Adrian Obeso

I think especially with what's happening in the market, um, and recruiting being one of the first pieces of an organization to be affected in these, these large layoffs, um, I think recruiters need to be flexible and need to develop skills across all of recruiting, um, and not just focus on the, you know, specific and, and, and. Specialized like talent acquisition piece, but you know, pick up recruiting, pick up sourcing. Like I, I, I don't think right now we're in a place where recruiting can just focus on closing candidates. They need to be full life cycle. Um, and I would also challenge recruiters who are maybe, you know, technically focused or go to market focus to try.

Nasser Oudjidane

Hello and welcome to our series of Scaling Stories, a discussion with talent leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm excited to introduce our guest today. Adrian Abso, the Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition at Superhuman Adrian. Welcome, and thank you for joining. To get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your back?

Adrian Obeso

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for, for having me.  so as you mentioned, my name is Adrian. I have been recruiting for 11 years, as you mentioned. I am currently the senior manager of talent over at Superhuman.  a little bit about my background. I started on the agency side. I think the time between agency and internal is ex exactly One in one. So about five and a half years on one side and five and a half on the other.  I moved to,  and moved internally and was at a couple companies before I landed at Honey, where I helped,  scale them to about 600 employees. I started there when they were about at a hundred, and now I'm at Superhuman. 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍And for those that have been living under a rock, could you tell us a little bit more about Superhuman?  its mission, its. 

Adrian Obeso

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,  superhuman is,  first off, the product is fantastic. I was not a user before I joined, and I don't know that I could ever go back to not being a user. and I say that as someone who, who took the interview skeptically.  but superhuman exists. So that professionals end everyday feeling happy, more productive, and closer to achieving their potential. That is our actual mission. And when we say that we're really thinking about saving people time, like that's what that means to me when I think about what our product does for people and how it helps them in their day-to-day work life. It's really about making tasks easier, helping them just minimize redundancies and again, give them more time back. Cuz it's, you know, while I was at Honey, we were saving people money and it's superhuman. We're saving people time, which to me are the two most valuable resources that you can offer someone.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Awesome product.  recommend anybody listening to, to go and use it if they're not already. just on your, your experience, particularly in technical recruiting, you know, for, for more than a decade, what does it mean to you? Yeah. And why is it important to take a listening driven recruiting approach?

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, so I think this was something I started when I was on the agency side. I found that I was, When you're out on the agency side, you have numerous clients, right? You are pitching five or six different companies, hopefully to a candidate who has a great background, and you're doing this for a couple of reasons.You're doing this because they themselves have a fantastic background and you want to show your clients a great candidate. But also you're trying to give them variety, like you want them to be able to look at what you're offering and really feel like they can trust you as someone who's plugged into the market as someone who's going to connect them to interesting and exciting roles.And so for me, it became really important to understand what a candidate wanted for their next role. And now with. internal with being internal and, and you know, having one company that you're representing, you don't have as many of those opportunities to pitch someone. you might have, you know, a couple of roles within your company, depending on how many teams are hiring, but really you just have your company to pitch them.And so in order to really broker your information properly, you need to understand what they want to do next. And, and I say that in in such a way, so it's not. You are trying to just listen to what they want and then form your pitch exactly to what they want in hopes that they'll come work or at least interview with you, but more so that you can showcase to them that what they want to do next is possible at your company. And if it's not being honest with them. And so when I say taking a listening during the poach, I mean try to do more listening than you are talking. Try to actually. Sit down and gather someone's desires and again, try to communicate how your company might be able to meet them. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. And what techniques have you learned to effectively partner with the business leaders to champion these qualified candidates?

