Data Over Drama: Building Strong Partnerships
- Ashley King
- Feb 3
- 34 min read
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Episode Summary:
Season One | Episode 27
Ben Abear, Scaled Analytics & Innovation Manager at Adobe
In this episode of Talentless, Desiree Goldey and Ashley King sit down with Ben Abear to talk about why modern hiring breaks when decisions are driven by feelings instead of facts.
Ben shares how data builds trust, strengthens partnerships with the business, and helps recruiters move from order takers to true strategic partners — even on small or under-resourced teams.
We dig into what hiring metrics actually matter, how qualitative insight adds critical context, and where AI can support (but not replace) good decision-making.
What you’ll hear:
Why data is essential in today’s hiring landscape
How trust with the business is built through clarity
The role of qualitative data in better hiring decisions
How small teams can still leverage data effectively
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Ashley King (00:06)
Recording in progress.
Desiree Goldey (00:08)
Hey folks, welcome back to Talentless. It's an exciting day if you've been through the winter storm.
you're staying safe out there and doing things, I'm here in Austin and well, it's just a joke. So here we go. It is, it's a joke here. ⁓ But today we have a special guest. Ben Abear who is joining us ⁓ to talk about strong hiring partnerships and using data. And that's very exciting. I'm gonna read Ben's.
bio here and then we'll jump into the topic. So Ben is the Scaled Analytics and Innovation Manager. Woo!
for Adobe. With a proven track record of
Ashley King (00:43)
Yeah!
Desiree Goldey (00:46)
programs and exceeding operational targets at high growth companies like Meta and Google Fiber and Google. Expertise in building and scaling high performing teams, optimizing workflows and implementing data driven strategies to achieve significant business outcomes. He's done a lot. He's reduced time to fill by 77%. He's consistently identified
Ashley King (01:06)
Woo!
Desiree Goldey (01:08)
Implemented process enhancements cost savings of 32 % I mean god this guy is just doing it in the operations world Ben welcome to this Yeah, then welcome to the show or prompt to have you here Oh, that's so great, um, do you want to set up the topic Ashley or should we just jump in?
Ashley King (01:16)
Light work.
Yay yay!
Ben Abear (01:22)
Thank you very much. Thank you
very much. Yay!
Ashley King (01:30)
Honestly, I want to jump in because I am very eager about this topic just to get it over the fence. Y'all, we're talking about data today. Like nothing's off limits. Like please hear me when I say this is probably about to be the biggest nerd session you've ever heard So just sit back, nerd out and relax. But yeah, Des, kick us off.
Desiree Goldey (01:35)
Go for it.
Yeah, know, Ben, when we were talking about what to talk about, we went back and forth a little bit about topics. You know, I would love to hear your explanation of what you meant about using data to build those better partnerships and building teams and making hiring decisions.
Ben Abear (02:05)
Yeah, love this question and something we should all start with before we have a conversation with another human about hiring. ⁓ In today's day and age, if we're not leveraging and using data in a conversation around talent, we're missing the entire boat. Not just a part of it, the entire one.
Desiree Goldey (02:14)
you
Ashley King (02:16)
Mmm.
Desiree Goldey (02:17)
Hmm.
Ben Abear (02:31)
There's so much out there that helps not only hiring teams, but talent partners set the stage for how trust can be established from the first meeting, especially if it's the first meeting with an individual who may be new to the org. It may be on the hiring manager side, right?
Ashley King (02:42)
Mm.
Ben Abear (02:49)
being able to use that as your language from which you operate from generates all of the other conversations. So it's just as important to have the personal connection. And we, you hear a lot about that right now with everything in AI and data. And I think that is also just as important as all of the other data that you can bring to a conversation around market sizing, time to hire.
Silver medalists, all of the data that you would bring to those conversations is just as important as, gosh, when is Ashley's birthday?
Ashley King (03:24)
That's a very important question!
Woo! The most important!
Ben Abear (03:28)
Right?
does Desiree like to do on the weekends and have fun and like all of those things, if you bring those together, I think it really creates an opportunity to put both a great experience and one that's based in how do we talk to each other about what good is going to look like between the two of us.
Ashley King (03:37)
Yeah.
Yeah, I love data because I feel like one, if you can speak it, you're bilingual in a special way. So like, what a superpower. But two, and I know I've said this to you before and we align on it, but to me without data, you truly are just an opinion. And if you want to come to the table with something more than your plate, then you need to be bringing like concrete evidence and data.
Ben Abear (04:00)
Yeah.
Ashley King (04:15)
is that. It may not tell me why, but it definitely tells me what and that's all we need to establish at least to build trust on the foundation of the landscape that we're dealing with.
Ben Abear (04:24)
Absolutely. And I think the context is important, Ashley, right? Like you talk a lot about, we may not know why, but we know what we're talking about. And then that's gonna spark the next set of questions, right? Well, how did we get there? Is that representative? Is it not representative of what we're trying to do? What makes our situation the same or dissimilar to what has historically happened, right?
Ashley King (04:33)
Mm.
Yeah.
Ben Abear (04:51)
Yeah, to your point, showing up without any data, I mean, you might as well just open up your spreadsheet and start hiring that way. Do people do that anymore? Are spreadsheets still a thing?
