A Casual Conversation: Inside TTA Connect

Maria Melfa: Bring out the talent. Bring out the talent. Bring out the talent.

Narrator: Welcome to Bring up the Talent, a podcast featuring learning and development experts discussing innovative approaches and industry insights. Tune in to hear our talent help develop yours. Now, here are your hosts, TTA CEO and president Maria Ah Melfa and talent manager Jocelyn Allen.

Maria Melfa: Yeah, baby.

Jocelyn Allen: Yeah, baby. Uh, hi, Marie.

Maria Melfa: Hi, Joss.

Michael Aguirre: How are you?

Maria Melfa: Jackie, how are you?

Jocelyn Allen: I'm, um, fabulous. Matilda. How are you doing? Good.

Narrator: Good.

Jocelyn Allen: I feel like.

Maria Melfa: I know we're excited to have a few guests and we're a little bit ramped up today. We were supposed to be a little more serious today, but we just had a pre super bowl party. Hopefully that is not going to have any negative effect, but.

Jocelyn Allen: No, nothing.

Maria Melfa: But as a lot of the country knows, the Patriots is. Is going to be in the super bowl this weekend playing Seattle. And I know everybody is sick of the Patriots winning. And I could see, because I was kind of getting sick of the Chiefs, even though I like the Chiefs, so I could see that. But you know what? It is what it is. And I do like other teams. I do like the Rams. I do like Buffalo. I feel very bad for Josh Allen and the Buffalo fans because they've never won the super bowl.

Jocelyn Allen: And.

Maria Melfa: Yeah. And I like the Detroit Lions. M. That's about it. So we just had a chili cook off party and we had some winners. So it was very good. Yes. Slugs.

Jocelyn Allen: We turned into slugs since then. But it was quite a celebration.

Maria Melfa: It was a celebration.

Jocelyn Allen: Delicious food.

Maria Melfa: Yes. There was a lot of good food. A lot of different varieties of food besides the chili cook off.

Jocelyn Allen: So more cornbread than anybody.

Maria Melfa: Yes, more cornbread. Absolutely. Very, very nice. Yes.

Narrator: So.

Maria Melfa: Well, we're very excited to have a couple of our guests today. One of them, you know, our famous Mr. John Lavenger, who is our VP of Sales and has joined us on several podcasts before. But for the first time ever in the history of forever. Exactly. We have big time stuff. Michael Aguirre, who is our VP of IT and has been with the company for what, 20 years? Almost.

Michael Aguirre: Oh, is it 20?

Maria Melfa: I don't know. It's getting up there.

Jocelyn Allen: That'd be close.

Maria Melfa: I think it could be.

Michael Aguirre: I think it might be 20. Yeah.

Maria Melfa: And just think 20. You. I think you get a bubble. Bubble gum for a 20 year anniversary at TTA.

Michael Aguirre: It's a 20 year old bubblegum too.

Narrator: Yeah.

Jocelyn Allen: We bought this the day you started.

Maria Melfa: Exactly. We save it.

Michael Aguirre: It's the one that's under my desk right now.

Narrator: Absolutely. Yeah.

Maria Melfa: So, uh, so we're very excited. So I guess let's get started guys.

Jocelyn Allen: Let's get into it.

