How to Build Credibility with Hiring Managers Before You Even Speak with Caroline Kiesler and Kearstin McGinnis

Speaker A: Foreign

Speaker B: what's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Recruiting is no Joke. I'm your host, Joel Algee, and this is the ultimate recruitment podcast that brings you a blend of entertainment, no nonsense insights, and of course, the latest trends.

Speaker C: Join me as I expose bad takes in the recruitment industry and get real

Speaker B: with talent leaders to give you an inside view of the industry here on Recruiting Is no Joke. Welcome to Recruiting is no Joke Folk. I am your host, Joel Lauchi.

Speaker C: I am super excited. For the next few episodes, I'm going to be airing content that was shot live at Rec Fest 2025 in Nashville. It was amazing. It was a great festival. For anyone that doesn't know, Rec Fest is essentially a conference that's done festival style. So I'm talking tents, outdoor. Everybody is relaxed, everybody is in their element. And it's a really great time to connect with talent acquisition leaders, HR leaders, really anyone who's interested in the people space. I got the opportunity to record live

Speaker B: episodes of this podcast.

Speaker C: So I've got five great guests in the next two episodes. And I was able to go to Wreckfest because of my sponsors for the

Speaker B: show for these two episodes.

Speaker C: And that is a company called Basic Capital. So if you go to basiccapital.com Essentially, Basic Capital has a brand new 401k option for employees.

Speaker B: It's a way to actually have your

Speaker C: employees more involved in their retirement. It's a lot more customizable, helps them grow their retirement five times faster. And, uh, I got to actually sit down in one of the episodes with one of the executives from Basic Capital along with one of their clients who'd actually been using Basic Capital as a way to not only attract top talent, but also to retain top talent. So if you're looking for a better way to serve your current employees to candidates that you're looking to recruit, you're going to want to check out basic capital capital.com. they're going to revolutionize how 401ks are done. So massive. Shout out to the Basic Capital team. You'll see a couple of their team members and one of their clients in one of the episodes. And then we have a variety of TA leaders and HR leaders. Hopefully you enjoy both of these episodes. We really enjoyed Wreckfest. We had a great time and we think you're going to love this content as well. And remember, if you want to be a guest of the show, if you want to sponsor the show, Please go to www.therealist recruiter.com. you can fill out an inquiry to, uh, get on the show and meet me. Or you can reach out to me at LinkedIn. Joel Lai, enjoy the episodes and we will see you guys back in a few weeks with our regular episodes again. See you guys. This episode was brought to you by Basic Capital. You're competing for talent, so why settle for the same old benefits? Basic Capital helps your 401k stand out by investing with your employees, boosting their investing power by up to five times.

Speaker B: It's a new way to show candidates

Speaker C: you invest in them to ask your team about adding basic capital and make your 4.1k a real recruiting advantage.

Speaker B: All right, we are live at the Purple Acorn 10 at, uh, Wreckfest 2025. It is great to be here. I want to give a special shout out to Purple Acorn and Basic Capital for making these interviews happen. We had great set of interviews yesterday and today is going to be the same. I would love to introduce our guest. Why don't you tell us, who are you, what do you do, and who

Speaker C: do you do it for?

Speaker B: That's how I always started out.

Speaker A: Yeah. My name is Caroline Keasler. I'm the director of human resources at Workwear Outfitters. So under my scope is everything from talent acquisition, business partnering, engagement, learning and development in a, uh, global capacity. So everywhere but Central and South America. We've got an HR director down there.

Speaker B: I love it. I love it. You were before this role. Were you in recruiting as well? So walk us through that journey.

Speaker A: I grew up in recruiting. I got to hr.

Speaker B: Did you grow up wanting to be a recruiter?

Speaker A: No. Oh, my gosh. Does anyone? It's like we all stumble into recruiting. I actually thought I wanted to do sales and ended up in a staffing firm. So my first job was a recruiter in a staffing firm, and I didn't want the promotion into sales. And I was the first person that didn't want a promotion.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Um, I wanted to stay. There's nothing like changing someone's life by getting them a job. And so I eventually made my way over to corporate recruiting, but I knew that I didn't want to be a vice president of just talent acquisition. I didn't want a slice of the pie. I want the whole pie.