Ashley King (05:02)
Yeah. I-
Desiree Goldey (05:03)
Yes.
They do still do best thing.
Ashley King (05:04)
It is still a thing.
Desiree Goldey (05:06)
You know, my question is like I'm a new hiring manager. I've had this difficulty before and Ashley and I have talked about this on the show that a hiring manager definitely doesn't understand talent, doesn't understand hiring, doesn't understand any of that stuff. And so you're throwing these numbers out there and like, what, I don't know, like dude, what does that even mean? Right? So how do we start to have those conversations with those hiring managers or even recruiters, right? Who don't even understand how this works.
Thanks.
Ashley King (05:33)
now.
Ben Abear (05:34)
I really appreciate this question. And let me tell you why I appreciate this question, because it's something that I think we often skip in the onboarding process for recruiters. You need to go spend a day in the life with your hiring teams. And I would recommend more than a day if you can afford it. And it should be part of what you do on an ongoing basis. Not only is data important,
but also being able to speak the language of what your hiring teams care about, know what they are looking at, what does success mean to them? Because a lot of the data and metrics that we use are not dissimilar to the metrics on the business side of how they're looking at what good looks like, right? Like we're processing and hiring people, they could potentially be processing widgets, code, sales, right? There's all sorts of things that are completely translatable that
hey, maybe it's not time to fill on the business side. Maybe it's something else that they're talking about that we would use the same word and everybody would immediately understand what we were talking about. And it's the same on vice versa for hiring teams understanding what we mean by conversions and pass-through rates and all the other things that we talk about, right? Because those are the things that help.
to me that make the most impact right away is being able to have that shared understanding and that language.
Ashley King (06:58)
Yeah, I definitely think the language is important only because specifically whenever you're talking with recruiters, right, and you're trying to teach them how to have these more educated conversations and how to create buy-in or a business case or logic of a strategy all built around data. And there are times where, you know, people don't know the difference between attrition and retention. People don't know the difference between, and these are all different forms of measure. And they're all articulating something different.
to which all of these quantities can be monetized to show the business case. Cause that's something that I think people don't understand is like you can use the same exact data set for 15 different business cases for 15, whether it's finance, whether it's HR, whether it's engineering, whatever it is. Cause every single audience has a different thing they care about, but it can all be derived from that same data set. And I think creating those different.
windows of opportunity to be like, this is how this is gonna impact you. Speak now or forever hold your peace. And like just kinda, you know, going through that parse match. But one question that I have for you, because I actually, don't think we've ever talked about this on the show with someone and I'm really curious your perspective. In my experience, I feel like again, quantitative data gives us the what. It tells me what is actually happening, no opinion.
But qualitative data is how we often find the why and the how and all those things in between. And my curiosity is, in your experience, how often do you see people actually seek out qualitative data surrounding the quantified data? Because that is not happening anywhere as much.
as you would think it would, because now we've established the what, but it's like getting to people to the root cause, not the symptoms, getting them to the why, that's a whole another ball game. So kind of talk to me, what's your experience in that realm? I feel like we always talk about quantity, but what about qualitative data?
Ben Abear (09:00)
Well, I'll ask you a question back to your question. How many individuals or organizations have you run into where experience is actually their number one priority? Where candidates feel, how hiring managers feel, how talent partners feel, it is truly their number one thing that they are racing against.
Ashley King (09:02)
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (09:02)
I love it.
Ashley King (09:22)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I guess it definitely does depend because then that would keep you in a quantitative because if it's all about the race to productivity and how quick we can do it, then they don't really care why. So I guess that goes back to the point of the audience. Like who has what? Some people aren't going to care. But as far as you as a professional, as someone who's maybe trying to find gaps to create solutions, is it something where you feel like you primarily reside in the number side or is it?
Desiree Goldey (09:22)
Yeah.
Ashley King (09:49)
Do you also do like exploratory? Like what's Ben's life like? Like just walk us through. Like what's the deal? Like tell us everything.
Ben Abear (10:40)
You know, I try to put both of those things together, ⁓ not just the quantitative stuff, but it's also, I mean, we've got tools now to make this a lot simpler, right? We've got survey results, we've got MPS, we've got internal, like we've got all of this qualitative data available for us. One of the things that I've been leveraging and using is using LLMs.
Ashley King (10:44)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (11:05)
using AI to contextualize all of the handwritten comments that go into the surveys, that go into the internal survey results. So you can plug and play very, very quickly and easily. I've seen it done and I've done this too. I've seen word clouds like this describes the hiring experience, right? Like using a visualization like that or talking just knowing your audience.
Ashley King (11:10)
Hmm.
Bye.
Desiree Goldey (11:24)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (11:30)
Knowing what is going to be the most important thing. Hey, guess what? Hiring manager candidates say that interview process sucks in your org, right? They said that like the data saying that it's it's sampling, but they're saying that your interviewers show up late. X amount of the time they show up and they're not prepared. They don't even know what the role is. Having those conversations are just as important as.
Desiree Goldey (11:38)
Yeah, yeah, right.