Maria Melfa: So we're excited to talk about TTA Connect today and the shift we're seeing in how organizations want to explore talent and make decisions. Over the last few years, the way buyers want to engage has fundamentally shifted. Research shows that more than 60% of B2B buyers now prefer a self service rep light experience, especially in the early stages of the buying journey. I know, I certainly like that buyers want time and space to explore on their own time, compare options and build understanding on their own before bringing someone into the conversation. In fact, studies consistently show that buyers now complete the majority of their research before ever speaking to a vendor, often progressing well into the decision process independently. By the time they reach out, they're not looking for a full size pitch and orientation. They're looking for validation, confirmation and support. What makes this shift especially compelling is the size of the decisions buyers are comfortably making this way. According to gartner research, nearly 40% of B2B buyers are willing to complete purchases of 5, $500,000 or more through digital or self guided channels. And one in five would consider purchasing um, purchases exceeding over $1 million without a traditional sales led process. I mean that's unbelievable. That level of confidence shows how much buyers want to stay in control over uh, their own journey. That does not mean though guys, that buyers do not want people involved. Most still follow a hybrid journey using digital tools to narrow choices and build competence than engaging experts. When alignment, risk and execution details matter, what they want less of is friction back and forth and uncertainty about whether the options in front of them are already vetted and relevant. That's exactly the gap TTA Connect was designed to address. So TTA Connect brings together more than 30 years of TTA's relationships, our best practices, our vetting practices and our uh, learning talent expertise into a modern AI powered self service experience. It allows clients to explore talent confidently, moving faster when timing matters and collaborate more efficiently and effectively while still having access to the human judgment and partnership TTA has always been known for. With that context, let's get everybody's else feedback here. Mhm.

Jocelyn Allen: Yeah, absolutely Marie. I love that intro and I mean as the on the talent side of things, as the recruitment manager, I've seen how this enhancement of the platform has completely transformed the way that clients are doing business with us. It's been great to see because it's not, it's this message that you've been delivering all along. There's nothing being replaced here there's something being enhanced. And we've seen that journey grow and grow since it started. And you've led the charge, Maria, like you've led TTA through decades of change, this being one of them, and have seen buyer expectations evolve firsthand. So I'd actually like to flip it and get your perspective. So from your perspective, when did you think it became obviously clear that buyers weren't just asking for better service, but for fundamentally different ways to engage? One that puts more control, transparency, even and speed back in their hands?

Maria Melfa: Well, Jocelyn, it was a cold, dark morning in 1942 when I said to myself, we need a platform like this even before technology existed, even before curled

Jocelyn Allen: up with a good book.

Maria Melfa: So, so no. So TTA Connect has been around for approximately 15, 17 years, but it was pretty bare boned platform. So we mainly had a job board, um, for our talent obviously to review our open opportunities. We had a place where they could download their resumes, so we certainly didn't have to handle that manually. And we also had a lot of functionality for like payments. So clients could go and they, they could review their invoices, pay invoices and talent could go and see they could submit all their information and, and also be able to look at when their payment was due. So again, it was a pretty bare boned system. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to add more features to make the buying journey easier for our clients and prospects and have more robust features for our talent to make their lives easier. Because as we know, our talent is on the road, or I shouldn't say on the road because they're not really on the road anymore. I mean some of them are, but they're busy doing what they do best. And a lot of them, they don't want to have to go and like find their own work. Right. They want to be able to do what they do best. And they, and that's why we have such great partnerships with our talent, because we can help them find the jobs that best match, best match, not Mitch, best match, what they want to do. So what we didn't want to do is we did not want to create a, a, uh, faceless platform. So we didn't want to have it as a full self service journey. I know there's a lot of platforms out there where you don't actually ever speak to a rep, but uh, we wanted to be able to still provide the same service that we provide because one thing that TTA is known for is excellent customer service and that is very evident in 80% of our clients are repeat clients. I mean, we've been doing business with many of our clients for 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 32 years, which is absolutely amazing. And what that speaks for is all the incredible talent. I have, like all of you on this meeting right now because you guys do such an amazing job supporting our clients and Michael from the back office supporting our clients. So. And another big thing is we wanted to get with the times, right? People work differently now. So we all don't just live in our office, right? We're all consumers too. We're all used to using different technologies and tools. So we're all used to doing online banking. We're all used to doing like registration when we have doctor's appointments or just everything ordering food. I always use this story, which is kind of funny, but when they first started with like door. Not doordash, it was even before doordash when they started actually having the ability to, to order food online and not. You would actually have to speak to somebody, right? Can you imagine that? You have to call up and place your order on the phone. I know obviously that still exists somewhere, but it's kind of very rare now. But way back when that was unusual. So my husband and I used to kind of bargain with each other about who is going to make the phone call versus who was going to pick up the food, right? So he would, we would sit there and say, okay, you make the phone call and I'll go pick up the food. Even if the food was 30 minutes an hour away because we didn't want to make that one minute phone call. So that just shows that we were willing to drive a half hour an hour and away. And that point is again, it's like people just, they, whatever. People want to be able to do things themselves on their own time. So that's why I kind of tell that story. And I am a middle aged woman. I'm probably the most technically illiterate person in the company, right. And I find my, I mean, see, John is shaking his head. Michael too. No, no, I'm uh, pretty good at John.

