shakers of talent acquisition to hear their talent triumphs, their hiring horror stories, and genuine opinions about the recruiting industry. All right, so in this episode, I am talking with Joel Lalgee, aka The Realest Recruiter. This guy is legit. He has somewhere north of 800,000 followers across all platforms for recruiting. Whether it's candidates following him for the greatest and latest advice, or recruiters that he's helping with an agency or internal organizations. This guy is an absolute beast when it comes to content and how it attracts candidates. He's going to give you some insider tips, some ways to think differently about creating talent attraction.

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Devyn Mikell [00:01:20]:

And that's really what we need right now, is just ways to think differently so that every company doesn't look like every other company claiming to be the best place to work, or whatever it may be. He's telling you how to stand out, how to be authentic, and how to build great talent pipeline in a way that's very different. So keep listening because this one's going to be good. I am joined today by Joel Lalgee, or you might know him as the realest recruiter. Joel, thanks so much for joining. So why don't you tell the world who you are, what you do, what you're best at?

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Joel Lalgee [00:01:49]:

Yep. So my name is Joel Lalgee, aka the realist recruiter, and I've been in the recruitment agency world for about a decade, mainly recruited on corporate, non tech positions, as well as found a niche for a number of years in the construction space. I'm probably most well known for my content creation. I've been creating content since 2019, started on LinkedIn, and that has just moved across platforms. And then I also run a podcast called recruiting is no joke. And the idea of the podcast is there is some interviewing, but I like to think of it as co-hosting and what I do is I look at everything that's going on as it relates to job search and hiring, mainly on social media. And then we actually react live on the show and then just talk about some of the real things that people are facing, particularly candidates, because that's a big portion of my audience as well. And then outside of that, I've been married for about six years.

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Joel Lalgee [00:02:44]:

I'm a proud husband, and I got three kids under five. And so I love being a dad as well.

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Devyn Mikell [00:02:50]:

So there's our hardest job on the list right there.

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Joel Lalgee [00:02:52]:

Oh, man. Telling me, especially when your business is content, because I do. That's basically my business now is like content media. And I still do some recruiting, but the recruiting calls. People don't care about kids crying. But on podcasts and media, that is a struggle. Try keeping three kids quiet.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:09]:

Right, right. Well, you have the dope setup for sure. For those who are watching on video, they'll see it. Here's the thing the audience should know. This guy has close to, if you add them all up, getting close to a million followers total. I did the math this morning. I was like, my goodness, it's crazy. It's not that you're out here just posting content like you're really out here doing the thing.

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Devyn Mikell [00:03:30]:

And I think there's a lot that we stand to learn today, and I want to focus a lot on your journey, how you got to this point from the very beginning and what made you carve out the niche you carved out. And then we'll jump into some tactical stuff about candidates and what they're looking for in this market today. But let's start first with I believe you started off in more of a consultative kind of talent role. Not staffing necessarily, but like talent solutions. Talk to me about how you went from here to starting your own company and kind of carving out your niche where, how you saw that path.

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Joel Lalgee [00:04:00]:

Yeah. So a friend of mine, he started a recruitment agency. It was more of an hourly RPO. So for ten years ago, it was kind of an innovative idea. So essentially what we would do is we'd partner with companies. They'd give us an open position, and then we'd dedicate ten to 15 hours of actual recruitment time position. And the idea was in four to six weeks, wed fill the position and the cost would be significantly lower than a traditional contingency or retained agency. So we would typically save companies on the high end 80%, on the low end, 50%.

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Joel Lalgee [00:04:31]:

So it was a really attractive offer. So thats how I got into recruitment most agency recruiters start with full desk, so theyre doing a lot of sales and recruitment. I luckily didnt have to do much sales when I started. I just jumped right into recruitment. So day one, I am talking with vice presidents about hiring strategy for different positions. Even though I didn't really know what I was talking about, I would have an account manager or whatever on the call as well. So jumped right into recruitment, and quickly, I just, I realized, like, I was good at understanding what people's jobs were from, like, more of a conceptual point of view. So I could just understand, okay, here's the type of work you're doing.

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Joel Lalgee [00:05:08]:

Even if I didn't know all the technical terminology, I could almost, like, visualize what people were doing. And then I was pretty good at asking questions and clarifying without sounding like I didn't know what I was doing. Like, I could just ask the right questions and be curious. So I was like, all right, I like recruiting. This is fun. And that company that I started with, when I started with them, I think we had nine employees. When I left five years later, we were at 200. So it was like, definitely that startup.