Ben Abear (11:56)
Okay, we're going to interview six people. We're also going to look for these skills. But that part also is just as important because, I mean, maybe not now. And this is the part that's really hard, that's been really hard recently. In the macro environment that we're in, where we are tilted back towards the employer side and not so much on the applicant side, less and less organizations are inclined to
want to spend time on that experience and that qualitative data set because they're like, people will put up with whatever we put them through at this point, right? And that's tough because it's all cyclical. We've all seen this before. It's going to be two, three, four years. And we'll be right back in the same position where the tables have turned and candidates, employees all have long memories of what that looks like.
Desiree Goldey (12:31)
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I hope it's shorter than four years, okay? Because I can't take it. So, you've worked for some very large organizations with, I'm assuming somewhat of processes and strategy when you've gotten in there or maybe you built them yourselves. What does this look like for a two-person team with no internal surveys and no tools and no all of that stuff? Like, how do they do this without
Ben Abear (12:54)
Yeah.
Ashley King (13:12)
Hmm.
Desiree Goldey (13:17)
all that structure in place.
Ben Abear (13:20)
Yeah,
how do they do it? It's a great question. You have to there has to be a process set up for yourself. You may not have elegant surveys or ATS is or any of those things, but there's a way to make it part of how you operate, right? So as the as the talent partner as the recruiter, you are on the front lines of these conversations and.
In most of these cases, we're making it a lot easier today because, gosh, what half of conversations are recorded at this point, right? Whether you're on the phone with a recruiter, you're on, you're interviewing with somebody. Those are things that make it a lot easier to go back and just dump that data someplace and say, give me some insights on how candidates are feeling about the hiring process and what's going on and what that looks like. So I would say today, more than ever, it's a lot easier to
Ashley King (13:50)
Hmm.
Ben Abear (14:10)
to use LLMs to be able to dump that kind of stuff and get an insight in 25 seconds, shoot, you can do it two minutes before you walk into the meeting now and be like, great, I have this great insight. It's much easier to do and you can point to it. You can say, hey, this is where I got this from. This is what it looks like. So I would say it has to be something intentional that you design and do with how you do your work and it can be done.
Ashley King (14:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Ben Abear (14:38)
It doesn't disrupt your efficiency or effectiveness in any way.
Ashley King (14:41)
Yeah, no, I definitely I will say as someone who was a research assistant and had to go through and code terms. Yeah, not a fan and love what AI can do because that was like six months of research assistant work that is handled in 10 seconds and it is wild how far we have come, especially since like 2012 whenever I was doing this and it was not fun.
Ben Abear (14:47)
Hmm.
you
Ashley King (15:03)
So, okay, so walk us through, so you've kind of been, and has the data that you've been in, because I know you mentioned you're with Adobe, is it within the talent space or is it just kind of within the business space as a whole?
Ben Abear (15:14)
Which data are you referring to?
Ashley King (15:16)
I don't know, whatever data you work with.
Ben Abear (15:18)
I mean, it's everywhere, right? Like it's not, I think one of the things that I've seen, not one, but I've seen TA data be isolated only in TA and it never goes outside the four walls of TA. I've seen business data only stay on the business side and never get shared with TA because you're not supposed to see it.
Ashley King (15:28)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Abear (15:38)
And I've also seen like the people data be obscured, even in the same people organization, right? People data is oftentimes separate from TA data, which is very strange being in a people umbrella. So I've seen all versions of who has access to what data. In one of the companies that I work for, we actually shared data pretty seamlessly between the business and
HR and TA. And one of the things that it helped us be able to do was reduce ramp time for sales teams, right? Like being able to understand what's going into onboarding and expectations gives you much better clarity on the type of profile you need to hire for the type of skills needed, the personality needed to be able to do those things. And you go from a really long cycle to a very, very truncated cycle, which
in this particular case, led us to reduce attrition by a ton and increase the overall attainment of sales goals month over month for the first six to 12 months. So when you are able to put those pieces of data together and unify business objectives and talent objectives, it can work really, really well together to really energize the impact that you can have with the hiring outcomes.
Ashley King (16:34)
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, I definitely feel like silo data is someone screaming, don't look in my kitchen. My opinion. Anytime people don't want to share the actual reality of what's happening, that's because the reality ain't good. So like just prep.
Desiree Goldey (17:02)
Hahaha!
Ben Abear (17:03)
Right?
Well,
I mean, what, where does that come from? Like, I'm so curious, where do think that comes from? Cause everybody quotes like, you don't have a need to know a reason for, for looking at like finance data. like, we all work for the same company, right? Like we, are all here trying to do the same thing. And I wouldn't be asking unless I needed it, right?
Ashley King (17:31)
First of all,
Okay, thank you. I think this is like a Fortune 200, 100 company thing. I think the bigger the company you get, the more people are like, why are you in my kitchen? Why are you stepping in? So like that creates the silo ordinarily. Second of all, I think a lot of people in these seats, and this is old school business moving into new school business, but I don't think that they actually see the connection as talent as an essential function. I still think we're stuck in the day where we're just...
people who HR couldn't handle this one little admin task, so we handed it over to talent and talent has their numbers so they can hit things and we don't actually need that for business. But TA, everything that TA does, first of all, salaries is your number one export of money outside of a business. So we're the number one cost spent of what we're, like, we're procuring the number one cost. Like, so you should think, you should care. Because the quality of that will.
deeply impact whatever happens next, regardless of where they're hired in. But I definitely think that there is some, because in my mind, the data is the dirt under the rug, or the cleanliness under the rug. It is whatever is underneath the damn rug. And I think that whenever you see hard numbers, you can now call things out and either, again, we know the what, we don't know the why, and because...