Michael Aguirre: I didn't say anything.

Maria Melfa: I'm very good at tcpip. So you know, if anybody needs any TCIP training help, please let me know. I can help out with that. But for me, not wanting to speak to people, wanting to do a lot of this work and research on my own before I speak to somebody, just shows again, like where people are going. And again, it's not, not just me, it's everybody else and the stats that I just mentioned earlier, like with Gartner and it just, it's staggering. So, so we wanted to basically allow. Not basically so we wanted to allow this journey for our clients to be able to get clarity on their own, be able to browse and explore on their. And then when things are more complex or they want guidance, they still have the human support. Human support is always there and it's not either or, it's both. And another big thing too that speaks to how the platform also is working with where we're at in the economy. Today, 83% of companies outsource and that number expects to even grow bigger. And the reason why they're outsourcing is because it's impossible for them to have um, full time, especially I'm talking about in the learning and development area. It's impossible for them to have full time staff that can help train or develop all the learning programs that they need. Way back when we used to do this business 30 years ago, you might have a company or learning development team that oversees a group of people that might want new training in Microsoft. Right. Or, or even some Microsoft apps.

Jocelyn Allen: Right?

Maria Melfa: That was about it. So you are able to handle it now people want training in every single area. They need development and design in every area. So it just, it doesn't make sense for clients to have full time staff. So they need the ability to quickly skill source and that's what TTA Connect does. It allows them to quickly find these people that already are like experts in this area. And if you look at the whole traditional hiring process right now, you know, if you're looking for somebody full time, you what do you do? You post an ad, you get flooded. Especially now with tons of resumes. You spend months, weeks, months going through all the resumes. Then you have to spend weeks to go and interview them. And then after you make a decision of hiring them, they come and you have to do an onboarding program. Correct. So onboarding to acclimate them, to acclimate them to the culture and to everything that they need to know. Plus if you're hiring for a learning and development role, you have to upskill them in all these different areas. Right. They probably good in some areas but again they're probably not fluent in all the areas that you need help on. So even more so in the learning and development area, do people need the ability to quickly find talent that could come in, be able to just bring in best practices, get quickly onboarded? And that's exactly what our Talent does because they're experienced talents. I know there was kind of a long winded answer, but let me know if there's any questions. Otherwise, I, I have a question for you.

Jocelyn Allen: Well, it's a big answer because it's a big question. So I think you covered all the bases very thoroughly. And we always love a good story time too.

Maria Melfa: Okay, excellent. Yes, I like story time too. Me too. Yes. Okay, so my next question is for John. John, you're in conversations with clients every day, almost every day. We give you some weekends off often when timelines are tight and pressure is high. Where do you see TTA Connect immediately removing friction for our clients, especially at the very beginning when they're requesting talent and they're trying to move fairly quickly.

