Episode 208
Evan Sohn, Recruiter.com
We are back for another great interview on our podcast on unlocking YOUR world of creativity. We go around the world to talk to creative practitioners and leaders about how they get inspired, how they organize their ideas, and how they gain the confidence and connections to launch their work out into the world.
Today, we explore the world of talent recruiting with our guest Evan Sohn. He is a Chief Executive Officer at Recruiter.com. And also the Co-Founder of the Sohn Conference Foundation. Our main conversation will be around sourcing, recruiting, and talent acquisition.
Recruiter.com is at the epicenter of many of the conversations going on in the job market.
- They have an on-demand platform for freelance recruiters. It carries a network of over 40,000 recruiters and growing. Where they place assignments on behalf of their clients, ranging from scientific recruiters, looking for scientists, for pharmaceutical companies, to technology recruiters, to general recruiters from the US to Mexico, Latin America, Europe Singapore, Australia, and just everywhere in between.
- They also have their own brilliant AI software that sits on top of about 170 million records. Which they use to help their clients source, find, engage, screen, and qualify, candidates of all different types of candidates
The software mainly aids in a couple of things:
- It helps people to get engaged in an opportunity. Especially since life has changed tremendously since the pandemic. Because even jobs that were considered geographically inaccessible or undesirable are now quite accessible. Given that people work remotely these days.
- The job application process has become so much easier as opposed to writing numerous resumes and sending them to so many companies.
- Technology has narrowed down what positions are open.
- Making online applications has made the hiring manager’s job that much easier in finding the right fit for whatever position they are looking for. Making the job matching process more like match.com or Tinder.
Overall, Evan teaches us to embrace technology in the search to find the right job or in recruiting the right person for the job.
He further gave us tips for people looking to make a change in their careers,
- Find the person on LinkedIn that has the job you want and then reach out to them on LinkedIn and go,” Hey, can I pick your brain for 15 minutes? You have the job I want. What am I missing? Here's what I've been doing. I'd love to get into whatever you are doing.” And that would point you in the correct direction.
- Similarly, as a firm looking for a workforce, it is important to hire a recruiter that knows how to find remote workers.
He also has some golden advice for the recruiter as well, that they too should know what their strengths are. For example, they should know how good they are at finding some sort of talent. Or how good they are at onboarding candidates and highlighting what success rate they have.
In conclusion, we discuss another of his passions which is doing a tremendous job. The Sohn Conference Foundation. A foundation inspired and named after his late brother Iris Sohn, who passed away from cancer in 1933 just a day shy of his 29th birthday. The foundation aims to fight pediatric cancer and other childhood diseases, it is now in 11 cities including New York, London, Australia, Israel, and Hong Kong.
Evan Sohn
Evan is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Recruiter.com, an on-demand recruiting platform providing flexible talent acquisition solutions that scale from startups to the Fortune 100. Evan is a frequent contributor to CNBC and Yahoo! Finance, and demonstrates expertise in a diverse set of industries. A mission-driven leader, Evan is also the co-founder and Vice President of The Sohn Conference Foundation.
Transcript
autogenerated transcript
Mark (:Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. We go around the world to talk to creative practitioners and leaders about how they get inspired, how they organize their ideas, and how they gain the confidence and connections to launch their work out into the world. And today we're gonna explore the world of talent recruiting and, I'm wondering which end of the pool you might be on listeners. Are you at the end where you're saying, I'm looking for a new career move and I'm looking for a new company that I can connect with, or are you on the other end, where you're at the company trying to recruit new talent and what technologies and what job matching services might you be using and what can we learn about how they were developed? That's what we'll talk about, with our guest, Evan Sohn.
Evan (:Hey Mark. Thanks so much. Interesting introduction. You know, I grew up in a world where either you were an active candidate or a passive candidate and I think your intro is really basically saying to your audience unless you're running your own company unless you're the CEO, you're always a candidate. You're always someone else's talent. I think if you look at the overall world, what we grew up in where you had one job for 30 years and you got the watch at the end, now you're in multiple, multiple jobs, multiple careers, multiple industries. I'm jealous. I'm actually jealous of the next generation of the opportunities that they actually have available to them. That we just didn't.
