Hire slow does not mean take a long time

Welcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top executive leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. That's crappy. Now let's jump in and get started with our next guest.

Welcome to the Build by People podcast. Today I'm joined by Shannon Russo. Shannon, thanks for joining us today.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. To start off, I'd love to hear about your career journey. You know, the unexpected turns, what ultimately led you to where you are.

That's actually an interesting one because I have children that are out of college, so it's funny that that has become a topic when it never was. So my background is finance, which is not traditional for someone running a company, or at least not every time. And how I got into finance was I am terrible at math. And so my very first job out of college I took because I thought it was going to help me get better at understanding math than certainly I did through high school and college, which now, when I say it, is a bizarre way to make a decision, but that's how I got into finance. I sort of backed into it and did that. And my first job was on Wall street, got tons of experience, worked really hard, and learned that I could use Excel to see a company. And that was like, life changing for me. I was like, okay, there's a good use for this math, and I can use something called Excel to make that work perfect. So that was it. And started kind of on the finance side, and that was really a critical part of my journey. And then ended up being the VP of finance for a big company in the spaces that I'm in now and sort of saw what I thought might be a better way instead of the big company way. And so 20 or so years ago, liquidated all of my retirement and started Kinetics.

Wow. It's a gamble that paid off, though, it looks like. So that's great.

So on the other side, feeling positive about it, definitely, when I say that, sometimes I'm like, that sounds super crazy. But it worked out. It worked out. So

that's phenomenal. Well, great. Well, you know, tell me a little bit about your top priorities right now. Being a business owner.

Yeah, so it's super interesting, those whole Covid post. Covid mayhem up and down, at least for a lot in and around my space. And not just that. So for us right now is we're sort of back on the positive trajectory because we had a huge rise after Covid with just right. Everything sort of shut down. So the comeback, but now really trying to use technology to make our processes more effective and deliver better for our clients sort of across the spectrum. So that's really been the biggest. And then don't laugh because the second one was the main business of what we do, outsourced recruiting. We are locked and loaded SOPs, all the things that small little 10% of everything else, the back office and all of that, nothing. So the project that's going on right now, hard this year is everything else. Getting those SOPs in place and processed so that it can be replicated and doesn't have to be remembered. I would say that's kind of the bane of small business is you focus on your thing. We did that. You don't focus on all the other things. And so we're trying to get better at the other things.

Oh, that's awesome. You know, as you look after the course of your career, what's one initiative you rolled out that you're really proud of?

So sort of goes with what I was talking about a little bit. And that is really using technology for us to deliver more effectively and then secondly to sort of get critical insights that we weren't getting before. So right now expecting around a 10% pickup on the team through using technology to get rid of some of the repetitive tasks and that kind of stuff. And then the second is analyzing data to sort of meet where the client is or where we are. So if you think about, you know, the main business we have on the back end is recruitment. It's a sales funnel. So now we can give you more jobs of your skill set when you are at the end and you have a bunch of jobs in offer. So we can kind of keep you full and doing what you do best if you're a recruiter. And so that has been what we've used sort of technology and reporting to get to that improvement. And so super proud of that. We used to, when we were little, we'd manage the desk manually. And what I mean by that is, if you're a recruiter, how many jobs can you handle? And so managing that, we did it with people to do. And so now the system recommends based on where your jobs are in the pipeline and all of that. It looks like Shannon can take on some new jobs because she's got four jobs in offer. Right. She's kind of at that next stage and so doing that kind of stuff. And then our weekly goals by recruiting. So really proud of sort of those using data to enable enhancements. So we're focusing on stuff in the fringes more where things really tend to go off the rails, if that makes sense.

That's great. What tools or platforms are most essential for your operations today?

Yeah, so it's relatively simple. We use a Salesforce based app on the front end for our ats, believe it or not. So I think all of the great things that Salesforce is good for, plus solid built. So it's a system we buy and then we use Great Plains, which now is a Microsoft product and then we're a Microsoft stack on the back end. So in some ways simple but full connectivity front to back, which for us was a critical thing when you have high volume, if that makes sense.

If we sat down again 12 months from now, Shannon, what would you have hoped has changed most within your organization, within your business?

That's a great question. One of the things that we've really been working for is trying to figure out there's been an explosion of great tools, but man, right. Where do you plug it in and how do you get there? And so we've been really working on where are all the places we can utilize things like AI to enable success. But it's not an all or nothing. And so the team suggesting tools and then our ability to sort of vet that, that and then executing on that, if that makes sense, is that's really what I would be the most proud of. I will tell you that we launched a new version of our applicant tracking system, which is the main thing that runs our business. And our ability to get that 10 to 15% improvement by delivering so the team can execute quicker and easier for them and that follow up, that'll be the thing that I'm the most proud of. And then if there's anything else we can do on the front end using sort of, I'll say AI target for us, those would be the things.

If you could leave one piece of advice for our community, maybe something you wish you had known earlier in your career, pitfall you ran into or just on the path to leadership that you took, you know, what would that piece of advice be?

For our community, there are so many. But given that what we do is hiring, I'm gonna leave you with one that never fails, is what I would say to you. And that is this a reminder to hire slow and fire fast. I'm gonna give you two sides to that. So. And hire slow does not mean take a long time. I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk about that in a second. But the fire fast, you tell me if you know a person ever, a leader who said, man, I wish I had held onto that person before I fired him a little bit longer. And so the lies we tell ourselves and those kinds of things. The fire fast is a key component, and often it's tied to the higher slow. So let me take it back the other way. People don't hire because they're like, oh, then I have to figure out and find somebody else and do that. And that's so hard, and it takes so long and. Right. Those kinds of things. So then they end up going too fast. And so when I say hire slow, here's what I mean. I mean, decide critically what you need to hire and all stakeholders, if there's more than one, or if it's a narrow job, easier. But spend the time before you start hiring to figure out what you need, what success looks like, what not success looks like before you start hiring. Then the process can go fast, because then you know what to look for. You understand when you see it, you have a critical rubric, right. To figure out success. And so while I'm saying higher slow, I don't mean go slow.

I love that. That's great advice, Shannon. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Build by People podcast. You're a wealth of knowledge. Thanks for all that you're doing.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.