Speaker B: I love that.

Speaker A: Um, so it took timing and the right leadership to finally make the jump over. So I've been fully in the HR space for about three years now.

Speaker B: Now, a lot of. A lot of people I talk to, obviously it's been a rough kind of few years for talent acquisition, so a lot of them are Looking at maybe transitioning into hr. Yeah, maybe some of these kind of similar fields. What advice do you have for somebody who's maybe in talent acquisition for, you know, three to five years and they're thinking, hey, you know, I want to actually switch. I, uh, maybe want to try a different area of the business.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: What would be the best strategy to get into that type of role?

Speaker A: I think you have to get closer to the business to get closer to hr. So start partnering with your HR director. Ask to sit in on their learning and development sessions. And I think that recruiters have such amazing gut instinct on organizational design and how the work should flow. So you've got to start approaching hr. You got to start telling people that that's what you want and having the right leader that'll start giving you the exposure. I ended up giving our, our, uh, total orientation, onboarding and a piece of learning and development to my recruitment team to start expanding them to giving them more opportunities because I think they're totally capable of doing more.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. What are maybe some things that, uh, you know, if someone's thinking about doing the transition, what are some things they should kind of know, transitioning into hr, that might catch people off guard or maybe they don't think about.

Speaker A: I think one of the biggest leaps I made as a recruiter in becoming a better recruiter was when I understood compensation philosophy. So today as a recruiter, you just find, here's the range, go. Right.

Speaker B: Well, sometimes.

Speaker A: Right, right, right. But when you know how to evaluate, uh, a job for your company so you understand the accountability, the authority, the decision making, the global nature, you have such a deeper understanding that I think compensation philosophy is such an interesting place for recruiters to really start digging in to understand the why.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Any, any kind of resources, like what's the best place to go, do you think, to kind of learn about.

Speaker A: I mean, you can just type in to any search platform. Um, compensation philosophy, the job leveling tools. Yeah, honestly, it's a, it's kind of like a five page document. It's very public. We use Aon for it, so it's an easy document to procure. Amazing.

Speaker B: M. Is this your first time at Rec Fest?

Speaker A: No, this is actually my third year since I'm local. I've seen it grow year over year over year.

Speaker B: I've been here all, um, events as well. So like past two years and obviously seen a lot of changes. What's been the biggest change for you that stuck out in terms of like, vendor content like what people are thinking about.

Speaker A: I think it's just getting sharper and sharper every year. There's more people that are coming, more relevant vendors, bigger players.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I, um, mean you think about some of the speakers that we started with three years ago versus speakers they were able to attract this year. Like it's m worth the time to get on a plane and get to Nashville for this.

Speaker B: Yeah. 100%. And it was, I mean last year was raining a little bit and have that, have that worry.

Speaker A: Oh my gosh, it's perfect this year.

Speaker B: Hearing a lot of people excited about just the overall vibe. Right.

Speaker C: Like it's.

Speaker B: Yeah. Not as corporate. You can really kind of connect.

Speaker A: Yes. That's the best part. I'm in sneakers, not heels today.

Speaker B: The best part, get to wear the shorts. I think one, one of the things we're going to be talking about later is we're going to have a fireside chat.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it really approaching TA through the lens of hr, which, which I'm really excited about. Why don't you give us a little preview and kind of like we're going to be talking about like why it's important and why recruiters should be tuning in.

Speaker A: When I, as an HR leader, I'm thinking about talent acquisition, I'm thinking about the whole pie. So if I have a hundred thousand dollars to invest, I'm not just thinking about talent acquisition. And I think that people need to hear that. I think that they need to know that there are. When you're looking at the full employee life cycle, you have to be objective for what your business needs. I also think that HR has a unique perspective over talent acquisition. How they're underutilized, how they can do more, how they can evolve. Um, so I'm excited for it. I think it's great.

Speaker B: What's one area that you think you know, hey, recruiters, this is a way to up level up skill in 2025. Like what would you, I guess with your team.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: What are you having them focus on?