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Joel Lalgee [00:05:35]:

By plus seeing a company starting to scale, add processes in, and honestly, I just learned about myself. I love the early stages, and I love getting in there and doing work and being a part of something exciting. But as soon as lots of processes come into play, I kind of tune out. And to be honest with you, I just get bored, and it's just not my thing, and I'm not good at sticking to processes. After about five years of being at this company, one of the things I started to notice was, particularly on LinkedIn, people were talking about this idea of creating content and the idea of, if you create content and people know you, then people will come to you instead of you going out and going to them. That time I had developed more into sales positions, and so I was, you know, reaching out to a lot of people getting rejected. And I just thought my whole life would be easier if people came to me. And so they got me with the whole, if you just produce video every day, people will come to you, get game.

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Joel Lalgee [00:06:28]:

And I thought, this could happen, this would be amazing. But as I started creating content, and again it started on LinkedIn, started writing posts and doing videos, I started to realize, oh, I actually enjoy this. And because I enjoy it, I'm good at it, but I'm creative with it. I can come up with different ideas. I think I just fell in love with writing and creating videos, coming up with things and at first I'd say the first three months I didn't get any traction at all. Like, every post I'd post would get five or ten likes, but I just didn't care because I was like, it's adding a component to what I'm doing that I enjoy. And whether it works or not, I don't actually really care at this point because I enjoy doing it. And so I just continued to do that as well as, obviously, recruitment and holding down a full time job.

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Joel Lalgee [00:07:14]:

And then around 2020, so I'd been at this company for about five years. Around 2020, I decided, I'm going to make a move and I'm going to go from this company. It's got 200 people, I'm going to go back to a smaller company, and instead of doing the RPO and this hourly model, I'm just going to do full desk contingency recruiting. I'm just gonna build my own book of business. I chose to do that in March 2020, and it was literally two weeks before the pandemic. And suddenly I'm hit with, like, non competes. I'm hit with can't go after these clients. And then obviously trying to make new relationships in March 2020 is practically impossible.

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Joel Lalgee [00:07:49]:

And so I'm just left in this zone of, like, how do I get new relationships in these industries when people are, like, hanging up going, don't you know what's going on in the world? How do I meet my phone quota that I've got to hit and my phone time when nobody wants to talk to you? And so I did that for about six months. And then that was at the point where I went, you know what, I think with my following on LinkedIn, which was already at like 40,000, I was like, I think I could probably help recruitment agencies with. And I'd already started to get people reaching out to me going, hey, could you help us with this? And so I launched my first business around that time and did that for about three months and completely freaked out, realized I don't know how to run a business. And so I ended up actually partnering with another marketing agency and getting more into coaching and training. A few years later, got back into recruitment because it was a hot market. And then once this kind of downturn happened, at least in corporate recruitment, thinking, like tech and startup world, obviously there's been a big downturn once that happened, I really just had a conversation with the recruitment agency that was at great company called Hirewell that's based out of Chicago. And we just had the conversation. I said, look, I was in a full sales capacity, and my pipeline was just going down and down and down, and at the same time, I was just up to my content creation.

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Joel Lalgee [00:09:04]:

Like, I just started not just on LinkedIn, but started getting active on TikTok and other channels. And those following started to build. And I said, guys, look, I think I could actually monetize, or I think I could make more money from brand deals and leveraging my audience than I can being a salesperson with a salary, because you don't rely on the salary when you're in sales. It's a little commissioner, but there's no commission coming in. So, like, why don't we, instead of you paying me a full time salary to sell, we'll just keep our commission deal. So if I get business, I can refer it through, because I still get inbound leads for business and I can just focus on building my brand out and monetizing and figuring out how to do it. And that was about a year and a half ago. And since then, another channel got added, like Instagram got added to my kind of following, and I've grown to like 200,000 followers in a really short amount of time.

