Jan Jedlinski: Evan, You're good to go. 

Evan Sohn: Excellent. So, Hey, you had a good morning everybody or wherever you're dialing in from, you know, I don't think you're allowed to say good morning anymore. I think we just say hello to everybody. My name is Evan Shon. I am the CEO and chairman of Recruiter.com. I want to thank all the folks over at the World Staffing Summit.

Evan Sohn: I've been tracking them for a while. All their different iterations and I'm really excited to present to everybody. You know, I'm new to probably the person with the least amount of experience throughout these almost 3000 people that were attending live yesterday, different events.

Evan Sohn: I'm probably the least experienced in the staffing and recruiting industry. Yet I get to a, yet I get to call myself the CEO and chairman of Recruited.com. My background really is in technology. Platforms have been around for a number of different companies, different industries, and really get the opportunity to really thread together.

Evan Sohn: Lots of interesting things as they come together for for now the recruiting talent acquisition industry the title is called don't look back. The world of work has changed for good. And if we start looking at the various things and the real premise, and you can start at the end, are there a variety of macro events that have happened throughout our lifetimes?

Evan Sohn: That has really changed the way we do business, the way we change everything from an economic perspective, and we've never really returned. This is obviously manifesting itself today, really with, you know, this notion of this job hopper economy that we're now entering. Kevin O'Leary. Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank wrote an article a little over two months ago, you know, begging employees to please stay with their companies for 24 months, 24 months.

Evan Sohn: Amazing. You all had parents or grandparents that said, look, your first job, you've got to stick it out for four years. You don't want to look like you're unstable. And I think that fundamentally, you know, if we looked at a 30 year old who had been in college for 10 years with the same job for 10 years, and we looked at that person five years ago and asked to actually describe that individual, we would say things like.

Evan Sohn: Good fast committed, loyal 2022, we see a 30 year old that's at the same company for 10 years. And let's assume for a moment that it's not a company like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or whatever that is, you would actually say, gee, this person, how we describe them, risk averse, not interested in trying new things.

Evan Sohn: Maybe you would say things like not being lazy or all these other terms, or you might actually say there must be something wrong with this individual. Why are they still at the same company? And this started to happen. Pre COVID, this really starts to happen out in Silicon valley, actually spent a bunch of years there and very common to see someone's resume for 12 years.

Evan Sohn: And they'd been at four companies or three, four companies in 12 years. You're a hot software engineer and they're really moving around. And these sort of fundamental things are really going to have to impact the way we actually look at this world. And in fact, the matter is the career path of today's individual has dramatically changed.

Evan Sohn: And we can't look at these things like, you know, my son just got a job actually at McKinsey and they gave him this, Hey, here's where you're going to be in eight years. I didn't really start looking at what your career path. What's the progression, you know, we're looking about, you know, this new generation who got trophies for showing.

Evan Sohn: Right. You know, in my day we had winners and losers and now everybody's a winner. It's fair. Everybody gets to be at bat. Everything is cheap. And now it's actually a different world. We're getting trophies for those who want to get promotions. We want to progress. And that's what's really happened today from a career perspective, the career world, as we know, has really changed in a pretty dramatic fashion. 

Evan Sohn: In fact, you know, the word entrepreneur, the concept of entrepreneur is really not as old and it really got popular really in black Monday. So black Monday was in October. October 19th, 1987. Tremendous dip in, on wall street and people lost their jobs. And this was really the first time that a group of individuals who watch their appearance and parents, friends lose their jobs from big companies really said, I don't want to be held in a financial institution for my future. I'm going to now plot my own course. And if you think about and this generation of individuals are really pre 1964, you could sort of age them, but that includes Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Those entrepreneurs really saw our generation of people lose their jobs and which once was stable.

Evan Sohn: I'm going to go work at it. Right. And I'm going to be there forever. And I watched in 1987, people actually lost their jobs. And that changed that spirit, that entrepreneurial spirit. I saw a couple of thumbs up there, so yeah, that's what really did it. That's what really got this entrepreneur and we haven't turned back.

Evan Sohn: This notion sort of, you know, the world of doctors and lawyers and financers our store on it. You know, the only entrepreneur that we knew back growing up was the individual that opened up their own store. That really was the entrepreneur. I think my town, we had one guy that was doing software in the 1970s and he built a payroll system.