Speaker A: For me, my team's going to be focusing on development. I think about the output of work that I have as an HR director and what the business needs right now is more development in leadership, succession planning, things like that. So I am getting them involved in manager and director trainings, even going to have them run one or two activities during these four hour trainings. But I'm also bringing them to the table for succession planning because they're having the conversations with the employees before as their candidates about what do you Want in three to five years. They are so well connected to the business just because they're hiring all over the business. That, that development piece, that succession planning piece, I'm, um, bringing them to the table.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it seems, it seems like now, I mean, across the board, whatever area and whether you're in marketing, hr, sales, recruiting, whatever, whatever you're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: There's the expectation now of how are you bringing value to the business?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: How are you, you know, how are you going to level up next year? How are you using data? How are you looking at the activity you're doing? What are the results that's bringing? Uh, yeah, for ta, that could be a challenge. Right. It's uh, we get labeled as the cost center versus roi. So I think using these tools not to necessarily just replace all the things we don't want to do, using it to get more strategic, it's huge. What advice do you have for, you know, maybe people who are like up and coming on how they can get more strategic? Like do they need to be. You mentioned partnering with hr. Any other like resources or things, activities they should be doing that you kind of would advise them to do?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's. You're connected to hiring managers, but just by the nature of your job. So you've got to go deeper with your hiring managers. You have to understand and be able to help them solve the problem of if they are going to go 40 plus days without someone in the role, how can they reconfigure the work on their team? Before you hire the person, you have an hour with them, you should be going deeper in those conversations to influence them, to build your credibility. And that's just going to help you have a better visibility to leadership. It's going to make people start saying your name in rooms that you're not even in. And it's a way to expand what you do uh, without having to burn more time. You're already having these meetings with the manager, so why are we only talking about recruiting in that meeting? You have their ear, so go deeper.

Speaker B: I think it's huge. It's building the relationships. I was talking to someone yesterday. Obviously there's so many tools, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think sometimes we can look at it and go, that's what we need. We need another tool. We need some automation. But the truth is, if you're working with a great hiring manager, uh, if you're working with a hiring manager, you don't have that relationship with, you don't have that credibility. It doesn't matter what tools you have. It doesn't matter what the tech stack is. You're not going to get the roles filled. Now, do you have like a go to way of kind of connecting with hiring managers or what advice would you have for like, let's say someone who's junior and they're trying to connect with a leader in the business, like, how do they approach those conversations to build that credibility?

Speaker A: So if they're your hiring manager, then you're coming into the meeting with insights to give them. So before they're ever speaking, you're talking about, this is what's going on in the market externally. This is where I could see internal talent coming into. You're bringing the insights before they ever ask for them. Uh, I love that. Yeah. You know, I don't. I hate.

Speaker B: So we're talking about like, salary, location of.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like where people are at, what companies

Speaker A: are at, um, what gut feel. This is what I'm seeing on LinkedIn, but this is what employment data is saying. I don't think they align. But. And this is why. So having those insights before they're ever like, this is what I need before you're really getting into the weight of the conversation just builds that type of credibility, you know, I hate, uh, I don't love the. If one of my recruiters in their performance review or their goals for the year wrote, I want to increase my time to fill by two days, I would immediately send it back. I want to see. I want to have better data insights to influence my managers.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's how you build credibility. That's how the manager is going to come back to your office. They're going to give you feedback, immediate. They're going to view you as the ultimate professional and make them level up to your standard.

Speaker B: I love that. I think. I mean, I coach candidates on that all the time. When you go into interviews.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Nowadays that's the best use of AI is to gather that data, have the intelligence go in so easy, smarter. And I think if you're not going into those conversations, conversations like that.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: You know that first impression. And if you have a bad first impression, everything else is a battle, then.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: How are you going to consult them on who to hire, who the best candidate's going to be?

Speaker A: It's so true. And you have to remember your hiring managers are not interview experts.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: They might have to hire someone once every two years.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So they're just as nervous as the candidates walking through the door. So you also have to build them up so they Feel confident they're not going to tell you they don't know how to interview. You have to assume that they don't know what they're doing here. So what can. What else can you provide them? You've learned about the role? What interview questions can you create for them specifically? And I'm not talking a whole booklet, like one or two. Make sure you ask these two questions because it'll help you understand this. Because good interviewers, at the end of the day, they need to learn.

