Podcast Overview
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Eric Guidice (00:00)
Ladies and gentlemen, probably the most anticipated, long-awaited headcount experts guest of the season, Jeff Moore joins us. early starts in government, worked his way up through Google, TripAdvisor, Google again, now leads talent operations and workplaces at Toast. Jeff Moore joins us on the Headcount Experts. Welcome, Jeff Moore.
Jeff (00:21)
Great to be here.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Eric Guidice (00:26)
Any relation to Mary Tyler.
Jeff (00:28)
No relation to Mary Tyler and I'm also not Jeff Moore the author. So just you know, just in case.
Eric Guidice (00:32)
Okay. I
would have read the book if you were. I'm joined, of course, by Chris Mannion, MIT alum, Wayfair, talent, talent ops, talent analytics, currently runs Meander, who not only consults but builds some incredible headcount tools in the AI space. My name is Eric, obviously, headcount365. you know, changing the way companies do headcount. But we're here to talk a little bit about the craziest part of the year, which is Q4.
I and maybe it's changed. I've been out of the game now since twenty nineteen as a production TA person, but I always remember Q four being
Fit fill everything this year before it ends, let me get on my budget. While at the same time planning for next year, and maybe I have some of these roles, maybe I don't have some of these roles. And at the size of toast, I have to imagine this is a this is a period for you. You're getting you're getting a certain amount of action right now, and so we want to talk about it. but before we do, kind of give us the Jeff Moore story. If you had to elevator pitch yourself, how'd you do it?
Jeff (01:40)
Elevator pitch myself.
Eric Guidice (01:41)
Yeah.
Jeff (01:41)
Boy, that's something I haven't done long time.
Chris Mannion (01:43)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff (01:44)
you know, I think you your your intro was amazing, Eric. I like to say I've been recruiting since before LinkedIn was around, which makes
Eric Guidice (01:51)
I like that.
Jeff (01:51)
me a little bit of a dinosaur, but I also like to tell people I'm a T-Rex. So, I think the elevator pitch for me is I you've been in the space for a while. ah I see a recruiter for a long time, gotten a leadership role as a Google. Um,
to your point earlier, like worked my way up and got a chance to lead a lot of big, huge, really cool teams, build some cool stuff at Google, and then take a lot of that experience to to toast and translate some of that into just like, how do we move fast? How do we build this company that's really got exciting products and exciting space? And you know, use some of those lessons learned along the way and probably try to learn some new ones as well.
Eric Guidice (02:29)
I uh I'm always fascinated with how people get into talent. And although you, you know, there is no degree, So most people find their way into talent through some other way. I found it in from like intern recruiting at Target, which was my first job. Chris was from the supply chain, from the military. And it looks like you came from the government side of things, two questions, two parties.
Jeff (02:53)
Do it.
Eric Guidice (02:54)
One, how did you make your way in? And two, what from the like you know, the early few years in government that you spent, what what helped you?
Jeff (03:04)
Yeah, I think I've got a really good origin story. if we're gonna go there. I started my career on Capitol Hill. graduated from college, thought I wanted to be in government and do this thing. And I got there and after about two years I was like, wow, I really hate this. Um, this is a great hobby. Actually, it's not even a great hobby anymore. But I was like, wow, this is not what I want to do. And so I just left. I just like moved back home, moved in with my parents, and was like, this is not.
the profession that I thought I was getting into. And um literally I know this is where like every recruiter has the same origin story here now. I was out for dinner and drinks with some friends and the CEO of the software company that they all worked at. And after maybe a glass of wine he was like, you know, you should be a recruiter and work for me. And I was like, I have no idea what this job was. This was like, this is probably like
I don't know, April of ninety eight. And it's like, you this is a long time ago. And uh recruiters weren't really a thing. And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. He's like, why don't just come into my office, you know, on Sunday and we'll grab a coffee and chat? And I'm like, okay, it's Saturday. I've had a glass of wine or two and I'm gonna interview on a Sunday. Okay, cool. Sounds good to me. And walked in and we just had this cool chat about what a recruiter does and what was really interesting and like I'll never forget it.
His comment to me was recruiters have to not be afraid of titles and not be afraid of people. And you worked on Capitol Hill where you had to interact with senators and congressmen and chiefs of staff and all these big titles. And so I just can know you're not afraid of titles. And it was like this a it
Eric Guidice (04:41)
Yeah.
Jeff (04:42)
was like eye-opening. It was like moment of like, wow, talk about someone who knows me better than I know myself.
Eric Guidice (04:48)
Okay, well let me let me ask you this question, 'cause I experienced it. I'm not sure if you did, Chris, Jeff, we're about to found find out live. The
Jeff (04:55)
Here we
Eric Guidice (04:56)
first call you made to the first person you were trying to place, did you get the back s did you get that back sweat? Did you overheat a little bit? Did you did you get it a little bit or was that it didn't even that didn't even happen on first first cold call?
Jeff (05:09)
I I would I would say it's a great question. you know, I got handed so basically I ended up joining it was a recruiting agency that he was starting to support his software business, which is super cool. Um, I got handed a stack of Bureau of Labor Statistics data and a f and basically a phone book and like, you know, cold call into like New England companies and get racks. And once you get a rack, we'll figure out how to call candidates and so
I don't know that I was smart enough to be stressed. I think I was just like, I'm gonna churn and burn a hundred calls a day. And probably was the worst cold calling recruiter of all time. But I, you know, and if you remember the old Saturday Night Live commercial with like the change bank, like I made up for it with volume, right? I just did huge volume. So I don't think I was smart enough to know how bad I was, Eric.
Eric Guidice (05:58)
That's that's that's fair. I don't know if that's how I'd describe it. I would probably give you a little bit more on the bravery points, but um a humble, a humble approach. I uh not only did I get the back sweat, I my one of my first and most memorable calls, I started an agency as well at Robert Half, and like I called uh
religious organization that had some blunder that sounded like it was like romantic and and I like tried to backpedal and it was like my whole squad was watching me is drenched. Ah I'll never forget it. But you persevere and you can kind of grow that that talent. Once you get over that there's really nothing that can that can stop you from doing stuff like this, which is cold calling the the head
Jeff (06:43)
Totally then.
Eric Guidice (06:44)
of toasts, operations, workplaces, town organization and ask them to be on your podcast. So
So the other correlation I took away
Chris Mannion (06:50)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Guidice (06:51)
immediately was the people that I know who are successful, and I I always hesitate to say this, but I'm gonna do it anyway, which is like they're not afraid of Sunday or Saturday in that matter. You know what I mean? It wasn't a clock in, clock out. You saw, you know, success is when a little bit of luck, a little bit of opportunity meet some preparedness. And if you're prepared on a Sunday, you're prepared on a Sunday. I like it personally.
You you shouldn't have to. Let's just put out my my you know, I think for people
Jeff (07:19)
Yeah, yeah.
Eric Guidice (07:20)
to feed their family. They shouldn't have to do that. Sucks when it's the norm, but I'm not surprised that from the you know the 90s you're taking opportunities like that and running with it. Right? Like that to me it's unsurprising. Chris, how'd you how'd but I know that you do you've done that too.
Chris Mannion (07:39)
Yeah, no, I I well I come from a very different path. Um my first kind of real job was actually deploying overseas and leading a team of forty engineers. So I I jumped straight into a leadership role. Um never had to cold call anyone, did have to go up against a lot of very senior officers in the military. Um so very different experience, definitely had a lot of sweaty back moments um during that time, making some pretty punchy calls. Um but it but it was fun. I think
That helped me later on when I eventually led a recruiting team. It made me maybe a little less nervous to lead a team of people who knew knew a lot about something I knew very little about. Um the Dunning Kruger effect, I thought I knew a lot more than I did, which is how I wound up in recruiting. And then realized very quickly I was just another one of those hiring managers who think they could solve the the whole recruiting industry in in three months and then go back to the business. But here I am seven years later, still doing the same thing.
