Building a Sourcing Function from Scratch with Junius Currier

Get the inside scoop on building a successful sourcing function from scratch! Shally Steckerl interviews Junius Currier, a talent acquisition leader who specializes in recruiting for classified government contractor roles. 

They dive into metrics, measurements, and reporting for sourcing, strategies for moving talent across contracts, communicating value to leadership, and more. 

Junius also shares his thoughts on hot new sourcing tech tools like Gem and ChatGPT. If you want to level up your sourcing game, especially in the government contractor space, this episode is a must-listen!

Transcript

Shally Steckerl: 0:01

Hey, everybody! Okay, so, you are not in a galaxy far, far away. It's just that you have two uber geeks that are both Star Wars fans, for those of you that recognize the background behind me, this is an X Wing, and I swapped it out for my regular jet fighter in honor of our very special guest today, Junius, who is also a big Star Wars fan and has a I don't know what planet that is.

Junius Currier: 0:29

I'm not sure about the planet, I'm just more interested in the Darth Vader back there. That's right. Being menacing as ever.

Shally Steckerl: 0:36

That's right, and we have, and we have established yesterday that you are, you shall now formally be known as Darth Sourcer.

Junius Currier: 0:44

Yes, that's right. That's the moniker I'm going by from now on.

Shally Steckerl: 0:48

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So, uh, welcome everybody. And I'm glad you're joining us. I'll tell you a little bit about my friend Junius here. So Junius and I, we've known each other for probably what, four or five years, something like that? And, uh, I knew him in a previous life. He recently got a new job as the director of TA for all IT at a, um, secret, undisclosed government facility location that I can't tell you. But he is essentially running TA for one of the major, most profitable divisions of this government contractor and has to deal with a lot of secret cleared candidates. In the past, uh, Junius has been my go to person when I've had questions about... Exactly that. Now, I actually teach a class on cleared candidate sourcing. And Junius participated in that class and was like, Oh, yeah, I know all that stuff. And they started teaching me some more things. So just to show you how much more he knows about that space than I do. And that's given the fact that I've actually worked with all 16 clandestine organizations. So think about that. Now, Junius challenge right now is Basically to define what sourcing is. So I thought that was a really good topic to talk about. And basically obtain or like get credibility from management to establish a sourcing function. So since he started in this role, he was tasked to build a sourcing team. Started doing that in January. Now we're a couple months in. And I was gonna, you know, just... Ask some questions and talk about basically the objective and the obstacles and the trials and tribulations that you face when you're starting a sourcing function from scratch. So, um, with that in mind, what has been your biggest challenge? The biggest hurdle that you, that you have already overcome, so the biggest hurdle when you, you were tapped on the shoulder and somebody said, build a sourcing team, and the first major wall you ran into was what?

Junius Currier: 2:53

Yeah, um, I'm trying to think through like if there was any wall, like, I was pretty fortunate that, you know, I had leadership that was pretty supportive of the idea and kind of had the same vision. And. That was partly part of the reason why I was brought on was they knew that I had had previous success with launching a sourcing team, uh, and kind of managing that process as well as having had experience with full lifecycle teams as well. So, um, the. The, there was, so there was a lot of, like, I would say excitement about, okay, we're going to do this, but my primary objective, the first thing that I wanted to do was, um, identify, well, what does success look like? Uh, okay. Um, and I think that's super important, right? Like, I didn't want to set up a team to just go out and find people, but not be able to ever report on, okay, how do we know if we're doing a good job? How do we know if we're being impactful? So I would say probably the first goal I had was to develop a reporting structure to be able to communicate to the business how this particular sourcing function leads to other areas that they're more historically of interest. Um, you know, knowledgeable about of, Oh, this means success to us, right? Like when you think of talent acquisition, you know, you're going to hear, you're going to hear about, okay, how many starts do we have this month? How many hires do we have this, you know, how many offers went out, those sorts of things, right? Well, the sourcing team, um, they're, they're, they're focused on the top of the funnel, like, you know, really generating candidate pipelines that feed to the recruiters, right? So what I wanted to do was say, okay, well, I'm not going to have. You know, sourcers tied to a higher goal or anything like that, because they, they, they don't really have full autonomy to impact that, um, because at some point they hand off, and at that point, it's between the recruiter and the hiring manager to kind of convert those candidates. So, um, my focus was developing the metrics, um, You know, the KPIs for the team to focus more on a number of productions or number of submittals, and then also identify, okay, what does quality look like for us, right? So, we developed a benchmark of, hey, here's how many of your submittals should convert from You know, being a submission to accepted by the recruiter. And then from accepted by the recruiter, here's how many of the, you know, those submissions should be accepted by the hiring manager. Okay. Conversion rates. Yeah. Conversion rates. Right. Um, and I think those are more. Things that, um, those are things that are truly in the control of a sourcer, um, because they have control over how many people they submit and they have control over the quality of the people that they submit, um, by determining whether or not they are a good fit for roles. So, um, but I do tie sourcers, um, to, um, offers, meaning I don't tie, I don't hold them and say, hey, you need to have this many offers, but I do report on how many offers, um, they are responsible for, so that way for other business leaders who maybe don't necessarily understand all the You know, the, the, the details about what goes, goes on in talent acquisition, they can see like, oh, okay, so we have these people and they were responsible for identifying these individuals as a source of hire. And so that's usually, so that was one of the methods that I, that I was pretty intentional about when I created the sourcing team was developing, hey, how are we going to evaluate the team and show that they are being successful?