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Joel Lalgee [00:09:53]:

TikTok has been growing. LinkedIn has been continuing to grow. I got a business page to my LinkedIn as well. It's grown really, really fast, and then just started to understand a little bit more of this b two b influencer space, for lack of a better word. And how can I start to still create content and do what I love, monetize it for myself, which is great, but also deliver value, particularly for tech companies looking to reach my audience? And how can I do it in a way where my audience isn't like, oh, my God, Joel's sold out, and this guy sucks. He's just always trying to sell us something, but to like, hey, this guy's creating entertaining content. I want to engage with networking and building relationships, and then still drive value for the companies I'm working with. And so I've been doing that for about a year and a half, and I love it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:10:39]:

Yeah. So it leaves me with questions, which is always good. You're still partnered with the, we'll call it recruiting agency.

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Joel Lalgee [00:10:50]:

So basically, if a project comes in, so let's say if someone's like, hey, we really want to expand our go to market team in the US, we need to hire two AE's and six SDRs, and we need a sales executive, I can't take that whole project on. So that's going to be work that goes to Hirewell, the agency that, you know, that I work with. And that's definitely happened since I've left there, and it's been great, and they always execute, they always do a great job. If I get somebody that reaches out and says, hey, I've got usually a non tech corporate position. So that could be anything from a controller position in finance, could be a marketing manager. It could be just a one. Usually just one position I will take those searches on. And what I do is the tech that I'm working with.

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Joel Lalgee [00:11:35]:

So any of my sponsors that I'm working with usually get access to those tools to try them out, then that kind of keeps me in touch. But in terms of, am I recruiting for like five to ten positions at a time? I don't have the bandwidth for that. I've got probably a bandwidth of two to three roles that I can work at at a time, and then the rest of the time is just content and training those types of things.

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Devyn Mikell [00:11:56]:

Yeah, I saw on your LinkedIn, it says like, you train recruiters.

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Joel Lalgee [00:12:00]:

What?

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Devyn Mikell [00:12:00]:

And is it agency recruiters and internal, that's first one. Then what are you actually training?

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Joel Lalgee [00:12:04]:

So it's agency or corporate teams or even tech teams that are really looking to make a splash. There's two real components. There's content creation, which I would actually think of as more documentation versus creation. I think talking about problems that you're solving, talking about questions that your clients have, your prospects have, documenting some of the work that you're actually doing. So that's one area of it. And then also talking about yourself as well. Because particularly on LinkedIn, even though it's b, two, b is still very much like a networking platform. So when you meet people, the idea is to create an online presence that's you, that's still tied to the business.

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Joel Lalgee [00:12:44]:

But then when you go out, you don't want to go out and meet people in your industry and then be like, why is your content so different to who you are? Like, if you, if that's happening, you failed, so you still want to add in who you are. And people care about stories. That's like phase one. And then really the second phase is just training on distribution. And I think a lot of times companies, they don't have a distribution plan, and that's a distribution for, if it's an in house recruitment team, then it's your recruiting team. If it's an agency, then it's everybody at the agency, because typically they're doing sales as well. And then if it's a tech company, it's usually just having a clear distribution outside of just that one marketing person that has to create the content and post it. Everybody's got to get behind it, and everyone from founders to salespeople, maybe the accounting people in the behind, you know, behind the scenes, they, they escape without having to do this.

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Joel Lalgee [00:13:37]:

But it's really just this idea of, like, where do we distribute the content? And then, like, how do we create a cohesive team strategy? Because this is actually where you can compete against really large companies, because at really large companies, you should see some of their social media. Like, some of it goes viral, some of these teams have figured it out, but a lot of them, they don't have a lot of their employees sharing content or like, engaging or creating content. They want to be really careful of what's out there, obviously, because there's usually larger, like, pr issues and, like, legal things that can happen. But for a lot of startups and smaller companies, there's actually a lot of freedom to get creative and to do things and work together as a team to just maximize the distribution. I think usually distribution is the problem versus the content not being good. It's just there's no real strategy to get it out there. It's like you can have the best product in the world, you can have the best thing in the world. But if you don't actually know how to get awareness and create that tactically on these social media platforms, which everyone is a little bit different, that's a whole thing.

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Joel Lalgee [00:14:43]:

So it's content creation, documentation, and then tactical distribution. That's where I come in. And then probably the third piece, which is like, ongoing, is consulting on, like, hey, this is a good idea, or this isn't a good idea. And then accountability, like, how are you guys actually staying with it? Because again, a lot of times when I'm coming in, I get people excited. I get them envisioned. They get it, they suddenly understand it, top of mind, and then it just drops to the bottom, fizzles. And unfortunately, with this game, the social media game fizzles. It's not really even a social media game.