Speaker B: Well, that's. That's why you end up with these processes that are around. Oh, my gosh, same question over and over. And I always like to ask, like, why are you asking a question? What are you. What information are you getting? Yeah, and it's the same from the candidate perspective, too. A lot of them are trying to prepare questions beforehand. I'm like, no, be involved in a conversation.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Let the questions be organic. So, right. Where can people find out more about you? Where can people connect with you? And, um. Yeah, what's the best place for people to find you?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, definitely on LinkedIn. When it comes to my professional self, I've heard of that place.

Speaker B: Amazing. And then we'll be Inspire stage.

Speaker A: I think so. Or is it the one of them?

Speaker B: Uh, one of the stages at, ah, 1:30. I'm super excited to, uh, to host the conversation. And guys, uh, once again, a special shout out to Purple Acorn for hosting these conversations. And we got a gift from our friends at, uh, Basic Capital. So huge shout out to Basic Capital for sponsoring making this content possible. And Caroline, thank you so much. Looking forward to our chat later.

Speaker A: I know. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, we'll talk soon. All right. Welcome back to Recruiting is no joke Live. We are live at RecFest 2025. We're pumped to be. I want to give a special shout out to Basic Capital for making this podcast episode possible. I got another really exciting guest. I always start off the podcast by asking, who are you, what do you do, and who do you do it for?

Speaker D: Well, Joel, thanks for having me. Kirsten McGinnis. I oversee recruitment for GovCon. Uh, it government contractor called TechSnap out in the D.C. area. But we are nationwide and in five countries, so we are keeping busy.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker B: And this is your first time at Wreckfest?

Speaker D: No, I've been here all three years.

Speaker B: You've been here all three years?

Speaker D: I am a veteran.

Speaker B: Okay. This is good because I get a lot of first timers. Uh, so how has the event changed? Like Is it. What have you seen as, like, the biggest change from, like, year one to now?

Speaker D: The growth. Just the growth in attendance, the growth in the extra. You know, I call all the extra stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: Um, the content has changed.

Speaker B: Um, just all AI.

Speaker D: It's. Well, it's all AI, you know, but there's all an AI component, it seems like. But, um, yeah, the growth has just been exciting for Jamie Team.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. I love it. And I know, um, obviously this. There is a lot of AI vendors out there. What are you excited about? What are the things that you're seeing? Work with your team? How are you implementing AI into what you do? And, you know, is there anything that's going to cause your eyes? You've been looking around and, you know, maybe not specific vendors, but just things that they're doing, things that. Sure.

Speaker D: We are in the infancy phase, even as a tech company, on the recruiting cyber, in the infancy phase. So for me, my goal just today was to sit into sessions of people that have implemented it and the steps that they took to get from zero usage to how quick can we get to fully implementing it, uh, into practices that make sense within our processes.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I mean, that's a big piece, right? You got to know your own process, know how you can implement AI in. And like you said, it is. It is infancy. Is there anything, anything that surprised you about any of the vendors or anything that you've seen where you're like, all right, you know what? I could implement that into my process.

Speaker D: The interviewing scares me a little bit, but. But now is the time to ask those questions, to have the conversations to see if it's something for certain positions, certain contracts, certain customers or certain recruiters that we might be able to take that from not doing it to. Is it something we can entertain? And more importantly, will our customer, the candidate, how will they feel about that? We're in the govcon space, it's cleared work, and it's a little different than service industry or something else.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, super niche. You're probably relying a lot on referrals, network and who you know. So how important it is for you then in your process to really kind of keep that human, that candidate experience

Speaker D: in there so important, we want them to know that they're talking to a person. We try to build those relationships. And because it takes time, you know, it might take 2, 3, 4 emails or phone calls before they pick up the phone or respond to that email. And by then we want to have known them as a person and we want them to know us as a company as well as the recruiter that they're working with. Um, a lot of our relationships start from just a resume on name a job board and then continue after they've been hired or even months after they have that first conversation where they return back to us and say, hey, I'm ready for a move within the company or I think I'm ready to go here. How do I get there? Or hey, we had a conversation six months ago.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: What do you have for me? Do you have something that might align?