Evan Sohn: I think that eventually became ADP there. That was one person in this whole audience because no one actually did that. Right. You didn't actually say, gee. Obviously there was no entrepreneurial studies, but there just wasn't something that happened. And that macro event called black Monday changed the world forever.

Evan Sohn: And the reality is that this first professional model really started post-World War 2. And we started coming back after world war I during the war. And when we really industrialized the whole world and all of a sudden, the now, you know, the greats of a general electric.

Evan Sohn: Really said, gee, we're going to start having manufacturing. And if there's different people doing different jobs, remember this one from sort of the farmer model for the manufacturing model, your individual, actually, who's managing the actual lines themselves. This is really what created this professional talent model.

Evan Sohn: And so those of us who revere the great work of Jack Welsh and those that came before him in General Electric, this really created the professional. I'm going to have an army of people working on behalf of the company, each one doing their own thing. But now I have to have people on top of them managing their grooming.

Evan Sohn: And this whole notion of executive training and management training and I'm investing in an individual's career. This was really the beginning of this first professional talent model. Again, we're not talking about something that was 300 years ago. We're really talking about something that happened really within the last hundred years.

Evan Sohn: And then what we started to see now is companies really making investments in their talent. Again, very new. I have an opportunity. I want to take this group of people. You know, I used to work with a guy a thousand years ago. He was an IBM sales rep. And I once asked him, you know, he was a phenomenal individual.

Evan Sohn: And I said to him, John, are you unique? And he goes, no, I had a class of 120, right? So this is what, you know, the individual, the man white shirt tie on the phone, banging out sales calls, banging out a process, creating a process. And these were individuals that were invested in by their companies per really grow them for the next role that they were going to take.

Evan Sohn: Okay. Remember, these were the days of the gold watch for working for 25 years. This was actually what was happening in our society for talent was something that we invested and we groomed them. You know, I started my first company, 21, right out of college, you know, so my mentors were the books that I was reading from Peter Drucker and Tom Peters and all these individuals that were really thinking about how do we make individuals actually even better than what we're doing.

Evan Sohn: So we had this entrepreneurial surge, but every time there's a macro. We start to see other things that happen and let's go. So we started with black Monday for let's keep going in the 9091/92, there was another recession. So what did we start to do in 91/92, there was a real pressure on salaries and wages.

Evan Sohn: So we start to outsource things like call centers. All of a sudden now and again, the government made it easy because in the Philippines, we had this opportunity zone created there from a tax free zone. But other things that actually started to happen is you start to shift those environments. Now we actually do some work with call centers.

Evan Sohn: But before 1990, before the 1990s call centers were not outsourced, this really created that infrastructure of outsourcing those things. And, you know, it was really interesting. Josh, Jack Welsh, you know, really created the outsource model. Jack Welsh really invented the term or really professed the expression that someone else could do it better.

Evan Sohn: Let's let someone else do it better. Yes. We're having a manufacturing process or having the supply chain. But if someone could do a better job on one specific element of that supply chain it's better for us as a business to actually go leverage someone else to do that. And this started to create these entrepreneurs or these changes in the environment that really moved that and let's keep going.

Evan Sohn: So 1997, all of a sudden the whole world started to say. What if this was an open audience, I would say Y2K. Right. And what did Y2K create? Right? Y2K can create outsourced IT services. Why? Because all of our own development shops were working on whatever they were doing, we needed someone to go and change all the code to support Y2K.

Evan Sohn: Cognizant technology solutions. You're Bohemian. Now in the outsourced it services got started from Y2K and so many companies really got launched. When companies said, gee, we're going to need people to fix Y2K again, a real surge in entrepreneurship as companies met this macro change, right? Nothing that anyone could have what we call go to foreseen Y2K, but this was something that had to happen now.

Evan Sohn: Have. Right. Are we now a flurry of call centers in the US no. Now we have virtual ones going, et cetera. Have we brought back outsourced IT services from India and other places offshore. No, we haven't done these things. So early two thousands are another dip in the economy. What did we start to do?