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Joel Lalgee [00:15:17]:

It's a pure attention game. And you think, oh, I'm just competing against my competitors now. You're competing against the news. You're competing against Hulu, Netflix, the movie industry, Gary Vee. People who are producing a lot of content and have big teams a lot of the times, or they're just huge companies that have massive budgets, that's your competition. So it's, I think it's readjusting that mindset and realizing, look, if you don't prioritize it, unfortunately, they are, and it's compounding. So they're just getting bigger and bigger. That is the ongoing piece.

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Joel Lalgee [00:15:51]:

I think people find it a challenge, and I've seen it time and time again.

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Devyn Mikell [00:15:55]:

Yeah. So when you look at, like, let's say you went into a company who might be listening, right, they're gonna be recruiters or ta directors, whatever it might be, and they're gonna be, I think anyone would be excited about the potential of social media and its impact on attracting. And so I think where they might fall, just imagining is like, okay, we want to do this or we want to do this, but either our brand is boring, like we have nothing to talk about, or we're just literally not equipped to do it at all. And that's a valid point in where you'd come in. But how do you get people to that next level, past that thinking? And then what are some of the things that have happened when you've worked with a brand like this? And what are some of those quick wins? Or maybe not quick, but what are those wins that have happened as a result of doing this sort of effort?

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Joel Lalgee [00:16:46]:

If you're a brand that's looking to get sales, and there's definitely a difference between that and then the type of content that attracts candidates. And so, obviously, if we're looking at just, let's just focus on candidates, that'll be most relevant. Understanding even just how social media has changed, primarily because TikTok has changed everything, you see a lot of the content now that is working on TikTok is really authentic, uncut, non produced content. And the why I think this has actually happened is when you look at one of the biggest things that happened during the pandemic was people went from face to Zoom and FaceTime. And when I think of the videos that do the best on TikTok, and you can just go and look at any viral video, if you think about it, it resembles a FaceTime. One of the first things I do is I just shift that mentality of what good content looks like to, it's literally you facetiming your audience. So the more you can envision that, the better. So it's like, it doesn't have to be polished.

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Joel Lalgee [00:17:55]:

And so from a candidate attraction point of view, just think about what do candidates care most about? There's that old adage, right? Like, people don't leave jobs, they leave managers, right? So things like that. And when we talk about culture, it's like what is culture? And it's culture is literally the experience an individual has when they're working somewhere. And so culture changes from each person because you can't just be like, this is our culture, because it's an experiential thing. And so what I think that boils down to is the whole idea of employer brand is like people trying to cook up an employer brand in like, a room in a basement. And I'm like, it should be your employees. So I think just shifting people out of the mindset of this is a thing that you have to, like, create instead of just like, letting your people tell stories and talk about, like, what the workday is like. And some of the videos that are really popular, these like, vlog style, like, here's a day in my life at this company, but then really just documenting what are they doing? And I think that type of content, like, the truly authentic content is the content that keeps people engaged, versus the career video, where it's like, super polished. Because the problem is with the career videos is people know they're on video and so they start saying weird stuff.

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Joel Lalgee [00:19:08]:

That's just not true. And every career video will paint every single employer, like, the best place to work. And the problem is, when you look at social media becoming more authentic, you also have to just look at what is going on from a corporate standpoint. And the truth is, people just don't believe companies. No one is going to believe you. Now, if you say, we really care about our people, even if you do, we really care about our people. We really care about this because we've seen time and time again, companies saying things like this, and then a layoff happens, or they get rid of you because you're not performing whatever the reasons are and the legitimate reasons, because it's business. But the problem is, we've been cooking up these employer brands like, there's no imperfections.

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Joel Lalgee [00:19:48]:

And I think the only way that you can actually have imperfections is by letting your people be your people. And again, this is one of those things where smaller companies have such an edge over larger companies because you don't have the same pr issues that larger companies have. Like trying to control this with hundreds of thousands of people is extremely difficult. Trying to do this with 40 people is a lot easier. Not because you have more control, but because you're just more in touch with who your employees are. Like, there's no way a CEO of a huge company that 100,000 people knows each of their employees. So you might have a warehouse worker who's just pissed off one day and makes a video and affects your whole brand somehow, it's less likely to happen at a smaller scale. So I tell companies, like, the best thing you can do is to train people on it, give them that vision of what they're doing, and then support them in it as well.