I see it on two sides where people may not know the why and run with the what, and then that creates a bad echo chamber. And then I could also see where people find out the what and rightfully get the correlation of the why. And then again, those people are upsetting spaghetti that they were ever in their kitchen. So I, that's why I'm always like, anytime people don't want to share data, there's smoke in that kitchen. Be ready for the fire. There's only very few reasons. Cause if you're proud of what you do, you don't have any issue showing that.
Sorry. Like, that's just a hard truth, in my opinion. ⁓
Desiree Goldey (19:21)
agree with
you. I definitely think it is definitely like there's something going on that you don't want to share the data, but I agree with your first. Or they don't know how to collect it themselves or stop being collected. But I go back to your statement about the talent being seen as a little kid's table. They don't make the correlation. And I don't always think we're great at making that correlation for them.
Ashley King (19:26)
Or they just don't know themselves. They just don't know. They just don't know. Yeah.
Word.
Ben Abear (19:44)
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Goldey (19:44)
Right?
We are still not talented at making that correlation for them. So they're like, why would you ever need that? Don't you just go to a job board? And it's because we've made ourselves that way. Right? And it definitely is probably not happening, you know, as much in the startup world because there's only five people. But it's like, I don't know, there's a scale when you get to, you know, organization like Ben's works for where I could see it just being like this crazy thing to overcome.
Ashley King (19:53)
Exactly.
Correct.
Ben Abear (20:10)
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (20:14)
or We're not overcome is understood, right? So Yeah, but I definitely agree with you about the yeah I think that we just haven't done a great job of establishing why we're part of the business and we haven't done a good job of also understanding the business and having a want to Understand the business and we talk about that all the time on this show, right? You've got to know the business to be able to these roles bottom line so
Ashley King (20:18)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (20:39)
Yeah, how have we created an industry of people that have net literally if you ask them what the person does that they hire, they couldn't tell you except for the three sentence talk track the hiring managers spit out during that intake call. That's it. It's all understood.
Desiree Goldey (20:52)
Right. Right.
Right. And probably a bad intake call so you really don't even know.
Ben Abear (21:00)
Hahaha!
Ashley King (21:00)
And thing about those recruiters
that I find the most interesting, because you're right, they get a three sentence. And in my mind, I'm like, what is going to separate you from AI in two years? There is nothing. You are bringing nothing to the table. There is no skill set. AI could have done that. We have to separate ourselves. And that means if you're not a strategic partner at this point in time, you will be replaced. I think that that's an easy, there's so much stuff that AI can do. Even data, I mean, it's not.
Desiree Goldey (21:05)
Wait.
Yes.
Yeah.
Ashley King (21:27)
rate. It's not going to look at it in depth and give you all the context you need, but it's a nice enough calculator to get you 2 plus 2 equals 4.
Ben Abear (21:28)
it
Desiree Goldey (21:33)
Yep. Yeah.
Ben Abear (21:37)
There
are a multitude of tools out there at this point in today's day and age that with the press of a button generate all of the hiring artifacts from a job description, intelligence, everything. Nuts and bolts. What is the value add of the partner at that point? To say, me? Ooh, I love that question Desiree. Ooh.
Ashley King (21:50)
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (21:55)
What do you think it is, Ben?
Ashley King (21:57)
Yeah
Desiree Goldey (21:59)
You
Ashley King (22:00)
Cool.
Ben Abear (22:03)
You know, for me, the value of talent partners is the thing a computer can't do about engaging and empathizing and understanding how people work, right? What motivates them? What's behind their motivation? What do they care about? How do they show up on a regular basis? What does their worst day look like? What does their best day look like?
Ashley King (22:03)
Tell us!
Ben Abear (22:29)
Am I gonna, are people gonna like working with me on a regular basis? A computer can't tell me the answer to that question. Yet. ⁓
Desiree Goldey (22:34)
Right.
Ashley King (22:37)
Yeah, that's
Desiree Goldey (22:37)
Yeah.
Don't
Ashley King (22:41)
deadly
Desiree Goldey (22:42)
speak it into existence, my friend. I know. I know.
Ashley King (22:42)
Whoo, I feel like he's inventing it by the way. He said it. He's like not yet not in my dungeon. Yeah, exactly whoa dang that was a warning flare all right
Ben Abear (22:45)
Hahaha!
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (22:55)
It was, it was, it was.
Ben Abear (23:02)
telling
you though, like on that same vein, like you can't take the people out of people, which is the most important piece. At the same time, I think that the idea, and this is getting super tactical up now, but the idea that we have to generate our impact from company to company as we progress throughout our career.
Desiree Goldey (23:08)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (23:27)
I 1000 % believe that that idea is already dead. It's already dead. It's just the practice hasn't started or caught on enough and I don't know what I don't know what the next product will be. My suspicion is a work diary. So you go from place to place. You take the IP take the IP concerns off the table for a second, but if you just go hey.
Desiree Goldey (23:42)
Hmm.
Right.
