Recruiter Enablement Is the Future of TA

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Episode Summary:

Season One | Episode 23

What if the problem with talent acquisition isn’t recruiters… it’s how we set them up?

In this episode of Talentless, Ashley King and Desiree Goldey dig into recruiter enablement and why it’s quickly becoming the difference between TA teams that survive and those that actually move the business forward.

We unpack what recruiter enablement really means (spoiler: it’s not just more tools), why measuring ROI in recruiting is long overdue, and how TA leaders can build smarter partnerships with the business instead of operating like an internal agency no one fully understands.

We also get into:

• Why most recruiting tools never prove their value

• What recruiter performance should be measured on

• How data can help or hurt, depending on how it’s used

• The role of psychological safety in unlocking high-potential talent

• Why education and strategic scaffolding matter more than hustle culture

  
  

This is one of those episodes that might make you rethink how your TA org is built and why recruiters burn out when enablement is missing.

If you care about outcomes, not just activity, this one’s for you.

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Desiree Goldey (00:06)

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Talentless podcast. We've been off for a little bit I feel like but we are back in full effect talking about all things talent and doing the big things And today we're gonna talk about recruiter enablement and how it's the future of TA Ashley, can you explain the topic we're about to talk about?

Ashley King (00:27)

is talent enablement? my god, such a good question. ⁓ Alright, take it there.

Desiree Goldey (00:31)

Well, I hold on. want to back up a little bit and say that

I do not believe that most people even know what talent enablement truly is. And they aren't doing it in most of their organizations. So I want to hear your explanation of what that means,

Ashley King (00:49)

all right, so let's break it down literally word by word. First of all, talent in this scenario in general is going to be your recruiting, your talent acquisition to be specific. So I'm talking about the people who are dealing with prospective employees, not those who are employed. These aren't people who are doing onboarding talking about TA, recruiters. I think is the most important part. Second most important part is enablement.

This can mean a few things. This could mean enablement by tools. This could mean enablement by good management. This could be an enablement by a lot of things. What I specifically mean by this is enablement via education. And so what that all entails is going to be educating them on macro systems. Like talent enablement is teaching people on the systems within which they work.

and no one is teaching that except for TalentEd, but no one is teaching that. And so that is something that I think is very important because, you know, depending on a few camps that you can fall into and things like that, it really, really shapes who you are as a recruiter. So a few things that we think are the most important.

is for the past 30 years, the solution to TA's problem has always been a systems-based approach, meaning don't have quality candidates, we'll make an app for that, don't have the coordination you need for appointments, we'll have a software for you, and at some point, have we ever examined the people over the process? Meaning the people who are actually facilitating this, the brain power, the creativity, the everything behind it.

Truth is we haven't. We've all just said we're doing our best and we moved on, but what if our best was actually really, really bad the whole time? What if, I mean, yeah, what if what we needed, yeah, what if we needed this whole time isn't more tools in our box, but better logic for the handyman using them?

Desiree Goldey (02:38)

god. True story. ⁓

Ashley King (02:48)

But yeah, maybe we need to stop slapping Band-Aids on things and actually triage our performance and our outcomes and ⁓ how we're enabled.

Desiree Goldey (02:55)

Yeah. Listen, I'm a believer. I'm

a believer in this wholeheartedly. you know, it was funny. was watching Joel and Jeremy's clips. They did a recent podcast together. And one of the things Jeremy said that he would love for people to stop saying they fell into recruiting. But.

Here's the reason why, right? It's because it makes us look like we're uneducated. But I'm gonna actually banter against that and say, we are, right? Yeah.

Ashley King (03:27)

Yeah, so I

think there's definitely two sides to it. So one, yeah, if the message here in trying to not say we didn't fall into it is to illustrate how educated we are in the industry, I would say that that's probably not the route to maybe like that, what's that for? Like that's just lip service. ⁓ And that's coming from someone who loves Jeremy ⁓ and Joel,

Desiree Goldey (03:47)

Yeah

a very relevant comment. I just think it was taken out of context in that clip, right? Yeah. That he wishes people didn't say they fell into recruiting.