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Joel Lalgee [00:20:36]:

And focus on the people who are most likely to want to do it. Usually without, like, making a blanket statement. It's usually people who are more comfortable with social media. Maybe it skews younger, but finding those people and empowering them, training them, supporting them, is huge. The quick wins immediately are you're going to have people who view that content. So you're going to just get a Hire Quality of inbound right away. Because again, on LinkedIn, if we're looking at LinkedIn as a platform, you're doing this. Most people are connected to people they've worked with in the past, people that they have some sort of, like, business relationship with.

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Joel Lalgee [00:21:10]:

So you're going to get that network and then you just going to get candidates that feel already like they're connected to you so you don't have to sell them as hard on the interview. If that's where your candidates are on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn's a place to go. But if you let them go, oh, my candidates aren't LinkedIn, then you need to do some research and you need to figure out where are the people spending time. And the biggest mistake you can make is go, oh, no, my candidates don't spend time on social media. I'm like, that's nonsense. If that's your mindset, it's nonsense. But maybe it's YouTube. You have TikTok, Instagram, there's lots of different places you can go, but the key is find that out and then train your people, equip them and give them the tools they need to succeed.

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Joel Lalgee [00:21:51]:

Not enough companies are doing this either to where when you start to do this, you see the immediate impact and you see it more from a closing perspective. You get more of those candidates that you really want to see versus the candidates just spraying and praying and applying to everywhere. So. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Because I know it's a lot. Right, right.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:10]:

I agree. It's. It feels like an arbitrage opportunity, opportunity to, like, have a moat, like a competitive moat against competitors. Because two things I know from experience, like consistently, is one of the hardest things to do. Like to just produce on a constant basis, that's very difficult. But when you get in the rhythm, once you're in rhythm. It's like building muscle. And like, you can really become light years ahead because everyone has to catch up at some point if they're going to jump into this game.

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Devyn Mikell [00:22:40]:

And so that's one moat because not a lot of people are going to do it. And then two, I think those that are doing it, like, I'd bet 90% of them are doing it the way that doesn't work, which is like very markety feeling, very, like you said, very polished. And that's, I'm like, over here, FaceTime your candidates is the move. Like, that whole thought process is different.

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Joel Lalgee [00:23:01]:

And we got to ask that, like, why is it such a challenge? How does that not come out once people work with you? It's like why? We create one thing coming in and then when you look at the statistics right now, everybody is unengaged where they're at experiencing high turnover. So that means somewhere in this hiring and interview process, something is breaking down. We're still doing things the exact same way a lot of the times.

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Devyn Mikell [00:23:28]:

Right. And I also feel like it's like, I think people are scared to not do polish because it's people that don't understand the game, like don't understand social media that think polish is the move because they're used to, like, building a website.

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Joel Lalgee [00:23:42]:

I just think the trouble is, and again, that's why I said, like, I think your marketing strategy for sales is obviously different and maybe you have more of the polish there and the refinement there. I'm not necessarily saying that. And then maybe the argument is, well, if we had this other content out there, then what? Again, I look at it, I'm like, there's opportunity there. And it's something that the company that I'm partnered with, they have a platform to actually help employees with this. Their clients have seen it work, especially in tight markets. So we're talking healthcare is one of those market manufacturing. It's just those are tight labor markets. But I think part of the problem is when you look at those larger organizations executives, theyre sitting so out of touch with who their frontline employees are that they havent seen the trend of where people are actually spending time.

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Joel Lalgee [00:24:31]:

And so thats why you see its like your billboards and radio. Im like, okay, radio. I listen to the radio sometimes, but im equally spending way more time on social media. And so I know the couple of startups right now that are even driving like influencer marketing with like job postings. And I thought about this, like, you want to reach nurses, then find some like influencers, micro influencers that have large nursing communities and figure out a way to work with them and partner them to drive traffic because right now you're not getting any attention. And if you look at like what's the solution? Well, we'll just spend more money with indeed once they're on, indeed, I don't care what spot you are in, indeed, you already lost because they're applying all ten of those companies. Like that is a pointless strategy. You need to think, how do I get them before indeed is to go to where they're spending time.