Narrator: Yeah, we, we see that a lot, Maria. I think one of the, one of the largest themes in recent years has been our clients trying to do more with less and more quickly than ever. And uh, I think it's true for just about every company out there. And we've, we finally brought kind of that fundamental shift that's been taking place in the marketplace. You mentioned doordash, you've got your thumbtacks of the world, all these ways to engage immediately with what you need. And that's, that's what TTA Connect is offering. We're making that fundamental shift in the learning space and it's been, it's been a huge value add to our clients. They, if you actually break down the process of bringing on contract talent, you did a great job with that, Maria, for like W2 hiring somebody who's, uh, a full time employee, I mean, you essentially go through all those steps in a contract role as well. Maybe maybe not quite the same amount of rigor like in the onboarding and all of that, but I mean, a lot of those steps are consistent. So anything we can do to make that streamlined and easy for the clients has been incredibly well received. If I had a nickel for every time I've asked a client, how quickly do you want to get started? And I get the coy answer of yesterday, it's, uh, I'd be rich. I'd be absolutely rich. So the fact that we're able to make these tools real time for them has been huge. I mean, they're able to go in and plug in their request in the most streamlined way possible. They're able to have AI provide top talent amongst thousands of potential candidates. And the AI is looking across several dimensions and levers that you would consider talent for and giving them people to consider Some of the top talent in the country, sometimes the world in minutes. That's hugely powerful. And they get to look them over, see exactly why AI picked each of them, giving us a narrative associated with each of those folks, and giving you the option to meet those folks, get to know them, make sure they fit on some of the things that are harder to see in a profile, but to actually understand what interactions are like with them. And all that's happening in, in minutes as opposed to. I mean, I think people would be pleased to have somebody on the phone with them in a few days, sometimes their expectations a week or longer. And we've gotten to the point where, where they're. They've already selected folks that they're interested in and oftentimes can speak with them the next day. So, I mean, it's just, it's a huge shift when our clients are trying to move quickly. So, yeah, it's been, it's been an enormous benefit for them.

Maria Melfa: Absolutely. And I know we'll talk to Michael very soon. But I do love the new feature of the AI match, which it will show right in the section on why this person was matched, because it gives you the highest match based exactly on what requirements the client puts in. So it'll tell you. Like, we picked Suzy because Suzy has 10 years of experience in the financial industry. She's worked on these similar projects, she's worked with this similar audience. And it will show you, like, a whole paragraph on all the reasons why. So it is very cool and exactly what you're saying. People do want to be able to find talent very, very quickly. And oftentimes we're able to fill requirements within, certainly within 48 hours and a lot sooner than that, within, like, hours. And with, uh, the AI match, they can get exact matches and start interviewing these people right away and figuring out who is the best for their company.

Narrator: Yeah, and that carries over to their deadlines, Maria, because, I mean, that, that starting yesterday absolutely ties to their, their business, saying, we need this software launched, we need to get this training deployed for this particular event that we're having. I mean, these are firm deadlines that they're faced with, and they get, they get squeezed. They're often hearing about the requirement late, but the deadline's not changing. So, you know, sometimes this is truly like, it can make something happen for these clients.

Maria Melfa: Okay, thank you, John. Next question is for Jocelyn. Oh, boy.

Jocelyn Allen: I don't know if I'm ready to be on this side, Maria. Uh, I'll do my best.

Maria Melfa: I know. Well, you know this stuff inside and out. So, I mean, you work very closely with our talent, you have amazing relationships with our talent. What do you see that makes this successful on both sides from the talent perspective, how does TTA connect change this whole relation ship from the talent side in a meaningful way? And how does it get talent connected to the right opportunities?

Jocelyn Allen: Absolutely. Well, I think it definitely all started with our talent. I mean, the beautiful thing about them is that they are very communicative. We gotten lots of feedback from our lovely talent network about ways that this platform really could work in the best way possible for them. So the changes and the updates that we've made and kind of the platform that it is today is largely in part with to the fluidity of how they can work with our clients better. And it's really comes down to a way to market yourself within our, our talent network to our exclusive list of clients in the simplest way possible. Like, you don't have to do any of the heavy lifting and you still come out of it with this branded profile that sells who you are to our clients and learning and development. I mean, you essentially are building as your talent profile, your website, your resume, your portfolio, whatever, all in one place. And as somebody who has applied for jobs before, working with ATS isn't great. Like, it's not a fun experience to have, especially if there's that one out there that you come across again and you're like, awesome, um, this guy again. And no matter what you do, it doesn't matter how many times you've signed up or what you've uploaded, you. You do it over and over and over again. And TTA Connect has found a way

Maria Melfa: to cut that out.