Jeff (08:37)
Tracks. That tracks.
Eric Guidice (08:39)
Jeff, when was so you're doing agency stuff post Capitol Hill? When was the first time you were introduced to the hiring plan, the headcount plan, like the, you know, the the predefined, this is what we expect to do? And um, yeah, when was your introduction to that concept? Um and early in your career, how did that how did that go down before?
Jeff (09:04)
Yeah. Yeah. I I yeah, it's so funny. I was thinking about this before we got on. 'Cause I was like, I'm gonna be prepared for this conversation. And uh unlike most conversations in my life, the first the first time I got the headcount plan, I w was working at uh at Mathworks. So if you know MathWorks there, local company here. Um, where I really sort of cut my teeth as like an in-house recruiter and we printed out on paper all the open recs.
And they were all sort of assigned by recruiter, but it wasn't like assigned in the system. It was just like I mean, it was like I don't know, I must have been a download out of our ATS. I don't even know what the ATS was. And we had the hiring plan, which is basically the open racks. And we manually sort of kept track when we thought people were gonna start to then forecast it. And I mean it was like we got in a room every Monday morning for like two hours.
And it was like, you know, break out the pens and speak to your rex. And then we'd sort of like collate it all together. And then we'd, you know, report out what we thought we were gonna do. Now it's a private company, and it was call it 2000 for sake of discussion. So there wasn't exactly the world of like AI and analytics and snowflake and all that stuff now. But um that was the first time really getting into like a hiring plan. And it was, it's funny, I look back on it and it
It it was so effective because the way they did planning made it crazy effective. And it's just like it's a diff but it's a different world front when I th and I look back on it. But that was my first exposure. It was printed out printed out copies of the plan that we talked through one by one.
Eric Guidice (10:53)
Yeah, I'm always interested in the evolution of
where we are today, because I am building on top of a system that was built on top of a manual system. And so it's like what had permeated through to the Excel's or the spreadsheets that I kind of grew up on that then I took and tried to evolve in headcount, which now is going into AI, is a progression where the underlying principles, I think I'm super interested in how these concepts kind of
came
to be. And the the first concept that I always try to talk about with TA folks is the idea of capacity versus demand. The recruiting team can produce X. The business is asking for Y.
stylistically, I've heard of two main themes. If you have another one, I'm all years. But one is like fixed capacity against demand. And the other one is kind of like running it like a sales quota, right?
Do you fall on either side of that spectrum or do you have a different way or hybrid that you approach? And then how did that progress as you went through MathWorks all the way up through Google and now Toast?
Jeff (11:54)
Yeah, boy, that's a question.
Chris Mannion (11:56)
Mm.
Eric Guidice (11:58)
That's a big one, I'm sorry.
Jeff (12:00)
No, it's good. I you know, it's
funny. I I think it
I think when I think about that question, I think the world, if I go back through like my whole career, right? So let's sitting in a room, first time in-house recruiter at MathWorks, going through my list, what life was like then to what life is like today, right? I mean, I hate to say it out loud, but yeah, that was a quarter of a century ago. Right? I hate to say that. I feel really old right now.
Eric Guidice (12:26)
That is a way to phrase it.
Jeff (12:28)
Right? It's one way phrase it. But like it was a long time ago. And I think you know, like the way
The way businesses, especially software businesses, operated back then. That was before SaaS. Yeah, like there's before a lot of stuff.
The way that all worked was amazing for the time, wouldn't work now. And so when I think about like your two models, I actually think the model is both of those combined. And I say that meaning if you think about the like fixed capacity, fixed capacity is how I'm managing my cost per hire. Right? Like I don't have unlimited cost, I don't have unlimited tooling. I have to be thoughtful around what am I
What am I accountable to as a shareholder and as a business leader who has a budget? So that's like the right hand, I think that was your right hand side. That's your right hand side of that equation. The left hand side is like, how do I outperform the structure that I built on the right hand side, knowing that the plan that I'm building around is directional at best for all the right reasons?
So I need my team to be able to do like, hey, I can do more. Maybe I actually need to do a little less, but not get penalized. And so you have the it's it's hybrid, but it's it's hybrid for very different reasons. One reason it's hybrid is because I have to manage to budget and a plan. And the other one's I have to then I have to achieve outcomes. And so you kinda have to play both sides as opposed to hybrid. It's almost like you're balancing on a uh whatever, a teeter totter or whatever those things are called.
Um, in order to really get the outcomes you want, you you can't over-index left or right. You have to stand in the middle and then flex the org or your strategy based on whatever inputs you got.
Chris Mannion (14:20)
I I'm interested in digging a little deeper on on that,
Eric Guidice (14:20)
Chris, I I assume yeah.
Chris Mannion (14:22)
Eric. One of the things we talk a lot about is utilization and there's almost like a counterintuitive part where normally you would expect to maximize utilization to get as close to 100% as possible. But you talked a little bit about having agility there and at agility at 100% you've got zero agility. There's no flex in the system. Um but one of the challenges is is then how do you communicate the need to be at like an 80% utilization back to
finance or back to your business leaders who you know always want one more thing or or or you know one one less kind of uh cost item on line item on the on the budget. How do you think about doing that and what are the I guess what are the data points that you would share back in order to show why that's so important. You mentioned mentioned cost per hire. Um and I I I uh I could definitely go deeper on that one, but I'm curious to get your take on that.
Jeff (15:16)
Yeah, I mean I think I think that's where, you know, if you you know, the unsung un unsaid things within all of that, right, is like you've your your team performance isn't a linear line. Right. And so you've got you've got a whole lot of different factors going on within that capacity. You've also got like, is this a one off job we've never hired before? Is this a job in a new country? So there's all this stuff that, you know, when you're a growing organization, right? I think if you're in a a little bit more static company, it's maybe it's different. That, you know, you
The way you build that initial capacity model has to account for the fact that you don't know what you don't know. Or what's great for me, right? Is I've I've been here long enough that I know this is where I'm gonna get unforeseen increases or change plan you know, plan changes to the plan, excuse me, that I'm just gonna account for in my capacity. And then the other thing that I think you've gotta do, and Chris, you may be getting at this a little bit too, is you've gotta be able your capacity isn't just
X recruiters multiplied by Y recks. It's like, yeah, this kind of rack I can get 10 a month out of a recruiter. This kind of rec I can get one a month. This kind of rec I can get three a month. And this kind of rack, I have no idea. So I'm gonna just throw a dart against the wall on that one. And then you sort of like take that, you know, that crazy algorithm or whatever it is, and like that gets you.
Call it 80% to the line. And then you have the variables that you can't control, right? You don't know what your attrition's gonna be, you don't know what your internal mobility rates are gonna be. Like there's all these other variables that you just have to say, like, well, last year it was X, so I'll account for X, and you know, maybe it's gonna be Y because we're trending this way. And so it it it's one of those things that it it I think everybody wants it to be science. And there's certainly some science to it, but it's also a little bit of art. And for me, it's about like.
How do you create uh you know an organization that that has a little bit, I say this a lot, like has a little bit of like the Amoeba mentality so that if I guess wrong or the plan changes or whatever, maybe my recruiters can flex up and hire some leadership roles that normally my leadership team would do, but the capacity wasn't right. Or maybe the sales team can flex over and help GNA because there was a surge we didn't anticipate. And so you've kind of got to build that into the model.
But it's hard, man. I mean, it's like the hardest one of the hardest parts of the job because you're basically you're trying to make a twelve month plan in a in a world that in twenty twenty you know, twenty twenty six isn't a t nothing's a twelve month plan anymore.