Shally Steckerl: 6:48

So, what kind of, um, what kind of conversion rates are considered quality, and, and what's the, and what is the peak measure, right, so, like, when I, when I talk about metrics and measurements, and a lot of folks may already know this, but I actually, uh, for, for many years sat on the American National Standards Institute's delegation to the NCE. International Standards Organization, ISO, and we created the, um, well, we revised, it was already created, but it was out of date. We revised the recruiting standard and the recruiting metrics, and also, uh, started working on a sourcing standard. Um, so, Speaking from someone that has been around lots of other, you know, international leaders in, in this area, one thing that I learned that was a big lesson for me was you gotta boil it down to like something, one or two or three things that you can really measure consistently. So, you can have... 10 measurements. Like, you know, you're, you're the boss. You have your team, right? You're leading your team. You can have 20 measurements. You can have 100 measurements. Measure whatever you want. But when it comes to metrics and reporting metrics and dashboards and scorecards, it's a good idea to have like a key metric or a couple of key metrics. Have you identified that? Yet or is that like you're still measuring so you haven't

Junius Currier: 8:14

yeah, we're still kind of yeah We're still kind of you know, kind of filling all out because like I said, I mean there there really was no sourcing function at the organization I was with like this before right so The the first metric that we identified was hey, well, let's create a submission goal All right. So yeah, so we can at least get some cadence as far as okay Uh, you know, weekly production to develop pipelines, and then from there, that's when we talked about the conversion rates, but as far as like, we don't, you know, right now we're just in the process of trying to gather enough data to be able to say, okay, what are, what are the historical trends? Um, and so that's something I was planning on looking at over Uh, probably about the three month time, uh, to be able to kind of see, okay, here, let's take a look at all of the production and, and in the areas that we've been successful in, and, um, let's start to like peel that back a little bit to identify, okay, what are the appropriate benchmarks? Like, what, What truly makes sense, right? So, at first, to get started, I just kind of had to kind of develop what I thought was a fair, uh, some fair assumptions, uh, which is, you know, you know, set like, hey, for every submission that the team submits to of the every sourcer submits to, you know, recruiter, we want, you know, if you submit four, we want three of those to be accepted. So 75 percent acceptance rate. And for every four submissions that the recruiter sends to the hire manager, we want the hire manager to accept three out of four. Now, whether that will stay the same, um, you know, That, that's up for debate, but it's a good starting point, um, that I thought was fair. It's not, you know, too high off the, uh, the deep end where we're saying, uh, you gotta have 99 percent conversion rate or something, you know, uh, ridiculous like that. But, you know, I think it's reasonable to say, hey, if you send four people over, um, you If you're, if you're really aligning them to the role, um, you know, three of them should be accepted by the recruiter. I think that's fair.

Shally Steckerl: 10:21

Yeah, I agree with that. It's actually, that's actually about right, in my opinion as well, because if you, if you approach 100% Uh, acceptance rate. In other words, if, if the, if a sourcer is sending 10, um, submittals or 10, 10 profiles of people that have been pre qualified, uh, whether it's to the recruiter or to the hiring manager, and let's say to the hiring manager, um, because sometimes the recruiter and the hiring, sorry, the sourcer are aligned and the sourcer is sending them directly to the hiring manager. with, you know, the knowledge of the recruiter. So let's say it's going right to the hiring manager and the hiring manager accepts all 10. I'm, I'm a, I'm a member of the clean plate club kind of belief system. So in my family, if you cleared your, your, your plate, if you ate everything on your plate, what that effectively meant is you're hungry. And you want more, so you haven't had enough. So you had to leave a little bit as an indicator that I'm good, you know? That was, that was my family, and I'm sure other families have similar traditions like that. So what I'm saying is, if the hiring manager cleared their plate, they probably want more. And so that tells me that, um, we may not be submitting, as you said, the right quality or the right quantity. So. If I have more like, you know, 8 out of 10 or 7 out of 10, that tells me that the hire manager is full and they're, and they feel comfortable saying these are, these two or these three, I'm not going to look at. That's good. I want that. I don't want 100%, right? Because just It means, it means we're probably, I, I, well, it could also mean the hiring manager is accepting everybody and not really look at them, that's another problem, but, but it probably means, more than likely, that the sourcer is not sending enough people, or, um, you know, it, it may not really be an indication of 100 percent quality is what I'm saying.

Junius Currier: 12:17

Right? Yeah, no, I could, I could, I could definitely see that and vice versa, right? Like, if you, um, you know, if, if, if the sourcer is submitting, uh, you know, a large number of people, but the, the acceptance rates are low, uh, then, you know, that, that could be another issue that we need to take a look at. So, I, I think, I think focusing on quality is an important, um, aspect of, Evaluating a sourcer's effectiveness, um, just like I, I, I, and I was really happy about, um, really more so aligning the sourcing team, like as a source of hire, um, kind of like as an internal, uh, agency, right? Like we're, they're partners to the recruiters, um, and, uh, strategic partners and, you know, one of the other things, uh, that's probably, every enterprise is a little bit different, but we also, we're, we're, And like I said, we're just in the phase of really ramping up this team, but we, we also have our sourcers that also in the government sector, uh, if you're a government contractor, there's a segment of recruiting, you know, which is that, you know, business development, uh, proposal recruiting, uh, trying to go after new work. And so our sourcers actually support, uh, some pre award activities, um, There as well. Uh, and, um, you're familiar with Todd Davis, right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So in his, in his, um, organization, I think he's part of, uh, what the executive team where they do like some really, uh, top notch like executive search, uh, developing like personas of like, You know, uh, strategic hires for the executive, C suite, um, and that's a function that I think, uh, we would be able to, uh, take on as well. And I just think, um, that what's really cool about sourcers, uh, and the sourcer team is, to me, they've always been kind of like the SWAT team of recruiting, right? Like, they're, they're like, The top of the line, you know, um, you know, they have all the tools, they have lots of knowledge, and, you know, really, they're just, they're real big on research, and I just think that there's some possibilities that we could Uh, impact the organization even further than just filling top of the funnel, but finding new ways to provide value. And I think that's like the biggest determinator, determination of, uh, success in sourcing is like, how many creative ways can you establish that you can bring value to the organization that they don't even know exists, that they haven't even thought of, right? Um, cause that's one of the things that I've come across a lot, uh, with business, uh, leaders is that. They really don't necessarily understand exactly what we do in talent acquisition or in sourcing. Like they, they, they don't get that. So, you know, I'm, I'm constantly having to have conversations of educating and really identifying exactly what it What the value is of our, of our department and how we impact the organization, uh, at an operational level. And it is a little bit easier in the government contractor world than in some other, um, um, businesses because...