Speaker B: What's uh. Because it's been coming up a lot. Obviously it's easier right now to send messages, it's easier to dm, um, people, it's easier to put out content. What do you think the key is to really keeping those relationships going? And like, how do you kind of train your team or how do you kind of keep relationships going long term and kind of balance, you know, those volume of messages that you have to send out to how you nurture relationships. Like, what's the, what's the key to that in terms of building relationships, finding

Speaker D: that relationship to nurture? Because you can't. You want to nurture them. M all. You absolutely want to nurture them all. And there's ways, there are ways that you can do that. Yeah, but for us it's find the candidates that you've connected with and then figure out how you're going to nurture. Which way do they want to be nurtured rather, you know, find out how you're going to do that. It could be phone calls, it could be emails, it could be text messages, you know, just simple. Hey, just thinking about you. How's your week been? Yeah, I've heard a lot sliding into the DMs. And that is such a foreign term for me to use in recruitment, but it makes sense. You have to go to where the candidates are. You can't wait for the candidate to come to you and you have to meet them. Where they're at. If they want the text message, give them the text message. If they want the email, send the email. Yeah, they want to meet in person. We, we encourage that. You know, it's rare that we get to do that nowadays because of just where my recruiters are at and where our candidates are at. But if we can make it happen, we want to.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny because I've seen a lot of content recently around Gen Z, uh, maybe like Gen A, I guess they're predicting like almost like um, unplugging and kind of getting away from emails and social media. And, you know, I think a lot of people are predicting that's going to be a push away, away from that. Is there a world that you could see recruiting being more like going to events and meeting people? I guess. How do you kind of play that into your strategy as well?

Speaker D: That's. I wish there was someone with early careers sitting here because I would love to know what they're seeing. But having a 21 year old myself, I see the same thing. You know, she used to be very much into social media and now it's text messaging. Yeah, don't email her. Like she might email me and then say, mom, why haven't you responded in five minutes? But I wish I knew what the next thing was going to be. You know, people said TikTok for, for a really long time. And yeah, no, that's social media. You know, it's, it's not where we're going to be. Maybe it's YouTube, maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a blog that we set up. I'm not sure yet.

Speaker B: How do you, uh, obviously there's a lot of noise out there. Like we were just discussing how do you kind of coach recruiters on how to stand out from that noise. So you're reaching out to a candidate that doesn't know you. What are the kind of things that you do to stand out and just really kind, uh, of look different from everybody else that's reaching out.

Speaker D: Set yourself apart and do your homework. Don't send, if you will, the AI email. You know, the one that gets generated for you. For you. Yes, that's easy.

Speaker B: Personalized message.

Speaker D: Personalized message. Take it, because it's gonna still save you time, but still personalize it a little bit more. Figure out where that person's at, where did they go to school? Do you have a connection there? Did you see them post something via LinkedIn or another platform that might intrigue them? Everyone has their own flavor to that. I'm very. I get, I don't want to say I get personal. Yes, I get personal in email or I get personal in my messages. But not too personal. Right. And then highlight the why behind your reaching out to them. It's so important. Like why the. Why me or why you and why they should choose us or text it out or that position or even pick up the phone or have a conversation and build that connection rate. We have a new platform and I've been watching the response rate and we're at about 50 to 75% on responses on this new platform. And I think it has a lot to do with just taking the time after the sourcing piece to really personalize that message.

Speaker B: It's really interesting because I know a lot of tools that I've seen out there promise the personalization, and usually it's been boiled down to past companies you've worked with or something from a profile. What tips would you have for people on, like, really, you know, how to do that research and like, how long should they spend? Like, where do you, like, usually go to a LinkedIn profile? Like, what's your advice for people on, like, how to dig a little bit deeper and like, what's that approach while still keeping it somewhat scalable so you can kind of keep that volume up.

Speaker D: Company is great, of course, because that's what the personalized message does. If you're on LinkedIn, where have they posted? What have they liked? Yeah, uh, do you have a group? Because you can normally see that in some of the profiles very quickly. Do you have a group that you're connected to and maybe you saw something that they may have been interested or, uh, they may be interested in from that particular group?

Speaker B: Are you finding people are more engaged now on LinkedIn than maybe before? Or you kind of see it down, like, what's that been like?

Speaker D: Yes and no.

Speaker A: We.