Mark (:Yes. And I think if you start with that point of view, I mean, you go back 20 years, plus to Tom, Peter said you are your own brand and you have to manage your career and your work and your portfolio and the kind of feeling that you're only as good as your last deliverable. It's a little, oh,
Evan (:That's Great.
Mark (:It was a little jarring at that time, but it is true.
Evan (:So I'm glad you get Tom Peters. He's one of my favorite early authors. I started my first company right out of NYU business school, at the age of 21, a little early I'm a little 1989 being 21 and running your own company then was not as cool as it certainly is now. And I was perpetually reading. So Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, these are the people that I referred to aim fire, aim, fire, aim, fire as like my motto in life, but that's a Tom Peters. What was it? Hurry up, fell fast. You know, those are all like great Tom Peters isms. So thank thanks for walking, walking down memory lane. So really good. Thank you.
Mark (:It all comes back. Well, Evan is the chairman and chief executive officer of recruiter.com. So I think Evan, we need to start with this sort of job matching and how your platform and how the technology itself. I mean, how do you match the candidate with the company these days?
Evan (:It's a great question, mark. And again, thanks for having me on your show. I really, I got a great kick out of looking at and listening to other podcasts that you did really great, your great quality, great content. You know, the benefit of being recruited.com is that we're actually at the epicenter of all the conversations or many of the conversations going on in the job market, the job economy, and it is been thrilling. It's probably the right word to use. You know, these last three years watching the world change so many times in so many great directions everything's the great, the great resignation, the great reshuffle, the great rethink, the great, really just the great everything. If you're not great, you're nothing. So it's been very, very interesting. We rely on as recruiter.com, really two on demand, things that we leverage, right?
Evan (:We have an on-demand platform for freelance recruiters. So we have a network of over 40,000 recruiters and growing, and we place them on assignments. For, on behalf of our clients, ranging from scientific recruiters, looking for scientists, for pharmaceutical companies, to technology recruiters, to general recruiters from US to Mexico, Latin America, Europe Singapore, Australia, just everywhere in between. And then we have our own technology. We have our own AI software that sits on top of about 170 million records. And we use that to help our clients source find, engage, screen, qualify, whatever you want, candidates of all different types of candidates. We've done truck drivers, Paul center representatives, financial analysts, sales professionals, SAS sales professionals, job developers, and really healthcare workers and everything. And everything in between the, the reality is that everybody is now more valuable as a talent than they were three years ago, whethe r you're the waiter or the dishwasher or the Java developer or the chief people officer you're more valuable.
Evan (:And what we're trying to do with our software is really get you engaged in an opportunity. So the first step really is narrowing it down, right? Because you Mark, if you're not actually setting up the alerts of things that you're interested in, you wanna make sure that someone knows you. We all get annoyed. When Spotify recommends a record that we would never listen to, or Amazon recommends a book that you would never read, same thing goes through with opportunities. You wanna be presented with opportunities that really align with your skillset, your interests, what makes sense for you. Now there's some challenges because there are some roles that don't necessarily have someone you don't major in sales. Right? How do you find the right salesperson? Well, if they've sold here, that's good for them. Well, what do you do with your early career? How do you find the early career people? So there's a lot more tech that we have that really goes out and helps see the quote-unquote, behind the resume looking for the right person.
Mark (:Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I was wondering about the AI finding these well and also emotional, intelligent qualities. That's right. That's right. If this is beyond the paper and the skill set and the resume.
Evan (:Whether you're, you're doing skills testing, depending what the clients are really looking for. You know, we have our own video system where we could really use our video AI to actually look at how the interview's going. Are they being hostile? There're things that we could actually do behind the scenes if it's necessary, otherwise look in the talent shortage which we have today. You wanna eliminate the barriers.If Mark is interested in an opportunity, the assumption used to be that, okay, I got mark interested. Mark's gonna look at maybe one or two opportunities and I can get him fast enough. And I'm in control. I'm the employer I'm in control. Mark. You'll wait around. Sorry about that. You know, the person you're gonna interview with is away for two weeks, we'll get you back in three, et cetera. The world's different now the assumption is... I'll give you the example when, when you and I were getting outta college let's look at what was the, what was applying for a job back in the late eighties, right? Or early nineties, you found really good stock paper for your resume, right? You picked
Mark (:That is right.
