Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Retrained Search, the podcast where we lift the lid on what it's really like to work retained, discuss the stories we've gathered along the way and give you all a peek behind the scenes of our amazing community and how they're getting ahead and we're rolling. Welcome everyone to today's episode of the Retain Search Show, as it's called now, and I've remembered really well. I'm really excited to be joined by the wonderful Paul Press today of Press Associates. Hello, paul.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Hey Lou, how are you doing?

Speaker 1: 0:38

I'm good. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Yeah, no, my pleasure. I really enjoyed doing these things. It's always a pleasure catching up with you. I always enjoy our conversations. So happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Good, good, thank you, and I'm excited about what we're here today to talk about, because I think I've shied away from this topic for a while and in, in fact, you were in the recent virtual mastery event where I think I'm told that I had my head in my hands after, uh, three hours of talking about this. Yeah, I think you might remember that somebody definitely commented on it, um, and I have, yeah, definitely shied away from it, but you definitely have not shied away from this topic. So tell me, if you will, a little bit to start with about for those of you that don't know who you are and what you do, who you are and what you do. And then I really want to dive into our meaty topic today.

Speaker 2: 1:45

That's good, yeah. So hi, my name is Paul Press. I'm the founder and managing partner of Press Associates and we specialize in helping private equity firms build out their value creation teams, as well as hiring in the technology function. So chief information officers, chief technology officers, product cybersecurity, all that good stuff, a lot of data and AI searches as well and I've been running Preston Associates for coming up to nine years now, and the last probably two months or so I've been really focused on kind of a refresh and rebrand and positioning the firm for what I think a future state search firm would look like and I think we're going to get onto the topic in a moment. But there's a lot of tools and a lot of resources that are available to either individual contributors or business owners that are very accessible and make the job a little bit easier to uh be a kind of expert in, so it's a really good time to uh look into this yeah, I love all of that.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Um will tell us a little bit about your journey with the evolution of tools and technology and AI, as it's been for you in recent years. Tell us a bit about where it sort of started and how things have played out from a tech perspective for you.

Speaker 2: 3:21

So I think the general theme is it's a lot of trial and error, it's a lot of uh kind of using a mix of tools, figuring out what you like, what you don't like, what features are a must have versus a nice to have, and I think it's pretty easy to get lost amongst all the different technologies. Um, so what I've tried to do in the most recent iteration and what I'm doing now is setting out a foundation of instead of just getting technology for the sake of technology, what's going to be the business impact? How's it going to either make my life easier, time more efficient, it's going to get the clients better results at the end of the day, better candidates, quicker, higher quality. So I think it's really easy to kind of get lost in the weeds here and spend money on technology just for the sake of it. So what I've been trying to do over the last four or five weeks and it's taken a lot of kind of, I suppose, kind of self-discipline here is I've tried to keep really tight to the eight stages of a successful retained search from Clockwork.

Speaker 2: 4:39

So what I've been trying to do is look at the entire search process, from concept to completion, and identify the areas where you can either outsource the task, whether it's a virtual assistant, whether you hire someone. I look at the task and see if it's easily automated, if there's a technology out there that can do it for me. I also look at whose role and whose responsibility it is. So is it me, as a partner, I need to do this particular thing, whether it's a pitch or a kickoff call? Is it the recruiter who manages the search delivery side and they need to interview candidates, do-ups, whatever it may be? Is it their responsibility? Is it the researcher or the market mapper? So I'm trying to be really rigorous and disciplined around all the tasks, what their level of impact is, and then research into the different tools that could help me there and try and rationalize the tools from that perspective.

Speaker 2: 5:44

If it's not going to be high impact or make my life easier or cut time or whatever it may be, give ultimately give the clients a better result. At the end of the day, I kind of put it to one side and focus on the things that are actually going to move the needle. So I think it's a difficult thing to do because there's so much to go at, but I'm trying to keep it as disciplined as possible. So I'll say that's the the biggest lesson. Over the last eight and a half nine years I've used probably every CRM out there, probably every ATS out there. I've done implementations, I've done data migrations. It's been an absolute headache, but that's how I'm trying to approach it.

Speaker 1: 6:24

For the uh kind of most recent iteration, I mean I've got to ask the question because you've mentioned crms and having used so many, what, what do you favor?

Speaker 2: 6:36

um, so at the moment I'm on the free trial with hubspot. Um, so I'm just using that purely as a um deal, pipeline, contacts, leads, etc. Um, yeah, we use hubspot as well, as you know.

Speaker 2: 6:51

I think it's great and the uh I follow the cto on uh linkedin and he's just like a proper ai wizard. Uh, he's like a very hands-on cto. He does like demos of like hey, look what I just coded and look what I just developed. So I think HealthSpot's one of the best ones for how it's being set up for the future and it's pretty cost-effective. You can start off with a $0 kind of subscription and test it out, see if you like it. I think that's probably the best one for a pure play. Sales CRM perspective.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Have you tried Salesforce? Have you ever used Salesforce before? Yeah, I tried Salesforce.