Shally Steckerl: 15:31

Why's that? Is that because everything's tied to like a billing code or something like that?

Junius Currier: 15:34

Well, I was going to tell you, like, so at the end of the day, if... If so, like my organization, we're a staff augmentation, uh, organization, so meaning, you know, we, we win a contract, um, you know, let's just say it's a, uh, firm fixed price contract or a T& M, time and materials contract, we win that and, and essentially we said to the government, okay, our deliverables are going to be, here's the people, That we're going to hire to do this work that you need us to do. So, uh, if it's firm fixed price, you have to have a certain number of people, uh, uh, based on the contract to fill the labor categories in order to be in compliance, right? If it's time and material, every single person, uh, every labor category that goes unfilled is either lost revenue or Revenue that's actualized. So we can clearly show, if we fill positions for the organization, guess what we're doing for the organization? We're helping them generate revenue. So, so it, so in our, so even for sourcing, you know, um, where maybe in the past, that particular organization has had a, Uh, pattern of utilizing staffing agencies. I can clearly come in with a sourcing team and say, hey, these positions would have cost this amount of money had they gone to staffing agencies.

Shally Steckerl: 16:56

But because we have Doesn't that go back to the hire again? So that's like, you know, the sourcer and the recruiter together getting credit for the same thing. So how is sourcing specifically contributing to that?

Junius Currier: 17:06

Well, sourcers are getting credited as a source of hire. Not, not as they're tied to a higher

Shally Steckerl: 17:15

goal. Is it a, uh, uh, percentage of all hires, right? Like, of the 100 percent hires, some percentage of it were sourced by sourcing? Is that the overall, like, team metric?

Junius Currier: 17:28

Well, that will be, uh, but we haven't gotten there yet, but eventually we're going to try to identify like a certain percentage, right? We're going to look, so like this first year is pretty important to be able to like fully map out. Yeah, yeah, set the stage, and then we'll be able to kind of forecast from there. Um, you know.

Shally Steckerl: 17:47

Yeah, you are going, what it's going to look like until you actually do it. You know, it's hard to, it's hard to create a measurement. Without actually having the data. So first you have to get the data, then you can create the measurement. Now, um, real quick, uh, this can get kind of heady and be a pretty intellectual conversation. Um, and some folks might be tuned out to it. So I just want to clarify. Mm-Hmm. And by tuned out I don't mean because they don't have the capacity. What I'm saying is it might be boring. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I got you. It might, people are into some people. Um, so lemme make this a little bit more interesting. There is a very big difference between a measurement. And I see people making this mistake all the time, especially when they're young in the function, when they're early in the function and they're just starting to be asked, can you tell me what your team's success is? Define success for your team. And they make the mistake of assuming that a measurement is a metric and that's not the case. Um, the measurement is the, is the number specifically. Okay. So my, my, um, waist size measures 30 inches. Yeah, it doesn't, but you know, let's pretend my waist size measures 30 inches. However, that is not a metric. If I'm trying to lose weight and I'm using my waist size as the metric, then the metric isn't 30 inches. The metric is how many inches of change have been made in a defined period of time. So if I say I want to lose some weight, I can say in this year, in a one year period, I would like to lose two inches. The metric is how many inches per year. Not the measurement and this is a very important point no matter what even if you're being measured It's important to understand that because the metric itself and by the way The reason I'm bringing this up is I often hear people saying the number of contacts found Or the number of contacts added to the ATS is a metric No, it is definitely most definitely Absolutely, not a metric. It is a measure And it matters because if I, every day, add ten people to the ATS, that doesn't tell anything, that just tells me I've been doing the same thing over and over again. So if you want to measure success, then you have to say, the increase in contacts added to our ATS over time. Over what period of time? Right? So, that's important. If you're going to say, we are going to measure success based on, People being added to the ATS, then you have to say people being added to the ATS per week, per month, per year, compared to what? Compared to last year, or compared to a different department, or, right? That is the metric. So, just wanted to interject that, because it can, it can derail quickly with people saying, well you have to add, uh, this actually is a true story, you have to add a thousand people to the, to the CRM every, every month. Okay, well, um... Guess what? I did. I added a thousand people to the CRM. Heck, I added 2, 000 people to the CRM. It means absolutely nothing. You know, those

Junius Currier: 21:13

2, 000 people were like... Yeah, that's the first thing I was thinking of is, okay, well, uh, you do that, but what's the outcome of

Shally Steckerl: 21:21

that action? Garbage! Outcome! I love that! Outcome! That is it right there. That is the, the outcome is what you want.

Junius Currier: 21:28

Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's kind of like, you know, um, the, uh, um, I guess the analogy is, you know, beginning with the end in mind, right? Like, you know, what, what are we trying to accomplish? Well, for me, the sourcing team, what I'm trying to accomplish is an internal, you know, center of excellence of, uh, a, uh, function that can build, You know, talent pipelines and, you know, lower, uh, our aging requisition, uh, numbers, uh, and, you know, be a significant, you know, source of hires, uh, within the organization for some of the, for the most challenging, uh, most difficult positions to fill. That's the outcome. So for me, I just need to be able to capture enough data, uh, in order to set. Appropriate benchmarks to know that as we go through this process, that we are trending in the right direction to accomplish the outcomes. That's

Shally Steckerl: 22:27

right. Bez pointed out that in his comments, so definitely go back and read that for those of you that are watching online. He pointed that out. Um, and, and going a step further, also saying that if your leadership is saying, That you have to contribute X, um, make sure that the organization is capable of onboarding X, right? So this happened recently in an organization where the team as a whole, TA as a whole, was tasked with hiring a particular number of, you know, a headcount, right? So you've got to hire X amount of people in this quarter. And... What ended up happening is we hit a sort of hit a wall where hiring managers didn't have enough time to interview and onboarding was overwhelmed and everything. So we really should not have tried to meet that goal in retrospect. The thing is, we met it. But then we had to pivot and we decided, okay, we've got to, we've got to slow this down. We can't do this again because it caused a lot of repercussions in order for us to jam those hires in there. Everybody wanted the hires, but the organization itself wasn't ready to onboard. We didn't have enough laptops. We didn't have enough people that, you know, so, so that, that is a very good point that, uh, sorry. Brez, I don't know what, Brez, Brez Renfro, Brez, yeah, that's your new name, buddy, Brez, Brez is pointing out, so absolutely, yeah, yeah,

Junius Currier: 23:57

that's a good point, good point.