Ben Abear (23:52)
I'm watching you, you're on 20 hours of meetings a week, you interact with these 27 different people from their organizations. This is how you show up as a person. This is how you drove the results from the project or the work or the hiring. And that diary will follow you till forever. So we will enhance what we know about how you work, what you're capable of, your skills, all of those things. So we can start bringing out.
and engaging in the people side of things of who are the right people to put together to spark that joy, to spark that innovation. How do we get those people together to do bigger and even better things?
Ashley King (24:32)
Yeah, I definitely think your diary is what is going to be the playbook for how they train them to do our jobs. ultimately, because at the end of the day, if it can diary and mimic as a layer on my screen track everything I do when, where, why can even track my eye line to see what I'm actually reading.
Desiree Goldey (24:33)
Very interesting.
Ashley King (24:53)
I mean, it will get to a point to where it is seamless enough to where they don't have to. And what's worse is whenever it comes to like chat, GPT and stuff like that, it's just a conglomerate of all of our thoughts, innovation, imagination being tossed in there and being like, what should I do coach? Help me. And it's like, nah, you're the source of innovation. This thing can't think it up on its own. And yeah, we're giving away the keys to the kingdom real, real quick. And I do think that it starts with a diary. know a few company, I think Robin Hood's one of them.
Desiree Goldey (25:05)
Yeah, I know.
Ashley King (25:22)
that has started and told them. They've put the layer on there and said, everything you're doing is gonna be diaried. Yeah, and it's not for a performance standpoint, it's for an AI understanding standpoint. And they tell them that, they sign that. So they are training the bots with every single move that they make. So hey, if you want good career stability, just remember...
Ben Abear (25:32)
⁓
Ashley King (25:45)
What's his name's Walter White's rule from Breaking Bad. You only teach them 80 % or 90 % at max ever. You never teach them 100%. And I keep that with me. He's talking about meth. I'm talking about AI. Like it's all the same. It's all the same. But I mean, truly, I didn't know drug dealers could give us good feedback, but it's the truth. So just don't ever teach it 100%. Keep your best in your pocket.
Desiree Goldey (25:50)
percent here.
you
It's all the same! It's all the same! Yeah. There you
Ben Abear (26:11)
Well,
Desiree Goldey (26:11)
go.
Ben Abear (26:12)
also, also, there's an enormous amount of garbage in all that data that people are putting in. are they really going to be able to, right? Are they really going to be able to tell the difference? look at how, look at how we work as a society in terms of following a process accurately, doing things with high quality. like, it's going to take a long time.
Desiree Goldey (26:17)
Yeah. Great.
Ashley King (26:19)
Mm-hmm. Shit in, shit out. Mm-hmm.
Desiree Goldey (26:24)
Now...
Ashley King (26:33)
You could have just said, at us as a society,
period, and end it, right? You didn't even have to say process. You didn't have to look at us as a society, end a sentence. yeah. Sheesh.
Desiree Goldey (26:35)
I know, right? You're just stop there. Boom. Period, point blank. ⁓ I
Ben Abear (26:38)
BEEEE
Desiree Goldey (26:46)
love it so much. I love it so much. And I feel like, you know, you can't have these conversations anymore without talking about Aon. You know, I just, you know, I was having a conversation over the weekend with a friend of mine who's looking for a job and they replaced her company.
They had 10 recruiters, they're down to three because they replaced a lot of the recruiting functions with AI, the AI tool. And I said, won't last. They're going to have to come back to some version of human, I hope, because I don't think it can give you the data to do all these things, but from a human side to what Ben said, it's not going to tell the personality of the story really well as a human. And I think that's the important part to remember.
I do agree with Ashley as well. If you don't figure out how to be a better partner and be able to read data, understand the business, do all of those things, you will get left behind in this industry. It's just going to be point blank because the AI will be able to do the majority of the functions of your job.
Ashley King (27:46)
Yeah, yeah. What we both say Ben.
Ben Abear (27:47)
That I mean,
Desiree Goldey (27:47)
Bye!
Ben Abear (27:49)
I was gonna say desert, but that that goes back to like the anthropology of society, right? Like how do we I'm so curious what a year ago we saw all this major push and like everybody needs to learn prompting. Everybody needs to learn how to use the 15 different versions of the AI tools. I'm still waiting for the Renaissance that we go through again where it's like.
Desiree Goldey (27:54)
Right. Yeah.
Ashley King (27:54)
Mm.
Desiree Goldey (28:02)
Yes. Yeah.
Ashley King (28:03)
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Goldey (28:07)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (28:12)
Let me train you how to be a person. Let me tell you how to like, know how to like, emote and connect and demonstrate empathy and do the things humans do because as much as we're training the machines, they are definitely training us to operate and be a certain way.
Desiree Goldey (28:14)
Ha
Right.
Ashley King (28:18)
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (28:28)
I know, which is bizarre, right?
Ashley King (28:29)
Absolutely. Actually,
that's something that I think, hear me out, I think we'd be remiss not to lean into and again, hear me out. So there was something that I was reading the other day and it was like you to future proof your job, you need to take your job description, put it into chat, GPT, co-pilot, whatever, and do what's called a task augmentation and say, what of this job can you take and do seamlessly and see yourself doing in the next five years as a robotic AI, whatever?
