The Full Desk Experience

Brianna Rooney [00:00:00]:
As recruiters, we have to know why they're great on paper, and then we also have to articulate why they were great on the phone. And if you can't do that in a bulleted paragraph, you're not going to make it. So again, going back to the fundamentals is where I think people fail, because there's all these new shiny tools that swears they'll do it better, faster, easier. And we shouldn't be thinking about us fighting the tools. We should be thinking about us fighting ourselves, essentially just not being really good at it.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:30]:
Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. This is the Industry Spotlight, a series of the Full Desk Experience, a Crelate original podcast. In this series, we will talk with top leaders and influencers who are shaping the talent industry, shining a light on popular trends, the latest news, and the stories that laid the groundwork for their success. Welcome back to another episode of the Full Desk Experience, Industry Spotlight. This is part two of our special conversation with Brianna Rooney. She's the renowned entrepreneur, executive coach and public speaker that honestly, we had an amazing conversation in the last episode. We heard more about Brianna's incredible origin story, how she founded multiple successful firms and she's really known as the millionaire recruiter. So in the second half of our talk, we're going to dive deeper.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:26]:
We're going to unpack some more from Brianna's insights and vision into what she does with her own firm in the tech industry and see her predictions for the future of our industry. She has such a unique and valuable perspective to share. So let's dive in to Brianna's talk for the Full Desk Experience. Thanks for joining. Let's talk about major shifts. We're going to talk about your industry specifically. What are some major shifts you've observed in your industry over the past year?

Brianna Rooney [00:01:56]:
Yeah, a major shift. Well, besides all the, all the layoffs and people thinking that they don't need recruiters, that's been interesting. I would say the major shift that I'm actually happy to see is that on job postings for like recruiters and TA leaders and stuff like that, they're actually now asking for people with agency experience. And that makes me happy to see. I love it because I think that for a long time agencies like internals and externals were like, kind of like at war. And I myself have said this, so I'll put myself under the bus here. I've always said that people go internal because they couldn't hack it. External.

Brianna Rooney [00:02:30]:
I see very differently now, maybe because I'M so brilliant at age 40. But the bottom line is everybody works differently. Some people really get off by commission. Some people shut down. Yeah. That doesn't mean that they can't do their job really well. But I will say that agencies do care about different things than internals care about. And I kind of got hit with that really hard a few months ago when I did a very interesting contingency meets RPO gig.

Brianna Rooney [00:03:00]:
Very interesting. I will totally tangent on that. But essentially I got to sit in their internal seat even though I was external. They didn't have anybody. And it was actually quite a big organization to not have anybody. So that was like its own separate thing challenge. But I got to sit there and really see from an internal seat for the very first time in my entire career what goes down. And I got to see how they care about things so differently than externals do.

Brianna Rooney [00:03:27]:
So I was still able to do my recruiter screens in about 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes. But I got very different information than I would if I was doing an external gig. And so I got to see why, because I got lots of questions directly from the team as opposed to maybe from the TA person or maybe they bitched about it somewhere else. You know, I was responsible for certain questions. And so it made me like, look differently. And so I think that once you realize when you're seeing this shift, you're realizing that internal and externals, we are the same. It's kind of like how everyone should have done have been a waiter or waitress.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:04]:
Yep. A whole different world.

Brianna Rooney [00:04:06]:
Yeah. It's just external. We probably have more grit and resilience because we have to survive, whereas the survivals is indifferent. But we're still doing the same job. We just perhaps move and think differently. But that doesn't mean you can't train them, you know, otherwise. So I think that's the giant shift, which is super interesting. Another shift is, and which I'm also happy about is there's a lot more sharing because the recruiting world took a big hit because people got caught with their pants down not doing biz dev.

Brianna Rooney [00:04:34]:
They were like in trouble. And now they become a little bit desperate. So what do desperate people do? They reach out to all these different people. Right. But what I like about how that happened is now people are sharing candidates, sharing clients. It's more of an interesting marketplace. And so now we're having like, trusted partners. I mean, even myself, I just did a deal with one of my old employees.

Brianna Rooney [00:04:55]:
That felt good. It feels good to split and share the recruiting Industry is still a massive money maker. It's just we're seeing money differently. And maybe it's a little harder to get, but it's still there. And so I think the sharing and collaborating is a really cool thing.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:12]:
I love that I have so many things I wanna go in so many different directions.

Brianna Rooney [00:05:16]:
Yeah. And I totally didn't even finish, like, my journey that I was supposed. I just couldn't. I'm so bad. I tangent.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:23]:
It's okay. I love it. I love where it's going. As a coach, obviously, in this industry, you see a lot of things. What people are doing wrong, what people are doing right. I want you to talk about maybe one industry. I want you to do one. I know you could do one.