Speaker 2: 7:34

I find it's better for large enterprises, I think, to get it set up for search and to tailor it to what you're looking to tailor it for it's pretty expensive. You've got to have someone like onboarding with you, you've got to have someone implementing it, you've got to have, you've got to pay the setup fees and so on. So I feel and I may be wrong they may have more kind of startup.

Speaker 1: 8:01

I think I agree, yeah, we used it, um, at swift and I absolutely loved it, but that was a, yeah, massive multinational and I and you're managing you know deals that, uh, there might be four different regions involved in it and 30 different people and maybe even more. So, yeah, yeah, I totally agree, and I love hubspot and I love how HubSpot is. Um is so easy to integrate with things like note takers and, um, the AI function on it. It just keeps getting better and better. Every time I go in, it's telling it's giving me more information about you know each deal or each contact, without me even doing anything. It's just saying, hey, you might want to know this and this and this, and I'm like, fantastic, I don't even need to find the notes. Yeah, really good. And then, what about from a delivery perspective, then? Because it doesn't deliver projects from a crm perspective, does it very well, or does it?

Speaker 2: 8:59

um, I think you can tailor it to that. I think there's HubSpot consultants that can go in and kind of manually tweak it and customize it to have the kind of recruitment lens on it. But again, I think that's pretty expensive and it takes kind of two, three months. You've got to go through kind of the whole brief and getting a consultant in and all that sort of stuff. So I think it's pretty time and resource intensive. So I think from an ATS side I'm still the jury's still out on that.

Speaker 2: 9:35

I think I'm not a fan of the bull horns or any of the big platforms like that. I do really like Loxo. I think Loxo is a great platform and it covers both bases. Haven't used it in probably 12, 18 months or so, but I could see myself realistically going back to that. I think that's a really good platform and it covers both sides. It's a really easy user interface, user experience. You've got the Kanban. You can track deals really well. It's got the sourcing side of it as well where you can source candidates, and I believe they're doing a lot of good stuff with AI and integrations there.

Speaker 1: 10:14

What about Atlas? People keep talking about Atlas. Have you looked at that one yet?

Speaker 2: 10:18

Yes, so I was actually chatting to someone yesterday about Atlas and that was really cool. They. They were saying how kind of your note takers integrate directly into it. And you can even ask it questions like hey, I'm kicking off this search and it'll go. Hey, you spoke to this person like six months ago and they said this no way. That seems really cool, I need to check that one out for sure.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Yeah, yeah, I've heard a couple of good things about that from good people, so worth checking out. Um good, thank you. And what are your thoughts on ai in general? What have you been? Yeah, what are your thoughts? Let's just throw that out there.

Speaker 2: 11:01

See what happens yeah, I think it's a must-have tool. Um, I think anyone who's not learning about it and familiarizing themselves with it are going to be left behind, because it's just such a like time saver. It's such a good kind of mental check on things. You can bounce ideas off it, even if you just use it as like a kind of a shrink on the side just going, hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? It's? It's so good and I think people who aren't using it need to start and if they don't, they're going to be left behind because you can do probably two, three times the amount of work.

Speaker 2: 11:45

That's someone who's not using it. At least, I've been speaking to a load of private equity firms around. Their hiring and their deliberation isn't kind of if we're going to implement it or if we're going to use it. Their deliberation is we're definitely using it, but do we have a data and ai specialist to come in as a subject matter expertise or do we train everyone and anyone on ai? So everyone's ai capable and it's a mixed review, but everyone's looking at it going.

Speaker 1: 12:18

We need to do this, otherwise we're going to be left in the dust yeah, I mean, I couldn't't help thinking we've been using it so much recently and more and more and more, and I want to kind of dive into this as a main topic really and how and the limitations, and what works and where and where. But is it isn't it true, then, that every business in every industry is it ultimately going to be in the same situation, is either now in that situation or ultimately will be? And therefore, you know, every recruitment firm that's above probably a certain size is going to need somebody that knows their shit to come in and either teach everyone how to do it or implement it, or wouldn't. There must be aid, there must be agencies, there must be people and and there are I'm sure we've got them in our membership that just specialize in hiring for ai people. Is that not the biggest growth area for recruitment, or am I missing something?

Speaker 2: 13:29

No, definitely.

Speaker 2: 13:29

I think there's been a lot of cases out there where you've seen like the talent moves between kind of open AI and meta and Google and some of the salaries they're getting paid like in the kind of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars for the top people at those firms.