Eric Guidice (17:58)
I have two things on it.
One is a is a is a is a Chris thing. We talked about it in a previous episode. I wanna I want to actually show it to you and get your reaction on it, called the Kingsman Formula, which talks about approaching 100% utilization and what that does, right? The flex up of the recruiters, right? When you start to
Jeff (18:15)
Yeah.
Eric Guidice (18:18)
how do you separate the the normalization of like, yeah, push them to 100 all the time versus maintaining that buffer to allow yourself the flexibility. So one of them's the Kingsman formula, I want to do that.
And then the second one following that is you know, next week or the following, we're gonna have a prominent people analytics voice on the podcast next. And so I'm curious how you balance art and science. And like, you know, I think from that perspective, we're gonna get a very people analytics is the center of the world, but from a leave, you know, for the person they're delivering it to, it's in a it's an applied tool. And so let's let's start with the the Kingsman formula where you can kind of see, I'll pull up a quick share here. Will it let me do it?
I think it will. I don't know if you can see it, but this is the image that we have. This is
Jeff (18:59)
Was told there'd be no math. Just just just Yeah.
Chris Mannion (19:01)
Ha ha.
Eric Guidice (19:04)
what we use at a previous thing, and it it it kind of shows, and this is based on OpenRecs rather than it is uh on fills, it's kind of giving you this um
you know, high sloped curve once you start pushing utilization. So as you're balancing your art and your science, how how much are you applying this? And Chris, fill in where I'm missing, because this is more Chris's zone, but I figured I'd manage a transition. But how are you managing kind of this concept in your day-to-day application of those flex periods for recruiters, especially that were in Q four and I'm sure everyone's trying to use their budget. I'm sure everyone's trying to get it filled before the end of the year. Um
Okay.
Jeff (19:45)
Kristen, do you have
you want to add on before I jump in?
Chris Mannion (19:48)
no, I I think think Eric's explained it perfectly. We've we've tried to kinda keep it as simple as possible. and these are all synthetic numbers, so it's not eighty percent is not a hard and fast rule, but I found it's a really good rule of thumb.
Jeff (20:01)
Totally. You know, I think this is where, you know, all of this stuff looks different by functional area. And so that's where I like to operate. I like to take it like a click or two a little bit deeper, look at regions and and areas. Um and and know that there becomes a point where the green the green turns red. And, you know, like and every role's different and every org is different. So like the way I would think about it, I don't know.
If if I'm hiring bunch of sales reps, if I get into that red zone where that time to hire, I can't remember what that exact number was at the top right of the slope, but it goes up to say it goes up to 60 days from 12 days. I think that's what the math was on there. Something like that. Um that's revenue. Like that's that's lost opportunity for the company. Okay. I can't get there. I just can't get over there. I can't ever get there into the red. So I need to have the ability to either add contract recruiters, flex people on the team. Like I just
I mean, revenue's the revenue's the thing, so I gotta make sure that stays stays good. Whereas maybe there's other parts of the team, maybe it's my own team. Maybe it's like, you know, converting recruiters to full time or hiring people on my org, where I can be like, you know what, actually stretching out to 60 days, okay. That I can manage and like make sure that that that it's like s almost like micro adjustments within the capacity doesn't impact business outcomes.
Now, not that everything, you know, recruiters we all impact business outcomes. You guys get the point. But like everything has a different impact on business outcomes. And so like making sure that the stuff that's closest to the line doesn't get impacted by me moving around within that that matrix of like time, capacity, constraints and recruiters being overloaded. Um, but it's hard, right? Because you also there's also people parts of this where it's like maybe one recruiter
is really good at a certain kind of role and there's 15 of them and they're like, look, I can just handle these. And you're like, you know what? They hire they hire really great people and I don't like being in the red, but I'm gonna get way better outcomes. And so you've gotta you've gotta be like, you know, like I don't know, I say this a little bit, you've gotta be like data informed, not like data wedded. And so like I need to have the data, I need to know what I'm doing, but I also can't just be like, nope, the data tells me I just need to I need to change this. It's like nah. I probably gotta let the play develop.
And then once the play is developed we can change tactics or change the change the setup a bit.
Eric Guidice (22:30)
That's a really good example of art and science because there are people who are specialized and there's kind of, you know, how if I if I was, you know, we do a lot of work on on workload algorithms for recruiters, right? If a job title's new, how many of the same one do they have? What stage of recruiting is it in, right? Algorithmically, we're trying to do that a lot within the platform. And but like, how do I quantify the pipeline network of a recruiter, their ability to convert uh
cold outreach into good applicants and you you know their their the level of intake session they've done with a hiring manager to create a real predictable outcome and they might do it well really well in one zone but not in another and it's like you have to I love that example because it's it's really it's a difficult problem to solve uh with data only and so I like that.
Jeff (23:24)
Well goes even deeper, Eric. It
goes even deeper, right? Like how do you account for a hiring manager now has to work with two recruiters? How do you account for two recruiters have to collaborate on the interviewer bandwidth because the team only has X amount of bandwidth to use? And so there are situations where it's like actually maybe this recruiter does carry 15 recks, but we just have a crystal clear prioritization with the hiring manager. So my data's gonna look terrible, but my experience, my outcomes are gonna look great.
And so like sometimes you just have to be willing to say, like, eh, let it ride because the manager will be happy, the candidates will be better, even though my time to fill is gonna drift up by half a day. Eh.
Eric Guidice (24:08)
For the
for the founders, the CEOs listening to this podcast, these should be worked into your talent leader interview process. Because I think everyone can talk about the numbers and the data and the theory behind it, and it works. But the practical application of making a decision about priority or distribution, or the way that you partner with the business to get a hiring manner, I think one of the hardest things I did as a leader in recruiting.
Recruiting was getting one manager to admit they're not the highest priority relative to another manager. And that it it's a it how do you, you know, and people will accept that at different rates, and you know, depending on how your company culture is set up and stuff. So I think that these are all, you know, extremely important.
subjective pieces to how you apply the data, but you know, leading into my second question is like, how do you use people analytics for these types of of things? Like what problems do they solve and what problems don't they solve?
Jeff (25:17)
You know, I think look, I think I think over the course of my career I probably leverage data a million different ways. And and it's really for me, it's less about like this is the Jeff Moore playbook and more like this is the problem I need to crack. And so there are some situations where it's like, Yeah, I can get by with the top line data and like manage it because I've done it enough, I can sort of play with it. There are other situations where you're like, ooh.
I need like a PhD thesis on this topic because it's gnarly. And I remember um I had an example at Google that I'll I'll fuzz out a little bit of the details, but it's still I think really interesting. Where we had this sourcing team that I I inherited and they weren't really producing. And like the recruiting team they partnered with didn't like them. Like it was it was a nightmare. And I took the team over and it was it wasn't small, it was like
30 sourcers. You it's not like Jeff pick up these two people, it's like, man, this is like a real, this is a function. And I was trying to figure out like what the heck is going on. Like the team was grinding, the team is finding people, the recruiters don't like the people we're finding, or like and I was just like, like, what is happening? Like this doesn't make any and it wasn't, you know, we weren't hiring like, you know, machine learning, like, you know, like the the roles weren't so complicated that there should have been friction. It should have been like, you know, a bunch of high fives.
And was like looking at it and looking at it and I couldn't figure it out. And I met with our analytics team. I'll never forget it. Victoria was the analyst who brought it to me. and she said to me, She said, you know, I did an analysis on this particular part of the business. And over the last three years, 70% of our hires had applied for a job in the previous three years.
