Episode 137

Scott Shearin’s Conversation on Leadership, Chaos, and Climb

TIM: We are live on the Objective Hiring Show. Today we're joined by Scott. Scott, thank you so much for joining us.

SCOTT: Absolutely, Tim, great to be here. Thank you for the invite.

TIM: Oh, it's our pleasure. And I'm really pumped to speak to you. We spoke earlier a couple of weeks ago, and you're a very interesting character. So I'm looking to learn more about you today, and I think a great place to start would be just a brief introduction about yourself, because then our audience can start to think about who they're listening to today.

SCOTT: For sure. And we're all interesting characters, I'll tell you that much. And that's one thing that I've carried with him my entire life. I was born a sales guy, and so if there's any skillset that I've ever had that I've carried with me my entire life, sure, I've done sports and baseball and football and all this stuff, and I joined the Marine Corps. But at the end of the day, I've just always been somebody that makes friends with people. And I see that in my son too. He's the same way. Anywhere we go, we just make friends. And so if there's one thing I've recognized over time, it's that we're all very unique. We're all very interesting folks, if you take the time to get to know us. But who am I to you, for your audience? I'm from the US, born in the Midwest, born and raised in a lowly state called Ohio, and it's a great place to live. It's cold in the winter and a little too hot in the summer, but it's cheap here. I grew up, and quite unexpectedly—I mean that literally; I had no idea I was going to do this until the day that this guy knocked on my door out of high school—I started college. Didn't go super from the start. And this. A recruiter knocked on my door when I was a teenager, and I tried to close the door on him, Tim, I really did, because I'm not one of those guys from high school where you're like, That guy is joining the military. You know what I mean? They're in all their junior ROTC programs and stuff like that. I was not that guy. I was a transitioning jock to punk rocker in high school. I was a

TIM: Okay.

SCOTT: And I tried to shut the door on him. But he actually stopped me, and he was just like, Hey. I was wondering if you'd like to take a test. And I was alone at my house. My mom's at work, and I was like, A test?" It caught my attention. Sure, I'll take a test. I love tests, so I let them in. That's how I became a Marine, and so I joined the Marine Corps and went off, and honestly, again, just to give your audience some color, I, I. I really thought that I would just go in and go to bootcamp. I signed up to be a military police officer. I would go to bootcamp, go to infantry school, go to military police officer school, and I'd be back home in time by September of that year to get back into college where I belong, and so I was like, okay, we'll just take this little diversion and get some college money. And so I went off, and I was ready to go. I went to ship out to boot camp on my birthday. That's a great place to be for your birthday.

TIM: Wow.

SCOTT: And I was sitting down in the MEP station, the out-processing station, and still remember this day, like it was yesterday, but the guy was sitting there; he had all these stripes up and down his arm. I'm just a kid, and he's just so I see you're joining the military police. And I'm just like, Call him 'sir, you're not supposed to," because he's enlisted, and I'm just like, Yes, sir. And he's—you see that kid out there? And he wants to be in a mil. He wants to be a military police officer. I'm like, That's good for him, and the thing is, you got the last slot for the state of Ohio. I'm like, oh, okay. Based on his test scores, all he can do is infantry or military police. And he was like, Based on your test scores, you can do any job in the Marine Corps. He's so now he starts playing on my ego as a kid, and he is. He's so Scott. Why didn't you call me, Scott? I'm sure. But you'd be doing the Marine Corps a tremendous favor if you took this job. Instead, I slid the paper across the desk, and I looked at it, and of course I was feeling all proud, and I was like, I'd be doing the Marine Corps a favor, and I was like, Okay, I'll take that job. I've never heard of it. I don't know what that is, but I'll sign right there. And because I was a teenager, you're not reading the fine print or the contracts, but I signed up to be an ologist, and that's when I ended up being in cryptology. And let's just say I didn't make it back by September. To start college because crypto has, like, a two-and-a-half- or three-year school to be a cryptologist. And I didn't again, but I, look, I have no regrets. Everything worked out the way it was supposed to, and I went to college later, years later. Still young, and honestly, after all that, college was super easy. Because you have that discipline now from all those years in the Marine Corps and got my finance degree, I thought I was going to be a stockbroker. I think you and I talked about this. I. And he became a stockbroker. Hated it. And that's what kind of got me pushed into, referred to the recruiting industry, which I remember chatting with you about, was like, I didn't even know that this was a profession before I got into this industry. I didn't know people did this for a living. I just, when I, like I said, when I thought of recruiters, I just thought of the gunnery sergeant that showed up at my door when I was a teenager. I. Convinced me to join the Marine Corps, so that opened the door. I got into IT staffing with a large company called Tech Systems. So I'm a techie, and they put me up on an Air Force base to go after the third-party defense integrators out of the right Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which is a wonderful fit because that's an Air Force base. I'm a marine. So the marines are the brunt of many jokes from the other forces. You know what I mean? The Air Force guys were the smart ones, just a dumb marine. You eat crayons, and I'm like, I do. Here, sign this contract. So that worked out well, and so did that for three years, and that until I got recruited into the Sarah Lee organization, a Fortune 500 food company, which I thought would be cool because I could see what life was like on the other side of the desk since I've been selling these services. Into large companies for so long. And so Sarah Lee joined back in oh seven, a long time ago. I'm getting old; Tim can take over their IT recruiting. I could office out of Cincinnati. But from the start there, one of our projects that I was supporting was the outsourcing of applications and infrastructure simultaneously to two different vendors, by the way, HP and IBM, which was just a nightmare of a project because it was just a year of finger-pointing. You know what I mean? HP is, it's IBM's fault. That's HP's fault. It's internal. Sarah Lee's fault, but I realized pretty quickly that I was probably working myself out of a job. You don't need a head of it recruiting if all of it is outsourced, but during that time, I had made friends with a lot of people at corporate just because, again, I'm the sales guy that doesn't shut up. And you put a sales guy on a corporate HR team, and anytime they were. Like, hey, we need somebody from talent acquisition to get on stage and talk to 35,000 people. I'm just the only idiot that was like, Hell yeah. I'll do that. I love the stage. And so I ended up getting an opportunity to—I had to move up to Chicago and get an opportunity to lead recruiting for the Fresh bakery. And so we did that. And honestly, Tim, for some years there, all the people that I was working with had been with Sarah Lee for decades, and so in my mind I was like, This is who I am; this is what I do. I'll probably just retire from Sarah Lee, but then it went out of business. A lot of people still don't know that.