And what are the skills that I'm always gonna have to harness in this job? And literally from that diagnostic, taking it and creating like, am, so one of them is strategic partnership. Like it's not really gonna be able to hit that. So like, how do you make that the core competency that you pound? Because that is future-proofing your role. That is leaning into the skillsets that can't be offered anywhere else, becoming irreplaceable. Like those are all those things. So your array,
Desiree Goldey (29:09)
Right.
Ashley King (29:25)
we correspond or with it and demand it, but I think we're hitting a turn where now we're going to find out what it offers and it will we ebb and flow into it and it demands of us, if you will. so anyway, I say all this to say we're at a weird juxtaposition at this weird, you know, part.
Desiree Goldey (29:35)
you
We definitely are. mean, it's kind of crazy actually how and how fast it's moving. Like what I feel like a year ago was very different to where we're at now. It's insanity. Right. And where we're going to be in six months is going to be even crazier as people really, really develop these awesome tools. I want to get back to like the kind of the partnership piece because I was just thinking to my head, now you have AI, you have these recruiters in the system, right? You've got all these things built.
Ashley King (29:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (30:11)
How do you kind of keep a really and what does strategic really look like if you have all these tools involved and not as many humans? Ben, you have any opinion on that?
Ben Abear (30:23)
Yeah,
I do. Strategic means you're as a partner, but the day and time of opening the wreck and starting your work then needs to be in our past. The always on talent partner that's looking at trends from a dashboard, from tools, from notifications, like I don't know about y'all, but I've set up different
notes for myself where you can just set up talent intelligence. Like these are the things that I need to know about on a regular basis. These are the employers that are laying off. These are the people that are hiring like and building those relationships ahead of time. So true relationship management, not sourcing. I intentionally didn't call it sourcing on purpose because I don't think that that I don't think that that is going to be how we operate segmenting that role.
Ashley King (30:55)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (31:16)
talent partner is truly going to have to be able to do both things at the same time in a way that's more opportunistic than we are now. I think we're going to see the number of opportunistic hires change exponentially as we get better and faster sets of fluent data that will tell us where talent is and when it's ready, regardless of if I'm ready as a company.
Ashley King (31:16)
Hmm.
Ben Abear (31:39)
And I think that's going to be a major, major shift.
Ashley King (31:42)
Hmm. Whew, the future y'all. What are we gonna do? Are we even gonna make it? Will we even be a country by then? Props no, props no, props no. Yeah, no. We might make it till next week.
Desiree Goldey (31:49)
Props on.
Ben Abear (31:50)
No, Wait,
will countries eat? Will the word country even exist? Will we even have a
Desiree Goldey (31:57)
Right.
Ashley King (31:58)
I don't think
we'll be allowed to say it. I'm not gonna be able to wear shoes, have an opinion, speak with my mouth. Like lot of things are about to change. woo wee! This is probably my last outing in public. Allowed to talk to you. Shit.
Ben Abear (32:02)
Hahaha!
Get ready
for your feeding tube and your VR glasses that give you all of your content.
Desiree Goldey (32:13)
Right. Yes. Glasses, And you're just
Ashley King (32:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (32:19)
laying on this bed for the rest of your life. Yeah, I feel it. I feel it coming. But I do appreciate what you said about being a talent partner.
Ashley King (32:22)
Good lord.
Desiree Goldey (32:27)
and the sourcing and the full life cycle piece going together. I can't tell you how many recruiters I've met over my time of training and building up recruiters that don't know how to source or don't know how to do full life cycle. listen, I get it. I'm not a sourcer by any means. Ashley will tell you, if it's one thing I hate, I'm not gonna sit there and do it for hours. I can't stand that and Ashley loves it, But I know how to do it, but I know how
Ashley King (32:47)
I love sourcing.
Oh, I love that. It's such a bounty.
Ben Abear (32:52)
You
Desiree Goldey (32:56)
do it right and even through the LLM's now you can do it even more effectively right like it's a no-brainer so I you know I just think that the true talent partner understands both things right and it's not it's the full gamut of those skill sets plus understanding the business plus doing all these other things it becomes a more fully rounded thought out
Person and and position than what it is today, right? And I love that about it because I hope we do get there But with you know with training and appropriate steps, right? So, yeah Yeah
Ashley King (33:32)
Yeah.
Ben Abear (33:32)
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious what y'all are hearing in that bin. Speaking
of that, right? Like, that's the buzzword these days. Talent partner, no longer recruiter, no longer sorcerer.
Desiree Goldey (33:40)
Right. Yeah.
Ashley King (33:42)
Hmm.
Desiree Goldey (33:43)
I have seen a lot of new job descriptions come out lately with Talent Partner on them, which is interesting to me. And then I read the job description and I'm like, this is the same old recruiter job. ⁓
Ashley King (33:55)
Yeah, so here's what I
think is I do feel like the industry as a whole in talent is making a move to say, again, we're the biggest export of all the money going out of the business. We should be a little bit more important, I think is one thing. So the way that they're trying to mimic that and where I think it's going wrong is we're mimicking it through packaging of title and not role of duties. And that's the issue because I am currently so like I do talent enablement now.
Desiree Goldey (34:18)
Yeah.
Ashley King (34:24)
and you can ask 200 something different recruiters, what is a strategic partner in talent and what is the difference between that and a recruiter? And no one can actually answer that for you.