Evan (:You picked out the paper that you wanted a little Offwhite cream we would sort of have this discussion. We would type up a cover letter dear, to whom I made concern. Dear Fred, thank you so much, dear Mary, I'm interested in applying for this job and we would mail those resumes and cover letters. If you sent 20 resumes and cover letters, you were considered aggressive. Wow. I applied to 20 different companies. so aggressive. That's amazing. Let's look at what applying to a job is today and for your audience think about what applying is today. Click, click, click, click, click. So we've just made it so easy to apply for jobs. What was interviewing like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you got on a plane, you dressed up you put on a business suit, you had to tell your manager, I'm gonna be on the afternoon.
Evan (:I gotta go to a funeral. We came up with these lines of, of how to do it. And, remember the expression, finding a job is a full-time job was not authored in 22, right? It was not. So what is, what's applying for a job today? It's click, click, click, click, what's interviewing for a job. It's a zoom or a Skype for 15 minutes. And that's what happens now. You know, it's just so much easier. So the reality is that we're all shifting, I believe. And again, I'm generalizing to prove a point there's certainly a larger population. That's probably a better way of saying it, of people who are gonna be far more mobile in a job than there ever were. The final element there. Mark is geographically undesirable. Right? So think about all the jobs that you used to look at that you wouldn't even dream of taking because they were geographically undesirable. That doesn't exist anymore. Now, again, it does. Of course, if you're a factory worker, if you have to go in the office again, I get it all. But the jobs that you might want that are not in your immediate one hour radius are now available to you. Like they've never been available before.
Mark (:Yes. And I, wanted to stop on that point of , quantity that there are hundreds of jobs that you're applying , the 20 of letters. And I guess I always thought as the hiring manager, I still remember just shuffling, literally shuffling through resumes looking for something. I don't know, whatever it is, those keywords that I mentally wanted to see, but now you're doing this with AI, but the job matching has become more like match.com more like Tinder. It's like, how many can I go through?
Evan (:I will tell you, I think that sometime in 23, we'll start becoming a little bit more focused on expediting the overall process changing the process. Mm. So I gave a talk once on the tenderization of recruiting or the tenderization of job hunting, et cetera. And I think that, again, we could sort of make some predictions it's July of 22. So the process of, of recruiting hasn't changed ever the actual process never changed by the way who invented the resume Leonard da Vinci.
Mark (:Well, there you go.
Evan (:Andd, I think that other than the font and that we put our mobile number on might be and email, might be the only thing that's changed.
Mark (:Well, I'm surprised to hear you say that. I always wondered if you needed a resume.
Evan (:Yeah, that's right. You know, so what's the process. The process is to post a job, collect resumes, review the resumes, screen, the candidate's interview, and the candidates hire. Right? Negotiated hire that has not changed that process. Now, 30 years ago, you posted a job in the New York times. And now 30 years later, you're putting the job on ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, or one of the other niche career communities. You're still collecting resumes, screening candidates might be over the phone. It might be over Skype. You might be over email, might have a little chatbot. You might have a test, but that process hasn't changed. But if I asked if you were hiring a comedian for your nonprofit or for your company, you would not look at them, you would not post a job and look at different comedians on paper and then say, Hmm, let's look at the ones that look good.
Evan (:Let's screen them first. Then let's here are their material. Now you'd say, look, show me all the comedians that are available to that are available for my demographic, for my event, for my date, for my time, for my price, just show me the people that align with what I'm looking for. I will screen those out. I'll then watch 30 seconds a minute of the few people that actually align with that. And then I'll make my choice, right? So you think about what Tinder and match.com, what these companies are doing are, Hey, look, I have parameters that I'm seeking. Show me the people that align with those parameters, and then we'll decide whether that makes sense or not. Because of the sheer quantity of candidates now, applying for jobs that aren't even qualified for those jobs we have a client that said, I put a job on LinkedIn for a paralegal. I got a thousand applicants. Not one of them was a paralegal.
Mark (:Yes.
Evan (:So this is common because its just so easy to apply for a job. I'll just apply for every job.
Mark (:Just click the button, right.