Brianna Rooney [00:05:37]:
Okay, fine.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:38]:
One industry practice that you think needs to be completely reimagined, besides the marketing stuff.

Brianna Rooney [00:05:45]:
Okay, fine. So I feel people are not thinking like an owner. Ooh, maybe because I've been an owner for so long, I don't know. But recruiters need to think about either they're the hiring manager or they're the CEO, because that tender, loving thought care doesn't seem to be there. So, for example, if I'll use Pinterest, because Pinterest has still not been my client and they really need to be. I'm going to get them one day. So. So close.

Brianna Rooney [00:06:14]:
So Pinterest, I want Pinterest to be my client, right. And I see their job description and I have this person. But what I should be able to do as a recruiter is I should be able to read between the lines and know what questions my candidates will have based off of that job description. And if I think like that, then guess what? I'm going to ask Pinterest those questions in anticipation that my candidates will have those same exact questions. So when you think like a hiring manager, when you see the gaps that they probably have, then I think you can do better. And so this is how, like, you have to would reimagine stuff, because I would say a lot of recruiters have trouble pitching candidates to companies and pitching companies to candidates. So you have to sit in two seats. So one, you gotta think of the hiring manager and owner, right.

Brianna Rooney [00:07:06]:
But then on the other side, you have to think like a candidate. So if this was your job, this is your job interview, what would you want? What would you need? And if you're not doing that on both sides, I think you're totally failing, in my opinion. We don't get paid to send resumes, and I think recruiters are still thinking like that. A good example of this. Sorry to throw someone under the bus here, but so let me think of a different industry. They do accounting, right? And so it's like I had this resume. I'm like, hey, give me your best candidate right now. I want to see your best candidate share screen this candidate be like, all right, cool.

Brianna Rooney [00:07:42]:
So he was really excited to do that. Here's my best candidate. I go, great. Why is this candidate different than this other person? He couldn't tell me. And all he did was tell me about how great she was on the phone. He couldn't articulate it on paper, why this person was so great. And here's the thing, as recruiters, we have to know why they're great on paper, and then we also have to articulate why they were great on the phone. And if you can't do that in a bullet, you know, paragraph, Bulleted paragraph, you're not going to make it.

Brianna Rooney [00:08:17]:
So again, going back to the fundamentals is where I think people fail because there's all these new shiny tools that swears they'll do it better, faster, easier. And we shouldn't be thinking about us fighting the tools. We should be thinking about us fighting ourselves, essentially. Just not being really good at it.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:34]:
No, I love that. I worked with MRI Network. I was one of their trainers and we did new owner development. So anybody coming into new franchise development, they had to come to training with us. And we did. Like, you had to defend your impact player. Like you brought one to training after 12 weeks. And I had their resume and a job order and I quiz the crap out of them, but you didn't have it in front of you.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:57]:
And it was literally a test. But just how well do you know how to defend and know your person and what they can do versus the transactional? So often it's like, well, here we go. It's a transactional. I love that you talked about that because that is. That was one of my favorite things that we did.

Brianna Rooney [00:09:12]:
That's really fun. And, you know, it's funny, people don't like role playing. And I also think that is a huge mistake. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:24]:
100%. I love it. It makes you uncomfortable, but it's a good prepared uncomfortable whether it's your top performer and your other people are listening. Especially in a remote world where so many people are remote. You're not a bullpen anymore. You're not hearing your, like, best people, like, respond to resistance, but maybe you put them on the spot and it's like, okay, maybe the CEO. You haven't ran a desk in a while. Tell me how you'd respond to this.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:48]:
But they get to hear a different perspective and a different approach, and I think those things are game changers.

Brianna Rooney [00:09:53]:
Yeah. So every single time someone would have an offer, they would have what I called an offer buddy. Even me. Okay. So if I got an offer, and plus, I ran full desk for a very long time, almost all the way up to I sold. I remember that moment when I walked away and I went to my office. I cried for a whole week. But.

Brianna Rooney [00:10:10]:
And by the way, I run full desk now.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:12]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:10:12]:
So I'm completely back to full desk, and I absolutely love it. And it's a new thing for me. It's probably about, like, four or five months that I've been back, and I love every little second of it. But anyways. But we have an offer buddy, and so the way that we would do that is I would talk about, here's the offer, here's the thing. And then the offer buddy would be like, what's the problem? Do you think this is going. Do you think it's going to close? What's the percentage wise? Do you think it's going to close? If it doesn't close, where is this person going? And as a recruiter, if you are surprised by someone not accepting an offer and then in return don't know where they're going, fail twice. You have to know.

Brianna Rooney [00:10:50]:
And I think a lot of people. Sorry, I tanged on this one, but a lot of people listen to what they want to hear. They don't listen to understand. Right. And so, I mean, very easily do. You are like, oh, my God, my person's accepting. I go, great. So are they signing today? Oh, no, no.