TIM: Really? I didn't know that.

SCOTT: Went out of business back in 2012. If to this day you go in and pick out a loaf of Sara Libra and turn it over, you'll see in the fine print it's distributed by the Bebo Baking Company, out of Mexico. And even then, there was a, sadly, I've had a great relationship with our CEO Brenda, and sadly, she had a stroke, maybe in 2011. I can't remember. But she had to step down from her duties. And a new CEO came over from Amsterdam. Good enough guy. As soon as he got there, he just immediately started carving out all the companies shared services and siphoning them to specific products. You know what I mean? Everybody has their own research and development department. Everybody has their room, and it was like, and of course that guy didn't know that even though I was a recruiter, I have a finance degree. So I'm like, looking at this, the only reason you would do this is to divest all these brands and to break the company up, and of course, like, no, we're all one Sarah Lee, one big happy family, and, sure enough, within six months or so, you started seeing, there goes Jimmy Dean's, there goes Hillshire Farms, there goes, and then there went Scott. I got sold like a free agent in one of those transactions to that Mexican baking company, BMO Bakeries. And so I went down there, a good group down there. The Ceviche family, I think, is still managing that. Daniel Ceviche was the CEO. I remember him being like, Hey Scott, we've 110,000 global employees, and we've never had a centralized recruiting team. He is like, How about we just, we can move you down to Mexico City and build the whole thing out? This will be great. And I'm like, look. My wife and I are pregnant. Our little one, he's 12 now. Little guy. He is 12. And I was like, plus I don't speak a lot of Spanish. Not all those years in the Marine Corps, being out there like at Camp Pendleton and trying to get burritos on the beach. I know how to say, Where are the bathrooms? and More chicken, please. That's like the extent to which I can ask for more chicken. And where are the bathrooms? TIM: the essentials. SCOTT: The essentials. That's right. And so we resigned, and honestly, that's—or I say we, my wife and I resigned, and then we wanted to move back to Cincinnati because grandparents are here. And so we came back here, and that's what pushed me into entrepreneurship, and I always wanted to be in entrepreneurship. I just never really exactly knew what the path would be. And so we started Veteran Talent, which actually spun off from a veteran career fair company called Recruit Military, which was situated in Cincinnati back in the day. And that was many years ago now, which is crazy. I've been saying that to candidates lately. It's hey, we're a boutique recruiting firm focused on placing military veterans with private companies across the US. Been in business going on 11 years. And I was like, every time I say that now it just makes me feel old, don't

TIM: You haven't aged a day, particularly given your

SCOTT: Now.

TIM: Must have been stressful.

SCOTT: Somebody told me the other day, they're like, Oh, we have to update this. You've got this great community on LinkedIn, but you need to engage it more. We need to update your profile picture. And I'm like, whoa. What do you mean I haven't aged today? That picture's just fine. Yeah. It happens to us. All right.

TIM: It, it does, and I'd love to. Hear more about the military because maybe it's just 'cause I'm in Australia, but it's not as big of a thing here. Obviously the size of our military relative to the United States is minuscule as a result. Then we don't really have the knowledge around what it's like to be in the military. I think it would be pretty rare that anyone would know anyone who's had that background or at least know that in detail. So I'd love to hear more about the kind of skills that you learned there. And how you've taken them forward in the rest of your career.