Speaker 2: 13:47

So there is like a huge appetite for those people and I think the main thing is is hiring them with a specific business case in mind and not hiring for the sake of them, because, especially in PE, they're very kind of focused on the numbers. They're focused on returns and investments and the biggest worry that they have is, if we hire someone, how do we guarantee impact and value creation? So I think that's going to be the big thing, not just like kind of spinning your wheels and hiring someone for the sake of having that person, but looking at similar to what I mentioned earlier looking at the whole life cycle, for example, of an executive search and picking up the pieces where you can have quick wins, high impact. I think that's going to be the key thing. But there's a huge demand for those people across the board. Um, you're seeing people come out of university with two, maybe three years experience getting 200 300k based salaries like it's a huge demand there and the competition is fierce for it wow, amazing, amazing.

Speaker 1: 14:56

But I can totally um see the other. Even if, for example, you know you talk about your clients then having two you know leanings, one, do we bring somebody in to just implement it across the board or do we train everybody else on how to do it themselves? You know, teach them how to fish, and all that, and certainly in in our business, in our team. It started as one person kind of starting you know who that would be, sarah just like going this is cool, this is cool, we can use this and then gradually, the rest of us going oh yeah, I like that, I like the look of that, and now we've all kind of all got our own little things going on and we're all kind of learning from each other. And it's much more because it's there's no kind of fixed process is there for using it or like start here and then end up here. There is no final destination is there because, like, who knows?

Speaker 1: 15:48

where it's going to go and there's definitely no straight. It's not a linear journey that we're finding that we kind of have to feel our own way through it and our own, and just learn it in our own way, and that's meaning that it's more. We're getting maximum efficiencies in our own little ways by doing that, rather than trying to force our heads around something or a way of using it that just doesn't make sense for us.

Speaker 2: 16:11

Yeah, yeah. But I think the funny thing is is that it's kind of like a catch 22 situation, because if you are apprehensive of using it, you're missing kind of the best tool to help you use it in the future. Using it, you're missing kind of the best tool to help you use it in the future. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I do is I plug into chat gpt and go, hey, I've got this problem, how can ai or how can you help me solve it? So it's kind of like, yeah, catch 22, where if you're not interested in using or you haven't used it yet and you're worried about how to use it and you kind of paralysis by analysis, you're kind of shooting start there.

Speaker 2: 16:48

Yeah, you can just start by going hey, this is what I'm thinking, and it will start formulating ideas and so on. Um, even just like a little step on hey, I'm wanting to use chat gpt more. Give me some pointers. This is who I am, this is what I specialize in. So even baby steps are kind of hugely forward.

Speaker 1: 17:12

Yeah, I was like my mind was blown when Sarah showed me custom GPTs, which is my new best friend, but I was struggling like writing the instructions for a custom GPT that was going to be, you know, a uh, in my case, a playbook creator, right, and so she goes. Well, you just ask chat GPT to create the instructions for your custom GPT, so you don't even need to write the instructions and um, and I love, you know, I love that. So let's, um, how do you? I want to touch on this only briefly, really, because I want to kind of focus on where you sit in the market. But in terms of the recruitment industry in general, I have seen that the way that AI is used and leveraged at lower levels lower levels, lower level, higher volume recruitment is different to how it's used at the top end of the market. Can you speak to that a little bit and share an experience or what you're seeing there?

Speaker 2: 18:23

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 18:24

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Speaker 2: 18:50

Right, let's get back to the good stuff I think, like historically, the difference between lower level or kind of contingent, rpo, volume-based search versus high level exec search is it's a completely different service, it's a completely different relationship with the client, it's a completely different process that you go through, different standards etc. So AI needs to be tailored to those things higher volume, contingent or RPO market. There's a lot of tasks there that are highly repeatable, very process-driven, very volume-based. So from what I understand, actually AI and automation has the biggest impact there. I'm seeing a lot of data and AI professionals going. I can actually streamline those processes by 80%, almost 90%. So I think the impact of AI and automation and machine learning is huge.

Speaker 2: 20:03

On the repetitive tasks, volume driven approach, very process driven you want to do this background check? Okay, you got to fill out this drug test form, whatever it may be Like. Those sorts of things are very repeatable and very easy to automate, whereas in the exec search world it's a highly white glove tailored approach. Firms are paying bigger fees, so they're wanting kind of a personalized service, very customized to what they're looking for, and they want to be kind of at the center of the picture so they can control the outcome. So with the exact search world. I think the process can still be made more efficient and streamlined. I think you can probably bring it down between 25 to 50 percent in timeline. So, as searches usually take 100 days days, maybe they take 50 to 75 days.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Um, I just think it's a less easy um use case to be like. This happens every single time in every single search. There are things obviously like kickoff meetings and creating scorecards, creating job descriptions, all that sort of stuff. There are instances where there are repeatable uh actions without throughout the process. But it is a more tailored, personalized uh approach and it makes sense. People pay more money for it. It's a higher impact role, um, there's a lot more uh spotlights on it and it needs to be custom to the particular situation. So, uh, that's where I'm seeing kind of the differences between retained exec search and then your kind of lower level, higher volume contingent rpo world yeah, I need to need to.