Brianna Rooney [00:11:04]:
They said they need a week. What do they need a week for? You just told me they were ready to go so I would make them get back on the phone. I go, nope. I need to know why they're not accepting. They're like, no, they are. No, they're not.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:16]:
Not today.

Brianna Rooney [00:11:16]:
Now I need to know why. You know, I need to know what's wrong. Because there's always something wrong. And here on the other side of the coin is people don't want to deliver bad news. So the candidate might like you. They might have even liked the company. And they sure as shit don't want to tell you on the phone that they're not accepting that thing that you just spent a whole lot of time on, because essentially they know how we get Paid.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:38]:
Right.

Brianna Rooney [00:11:40]:
They know that if they don't accept the job, we don't get paid. So who wants to deliver that news? Nobody.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:47]:
True. That's very true. I love it. I love it. I love it. All right, I'm going to flip.

Brianna Rooney [00:11:53]:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:54]:
Candidates and you can talk to specifically about yours right now. In your industry, how has candidate behavior changed? Have you noticed any recent change? Because hiring processes are different. People act different. You just talked about counteroffers. All the things. What changes or what has changed in candidate behavior in the past year?

Brianna Rooney [00:12:14]:
Okay. I love that you're talking about this. And for some reason I'm getting money chills. But what we saw, what we've seen recently is recruiters haven't felt the love from companies. Oh. But we feel the love from candidates. They love us again. And they love us even more than maybe they used to.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:33]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:12:34]:
So candidates want you. They want to talk to you. I have actually been very surprised how much they want to talk to me because before I got really good at getting an intake via email because, no, they never wanted to get on the phone with me and like, urgency, urgency, urgency. I don't want someone else to send them and I don't want them to get booked on interviews, so I have to get their intake. So I actually was getting really good at placing people I never spoke to.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:59]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:13:00]:
Because they wouldn't give me the time.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:03]:
Crazy.

Brianna Rooney [00:13:04]:
So I would call, I would leave messages, I would text, and guess what? They only responded to emails or texts. So I just got really good at it. Anyways, now everyone will send their resume and be like, what time can I talk to you? I was like, this is great. So I have been spending again, the same kind of time, 15, 20 minutes, depending, like, if this person, if I see a lot of potential for this person, or if we just happen to connect and, you know, you always want to help. Right. I'll spend a little more time with them. So in my mind, and this might sound good or bad, I don't know. But I have what I call charity calls.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:38]:
Okay.

Brianna Rooney [00:13:39]:
So I like to give myself three a week tops, because I like to help. And sometimes it hurts me not to help. Like, I feel like I gotta. I gotta help this person. So if the person feels coachable to me, I even might on the phone with the candidate, walk them through how their LinkedIn or resume appears to me and what they're missing and where they're missing the mark. And so I'll maybe spend like five more minutes or whatever it needs to go over that And I think that that's been going a long way. I've been getting a lot more referrals recently where normally. So I'm very used to.

Brianna Rooney [00:14:12]:
I don't know about you, when you had your agency. I'm very used to paying for referrals. I pay $2,000 for every successful referral. I'm really open about it. But now I haven't even had to drop that at all. I'm like, hey, do you have anyone you want to refer? Sure. Now we're really good at. I'm really good at, like, getting three referrals per person.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:28]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:14:28]:
Like, hey, give me your friends. Hey, how's your company doing? Oh, doing layoffs. Great. Pass your friends over. Let me help them out.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:34]:
I love it.

Brianna Rooney [00:14:35]:
So I think that the candidates have shifted for sure. However, I do think there are always going to be those bad seeds. For example, I have to just share this story because I almost wanted to share it, but I'm like, look, I'm not into that, but I'm going to share it here for a second. This person goes, I'm not interested. I only want transparency. And I was like, what? Yeah, I'm happy to answer questions. I'm not going to send you a novel because nobody will read that. I said I was just trying to provoke a conversation and here's what I want for you.

Brianna Rooney [00:15:04]:
And so I spent a little extra time, right? I said, here's what I want. Da, da, da, da. And I even said, look, I know you just told me that you prefer remote. This is two times a week. I don't know. You know, I feel like there's an exception to every rule. Just want to let you know, it's two times a week. You know what he did? He messaged me back and goes, wow, good one.

Brianna Rooney [00:15:22]:
Looks like you don't listen. And he completely blocked me on LinkedIn. And I was like, wow, you're in a really bad mood. Like, really bad mood. So there's always going to be that shit, right? And so this just happened a couple days ago. Why? It's fresh. But, like, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? Go post this shit on LinkedIn and get mad about it, enraged. Just like candidates do about us ghosting, you know, it's like, no, no, I'm not going to do it.

Kortney Harmon [00:15:48]:
No.