SCOTT: It's a great question. Honestly, I think the skills that I learned there that I took forward in my career would really be mostly centered around the aspect of leadership. I. And confidence, and and not that I was not confident prior to joining the military. I certainly was. I, again, am just that sales guy. I've always been pushing forward. But I published an article years ago, and I think it's still out there on LinkedIn. But you might enjoy it, but it's basically leadership development, Marine Corps style, and what that means is like in the Marine Corps. You, you find that you put folks into the most chaotic situations imaginable. As leaders, this is what you do. You take your soldiers, you take your Marines, and you put them in the most chaotic situation imaginable. And then you just step back, you step back, observe, and watch. And it's going to be, it's going to be insane, and it's going to be painful, and there's going to be suffering. But at the end of the day, somebody within that group, in the midst of chaos, is going to step forward and try to take charge and try to do something positive and try to elicit some improvement to the situation that they find themselves in. They may fail miserably, but it doesn't matter. They stepped up and tried, and as a result, and as a point of emulation for the others around them, other people are going to observe what that person did, and then the next time they're in a situation of chaos, they're going to be more confident to step up themselves. Have a voice and try to move the situation, move the needle forward. And so I always try to say, Try to incorporate that methodology or that philosophy into corporate leadership development. However, I totally understand that in today's litigious society, you can't intentionally put people in too much chaos. 'cause you'll just get sued, where it's a little bit different than the Marine Corps. You can literally put people in the most insane situations possible and then just kind of sit back and see what takes, see what? I'm bold. And so I think being in those situations time and time again and becoming comfortable. Literally becoming comfortable with chaos is what a lot of people from the military bring to the civilian workforce. They're not going to be intimidated by chaos, and no matter how much you plan as a leader, no matter how talented you are, you're not going to be able to completely avoid chaos within your plant, within your sales team, within your HR, or whatever it is you do; you're not going to be able to avoid chaos within your startup. Certainly within your startup, there's going to be chaos, and so having people that aren't intimidated by that, number one, and having people, number two, that have the ability and confidence to stand up and try to address that chaos with confidence is very valuable.

TIM: Okay, so it's dealing with the chaos by confronting it, not crumbling under the pressure, not getting into a freeze mode, but saying, I don't know if this is going to work, but we're going to proactively try to solve the problem this way. At least give it a shot rather than doing nothing, which is, in a lot of cases, the worst thing you could do.

SCOTT: Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred. Doing nothing is always more destructive than doing something wrong. If that makes sense. It's the most wrong thing you can do; if you took some action, it's always going to be at least markedly more productive than having done nothing at all.

TIM: It's interesting, actually. I do know a couple of people who have worked with me in the military here. One of the first jobs I ever had, I worked with someone who'd had a pretty substantial military career, and I remember we were setting up a boardroom before a presentation. I. Between our company and a major bank here. And so it's sensed a bit of pressure. And I remember driving to this meeting; actually, my friend, the guy from the military was doing about 40 km over the speed limit, which was driving like a maniac by Sydney standards. Anyway, he was really keen to get there on time. Maybe we were running a little bit late. Remember as we were setting up the boardroom, this is my first year of work, by the way. I did a finance degree like yourself. Maybe I was. Overly analytical in some ways.

SCOTT: Right.

TIM: I remember he said something to me that stuck. He said, Don't think, Timmy, do.

SCOTT: That's right. That's

TIM: And I wonder if that's something he picked up in the military. That kind of mentality of kind of being action-oriented and not overthinking things and just getting on with it.

SCOTT: And even when you take action without any amount of planning or thinking ahead of time, there's a lot of thought that's going into that, even if it's subconscious, so even if it's informed by things that you've seen and learned previously, that action has thought behind it, whether you're actively thinking about it or not. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying to never plan; that's not what I'm saying. However, don't fold under the chaos. Just take action. Do something. Just make an effort. And I think you'll find that most people will recognize the chaos that you are confronted with and will respect the effort that you put forth.

TIM: Is there something to be said for that skill also directly? Translating into sales skills in the sense that anytime you have a conversation with someone, it could go in any direction. They could ask you anything about your company, anything about your product, or anything about you, and they could come up and be aggressive or defensive or what have you. And just being able to deal with the infinitely many paths is itself also almost like a component of sales skills. Is that a fair summary?

SCOTT: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. And I've made recommendations to a ton of hiring managers over the years that are looking for salespeople to not rule out. Military folks, not really, especially recruiters, because actually military recruiters go through professional sales training, some of the most robust professional sales training. If you're looking to fill a sales position, especially if it's like an entry-level sales position that doesn't need industry-specific experience or things like that, yeah, you would basically really want to think about or look at folks with a military recruiting background. They're going to be aggressive, confident, and competent, especially in their sales approach. I never went; I was never a military recruiter, so I never went through that training, but I'm very familiar with it. And I have—I've placed a lot of folks into sales roles from that specific MOS (military occupational specialty).

TIM: Is there anything to be said for maybe deliberately adding a bit of chaos to the interview itself? Like the hiring process and borrowing some of those learnings you had from the military and just seeing how the candidate deals with it?

SCOTT: It's me, maybe late in the interview process, if, in my opinion, you've developed some. Trust and some confidence—you don't really want to, you maybe don't want to do that when you're still dealing with first impressions, you know what I'm saying? In my opinion,

TIM: Yep.

SCOTT: It's later in the interview process, depending on what the interview process is structured like, what kind of assessment tools you're utilizing, or things like that. But yeah, I think that could be helpful to think about that and try to incorporate it. See what happens.