Shally Steckerl: 23:59

So I looked at a couple of things. I look at things like the percentage of people who were contacted that replied, and I'd like to have some sort of number, so I start with taking a look at, okay, how many people have we contacted that we replied? And if that's, let's say, 20%, then what I'd like to do is I'd like to increase that by 5%. So, uh, start out with, in general, 20 percent of the people we contact reply. Okay, so improvement this year will be to increase that number to 25%. That's your metric. Make sense? Absolutely. Then, you know, of those replied, percentage that were screened. Of those screened, percentage that were submitted. These are smaller, you know, these are smaller steps. Now these are, by the way, these are the things that I would put in a dashboard. They are not the things I would put in a scorecard. In the dashboard, percent contacted who replied, percent replied who were screened, percent screened who got submitted, percent submitted who got accepted. Right? That's the dashboard. You can think of it as a funnel or whatever. But the scorecard doesn't show any of that, because the scorecard is going to show the one that is the big measure, it's what I was asking about before, which is percentage of people submitted that got accepted. Because that tells the hiring managers about our quality and our process. And then the second part, or the second dimension, is that percentage that were moved forward, so percentage that got accepted, as in, I like this candidate, I'd like to talk to them. And then the second part of that is, percentage that moved forward past that point. Yeah. So, you know, 7 out of 10, the hiring manager said yes, and so that's 7. Out of those 7, uh, 2 of them, Like, we're no's, and so two out of five got no's, or the other way around, three out of five, sorry, I said seven, five out of seven, move forward, that's the other one, and then that's about it, so to me, sourcing, uh, respectfully, I don't know what you're doing, but to me, sourcing kind of ends there, when the hiring manager moves the candidate forward, maybe that's a test, uh, an assessment, an online, a phone interview, whatever that is, my team in sourcing doesn't really have a whole lot of recourse to impact that anymore. Exactly. You could argue that we could increase the quality, um, Because, you know, if some people aren't passing the test or whatever, but there, there comes a matter of culture, subjectivity, compensation, you know, I'm sure that in your space, you probably have some very specific compensation guidelines related to the cost or profitability of the project. Of the contract, yeah, for sure. God bless you for having the ability to do that. Some of us, uh, essentially have to go to our, our teams and go, listen, uh, Nobody that's doing this job right now is getting paid that low. And have the team say, well, you know, we need to do a salary comp. Yeah, I'm sorry, uh, to all the analysts out there, of which I count myself one, these salary comps are horribly out of date. They're out of date right now. Everybody that used to be making 350, 000 after graduating from college and having one year of experience is probably looking for a job right now. Or maybe not, and maybe they're lucky. But those salaries of, you know, skyrocketing proportions are very quickly being normalized right now. So if you have a, if you have a salary analysis or a salary comparison right now, it's probably from December of last year, last quarter, because it hasn't even been a full quarter in this year yet. Not yet, Jennifer Brim. Yeah, almost, you know, in a week, right? So even something like that, you know? Yeah. I really appreciate that you have the ability to do that. It's just not...

Junius Currier: 27:46

Well, well, sometimes it can, uh... It is nice when it's priced correctly, so, you know, because there, you know, because there's different variations of contracts and, you know, um, and, and so it's actually important for operations to bring in Recruiting, and that's actually, you know, um, for, uh, business development purposes, so we can provide input as like, hey, um, I, here, cause they're gonna bring us in from, uh, from their, they're basing their proposal around solutioning and cost, right?

Shally Steckerl: 28:22

Oh, wow. So what happens if, what happens, I'm just going to make something up. What happens if you win a contract that, um, your company has to provide, uh, I don't know. 10 million servers or something like that. And in order to do that, you need that you, you, you need to have, um, a hundred network engineers. To build out this 10 million server. I'm totally making this up by the way, but like they need to have a hundred engineers Project starts and you only have 80.

Junius Currier: 28:49

Well, depending on the contract It's it could be fine. Like if you're firm fixed price and you're meeting the threshold of you know I'm too like you're you're you're fine and some contracts that there is a You know, there's a transition period so you can you can get up to speed so there's all different variables, but was that but what what really is like a bad thing is if You A contract is won, they didn't include recruiting, and, um, they, uh, underbid the contract. So now, so now you've promised the government that you can fill this contract with these individuals at a rate that you can't find anyone at, because... That's not what the market is bearing. I didn't even think of that. Yeah, so when that happens, that causes a whole different set of problems. So, so it is, you know, I've been doing this for a while, so it's really important. So, so that's one of the reasons why we are involved in kind of like the, you know, we would call it business development or proposal recruiting.