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, I, you know, when I first started at honey, I, I, I really had to learn this piece because when you're on the agency side, it's really. It's a volume game, right? Like you are trying to get as many people out to a job, and obviously you want people who are lined up with the role. You're not just trying to throw something at a wall and hope that it sticks, but you are trying to increase your odds, and you do that through volume, whereas internally, volume means more time. right? And, and you can't use someone's time without it being valuable.  that, that's costing your, your company money.  you are using resources for hiring and, and obviously that's important, but if a team can only interview and only has time to interview and isn't interviewing the right kinds of people, now you're being with your company's resources. So for me, the one thing that I learned at Honey that I've taken to superhuman. Is using data whenever it's appropriate and as often as possible.  I, I think data one,  I was once told this by a leader at Honey,  data gets you a seat at the table, right? That is what? People respond to when you can actually show tangible facts, numbers that relate to how working is being done at your company. And it also showcases like where effort is going, right? Like when you're interviewing, you are spending so many people hours to potentially get a hire. And in order to show that you are using those numbers responsibly, you need to use data. And I think this also shows that you're being thought. about how you're using a team's resources, how you're deploying their people, by actually looking at where that time's going, and then showcasing that to the people you're partnering with. I think this shows that you're bought in, it shows again that you are being responsible,  and that you're looking for ways to improve.  one really good example that I have was,  recently actually at, at Superhuman, we were running a search for a role. We found that we were one, the interview process itself was a little longer than some of our other others, just because of the nature of the role and how senior it was, and we found that candidates were getting through part of it and either dropping out or just, you know, seeing how long we had to, like how many hours they had to dedicate to the interview. Self-selecting out and, and not doing the interview at all. And what we found, we looked really close at all the different interviews and how people were doing. And rather than look at the ones where people were, were failing or, or, or, you know, not doing as well, not performing as well. We looked at where people were doing. extremely well, and we found that we had one interview that was,  that had people pass, I think we had a pass rate of 96%. So, you know, of 10 candidates, basically nine we're passing this interview. And so what we found is that the information we were gathering in that interview was, was really valuable, but it wasn't very high signal as far as, you know, a candidate's full ability. And so what we did was we took that interview out and we took the questions from that interview and injected them into other parts of the interview. that way no one piece would be super bloated. And we were able to eliminate that whole interview. So now we were saving a candidate an hour of interview time. And because we have two interviewers on each interview, we were saving two interviewer hours,  for every interviewer. So all of a sudden we now had given the candidate back an hour, we've given ourselves two hours, and we were getting better pass through rates. . Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

And probably saved a ton on cost per higher as well, while you're 

Adrian Obeso

Yeah.Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, you have to think about that as well. Right. And, and you know, if you're, if you're thinking about, especially on the engineering side and like, you know,  how, just like how people are compensated, like it starts to get pretty high. Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

And when you think about,  effective partnership, what are some of the roadblocks with building trust with the business?

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, I think early on,  you, when we think about why, especially tech companies start to hire, you know, you get to a certain size and, and hiring is maintenance, right? Like you are, you're maintaining the company. But when you're a startup and you're small, it's growth and, and you are trying to grow quickly, but also responsibly. And I think one of the roadblocks, or at least one of the challenges that a lot of recruiting professionals face is. Convincing the people they're partnering with, that they truly are there to, you know, protect the culture to, to bring people in who are going to add to the company. And they're not just trying to hit numbers. You know, recruiters are inherently salespeople and I know that a lot of people in technology. You know, have different opinions about recruiting and, you know, they, they just see the , the messages that they're getting on LinkedIn, and they use that to classify every single recruiter. Whereas, you know, especially I, I, I like to think that the, the teams I've worked on and, and the kind of. Work I try to, to cultivate out of my people is far more high touch,  far more precise and really careful about, you know, who we're messaging, why we're messaging them, what we are, messaging those people. And so it's not just about, again, you know, trying to show as many people as possible, but showing that we're partnering. you know, I, I think that oftentimes hiring managers can treat recruiting as service providers. The way that you flip that relationship is by being a partner first, and again, using data, being thoughtful, checking in, showing that this is much more to you than, than hitting a number, is a way to really get over that roadblock.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

And, and something that you've, you've said really important, which is talent acquisition's role is maintaining the culture bar and recruiting is the first line of defense. Yeah. How, how do you do that in practice?