And that like hit me in the face, you know, like a frying pan, right? Because I'm like, wait a minute. I have this team of 30 people generating more pipeline into a team that's getting 70% of their hires from online applications. I don't need a sourcing team here. I need a better pipeline distribution system. And so we like pivoted the whole strategy. So
Basically, what we did is we started pulling trailing three years of applications for whatever job was open. Cause you know, the jobs are, you know, this job here, this job there. It's like, you know, at Google scale, the jobs aren't materially different all the time. And I would just be like, my recruit my sourcer would just go pull three years trailing apps. And we would just churn and burn through that list. Recruiters were super happy, jobs got filled way faster, relationship got fixed, my team was happier because they were making hires, making progress. I was like,
I never would have got here. Like without an analytics team giving me that data point on like tra like three years trailing, I never would have got here. But I look back on it, I'm like,
Eric Guidice (28:16)
What is
Jeff (28:17)
this is one of the coolest things I did, and I never would have done it. Never in a million years would have like we should pull lists of online applications and comb through them. Never. But it was key.
Eric Guidice (28:27)
I would
I would I'm guessing that Chris is in the bat if this is the first thing that came to my mind is what a great reinforcement for the the Kingsman formula. Or Kingman's formula. Right? It's
I need the time to do I can reduce the amount of time, but if I'm always at a hundred percent, I can't I can't be doing things like managing a great pipeline or tagging, especially now. We're gonna get into this later. Quick foreshadowing, but you know, curious uh on your your take on what I've seen across my customers and just on the market in general, just heavy increase in inbound applications that are much
Jeff (29:11)
Yeah, yeah.
Eric Guidice (29:11)
more, you know, tailored.
To what things are. So building that, you know, back in the day, pipelining was like the secret sauce, right? That's if you just knew how to keep a good pipeline, keep someone warm, and then run a good kind of talent pool, that's the that's the secret. That's how I would get promoted. Is like, I could just tap people and my time to fill is always managed by me, not by the luck of the draw. But I don't even know if I was a recruiter now, I don't even know how I do that.
I
don't know how I would go about segmenting my pipeline without uh, you know, and I guess that's my question for you. You're mo you're way more in it than I'm I'm theorizing. But like are you seeing application volume get in the way of of some of these principles?
Jeff (29:57)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think application volume is out of control between fraudulent, you know, fraud candidates and then just, you know, AI slop, you know, resumes and stuff like that for sure. but you know, I think it's it it's funny. I have this central thesis that I've probably said a hundred times, which like when I started recruiting, it's it's kind of similar to what you're saying, Eric. When I started recruiting, your the the pipeline the recruiter brought with them was their value.
And now finding people is a commodity. Like between like online data sources, LinkedIn, juice like all these other sourcing tools. I can find anybody. Like there's very few people that aren't findable now. So what's my value add as a recruiter? And for me, it's like my value add as a recruiter is like I'm gonna give you a good experience, I'm gonna talk to you about the organization, and I'm gonna make sure that this job's a fit for you. And that's like a whole different
whole different value prop than what twenty years ago it was like, no, no, I've got this huge network of you know, technical computing people that uh can build you know tools in C plus plus. Yeah, well now I can just like open up a million different apps and get 10,000 C plus plus engineers.
Chris Mannion (31:13)
Yeah, we had we had this theory
Eric Guidice (31:13)
Are we creating a new
Moore's Law? Is that what that is? The
Chris Mannion (31:17)
Ha ha ha.
Eric Guidice (31:17)
real Moore's Law is the it the quality of recruiter is the pipeline they bring. Sorry, Chris, I didn't mean to cut you off,
Chris Mannion (31:23)
we can call this Moore's Law, but it was actually a theory we had five or six years ago that the way the recruiter role was going, just from what we were seeing internally at Wayfair was um less kind of sales focused and more of like almost like a career career planner or career guidance council where um you're you're kind of bringing people in and helping them to navigate to the right pipeline based on their career goals. And we saw big improvements in retention, quality of hire, everything else. But you could also blend
The internal, the external, um, inbound, referrals, basically all all channels could be blended into that because then the recruiter who knows the roles, who knows the hiring managers best and knows the process and how far along it is, could actually be a a really incredible value add. And you know, from from what you said in the the age where so much is being automated and so much data is now available, that is a skill set that's not gonna go away. It's gonna get more and more important.
Jeff (32:18)
Absolutely. And also just knowing the nuances of a team, right? Like knowing, oh, this team, they kind of lack a senior person, or they lack someone who's got good communication skills, or they lack somebody who, builds culture. Like the there's these little silly things that actually determine whether you are happy in your job or not.
that I think recruiters that are really good just have this radar that they pick up like, you know, hey, this is just a good person. And then like, you know, then you go and you put them through the coding tests and you grill them and you do the personality. You do all the stuff. But like when the recruiter's like, this is just someone who people are going to want work with. And now if they're over the bar, then the recruiter's really done like a great job because that talent comes in, performs the work well, but also just sort of enhances and moves the culture forward somehow.
Eric Guidice (33:09)
So you have a a hybrid capacity demand model. We have a a shifting recruiter role that's
Jeff (33:14)
Yeah.
Eric Guidice (33:17)
using not only their pipeline, but their brokering, the relationship of what the candidate provides, what the company offers. We have ah
You
know, different applications of people analytics to identify opportunity, all culminating into the Q4 rush, right? What changes about these things, or what do you notice changes in the next three months or so uh about all these principles when when we're in Q4? How does the hiring manager behavior change? How do you and your recruiting team respond to it? And how should people be applying this to their own recruiting environments?
Jeff (33:53)
Yeah, that's a great question. I actually was just telling a a a colleague yesterday, I'm like, Q four. Nothing nothing better than Q four in TA world. Nothing better. What can you do today and what can you do tomorrow? Okay, great. Um, you know, I think I think in Q four if you start overlaying whatever your time to fill is, it's time to start talking reality to people. Which is like, hey, if these roles aren't open, they're not getting filled.
And like, yeah, this yeah, there's your Moore's Law. Like there's just like there's an immovable time and it doesn't matter if the time to fill for this job is fifty-seven days and it's October twenty-third, guess what's not happening for you in Q4? And you know, like that was something we were really good at at Google is basically just saying, like, hey, if your job's not open on on October first, we're pushing it to Q one. Congratulations, happy birthday, have a great Q four. Because it's just it's not gonna happen.
And so I think part of the challenge in Q4 is nobody likes that message. I mean, I don't like that message on my own team when I'm hiring. And then I have to be the person who's kinda like, I don't think you're gonna get those hires in. Um now that's not to say that there aren't a ton of hires that happen, but it's sort of setting the reality of like, you just opened a job today. Sorry. It's just people aren't gonna switch jobs, you know, on the
Thanksgiving afternoon, right? It's like just not the way the world works. Somebody will. There'll be yeah, there'll be one, but it's not going to be at scale. And so part of it is just sort of being the reality, the voice of reason for the organization, on where you think you're going to land and how you think you're going to perform, while at the same time reminding everybody of sort of where we started the conversation, that whatever my team delivers is this, you know, quasi-scientific combination of a bunch of data points.
That the more time I have to impact those data points, the better job I can do in Q1 or Q2 or Q3. Because like if I spend Q one increasing my capacity 20%, guess what's not gonna happen in Q one? 20% increase in hires. If I'm increasing my team 20% in Q4, you're gonna see that in Q one. And so it's this really interesting dynamic of like telling people what you can't do.
While also trying to be aspirational on what they want you to do and then what you need to deliver against that. And those are like totally conflicting messages. And so it's
Eric Guidice (36:25)
So it's
Jeff (36:25)
Q four is always crazy.
Eric Guidice (36:28)
What is your opinion on the idea that you are the messenger of the reality of talent acquisition from the business?