Speaker 1: 21:50

In fact. Um man, I'm the guy that I speaking to was saying that he sees exactly the same. This guy that's been working on AI for 12 years. He says that at the lower end, high volume, they call, they refer to it as AI native, they refer to it as AI native. So AI agents are doing the vast majority of the work now, and then at the mid and senior level, they refer to it as AI assisted.

Speaker 2: 22:25

Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:26

And then at the top level it's AI augmented.

Speaker 2: 22:31

Right, yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Which I think is quite nice. Yeah, so it's kind of consolidating information, sifting through it, Right. Yeah, I like that. What? Where have been the most profound either transformations of process or time saving been for you so far in the AI or, you know, tools and tech journey?

Speaker 2: 23:11

Yeah, I think note takers 100, 100 like they are the biggest time saver ever. And I think, more importantly than the time that they save with writing up your notes is that you can sit there and just fully engage in the conversation. You don't have to be scribbling anything down or oh, I need to remember that, remember that, or oh, that was a good point. Let me make sure I have that in the write-up. It captures everything, whether it's a transcript with the full conversation, whether it's just the high-level takeaways, action items kind of summarization. I think they're fantastic across every single conversation, whether it's a pre-screen call with a candidate, a kickoff meeting, a deep dive, competency-based analysis, like the whole note-taking application across every single conversation is just so valuable. You can keyword search it, you can have it automated to join every single meeting that you're in. Um. It provides your notes via email, um. I just think that's the biggest time saver by an absolute mile I completely agree.

Speaker 1: 24:22

Um, I was telling george I, um, I asked we use fathom and it's been getting better and better. Again. I you go into it now and it's like what do you want to know about the conversations you've had? This is a new feature that only arrived yesterday or the day before and it's great and I was like I had a conversation with someone about this topic and I'm not sure when and I'm not sure where. Could you have a look and see if you can find it? It found the conversation. I couldn't even remember who I was having the conversation with or when I'd had it, and that ability to be able to recall the information that you need when you need it is absolutely invaluable. Yeah, and to be able to, like you say, give that discussion your absolute full attention and be thinking and absorbing the information. And think about the integration of uh note takers. Um, our note taker integrates with hubspot. So do you use a similar sort of arrangement where your note taker integrates with your crm or your system and the notes automatically get uploaded then? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:35

So at the moment, um, I've got everything on the google tech stack. So, um, gmail, google drive, etc. And uh, gemini hooks up with everything kind of similar to microsoft copilot. So, um, everything will call my google gemini note taker joins and you can either record video transcript both neither and you get an email right after saying here you know it's, it saves it to the calendar meeting notes as well as a document. You can have it hooked up straight into hubspot. So, yeah, that's incredible. The only bad thing about gemini is it won't join zoom meetings or teams meetings. So I'm currently looking into, uh, how to uh get note takers for that, whether it's a fathom quill meta view.

Speaker 1: 26:26

I'm kind of looking into all those guys to see and I think they're all good in different cases, aren't they? Lots of people say quill's great with loxo because it integrates and it all goes directly into loxo, but it's also geared towards candidate assessment and client briefings. Um, fathom is brilliant for hubspot because it integrates and it all goes directly in, but it's not geared towards candidates and clients in the same way that metaview and quill are, and most people have been raving about Metaview. When we did the poll at the last event, I think Metaview came out on top, but it changes all the time, doesn't it? And it does depend on your own personal kind of preferences and tech style.

Speaker 2: 27:05

Yeah, I think it was. Maybe was it last year in Richmond, I think. Metaview was like the talk of the town and then when we went to LA, everyone was talking about Quill Quill. Yeah, so you're right, it kind of flip-flops between different platforms. But yeah, you've just got to figure out what works best for you and the rest of your system.

Speaker 1: 27:26

Yeah, and have you experimented with agents yet, or?

Speaker 2: 27:31

bots no, not yet, with agents yet or bots? No, uh, not yet. Um, I just got a notification this morning when I uh um powered up and went on to chat gpt and it said, hey, chat gpt now has agents. Would you like to try it out? So it's on my to-do list, um, but uh, yeah, that's very interesting. Have you dived into that as well?

Speaker 1: 27:53

not yet. I think we're very close, though, because we're basically going to have a, an agent that is well me in the program, that's loaded with all my information, all my knowledge, all my experience, all my calls, you know, all my information, you know, exposed to things that can then answer questions that you can go. What would Lou do in this situation, or what would be the advice? What should I do here? And we're going to experiment with that first. So, yeah, and Sarah can't wait, she's well excited about it, I bet yeah. So, after note takers, what would be the second kind of best development in ai, or your, or use of it? That's made a big difference to what you do and how you do. Maybe it's an application of it rather than an actual tool yeah, I think.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Um, well, there's two things here to note. So, first of all, the one that I've actually used is the custom GPTs. I think they're absolutely incredible. You can set them up. You can set up your normal GPT to have the rules and like what type of tone and tell you about itself, tell it about you and the settings, and it can kind of give you a general tailored approach to all the chats. But the custom GPTs are so good. You can have it as a subject matter expert and whatever it may be. I have one for like fitness, for like coaching, for private equity, for exec search, for LinkedIn posts, for content writing, for absolutely everything. So I think having those set up is just absolutely incredible.