TIM: I guess it probably depends on the role a bit, doesn't it? Like, I remember when I was first starting out trying to get into investment banking, they used to use, at this point, the stress interview technique, where they'd just be deliberately obnoxious and aggressive. I remember interviewing one person from, I think it was Bank of America Merrill Lynch. And I come into the interview room, and she's sitting down like she doesn't even look at me, doesn't shake my hand, just says, Sit down, and starts peppering me with questions, no smile. And I remember her asking me something like, Oh, what's the most impressive thing you've done recently? And I told her about the fact I was doing this full-time job and full-time degree; it's just not that easy. I don't think it's 90 hours a week or something.

SCOTT: Right.

TIM: That doesn't impress me at all. So they were obviously deliberately trying to rattle me in some sense, because in their mind, part of the role of an investment banker would be to maybe deal with the CEO of a company. This is like a $5 billion deal. You have to think on your feet and not crumble on those kinds of things. So maybe for that kind of role, it's fair enough, but maybe for a lot of other roles, that's just not the case. A realistic requirement, like as a software engineer, for example, is that you probably don't often have to deal with that level of intense pressure, so maybe in those cases it's not as important.

SCOTT: Agreed. Agreed.

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: But if you want to have some sort of insight into who the person is that you're dealing with, even if it is, like, an engineer, but you want to think, Hey, is this a potential I. Future engineering manager, and let's be honest, a lot of folks in the engineering field are not well suited for people leadership or for sales. And that's not a hit on any of those engineers at all. It's just personality structures. And the way I've, Tim, I've interviewed countless engineers, especially on the IT side. And fortunately for them. I'm this; I'm the dude that never shuts up, and I can always work hard to force down their barriers on their walls and get them comfortable talking to me. But hard. It's tough, especially for people in that mindset, and which is, honestly, the fact that their personalities are organized that way is probably part of the reason that they pursue fields like engineering or like accounting, or I just want to sit down and deal with the books. You know what I mean? I don't. Fair enough. That, that's, there's nothing wrong with that. But it might be nice to know who might be well suited as a candidate to maybe step into a people leadership or engineering role, although if you hire them into the role itself, you're going to, over the course of time, find out who's structured for those kinds of positions and who's not. So anyway. But there, there could be. There could be something there, though.

TIM: You'd mentioned at the top of the call that everyone's an interesting character if you get to know them, and you've described yourself certainly as a people person. I'd love to just unlock your mindset for a second. So if you were to meet a complete stranger, what are you thinking about? How are you approaching that conversation? How do you get to know them? Yeah, I'd love to just hear your general thought process and compare it to the way I would think about it, for example.

SCOTT: First of all, I don't know that I think a lot about it, which is

TIM: Okay.

SCOTT: Me

TIM: There you go.

SCOTT: Yeah. If I meet you, Tim, you and I can meet at Inline at Chipotle. They have Chipotle in Australia, right?

TIM: I, maybe just now, maybe a few stores here and there. Yeah, but I know about it. Yeah.

SCOTT: Okay, there you go. I love Chipotle. Okay. So it's, see, the Marine Corps did that to me. Those chicken burritos on the beach—it just stuck with me. Chicken burritos, no, but we could run into each other literally in line at Chipotle, and I, within minutes, could be talking to you like we've known each other for years, and I understand. That's just something that's more systemic to me. But I don't think a lot about it. I'm just, I think that the biggest thing, if I have to, you force me to think about it, I'm just, I. I'm open-minded, I'm interested, and I think people can sense that I'm generally, genuinely interested in them and what they're doing and what their thoughts are about whatever it is we happen to be talking about in line at Chipotle or wherever. And, my wife brings this up all the time, that I, you know, am someone she's with. Outgoing, especially with strangers and things like that. And so she's just—you've never met a stranger. You too, everybody, but yeah. But honestly, I don't put a lot of thought into it. I'm just, I guess I just assume that everyone I meet is a friend of mine. I think that assumption. Wears off on them,

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: When you make that assumption, then they're like, oh yeah, obviously I'm your friend.

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Talking. So that's why I give people the benefit of the doubt. Understanding though. And look, this is something I've learned over the years. I've been around a while now, just turned 50, but still feel great. But, even though I do give people the benefit of the doubt,. I'm an overly trusting individual. I certainly am, and I think you need to be, especially in sales. But also I've been stabbed in the back enough to know, and trust me, I've been stabbed in the back a lot, but I've been stabbed in the back enough to know that when it happens, I can survive it. And so that way I'm not worried about it. I meet this stranger here; I meet and develop this relationship there. I'm not worried about them stabbing me in the back because I know some small percentage of people are going to, and it's happened enough now that I'm just like, yeah, I'll just pull out the knife and keep on moving.

TIM: So the backstabbing doesn't then make you change your behavior for the future, because you just write it off and say it's going to happen sometimes, but that's not going to make me cynical or jaded or what have you.

SCOTT: And I learned through experience that I survive it. I can overcome it sometimes. Look, sometimes some people may not be able to, and sometimes maybe something's happened to them that's much more serious than things that have happened to me, and they just can't overcome that. So I'm not judging anybody that can't overcome. Those instances, but it's just, yeah, it's happened enough where I'm just like, That's cool. I'll just keep moving. I'll even forgive that person too. I'm willing to still talk to that person within limits but won't necessarily invite them over to hang out with the family or anything, but

TIM: And it's an interesting mindset also, given your military background. Anyone who's worked in the military is dealing with bad actors at some level or another. And so to not have come out of that with a very almost defensive mindset of everyone's out to get me. The whole world is evil. We need to lock down the situation. You've come out with the opposite.