Ashley King (03:54)

Yeah.

fair enough. What was his exact comment again?

it's to illustrate education, I don't know. if it is to illustrate, if his logic is that there is a similarity to all the ones who are good, there are, just like how engineers have specific quirks, and so do

Desiree Goldey (04:08)

Yes.

Yeah.

Right.

Ashley King (04:22)

talent individuals, even different from those in HR. Like, I don't know if you've ever gone to an HR and TA event. Homie, you can tell who's who. Like, yeah, like it's always the talent. Yes, we are the Chatty Cathys. We are the ones who are like, how you doing? What's up? What's your, like, have you ever seen like, TA and comp in the same room? Like, what? no.

Desiree Goldey (04:31)

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Right off the bat.

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Ashley King (04:46)

I mean, it makes a balanced audience because one person's like, please keep talking and the other one's like, well, I guess I'll just keep talking. yeah, that too. That's more me. Bye. But yeah, so that's my opening thoughts and trots on it.

Desiree Goldey (04:53)

Bye!

Yeah, yeah,

you know what? I really want to get into this tool thing because you know I have a thing about this. But here what I do want to say about this one is like stop making so many tools to do nothing.

Ashley King (05:05)

Okay.

Mololama.

Stop making so many tools that you know nothing about. Proceed though. Yeah. No. You think once? Maybe I would have said at max twice.

Desiree Goldey (05:17)

Exactly, we've talked about this before on this show, right? I mean, a million times, a million times.

But I also think when we're talking about recruiter enablement and tools, it's like, who's training those people to use those tools?

in a productive way, who is then saying like this is how we get the most out of that tool, who's saying this is actually upping our game versus just having another tool, right? And that is, you I believe that lives in leadership, but that leadership also has to know how to do that. ⁓

Ashley King (05:48)

Yeah.

Hmm and for a lot of them it's

been a long time since they've been in that role since they've been in that seat. yeah. Yeah

Desiree Goldey (06:01)

Oh my gosh. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

It's like a crazy thing. was talking to, I forget who I was talking to the other day. We were talking about the ROI on some ATS. I'm not going to name it, but yeah. mean, I don't even know if most people even know how to prove the ROI on their tool that they bought, which these tools are significant in dollars, right?

Ashley King (06:29)

yeah.

Desiree Goldey (06:30)

And so like

Ashley King (06:31)

Yeah.

Desiree Goldey (06:31)

proving that ROI is a big deal. But do you know how to do it as a talent professional? And that's a thing.

Ashley King (06:34)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, just, yeah. No,

100%. And to be honest, every tool is different for every, like for some it's utilization rate, for some it's gonna be ROI on the literal return of source tires that it brought back. might be, so like everybody has a different measurement and measure point. Because for some it's just like how many I saw our XYZ and like that's it. ⁓

Desiree Goldey (06:44)

Yeah. Right.

Right

and or if you're in a startup, maybe it's just the fact that it's contained somewhere that you're not working off an Excel spreadsheet anymore Like you know what I mean? So the ROI can be different for different organizations. I just think that we're not measuring those tools

Ashley King (07:09)

Yeah, yeah.

Desiree Goldey (07:18)

in a really efficient way that says this is actually working for our organization. This is why leadership should keep signing up for this. And the CFO is like, signing that dotted line because this is what's happening and why it's so much more productive for us as an organization.

Ashley King (07:31)

Mm.

Desiree Goldey (07:36)

And we can even talk about brand in here. We could talk about so many

Ashley King (07:36)

Yeah.

Desiree Goldey (07:41)

I think

would tell me that, you know, like brand is an important part of this piece, right? And so as we start to talk about those things, I think that we need to do better in educating recruiters and talent leadership about how to measure that ROI.

Ashley King (07:46)

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think so it's a few things. It's how to measure the ROI, but also have we taught them the proper way of utilization? So like we can measure the utilization of the tool, how much activity they've done, like what's all happened. Like you can do that in any tool, but what deciphers it differently is.

how are they doing that specific utilization? Because what someone does with 10 minutes is not the same thing I can do with 10 minutes versus what you can do in 10 minutes. And so it's all different. But what I will say is that there are some specific things that I think we need to factor in there. So one, since tools have become such an

uprising roar like 90 % of tools are who is going to be taking your conference stages they're going to be the vendors outside they're going to be swamping you and your algorithms like telling you that 99 % of your problems can be fixed with xyz

And what that's done is leaned us on hoping for a tool fix versus a fix that could potentially be based within people. And so what we do now is we run to one thing versus really, really looking at how are we currently utilizing it? How is it, you know, being taught to be utilized? Is there a variance here? Do we need to recalibrate it? Do we need to reinvest in something else?