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Joel Lalgee [00:25:22]:

And you go to any of these businesses, go to the lunch break room and tell me that everybody is not on their cell phone. So you need to get on the cell phone. That's what you need to get. That's how I think about it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:25:33]:

You said something that really strikes true. And we talk about this a lot and qualify as like the executive decision makers, they're out of touch with their frontline candidates. Right. And so you are on the opposite side. You're very in touch with the candidate. Like you not only recruit, but also you get to see comments, you get to see people asking you to create a topic about this, like what today's candidate look like that everyone seems to be missing. In your, in your mind, there's tools.

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Joel Lalgee [00:26:02]:

Now that can help candidates auto apply, that can help people craft resumes based on job descriptions. And so we're at this weird precipice now where a lot of these, and this is more on the corporate side, those problems are around, like talent shortages, like there's just not enough people going into some of these fields, which I think is gonna shift. And I think AI is actually gonna help shift away a lot of the corporate focus to trades and hands on work. That can be a good thing. But let's say a lot of people who are on the job market right now that are hurting from conversations I've had and hundreds of live shows, they're applying to hundreds if not thousands of jobs a month because it's a pure numbers game at this point. And I also think that's because a lot of companies, they still really value top of funnel metrics. So they value how many applicants they're getting. And so there needs to be a rebalance.

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Joel Lalgee [00:26:50]:

And I think a lot of tools that are going to be on the market soon that are going to help with this rebalance, where we actually need to bring the amount of people applying down to jobs just we need to make that lower because it just doesn't help the situation. And it doesn't mean that you make things unaccessible to people. I just think there's things that you can do in your process that actually attract the right people and instead of just attracting mass people. And so I think that issue is one that's going to get. I think we're going to see a lot of attraction with AI because I think AI is more scalable to handle some of those things than humans are. Like a one person recruitment team that's handling 40 requisitions. Like it's not realistic that they're going to get to everybody. And then I just think overall it's processing.

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Joel Lalgee [00:27:33]:

Canada experience just needs to be elevated and it needs to be a focus. And I think for a lot of companies, they will ask questions like what's the ROI of it? Because ultimately in their mind they're like, we're still hiring people and that's the end goal. But it's Canada experience is just so bad right now. And so it hurts everybody, hurts the job seekers, it hurts recruiting brand as a whole, which is why there's Reddit channels like recruiting hell, which is why when I post on LinkedIn anything that's like recruiting Centric, I get hate on those things. And that's okay. I don't mind that. I get it. But there's a misalignment there of what that process looks like similar to content.

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Joel Lalgee [00:28:14]:

One of the big questions people ask, what's rOi? What's ROI? And people don't get that. There's an ROI and just brand new reputation and it's not something that you can just write on paper like it's worth this amount. And so it's the same with Canada Experience. I had a great conversation with UPS recently and they hire hundreds of thousands of people in a short amount of time. And they're very big on Canada Experience. They say, why Canada experience so big? And they're like, well, anybody could be a customer. So if we piss off a candidate at UPS, they could be a lifetime customer. The amount of money they're going to spend lifetime with us outweighs any costs that we put into candidate experience.

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Joel Lalgee [00:28:51]:

And so I think actually having that mindset is huge and not enough companies are thinking that way. And I think right now in an employer market, maybe it doesn't hurt because people just need a job and inflation's high and all these things, but it comes back at the end of the day. And I think that's the part that leadership aren't connected with because again, they don't want to invest money in making it better for candidates because they're like, what's the .1 person's going to get the job? Or only a certain amount of people are going to get the job. Who cares about everyone else? Amazon is a great example. They go through whole populations in cities and towns where they've hired everybody in the town and people haven't been treated well. So it's like, who else are you going to hire? And I think it's going to come full circle at some point. That's a big adjustment. And I do think technology can help a lot with this.

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Joel Lalgee [00:29:34]:

But again, it's like, do they value that investment enough? Do they care that enough?

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Devyn Mikell [00:29:38]:

Yep. Yep. It's about the nose. Like candid experience is all about, not all about, but it's mostly about the nose. It's really about those people that are like, nah, like, we're not hiring you now. They're going to really be pissed.