Evan (:Just click the button. So it's certainly this is gonna happen sometime. I think next year, today, we're really focused on gee, how do I fill up my bucket with candidates to look at? I need more candidates or I need more recruiters. In fact, typically the conversation that we have with a client is, do you need more candidates, more recruiters, or both? that's kind of the conversation that we have.
Mark (:Well, we've been looking back and certainly looking ahead maybe a year or so, but is there any way to Parascope out I've got grandkids who are in the class of twenty, twenty-five, twenty, thirty a newborn today is in the class of God knows what so you know, how can we look ahead? Because like you said, Hey, in the early nineties, nobody was saying, well, what are we gonna do in 2022?
Evan (:So let's make some, yeah, let's make some predictions. So first off I think that this comes from Reed, Huffman that candidates are people coming outta college should be looking at industries, what industry you want to get involved in, as opposed to the job. Right? In other words, you are in communication, but you could be in communication in any industry. So why don't you pick the industry that's, you're interested in. So I wanna get involved in advertising and media. Great. I'll go get a job in advertising in media, only look at jobs in advertising, in media and who cares what the job is. Right. I don't mind sweeping floors again, or being, an assistant, an associate,
Mark (:Still the foot in the door mentality.
Evan (:I wanna be in an industry and then I will learn that industry grow in that industry. And , maybe I'll decide gee, that industry, I don't like that industry I'll go to a different industry. So don't think of it as an, I wanna go into X or Y. I do think that we'll start doing better job in, the universities for the jobs that we actually have today. Right. You know, my daughter's studying to be going into genetics. She's studying to be like a genetics counselor. She's studying biology and psychology and not will evolve into, Hey, there's a class course curriculum for to be a genetics counselor. There is no course curriculum to be a recruiter. You can't say I went to school to be a recruiter. By the way, you can't say I went to school to be a salesperson. There is no, I majored in sales. Why is there no major in sales? Why there's a major in computer programming? yet how many sales people are in the US today?
Mark (:Yeah. It's quite a job title based everywhere. Yeah.
Evan (:How come there's? No. What would that major look like? Okay. You have marketing, you have finance, you have communications, you have presentations, right? I got my degree in sales. Why, not have a degree in sales or have a degree in recruiting? And I think it's fascinating that these industries that are huge, the university hasn't put up with yet. Okay. So let's, let's go back to your question. Why am I jealous of this generation? Because they do not have to make these lifelong decisions that we had to make. You know, we both had a parent that said, suck it up. You gotta spend at least four years in your first job. Suck it up. Now, Mark. You know, if your child was at the same company for a decade, you're probably saying to your child, Hey, have you thought about leaving? Imagine, imagine that we're actually going to coach our children or grandchildren to leave. Hey, look, you've been there. It's not gonna look good if you're at the same company for that long so you gotta figure that out.
Mark (:And it doesn't look like churn
Evan (:And doesn't and it can't look like churn. So the other thing that's interesting is recruiting went from, Hey, do you have a good Rolodex? By the way, I hope your audience knows what the word Rolodex means.
Mark (:Well, we Googleing it right now.
Evan (:That's Right. They're like, why would I need a Rolex, a watch?
Mark (:Is that an R? or an O?
Evan (:What? The hell's a Rolodex, but it went from a recruiter having a, you went to a recruiter cuz they knew the people in your geographic region, in your industry segment. Right. They were aware of that. Now, the next generation of recruiters, you're gonna wanna hire a recruiter that knows how to find remote workers. Right. Or they know how to decide, Hey, I'm really good at finding this sort of talent, but my average candidate stays for three years. Right. And that I'm gonna brag about that. Oh yeah. I have a success rate. My average candidate stays for three years. I'm really good at getting candidates to stick around and align, et cetera. I also think that let's go back to predicting. We're really gonna focus on onboarding, right? We're gonna have to figure out that we can't spend six months onboarding somebody or three months getting 'em ramped up.