Brianna Rooney [00:15:49]:
But it's crazy. So anyways, it's interesting, but I would say, for the most part, I say 80% of candidates are just darling right now and they need help and they want our Help. And they want to cut the noise, and we're here to do that for them.

Kortney Harmon [00:16:00]:
I love it. And I love that you have a limit to your charity calls. Sometimes I struggle cutting those off, so it is hard.

Brianna Rooney [00:16:08]:
My coach told me that because she knows I'll take calls all the time.

Kortney Harmon [00:16:11]:
I love it. Okay, so let's flip the coin. Let's talk about companies.

Brianna Rooney [00:16:15]:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:16:16]:
How are companies having to adjust their hiring strategies for today's market in your industry?

Brianna Rooney [00:16:23]:
Are they adjusting?

Kortney Harmon [00:16:24]:
Okay, that was my next question. Or are they. And they're failing?

Brianna Rooney [00:16:28]:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of failures happening. But here's what's interesting again. I'm in San Francisco, and San Francisco is definitely used to a certain thing. Right. They've been used to remote for quite a while. And now we have a lot of companies that want people back in the office. And as a recruiter, that's very difficult. That is like a very hard.

Brianna Rooney [00:16:49]:
And they're not cutting anything else that they want. So, for example, I've had this company who, again, I only take companies that have already done and struggled on themselves, by themselves, because I don't want to. I don't want to go there. But they have been looking for this person for nine months. So my question is always, what's the cost of vacancy? What's going on? What can we give and take on? Because the give and take is not the office thing they need every other week, every other day. And so I said, okay, fine. What else are we going to give and take on? Because obviously you've done this yourself for nine months. You're coming to me desperate at this point.

Brianna Rooney [00:17:24]:
And I got to tell you, your team's looking right. And can I tell you who? Absolutely not. But I got to tell you that not filling roles messes with retention. And I don't think companies understand that. And that drives me absolutely wild. So are companies adjusting? I don't really think so. I think they're still being operated by the senior, the C suites, and whatever they want goes. And I think they're dying on their swords.

Brianna Rooney [00:17:51]:
I think the smart companies are the ones who adjust. Per. For example, there's certain roles that are used to being remote, period. And this is not a Covid thing. It's just they've always been remote.

Kortney Harmon [00:18:03]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:18:03]:
And it is what it is. So I think exceptions need to be made. But the problem is also being inclusive. So how do you make exceptions and still be inclusive and still get the job done? And I think that the issue is companies aren't doing a good enough job at getting their employees attached to the business and roi. And also I think candidates are doing a good job stepping up to that table and say, hey, what's the company need? Because they're just getting laid off.

Kortney Harmon [00:18:28]:
Sorry.

Brianna Rooney [00:18:28]:
Totally tangent in this one. Candidates. I think if a candidate is totally shocked by a layoff, then they weren't involved enough in the business.

Kortney Harmon [00:18:39]:
I like that.

Brianna Rooney [00:18:40]:
So I think that there's problems both ways when it comes to companies. So it's an interesting challenge. But here's another I think problem. Me addressing this question is because I work with smaller companies and smaller companies think that they're the exceptions and that they're innovative and everyone will just run to their mission. That's a problem too. So I don't think they're doing enough. Yeah. Oh, man.

Brianna Rooney [00:19:06]:
I could literally spend hours talking about the problems of companies. Because here's just a quick thing. There's all these tools. The problem with the tools is no one has agreed on what the problem is. So how can we solve a problem if no one's agreed what the main problem is? So if you could ask a recruiter what the problem is and you can ask a VP of engineering what the problem is and they're going to say they're two different problems. I could ask an HR person what the problem is is going to be a different problem. It also depends on the org and the industry. But I think the problem that AI is solving is not the main problem.

Brianna Rooney [00:19:44]:
I don't think it's sourcing. That's the problem.

Kortney Harmon [00:19:47]:
What do you think the problem is, Brianna?

Brianna Rooney [00:19:51]:
Well, a lot of the problem is on hiring managers. And here's the thing, here's why. And I'm not going to totally attack them because I'm my own hiring manager as well. Right?

Kortney Harmon [00:20:00]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:20:01]:
But when people go into leadership, they're typically not trained. So typically leaders are the power ICs. Power ICS should probably be left alone to do their overachieving stuff. And the people who actually want to manage and lead, because those are two different things. Manager and leadership is two different things. The people. That's a different personality. And so then, so think about they're not only not trained, but they're not trained on how to have a conversation about hiring.

Brianna Rooney [00:20:30]:
They're not trained on the shit that we go through. They're not trained on how to close a candidate. They're not trained on how to interview a candidate the same way every single time. That's hard. There's biases. I Think that there's just so many issues and they don't understand as well that when they change a search how long that takes to recalibrate because it takes what, two weeks to build pipe? One change, two more weeks.