Jocelyn Allen: Because your profile exists before anything else. You are an independent contractor in TTA's talent network. And then you apply for jobs and you get introduced to our clients and we market you in that way. So what you build is your exclusive page to say, here I am, here's what I do. You want to get to know me. And instead of saying all of that time and time and time again, no matter like every new job that pops up, it continues to send your already build profile to us as your recruiter, to the clients who are searching for you in on the back end of the platform, to the AI bot that is scanning every single piece of information in your profile. So the more that you have in there, the better hint, hint, and matches you to these opportunities before, before we can even get to them. So the wonderful thing that it has done is it's really taken, I think all of the places that contractors and people who are job searching, it takes all of the things that they are putting out there in different areas and puts them into one place and does exactly the same thing. So simplicity along with targeted approach. It's quick and it's really efficient. And our job matching. If I could toot our own horn a little bit, I think our recruiting team has done a pretty good job with it so far.

Maria Melfa: Absolutely fantastic. Okay, well, I know we just, we've been talking a lot about the AI feature and Michael, the, uh, mastermind brain behind this technology. AI can sound scary to some people, but I know when you see it in action, especially through TTA Connect, do you want to talk anything about what it looks like kind of behind the scenes? Uh, what was the goal in adding this functionality to the platform? And also another question is, like, how does that work alongside our certified qualified designation to build trust? Because that's obviously a big thing for our clients. Like, how do I know who I'm getting back on return is actually a good qualified candidate.

Michael Aguirre: Yeah, very good questions, Very good questions. AI. It's like the mystical black box, isn't it? Like, what is going on in there? Exactly right. And, uh, it's a buzzword, right? Everyone's like, oh, everyone's using AI and everyone's dabbling in AI. And our approach was a little bit different. It was very purposeful. Right? We, we wanted to use AI the right way and take the data that we have, uh, years of industry experience and expertise, and then make like a proprietary trained model that's ours and basically is kind of a little virtual Jocelyn working for you. That's. That was, that was what was important. Because you know what, if you're in your pajamas and you 11 o' clock at night, you really need a trainer and you go off and you try to reach out to Jocelyn, guess what? She's not getting back to you, but the AI will. So that's kind of what we've done here. We've taken that knowledge and, and then put it in our, our workflow so that we're doing a thorough scan. Like, we're scanning what Jocelyn was talking about, the people's profile. We, we have their industries, their skills, their past work, all the engagements they've done with tta and it looks at those patterns and it's scanning everybody. This is like, not a jab to you, Jocelyn. You can do a lot, but AI can read thousands and millions of rows in a couple seconds. Uh, I wish you could do that, that'd be great.

Jocelyn Allen: The amount of books I would read. Michael. Oh, my goodness.

Michael Aguirre: Exactly. But that's, that's what we wanted to do. It can only do so much. It's not exactly the customer service that you'd want after the fact, but it's going to get you there very quickly. And AI is so much different than traditional searches, like back using other platforms like Thumbtack or whatnot. They have some AI where they can, you can do some like translation where I don't have to fill out a form. I can just kind of ask a question. But all that's doing is coming up with a search that, based on the question you asked, we're doing things a little bit different. We're using everything that you gave us on a job post and we're trying to understand it. The AI has better context. Oh, okay. You're looking for someone who can do instructional design in the accounting industry. Right. And normally a search would look for people with the keywords accounting, instructional design. Right. However, AI and uh, particularly our AI can use the context to make sure we're not just looking for keywords. We're looking for actual work experiences that show major banking names, that show that your experience was actually applied with instructional design. And that's not a keyword search. That's like intelligence, hence AI. Right. So that we, we're giving like little hints of our industry knowledge and we're putting it in the fingertips of the customer. Right. So, and that's kind of like, and I kind of can kind of transition this. The second question that you had about our qualified and, and certified talent. Our qualified and certified talent. That is the, the, the, the forefront of what we do internally here. Right. When we're qualifying people, we have a very rigorous qualification process. Right. And we have done all that work to make sure. And when I say we, not me, it's like Jocelyn's team.

Maria Melfa: We're all in one team.