Shally Steckerl: 29:51

Wouldn't that be awesome if that was the same case everywhere? So, you know, the leadership team went to the sourcing leader and said, Hey, sourcing leader. We would like to plan next year's headcount, and we would like to get some assistance from you in figuring out what the market, you know, availability is, right? But wouldn't that make sense? Uh, yeah. I've been talking about that for a while now. Yes, yes. So get this, I probably shared this story before, but, you know, so sorry if it's repetitive. But there was an occasion at a company that I was working with, not recently, but some time ago, where the... VPGM, which is essentially the president, uh, for all intents and purposes of this division, had a, during a meeting with other leaders, and I was in that meeting, had a question for the other, their peers, that was, um, essentially, we would like to We would like to close this facility because it isn't producing the number of widgets that we need. And we would like to outsource the obtainment of those widgets. Rather than making them ourselves, we'd like to just buy them. Um, does anybody have any ideas? And I was like, really nervous. But I spoke up because, you know, these are all VP GMs and I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm just a sourcing leader, right? But I'm like, I have some data. I said, I have some data that might help. I said, what if we can identify the reason why the facility isn't producing? Is it one of staff? Is it one of leadership? Could we potentially identify competitors in the area that could either A, be acquired? To augment the production or be recruited to come and lead this facility to improve production, if that's possible. So, I suggested, this is, it was a lot briefer than this, but they asked questions and we got to, you know, long story short, right? I suggested, okay, at the end of the brief discussion, I said, what about this? What if we can figure out what other facilities do the same thing nearby and what they produce? Right? So we can see, you know, first of all, are there other facilities that can do better? And, um, what talent is available in that general market locally? Because we know we didn't want to go do a, you know, nationwide search and everything. And they said, okay, we'll hold off on making that decision until you can come back and do that report. Wow! Okay, great. So now it's like on me, right? So I go out and I do the research. I come back and I, and I send an email and I say to everybody, all right, this is what I found. There are three other organizations that have similar facilities for widget manufacturing of similar footprint, size, etc. There are several others that do similar things that don't make the same thing, but that have leaders that are, you know, facility leaders that could easily, um, you know, Come over and you know be brought in to like turn things around and then these are the situations And so based on that email the VPGM called the meeting and said we are going to fund this facility for three more years Wow, dude. Yeah, that's that's that was

Junius Currier: 33:12

huge.

Shally Steckerl: 33:13

Yeah Yeah, that was huge and I was like so happy for sourcing at that moment because it really proves the value of competitive intelligence Yeah Ultimately they ended up Going with option B, which is they basically, instead of buying another one, they, they hired on someone that would oversee the facility locally. What was happening was, one person was running three of these widget making things, and there wasn't enough time on the ground to really... You know, run things, um, to improve things. So they hired someone to come in and be the local boss of the widget making. And it did, uh, turn things around. And, um, all I can tell you is that the result of that is in your wallet. Right now, almost everybody listening to this has a item in their wallet that was made by this facility. So, um, by the way, I am not, this is not me bragging. This is me telling the importance of having information at your fingertips. So if you have the opportunity, speak up, because at the very least, my My fundamental belief is that our value, yours, mine, everybody that is leading at not just a sourcing team, but also a TA team, our number one value, our number one contribution is decision support. We are not really the decision makers. You may be the VP of TA and you may make decisions about your team. Obviously, I make decisions about my team all the time, but when it comes to business strategy, that's above. You know, that's the CEO, maybe the board, not usually, usually the CEO and the executive team are the ones that are setting the strategy. I'm tasked with executing it. But if we are able to provide leadership with better decision, that made a difference. So Junius, if your sourcer produced a candidate that made it all the way to interview, but didn't get hired. However, they were the second candidate, and the first candidate who did get hired was the only candidate. I'm pretty sure that hiring manager would not have hired that candidate, because they would have felt like they don't have a choice. Right? Yeah. If I only have one candidate, unless it's literally a match made in heaven and absolutely perfect for every measure, I'm probably not gonna just... Slam dunk it. I'm probably going to say, I need to compare this, right? So, if you provided the alternative, and they went with the first choice anyway... Your job has been done. They didn't get hired, but that manager is now confident in having interviewed two very equivalent candidates and hired the right one because of your contribution. So even if you don't assist in recruiting, if you don't assist to the hire, we still contributed. And that's just one aspect. What about the other aspect of, you know, headcount planning and things like that? There was a lot about that in the call yesterday. Yep. You know,

Junius Currier: 36:05

so headcount planning. We're actually, uh, Uh, and I think this, it doesn't necessarily fall underneath, um, uh, TA per, per se, but, you know, I, I think any great organization should also have a pretty good plan, especially in the contracting world, of how they can shift their employees around from Expiring contract to other so talent management. Redeployment. Redeployment. Yeah. Yeah. So we're currently going through a process as an organization focused on that, um, because, you know, that's just such a waste, right? Like talk about a waste of resources. Like, um, you know, you spend all that money bringing people into the organization, you know, and a particular contract ends. Um, you're like, okay. Thanks, right? And then, you know, another opportunity comes up. Goodbye, thanks for all the fish. Uh, would you be interested in coming back? Instead, like, the longer term solution is, okay, let's identify a strategy. You know, internally, that when we have, like, you know, um, expiring contracts, what, what are, you know, what are the kind of contracts we should be going for? First of all, like, feeder contracts,

Shally Steckerl: 37:27

uh, intermediate contracts, yeah. If maybe there's another contract, this one's ending, but another one's starting, and you just go boop. But you need to know, like, what kind of things would you need to know? You need to know what the skill set is.

Junius Currier: 37:39

Well, and that's part of forecasting, right? That's part of that. No, I'm

Shally Steckerl: 37:42

sorry. I mean for the, for the team that you're deploying. Yes. You know what that skill set is, but you don't know what this skill set is. You need to know

Junius Currier: 37:48

both, basically. Exactly. Right. You need to, to, like, and that, and that's one of the benefits sometimes of, um, being in the government contracting realm is that you really can kind of shape your workforce. Uh, around the kind of work you go after, but I think the same principles would apply to any line of business, you know, depending upon what your lane is, um, you, you know, you can kind of build in those escalation, um, you know, um, you know, career tracks within your organization. So you have kind of like a feeder system to, you know, and I know it sounds kind of like weird, like, you know, the terminology I'm using, but, but you just want. Um, the capability of being able to say, okay, like, for instance, I'll give you an example. We have these contracts where they're like secret level. But what if, what if, what if we went after some contracts that are not secret level because Okay. Uh, we want, we know that the government, historically, has had a hard time of, um, processing clearances, and most of the contracts in the cleared world, um, you have to have people who already have that skill set. What the problem is, is that, uh, there's supply and demand issues, there's more cleared work than there are cleared personnel, uh, you have individuals that are retiring, so what if you So, what if you could

Shally Steckerl: 39:08

compartmentalize The clearance levels so that whatever the work is that requires clearance is done by one individual and the rest of the world that the work is done by non cleared individuals because those those tasks don't have access to the compartmentalized cleared information.