Kortney Harmon [00:20:57]:
Right.

Brianna Rooney [00:20:57]:
So here we are with that. The longer the candidates doesn't hear from you, guess what happens? They shut down and they go somewhere else. We have to address this more and more. Like dating, because that's exactly what it is. There's really no difference. So I think the problem is the lack of knowledge and training. I think that's the main issue.

Kortney Harmon [00:21:16]:
I agree with you.

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Kortney Harmon [00:22:23]:
The leaders of these organizations, they think there's a process happening because they willed it into existence and we just think we're following it. But in reality the process is most of the times in the organizations I've seen is the wild wild west. Well, Bobby's successful over here. Brianna is successful over here. I'm not going to bother him, but this is how I want everything else to go. Process is a whole nother, like tangent. I could get on for hours.

Brianna Rooney [00:22:47]:
Oh my God. Well, let me tell you one and then you can tangent and tell you how you would have fixed. I got to go to for you. This company wanted to hire six people and have them on board all within six weeks. So position open six needed to be hired and onboarded in six weeks. Here was my question. Great. How many people do you have interviewing? Because it's the same role.

Brianna Rooney [00:23:06]:
Right. So I go, how many interviewers do you have? Two. How long's your interview process? Six and a half hours. Okay, so like total from like start to Finish.

Kortney Harmon [00:23:16]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:23:16]:
And then how, how long does it take your team? Because then they got a grade and talk about the person. Right? That was going to take eight and a half hours. So for every hire, it was going to take eight and a half hours. That's the first thing they needed six of them. And then I was like, great, how's your onboarding process? And do you have plans for the 30, 60, 90 days? And then where, how's hiring manager? Oh, and by the way, how much work do they still need to get done during all these interviews? So think about that. So I had to actually say, let's do the math. Math wise, does this work?

Kortney Harmon [00:23:51]:
No. The answer is no.

Brianna Rooney [00:23:52]:
The answer is no. The answer is hell no. Okay. And no work. And then I also said, by the way, I'm not even talking about burnout. You're going to burn these people out so fast. We're going to have other issues. And guess what? They're going to feel that.

Brianna Rooney [00:24:08]:
The candidate's going to feel that. And they're not going to want to work there.

Kortney Harmon [00:24:11]:
Heck no.

Brianna Rooney [00:24:13]:
And then I said, and by the way, there's so many meetings on these people's calendars. Like it's going to be really difficult. They said, nope, book them over everything, including their lunches. I was like, wow, wow. So ask me how that went.

Kortney Harmon [00:24:28]:
Tell me you care about your employees without telling me you hear about your employees. I mean, I was in the tech space too. We're getting more and then more to the idea. Okay, let's have interview afternoons or let's do all one and let's like rotate people. I was always a big fan of. I'm going to set these interview times up. If you need this hire date this day. I'm going to schedule your interviews right now without even the candidates being in place.

Kortney Harmon [00:24:51]:
Because I need to block your calendar because yours is sacred. Because I can't even get a hold of you if I need to get a hold of you. So those are things that worked. But be realistic, people.

Brianna Rooney [00:24:59]:
Yeah. I said the only answer in my opinion is a sprint. Is a hiring sprint where you guys stop working for two weeks.

Kortney Harmon [00:25:07]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:25:07]:
And everyone's involved. You train more interviewers because this isn't going to work.

Kortney Harmon [00:25:12]:
Did they take it?

Brianna Rooney [00:25:13]:
Nope.

Kortney Harmon [00:25:14]:
Did they say yes?

Brianna Rooney [00:25:15]:
Nope. And guess how many people they hired. None. None. Guess how many people now I don't.

Kortney Harmon [00:25:21]:
Know how many people quit.

Brianna Rooney [00:25:23]:
Well, okay. So obviously I couldn't tell them this. It was a 70 person team. Okay. Obviously. Because I'm not a member of Their team, I can see how many are looking. So if I, oh, every time I enter a client, I look to see how many people are looking because I want to know what's this company like, right? So I looked before I looked again after this debacle. 32 out of the 70 are now open to work.

Kortney Harmon [00:25:50]:
Not shocked.

Brianna Rooney [00:25:51]:
And nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about what not hiring or hiring wrong does to an organization. And there's only three reasons why companies fail and well, hiring is one of them.

Kortney Harmon [00:26:03]:
I love it. Okay, I have three more questions. I want to get to these you and I think we could talk for hours.

Brianna Rooney [00:26:09]:
So I know you're pumping me up today.

Kortney Harmon [00:26:12]:
Tell me, as you are looking to scale your firms, right? So so many people in our industry, especially a lot of the listeners, are that mid small to mid size company and they're looking to scale more. What's the most valuable lesson you've learned about building and scaling a recruiting firm?