Evan Sohn: Outsourced web services, outsourced hosting services. How many people are actually running their own data centers or we're outsourcing them to data centers? Again, late 1990s, we started outsourcing again, another recession or dip in the economy in 1997, we started to outsource BPO, Business Process Automation services and other things.

Evan Sohn: We started to move these things out and focus on the things that we're doing best. Cause they were cataclysmic events that were occurring in our society that were causing these actual shifts to occur. And that was really what started to happen in all these entrepreneur environments, because the new normal is really not going back to what it was.

Evan Sohn: This is never, this is not saying that we're going to be returning. I don't know how many of you are out actually now. Hiring people to manage your data centers or managing data centers means managing your AOS or your Microsoft cloud services or whatever you're using. That becomes really the new normal associated with these things. And now say we take back outsourced IT versus or looking at them in a different way. And the reality is we've been really, since the nineties really expensive, it's really black black Monday starts to expand our thinking about what we should be doing as a society and how really should we be working?

Evan Sohn: Cool. What's really next? And I think what we really start to see at Recruit.com. We run a recruiter index every month. I will talk about it on CNBC. I'll be on, I think, a week from Thursday. And we track not just recruiters sentiment, but candidate sentiment as well. I'm going to really start just what happened over the last like six months was really the promotion of remote work and work-life balance.

Evan Sohn: You know, it, you know, I grew up in a day and age where, you know, you work to make money and if someone wants to leave, you throw more money at them. Right. I grew up with the expression. There's nothing that money can't solve. And I know there's probably some of you that have that as well, but all of a sudden, now there's a whole society now.

Evan Sohn: That is prioritizing remote life and work like remote work and work-life balance. And now, by the way, there's probably something good about it. You know, I think not a day or two goes by where someone asks me where all the people are, why aren't they working? And the reality is I think that people are working.

Evan Sohn: I just think they're working less. I think the day and age of someone working in two factories, one during the day, one at night, one on the weekends has been either replaced with, Hey, I'm just not going to make the money I used to make, but at least I'm home now, or I'm using gigs and I think these are all the things that are associated with the growth of remote work and work-life balance.

Evan Sohn: I want to be home for the kids. I liked being home for dinner. I don't want to be doing that again, or my priorities have changed. We're not going out anymore. So we're cooking, we'd like to cook and cooking is far less expensive. I also think we're moving into an outcome based performance society. Now I'm a sales guy.

Evan Sohn: So we've always had that. You know, when you don't hit your number, you don't say, well, I worked a lot of hours, but I really just bring it. Didn't bring in the number, you know, in sales it always was an outcome based performance level. And I think we're really shifting as a society to that. I don't care.

Evan Sohn: You know, I'll give you great examples. You know, five years ago, if I got an email at 11:30 at night, I would say, wow, that person must be, you know, burning the midnight oil working really hard. I can't believe how hard they're working. When I got an email today at 11:30 at night, my assumption was that this person took off in the evening.

Evan Sohn: They were hanging out with their family. They went for dinner. And now they're finally coming back on line at 11:30. Now whether it's true or not, that is my perception. And if I get a couple of high fives or whatever you're doing, let me get a little reaction, like who actually thinks that right. Who actually thinks that then we get an email now at 11:30, that person is actually working from 7:00 AM to 11:30 at night.

Evan Sohn: Hey, they figured out that they want to take off a couple hours and you know what, it's fine because we work in an outcome based performance society. And my advice to everyone is to really figure out the metrics. And I go, I know in a staffing environment, it's hours and how many hours and how many this.

Evan Sohn: And I really think we're moving very quickly to an outcomes based performance society and surely in many worlds. You know, what did he get done? And by the way, it's actually returned to what it was. Thousand years ago, I got paid to make the shirt. Now how long it took to make the shirt. I got paid to make the shirt.

Evan Sohn: You take the doctor and the doctor gets paid for a procedure. Whether their procedure takes him two hours or it takes three hours. He gets paid for that procedure and you get your teeth cleaned. Now there's a time process involved there, but you're getting it based on the outcome or based on the procedure they're actually getting.

Evan Sohn: And so we do have that environment already. This is not a new construct for us, but now we can start using this construct in other areas of our actual business, And finally, I think we have, we should be looking at employees really through the lens of entrepreneurship. I really through the lens of, you know, we sat down with just about everyone I've recruit.com.