Junius Currier: 39:25

Um, well, it's all based on, based on the contract, right? So sometimes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So sometimes you have that flexibility and sometimes you don't. It's not the work, man. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But what I was going to get to is like, well, a strategic initiative would be, well, how about we, as an organization, go after some non cleared work and then bring in people, um, and then, Get them, they're billable, so they're, they're not, they're contributing to the organization.

Shally Steckerl: 39:56

And then we, uh, what... And

Junius Currier: 39:58

then what we could do is we can, as people perform and they're top performers, we could start putting people in for sponsorship for clearances. So when a vacancy comes available on a cleared contract... And we have some people who have been cleared for the, uh, for a clearance. We can then move them as a career track into that. Talent development,

Shally Steckerl: 40:21

bro. I mean, it's not training because they're not, they have the skill. They just don't have the one, you know, checkbox, but you're still developing them into that. That, that is brilliant. I love that. That's like pre sourcing, right? Like, I'm thinking Minority Report, you know, uh, Tom Cruise is like pre crime, like this person is going to commit, yeah, the opposite of that, right? This person's going to become cleared. So let's, let's get him out. And then he's here. I love that. Yeah.

Junius Currier: 40:51

Oh yeah, sorry. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, I mean, you could even like, if you want to get into the weeds on it, you can even say, okay, well, we want to make that part of our, uh, You know, uh, uh, D, D, E, and I initiatives. We want to make that part of our military veteran outreach initiatives, our early career. I mean, there's so many ways that you could, uh, implement a strategy like that. That could impact the organization at scale in a very big way, um, and you, you would be like, and then to have the ability to go back and look at, okay, you know, what are the impacts of having this kind of, um, you know, strategy. Built into the organization, right? Like, you know, as far as turnover, as far as, you know, meeting some of our social initiatives, like, I mean, there would be so many different things that you could be able to speak to that would bring value to the organization. And that's one of the things I think is so important as a leader, or even when I was a contributor is I was always thinking. And I'm still constantly always thinking, how can I bring value to the organization, um, because I truly feel that talent acquisition and sourcing, uh, they are, uh, revenue generators for companies. They are not cost centers. Now, I know they might be labeled as a cost center, but I think if you implement the right strategies that are always tied to the outcomes that we're looking for, that align with the business goals of the organization, it changes that paradigm, you know? Uh, what were you going to say, Shelly? Sorry, I didn't mean to, uh, cut you off. What

Shally Steckerl: 42:23

you're saying... I'm like, deep thinking all this. What you're saying sounds to me like a measure that's been established by the ISO that is a legit measure, um, called Impact of hire, right? So it's not necessarily source of hire, because whether it's sourcing or, um, you know, you made, you made a comment and I know it was just a comment as you were processing your thoughts that, you know, TA or sourcing, I don't think that's an or, I think TA includes sourcing, but I know that's what you meant, TA in general, um, that is contributing, you know, people into the workflow shouldn't be measured Just on the hire, because, um, meeting the goals, like one of the, one of the classic measurements is, um, how many people we hired, but that, that again, going back to my beginning, how many people we hired is just a measurement. It is not a metric because if you hired a thousand people, but you needed 2000, you failed, bro. You're done, you know, so hiring a thousand doesn't mean anything. Um, but the, the, uh, measurement is. Uh, how many people do you hire? The metric is percentage of positions filled or fill rate or staffing rate. People call it different things. I get that. But that is really only about recruiting and hiring. It doesn't really include onboarding. It doesn't include some other parts of the process. That's why the ISO has this impact of hire. the source of hire, the people that are hired have a certain contribution and it's kind of related. So quality of hire, but not the same because quality of hire is often measured in the long term impact. So, our quality of hire improves if the people that we hire stay here longer, right? 30 day, 90 day drop off, promotions in one year, promotions, these are quality of hire measurements, but this is impact of hire. So, think of it as... I've used this example before, so I'm gonna try and see if I can, um, I can't remember the name of the, the, the dude, but the dude that invented the iPhone, literally, like, invented the iPhone, legit, there's somebody who did this at Apple, they actually invented the iPhone. I'm sure that they were standing on the shoulders of giants, I'm sure they give credit where credit was due, and they, they, you know, talked about Windows and UI and, and even the Palm devices or the BlackBerry, whatever, but at some point, This dude made the iPhone, and that iPhone, heck, that changed the world. But forget about the world, let's talk about Apple. That made Apple some money right there. That's impact of hire. But in the world of TA, that's one hire. No,

Junius Currier: 45:27

it's not just one hire though. We just hired one person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but to your point, yeah, absolutely.

Shally Steckerl: 45:34

But the impact was huge. Yep. Right? Now, the opposite of that... Okay, make a hire. And that person has a very negative impact on the organization and takes the company. Right? So I think impact of hire, the ISO established it as a recommended measurement and metric. But I don't think I see it very often. It might be just kind of challenging to measure. Yeah, because it's not about revenue, necessarily. I mean, it can be. Right? Uh, is somebody just posted here? Oh, there's, yeah, I saw the corner of my eye. I was like, yeah, income generators, right? That, that obviously makes sense. If you recruit salespeople, you know that they're generating revenue, but there is a way, I think, and maybe have you thought, do you have this where you can look at the impact of hire, even if the person is not tied to revenue, right? Or revenue, uh, lost. Cause there's, there's people who make. Money. And then there's, there's people who save money. Um, in procurement, they're similar to sales procurement officers are often measured on how much money they save the organization and how much money they save more than last year. And they're even bonused like a salesperson is, uh, for commission, their bonus for commission on how much they save. So making money and saving money are just two sides of the same coin. There are people that don't have anything to do with money. Um, but they still save the company. Like for example, in your business, Are they saving lives? I'm not, you know, I don't know exactly what it is, but like, are these people actually saving lives, uh, protecting our, our, our country from evil, protecting our world from evil? So, that is a significant impact, I think, that, you know, the, the, the sourcer who found the candidate that created the defense system that protected us from some kind of nefarious evil attack, that's a significant impact that doesn't necessarily tie back to revenue.