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Joel Lalgee [00:29:50]:

Transparency and communication, what is that? Okay, well, they just want to know like where they're at in the process. And they just want to have communications. They can figure that out. Like people get, like, they're not going to get the job. But the complaint is like, you apply to this black hole and you don't hear anything back. That's frustrating. Right? And it's like, it really should not be like that. And this is why, like, sometimes I hear these candidate stories on LinkedIn that go viral and it's like when you look at it, it's so basic.

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Joel Lalgee [00:30:16]:

Like they sent an email that sound like they didn't care. How hard is that?

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Devyn Mikell [00:30:21]:

It's communication and transparency. Right? Do you think candidates would rather, like, let's say they literally have no movement. Would a candidate rather every week hear the same thing? Like, hey, you're still in review, or would they rather not hear?

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Joel Lalgee [00:30:35]:

So I think absolutely, if you're applying to 30, 40 jobs, you want to know, am I still in process? And I thought about this a lot. Like, how could companies do this? Again, it's because they would never do this because they care about these top of funnel metrics that don't even make sense. But if maybe that shifted, they could do this. What happens if you apply to a job and you could just see where in process you were. It was like orange light or green light. Like you're on to the next line. What are other industries doing? And what are consumers? Who are candidates and consumers? Right. They're the same people.

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Joel Lalgee [00:31:02]:

Like, what have they come to expect? I would get really annoyed. If I ordered from something from Amazon and it took three weeks, I had no idea how to figure out where it is. But I'm not as annoyed if I go, it's still in China somewhere, because at least I know the worst feeling ever as a candidate, and I know this because I've been in Canada, is just not knowing. And then you're like, do I follow up? Do I not follow up? Right? And that's probably the most common question I get when I do, like, live job search kind of tips, is like, how often should I follow up? And then people will say things like, I don't want to be annoying. And I'm like, guys, trust me on this one. If the recruiter needed to get ahold of you, they would be the most annoying person in the world. So you're okay to annoy them a little bit without getting out of hand. But again, it's like then streamlining the process and just having processes around this and, like, actually equipping recruiters, because a lot of times people put the blame on a recruiter.

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Joel Lalgee [00:31:55]:

I'm like, I actually spent about a year and a half recruiting recruiters, and it was in 2021 where there was a real, just, like, lack of supplier of recruiters. And I would say 80% of the recruiters I talked to were just burned out because they're managing 20, 30, 40 requisitions, hundreds of thousands of candidates. It's a lot. So it's not just like a recruiters felt. It's a company issue, and it's prioritizing that. And it's, that whole funny thing is, like, people talk like, recruiting is a people business, but it seems like sometimes even technology and process gets elevated over actual people. And so I've seen memes go viral where it's like, every CEO should have to go apply at their company to see what it's like. Yeah, it's like undercover bus situations, but maybe that should be a thing.

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Joel Lalgee [00:32:39]:

You can see what it's like to do the workday application and go through that. And the irony is, that does happen, because I deal with executives, I deal with recruiters, and a lot of people right now are feeling how challenging these processes are and how bad it actually is. And the problem is then they get the job. And like you said, as soon as you get the job, you forget about everything and you don't go, oh, actually, guys, that was a really terrible process. And here's what could have been better. You just go, thanks for the job. I'm happy moving on. This is wild.

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Joel Lalgee [00:33:11]:

I don't get it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:12]:

Facts. I'm going to transition us to the hot seat, which is five questions quick. I try to read it fast, and you try to answer it fast, and then we'll close it out. So are you ready for the quick hitters?

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Joel Lalgee [00:33:26]:

I'm ready.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:27]:

First one's easy. One person that has changed your life.

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Joel Lalgee [00:33:30]:

In talent acquisition, Jonathan Reynolds. He's the CEO of the company that I first started with.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:36]:

Challenging role you've ever had to recruit for.

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Joel Lalgee [00:33:38]:

Garbage truck driver.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:40]:

For real, this is a first.

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Joel Lalgee [00:33:43]:

It was so hard. I did it for about two weeks, and then my manager was like, you went off this project, right? And I was like, yeah, Craigslist conversations are not working for me right now. It's just, it was, it was tough.

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Devyn Mikell [00:33:54]:

That's rough.