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, that's, yeah. Thanks for, for asking that. Cause I, I think about that a lot. You know, I, I think about how quickly Honey grew and how important it was to maintain the, you know, and it feels like such a, it's like such a, a rote thing to say, and, and, you know, I, I think it's used quite a bit, but to maintain a culture,  I think there's something deeper there, right? Like you are thinking about how the company. Why it still exists and what's going to keep it in relevancy,  you know, moving forward. And a lot of that is the people who work there and why they work there. And so I think taking that and making sure that like you are lining someone's character up with, with what the company is looking to do. so for me, like it's not just about assessing someone's actual hard skills, but trying as best you can to dig into their charact. By asking a question, by asking questions around the work they do, right? So, you know, one, one thing I like to really, one thing I like to do when, when talking to candidates, is asking them about mistakes, asking them about feedback, right? Because now you're not asking some, you know, some obtuse character driven question. You are asking a question about their work, but the answer you're looking to receive will be shaded by their character, right? If you ask someone about, A time they missed a goal or a time that,  a deadline was, wasn't met, and they start blaming others.Like, you have a good sense of who this person might be on a team, how they collaborate, or if they don't collaborate for that matter. If you're asking someone about feedback and some of the most challenging feedback they've ever received, one, like, how vulnerable do they get with you and. What have they done since to then action on that feedback? Right? Did they take that feedback and get defensive? Did they take that feedback and associate it with,  some, you know, some, some missing resource, something they didn't have to get the work that they needed to get done, accomplished?  or do they own it? Do they see. The validity and the feedback.  you know, do they, I, I understand that sometimes feedback's given when we aren't necessarily looking for it, but how, what was their response to it? Like, how are they then showcasing that or communicating that response to you? And I think that really tells you a lot more about, not necessarily the background you're, you're speaking to, but the person you're speaking. , 

Nasser Oudjidane

Absolutely. You could also get a response with, I,  I've never made a mistake, and it's, oh, yeah, it's, you know, 

Adrian Obeso

Never received bad feedback.Yeah, exactly. Then it's, now we're, we're, we're dealing with awareness, right? Like, how aware is the person that I'm speaking to, and, you know, especially when someone speaks like that, I often find they also speak in hyperbole, and that's, that's a bit of a red flag for me, like if someone's speak. in hyperbole.They're not using specific examples. Everything they're, they're saying sounds large and vague. Again, like I am now speaking to someone who either does not have intimate knowledge of the work that was being done at their last organization, or really can't speak to it because of a lack of awareness or, or understanding for the work that was being.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Right. Right. And this is a, a, a tightrope in,  in, in some examples. Yeah. What are some of the objective questions that you can ask around values, because this is obviously a really important aspect of. Of identifying and hiring the, the right people for your 

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, so for me, again, bringing it back to work as often as possible is really important.I think one question that does really well for me is asking that question around,  around missing a deadline. Right? And so the, the reason I ask this is I, I want a little bit of a story, I think understanding. The background of why someone missed a deadline is important, right?  and also like how, like where are they assessing responsibility?Like who's, who are they saying was most responsible for, for the miss? You know, are they putting it on themselves? Is it something external?  where do they stand in for people on their team? , you start hearing about just what it was to work at that company and kind of a day in the life and a a day in the life that was a little more, more hectic and not, you know, probably not as enjoyable. And so again, how do they shade that? How do they, how do they color that experience?  how do they speak about the people involved?  how do they talk about resource management?  cuz you have many types of people who will start to. Put responsibility on or blame on, you know, not having a certain resource or, or someone not doing their piece of the work. and then you have others. Start to just initially talk about what they could have done better. Right? So when I start to hear that, that's really, that's really a great signal for me, like a green flag, if you will.  because this is someone who has thought critically about what happened. They have assessed their responsibility in it. and they're aware enough to be able to call out, you know, what could have been better, what they could have done better. So for me it's, it's, you know, really a way to showcase just again, awareness. Responsibility,  and, and collaboration. Like how closely are you collaborating with the people that you're working on, on a certain project, and you know, how much are you taking responsibility for them versus support?