Junius Currier: 47:34

Yeah, but you bring up a good point, though, right? Like, which is, like, really, um, doing the work to identify the impacts of talent acquisition, uh, to the enterprise at large, and doing a good job of being able to communicate.

Shally Steckerl: 47:53

Well, in general, I see what you I gotcha. Yeah,

Junius Currier: 47:55

yeah. To communicate, uh, you know, and that's something that you hear quite a bit. Like, um, you know, we've all been on the forums and seeing people say, you know, um, you know, we don't have a seat at the table or, you know, that kind of stuff.

Shally Steckerl: 48:09

Um, and I had a seat at the table, but right as I was sitting down, somebody pulled it out from under me and I fell.

Junius Currier: 48:16

Yeah, yeah. Um, but no, I, I, I think that you, you, you had a great, uh, illustration there and, and certainly, uh, that's actually one of the things that's so kind of cool about working in the government clearance sector is like, you know, we have a program that we work directly, you know, we're at the Pentagon and we're doing some pretty impactful stuff, um, to protect um, people's education. You know, our networks across, you know, uh, whether it's CONUS or OCONUS, the enterprise and, and, and we're, we're doing some stuff, um, that, you know, it's not just dollars and cents, you know, we're impacting not just our organization, but we're impacting lives and, um, American citizens, right? So, um, so, but, but if you don't tell that story, or if you don't do the research to figure out, go down that rabbit hole a little bit to be able to tie, tie it back to the mission of the organization. And when you have the opportunity to brief on these things, if you don't say these things, then, you know, that your business leaders, they don't connect the dots, because this is not what they do day in,

Shally Steckerl: 49:24

day out. It's not visible to them. Yeah, it's, it's, they hired somebody to take care of this. So

Junius Currier: 49:27

exactly. Yeah. So it really is, it really is incumbent upon the leaders to communicate and share that story. Right. No matter what line of business it is. Um, so that way they can understand the value. Now, again, I've been pretty fortunate. I've had some forward thinking, you know, leaders that I've been able to work with who, you know, they, they looked at talent acquisition, um, you know, in a, in a, in a very positive way, but I'm not naive and know that there, there, there are instances across. You know, uh, the American landscape where that's not always the philosophy that's held dearest to all C suite leaders, right? So, um, but I do think that that is an area that I've always tried to figure out is, okay, what's the mission of the organization? Uh, and how can we tie operations to, to mirror that and be able to communicate that value?

Shally Steckerl: 50:22

Yeah, that's huge. You know what that makes me think of? And, and this might be something I can do some research on, bring somebody on the show. Um, it, it would make sense to me that, uh, people in the healthcare, and I don't just mean hospitals, could be cancer research and stuff like that, must have this figured out or someone, because, you know, that... Everybody knows a hospital's mission is to save lives. I mean, that's what their job is and to make people's lives better through healing. Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna look into that. But the, as you were talking about that, the other thing that I, that I thought of as well was one step below the mission is the overarching strategy of the organization. And so, for example, uh, when I talk about metrics and measurement and, and, you know, talking to the C suite, I use this analogy that, um, it, let's say the leader says, our mission this year is to penetrate a new market. Let's say, you know, we're, we're a US based company. Um, this year's strategy is to enter China and establish our business in China, for example, right? So TA can tie their outcomes to that, that, I don't know, that's a, that's not a mission. That's more like a strategy, right? Um,

Junius Currier: 51:37

yeah, but you were talking about underneath that, right? Yeah, that's,

Shally Steckerl: 51:40

yeah. So the mission is there, but this is like, okay, this year we're going to do this. So TA can say, well, you know, regarding the establishing ourselves in China, here's what we've contributed. And so that's like a very direct way of being that best, best favorite word today, trusted advisor, because you can then contribute to that, that goal of establishing business in China through a very direct way, which

Junius Currier: 52:04

is part of the strategic plan.

Shally Steckerl: 52:05

Exactly. We're hiring X amount of people. We have 100 openings in China. We're hiring for those openings. And that's not just vacancy rate. That's vacancy rate in China, specifically to our mission. So. Yeah,

Junius Currier: 52:17

absolutely. Hey, um, I, I wanted to ask you, uh, Shally, just because, uh, since I have you, uh, uh, all to myself here. What is your favorite, uh, like, I shouldn't say favorite, but what, what, what's kind of like the, the new thing that you've been, like, you, you really utilizing a lot? Like, what's like the hot thing that you are just enamored with as far as like sourcing, whether it's technology, whether it's a tool or like, what, what, what, what's something that you're like engrossed in right now?