SCOTT: The opposite, for sure. A hundred percent. Yep. No doubt about that. And that's my eight years in the Marine Corps, like you, like I told you, was crypto. So that's all the intel. And then when I went back and went back into the military again a second time, because that wasn't enough abuse, I didn't think. But this time as a commission officer. And I spent five years as a commissioned officer, and I branched into Intel because of my previous time as a crypto. So I figured Intel would make the most sense. So I've got 13 total years in military intelligence. So 13 years with a top-secret military clearance. And my little joke I like to tell is, and I don't even know if aliens are real. It's nonsense, I should know. But no, but what all that did really for me is I got an in-depth understanding of the ways in which the military procures, collects, disseminates, evaluates, and acts upon information. So did it create something defensive in me that everybody's out to get me? Actually, what it really did was create a philosophical anarchist. And I have no qualms in stating that. That's precisely what I am. And

TIM: And what is a philosophical anarchist?

SCOTT: Not to, and you probably don't want to go down that too deeply, but yeah, I don't see the same need for structured government that most people see. Although I do understand and respect. People's interpreted need of government. And so I understand that it's there because people believe that it needs to be there. But all I can do, like, for instance, if the government collapsed tomorrow and there were no more structure, there were no more laws, I'm not going to change the way I live my life in any way, shape, or form. Period. And so I think the things that keep us well-behaved aren't. The laws. It's the things that we all need to live with each other, symbiotically, and we all need to survive, and we all need to advance, and we all have things to accomplish. And the way we get those things accomplished is by collaborating with one another. Not now, you'd be like, Oh, Scott, there are some people that steal and hurt people and kill. Yes, there are, that they're doing those things even with all those laws. And so I don't think the absence of government—I think the same—there would be the same amount of psychopaths within any given population. There'd still be the same amount, and anyway, I know I won't. I could sit here and talk to you about government politics and anarchism for hours, but you probably don't want to focus on that specifically.

TIM: I do, but yeah. Maybe the listeners might not have the same interest as I do.

SCOTT: Yeah, That, that's where I am. I'm not a big fan of Democrats or Republicans.

TIM: Okay. Okay, good. You're unlike a lot of people in that you're at the polar end of one side of the spectrum you're on, not on the spectrum at all. Maybe that's the best.

SCOTT: No, I'm not. I'm not. I, yeah. I grew up in a Reagan conservative household, and when I was a young man, I was like, yeah, I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative, but then as I've marched through life and learned a lot more, it's oh, this is a. This is all kind of nonsense, so if you start seeing the whys behind why government exists, how it grows, how it metastasizes, and how it goes about addressing problems, you start to see rather quickly that it's way more destructive than it is productive. So that's all I'll say.

TIM: I can't disagree with you there, Scott.

SCOTT: I'm a

TIM: But yes.

SCOTT: Just let us, you let us have our startups, let us

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: The economy. You know what I mean?

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Serve the needs and provide value to people. And it,

TIM: I agree fully. What about going back to hiring, then? So I'd love to know, is there any kind of belief about hiring that you have that is out of the norm that might be considered a little bit strange or controversial but something you've learned through time to rely on?

SCOTT: I, I don't think this is strange or controversial in any way, shape, or form, but it has that old construct of what's old is new again. I.

TIM: Okay.

SCOTT: And so, for instance, now with all of it and all of technology, there are all these tools out there, and everybody's like, You gotta have this tool, and you gotta have that tool, and it can do this. But at the end of the day, you can go out and have all these platforms and post a job and get 600 applicants to the job in 45 minutes. I'm exaggerating, but not by that much, and that's all well and good, but what I have found out is that. The less time I spend on these platforms from an aggregation of candidate standpoint, the less time I spend out there posting jobs and collecting candidates who apply. And the more time I spend getting to know people who are making the hiring decisions, getting to know the hiring managers, and understanding what it is outside of the job description that's really going to make a candidate successful there outside of somebody's resume, that's really going to make somebody. Come in and really hit the ground running and make an impact in that industry, in that company, in that role, et cetera. The more time I spend doing that, the more time I go out and actually point fingers at people that I see are like, Hey, this is exactly who this plant manager described to me. This is exactly who this VP said that they need, and I reach out and try to start a conversation with those people individually. Hey, Tim came across your profile today working with an awesome client who's got a need that might, or that might be, very interesting in your background. Do me a favor, connect with me here on LinkedIn or wherever it is I'm finding them. And let's chat about it. And then of course, like any sales funnel, you have to put enough of those finger points in the top to get a couple of the drips out the bottom. But what drips out the bottom are people who are engaged and interested in making a move. And oh, by the way. On paper, at least. Absolute A-plus players for what I know that the hiring manager seeks. And you can't do that through any technological tool. You just, you can't; it just comes down to that sale. It's spending the time building that relationship and understanding what it is that company's looking for. And so that's what I say. It's what's old is new again because back in the day, before it revolutionized all these industries I just described,. It was the only way to go about things. And yeah, that, and that's what I do. And that's, that's how I get a lot of our successful hires: taking the time to really understand the need and going out and self-identifying. And a lot of clients of mine, they're pleasantly surprised when I make that comment in a sales call. I'll be like, I'll be like, Tim, look. I'm not going to post your job. And normally you can see the expressions that I get from people, like what? I'm you post your job, Tim. You post it. I'm not going to go out and compete with you on the exact same platforms. You know what I mean? If a job seeker happens to see my posting three minutes before they see your posting, then I get $20,000 for making that placement. You know what I mean? It's like, how does that make any sense? I'm not going to post your job. You post your job, you spend some time with me, and you tell me what it is I need to look for. I'm going to go out and find the people who aren't applying to the jobs and get the person you really need and want. So that's where. That's where I have success.