Evan Sohn: I came with about 70 people and really mapped out their progression for the year. Here's where I want you to be not just over the next three months, but here's where I want you to meet in six months. Here's what I want you to do in a year. Let's look at the deals you're going to have. And I think those are the things, because we're not looking at this linear path.

Evan Sohn: Really just for a year, then you'll get a promotion, you get the spirit, etc. You know, it is too easy now. And I think I could talk about this for a minute. This is actually pretty cool too. Right? So I think part of what part of the challenge that we have today is that aside from the fact that we have these, you know, incredibly tight labor markets, now 3.9% unemployment here in the US.

Evan Sohn: The quote unquote, no one wants to go back to work 10 and a half million jobs opens and the, in the end really, and let's call it the, you know, the less knowledge or the, you know, you're working collar environments. We have incredible, great resignation people leaving people going to other areas now, but you know, fundamentally it's become incredibly easy to interview.

Evan Sohn: Right. It's become incredibly easy to apply for a job. Let's actually look at the college application process. I think NYU takes in, I forget how many, I forget how many students they take in a year. I think it's, I think it's 20,000 freshman year or something like that. 15, 5,000, some crazy numbers like that.

Evan Sohn: They get ridiculous, like hundreds of thousands of applicants. You can Google it or see how many applications that NYU gets. And the reason is it's so easy to apply to college. Well, you look at ZipRecruiter, indeed, linkedIn. They've made it so easy to apply for a job. You can click a button now let's keep going.

Evan Sohn: How hard is it to interview you're interviewing in, you know, 10 years ago meant that you put on a suit, you brought a suit to work. You told your employer or your manager that you got to go to a funeral for your uncle's sister. You took the afternoon off. You went to the funeral. You're getting calls and you come back the next day.

Evan Sohn: You're getting calls. You got to tell your manager. It's my mom. Who's really sad about my uncle whose sister died. It's a whole cloak and dagger. But that's gone, right. You're interviewing today is exactly what we're doing today. Looking at a video screen and being interviewed we're actually launching a webinar series on talent effectiveness, really around how to do it.

Evan Sohn: One of the sessions on how to read body language on zoom, how to interview on zoom, how to deliver culture over in a virtual environment. But it's so easy to interview. Now, what was keeping people from leaving jobs was really the stigma of leadership. Now, if that stigma is gone, if it is. So, if there is no longer a stigma of I've only been there for a year, that's not going to look good on my resume.

Evan Sohn: Well, if that's gone, then that's really fueling this great resignation and it's really emerging this job hopper economy. And I really believe that's really where we're actually backing to as an industry, that the notion that I'm going to say, gee, I'm going to take this job for a year. I'm gonna take this job for two years and here's a skill that I want, and then I'm going to leave.

Evan Sohn: And I think what we need to be doing as an industry is not just finding the right talent and engaging the right talent, but really having plans on how we are going to do retention? And I think there's going to emerge a whole industry really around. I think every company will embrace talent talent acquisition, talent effectiveness, talent acquisition, very much the same way. In the nineties we all embraced security, right? Every company has the biggest ones that have Chief Security Officers, IT talent, IT network security, intrusion, detection, security all these other all these other things lower down the road. You might have your Head of IT. Also handle security, lower down.

Evan Sohn: We're outsourcing that we use in hosting services. We're using Counter-Strike, we're using other companies. We're actually handling our security for us. We're outsourcing our email, any virus, any spam services, we're doing all these things, but every company recognizes that security is now fundamental to the actual business that they're doing itself.

Evan Sohn: And I believe that talent management talent acquisition talent effectiveness is also going to be something that every company now embraces. Again, not the individual solo practitioner, there's probably a 10 person company. You know, where do I make sure that I'm in the right things? How do I make sure that I'm replacing the talent?

Evan Sohn: What's my succession plan? What's the bench that I'm building? How do I ensure that I have the right people with the right skills? What skills do I want to give to my team to make sure that they stay a little bit longer? What progression do I need to be finding out? And I think this is true. Really catapulted itself to an entirely new era in talent acquisition and talent management.