So like how much of this is the business has made decisions and we're here and I'm the solutions person to bring it to you versus you owning the message? How what is your thought on the town acquisition role in communicating town acquisition capability as a function of Q4
Jeff (36:55)
I mean I feel like that's something that I I you know, I expect everyone on my team to own that. Like that's an us thing. No, like that's not a I mean of course it's a Jeff thing, but it's an us thing to be able to speak to whatever local or enterprise data you need to speak to on the reality of the situation. I mean I I'm also I Eric, you know me well enough. I'm I'm also pretty snarky, right? Where I'm like, well, you know, we could we could hire five hundred people. We could just do phone screen to offer. Probably not a great idea.
But like you could, like we could do that, but we shouldn't. And so it's, you know, a little bit of the like helping people understand not only like the TA capacity piece of it, but like if you're willing to sacrifice X, Y, Z, you can get that outcome. I'm not advising you do that, but if you're like so adamant that you need to do it, we can do I I can do whatever you want. We don't have to interview people, we can just find people and make them offers. That sounds great. And so like
You never want to do that stuff. But I also think it's like making sure people that realize that you're not you're not pushing back or saying no because you're a gait. You're pushing back and saying no because this is just the reality of how the system works. Right? You're not gonna call a customer that has never heard of your products and sign the deal this afternoon. You know, you're not gonna say I need to ship a new product and ship it tonight. And hiring is the same thing. It's got some sort of, you know.
some laws of physics that happen around it. And you can play with them. You can mess around with those. But it's just like you would never ship a new product without testing it. You probably want to hire a new candidate without interview.
Eric Guidice (38:33)
when you're doing your head count planning, are you looking at the way that the plan changes, how often it changes, what the delta is, and how are you using that to your uh you know, in your leadership style?
Jeff (38:44)
Yeah, I mean I think this is where if I think back to those days with my paper sheets hiring plan at the math works to today, this is where it's different. Like I would say for the last ten years of my career, the hiring plan has changed constantly. Uh up, down, over and about. The TA capacity has sort of flexed up, down, over and about with that as well. And that's where I think
If you're gonna be good at this job, you've gotta be okay that that's actually the job. The job is to figure out the business needs something fast. And, you know, whether they update their plan monthly or quarterly, er I mean, literally the last 10 years of my career, we've changed pl like Mathworks, we changed plan twice a year. You got headcount in January and you got a headcount in June. And that was it. I have never in the last
probably longer than ten years, but in an environment where we're that stable. I mean, I remember I took a role at Google where they wanted to hire five hundred people in a year. York was like a thousand, so it was like we're gonna increase by fifty percent. And I said to the leader, I was like, look, this is not a this is not a linear growth situation. Like I'm gonna throw a bunch of recruiters to this, we're gonna pull this together, but we're gonna hire like two people this week. We'll hire seven people next week. We'll hire none the week after
We'll hire four the week after, we'll hire thirteen, we'll hire two. It's gonna it's gonna be really rough.
But here's the run rate number. And when you see the run rate number, know that I gotcha. And we're gonna hit the run rate number probably in like mid April. And he was like, Okay. I'm like, so like between now and mid-April, like I'm happy to fe take feedback, I'm happy for you to just be frustrated, whatever. But know that in my head, I'm like, I'm gonna nail this number by April. And then you're golden. Like then you don't have to think about it. Like I've built it, just set it, forget it. And we got to that number for two weeks in a row.
got to or exceeded that number two weeks in a row. And I got a call that we decided to hire a thousand people instead of five hundred. And I had to do the whole thing over again. But like that's what the business needed. And so like for me, like that's the fun. Like th you know, throw me that bone and force me to figure it out.
Eric Guidice (41:04)
you're taking this active part in the planning. You have a voice going to the inputs so that by the time the recruiting plan, the hiring plan, the headcount plan happens, you've had your influence on uh up front, and people are either taking that into consideration and applying it, or they understand a gap.
Delta,
and now you have something to work with with your team. But I'm curious to know what inputs are you giving the headcount planning process and what do you tell the business? What do you tell finance and what do you tell your team going into a plan, you think you know principally others should be doing?
Jeff (41:37)
Yeah, I mean
I it's a great question, Eric. I I really try to be thinking about what do I know and what do I not know? And what am I resourced that like like this is what I've got right now for capacity, sort of where we started. This is what I know. This is what I think I know. This is what I have no idea I know.
I'm gonna go into all these conversations saying this is what I think I know. And this is what I need to really build for what I think I know. and also be honest, right?
I think a lot of times CA leaders are afraid to say, like, I've been doing this with duct tape and and glue. When I think leaders want to hear that you're actually like, hey, look, look, I'm balanced. I'm spinning plates over here. Your plate hasn't been a priority for these reasons. And if I'm wrong, call me on it. Like I'm the first one to get called on stuff. But if I'm right, let's align that like, yeah, probably didn't need you to have you know, you don't need to be building me an engine, Jeff. You needed to be building me a paper airplane. But now I need an engine.
And so I think it's it's for me it's a lot about knowing knowing where we've been, knowing what we can do, knowing what is hard. And so if someone comes to me and like, we're gonna blow this thing up, it's like, well, that's really resource intensive. So can we have a deeper conversation on it?
Eric Guidice (42:53)
I think know, we we do a segment at the end which I'll pull up shortly where I'm gonna I'm gonna pull up a few things that'll have you react to them live. Before we do that, that's the fun part. None of it's too crazy.
Jeff (43:03)
Okay. All right.
Eric Guidice (43:05)
Um before we do that, I wanna kinda end with something that's uh I don't know if it's really about headcount or not, I know it's correlated, but you have a, I think.
From a leadership quality perspective in TA. TA is a service business, right? You you're the business is asking for TA services, you are providing TA services to the business. And I I I anecdotally notice that there's like a little bit more.
I don't wanna say fear or lack of confidence, but there's a different vibe with a TA leader new in seat or um who maybe doesn't have the the the leadership experience that you have. I think it takes a certain level of confidence to like sit in a room and
Dance with the pushback. And that's why I think at the beginning of the conversation, I was curious about like the role politics played in the in your style. Or but
Jeff (43:54)
Yeah, sure.
Eric Guidice (43:55)
but how do you get to a place, where you feel comfortable having that peer level, like a truly peer level conversation in a service business, um, you know, as a TA leader? Like where do you draw that from? Because it's a noticeable quality that's I think aspirational in most.
when you you know it when you see it.
Jeff (44:13)
Yeah, I mean I used to say at Google all the time, I'm a service provider, but I'm not a doormat. And that was always sort of like an interesting way to introduce yourself to people. Um and you know, I mean the other the other thing that you didn't say it, but I'll say it. Part of that comes from everyone thinks they can lead a TA team. Like everyone thinks hiring is easy. They don't understand why this would be complicated. They don't understand Yeah, like it and it fair. From outside it looks like I don't know, why is this hard to fill this one job? And it's like, well, I don't know.
Maybe you know, depending on where you're recruiting for, like, maybe nobody wants to work here. I mean, like, there's there's realities of the situation. And I think for me, what has sort of always helped me is two things. One is having enough data and understanding of how things are working, whether that's like hardcore data or even some anecdotal, to be able to speak truth. And just say, like, hey, look, I I hear ya. But, you know, like this like you know, I had a a
manager I was working with a long time ago, who was like, you just need to find me better people. And I'm like, well, yeah, of course I need to find you better people. Like, that's my job. But like your your engineers are doing they're every time they do a phone interview, they say yes to 50% of the candidates. And then when we bring them into an on-site interview, they only hire one in 10. So your guys aren't calibrated. He's like, you don't get it. I'm like, nope, I get it. Because
If they were saying yes to one in every two, they should be hiring one in every three or four, not one in every ten. And like, do do like leaders like hearing that from TA? Absolutely not. But also, like, I'm here to be a partner and solve that with you. Because at the end of the day, I'm invested in the business doing well and less getting great people to do the job. And so I think like having enough data to speak with confidence is huge.