There are like so so many different things and so what I have found is that there are certain Groups that I will say we've seen have Different types of success like they're as far as the type of recruiters that we have in the building so They're usually kind of in three camps so like one is like they're just

not up to the standard that a basic recruiter should be and makes like bad decisions and and makes bad impact. You can have some that make like mad decisions and mad impact and then you have people who are great and make great decisions and great impact. And so it's kind of like those three different buckets separates all the peoples. I think I'm gonna cut that.

Desiree Goldey (10:18)

I

No,

but I do like the camp idea though, because if you really go into the camps, and if you're a TA leader and you're sitting in a seat, you can identify who is in camp one, which is like the really not doing a great job as a recruiter. And what's happening with that person, right? Is it that they're not educated about how to do the work? Is it that the tool, they're not utilizing the tool correctly? What is happening in identifying what

Ashley King (10:25)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Desiree Goldey (10:47)

needs to happen further is so essential. How do you train that person up? Maybe it's not always possible, right? You know, maybe they're just never gonna be a good recruiter, but I don't believe that about most folks. I believe that they're just not given the opportunity, the training that they need to be able to be maybe not a three, not in camp three where they're amazing, but maybe they're in camp two and they're still representing your brand correctly. They're still doing all the right things.

Ashley King (10:48)

you

Ahem.

Yeah.

Desiree Goldey (11:17)

You know and but they're just not fantastic like me and you right like you know So they may be in camp two and that's fine Everybody can't be camp three right and so but camp one

Ashley King (11:21)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Or candy!

Nah, I'm just kidding. Yeah. Girls!

Desiree Goldey (11:33)

or maybe or maybe

but I goals but I do think there's a there's a misstep we're still seeing between camp one and camp two right like there's absolutely there's like no real identification and then also no training to get them to a better place because we're overloaded right we have smaller teams we're you know we're doing all these things we're just trying to fill wrecks

Ashley King (11:39)

You

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Goldey (12:03)

And this goes into our next point about strategic partnership, right?

Ashley King (12:07)

Yeah, but I will also say that I do think that who your manager is matters so much. Who your first and second manager are in recruitment probably matter more to the rest of your career than anything, honestly, because it really shapes.

Desiree Goldey (12:18)

I agree.

Ashley King (12:33)

what you think this is, what it's supposed to be, what, and that's all kind of based on your manager. Like you don't know how good and or bad you have it until you get out and then you find out and then you go somewhere else and see, okay, these are the common factors. These are the uncommon factors. Like these are things everywhere. These are not. And so anyway, putting that in there too, because the more I think about the enablement of recruiters,

Desiree Goldey (12:36)

Yeah.

Ashley King (12:59)

the more I think for some of these people that are in group two, we're just giving them their baseline competency and then educating them towards the standard of three, right? But for those in one, this is an absolute change management. This is something where we are having to alter directions, have you unlearn something you've been doing for who knows how long ⁓ and relearn something new, which.

Desiree Goldey (13:09)

Yeah, right.

Great.

Yeah.

Ashley King (13:23)

by all means could be more complicated, intricate, or it might even be better, who knows, but the point is, is it's an open game at that point, so.

Desiree Goldey (13:32)

Yeah, I mean, you brought up a great point because I do believe some of this is really being skilled at change management, right? and so like if you've never taken a course or read a book on change management, please, I hope that this audience will go ahead and do that. There's some great ones out there, but there I do believe that if you are a TA leader, you should be able to do change management in a really effective way. And that gets you from Camp One

Ashley King (13:43)

Ahem.

Desiree Goldey (14:00)

to Camp 2 and I think it excels a TA department like 700 fold. can't even explain if you are able to

change management in an effective way when you come into an organization, it can change the trajectory of an organization.