Evan Sohn: That's my slides. I think that was it. Yes. So anyone that has any questions, you can email me at evan@recruiter.com. I think my phone numbers there, you can scan the QR code if you, this is a recording and it will take you over to our website and all these other things I can actually do. We can open up the floor for questions, or we could just muse around for a little bit longer if we actually have a.

Evan Sohn: Let's get out of full screen mode. And see if we could ask any questions. New speaker Pratt beyond, right. Well, if there are no questions again, I want to thank the folks over at the look crap there. Oh, there you go. Okay. Sorry about that. I was chatting there. Oh, a lot. Oh, a lot of questions.

Evan Sohn: Okay. Very good. Couple. Hello everyone. Let's see a lot of hellos. There's it's all just very good chat on what's going on. Let's see if there's actually any question. Oh, Evan sales cycles are different in many positions to see that you're getting paid for outcome based is not exactly pro for many roles.

Evan Sohn: Solutions-based sales, as it equates to dollars. I'm asking what percentage would turn out to be a sale. Yeah, I get you Scott, but you know, You know, I have a few golden rules. One is, you know, only do the things you're being measured against. But I really think that looking at, you know, a friend of mine was looking to hire an attorney and he wants someone that could build as many hours and, you know, and I think that's all fine and dandy.

Evan Sohn: And I think there are certainly areas. And I was generalizing just to prove a point, but not everything could be, you know, overall on the outcome thing. But I really think that. You know, when we're working in a virtual environment, in a remote environment, you're no longer just clocking in and clocking out.

Evan Sohn: And you want to keep people focused. I think what this has really done has gotten people to focus on the job at hand. We're actually instituting at recruiter.com now, 80% jobs that they were going to, you know, expect you to work 80% of the time for four days a week, or however you want to fluctuate it that way to really create a degree to work life balance.

Evan Sohn: But the best way to have work-life balance. Scott is to really know when you're done. You know, when I hear people are burning out because they're working virtually remotely, to me, that's really a matter of, they don't know when they're done. They don't know when they're finished. They don't know what they need to do in order to get actual things, you know, to actually get it done.

Evan Sohn: And, you know, I see some of your goats, you know, the reality is as a salesperson, you can be done. Right. You're tied to a number you're tied to a metric you're tied to actually, you know, doing the things that you need to be doing to get done. And I've been, I'm not paid as a salesperson for the time.

Evan Sohn: It takes me to close a deal. I'm paid for the decades of experience that I have that brought me to the ability to actually deliver the outcomes that I deliver for my business on a day-by-day basis. All right. So, Hey, I have another one. I have a challenge in presenting. Employers, as they were perception of job up is still out there amongst talent agents.

Evan Sohn: How do I tell clients that once an employee is there, it's up to them to care for them? You know, I completely agree with you, Laurie. I think that, you know, I was musing around with a global head of talent of a very popular company. And I said to them, you should probably just embrace the fact that this is a 24 month project, right.

Evan Sohn: If people are going to leave after, before 24 months, then just say to them, Hey, look, I'm hiring you. This is 24 month. No, that's really about if that's what you want to do and really define these roles that are really, Hey, I need you here for 36 months. Here's what's going to happen in 36 months.

Evan Sohn: I'm going to pay you a lot of money. You're getting more money at the end of 36 months. And then you have the, you know, then you can go either another project. He actually was thinking of a 24 month project and give the person a 30 day vacation. But I think that's really, you know, the question to Lori is how do I convience the client that these are really good people. You have to really think about, you know, the progression of this individual. I think the CFOs are going to get involved and start using other tools to say, how do I keep Lori for another three months? And if I know that Lori likes to travel, Hey, why don't I create an environment where people get the travel?

Evan Sohn: Why not create an environment which is actually happening by the way, Laurie, part of why we're thinking about this, like fifth grade. It was like, I think you can actually get a great talent pool. Hey look, you know, we're building work-life balance. We're building in the fact that you're not, you know, we're not expecting you to be on-call 24 7.

Evan Sohn: You're not going to get paid the same, but we're just removing that expectation. I think that's going to be very beneficial for a lot of folks. And Scott, you know, we can go back and forth on salespeople are, you know, we're on all the time. We have people emailing us on the weekends. We have to address them.