The difference between a strategic partner and a recruiter is again, someone who shows up to the table with something more than their plate. Whether that is talent intelligence, whether that is market research, whether that is saying, actually, you know what, I think it's actually gonna take us this long based off the historical data that we have. It is someone who shows up informed. It is someone who shows up to partner with another person to execute something, not showing up as an administrative assistant to say, what are all the things you have, let me take them.
Desiree Goldey (34:41)
Yep.
Ashley King (35:00)
No, this is someone who shows up just as equally with items to be taken, parsed and learned from as the other person that's coming to the table. And that to me is the difference. I don't, I have yet to really have very many recruiters be able to articulate that and say like, ⁓ I, you know, that's the difference. Now once.
you explain it, they're like, okay, that makes sense. I need to bring things and not be in order. But then whenever you get to the brass tacks, what are the things you bring? One, it needs to actually be valid. Two, it needs to be quality and have impact. Three, there needs to be a logic and a reason for it, which means you have to know your customer well enough. So it ties into all these other intricacies. But I will say, recruiter, if you're listening, the biggest difference between a recruiter and an actual strategic partner is someone who comes to play the game. Are they coming? Are they delivering? Are they bringing? Or are they only receiving?
Those are the biggest differences in my opinion. I don't know that I'm the litmus for the whole world, but that's the biggest difference that I've seen.
Ben Abear (35:54)
Actually, you said something important there that I think is meaningful, which is the talent partner is a title we're putting on things, right? Like it's not a real thing. What's the difference in outcomes between a talent partner and a recruiter at this point? Because we oftentimes in TA, we're evaluated on just the outcome. Really, we should be measured on all the things that go into it.
Desiree Goldey (36:09)
Right. ⁓
Ashley King (36:18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, productivity.
Ben Abear (36:18)
because the outcome will happen if we do all the other things, right? But what does that look
like, right? What does that look like for the difference between people that are trying to think through getting their teams to be talent partners versus ones that continue to maintain recruiters?
Desiree Goldey (36:30)
Great.
Ashley King (36:33)
Yeah, so I think the ones that are getting their recruiters to talent partners, it is a lot of education and enablement. It is a lot of understanding macro systems.
because in order to speak a language to a manager that matters, you need to understand their playbook, their whole game, like everything that they do. And so to be honest, a lot of teaching how a recruiter can become a strategic partner is teaching them about their customer. It's teaching them on the larger impacts and the business implications of when you do your job right, when you do your job wrong, and when you don't show up at all.
It is something to where, so where the title I think comes into play is it can kind of create a form of self-fulfilling prophecy where people are now attending to them as they are a blank, blank partner versus just a rinky-dink. but again, who gives a damn what the title is if when they show up, they're still rinky-dink. But it does, there is an element of this packaging where,
Desiree Goldey (37:21)
Right.
Right.
Ashley King (37:33)
one will come before the other and one can maybe induce the other, but it's never gonna get you to the outcomes of the other without those duties and second half actually adhering to that. Like a title is just a title until force is put behind it. And I think that force comes with education because whenever you find yourself becoming a strategic partner is whenever you've been in enough business rooms to be able to feel confident enough to say,
Ben Abear (37:35)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley King (38:00)
I wouldn't do that and this is why. And until you can get to that level, you will be stuck at just an order taker. And the only way to escalate someone to that level in a vacuum of time is through strict enablement and education on these things and basically giving them all of the knowledge that a C-suite strategic partner would have and saying, okay, how can I mind map this for you and break it down in ways that make sense?
Desiree Goldey (38:03)
Yeah.
Ashley King (38:27)
And that's kind of Ashley's whole entire job. Shout out to Talent Ed. So yeah.
Ben Abear (38:31)
Haha.
Desiree Goldey (38:33)
Ben we're getting close to where we go into a different segment any last words on the data Relationships anything like that you want to leave our our audience with
Ben Abear (38:44)
Lean into relationships. Lean in, lean in, lean in on the people. And you are the owner of your time and career. And to Ashley's last point, you're only going to get enough time to get all of these skills, this data time to look and review and understand.
by giving yourself and setting up boundaries in your organization so you have the time to do this. Don't listen to the capacity issues that your manager might talk to you about. I will have a lot more capacity when I understand it can do these people things really, really well with the data. And yes, it means I'm going to be slower in the short term, but I'm going to deliver far more in the long.
Desiree Goldey (39:28)
I love it. I love it.
Ashley King (39:29)
Run the right
way, not the wrong way. You can go fast as you want, but you're going the wrong way, that's bad. All right, Des, kick us out.
Desiree Goldey (39:35)
So we are going we're not doing talent outside the box today because we have a dumb dumb story It is our first so if you guys don't know what I'm talking about for 2026 we decided our new segment would be to read and understand people's dumb dumb stories in the recruiting and talent Arena, so I will say because I said arena because this is more of a job seeker one We'll ask both of your opinions and feedback on the story
Ashley King (39:41)
Woohoo!
Desiree Goldey (40:02)
Which is interesting that job seekers are listening to us. So yay on that. All right. Here we go. This person wanted to stay anonymous, but I will read the short version of this. I was actively pursuing a company. was very excited about ideal industry, excellent fit. I connected with an employee on LinkedIn and we chatted back and forth for some times. Turns out she's a hiring manager with a role opening up. Perfect. I submitted my application.