Shally Steckerl: 52:49

Can it be two things? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Um, in the past, I had looked at GEM as a CRM and had found it to be very lacking in some areas. And so I dismissed it. I looked at it very seriously at my previous job, and it had one gap that was just, I couldn't overcome. Um, Unfortunately, based on that workflow that we had that I established for that organization. So again, I overlooked it. This year, I looked at it again. And I, they had overcome that gap. And they have made a lot of other changes. They've made a lot of improvements in other areas as well. So I want to say I'm really impressed and I've become an advocate of GEM because they have overcome some of these things in the past that I, you know, I look at it every time and, um, it just wasn't there yet, but now it is. So I'm a fan of GEM for a number of reasons that include their ability to enhance existing, uh, systems. For example, we use Greenhouse and Greenhouse has some very well documented. Gaps that they themselves say, hey, we are good at this. This is an area where we have an API, and we don't just, we don't do that, right? So GEM has found a niche in that they connect very well with Greenhouse and EnhanceIt. They connect very well with SeqOut and EnhanceIt. So that's one. For that reason, for its ecosystem compatibility abilities alone, and then there's all the other things that it does. But that was stopping me before. The other one is ChatGPT. But not. For the reasons that you would think, um, I'm finding ChatGBT as a very succinct and quick way of summarizing information. Even when I'm looking at a page, I have to read a lot, and I often miss things, and I have to go back and read it again, and I don't have time, I don't have focus for that. So it's, it's helpful in using its summarization capabilities to give me an advanced Uh, you know, summary, when I teach speed reading, what I, what I teach is read the first sentence of every paragraph when you pass the speed reading test, then try to answer the question that's asked by the headline. And if you can't, then read the last question of each paragraph. And if you still can't, then you have to go in and read the whole thing. I think, I don't think that's that type of GPT works, but it's doing something like that. So it's actually doing the speed reading for me. I'm not relying on it. If I want the details, I go back to the original article, but I am finding that it is that first speed reading pass. And another area that it works really well is in answering questions very quickly. It doesn't always get them right, and it doesn't always have an answer, but, um, My mother is hospitalized in Florida, and I know this has nothing to with work, but it's an example, and I, you know, normally, I would never have gone to anywhere for this, I would have just done my own research, but I was like, I wonder what ChatGPT has to say about it, and I went there and I said, can you provide me a list of all the Advanced, um, nursing facilities. They're called different things in different states. All the nursing facilities in Broward County. And ChatGPT said, nah, no, I can't do that because it's not, you know, I should have known this. They don't have current information for 2021. But, it said, here's three websites that do. And, I know I could have gone to Google, but I guarantee you, In fact I probably should do that now. If I had gone to Google for that, I probably would have gotten a bunch of ads and some semi ads and some SEO things and probably would have ended up with some places that are trying to sell you services to find facilities. Whereas this pointed me to like literally three government websites that have directories of Oh, that's awesome. Oh yeah, so yeah, short time saving.

Junius Currier: 56:48

Yeah, that's one of the things that I've kind of, um, really, um, has been a revelation to me too is Just thinking through all of the ways that it could help us to become more efficient in what we do. So that way we have more time to continue to drive value adds. Like I've seen, you know, um, I think you mentioned yesterday, uh, during your presentation about how you used it, uh, to enhance, uh, I think you said the slides, right? That you used? I did,

Shally Steckerl: 57:18

yeah. They didn't write the slides for it, but it, yeah, it enhanced them. I gave it, sometimes I gave it, um, Things like, how would you put this in a PowerPoint slide, and then it was like, here's a bullet point, or here's a header, or anything, things like that, yeah. Yeah,

Junius Currier: 57:30

well, so, but that's what I'm saying, like, those are, like, I mean, it's like anything, like I tell people all the time, like, a tool is only as good as the user, that, that's, uh, you know, implementing the tool, right? Um, but I, so I, I, I think... Having a good grasp of how you would be able to, um, you know, really leverage something like this, it could really be a differentiator, I think, um, still, you know, like, you know, I'm not one to just kind of go into, like, the, the hype about, like, oh, this, you know, I don't, I don't really worry about, like, AI taking our jobs or anything like that, I, I just think that's, I think that's a little far fetched, um, but I do think that There's so much that we can utilize this kind of technology and I'm excited to see how this continues to expand into the future because like just some of the things that people have already explored doing, um, and this is a free tool. So, uh, who knows how long it's free. We'll see, I guess.

Shally Steckerl: 58:32

I'm excited about that. I have kept you for, uh, an hour now, and I know that you probably have real work to do. So, I'd like to, I'd like to just kind of wrap things up, but I want to make sure that I'm consistent about this. I'd like to end Our, our talks, as you probably know, by dropping a, a little bit of wisdom on our listeners and viewers to, you know, think about over the weekend. So is there something, what, what, what words of wisdom or a question or something you want to leave an idea, you want to leave people with as you're closing today? You know, that you want them to, I don't know, think about?

Junius Currier: 59:14

Yeah, um, I, I would just say, um, Continue to, um, just invest in yourself and understanding that, you know, um, in talent acquisition, we have a significant impact on, uh, organizations and, um, you know, as you continue to invest in yourself by learning as much as you can learn about the profession, um, increasing your, uh, your Uh, your capability and your knowledge, it's going to, um, empower you to feel comfortable to really become that business partner that hiring managers need. Um, that they don't even know that they need, right? Or even business leaders need, right? Because Sheldon, you made a great point, which is, you know, you talked about how, you know, you, you know, we're there to help the organization make better decisions. Yeah. And this happens all the time on the front lines in talent acquisition, and you'll see a lot. A lot more with senior recruiters or senior sourcers who have become very confident in their voice. Uh, where they, where they're advising, you know, they're not, they're not order taking, like they, they are driving the engine that's helping, uh, the higher, their, their, their business partners get to the outcomes they're looking for. So, I would just say those that are out there listening today, Uh, try to really take that approach, right? Like, do what you need to do in order to continue to invest in yourself to get to that level, um, but once you feel confident in, in what you bring to the table, you know, definitely drive that value by partnering and providing advice, uh, and providing alternatives and solutions So even problems they haven't even thought of yet. Um, because when that happens, they're like, wow, they're taking it back and they're appreciating it.

Shally Steckerl: 1:01:07

Value add, big time. Yep. I love it. That's a really good way to close. Thank you, my friend. You are beautiful. And I, I, this is, we gotta have, we gotta have you guys back on here at some point. So, um, I know we're definitely over time. Apologize for keeping everybody a little bit on. Have a great weekend and be kind to each other. Take care. Have a good one.