TIM: I'm going to put that into some words or framework that I would think about in hiring and see what you think. So I feel like hiring's a matching problem where you need to collect some data about the candidates on one side and the job and the company on the other side. And it sounds like. You're saying the data you have from a resume or from a LinkedIn profile is pretty limited. The data you have from a job description is pretty limited.

SCOTT: Yes.

TIM: And it's only by having those in-depth conversations that you peel away the onion to really get to the root of what each party wants, and then you can match them without that. You're just stepping in the dark a little bit.

SCOTT: A hundred percent. Yep. That's absolutely true.

TIM: And so it must be, so maybe here's one way to ask it. What percentage of what you actually need to know about a job and a company is on the job description, like how much extra information do you have to gather through those conversations with the hiring manager and other interviewers?

SCOTT: So a lot of it, man. What percentage? I don't know. Let's just say a totally made-up number, 50%. I don't know, because at least the jobs, at least the jobs are

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: Be like, Hey, this is the general kind of degree that we need in the general kind of

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: Quality job or whatever, whatever it is.

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: It identifies all of that, and that's great. But the kind of things that you're trying to get, the sort of information that you're trying to get, are things that you'll never find on a job description. You can't even put it in there. Like, for instance, I don't know why that just came to mind. There was a VP of manufacturing at Sarah Lee. And he actually died not too long ago, sadly. Really good guy. But he was, before coming to Sarah Lee, an operations director or maybe a junior VP with Anheuser-Busch. And he used to joke with me all the time. We'd be at these conventions together. He'd be like, Scott, beer and bread are exactly the same. You just add more water, and it turns into beer. It's the same thing, and he used to go on about it. The Anheuser-Busch their training systems, and how well structured they were for developing talent. And he had a deep respect for people that had gone through that Anheuser-Busch process, and so I knew then as a recruiter that if I could find literally anybody who'd ever worked for Anheuser-Busch and presented it to him, he'd be done hiring. Hired. So those sorts of things, those sorts of little things that you can find within people. People might like to call them preferences; people might like to say, Oh, it's bias, and look, another word for bias is preference. And look, there are negative things that you can have bias about, especially when it comes to things like race or ethnicity or gender; you shouldn't do that. But generally speaking, everybody has a long list of preferences that are well developed for many different reasons, and. There's nothing wrong with that. And so to get in and understand what that hiring manager's experience has been, what has informed those preferences, and why they exist, and then go out and look for somebody who's aligned with those specific things that make that hiring manager tick, if that makes sense.

TIM: It certainly does.

SCOTT: Find that on a job description. Sarah Lee's not going to post a job description for a production manager, like. Sarah Lee, production manager, qualifications or requirements: five years at Anheuser- Busch, you're not

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: You won't find stuff like that on a job description.

TIM: Yeah. and I can think. Back to myself, where I've ignored this at our own cost, which was, I can remember, with our own little agency working with the hiring manager, who, for whatever reason, really didn't want to hire any analysts who'd worked in the Big Four accounting companies. She had, again, probably a well-reasoned philosophy of why she thought they weren't going to be a good fit for that role. But. I presented a candidate who fit that profile anyway. I'm like, No. Trust me. You have to speak to them. They've done this skill set, done the interview, and they're really good. When someone's already made their mind up and it's very hard to convert a no to a yes, I think you can convert a maybe to a yes, but not a no to a yes. It's pretty much impossible. And I remember when we ended up presenting this candidate, they put them into a slightly different track and said, Oh look, go and speak to the HR manager instead. I remember speaking to the candidate, and they'd started the interview with I. This is probably a waste of time, but we'll do it anyway vibe. So he never really had an honest chance, like he was already rejected before he started the call. So I sent my boy over the top to be mowed down by the machine guns is one way of putting it. And I regret that. And so I know now. shouldn't maybe. Yeah.

SCOTT: You did that with the belief, legitimate belief, that if you would just talk to him, you'd have a shot. But

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Understand through experience, it's, yeah, it's

TIM: We, yeah, we were optimizing for objectivity and saying we have the data to prove in a way that this is the right candidate, but if they've already made up their mind, then you can't really do anything about that. But yeah, that becomes a slightly gray area, doesn't it? Because it's made maybe innocuous. If the hiring manager says nobody from the Big Four, okay, fine. What happens if they say, No one from your X, Y, Z background? Then you're in a bit of a moral quandary in a sense.

SCOTT: You are.

TIM: Is this, have you ever experienced this?