Ashley King (14:20)

Yeah,

no, I agree. yeah. Well, I mean, so think about it this way, because this is probably the most business way to think about it. The largest burden on a business is salaries, which means the number one outgoing expense is gonna be payment to your employees. So that's the most expensive thing that you have as a company. Step two, your company is only as good as the imaginations in the room.

Desiree Goldey (14:21)

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ashley King (14:44)

As far as innovation, as far as staying competitive, as far as getting more leads, as far as everything that you need in order to generate revenue, you're gonna have to MacGyver some things in order to get in that market, infiltrate and break, right? And so who you hire in that room matters just as much. And which means you're now limited to how innovative is your recruiter with trying to find these pods of people.

Desiree Goldey (15:00)

Yep.

Ashley King (15:11)

that have this specific type of niche set that this hiring team is looking for that can then support and produce and do all the things here. So it's one of those things where it's like if people really sat there and related, even business expense wise, what their biggest expenses and said, okay, how do we get the best of that? How do we get the best of the thing that costs that much? How do we get the most ROI on that?

then it would be, okay, those are employees. And then we're really, okay, how do we get the best employees? Well, we need to have the best recruiters. How do we get the best recruiters? Well, we either find them or we make them. And so I think that it's something to where people do not understand how much of an essential business function talent is and how much their enablement can impact your bottom line.

Desiree Goldey (15:52)

Great.

Ashley King (16:07)

and actually produce, maybe not revenue, but produce much less of a burden and cost center whenever it comes to cost of vacancy, whenever it comes to loss of production costs, whenever it comes to the cost it takes to hire by trimming down the days. Like all these different things that we can do as TA professionals to actually impact the bottom line in a granular way. It's, again, we're not gonna become a

Desiree Goldey (16:16)

Yeah.

Ashley King (16:33)

revenue generating center overnight or anything like that by any means, but it's something to where now we can have a seat at the table because we can talk to you much more about numbers than you ever thought before.

Desiree Goldey (16:44)

been touting the seat at the table thing for swear, 10 years. Like, and we still can't figure out how to get there, but I do believe in all the things you just said, right? Even if you do not believe talent affects your bottom line, you are so wrong.

Ashley King (16:49)

Mm-hmm.

So wrong.

Desiree Goldey (17:03)

So wrong. mean, there's just so many implications by putting the right person in the

unbelievable, right?

Ashley King (17:09)

You want me to tell you how I know it

matters? Because if your recruiter's number one strategy is not retention, that will be reflected and that costs dollars every single time. Every single time. So if you hire 2,000 people a year,

Desiree Goldey (17:17)

Right. Right. Yeah. Take all time. Absolutely.

Ashley King (17:28)

and your average, whatever the thing is with all those fees combined, let's say it's just 5K, usually, whatever, I don't know, it is 2025, so it's probably gone up a little bit. But the moral of the story is, just you do that multiplication table and you're like, whoa, and that's per recruiter, like that stuff adds up, yo, like it's not, yeah. And so whenever you start looking at that, yeah, no, it is. And that's why our next episode, if you're listening now,

Desiree Goldey (17:38)

Yeah.

It does. It's serious money.

Ashley King (17:57)

is going to be on the data that matters so you can actually speak this language and talk about it but we'll get to that all in a beat.

Desiree Goldey (18:05)

Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, it's gonna be her favorite episode. Everybody who listens to this show knows Ashley can't wait to talk about the data and really dig in.

Ashley King (18:13)

Do you

Desiree Goldey (18:14)

talk about strategic partnership though, and a really, yeah, I think, you know,

Ashley King (18:16)

All right, start us off with a hit.

Desiree Goldey (18:20)

We've been talking about seat at the table, but I also want to talk about

partnership even when it comes to hiring managers and candidates. We can separate the two, right? But there's a partnership there that should be happening all the time. And if you are not functioning, if you're just filling a rec or interviewing people, but not trying to figure out the through line to a candidate, your future work, your next organization, there's always a through line through a candidate.

But there's also that through line through a hiring manager, and I think we just don't think about it enough, right? We have these interviews and we're like can you do this job like a robot and that's not really what Candidates or hiring managers are looking for we need to do better. I Will say that I've been interviewing recently and I've seen some really trashy stuff

Yeah, it's been an interesting journey, right? Because it's just been... I really feel like they're just asking me these questions they wrote on a thing, but not really delving deep or trying to figure out...