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Awesome. And I want to move on to your experience within aging agency recruiting because. Many people have cut their teeth with an agency and yeah, their eyes a lot to like learn and  I think benefits that have been taking out. But at the same time you've said that agency recruiters are largely ignorant of some of the key aspects of hiring and team building. What do you think are some of the new nuances that are actually quite hard to grasp from the outside looking? 

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah. And, and I, I pre, I appreciate you preface that. I, I did spend so much time on the agency side cuz it, it isn't even, you know, as if they refuse to acknowledge what it takes to be an internal recruiter. But I remember being younger and being an agency recruiter and thinking that. You know, internal recruiters were, were simply resume pushers and weren't doing the, the hard work of, of what it is to be an agency recruiter by cold calling. Cuz you know, back when I started you were, you were still cold calling. There wasn't really, email campaigns really weren't in vogue yet.  though they were a little bit later in my career on that side, but, , I think what, what agency recruiters are missing about the other side of, of recruiting and being internal is systems and process development. When you're an agency recruiter, your, your systems and your processes are really just ways to keep yourself organized, right? Like you're, you're managing your clients and you're managing your, your candidate pools, but you. , you're not responsible for, you know, a team's interviewing capacity for resource management for hours dedicated to interviews. Like that's all on the internal recruiter. And so your job becomes far more multifaceted when you become internal because now you're thinking about hiring managers. And especially when we're thinking about engineering, like you have these engineers who are trying to. Products and simultaneously they have to give you, you know, anywhere from, from five to 15 hours a week in interviewing in order to add to that team. So you're taking time away from building the product in order to add more people to like help build that product. So it feels counterintuitive and, and, and in a way it is. And so the best way to you, Quite that is to make sure that you are being intentional with the interviewing time to make sure that you are cutting down on as many interview hours as possible, making sure you are, you know, preventing interview fatigue like you're looking out for your team. you're making sure, I mean, even to speak on the candidate side, now you're thinking about like biases and making sure that they have a great candidate experience, that they are, you know, interviewing in, in what feels like a normal amount of hours and not spending just tons and tons of time in trying to showcase to your company that they should work there. And so you're balancing both sides, just like you were on the agency side. You're internal now, and so there's so much more that you're responsible for versus when you're on the agency and it's just business development and business management., 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, absolutely. It seems like the, the agency side, when you actually put all of that together, just seems so more, so much more transactional and 

Adrian Obeso‍

Absolutely. Yeah. And, sorry, sorry, I didn't want, didn't mean to interrupt, but I, you know, there is, there are fantastic agency recruiters, right? And, and, and there's. A fantastic service to it. It's just, it's a smaller piece of it.  and, and to be fair, like I'm not doing business development, so obviously I have more time to focus on, you know, creating better processes and systems in my business.and I guess that's, that's really the big difference. Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍ And. , you said to me before that you, a lot of the lessons that you've,  that you've learned in systems building has been during your experience,  at Honey. Yeah.  where you were involved several years building out particularly the, the engineering team.