Evan (:If they're only gonna last 18 to 24 months, we're gonna figure those things out. I do think we're gonna do more trybys. I think we're gonna do more. Hey look here's a program it's 90 days. If you make it through 90 days, you get a fulltime job. You know, I I'm gonna wanna move people that way accordingly. And I think we're gonna spend a lot of time on retention. I think we're gonna spend a lot of time marrying retention. You know, I was musing around with a global head of talent at one of our clients. And I, said to them, they were tech firm out of out of San Francisco. I said, look, you should not be telling someone. Come join us for your career. You should be saying, come join us for 36 months. This is a 36 months opening.
Mark (:A good place to learn and grow right now,
Evan (:36 months, I'm gonna pay you a boatload of money. And at the end of 36 months, if you wanna stick around, great, I'll give you a month vacation or you can go leave and go someplace else. I told another company their global head of talent, big company, lots of offices around the world. You should be offering a junior abroad, right? You should be saying, Hey, look, if you work here for three years, that fourth year, you can either pick an office and go work it there or pick one of our clients. We have a program with 30 of our clients that operate around the world. Go work there, go spend a year working in Dubai for the Abu Dhabi bank. why not because this generation and they hate being called this generation. The, new candidate, the new employee wants more work, life balance. They want more mission. They want more opportunities to do the things that we dreamed about doing. That's what they want.
Mark (:Yeah. So helpful. Good insight. Well, listening as my guest is Evan Sohn. He's the chairman and CEO of recruiter.com looking at past present and future of the recruiting business. And of course how his platform is supporting that. But Evan, I also wanna explore another side of your passion, your mission, your creativity, and that's the son conference foundation. You co-founded this you're leading this and it aims to fight pediatric cancer and other childhood diseases. What, what part does that kind of mission driven organization play in your passion and driven life?
Evan (:Yeah, thanks so much for bringing it up and I'll just tell the story. I don't want anyone to think that is named after me. I had a brother Iris Sohn who died of cancer in 1993. He was one day short of 29 years old. And he was a wall street trader. And when he died, his manager and friend and colleague approached the family and said, look, we wanna do something to honor your brother. And this goes back to 1994 and we launched a conference, used to be called the Iris Sohn investment research conference. Then became the Iris Sohn conference, then just the Sohn conference. And it's been going on for 25 plus years. And now it's in New York, London, Australia, Israel, Hong Kong, I think 11 cities around the world that was all pre pandemic.
Evan (:Let's see what happens post pandemic . And , the model was a 15 minute shot clock. The speakers gave their best idea to hedge fund conference. My brother was a trader. They would give their best idea to an audience. And if the idea was good, people would make money and, they'd buy tickets. And CNBC is our partner. They cover the conference and if it's good, good material, they'll publish it, et cetera. And the proceeds go to locals. They stay local. So the UK, the London conference, stays in London. The Australia conference supports its called the Sohn hearts and minds foundation, which focuses on brain cancer and brain diseases et cetera. So really it's really incredible. It's a lot of fun.
Evan (:The speakers are fantastic. Each city has its own chair, its own team. It's just amazing to watch the legacy of my brother really continue on in all of these events that happen around the world. It really is just, it's absolutely heartwarming. If you ever watch there's a documentary on Netflix now on Carl Icahn and his whole fight with Bill Ackman on Herbalife I actually introduced Bill Ackman at that event. And, we actually benefited really well. There's actually a Pershing Square Sohn. So Bill Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square. And there's a Pershing Square Sohn cancer research Alliance that does incredible things. it's really been incredible to watch, the families that we have impacted the children we've impacted the science that we've impacted just really around the world.
Mark (:Yeah, I think about that impact and how it must feed sort of your creativity and your passion as well. What kind of technology and programs, is it all science or is it some even I think about patient experience or how people could be cared for better?
Evan (:Sure. we initially had a portfolio that was very heavily weighted on quality of life. So that's the more touchy-feely programs. We've done programs where we've sponsored game boys for kids we've done a lot of those things historically. So it was really a combination of quality life science and then brick and mortar brick and mortar would be, oh, they wanna redo, the waiting room for pediatrics at some at Columbia Presbyterian to make it more kid-friendly. And so we've done all those projects. We weighed more now on the science. We just saw an opportunity to partner with scientists and hospitals to really move, the peanut forward on the science side of things. So we've done, all different areas.