Evan Sohn: And I get that, but I still think that what virtual environments let us do is to figure out how to build a work-life balance. And remember, you know, it's kind of a shame to hear people saying they're being burnt out. You know, from working remotely, well, meanwhile, you're not commuting, you're not having all of that downtime or all of that, you know, in between time of going from home to work.

Evan Sohn: And so you just working, you should be able to figure out how to really create that work-life balance. And I think it's up to us as leaders in whatever company is ran, know, really help employees, certainly those that are, know, I wouldn't say subordinates, but you know, our earlier age team team members are to really figure out how to have that balance, how to make sure you're allocating time.

Evan Sohn: You know, I was with the shareholder and investor the other day, you know, 11 o'clock in the morning and he calls his broker to buy some more shares and his broker goes, Hey, thanks for talking to me, Steve, but I'm actually walking my dog. I'll call you back in a few minutes. And I was blown over that.

Evan Sohn: You know, I grew up in a yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I'm tied up. Can I call you back in a minute? I'm dealing with a fire, you know, there's I had to come up with some sort of excuse and this broker had no problem saying, Hey, look, I'm out and walking around. You know, at 11 o'clock in the morning we walked to the house.

Evan Sohn: The thought of the answer is like I'm making this work-life balance work. And by the way, he still was able to close that deal. He still got his commission. He still did everything that he had to do. And obviously if there was something critical, he would have figured that out. But I was really impressed that we're sort of embracing this work-life balance.

Evan Sohn: I'll ask one more question from a lisa. What advice do you have for companies? We're just one way, sorry. What advice do you have for companies who are routing employees in this new normal? Look, I think there's a portfolio. I think you're creating a portfolio. Thanks. Thanks, Elise.

Evan Sohn: I think you're creating a portfolio of a company of employees, some that are going to be there for a long time, something going to be job hoppers, et cetera. I think you want to show people the progression, you know, fundamentally you pick up the phone. That's the old I am, right. Fundamentally. I always say you pick up the phone from a recruiter.

Evan Sohn: When you start to question your probability of success at the company that you're in and you leave when you balance out that the risk bleeding is outweighed by the opportunity for success at the center. But what if I never picked up the phone? What if that company was always talking to me about what's next for you?

Evan Sohn: Here's what's next for you? Here's what's next for you? You know, and it used to be, the only time we gave a promotion to someone is when they threatened to quit, we have to change that we really do. And we're seeing that today. You know, you look at Goldman Sachs, it reported bad numbers last week, and why?

Evan Sohn: Because they're expensive in hiring and retaining employees and for the roof, I think that's going to become very normal, the amount of money that's being spent. And, you know, my advice Elisa is to really figure out with your client your company, etc. Hey, what are you allocating to tension?

Evan Sohn: What are you allocating to ensure that people are going to stick around and not everyone's going to stick around, but what are you doing to do that? We talked about it with our board last week, right? What are we allocating towards long-term incentive and retention, right? That's because that's really what we have to start putting employees for folks there.

Evan Sohn: And at the same time, you know, have a bench, have progression, etc. All right. I think there's one, is there another one? I have a work phone, a personal phone. The phone gets picked up at eight, put it down to five, the contact if I keep working through it. It definitely is. Yeah, no I agree. I certainly think that there are things that we could be doing to do that, but you know, to me, when someone can be burnt out, they're a flight risk, right.

Evan Sohn: That's a real flight risk. And I hate quiet risks. I really like to, you know, try to see if we have P you know, try to keep people far less expensive than replacing them. So I really think about that. Well, I really want to thank everyone. I want to thank the world staffing summit and all the folks that put this together.

Evan Sohn: You know, I think. In conclusion the job hopper economy was here to stay. We are not, know, we're and again, I'm generalizing, I think the day and age of people staying at a company for 25 years and getting the gold watch is over, and we really should be embracing this new paradigm of gee, look at the skill sets that you have and what are you doing next?

Evan Sohn: So thank you so much again, if anyone needs to get in touch with me, my email and phone number are on the screen. So there you go. Jan. Thanks so much

Jan Jedlinski: Thank you so much, Evan. And everybody stick around for another great session, just following this one and see you soon. Thanks.