What were some of the main learning challenges 

Adrian Obeso‍

and surprises there? Yeah, I think the first one, and this stayed true through. My time there from, you know, 100 to 200 and, and so on and so forth. But the systems and the processes that you have in place when you're, you know, 90 to a hundred employees are typically not the ones you're going to have in place when you're 600 employees, right? A lot of the same things don't work as you scale. And so the biggest lesson that I learned was, as best you can try to build systems and processes that can scale as you grow, right? ,  when I say that one, one example that comes to mind is like interview training, right? You, when you're at a smaller company, you have a set group of people who run interviews. oftentimes a lot of companies have. The CEO is still involved at Honey.  I think right before I got there, they'd actually stopped doing that. The ceo, the CEO was involved in every single interview and had to sign off on someone, but then the CEO became very busy and that just. Scalable. You couldn't have the c e O on every single interviewer. You weren't gonna hire people because they were gonna get jobs elsewhere. So I think for us, it was important to find solutions that we could iterate, you know, in small ways as we continued to grow. . So one example was our interview training program. As we hired more and more people, we realized that, you know, we were growing, we were, you know, growing in profitability. And so we wanted to just keep building, keep scaling. And in order to do that, we were hiring, I think at one point, you know, three or four engineers a month. And you know, it takes a ton of interview time. And so the same group of interviewers that were doing interviews, you know, when the company was a hundred. Couldn't be the only ones doing interviews when the company was 250 people trying to hire, you know, a hundred people a year. Right. And so it was important for us to set up a system in which new people came in and team leaders would designate who would be involved in interviews, and then we would put them through training, make sure they were shadowing. And we did that for every hiring group, every quarter, so that as we continue to hire, we had more and more interviewers available and therefore we could actually keep up with the amount of hiring we were., 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Yeah, such a key,  key aspect that's sometimes often overlooked with objective, unbiased, or perhaps not always totally unbiased, but,  trying to mitigate bias within the interview process is,  is, is just so absolutely important.

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah. And it's, and it's, it's a tough thing to do for sure. You know, we've, we've partnered, I, I think it's superhuman.  I, I would say that I have been able to take the learnings from honey and, and use them here.  you know, we've, we use a, a number of tools to, to help us out with that. Right. We're, you know, obviously we're doing a very similar interview training program. We have a shadowing program,  but we also use tools like Bright Hire. To actually help us,  record interviews, and obviously we get consent from, you know, each,  each candidate. But we record interviews so that one,  interviewers can actually stay more engaged,  you know, and, and really have more conversational type interviews. With candidates rather than being fo completely focused on, on typing out notes and, and trying to record what's happening in the interview.  and also we can assess our interviewers, right? Like if we, if we as a recruiting team here, or see questions that are being asked that, you know, maybe could be asked in better ways,  you know, or, or should be reserved for different parts of the interview. then we're quick to call that out. Right? And so that's helping us just run tighter interviews. It's helping us remove bias as much as possible.  and it's just creating a better overall candidate experience. 

‍Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. One thing I find fascinating about the development of recruiting technology is just in, in, in my opinion, the surprise of recording interviews on the assumption that you're gonna be assessing the candidate and. That may be a small degree of, of the use case. We're actually, we're focused on training and making sure our interview process 

Adrian Obeso‍

is better. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I I, I know it's, it's so funny you bring that up because I, I do always worry that candidates are, are. Thinking that we're just using that to get really granular about their interview and to pick it apart when, when really it's on the other side of it. We're actually trying to do that for our interviewers and making sure that they're running the best interview possible. And,  I, I really think that remote work and lifestyle has helped. Kind of,  accelerate the technology and, and what we're using. I remember at one point,  at Honey, we were talking about I don't know how, how ethical this would've been, but we never did it. But we were talking about having interview rooms with two-way mirrors.  and, and so people could sit on one side and assess how an interview was going, and then provide feedback, you know, gather insight on how an interview was done. But to me that seems, I don't know, maybe because you use them in interrogation rooms, I just didn't like the sound of that. So for me, bright Hire is a, a much better solution,  to that challenge. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Right, right, right. And focusing on perhaps the present and the future. Now I'm fascinated some of the insights that we,  that we've collected in our, in our, during our previous discussion on the state of the market.Today, and yeah, particularly within technical recruiting, some of the challenges such as discovery or engagement, where do you think the balance lies? Where do you think the actual problems are? 