Ashley King (19:20)

Hunbun, they didn't even

write it. They got it out of Copilot. Like, let's not even play. Like, you're giving them way too much credit. No offense, but... No. No. They're not giving you the talentless experience by any means. No.

Desiree Goldey (19:23)

They're not trying to assess my competencies and like skill sets or like they didn't do it. No, they didn't do an

intake good intake call to figure out what even the job was needed to do.

But do you know what

I mean? Like I think the talent ed, version of what good intake looks like, good interview questions, how you build those is not

Ashley King (19:50)

Mm.

Desiree Goldey (19:51)

world of talent right now.

Ashley King (19:54)

That's why we made the whole entire company. That's why it exists. It's because it was like, dang, not a single one of y'all know how to do any of this. Like, let me make this little template. And then this little template turned into, let me make this little handout. And then this little handout turned into, let me make this whole entire learning hub. And then this learning hub turned into, let me make this whole entire company. And now here we are. So, I mean.

Desiree Goldey (20:14)

I

will say that it's been interesting because I've been interviewed now by people with like 20 years experience in recruiting and just been shocked about how it was just such an underperformance as a candidate.

Ashley King (20:30)

Mm,

yeah.

Desiree Goldey (20:32)

and I'm willing to explain all the things. This is, know, I talk for a living basically, right? So if you want me to tell you, I'm here to tell you, you got to ask the right questions. It's been interesting. Okay. I just want everybody who is only in audio that Ashley keeps building these building these horrible nerd out stuff.

Ashley King (20:38)

Yeah.

That one was dope.

This one's so dope.

This is lit- it

lit- it's like octagonal tesseract looking, alright? The first of the other one was a cubed watermelon. I'm gonna show y'all the little bracelet piece and now this has turned into the home shopping network. Just one little second. Look at that little bracelet. Look at that little funka-dilly. Alright, we're done with that, but I'll keep doing my own shapes privately. You know something? I bought it for my damn self.

Desiree Goldey (21:05)

my gosh.

Who gave you this present?

Day 10.

Ashley King (21:16)

It's not even a present! I've just wanted it for ages and I was like, you know what? What better time than now, honey?

Desiree Goldey (21:22)

want to get into a little bit of though, because I think this is where we're going with it. because I do think this was like our next topic. And I think this is really important. Are you a Sourcer? Are you a full life cycle recruiter? How do you evaluate all the things you're supposed to be doing?

Ashley King (21:25)

Okay, get in it!

Desiree Goldey (21:39)

and say, I'm doing a really good job, right? And what am I not doing well? How do I train up to do those things? Because I know I'm bad at follow-up.

You know, if I knew something's going on, like I'm not great at keeping, cause I mostly work with startups, but you know, sometimes I like have to go back and like really go through my spreadsheet. And that's just not like my thing, right? I'm a talker, I'm, you know, a relationship builder. And so I've set up agents. know everybody hates AI, but I've set up agents to make sure that I go and follow up and.

Ashley King (22:15)

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Goldey (22:15)

update

my spreadsheet. I know that's a failing of mine, right? So I am really cognizant of the fact that that is where I need to level up as a recruiter. And I think that when we think about enablement and talent leadership, like you should be able to identify that in your team, right?

Ashley King (22:24)

Yeah.

Yeah, let's talk about like basic diagnostic everyone, okay? Like look at this and I'm gonna give a verbal visual which I think is very rough, but we're gonna give it a shot. I want you to imagine like a cross, right? Okay, so down the long line is you, okay? That's you right there. The people that you interact with are gonna be the ones that we're gonna put across, right?

So cross number one is gonna be your candidate. Cross number two is gonna be your hiring manager. Cross number three, your HRBP. Cross number four, and the list goes on if you have a coordinator, whatever you have, all right? Every single one of those intersections right there is, if you circle it, is an opportunity of measure. And what I mean by that is every single opportunity of measure also means that there's an opportunity for enablement.

because none of those are going to be all 100%. Right? And so whatever those measures are off at that point, then you go ahead and you create enablement around that. And I always call it strategic scaffolding. But what strategic scaffolding is and what scaffolding is in general, because a lot of people are like, why scaffolding? I don't know if you've ever been in New York or any city or anything or any city. didn't mean it like that. Have you ever been in this earth? My bad, dude. That's not what I meant, bro.