Brianna Rooney [00:26:28]:
Oh my gosh. Okay. I learned this from someone. So, okay, first of all, always chase someone as an agency owner or business owner. Chase the person or company you want to be like or you want to beat essentially. So I always had that company that I wanted to beat. They started before me, they were bigger than me, they had brand recognition. So I eventually reached out to that person and I was very honest.

Brianna Rooney [00:26:52]:
I said, I want to beat you one day. Tell me what you would like. Tell me the real world. Like let's have a conversation. And he actually did. He actually had a conversation and I would actually do the same. Someone reached out to me, I would tell him the same exact thing. So he said, you're still contingency, right? I'm like, yeah, of course, I love contingency.

Brianna Rooney [00:27:08]:
He goes, you can't scale more than 15 people. And I tried to prove him wrong. So I did get up to 23 at my height, I believe. But I will still tell you today that a medium sized company, a six to eight person team, runs the best. So my advice to those mid sized companies, if your contingency, okay. Is either you have a different business model for other half of your team or what's probably happening is you got to cut the people who are not being efficient. Because what tends to happen is the bigger you get, the more of a fat cat you get and you're paying for things. Now here's, here's the thing.

Brianna Rooney [00:27:45]:
As a business owner, naturally the more people you have, especially LinkedIn, oh, look how much cheaper my seats are. Oh, look how all my tools are cheaper Because I go to Costco now. Right. But it's fake. So I lots of times will ask an agency, okay, tell me, who must you have on the bus? Who if your entire team gave notice today, what three people would you literally lose sleep over and give everything you have to keep them? And lots of times they don't have anyone on the team that they feel that strongly about. Or maybe it's one or two out of ten. So I go, great, these two, you harness the other ones. Maybe they need a pip, maybe they need a.

Brianna Rooney [00:28:28]:
Maybe they're not on your bus. So I think the allure of having a bigger team might feel like is maybe an ego thing or maybe it's a, oh, the more people I have, the less I have to work. I don't know. But I will fight that if your contingency or unless you have really good people that do biz dev. Because here's the thing, that's another problem. Normally the owners are the only ones that do biz dev really well.

Kortney Harmon [00:28:55]:
In those small companies. Absolutely.

Brianna Rooney [00:28:57]:
In those small companies. Yeah. I definitely, I feel like I trained my people really well, but at the end of the day, I was one of the ones that could do it better. I don't remember what your question was. What was my advice? To scale.

Kortney Harmon [00:29:08]:
Most valuable lesson you learned in scale.

Brianna Rooney [00:29:10]:
Most valuable lesson. Yeah. So most valuable lesson was don't scare scale. Just to scale. So I had at any given moment 50 clients. So I was like, I'm leaving money on the table. I can't even place enough people. Da, da, da, da.

Brianna Rooney [00:29:23]:
So naturally you think I'm going to grow. And you don't put a microscope on everything, everyone. You just figure growing is the way to go. And it's not. It's making sure you're a well oiled machine. So don't grow just to grow.

Kortney Harmon [00:29:38]:
Great piece of advice. I love it. Next question. How do you measure success in an organization like your own beyond placements?

Brianna Rooney [00:29:47]:
Ooh, I actually, I had a tally game and people would get rewarded for offers and activity. And when I say activity, here's what I mean. They would get rewarded for bringing in new clients and delivering someone that they wanted to talk to within 48 hours. That's a reward they would get rewarded for on sites because. And that's the final round, right. In my opinion. And then they would get rewarded for offers. They never got rewarded for deals.

Brianna Rooney [00:30:15]:
Actually, I didn't. Because they got commission. Right? Yeah, absolutely. So I actually never rewarded people in addition to closing deals. Now what I did do, though, when it came to deals is I rewarded the team. So if every team member closed the deal that month, the team got a massive price. Oh, that's whether it's like, we all took a date at the spa or whatever the hell it was. Right.

Brianna Rooney [00:30:40]:
You know?

Kortney Harmon [00:30:41]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:30:41]:
I wanted to make sure that we operated as a unit because I remember when my coach told me this years ago, you're only as strong as your weakest link. And she's like, if not everyone can close a deal every month like you expect, then you're not strong. I was like, ouch, it hurts.

Kortney Harmon [00:30:58]:
But it's the truth.

Brianna Rooney [00:31:00]:
It hurts. Actually, she did something with me that was very hard. She had me send over the numbers, Right. The numbers of everyone's. The activity, the deals, like, all of the stuff. Right. She took off the names and reworked them and then share screened and said, who are we getting rid of?

Kortney Harmon [00:31:19]:
Ooh, ouch.

Brianna Rooney [00:31:21]:
I did not like. Not like that session. I cried in that session, actually.

Kortney Harmon [00:31:27]:
But was it pretty eye opening? Did you anticipate the people you were picking?