Eric Guidice (46:07)
I I understand what you're saying. I just tr I'm trying to find the the the lightning in a bottle so I can say, no, this is this is how you do it in TA.
Jeff (46:16)
You have to have the data. I mean like that's the thing, is you've gotta have some level of basis in fact. 'Cause if you start talking emotions and feelings, you're dead.
Eric Guidice (46:25)
Chris, I'm gonna start pulling up some articles. Uh what are your thoughts on on the the management experience as in the position that you've been in, but from from just perspective, like how do you go about getting the the executive team on your side?
Chris Mannion (46:42)
Yeah, I I think Jeff made a lot of really interesting points and it reminded me a lot of uh experience I I've had. Um I think knowing the the culture of the the management team you're working with is really helpful. Um one of the things that that that um I I found particularly helpful, I was working with this very competitive group of leaders. And what I would do is get everyone in in the room and we'd be chatting about how the recruiting performance was going. Then on the screen I would put the pass-through rates by function and just show them how their teams were performing against each other.
And I didn't need to do anything else. They were then fighting and picking each other apart. And you know, within three months, everyone's performance improved. And we didn't need to make any changes. It was it and and I think that's where the art comes in. The science is helpful. You need the data. But once you've got the data, you can then be, I don't want to say manipulative, but influential, I would say, and persuasive with with that team. So I really like and I actually think anyone that's listening that is working within the talent function who's maybe providing that data.
I think Jeff's point on being better data informed but not data-wedded is is really helpful because that's an element where um senior leaders make decisions based on data but not solely driven by data. Um, and and that's where I think a lot of analysts especially get frustrated because they see one thing in the data and they say, well, the the solution is obvious. Why don't we just go and do this thing? But they miss the big picture. And so being more curious around that and understanding how.
The stakeholders are really thinking about this is gonna be really helpful. So I Jeff, I really appreciate you sharing those stories 'cause I think they are actually a gold mine for anyone who's coming up in the space.
Jeff (48:18)
It's hard. I mean, like it's not you know, there's only sometimes there's only one one way to learn these lessons and it's like to take it the face. It's tough.
Eric Guidice (48:26)
Those are the lessons I remember. The ones learned the hard way. Um and you know what?
Jeff (48:30)
Yeah, that's a whole other podcast.
Eric Guidice (48:32)
Yeah, for for better or for
Chris Mannion (48:33)
Ha ha ha.
Eric Guidice (48:33)
worse, don't schedule, you know, for the this won't matter. I'll edit this part out anyway. But the first time I tried to get Jeff on the podcast, I had house construction. That that did not go well for me. Um, okay.
Jeff (48:42)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Guidice (48:47)
Uh new section here, or not new section, but at the end of every podcast, well one one first thank you for sharing
Jeff (48:53)
Yeah, of course.
Eric Guidice (48:55)
I think a perspective that's kind of seldom public and and and rarely as kind of like raw from uh
You
know, in an honesty to TA folks perspective. I really like kind of hearing the how you got to where you are, what's made you successful, what advice you give. I think it's uh, you know, we owe you a debt of gratitude for for what you shared. And so thank you. That's number one. Uh and so as a reward for that, we're gonna hit you with three things I've curated on LinkedIn,
A few articles that I think are worth talking about. I try to find a person or a or a thing that's popular and talk about it. And this one I'm going first, a little out of order from my intended group here. Um but let's see if it the if it's this one. Did I get it?
Jeff (49:42)
Feels like a
setup right now.
Eric Guidice (49:44)
Carrie Parks. All so it's the whole window. I got all three. So Carrie Parks um shares a survey, and I'll switch over to the article in a second, that the most stressful thing for recruiters is the AI polished resume.
Right. And I anecdotally I've seen uh there's this uh startup tofu that's focused on fraud. I myself have hired for people and I get all these perfectly matched resumes, and what I feel like it's done is just jacked up the number of phone screens I need to do at the top of the funnel in order to get somebody into like a legit hiring manager screen that I as the recruiter endorse, albeit for my own company. Um, but this this top stressor and it kind of links to this um
Article on HR dive, right? AI is the root of recruiters' biggest stressors. And it says, among other things, applications, but this kind of idea that AI is in its disruption process. I think at the other end of it, we'll have some new process, some new tool, etc., that'll help do this. But for right now, recruiters are feeling the pain. One, agree, disagree. Two, do you feel that within your business? And three, what's the solution? But
Of course at the top,
Jeff (51:00)
Um
Eric Guidice (51:01)
what's reaction?
Jeff (51:02)
yeah. Um I don't know that AI resumes would be the biggest stressor. Um I think you know, I think AI resumes are a problem. I think they're a challenge. I think you probably, depending on the size of your firm, whatever you're doing, probably oughta have technology solutions to take that stress away that aren't that complicated. whether that's like having
secondary questions in greenhouse or whatever, using a like a bright higher screen to have like an AI interview. Like I I think there's a lot of ways that are not that hard to like turn that stressor into something that you don't even think about. so yeah, I d I don't know. I don't think that one would be my biggest stressor. I I still stress about like meeting the business needs as my biggest stressor. because that's actually what I'm my job is is to to fill jobs.
Uh for yeah, for the business, right? So like that's where my stress goes generally, not to like stuff
Eric Guidice (52:01)
Right.
Jeff (52:01)
like that. Um, what was the second part of your questionnaire?
Eric Guidice (52:05)
So if if it's not a if it's, you know, it sounds like you're mitigating it, because I know that you use some of the tools that you're talking about. Um,
Jeff (52:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Guidice (52:12)
you know, but what you know, after you've identified and solved the problem, right, how do you move forward from kind of this stressor into setting up the recruiters for the next stressor, right? So like n if if it's not the AI resumes,
Jeff (52:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Guidice (52:27)
is there another part of the funnel that's getting hit?
Jeff (52:30)
Yeah, I mean I think, you know, look, I think I think there's probably not written in that article, I haven't read it, that, you know, two years ago there was the uh there won't be any recruiters anymore because of AI myth that probably still lingers like a bad hangover. Do you know what I mean? Like I think there's a lot of this out there still. And so my guess is there's a lot of AI is the boogeyman, AI is the worst, sort of like
Spinning around out there. Whereas I think, you know, AI, I mean, it's so funny. I posted on LinkedIn a while ago. Like I stuck my LinkedIn profile into Gemini and was like, how would I recruit this guy to work for my company? And it was awesome. And I was like, I wish I had this when I was an IC recruiter. Like, this is great. It was like, yo, craft an email, do that. I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, so I I think it's really about.
Giving the recruiters the space and grace to figure out how to use AI. And then also from like, you know, from my seat or you know, whatever similar seat, how are you using AI tools to cut down on some of the stressors? And now there's challenges, right? Like some tools, you don't want to get caught up in some of the lawsuits that we've seen and all that jazz. So you've got to be smart and you've got to be careful and you've got to use the right tools. But I mean, I think AI generally is net positive for TA.
And it'll fundamentally allow us to spend more time with people and less time like I gotta go click the two hundred and thirty seven people that applied last night. Like this like nobody wants to do that work. So I don't know.
Eric Guidice (54:07)
I
didn't
uh I didn't plan for this order of articles that I'll be sharing, but you did lead into the next one pretty nicely.
But before I go to the next one, Chris, what's your what's your take amongst your customers in in your world? Is is AI and the AI resumes a stressor?