Speaker 2: 29:41

The second thing which I need to test out is someone mentioned that Canva is now fully integrated into chat GPT. So before, when you went on chat GPT, it would say, hey, would you like me to create this in canva for you? You say yes, please, and it'll go. Here are the instructions open up canva, go to this page, blah, blah, blah. But apparently now canva's just released a new update where it's absolutely fully integrated in, so you can. Haven't checked it out. Yeah, but I think this would be very good. You can be create a powerpoint deck for a presentation with company a looking for a chief executive officer based in new york. These are the details and I want the deck to be 10 slides. It needs to show my process.

Speaker 2: 30:29

Blah, blah, blah and it'll actually pump out a full deck for you in canva so I think that's going to be really interesting, because I know things like gamma do that already.

Speaker 1: 30:40

But I don't know gpt power no yeah, I have, yeah, I have to I have to take it from chat gpt and then put it into gamma.

Speaker 1: 30:50

um, you can do it in gamma, but it's limited's limited, it isn't as powerful and also Gamma's got limitations in terms of the design. There's, like you know, a finite number of designs and the experience you know Sarah and Kirsty are like no, it's Canva all the way. So the reason Canva's too much for me is it needs too much manual input. So if I can do it straight from ChatGPpc, that'll be a game changer for me as well.

Speaker 2: 31:16

yeah, I agree um, like you can put in canva and I'm sure you guys have done it already like your brand templates like these are the colors we use, these the fonts, etc. Etc. These are the logos. So I believe I haven't tested out yeah, I only about this yesterday, but I believe you can be like, put this in our branding, use our brand toolkit template, whatever we call it. This is what I want and it will pump it out perfectly. So I'm excited about that. I think that'd be great, but haven't used it yet. So I'll go back to the customer.

Speaker 2: 31:53

The best secondary tool that I use.

Speaker 1: 31:55

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm glad I'm not that far behind you. I think I feel like I've been a long way behind you for years and now I'm finally starting to get my head around it all. I love the custom GPTs as well. I like knowing that it knows everything already about that thing and so I can just ask it one everything already about that thing, and so I can just ask it one question. I don't need to give it any more information or give it context, and it remembers everything as well. Sometimes I have to say, like you know, remember this, like can you use this as a reference? But it's not perfect, is it? There are limitations. Have you spotted limitations, or what are?

Speaker 2: 32:37

you experiencing in terms of not just with custom GPTs but with you know, with AI in general. Yeah, I think it's a good starting point. I wouldn't say it would ever pump out a finished product for you. I think go into using these things as, hey, this will kind of streamline it. 80 80 and I just need to do the final 20, and I kind of think of it as if you're like a partner in an accounting firm or a law firm. You have all these associates that do all your research and drafting documents and all this sort of stuff putting the debts together, and it kind of goes up the chain of command and the partner goes tweet that, tweet that, tweet this.

Speaker 2: 33:18

I feel like that's chat gpt. It kind of covers all the ground bases for you. It puts all the kind of pieces together. It does 80 90 percent of the work and you're there as the reviewer to go. We need to change this, we need to do that. So I don't think anyone should ever use it, as this is going to do 100 of the job for me. It's like 80 90 there and you can go. Hey, I don't think the tone's right, or where'd you get this data from? It looks off to me. Can you double check it? Um, it always needs a bit of tweaking, but uh, it'll get you most of the way there yeah, he's.

Speaker 1: 33:53

Yeah, I agree. And manan said um, ai is very good at breath, but it's not brilliant at depth. Yeah, yeah, and I like that summary as well and, and I agree, I find the more you give it, the better it is as well.

Speaker 1: 34:09

Yeah so it does improve. But sometimes you have to say I have to say, yeah, this is great, but I think you might have forgotten this piece, yeah, or it just hasn't included that bit, like I would never put something straight out without going through it, but it's given me the framework and it's given me the basis and it's done the heavy lifting on the organizing things into, like you say, intersections and manageable, a manageable, you know, and this a really good draft, like you say, like 80 percent of the way there, and then I can, I can do the rest. Um, what do you? What do you see? I mean you probably I don't know how many you know people with, but in the people, a lot, I would imagine, in the people that you interact with then If we could kind of put people into three brackets, if we could put people into the never not really doing anything with AI at all, maybe putting, you know, having asked it I don't know about a recipe, or maybe asked it, you know, maybe experimented with it with their friends or whatever, or personal stuff, or maybe put the odd email in and said, reword this and said reword this.