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, I, I truly think it is an engagement challenge.  you know, there are certain roles where we are, our response rates are incredibly high because some of those, you know, The PE types of, of, of people or, or people, those backgrounds are being impacted more at, you know, some of the, the companies that are our peers,  but then others, you know, ha continue to survive these, these layoffs and are therefore saying put, and so it, it's truly less about discovery. I, I, I really think that there are enough tools out there and ways to come across great candidates. , you know, without having to get overly time consumptive or creative.  but, but engaging them is a whole different game. You know, you are one, trying to get someone's attention in an already noisy world with, you know, text message, email, slack, social media,  and then everything else external. and you're trying to get their attention with something that is actually, hopefully interesting and potentially valuable to them. And so how do. , how do you find out what's valuable to someone if you've never spoken to them? Right? And so you need to be able to look at their background. You need to be able to like think specifically about them, but also generally and what and what someone might want in this current market and how they might want to be messaged and what they might want to read about when opening your message. And. . I know this sounds like just general kind of, you know, sourcing strategy, but I, I truly think now more than ever, you know, taking time and actually editing messages per candidate and really seeing like, you know, what someone's done and being able to like, showcase to them why, you know, in my case, superhuman is, is a great and safe place to work right now, and somewhere that is, Still growing and somewhere that's still exciting despite everything that's happening in the market. And just like showcasing that to someone,  as, as quickly and efficiently as possible is, has really been our key.  you know, we're, we're working with,  you know,  our, our different like. email platforms to build out, like nurture campaigns where we are messaging people, not so much about, you know, just a job right now, but rather the health of our organization and how we continue to grow and, and hopefully it's, it's, you know, received as something that isn't, you know, spany, but, but really more. Formative and,  you know, and, and just getting creative in that way where I realize that right now might not be the most comfortable time to go look for a job. But if you can stay, you know, in someone's rear view and, and, you know, have them think about you in a positive light,  you know, when that time does come, hopefully they, they do return to you, right? And so I think for me, it's, it's the engagement for sure over d. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Yeah. What's fascinating is what you said earlier was recruiting his sales. Yeah. And what you touched upon earlier, just on your last,  point, was something akin to almost nurturing, which kind of almost falls within the, the, the marketing area.And it's, yeah. How, how can you think about it? Because I'm always interested in thinking about recruiting as its own. Separate function, which should like, set a path and like, like Trail Blaze itself, taking the best of, of, of its cousins and sales and marketing. What, what are your, what's your thoughts on that?

Adrian Obeso

Yeah, I, I, I like that you call them cousins, cuz I, I do see them that way and I think,  you know, like all cousins,  getting them all together is typically a lot of fun, right? So when you're, when you're combining sales, when you're combining recruiting and market, A lot of really cool stuff can be done.you know, we're, we're working right now to put together many soundbites and podcasts,  in our messages, and we've found, we're doing research and studies that find that,  you know, candidates that can quickly listen to a soundbite versus read a bunch of information are more likely to continue on through an interview process. And so that, I mean, that's marketing, right? Like that, and that's new age sales and. . I think taking the best parts from one another and using. You know, using components that maybe one, one cousin has been doing a little bit longer than the other and finding a way to, you know, make it recruiting focused is, is really how you win. Like, you, you can't just keep doing the same things. Like there's a reason cold calling is, is becoming less and less,  you know, successful. Right. People are no longer picking up calls. Your phone tells you if it's, you know,  you know, your phone tells you before, you know, before you even pick it up, who it might be. And so like you're able to screen more effectively. Whereas in an email,  you know, you typically do some sort of reading before you completely write it off. And so how can you capture someone's attention, you know, quickly while they're reading that, that quick snapshot? 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. And you said something that I, I, I really,  Enjoyed hearing, which is how you win, and just considering how, how fluid the, the market is and how fast things are changing. How would you describe some of the key traits of a recruiter today?