Evan (:You, you think about things a little bit differently when you're doing quality life and science scientists harder, you really gotta find the right partners. And in the New York area, we've partnered a lot with Rockefeller university medical center and really focused on the science side of things. And, for me, it's a little bit longer-term focused. How do we, change, the face of science we've done fellowships and junior fellowships, which also are very research-oriented. But then we were doing a project with Columbia university where we were genomically sequencing, every high-risk pediatric child in the New York area, regardless of what hospital they were at. And, that was actually incredibly successful. And the impact was really amazing to watch.
Mark (:Yeah. Sounds very exciting. Well, Evan, what a great conversation I've really enjoyed this kind of journey down memory lane on the one hand, but looking ahead to new technologies and new discoveries, both in the recruiting industry, and we've been talking about science and biotech and so forth too. So let's close on a question now to the creative listener who says I really do wanna take my career to the next step. Now we kind of touched on what the employers need to be thinking ahead to, but as a creative talent, what would I be thinking about these days in your point of view?
Evan (:Oh, that's yeah, so that's great. So let's tie it all together. I would actually suggest if you're looking to make a change in your career, I would actually find the person on LinkedIn that actually has the job that you have, right. Find the person and then reach out to them on LinkedIn and go, Hey, can I pick your brain for 15 minutes? You know, you have the job I want what, what am I missing? Here's what I've been doing. I'd love to get into whatever you are doing. You know, what skills am I missing? So here's the good news technology has really enabled us all to upskill really easily. If I, if I need to be a better communicator, I'll go sign up for an online class in public speaking, I need to be able to do better on spreadsheets.
Evan (:I'll go sign up for a class on how to do better spreadsheets. And so you gotta figure out what, what skills do you need to have for then in next role? But here's the good news. The good news is, you could always take baby steps, right? So if you're thinking about gee, I'm in this career, now I really wanna be Mark. Well, what do I gotta do to get tomorrow? I can't be Mark tomorrow. There's some steps along the way, and guess what? I'll do that step for a year. I could do that next step for a year and a half. So that's probably what I would recommend. And the other thing I'd recommend to people really is get out of Dodge. You know, you have the opportunity now to go, go work for a UK company, go work for a company.
Evan (:You know, that's across the country, go work for a company. That's doing something interesting that you want, that wants access to you. And if you're a seasoned executive, there are lots of people out there. A lot of companies that would love to have access to your skill and your background. So don't forget the geek economy. Don't forget that there are opportunities. Maybe it's not a full-time job. Maybe it's 10 hours a week, and you're helping a company 10 hours a week. And as we're trying to we're working from home or we're, we're, we're not going into the office every day. We have more time available to flare flame the, the passion for whatever it is you wanna get involved in startups. Great. You don't have to go startup a company. You don't have to go be a startup, but go consult for different startup companies. Use your skillset to move in that direction.
Mark (:Fantastic. That's great advice. And it sounds like good advice from the up-and-coming person who may be earlier in their career to even somebody who is later in their career and looking to sort of revamping, rewire and reengage.
Evan (:That's right. Absolutely. And by the way if you're bored, they're expert networks that are out there that you could join. If you have a skill set that someone else is gonna want, I just saw another platform go up the other day for executives offering themselves out as Uber executives, meaning an Uber platform for executives. Okay. You want to use Mark for five hours a week. He's on that platform. And I just think there's so many, these interesting ways to sort of expand your horizons, to see what actually works and what doesn't work.
Mark (:Yeah. Well, nobody should be bored these days, right? Evan
Evan (:That's right. No one
Mark (:if you're bored, you're not trying .
Evan (:Yeah. That's right.
Mark (:Well, thanks so much for being on the program. My guest has been Evan Sohn. Evan learned a lot today, and I really appreciate you coming by
Evan (:Thanks so much, Mark, and really thank you for having me. And I look forward to continuing this conversation for a few months.
Mark (:We'll see how we're doing. Yeah, let's do that. Let's stay in touch and listeners. You come by for our next episode, we've stopped by New Jersey today. We checked in, in LA yesterday. We'll be in Brazil, we'll be in Amsterdam for incoming episodes. So let's stay on the creative journey here and learn how we can get more inspired, how we can stay more connected, and launch our work out into the world. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we're unlocking your world of creativity. See you soon.