Desiree Goldey (23:50)

Alright, hey, see ya.

Ashley King (23:57)

No, what I didn't mean was when you're in a big city, a lot of times I think of New York, they have these massive like metal wiring, big old ladder looking that has these slabs of wood on it and they go outside the building. And it's like if they're reconstructing the building, they put what's called scaffolding on the side so that people can go in.

fix, operate, whatever it is that they need to do within this operation of this building and then on the work for it and then whenever it's done they can remove the scaffolding and everything's fixed up and new and everything's fine. And so whenever I'm talking about strategic scaffolding what I am saying and what I am talking about is this enablement. This idea that you can come up beside them and kind of be this sturdy little stand hold that comes in, helps, fixes, paints, whatever it is we need to do with the windows, yada yada yada fixes it up.

And then once it's all stabilized and everything is good to go, neat and in order, you can then remove yourself and you no longer need that strategic scaffolding anymore. The reason it's strategic is because we are preventative based practitioners, which means we need to do some form of predictive analytics of what we believe that this could all be foreseen. So anyway, so I say all this to say that, if you look at all of those intersections,

Those are the things that you should be looking at to measure. And those same measures are the same ones that you would enable. Not to give a piece of my secret sauce, but there the heck it is.

Desiree Goldey (25:28)

No,

but I think that's so relevant and I love the, you know, I.

We talk about scaffolding all the time on this show, but how you represented that was really clear. It's like you're going in and painting that building, you're fixing that window, you're doing all the things to get to the finish line, which is a fully updated building, right?

Ashley King (25:34)

Yeah.

Desiree Goldey (25:47)

moving on. And whether you're a sourcer, a recruiting coordinator, a recruiter, all of those things can apply. It's just different tasks, right?

Ashley King (25:56)

Yeah, so

like for a sourcer, if your strategic scaffolding would be, if you know that there is a job that is hard, hard, hard to pipeline and hard to find, and on average it usually comes up however often, or maybe you know it's in the headcount planning for next year, your strategic scaffolding is gonna be, you know what, I should put strategic scaffolding around this scenario, meaning I should go ahead and pipeline and source now, I should be slow active, I should be doing AI drip campaigns into it, matching keyword searches, whatever.

That's what you should be doing and everything kind of follows suit. so if it's like, well, my manager never hires anyone and always does all this. Okay, well then let's put strategic scaffolding around that. And what you do in this scenario, whenever I say put strategic scaffolding around it, is you sit there and you say, let's play it out. So he rejects it. Now what? Like what do you want to do? What do you want to say? What's this part of this person that makes them worth fighting for? Say it to me and let's map through it.

And so the idea here is you put strategic scaffolding around things that you think could go wrong and you lean into that wrong. Say, okay, let's mind map. So that happens. Now what? What would you do next? What would you need secondary? It's plan being, but in a two scale way.

Desiree Goldey (27:06)

Right, right.

Yeah, you know what, this goes back and I think you picked up on this a little bit when you were just talking, but if you don't understand the data of your organization, I suggest you find out. What in the, right. Right. Right.

Ashley King (27:24)

for show. Because you can't do any of this without it. You're going to be painting the wrong windows. You're going to be using the wrong color paints. You're

going to be the fastest sprinter on the planet and you're going to be running in the wrong direction.

Desiree Goldey (27:35)

Right, absolutely. And so we should be understanding the business. And I can't say this, you know, like some of the best recruiters I've ever met have business acumen, which is, you know, and that's because, Like they have such good deep knowledge of an organization and how it functions.

Ashley King (27:47)

must.

Desiree Goldey (27:54)

Right? I think it's why I excel at recruiting. I think it's why you excel at recruiting, right? Like there are people who know this work from the business side to the recruiting side, not reversed almost. And I think it's a skill that everybody should build.