Chris Mannion (54:24)
I I mean I I I think it is if you don't have the tools. We had the same problem, you know, years ago with campus recruiting. Every every campus resume looked the same. They'd take the same courses, same GPA, all good good candidates look the same. So it's like how do you then actually get the information that you need to separate them? And that's the hard part. And I won't go into details on how we used to do that, but I think there are tools available now that help you.
Eric Guidice (54:47)
The next one's from Gartner, and I'll blow up the image. but it said by 2029, 30% of the employees laid off to replacement by AI will need to be rehired, often at a significantly higher cost. And so it's arguing uh over a time series that there is a, you know.
I Chris, you may know the name of this curve. I know that there is one and it's slipping me right now. But the idea that there is a uh time series where everyone's hyping AI and making these reactions, whether they are in fact legit, we are cutting due to AI or it might be masking something else. We have seen it. but there is this prediction from Gardner that says we're gonna have to rehire everyone back. Um, Jeff, what's your take?
Jeff (55:39)
I don't know if I agree. We should just call this like hot take city. Uh I don't know that I agree. Uh
Eric Guidice (55:42)
Hate similar. uh
Jeff (55:47)
I mean I think I I mean I also don't know that I don't know, I'm gonna I'm just gonna go here, I guess. Uh I think a lot of the quote quote AI layoffs or AF reductions aren't actually AI reductions or layoffs. I think they're business layoffs. They they're calling it AI because people think that sounds good right now.
Uh so I I don't know. I think I think there's probably just a little bit of if you know, if you dated yourself, thankfully this is before me, kind of, like and thought about like the dawn of the internet, there was probably a whole bunch of disruption. And like the maybe the personal computer, you know, like there's probably a whole bunch of these disruptions that have happened and they get sort of masked in the technology, but really underneath it's the same business fundamentals, and then like
You're just hiring people that you would have hired anyway, but you've just kind of like made an excuse. I don't know. This one's a tough one for me 'cause I'm generally skeptical around these like massive disruption, but then it'll come back. I'm like, well, I mean, I don't know.
Eric Guidice (56:50)
I feel like I've seen a cycle or two where I might have gotten caught up in uh you know, but I feel like I've I've seen the movie before and I understand kind of the plot line.
It's really hard to predict,
If I did say one thing, I will say that I've been watching the transition of like recruiting operations to talent engineer. That's something that's it pertains
Jeff (57:12)
Sure. Yeah.
Eric Guidice (57:13)
to HeadCon 365, so like I'm closer to it than I would be maybe other things. But I do see these talent engineer roles getting hired at bigger dollars than recruiting operations roles, which may or may not be that old school. But I also see different profiles going in. People with more we had Brian Hong on the on the podcast, and he's like
Full on engineers going for being an engineer. Do you know what I mean? So it
Jeff (57:35)
Yeah, totally.
Eric Guidice (57:36)
commands a different and you're gonna change the profile. And so, uh, you know, I see it. I don't know, Chris, what do you what's your take on on the rehire later?
Chris Mannion (57:46)
Yeah, I I mean I I think I completely agree with Jeff. Maybe, maybe, maybe cynically I think that the layoffs are really just layoffs that that they want to happen and AI is a good excuse because then you can brief to the board, hey, we're laying all these people off, but we're investing in AI, and AI is the reason. And I don't think we're necessarily gonna see the productivity gains, or maybe in some roles we will, but I think the roles that are gonna get rehired are just gonna be the new roles that kind of emerge and it's gonna look like the company laid off 500 people, then hired back 400.
But I think there's a a a big shift in how that organization design's gonna work. And it's gonna take time. So I I I don't think it's any different from like the COVID layoffs or, you know, the kind of layoffs that we saw ten years ago. Um I think it's just
Eric Guidice (58:28)
Yeah.
Chris Mannion (58:28)
like the latest iteration of that.
Jeff (58:31)
I I think I'm also cynical from the like whole NFT phase when it was like I'm gonna buy like
Chris Mannion (58:35)
Right.
Jeff (58:36)
I'm gonna buy an image of my face and it's gonna be worth billions. It's just like it just cynicled me out on whatever's happening as the big trend. I'm like, nah.
Eric Guidice (58:46)
I have a r I have a friend who really really bought into it and didn't sell anything. We're like, just at least sell the money you put didn't lose it all. And it it is funny, but we don't want it to happen again.
Jeff (58:55)
Ha ha ha.
Eric Guidice (58:57)
I would say just, you know, selfishly as a software provider.
I feel it with the vibe coding. I'll vibe code it. And it's like, well, maybe. Hopefully in the future, you're just like, no, it didn't work, and we gotta buy it. Anyway, the last one I have here, uh, probably a little more abstract than the others, but we will do it, why not? Um, this is from Vidya Naranyanan. I hope I got the pronunciation right. She is a co-founder, so not in the recruiting space, but
She has commentary on Andreessen Horowitz laying off their portfolio recruiting team. And so, um, you know, what is the value? You're you're a publicly traded business, and I understand you might not have a venture firm providing you recruiting services. And if you do, correct me if I'm wrong. But what is is this a sign of something? Is there something else here that we should be reading into? But a VC laying off its portfolio recruiting team.
What's your take?
Jeff (59:56)
look, I think I think every VC is different. I think every business is different. I think you know, a big VCTA team
it's probably really hard to measure effectiveness of whatever that investment is. And so it I I think the take is without knowing anything about what the org did or the whole portfolio, it doesn't surprise me one way or the other. Um, because I think if you it you know, it really depends on like w the way that VC thinks about talent. And do they want to have like a centralized locust of control?
or are they more open to like just you know funding stuff and letting them figure out on their own? My my my sort of gut feel is there's probably a middle path that makes a ton of sense. Like may I don't know, maybe have an executive search team inside. You know what I mean? Like there's probably some some constructs that work, but it doesn't surprise me. I feel like that's one of those things that there's so much volatility in general, trying to build like a central service to to help twenty five fifty.
Two hundred and fifty companies is it's gotta be tough.
Eric Guidice (1:01:10)
I I think the executive side there is network. I mean I've I before I started Headcount I was consulting at Insight Partners and there were you know watching the boards operate, getting that little sneak peek behind the way it works. There is a level of network that's difficult to replicate for any individual recruiter, and it's it's not e they're not even doing it with recruiting as the primary purpose. but it sure helps. So I was surprised to see it. Um Chris, what's your what are your thoughts on
on centralized VC resource versus decentralized of the company.
Chris Mannion (1:01:45)
Yeah, I I think um just just from what I've heard and I don't know the details on that story, I saw the headlines too. Um the metric that VC seems seems to be pushing right now is revenue per employee. And the way that you maximize revenue per employee is you hire fewer people and you try and get AI to do more and more stuff. And I think what we've what we've seen, I don't know if the we have enough evidence because it's not been we we haven't seen the full end to end process yet, but startup teams are actually smaller and able to do more with with fewer people.
And I think at the point where they get to the the time they need to scale, the question then becomes, do they need a portfolio resource to do that or are they going to build their own internal talent team? So I think, you know, if you're if you're three people and you're building a, you know, a a company and trying to hit um product market fit, then you could probably get most of the way there with the three people and the people you're gonna hire are probably within your own network anyway. It's when you get to that, you know, ten to fifty where you you need outside help. But then once you get to to scale, yeah, you're just gonna build your own team and
uh yeah, I I I I think that's where I would go with that. It's more the trend of what VCs are looking at rather than this kind of like one story. And I I I wouldn't be surprised to see more of that.
Jeff (1:02:54)
Chr Chris, your point on the like smaller teams, especially now if you're starting out, I think is a really good one. You know, I've certainly talked to to friends or colleagues or folks that like they've got like one person who's running like all of TA ops, all of people ops, all of like onboarding and it's like, wow, that's like that's really impressive because they've just from day zero built agents to do ninety percent of the manual work.