Michael Aguirre: Yes, we're all one team. M. But that, that human aspect where we made sure that the people were who they say they were and did what, do what they say they do and are just as good as we think. So because they did work for us, they've reached a certain status and level, the AI is using that information and making sure that, yeah, it's trying to understand your search, but it's also making sure that no matter who you get in this, in the recommended search, they're going to be someone that we vetted down to the T. So you're getting people that are like the best validated designations as possible and you can make data informed decisions on the fly in minutes. You don't have to wait 48 hours anymore.

Maria Melfa: And the different levels also can show who has had significant experience working with us and working in, in other industries. So we have the ability as, as we know obviously to, to filter through industries and stuff like that. But certified, you have to meet a certain criteria where they have certain amount of platform hours and have scored the, the best and the best. So people that we've been working with for years and they, they bring best practices. So I love that. So once talent is selected, execution really begins. How does TTA connect give clients visibility into everything that's happening from the project details to documents to the work diary?

Michael Aguirre: That's right. We do a lot after, right? We've been talking a lot about like, oh, just like finding some people, there's a whole lifecyc cycle after the fact. Once you start working with them, the relationship doesn't end there. Right where we built the platform without guessing, this wasn't a guessing game, right? We, we decided, hey, guess what, we're gonna listen instead. And we interviewed customers. Okay, like we had a pretty good platform for the last 15 years, but like maybe it should be more of what they want, right? So we interviewed some of our biggest customers, asked them the question, what would make you feel like you're more in the driver's seat? Best example, like one of our customers, SAE International, we got a chance to interview uh, them and talk to them about like, what would make this experience better. They're a longtime customer of ours, but there's a lot of stuff that we kind of just do, emailing back and forth, right. And at the end of the day it's kind of like getting good visibility of like who's deployed where. Can we make adjustments quickly to the schedule? One of the original questions, and John knows this very well, is like, can we just dump the entire year's schedule into your system? Like, can we just have access? They really wanted to be able to just. It wasn't necessarily about being like micromanagers. They just needed to see what was happening. They knew we were taking care of it, they just didn't know where to find it. And one of the biggest features that gets used by our customers today, not just SAEs, is our work diary. When I talk about giving visibility and transparency to the customer, the talent can enter their day to day information. It's a timesheet at the end of the day, but they can write a Story and say, hey, today is when we worked on module one, we ended up finishing QA on the preliminary sections and they spent eight hours on it. And uh, they can report back to you. And by the end of the week when it's time to approve their billables, you got their diary right in front of you and with the click of a button you can approve. You didn't have to call, you didn't have to write an email, you just had to go on the platform really quick and take a look, click a button. And that's, that's our biggest one.

Maria Melfa: Of course at the clients really like the workplace, the work diary. They think that is extremely instrumental, especially in instructional design projects, that they have clear visibility versus going back and forth on emails. They can see everything real time.

Michael Aguirre: That's right. It's great.

Maria Melfa: Yeah.

Michael Aguirre: And of course there's all these contracts and invoices and things like that. At the end of the day, our clients know what's happening, why it's happening, when it's happening.

Maria Melfa: Okay, thank you, Michael. So John, this next question is for you. Speed has, and uh, I know we've touched upon a lot of this, so not to sound redundant, but there's a lot of different angles on this. Speed has become a real differentiator as far as who our clients choose to provide talent for them. They want to make sure that they can have quick access and feel confident about the access that they are getting. TTA Connect has certainly changed this pace from concept to completion. What impact does that have on our client? Confidence and momentum.