Speaker 1: 35:26

So the people that are kind of in the middle bracket of yeah, they've got chat gpt on their desktop and they're maybe asking it to reword things or, you know, check facts and figures or maybe get ready for a meeting. So those people that are probably more like you, that are starting to experiment with bots and, you know, looking at streamlining workflows and where, what percentage of the people that you interact with fall into each of those categories?

Speaker 2: 35:51

yeah, I would say mainly in the first two. Um, I think there's a lot of people who are unsure about using it and they don't know what they don't know, so they've kind of shied away from it. And then there are others that just use it for pretty basic stuff. Um, I think I actually fought between kind of bracket two and three. I'm not using it as much as, uh, I could be, but, uh, like the ai agents, for example, I think that's a really interesting piece that's maybe been around for a few months or so now, which I haven't like spent a weekend and just really kind of soaks everything up on that. So I think mainly people fall into the second bucket, um, with the first bucket coming next, and then I think there's even like a fourth bucket in there which is like your actual data AI people who do the coding and all that stuff behind it. So, but then that falls into the more I'm a data AI expert versus I'm a search expert that utilizes AI.

Speaker 1: 37:00

But I'd say it's pretty primitive right now and even in the private equity space, even with your clients.

Speaker 2: 37:07

Yeah, it's getting better and they're looking at it for a range of different applications, whether it's streamlining their own internal processes. So, at the fund level, within the private equity firm itself, people are looking at okay, how do we use AI to source deals? How do we use AI to do NDA redlining or due diligence, questionnaires and legal documentations and things like that, or investor reports, or we need to provide this LP and update on our quarterly KPIs. How do we utilize it for that? And then there are other PE firms that go okay, we need to advise our portfolio companies on how they're using it and how they can streamline things, cut costs, et cetera. So I think it's similar to what I was mentioning earlier.

Speaker 2: 38:04

You can get lost in it pretty easily. So it's itemizing all the areas that you can kind of have impact, kind of looking at high impact to low impact and ranking them and then going systematically through them and figuring out what's going to move the needle the most. Um. But I feel like a lot of people just sit there and go, oh my god, there's a lot here and, uh, I'm not a data ai expert, so I have no idea what to do. Um, I haven't even thought about asking gpt to help me with this.

Speaker 2: 38:35

I'll continue doing it myself so I think there's, uh, most people who are pretty primitive with it um, but I think in the startup world, like the small businesses um, there's a lot more adaptation there. I think the bigger companies are a little bit slower to um adapt and they have their kind of enterprise governance like. These are the systems we use.

Speaker 2: 39:00

We've got to get it approved by legal compliance compliance whatever it may be like how does it affect our current CRM and ATS? So I think the big guys are slower to adapt because they've got more hurdles to jump over and hoops to jump through. So I feel like the adaptation is more prevalent in the startups, one-man bands, the 5-15 type search firms. So I think that's why it's really exciting to be in this space at the moment, because you can kind of mess around and test things out and figure out what works, what doesn't. There's no kind of someone in the C-suite going, hey, you can't do that, it's against our policies. So I think it's a really exciting time for kind of smaller search firms to potentially leap for some of the bigger guys just with tech enablement.

Speaker 1: 39:49

Yeah, I mean you made a really, really important comment just before we started recording, so I'll bring you back to that. The impact on us as small business owners and in particular, in the search space how do you see that people entering the market?

Speaker 2: 40:14

Yeah, I think it's a really good time to enter the market right now, I mean with the use of AI. Even if you have no idea what to do, just use ChatGPT as like a shrink, as I was saying earlier, and be like hey, this is my career today. Here's my LinkedIn profile. I'm thinking of setting up a business, an exec search. Do a market analysis, tell me which markets are growing, which geographies, which sectors, which industries. Look at my experience and go where do I specialize? I'll name you a few clients that I've worked with and searches, and give me a full go-to-market strategy. Tell me what I need to do, from incorporating a business to setting up bank accounts.

Speaker 2: 40:56

So, um, it's such a good time where you can, like, literally within a couple of hours, have a full business plan written out, action items, checklists. Um, you can even kind of use canva, that plug-in with canva, to go hey, set up a brand for me, color scheme, I'm sure there are websites out there that do website creations, logo creations. So, like, you could do what normally takes months to do in a matter of a couple of days, if that maybe even a day. So, and the cost is relatively small. Um, I mean, chat gpt is 20 20 bucks a month for the pro um like. You could get away with maybe a thousand bucks and you're off to the races. You've got your company incorporated. You get your website done like it's uh, absolutely fantastic time to start a small business yeah, yeah, I completely agree.