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, I. So I think especially with what's happening in the market,  and recruiting being one of the first pieces of an organization to be affected in these, these large layoffs,  I think recruiters need to be flexible and need to develop skills across all of recruiting,  and not just focus on the, you know, specific and, and, and. Specialized like talent acquisition piece, but you know, pick up recruiting, pick up sourcing. Like I I, I don't think right now we're in a place where recruiting can just focus on closing candidates. They need to be full life cycle.  and I would also challenge recruiters who are maybe, you know, technically focused or go to go-to-market focused to try both. right now at Superhuman all,  every, everyone who's on the recruiting team is doing a little bit of everything. We have, you know, coordinators who are helping out with, with sourcing and recruiting metrics. Our recruiters are doing some coordinating when necessary. They're sourcing their candidates, they're talking to the candidates, like everyone is doing everything. And I think that's going to be what the new kind of wave is in, in talent acquisition is having leaner teams with team members who are doing more and more of the full life cycle recruiting process. 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍A reversion to the main perhaps.

Adrian Obeso

‍Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you know, and, and things are cyclical, right? Like perhaps at some point, like the market will, will correct and teams will start to get larger again and, and roles will be more specific. But I don't know when that is and you know, for that reason, like I even then, like I think. If recruiters right now become, you know, more well-rounded, they're going to be able to just be more successful. Even when the market corrects, they're gonna be able to do more, right? Like, I think it's important for, you know, people who are, are sourcing candidates to speak to their candidates. I think it's really important to develop that skillset to get on the phone, like against, Kind of speaking back to one of my points earlier, like we're we're screening calls, we're on the phone less and less. And so in order to really build a relationship with someone and truly like partner with them in deciding if the role that you're offering them is the one, you know, the one they should take, like you need to be able to talk to them and not just like, offer them immediate, necessary information to help them make a decision, but help them talk through it, walk through that information with them. I, I think that's imperative to any recruiting. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Yeah. And what piece of advice, perhaps have you heard or, or, or witnessed during your experience in technical recruiting or hiring in general that you think is total BS and what method needs to be put  in the trash?

Adrian Obeso‍

I, I can't stand the. The best candidates aren't on LinkedIn. Like, I get it. I get that You should get creative. You should think outside the box when, when, you know, trying to come up with new resourcing strategies. But any recruiter who says that they have hired a candidate on on Twitter or on sliding into someone's dms on Instagram, That is so anecdotal. It is. It is once, twice, maybe three times. And typically it takes a ton of time to find someone through one of those channels that I just, I just don't see it as a good return on investment. And so, you know, rather than, you know, finding new ways to find candidates, just be better at messaging the candidates that you see on the regular channels. Like I think that's a much better approach. 

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Yeah. And last one before the closing questions. What tech do you use to do your job? Feel free to shout out any products that are delivering value. 

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah, absolutely.  so we're, we're big on our, the tools that we, you know, the companies we partner with.  so we are using GEM for our campaign management.you know, obviously using things like LinkedIn recruiter for d. ,  we're using Greenhouse as our ats.  we started using Bright Hire about a year ago. We are using Intro for Referral management,  which has been fantastic for us.  what else are we using? Oh, we use Prelude. Who just got bought by?  Oh, who did they get bought by? Calendly, I believe.  we use Prelude for, for scheduling and to help us set up booking links. And I think that's just about most of our toolkit. I might be missing one or two things, but that's definitely the,  those are the big ones. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Okay. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And when you look into 2023, what, what are your priorities just considering that there is a remarkable slowdown.

Adrian Obeso‍

Yeah. So for me it's, I think my priorities, they, they haven't shifted a ton.  I think one thing I'm thinking about as a manager is really providing just, you know, what, what's, I guess safety for, for my people and this like, you know, mental safety and. You know, the work they're doing is, is valuable. We are, we are still hiring. We do still, you know, have goals as a company that we want to hit and recruiting's a large piece of that. We, we are not, you know, especially at super, we're not expendable, we are important to this organization and, and making sure that they have this, like, the psychological safety to do their jobs. Like that's, that's really important to me. and that while in some, you know, In some places of hiring, there might be an influx of, of candidates and we might have larger candidate pools than we're used to.  but again, you know, making sure that we are still treating that side of the market. With kindness and empathy, and we're not just, you know, taking for granted the fact that there are so many more people available because of the layoffs that have been happening. but treating them no differently than we would treat them in,  a candidate driven market. Right?  and so just making sure that, that my people are, are thinking about that when engaging with,  candidates. Awesome. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Moving  on to closing questions. What's one piece of advice that you wish you had when you started your career? 