You know, I had a conversation with somebody, you know, week about EBITDA and they were like, I don't even know what that is. and that's a recruiter, right? Like if you don't understand how your organization is functioning or, or what they're looking for or what their goal is, then you are struggling whether you know it or not. You're already behind the mark to me a little

Ashley King (28:34)

so I think the key point here, is there is one single language that everyone speaks for the most part, regardless of department, and that is numbers. That is data is what gives you fluency. Data is what makes you a translator.

Desiree Goldey (28:48)

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Ashley King (28:55)

Now all I need to know is who is who in this room? Are you Cathy over accounting? Great Cathy over accounting. I know all the data that you're going to need because you're over accounting. That's the only thing I needed to know because I know the data that's relevant to that. And that's what I think is a key part and what separates okay recruiters, the man ones, but brings what brings them up to camp three is one, like you said, the strategic partnership, but two, it's

Desiree Goldey (28:55)

Yes.

Yeah.

Ashley King (29:22)

Can they read their data analytics? Can they tell a story? And I'm not talking like filling out your Excel spreadsheet of being like, I had two interviews this week and I only had two because three, that's not the story I'm talking about telling. I'm talking about, can you look at your pass-through rates and see where your issues lie? Can you do a quantitative, know, root cause analysis for things that are happening for the TAs that you manage?

Desiree Goldey (29:25)

Yeah.

All right.

Ashley King (29:51)

So anyway, the moral of the story is is that

If you want to sit at these tables, you got to speak their language. If you want to speak their language, you either got to do a lot of homework or you got to learn how to speak data, which you should really know how to do anyway. If you want to be a number three style recruiter. And so with all of that said, understanding the data, how to read it, how to tell a story, how to see gaps, it is one of the biggest things that we are trash at. And I know we're trash at it.

Desiree Goldey (30:21)

Yeah.

Ashley King (30:22)

because all of our reporting systems on the planet are complete whack. So, I mean, that's how you know it. If the tools were in line, tools have been out 30 years, tools were in line with what we needed, that would mean the people have to have it down pat and we don't even, so no, mm-mm, I ain't buying that, silly billies.

Desiree Goldey (30:39)

Right. Well, most

This is part of the conversation we talk about the cognitive side and psychological side of what we've been talking about. Ashley, what are we talking about and telling outside the box?

Ashley King (30:50)

Oddly

enough, Talent Outside the Box started with my last thought, which is, talent and data analytics is relatively new, which is why all the dashboards suck. Moving on, it's like I knew I was gonna land in this rabbit hole somehow. But here's what we're gonna focus on for this Talent Outside the Box is talking about high potentials, because once you do have that number three recruiter and you have that hypo with you,

Desiree Goldey (31:01)

Thank

Thanks.

Thank

Ashley King (31:17)

How do you keep them? And essentially, did you know that focus on achieving rather than avoiding failure is actually how most high potential employees operate? psychologists have found that high achievers primarily concern themselves with reaching their goals, while lower achievers primarily ⁓ worry about avoiding failure.

It's not that high achievers are okay with failing, it's that they understand the importance of pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone, which allows them to continually improve and ultimately succeed at a high level. Those who are mostly worried about failing tend to stick to their comfort zones, which inhibits their ability to improve and leaves them with average or below average results. So you may hear that and think, wow, high folks have a lot to deal with, but what I want you to hear...

is that is why you should care about creating psychological safety on your team. Because whenever they are comfortable and can focus on their goals rather than having fear of failure, you're doing it wrong. Give your team freedom to fail. Give them grace. Give them peace. Don't let them make big mistakes, but you know, create parameters and create opportunity to sharpen that muscle and just get better.

Desiree Goldey (32:41)

Thank you so much, Ashley.

This is that's the end of this episode. I want you to follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, we're everywhere you wanna be. Also visit our store if you want some talentless merch. It is on our talentlesspodcast.com website. Please go ahead and visit it for the holidays. I'm sure everybody wants a talentless hat

Ashley King (32:46)

Oof.

geez.

Desiree Goldey (33:07)

I bought my dog the sweater, so I'm super excited. I definitely did, I did. That was hilarious. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time where we're gonna be talking about the data. So, woo, it's gonna be a good one. Part two, bye.

Ashley King (33:10)

No you did not. For Otis? my god that's hilarious. That is hilarious.

Part two, part two, part two. Bye.