SCOTT: When it comes to yeah, I have, yeah, I do. And also when it comes to the aspect of, hey, I'm a third-party vendor to all these companies.

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: I don't have the platform by which I can go in and change anything. And also, I don't think that these mindsets, even if they are a moral quandary with a specific role and a specific hiring manager, I don't think that's representative of that whole company. You know what I mean? It's just representative of that individual.

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Period. And if it is, if it's too pervasive from a moral standpoint, I could just simply choose to not support the role I. And I'm just like, I know this person. I know they're not going to. I'm thinking back to way back in the day with tech systems, and I don't know how true this was, and I was just a young guy sitting in an open pit, making phone calls, but I remember one of my buddies looking at me, and he'd been there for several years, so I was leaning on him, and he was just like, This client showed up with a roll-up on the board on the wall, and he was just like, Oh yeah. Make sure you don't send them Black people. that.

TIM: Wow. Really?

SCOTT: Oh, really? And he is. Oh yeah, don't even do it. And so then,

TIM: Wow.

SCOTT: But again, I don't know how true it was. I was. This is just something I experienced and I heard, so who knows? And it wasn't one of my direct clients anyway, so it wasn't something I had to spend any time on. But now as a business owner, if I get that sense or if I get something like that, that makes me uncomfortable. I could just walk away and not support that company. And then that company, by exhibiting behaviors that are maybe questionable, is going to self-limit itself to the top talent within any given market. And by limiting themselves to the top talent available within the market, they're going to limit their ability to compete in the market. And they're going to ultimately, over time, self-destruct. And and that's that. I don't; don't worry too much about it, because again, I'm not; I don't have a platform by which I can, like,

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: Like you said, you're not going to change people's minds.

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Especially if you try to go in there forcefully and be like, You're a bad person for feeling this way.

TIM: Yes. That's not going to land too well, is it?

SCOTT: So I just—it's okay, I'm not going to be able to; there's nothing I can do here. And so I move on and support places where I can provide value and people are open-minded to that.

TIM: And I wonder if. So these preferences, your preferences, are in that case a bias, but you can label it however you like.

SCOTT: Of

TIM: You unpack these in those calls, and I guess you're looking out for them. I'm sure if you'd spoken to the hiring manager, you might not have expressed it in those explicit terms. You might have said something. It was a little bit more around, around the bidding, around the bush, and it's for you to decode in a sense.

SCOTT: One of the biggest questions I ask right from the start, when I'm getting to know somebody or getting to know a role for the first time, even if it's somebody that I already have a long history of supporting and working with, but I'm just like, Hey Tim, thanks for letting me work on this. Tell me, I. Who has been, ex, what? Who's been extremely successful in this role in the past, and what kind of background did they have? And they have, and trust me, they'll just start firing things off. Oh, there was so and so, and you did this. He came from this background and came from this industry, and this is why that was a big deal. I'm like, cool. And then, you know what, have you seen any sort of people from certain backgrounds that failed in this role? And then be like,

TIM: Right.

SCOTT: They'll know examples like, oh yeah, this didn't work out. And look, Tim, you and I both know that again, it's more about those individuals for specific reasons. However, you are understanding their mindset, and if you send candidates with the background that looks like this from

TIM: Yep.

SCOTT: Of industry, it's going to be like, oh, this is just whoever just rocked this role that's been promoted five times. You're going to get a hire. And at the end of the day, look, I do—I run a recruiting company. I. I need to get hired and generate revenue. You know what I mean? So I want those little hints as to

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Who's going to get preferential treatment?

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: 99% of the time it comes down to things that wouldn't upset people. It comes down to

TIM: Yep.

SCOTT: Types of experience and skill set and what they're strong at and what kind of industries were there, what, where they've done well. So it really never comes down to that, that one conversation I shared with you from way back in my tech system days; that was like about the. Only time anybody's even brought up race to me

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: My 21 years in recruiting

TIM: I had a curious one myself about a year ago where we'd gotten a candidate to. The final round of a role for a business in Europe, and I was speaking to the manager, getting some feedback on the last three candidates who got into the final stage, and in reference to one of the candidates, making comments about the kind of pros and cons. And she said something that was quite curious. She said, Oh, she was great, but I just didn't get the sense that she was anti-Putin. The candidate was from Russia. Okay. So I'm like, Ah, okay. And I didn't really know how to deal with that because I'm like, fine. But what the hell has that got to do with anything to do with an analyst job? Like, why would that even matter one way or another? And why is it up to her? I doubt part of her interview process was grilling her on her politics. Which is presumably illegal in that country, although I'm not sure. And so she was probably guessing it anyway because this candidate hadn't gone out of their way to wear, like, a Ukraine shirt or something. I don't know what she was expecting. And so that's the kind of thing that I would never have thought to scan for in the initial job.

SCOTT: Now.

TIM: Calls, because that's a bit out of the ordinary.

SCOTT: That is, and I would've been uncomfortable navigating that conversation myself and just trying to figure it out. Especially when she would learn my politics if she ever would, I'm sure that would leave her very aghast, but yeah, it's Matt; that's crazy. That's crazy.

TIM: Yeah. But those are few and far between, so they're the outliers that stick out most. As we say, most conversations are a bit more normal and reasonable than that.