Adrian Obeso  I think the biggest one that would've helped me early on is slow down.  you know, oftentimes in recruiting and in sales, we are so quick to speak and, and, and want to be the person who is saying the most.And you think that that is doing the selling for you. But if you actually slow down, you are able to like, Present clearer thoughts and you listen more. And as I've really matured in my career, I've learned that sales is truly, truly more listening than it is speaking. Yeah. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

There's a statistic that I was reading about,  when,  coaching our sales team, which is. on average, you should be speaking less than 40% and listening more than 

Adrian Obeso

‍60%. Right, right, right. Yeah. Cause I mean, you know, if you are, if you were speaking, obviously you have less content. Like if you're speaking more, you have less content to pull from when you are actually trying to sell and make points and like,  I think I, I heard this on, on a podcast once, but. Sales, and especially in recruiting is information brokering, right? Like you are making sure that the information you are offering to someone is in line with what they're hoping to hear. Right? And so you can't do that unless you know exactly what it is they want to do next. Yeah, 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Absolutely. Is there anything that you've watched or are watching, listening or reading to that you find inspiring or,  think that it could be 

Adrian Obeso‍

Valuable for our.Yeah, actually,  when I, when I first made the transition into internal recruiting from agency, there were a couple of podcasts that really helped me just get a sense of what I was to expect,  in, you know, working internally. So one was a podcast,  by a gentleman named Rick. Gerard called Hire Power, so hire being hire.  and then there's a, this person I used to work with,  at my first agency job stringing partners. He was in a separate office, but since then, he went on to become the head of Talent at Bright Role, which got acquired by Yahoo and has, has done some really impressive stuff. And is, is. You know, quite a thought leader. his name's Aaron Wilson. He's on a number of podcasts that are around hiring.  one of the most recent episodes I listened to,  with him was,  greenhouse's podcast actually.  and so he's someone I look up to and definitely see value in as a thought leader in recruiting. So I'd say those are two really good resources there.

Nasser Oudjidane

‍Awesome. I, I think that podcast is with,  Ariana. If I'm not mistaken, 

Adrian Obeso

I think Yeah, I think you're right. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. She's actually been on,  so big shout out. 

Adrian Obeso‍

She's,  she's amazing. All right. Yeah. Shout out Greenhouse. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah.  and I'll, I'll put them both into the,  the show notes so that our, our audience can go and grab them. and just lastly, what is one thought valuable phrase that you live by? It. 

Adrian Obeso

I think as it relates to recruiting,  one thing that I have always, Live by, especially as become a manager, is, you know, take care of your people.  I, you know, I've been at organizations where empowerment was huge and easy,  and you could get people moved through the ranks, you know, as long as they were performing.And then,  I was , I was part of a, a larger organization that I'm sure you can guess by looking at my, my LinkedIn profile, where that was a lot more challenging. And so in order to make sure that my team. , you know,  fulfilled at their job. You know, I just made sure to take care of them in as many ways as possible. And I think when you do that, that also kind of like permeates then into how they manage their candidate relationships and then they take care of those people. So,  that's, that's really big and important for me. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Love it. There's, there's also,  an additional way. outside of recruiting, which is people, products, profits. So yeah, you actually like run a business,  whatever it is. If it's a service, it can be people, services, profit. But if you actually look first of all internally, then kind of that's the first stepping stone for everything else to work 

Adrian Obeso

Out. Yeah, exactly. Like I, I genuinely, genuinely believe like if you take care of your people, they will take care of you. Right. And like in whatever way you want that to mean.  like you said, if it's, you know, product pro profits, like I think you have to take care of your people first in order to like move those other two forward. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, 

Nasser Oudjidane

Adrian, thank you so much for your time. This has been 

Adrian Obeso‍

Incredible. Ah, thank you. I really enjoyed being on. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Awesome.