Brianna Rooney [00:31:31]:
No, it was very eye opening and it was very sad for me because I do also value culture fit or culture ad, I should say. It's a culture ad.

Kortney Harmon [00:31:42]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:31:43]:
Where it's like, maybe they're the first ones to help or they're always pumping people up or stuff like that. Or they're like the quarterback. I ended up having someone who was so good, who could. Wasn't a great sourcer, was okay with clients, but for some reason, their mind, the way it worked was they could see a candidate and know exactly where they're supposed to go at any given moment. And they just had a gift for that. So I actually thought of a commission structure for that person to do those things because we had such a big operation that things were getting lost left and right. So it was almost like they were quality control.

Kortney Harmon [00:32:18]:
I love it.

Brianna Rooney [00:32:19]:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:32:19]:
New role, New role on the spot, new role. All right, my last and final question. Just because I like where your brain goes, what is one prediction you have for the recruiting industry that might surprise people?

Brianna Rooney [00:32:33]:
That the tools are going to die down and the humans will win.

Kortney Harmon [00:32:38]:
I 100% agree with that. We just were at Staffing World last year. The amount of vendors this year compared to most or past years were through the roof. And there was a huge handful of AI only tools.

Brianna Rooney [00:32:51]:
Yeah, I think that's going to die down in, like, a really big way. So it will be interesting. Like, I already see fatigue from people. I mean, even think about just Doing demos on how long stuff that takes. But I think what's interesting, and maybe these companies will win, is that how do you train your team on something, but more importantly, how do you get them to adopt it and actually stay? So what I have seen, and I think we'll continue to see, cause I think it's the only way tools will still see the light is if they cut the year subscriptions. Because I think the recruiting world and the TA space, internal and externals, are tired of signing contracts with companies that won't work with them at any given moment. Companies have to scale up and scale down and you just don't know what's going to happen. And so having just those costs just because is a really hard detriment to every company.

Brianna Rooney [00:33:51]:
And I think that if those tools don't become more flexible, they'll die faster.

Kortney Harmon [00:33:56]:
Yeah, Great insight. You have anything else? I mean, I have more questions, but do you have like any, like one other piece of advice to anybody listening?

Brianna Rooney [00:34:06]:
Yeah. So, I mean, I think I've said it with the fundamentals, but here's what's cool about this industry that I think a lot of people forget is the amount from going from zero to hero in this industry is essentially, on paper, easy. Okay. But it's a lot of work. So can you go from making 50 grand to making 200 in one year? Yes, you can. Yes, you can. But is that easy? Is there an easy button? Hell no. Hell no.

Brianna Rooney [00:34:37]:
So I think that that is my advice is that if you join programs or you join coaches or you join whatever and anyone ever says that they are completely full of shit and they just want your money. And I think what bothers me, and from a maybe a human being perspective, is there's so many programs out there. Like, I have people come to me and say, can you help me? I just spent $10,000 and this person, like, and it didn't work. And it's so sad. It's so sad. So that, first and foremost, really bothers me. Second, also, when it comes to appearances, I think here's something that helped me in my world. You can go on LinkedIn and you might see, oh, I'm killing it.

Brianna Rooney [00:35:20]:
I'm doing so great. You don't really know what's going on. So my advice would be to never compare yourself to anyone or anyone else's journey. Okay? I get asked all the time, how did you do this? Right. I never took no for an answer. And again it goes to me. I did not care if someone told me no today. I didn't care.

Brianna Rooney [00:35:42]:
Someone tells me no the next day. I didn't care. I just found the one. Yes. I just kept looking for like the. Yes. I just kept looking. People were like, this isn't going to work.

Brianna Rooney [00:35:50]:
You didn't go to. You don't have your degree. This isn't going to work. Let them say that you stay on your journey, I think is really, really, really important. Are there a lot of people telling, talking about their experiences? Sure. I mean I'm. We're here talking about my experiences and hopefully some people can take stuff from this. But this is my journey.

Brianna Rooney [00:36:09]:
So my, the thing that helped me with my coach was this. Think about the five people you surround yourself with. Are you the worst of the pack or the best of the pack? The trick is you want to be the worst of the pack. And this is bad terminology. This is definitely. I'm not setting this up correctly. You don't want to be the worst. But you know what I mean, like it's kind of like the house.

Brianna Rooney [00:36:28]:
You want to be the ugliest house on the cul de sac.

Kortney Harmon [00:36:31]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:36:31]:
So then when they sell, your prices go up. It's the same logic.

Kortney Harmon [00:36:34]:
Yeah.