SCOTT: Oh, absolutely.

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: And even that one instance I did have was racially oriented. Again, who knows if that was even true? That was about that. You know what I

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Just a dude in the open pit said this about that client.

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: Knows

TIM: Yes.

SCOTT: Obviously I would never share that client's name or

TIM: Yeah.

SCOTT: And again, it's like I said, it's not about that client. It was, even if that is true, about an individual who happened to work for that client, and so that's that. But yeah, I never really come across that, and certainly, even if those sorts of biases do exist, higher managers aren't going to verbalize that.

TIM: Exactly.

SCOTT: Exactly. They're not going to talk about it, even if those biases do exist. So

TIM: Yes. Scott, tell us about Climb. What's Climb all about?

SCOTT: Climb needs to get climbing, man. Honestly, I have to be—look, Climb is a startup that I came up with at Sarah Lee. I came up with this at Sarah Lee. So this is an

TIM: Okay.

SCOTT: Idea. Funny though, even though it's an old idea, it would still be industry-shaping in the job board space, the recruitment advertising, and the employee branding space.

TIM: Yep.

SCOTT: It would be game-changing and will be. But we've just been, so far, myself and a couple of partners have been completely self-funded. And then over the last, I don't know, 18 to 24 months, I'd say, we've all become a little distracted, investing in other companies running and building this veteran talent. It took a sharp nosedive, post-COVID, with respect to making placements and still got lots of clients. But the majority of them weren't; they just weren't hiring, or at least not from us. But in reality, they really weren't hiring anybody, period, so I know everybody likes to say that, oh, the US economy was wonderful during the post-COVID recovery. But it's like. It's not, not at all. But anyway, so that's kept us distracted. starting to have some conversations again about getting some more traction behind that. We put a lot of effort into backend development, and so we've got a pretty solid backend development. And when I say that, a data acquisition. So we've got tools and scrapers out there to go out and get the data that we want in the way that we want it. And then now I've got the entire front end, the entire UI/UX mapped out on—can't remember the tool. Lucid, maybe. I think that's the tool. Yeah. And so then the whole thing is designed and mapped out, but now we just need to find somebody that knows how to code. I'm told that we should code it and react. I don't know. I'm like, I'm the non-technical founder guy. I'm just like, sure. If that's what you say. One language is, I don't know. The backend is developed in Python.

TIM: Yep.

SCOTT: And the data acquisition tool. That's where we're at. And the way I see this is, for most people, the market's going to interpret the tool. Once we get it to a point of an MVP and a launch, the market's going to interpret the tool as a job board. But in reality it's so much more than that. It does so much more than that. A lot of AI aspects to it. And those AI developments for the tool aren't even new with the advent of AI. These are, again, ideas and thoughts I had. I don't know, 2012, 13 years ago. Now granted, if I had tried to stand this up through investment 12 or 13 years ago, there wasn't the same sort of technology that's available today to support my idea if I tried to do it 12 or 13 years ago. So there's that. And we have a lot of brand-new work done too. We've even got the little characters developed. You know what I mean? The character that we'll be partnering with the companies

TIM: Okay,

SCOTT: character, the little AI character that'll be partnering with the job seekers. His name is Everest; he is a friendly little

TIM: Now on climber.

SCOTT: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's where we're at with that. We need to get that front end developed and stood up. Again, it's all designed and mapped out. Really just need to invest. And the right resource to come in and help stand that thing up and at least get that to a point where, in that MVP status, it is something, a tool, that people can look at, play with, and interact with. And I think that'll just snowball from there. 'Cause it's going to bring a lot of value to the market because, I hate saying this, but for free. And that's a lot of free value that a lot of other companies used to deliver to the market that is now deeply over-monetized. Because these companies have metastasized and grown, they no longer do that. And under my watch, at least this tool will never be over-monetized in that way. Now, there could be some future date where, you know, we, I sell, and then God knows what happens with the company after that. But we'll see. But that's where we're at with Climb. Yeah, I wish I had more I could share with you, as far as sending you to this site or playing with the ear. If you go to climb.ai right now, it's just going to take you to Veteran Talent's godawful website. Don't go there. My website sucks. I'm just letting you guys know. So I say that, and I'm fully aware, but again, my entire company has been built on my relationships. I've never really relied on my website for business development. I don't rely on it for candidate acquisition. I don't rely on anything for it, so if anybody does happen to see it, please understand that is a Dragon Drop website that I built with Weebley like 11 years ago. And you'll—you'll understand right away. You'll be like, Yeah, this sucks. So I know I need to invest some money into it. Veteran Talents website. But really, my focus, I would love for my focus and dollars to go toward climbing as well and get that moving. So

TIM: Yeah, it'd be fascinating to see where you guys end up with Climb, and that's Climb with a K, isn't it?

SCOTT: with a K. Yep.

TIM: Excellent. And yeah, Scott, we've chatted about such a wide range of things today. We've gone right around the world. I do think you're a fascinating chap, and I'm sure we could do this again sometime.

SCOTT: For sure.

TIM: And yeah. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's just been such an easy and interesting conversation.

SCOTT: I appreciate that. I love it. Thanks, Tim.