Speaker 1: 41:52

It's so exciting. Um, you know, we speak to and ultimately work with a lot of, uh, individuals that are bound by the constraints of bigger businesses and have been for many years, and I really hope that and a lot of them we speak to they're not invested in you know, and then they want to move to retain their company, doesn't support it, they don't fund it. They would love to become executive search consultants, as you have have done, and yet it's been prohibitive for them to be able to set up on their own. It's there's too much, it's too scary, it's too much of an investment and now it, like you say, it is so much easier.

Speaker 1: 42:40

Um, yeah, I, yeah, I mean I you. When you made that move, you were quite intent on I know we've talked about this before in previous conversations about making sure that you went down a retained route. Yeah, would that change for you in terms of your advice to people entering the market or those experienced recruiters that are thinking now's maybe a good time for me to set up? Was that the right decision for you? Would you advise other people to consider different options?

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yeah, I would say it really depends on what the individual is interested in. I mean, I was always excited about doing senior level strategic hiring. Senior level strategic hiring um, it was like a very easy opportunity for me to be the dumbest person in the room and to chat with people who are just like absolute rock stars at what they do and you can just kind of learn so much from them without actually like you don't really have a place there, like you're just like kind of introducing yourself to them and be like, hey, I specialize in exec search, I can help with, uh, finding a new job. So it was a really easy entry point for me to just like learn and interview people who I deemed really interesting. So I think it really just depends on what your interests are and then walking it back to kind of what the market needs, what the best service lines are, where there are gaps, analyzing it, what you've done before, where you see the industry going.

Speaker 2: 44:10

So I wouldn't recommend Retain to everyone and anyone because it's a very tailored service for specific searches. But I would say, look at the market, look at where the needs are and if an RPO model works and you really enjoy the volume side, go for it. If you want to get kind of the bigger, lumpier fees, more white glove service, then tailor the retained search model to that. So I think it depends what you're interested in. There's no point in pitching retained search for like a, an associate level, grad or something where you can stick an advert out there and you have thousands of applicants like it's uh kind of different horses for different courses. So I'd say, really dive deep on actually what interests you, because some people hate the seniority level, like some people go look, I don't want to be chatting to CEOs or whatever. I don't find it interesting. I don't feel I speak their language. I like the blue collar stuff, entry level on the shop floor. So it just depends on what you're interested in.

Speaker 1: 45:17

Good advice, great advice, and seeing as we're having this conversation, we have got a little bit longer. And seeing as we're having this conversation, we have got a little bit longer I really would love to find out a little bit about the abilities and capabilities and limitations that you've experienced so far for AI in sourcing candidates. In sourcing candidates, I hear real mixed reviews on mixed experiences, on there being an absolute end product or solution from an ai perspective, that that will mean that every stone's unturned right and and that obviously changes the game quite a lot in research, uh, in the world of search, but then I hear other people quite strongly disagree with that. What's your experience there in that sphere and where do you stand on sourcing, using AI for sourcing?

Speaker 2: 46:35

I think it just makes it faster. I don't think there's any kind of difference to the quality of Canada candidate you can identify because at the end of the day, you're using the same data. I mean, if you do a linkedin search, if you're searching through your crm, uh, if you're using something like indeed or whatever it may be like, you're still doing keyword searches. You're still utilizing the data that's already out there. So if that candidate doesn't have artificial intelligence in their resume and you're using that as a keyword, they're not going to come up. So I think it's definitely expedites the process, it definitely streamlines, it makes it a lot quicker.

Speaker 2: 47:21

Um, and it helps you with hey, create a boolean search to find this person or people, gpt, for example, you can upload a job description and it will scan it and go hey, this is a search, uh, criteria, these are the filters that you need to use. So it helps you do it faster, but I think you still need, like I was saying earlier, it does 80 90 of it, but you still need to spend time and tweak it and go, hey, this isn't right. Or hey, we're finding lots of these types of candidates, actually want these types of candidates. So it does help a lot. It is a big time saver, but I still think it needs, like, the subject matter expertise of a researcher or a search professional to go in and go hey, we're missing the mark here, we're missing mark there. So, um, I think the speed side definitely, but the quality is still dependent on the data that the people input as their resume, their linkedin profile, whatever it may be keywords, keywords.

Speaker 1: 48:21

So um, yeah, interesting, even with tools like clay yeah yeah, yeah, interesting, yeah, very good, and, like you say, at the lower level, where it's blue collar or it's entry level, that doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't matter if you miss those people that have not got those things in their cv, because there's hundreds of them anyway, yeah. Whereas when you get to the senior level and there isn't, then you do need that human input to be able to do those searches for things that are misspelled or omitted, or yeah all the information isn't where it should be.

Speaker 1: 48:57

Yeah, very interesting, very interesting. What, um? Before we finish, what is there anything you think we should have covered or we should have talked about?

Speaker 2: 49:08

that would be helpful that we haven't spoken about today, I think, going back to the good time to start a search firm. I was talking to someone yesterday or the day day before and they've just started their own firm.