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Joel Lalgee [00:33:54]:

Now, I would say, okay, if it was talk about, like, the most challenging in terms of, like, length of time. I worked on a few electrical engineer searches for, like, architectural companies, and they were just challenging, not so much because the position was, like, hard to understand, but just, it was just a lack of people with that. So it was headhunting at its core, finding people who had worked at companies and going from local to regional to national, even trying to get people to relocate. I worked on one of those searches for about four months and got a placement on the back of that. So that is notably a very challenging position.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:30]:

Where do you go to stay updated on the latest trends and changes in the TA landscape?

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Joel Lalgee [00:34:34]:

This one, I would say I probably get most of my updates from conversations I have on my podcast. I also tune into a lot of other podcasts, so any kind of industry podcast is where I would get my information from and then conversation, just demos. I'm in a position, a lucky position, where a lot of people come to me and go, hey, I need help. And so I get to demo a lot of things, and that's. I learn a ton from that as well.

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Devyn Mikell [00:34:59]:

Nice. Yeah, you are kind of the source. So different this time. What's your go to interview question? If you could only ask one.

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Joel Lalgee [00:35:06]:

Used to be, how did you get started in talent acquisition? Until I figured everybody had the same answer except for one person, which is, I fell into it. I'd say now with how the market's been, a big one has just been like, what advice would you give to people who are ready to leave the industry? Because I think there's a lot of people who are ready to actually leave talent acquisition, and so just, like, what advice would you have? And unlike, what do they need to hear in the moment is probably my go to question. Now, last one.

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Devyn Mikell [00:35:34]:

What's a common talent acquisition activity that needs to die?

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Joel Lalgee [00:35:37]:

Oh, just ghosting count as an activity? I think it comes back to what we were talking about, and I don't know whether it be an activity, but just a viewpoint that numbers of candidates who are in your pipeline, like that's a valuable metric, I think. I don't know if that's an activity necessarily. Maybe it's an activity. Right. Like just posting jobs that are just like wide open, that are just trying to attract as many people. I think that activity versus really trying to be authentic and paint a true picture of what the job is versus the person you're looking for. That would probably be the resulting activity. With that, I like it.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:15]:

Joe, this has been dope. I think everyone stands to benefit from following the realest recruiter out there. And you've proven your point.

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Joel Lalgee [00:36:22]:

Not to be confused with the real estate recruiter, which is what everyone thinks when they see it. It's bad.

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Devyn Mikell [00:36:29]:

Yeah, but why don't you tell everybody how to keep in touch with you, follow you. I think it's pretty simple, but I'll give you the floor to do your thing.

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Joel Lalgee [00:36:37]:

Yeah. Well, Devyn, first of all, thanks so much for inviting me on here. Love what you guys are doing. Love the branding and the show as well. So honored to be on here. I know you've had some great guests. For me, the easiest way is just to follow me on social platforms. I would say if you are in talent acquisition leadership, or you, if you founded a tech company and you're looking to reach people, usually I will connect with people on LinkedIn.

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Joel Lalgee [00:37:03]:

I'm really close to the max, so I'm at like 29,997. 30,000 is the max. So I do have to actually take people out of my network. So if you send me a connection request, what I do is actually send through like a. It's not an automated reply, but it is a reply, and then we can dm. So LinkedIn is the best. And then on all the other platforms, if you just follow me over there, and then you can go to their realistrecruiter.com as well to find some more information on the consulting, the influencer deals. My podcast is on there as well, so we'd love for you guys to subscribe to that.

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Joel Lalgee [00:37:36]:

I've been going to more events recently. Next one I'm going to in person, as I know right now, is Wreckfest. So if you guys are going out to wreck fest. Yes, Recfest. I'm hosting on one of the stages. Don't know if I'm supposed to announce that but they asked me to host on one of the stage. I'm assuming I am going to be hosting one of the stages but I love that place. It's very different to other conferences you are at Recfest.

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Joel Lalgee [00:37:59]:

Just come up to me, be like, hey, let's take a selfie, let's do a video, whatever. I'm down to connect. I'm all about connecting with people. Yeah, reach out.

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Devyn Mikell [00:38:06]:

And likewise, if you enjoyed this episode, of course, subscribe wherever you're listening. It's YouTube, Spotify, Apple, everywhere. And stay tuned because we release these every other week and they're always great. I always learned something and this has been no exception. So appreciate everyone listening. Joel, again, appreciate your time and everybody go and have a great day.

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Joel Lalgee [00:38:26]: See you guys. Thank you.