Narrator: Yeah, so it's, it's had a major impact and I think a lot of this is going to piggyback off of some of the functionality that Michael shared and Jocelyn's alluded to as well. But when we, before we were discussing about how quickly they can get going, they can get started, but they're, they're seeing that efficiency and speed carry through the entire initiative. And that's. Yeah, I mean that's confidence inspiring for sure. So once we have some talent for them and we, we get them introduced and they're ready to move, they're able to see a lot on TTA Connect. They're able to see who they've got deployed. I mean we've been doing a lot of large scale programs when somebody's rolling out an SAP or major CRM or something like that. And I mean we had one not that long ago that had 45 trainers on it and they want to know who was deployed, who was virtual, who was in person. And they needed that visibility at multiple levels in the organization. They were able to share access with their entire project team and those that sit above it as well so that everybody could see. And it became the hub that, that everybody worked from throughout the entire project. Work diaries, as it was mentioned, is huge. That was always a, that was always a challenge over the years, especially with staff. Aug a lot of happened a lot with the smaller to medium sized companies. It's like we need some extra hands to help us out with some instructional design and they, you have to manage somebody when it comes to contract instructional design. And that, that was always, it could be a little jarring for organizations that weren't used to bringing on additional support talent. So they would, they would kind of give some direction and set the talent free to, to work towards a goal. And then they'd come back and they'd be like, okay, we, we just found out that we really need to get a pretty detailed analysis of like what was done each day. We need to understand that. So it'd be these like last minute reports that would be pulled together and it was, it was a little notchy. I mean all that's changed now. It's all just part of the process and it's very seamless for our clients.

Maria Melfa: And they were working in multiple different platforms too. So now it's one place to be able to look at everything that you have from the candidates that you have on your project to candidates that you have favored. Right. For future things, candidates that you don't want to see anymore, candidates to like where they are every week to the work diary, to quality ratings and reviews. So from the whole process to obviously payments and custom reports for a lot of clients or custom features that we have made, as Michael mentioned, for one of our clients, we get that opportunity. I know you did mention large scale rollouts and I know we did have a project that um, started maybe about a year and a half ago where we had approximately 100 trainers for a national training delivery project on a proprietary system. And that was probably the first time we were able to really see what it was like on like recruiting as such, on like such a wide scale. So I know Jocelyn can talk about that, but the client absolutely loved that and that was a game changer for them. And they actually told us that was one of the reasons why is obviously we had really good candidates, but the ability to be able to quickly see and go through that and look at all the profiles, I don't know. Jocelyn, if you want to talk at all about that, yeah.

Jocelyn Allen: Uh, regarding that project. Yes. I mean, things were changing for them in very real time. I mean, in a way that I don't think we had seen before and of course was unexpected on their end too. But that doesn't change the end of the goal. Right.

Narrator: It.

Jocelyn Allen: It definitely changes the timeline and TTA Connect, not to mention everything that is in, within it as a feature already that we've talked about, being able to organize your schedule, see those changes in real time, favor your talent, pay and make adjustments. We also are able to embed a lot of other things, like by request, that still allows us to level up on how we are engaging, recruiting and qualifying the right talent, but still keeping it all in one area. So we were. Yeah, I mean, hundreds of people. I think at one point we had a pool of over 500 of these trainers that we were sorting through to the point where internally we started to talk about the time commitment on the clients and knowing that this couldn't all be on them to. To manage if they were. If they were going to still achieve their goals on time. And so we had changed our process and added different layers of qualification, which included video interviewing that was embedded in the platform, coordinated scheduling. We had lead trainers that would take over positions and start to maintain access to the interview schedule. But that all, again, is done in one portal where you say, I want this person. I'm going to favorite this person. I'm going to link my calendar instead, say, this is what my time availability is like, and then we take care of that coordination. So all you're looking at is your completed schedule and say, they did get that. And I'm assigned to this person on this day and I've got this rubric that I'm going to evaluate them on. And I mean, John, keep me honest here, but I think in a matter of two months, we had over 85 people qualified and deployed on this project with a. I mean, no extra turnaround time.

Narrator: Yeah, it was. That's exactly right. It was. We were able to move quickly and a lot of clients, they'll. I don't want to say they'll cut corners, but, you know, they're realistic about what can we do within this timeframe to make sure we have the right talent. I think because we were able to move so quickly and bring some innovative concepts like the video interviews. I mean, that's. That's powerful. I mean, I put myself in a stakeholder shoes and I know that I have well over 100 candidates that I can review that have Very short video based interviews that I can look through. I'm able to get through dozens of candidates and score them in a very short period of time. That is not how it used to be. It would be individual interviews. And what we did for a long time was when you had that many people in a tight timeline they would do representative interviews. Give me the first five, we'll interview them and then the rest we're going to hope and pray that they're very similar to the first five that we just talked to. Right. And all that shifted. Now they're going to get to actually review all of their talent and do it quicker than they did interviewing those five.