Speaker 2: 49:26

They're part of the mastery uh group and I think I know who you mean yeah they were saying, um, I was a little bit worried about being part of big company, big brand, big presence. They had all the back office sorted from invoices, from best practices, from crm, all this sort of stuff, all the admin side of things and once they started up by themselves they realized whether it was manual or through using gpt or whatever it may be like, the actual what they bring to the market as a value is the person and the relationships that they have. And search is one of those businesses where it does vary case to case. But I think the majority, especially in exact search, is people follow the person. They don't care if you've got a corn fairy logo in the background or if they've got kind of uh, kind of myself and I incorporated, like it doesn't make a difference, uh, they follow the person and the quality and the standard that they provide the service. So I think it's a little bit scary to start up your own business, but especially in search, I don't think the, the brand and the presence of the prior company has that much of an impact.

Speaker 2: 50:44

Obviously if you're doing rpos and you've got to go through vendor management and it takes you years to get on procurement and you've got approved vendors and all this sort of stuff, governance etc. That's a different thing, but I think uh makes me sure I hate a lot of stuff. Exactly, yeah, so, but I, exactly, yeah, so I think with AI and chat, gpt, it's so easy just going. Okay, what financial kind of infrastructure do I need? Okay, use QuickBooks or Xero. Okay, write up an invoice for this, write up terms of business, like everything you think is like time intensive and takes a lot of time. You need a big company for you, just don't. So I think that's the big thing, kind of now's a great time to take that risk and it's so low cost that it's great.

Speaker 2: 51:34

And you've got so much potential to leapfrog competitors if you embrace the the technology. So I think that's a big thing to note because a lot of people get kind of paralyzed by like, oh, I have an owning brand, who's going to do my payroll invoicing, etc.

Speaker 1: 51:50

But it's not as labor intensive or much of a hurdle as you think it is yeah, I agree, and, incidentally, one of the first things that in fact, it might have, yeah, be in. The first thing that he did was join the um been the first thing that he did was join the um, join the mastery group, to have the only thing that was missing, which was that he was he was going to miss, which was the peer group and the um, the shared or collective intelligence around the human side of it. Um, and that's, of course, you know, where you bring so much value to the group that we have, uh, together, but also, I'm sure, get you know as well, um, and that's all you need, isn't it? You don't, you don't need big company backings or big company brand. I completely agree.

Speaker 1: 52:41

I remember I left one of the firms that I'd been working for and I was thinking, you know, I don't, I wasn't sure what I was going to do next, but one of the first things that happened to me was I got a call, I don't know, three or four weeks later from a firm that I've been developing years earlier in actually a different business, saying I've got a search for you and I was well, I'm not actually working for anyone. And he was like well, I don't care yeah.

Speaker 2: 53:08

Can you do it or?

Speaker 1: 53:08

not, you know, and I suddenly realized that that's, you're exactly right, they, they didn't, they weren't interested in who I was working for, they were interested in me. So, yeah, we'll leave the audience with that, empowered to to do with your and create the life that you want for yourself. To um, to know that it's possible and there are many people doing it and doing it incredibly successful. And if you know you've got all the things at your disposal to be able to to do it simply and really cost effectively and very successfully. And if, on that, you want some company in a peer group, then there's certainly one for you with us and many others if you're contingent inclined. It's been so good to talk to you, paul.

Speaker 2: 53:56

We don't speak enough.

Speaker 1: 53:58

We tend to get intense times at the mastery events, but I know I'm talking to you again tomorrow because we're working on the AI kind of enablement project together and I can't wait to show you what I've been doing, so that'll help you too, those of our listeners. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for your time, paul. It's always amazing, amazing to have you on the show, and best of luck with everything that you've got going on.

Speaker 2: 54:22

Thank you, luke, and best of luck with everything that you've got going on. Thank you, luke. Always good to be here and always good catching up. You're right, we need to speak more Well.

Speaker 1: 54:29

That's another episode of Retrained Search the podcast in the bag. Thanks for listening to our wild tales, LinkedIn controversies and our top tips on how to sell and deliver Retained Search. Get involved in our next episode. Send in your questions and share your experiences with us by emailing podcast at retrainedsearchcom. And don't be shy. Connect with us on LinkedIn and come and say hi, we don't bite, unless you're a Shrek firm, that is.

Speaker 1: 54:58

We want to say a special thank you to our retrained members for sharing what's working for them right now and innovating new ways to grow and evolve. It's an incredible community. If you're wondering what exactly we mean when we mention our communities, well, we have two separate programs. Our Search Foundations program is for recruiters who want to learn how to sell and deliver retained search solutions consistently, and we have our Search Mastery Program. That's for business leaders or owners already at 50% retained or more and looking to scale and grow and structure their search firm. We cap memberships to these programs to protect the integrity of the community. If you want access, just talk to us. Okay, thanks for listening. We'll be back very soon with another episode of Retrained Search the podcast.