And so it's much different than like rewiring, you know, the onboarding process at IBM, right? Probably probably not gonna be a zero person team. Just my example, no no shade at IBM, just a big company example.
Eric Guidice (1:03:35)
Well, that's it. That's what I have for the reaction content. And I always I I like it because it's a little little extra spice at the end, but uh I appreciate you entertaining us there. I think I always try to close out with uh some plugs, some plugs for Jeff, some plugs for toast. I see that you guys are hiring, you got a couple of cool roles. You have a TA ops role, you have a systems architect role. So if you're in the headcount space, you're in the system space, you're in the TA ops space, a lot of listeners here.
Head over the website, give it a look. It looks to be like some really cool roles that you're hiring over there. What else is going on at Toast that you want to talk about? Um, and then we'll close up with everything, Jeff.
Jeff (1:04:14)
Yeah, we're hiring across
all functions globally. So I mean, like, there's there's no shortage of roles. Um, and if you look at the website, the number of roles posted probably doesn't reflect all of it. So, like, apply or reach out to somebody. There's definitely a lot of activity going on. It's an exciting time for sure.
Eric Guidice (1:04:31)
Amazing. Are you guys gonna be out in the field doing any uh in persons or events or anything like that that people should try to go find and and be a part of? any in-person stuff with Toast?
Jeff (1:04:43)
I usually go to Transform. That's usually my one a year. I'm generally anti
Eric Guidice (1:04:46)
Okay.
Jeff (1:04:47)
I'm generally anti social, things you might not know about me. Uh so I'll probably
Eric Guidice (1:04:50)
I wouldn't have guessed it from this.
Jeff (1:04:52)
No, totally. But I'll I'll probably I'll be at Transform is generally where I go. Um I've cut down and cut back on the amount of stuff I do.
Eric Guidice (1:05:01)
What is on your what's on your reading material for the month, for the year?
Jeff (1:05:06)
Uh so I mean I read a lot, so I'm I'm on book twenty nine for the year, uh, which is pretty good. my wife's at like forty nine, so I feel like I'm terrible at reading. But um
Eric Guidice (1:05:18)
Comparison's The Thief of Joy. 29's great.
Jeff (1:05:21)
There's
twenty-nine's great. I feel pretty good about that. Um, you know, I think uh a lot of it's not business as I'm not that guy. I'm not cranking through twenty-nine business books a year. Um, I would say there there's a book I read a while ago that I recommend to everybody, uh, especially if you're a leader or aspiring leader. It's called The Big Leap. It's by a gentleman named um Gay Hendricks. Super cool book. my executive coach introduced introduced it to me when I was at Google. Um
It talks about like how everyone has these zones of operation, like your zone of incompetence. Like my zone of incompetence would be being a software engineer. Like in your zone of competence is probably being, you know, a like, I don't know, whatever, brewing coffee. And like you have like these zones of genius and zones of excellence. And so how do you find opportunities to be in the kind of work where you do your best and perform the best? And then it talks about that as a leader and how.
There's different behaviors that you have that actually hold you back. Like I thought I was gonna be a history teacher growing up, right? That was my aspiration. Never thought I'd be doing a podcast. Well, we didn't have podcasts, but you get the point. And AM radio. I thought I was gonna
Eric Guidice (1:06:29)
Yeah. Morning radio AM radio.
Chris Mannion (1:06:32)
Yeah.
Jeff (1:06:33)
be AM radio talking about it being history teacher. And and then you sort of get to this point where you where it's like
Well, in order to get to the next step in your career, you need to do different behaviors. And but you got to this point by doing these behaviors. It's a really it's just like a really cool topic to to think about. It's a great book.
Eric Guidice (1:06:53)
Yeah, I
like that. I think I I came up through two uh very sound pieces of simple advice. One, do what you're good at and two stand next to someone better than you.
And that's, you know, I I operated there for a long time. That's why I'm next to Chris. A lot of people don't know that. Uh
Chris Mannion (1:07:08)
Ha ha ha.
Jeff (1:07:09)
Ha ha.
Eric Guidice (1:07:09)
fantastic resource to be around both of you and learn a little bit more about headcount than I previously knew entering the conversation. I really appreciate your time. For any anybody considering working at Toast, uh, if this wasn't an advertisement that you'd be under good leadership, I don't know what would be. So head over to the website, try to apply for some jobs, stay tuned for the next episode of Headcount Experts. We will be having on some people analytics experts.
Chris and I will be talking our book and what's coming for next year, and we'll finish out Q4 strong like all TA folks do. but until the next episode of the Headcount Experts, a huge thank you to you, Jeff, for coming and sharing all types of Moore's laws with us. Um, but I appreciate your time. Uh, and thanks everyone for watching the Headcount Experts.
Chris Mannion (1:07:56)
Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff Moore joins the headcount experts podcast
Jeff Moore, Head of Talent Operations and Workplaces at Toast, brings executive talent acquisition experience from prior leadership roles at Google, TripAdvisor, and MathWorks to the headcount experts to help teach us how to balance year-end requisition delivery against future-year planning.
Jeff Moore’s key talking points during the headcount experts Podcast
Draw a hard Q4 cutoff. Time-to-fill doesn't bend to the calendar. A role with a 57-day average opened in late October won't close this year. At Google, roles moved to Q1 automatically and hiring managers got that news early. Nobody likes hearing it, but it's part of the job.
Hire recruiters in Q4 to get hires in Q1. New capacity takes time to pay off. Recruiters added in Q4 produce hires in Q1. If you wait until Q1 to grow the team, you won't see the extra hires until later in the year. As Jeff says, a 20% capacity bump in Q1 does not mean 20% more hires in Q1.
Plan for fixed cost and flexible delivery at once. One side of the plan controls cost per hire and satisfies finance. The other side lets the team beat a hiring plan that is "directional at best." Real capacity isn't recruiters times reqs. It depends on the kind of role: ten hires a month for some, one for others, and a "dart at the wall" for a first-ever role or a new country.
Jeff’s take on Kingsman’s Formula - Don't run the team at 100%. As utilization approaches 100%, production becomes more difficult. It also leaves no slack when the plan changes.
Bring data when you push back. "I'm a service provider, but I'm not a doormat." Jeff shares his wisdom and advice for building executive credibility as a service provider.
Let analytics change your strategy. Jeff once analyzed sourcing production to discover that 70% of hires had applied sometime in the previous three years. Once addressed, fills got faster, and the recruiters and sourcers built a stronger partnership
Finding candidates is now a commodity. A recruiter used to be worth the network they brought. Now anyone can find 10,000 C++ engineers. The value is in the candidate experience, in judging fit, and in knowing what a team is missing.
Content Creator Reactions
AI Resumes are the biggest stressor for recruiters (Link) (Article)
Author: Carey Parks & HR Drive:
Explores the impact of AI-generated resumes on recruiter screening capacity, demonstrating that automated qualification questions and interview filtering tools mitigate top-of-funnel volume.
By 2029, 30% of employees laid off will need to be rehired (Link)
Author: Gartner
Analyzes the forecast that businesses will rehire workers displaced by AI at higher costs, framing workforce restructuring as traditional economic realignment rather than net labor destruction.
Andreessen Horowitz lays off "majority" of portfolio recruiting team (Link) (Article)
Author: Vidya Narayanan, via Axios & Dan Primack:
Examines the reduction of internal talent teams within venture capital firms as portfolio organizations shift toward higher revenue per employee and lean early-stage operations.
Book Recommendation: The Big Leap. (Amazon)
Author: Gay Hendricks
Summary: Outlines the behavioral barriers of the upper-limiting problem in "The Big Leap," showing how executives must replace legacy operational habits with strategic peer engagement to scale.