Brianna Rooney [00:36:35]:
So a few years back I really took a hard look at who I was surrounding myself with. And I think that that's a really big deal. And this is not just business wise, this is personal wise. This goes with all of that. So I, my advice there is don't think you owe anyone anything. Don't compare yourself to anybody. I actually smacked my mom's hand the other day. She was in town and my son was, is in sports and she was like, oh, oh Diego, did you look at that guy and like were you jealous that he got a hit? You know, said something along the lines of that.

Brianna Rooney [00:37:06]:
Right. And I was like, we don't compare, we just don't. Who cares? All we care about what we do. And I think the biggest thing too is every single day is a different day. I work out in 5:15. Right. Today I killed it yesterday I didn't. But that doesn't mean I didn't give my a hundred percent.

Brianna Rooney [00:37:23]:
My a hundred percent is different every single frickin day and I have to show up for that. So as I tangent all this stuff, show up, just show up, have a good attitude and put your head down. Don't get in the midst of all this shit. Don't start reading everyone's sayings. I actually got it so bad that so after I sold my business, by the way, I got imposter syndrome. Really bad. So no one talks about. Which is another podcast, Kortney.

Brianna Rooney [00:37:49]:
No one talks about what happens after you sell. Everyone's always, like, lifting you on their shoulders. You did it. You exit. How'd you exit? But no one asks what happens to you as a human being afterwards.

Kortney Harmon [00:38:01]:
Something to think about. And honestly, that is a big part of our industry.

Brianna Rooney [00:38:06]:
Yeah. So your definite success has to change throughout your journey. And no one told me that. So it's like you have this, your goal and your mega goal. What if you hit your mega goal now what?

Kortney Harmon [00:38:22]:
Shift.

Brianna Rooney [00:38:23]:
Right. But. So it's like you have to have already shifted before. Before that happens. You have to keep changing your goal when it happens. And then I was asked the other day, hey, you know what? I'm not having a good year. I keep thinking about this mega goal I had in mind, and I'm not even close to that. I feel like I'm shutting down.

Brianna Rooney [00:38:40]:
Well, guess what? Sometimes your goal has to change the other way, too. You're not always having to push forward. Sometimes you got to take a few steps back. And you have to be okay with that because otherwise you're just going to tumble down into this bottom low of awfulness. It's really hard to get back up, but you can. And so sometimes shouting and saying, that's why I'm really honest about. I've had some lows. Really honest about it.

Brianna Rooney [00:39:03]:
Because people, again, are comparing. It's like, look, it's not. Hasn't been all rainbows and roses and all of those things. It's been really fricking hard. I've absolutely. And I think every single. If an entrepreneur does not admit to this, they're totally lying. I have been in the corner bawling my eyes out.

Brianna Rooney [00:39:21]:
Okay. You have to. And if you haven't done that, you haven't pushed yourself enough. And something that actually my old business partner told me that I always think about is if you're not uncomfortable, you're not pushing yourself.

Kortney Harmon [00:39:36]:
Yes.

Brianna Rooney [00:39:36]:
And so get very comfortable being uncomfortable.

Kortney Harmon [00:39:40]:
Yep.

Brianna Rooney [00:39:41]:
That's the thing I got. I wake up every day and be like, all right, I look at my schedule. Does my schedule make me uncomfortable? If not, guess what? I better go find something that makes me uncomfortable.

Kortney Harmon [00:39:51]:
Such good pieces of advice, such good self reflection and the concept of it's your own journey. I love that. Because no one knows where you are, what you are in, the cadence that you're in. Except you.

Brianna Rooney [00:40:03]:
Yeah. This is so funny. People are like, can you give me advice on how to rock? Like, a conference. And I was like, actually, no, I hate conferences. Like, I suck at conferences. But they just assume I'm this very outgoing. And again, I am very outgoing. I do like to talk to people and stuff like that.

Brianna Rooney [00:40:22]:
But put me in a fricking conference room and I'm like, where's the bar?

Kortney Harmon [00:40:26]:
They're exhausting. I'll tell you. I just came back from one last week.

Brianna Rooney [00:40:29]:
They are. They are exhausting. And it's like the rule is you're not supposed to really ask them what they do first. And I'm like, aren't we here for that? Yeah. Anyways, don't even get me started. Everyone's training us around.

Kortney Harmon [00:40:40]:
I think we have three spin off podcast posts today just from our conversations. Thank you so much for taking the time with me. I loved this. I loved kind of where we went and really talked about your vision, your expertise, your journey, which it's really clear you have a passion for the industry, commitment to innovation.

Brianna Rooney [00:40:58]:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:40:59]:
So thank you so much for being here today.

Brianna Rooney [00:41:01]:
Yeah. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Kortney Harmon [00:41:05]:
I'm Kortney Harmon with crelate. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Industry Spotlight, a new series from the Full Desk Experience. New episodes will be dropping monthly. Be sure you're subscribed to our podcast so you can catch the next Industry Spotlight episode and all episodes of the Full Desk Experience here or wherever you listen.