Maria Melfa: And I would say even that took that particular project maybe two months. But a lot of that I think was on the client side to go through. I mean because we certainly have scaled up for large scale projects within weeks. That's we're famous for that. I don't think there's a company that can scale better than us because that's what we've been doing for years. And we have a lot of the same talent that we're using for various projects. So if we have a bunch of financial large scale rollout projects that are training maybe financial advisors, we can use some of the same talent and quickly like identify. Great. This person did wonderful for Morgan Stanley. I bet they would be great at ah, this project. So we can quickly identify and get it going and move as quickly as the client can move. But obviously be careful and make sure that the client has enough confidence and enough help. And I know another thing that we also do too is we offer project management too. So our project managers in addition to our recruiters can go ahead and help the client with that. We have some clients that we've been working with for so long that they don't even want to get involved in the interview. They ask us, you tell us who's best. You guys have been working with these people for a long time so that's fantastic. When we get that the confidence in our clients.

Jocelyn Allen: So whether it's all at once or it's that phased approach, you're right. Like we will meet you where you are at and actually try to get you ahead because we know that that's what you're here for. Absolutely.

Maria Melfa: Exactly.

Jocelyn Allen: Well this, this has been a fun conversation and uh, we've been talking about it for weeks and I couldn't wait to get this all together. But let's, let's have a nice little wrap up with you. Maria on tta TTA Connect and, and the future that it holds within tta, which is everything. So there's often more con, there's often concern. Sorry, let me back up. There's often concern. As we've talked about. You call yourself very playfully technologically illiterate, right? But there are people who are sometimes fearful of that, right? Especially the ones who are talking about human connection and having that real to real matchup. How does TTA Connect actually elevate our human expertise rather than replace it? And how does it shape where TTA is headed over the next few years?

Maria Melfa: And I think, Jocelyn, those that question is fair because there are still a lot of people that are afraid of technology and we didn't even talk about AI and how that's changing everything too. Right? So that's a whole nother, I guess, podcast. I know we've had a lot of podcasts on AI, but we won't talk about that specifically on AI right now. But I do understand the concern. But as, as I mentioned, TTA is a self service journey with full service support platform and the self service journey is you. You take as much self service as you want, right? So if you don't want to do anything on the platform, you can certainly go ahead and speak to reps. We have reps here that are absolutely fantastic and help you through it. So we didn't want to create that. We learn technology and I mean everybody knows this technology certainly does not replace human expertise. It removes the friction that gets in the way. So I know the big friction is having to wait, right? Having to wait to see the candidates, waiting to get resumes for like several days. You can go ahead and look at things at real time, right? And like TTA Connect, it takes care of the heavy lifting. It's taking the, it's doing the searching, it's doing the matching, it's doing the coordination. From a client perspective, it feels more human because they have clarity, they have visibility, they have the control. They know the talent they're seeing is already vetted and aligned to their specific needs, right? And from the talent perspective, the talent gets better matches because it's clearly matched to their profile and everything that they put in. They can do what they do best, right? Doing all of their design and development and training work and, and it allows them to be able to be their own boss with having the support of TTA Connect and TTA behind them. So while I look ahead, TTA Connect allows us to scale and move faster without losing what makes us different. We still have the high touch customer service. It's not technology instead of people. It's technology and service of the people.

Jocelyn Allen: Excellent. I always say when somebody says, like, what do you guys do? I say we build relationships, and then we do the rest from there.

Narrator: And podcasts, what we do.

Maria Melfa: Yes. Correct.

Jocelyn Allen: Correct. I'm like, and if you want to hear me talk more, I also do this.

Maria Melfa: Absolutely. You can see us, um, once a month on Wednesdays and listen to our. Our podcasts. Bring out the talent. Yes, absolutely.

Jocelyn Allen: This is such a fun episode, guys. John and Mike, thanks for joining.

Maria Melfa: Thank you for joining us. Um, thank you very much. All right, see y. Um,