Ashley King (40:13)
Okay.
Desiree Goldey (40:30)
and then I realized my writing sample was not submitted and there was no problem. There was a, at the bottom of the JD was an email address with an invitation to reach out if any adjustments needed to be made to your application. So I emailed immediately, explained my app.
Problem and that it was missing the what the writing sample and everything was connected and then the next day I got an automatic rejection surprised because I had spoken with the hiring manager She's also surprised the app wasn't sent to her her reply when she took a look it told me it filtered me out because there was no writing sample I Explained what happened yada yada her reply was that wasn't good enough She would only consider candidates who can demonstrate close attention to detail like filling out an application correctly
So no, she would not be reviewing my application. was floored. Any
So Ben, thoughts about the story about weeding that person out because they couldn't upload their application correctly?
Ben Abear (41:28)
This is a story I've heard a thousand times, unfortunately. ⁓ Process for process sake. Really, I mean, to me it feels very apathetic to say, you forgot to press a button. So obviously you don't have any attention to detail. To be able to...
Desiree Goldey (41:33)
Yeah.
Ashley King (41:34)
agreed.
Desiree Goldey (41:45)
I know. I know.
Ashley King (41:46)
Yeah, that's pretty, it's a sweeping generalization.
Ben Abear (41:49)
It's always fascinating to me that what hiring teams come up with to disqualify more people rather than to include more people, especially when you think you know something about.
Desiree Goldey (42:03)
Right? He engaged with this person, right? So you would think that would not be a case. I don't know. I think the market's crazy. I think what we're dealing with is unheard of right now. And I think they're finding any reason to lessen the load.
Ashley King (42:18)
think, so
a few things. One, this only happens in scenarios like this where you have enough applicants. So like, let's discuss that first of all. ⁓ Second of all, I don't know that they made their hiring qualification on EEOC. Could you follow directions on the application or not? But for the most part, that isn't usually what is used as the qualifying things. What is usually used is the qualifying requirements or what is in the job description and are job related.
Desiree Goldey (42:24)
Great. Yes, yes, sure.
Bye.
Alright.
Ashley King (42:45)
So I think a lot of times that whenever people decide to reject people based off of administrative nuances that are due to the technologies that they have, I understand the concept, I understand where they're coming from, I would challenge that manager, especially if that individual does meet all of the requirements and did put together a good writing sample. At the end of the day, we are all humans, being a perfect eight is the best you can ask for. And if the worst that ever happens is...
the thing you didn't attach and it got sent, first of all, why can your application even have it with it not attached and get sent? Why even make that the option if you want to force a writing sample? So then it shouldn't have even let him proceed. So anyway, so I would push back me personally just because that's who I am as a human and I feel like we're the only advocates for these people ever in the room. So if you're not pushing back, then everyone's just getting pushed over and that's what it is, that's fine, but that's just not who I am.
Desiree Goldey (43:17)
Great.
Ashley King (43:38)
So I would definitely push back, but I would say I have had instances where managers do this and I like lightly push, but I definitely understand where they're coming from. Mainly people that have that type of response are in like engineering, like QA, QC. And those are the ones where I don't push back as hard. If it's sales, go to market. It sounded like this one was maybe like a marketing, whatever. Those people make mistakes all the time. Get out of here. Like, are you joking?
Desiree Goldey (43:51)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks!
Ben Abear (44:04)
Yeah. ⁓
Ashley King (44:05)
You're,
you should be happy with a perfect six. Like don't even with me. Like if it's an engineer, I get it. Like if it's someone technical, I get it. But sales, like we're lucky if they even put the right OTE. Like please stop. Like what are these people saying? Get out of here with that drama. ⁓
Desiree Goldey (44:08)
Thanks!
Ha ha ha ha!
I know, I know.
Ben, this
has been a joy. We've laughed a lot. We've had a good time. I want to know how people can connect with you. Where can they find you, follow you, do all the things. Let's do it.
Ben Abear (44:32)
Let's do it. You can find me in one place and one place only on LinkedIn. Benjamin A-Bear.
Ashley King (44:33)
Let's do it.
Desiree Goldey (44:38)
Ooh!
Ashley King (44:38)
That's true, because
I think I've tried to stalk you before to be like, where is this man at? What's he up to? What's going down? Where do we find Ben, a bear? ⁓
Desiree Goldey (44:41)
hahahaha
Ben Abear (44:44)
Yep.
Desiree Goldey (44:46)
That's awesome Ben That was great. All right, that was better bear If you didn't take notes on this one, that's on you Yes, sure ⁓
Ashley King (44:53)
You shoulda. Plug in your copilot, homie.
Desiree Goldey (44:55)
Let's do
Ashley King (44:56)
Put it in your LL-
Ben Abear (44:57)
Yeah.
Desiree Goldey (44:57)
it. Let's do it. Make sure you follow us wherever you get podcast You know, we're at Instagram LinkedIn blue sky all the things all the things and because we just read a dumb dumb story Please send those in you can send them to me at Deseret talentless podcast calm DM us our LinkedIn page Instagram just follow us anywhere. So thank you so much and we'll see you next time. Bye
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