Speaker D: I say we, the collective, we on the team, we use it more as when they haven't reached out to us through another point of contact or another two points of contact. A lot of our recruiters are using LinkedIn as that third point and that's where they're getting the connection because now they've. The name's not foreign to them or the company's not foreign to them.

Speaker B: Yeah, makes. It makes a ton of sense. So third year, uh, rec Fest, you know, for people who aren't used to going to conferences and maybe they're considering going to Rec Fest next year. What's your approach to making a successful conference? Like what, what makes a successful conference for you just as an attendee.

Speaker D: Attendee? Yeah, absolutely. Great question. Look at the schedule, look at who's going to be there, and map it out. If you're trying to do that day of, um, you're going to miss opportunities. So take the time to look at the schedule, map out who you want to see, map out what booths you want to visit, and kind of get your game plan so that you're not, you're stuck in the moment, not the phone or the map, and trying to Figure out where you're going to go.

Speaker B: What happened to me today? No, I got lost.

Speaker A: You got lost?

Speaker B: Looked around in a circle and started sweating.

Speaker D: No, It's. What? It's 2:35 Nashville time. And I just realized there's a fourth stage right here. I couldn't find it, so I love it. Yeah. And then like, to walk away from it. You can be so overwhelmed after two days. But I used to pick five things that I wanted to do or implement as I got back or take a deeper dive into. And then I heard another session today. She said, pick just three, you're going to accomplish three. And I was like, that makes sense. Normally I get to four, sometimes I get to the fifth, but I always get to three.

Speaker B: What have I said in terms of, like, maximizing those connections as well? Right, because you mentioned, like, there's so many people, like, you get overwhelmed easily. So do you have, like, a way to connect during the conference and then, like, what's your kind of game plan afterward to, like, kind of keep those conversations going?

Speaker D: Yep. So when I sit in a session, I'm connecting with someone on LinkedIn and sending them a message immediately about something I saw in their presentation. Because that reminds me what I later, what I heard, especially if I'm still doing that messaging through LinkedIn. And in some cases you're exchanging phone numbers, you might be exchanging emails, but setting that time to make sure that you connect within the next probably seven to 14 days. You know, let it all digest and

Speaker B: then, um, that momentum going. Yeah, it's. It's true. Like, I think my first conference in person was like, three years ago at breakfast. So that was the first time I went. And I remember that's how it was. It was like, you're overwhelmed, there's a lot of people. And just even taking that time after each day to decompress and look at, uh, okay, what have I learned? What have I taken away? Who did I meet that was impactful? And then just making sure that you follow up. Otherwise, I think you just, you know, you can get lost in there. What, what about with. With vendors? Like, what are the things that you're looking at, like, when you go to a vendor? Because obviously I think they got over 100 vendor sponsors, which is huge. Which is awesome.

Speaker D: Great.

Speaker B: But, like, what are the types of things that you look for, you know, in choosing a vendor or, like, where to spend time and like, how do you kind of decipher between what each vendor is doing to really figure out, like, what solution's going to work for you.

Speaker D: Sure, sure. So last year we thought we were going to be shopping for an ats, so that's where I focused. I want to talk to the atss that were present. This year, I took a little bit of a different approach, and it's, what do we not have M? Because the moment you need it, you have a lot of homework ahead of you to get from point A to point B, and then you have approval and then implementation. So this year it's, what do we not have? And just go in with an inquisitive mind.

Speaker B: I know you're working with your internal tech team as well, to kind of get an idea of what needs they have. How does that work internally with the company?

Speaker D: Yeah, a lot of collaboration there. A lot of collaboration with our IT team, with hr, of course. And then this year, to rec Fest, we brought two, uh, members of our marketing team.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker D: Because there's so much that they can take from this. So it's collaboration with them. Of, hey, I saw this vendor on the list. I would love for you just to go to have a conversation and see if it's something that makes sense. I sent over to another booth to say, look at that setup. Like, we've been doing some things with a lot of video and audio equipment. I was like, you're gonna love that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Are you doing a lot of content within their recruitment process as well, or.

Speaker D: Not yet. Okay, not yet. Getting there. We're getting there. We do a monthly teams chat, if you will.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And I think we can expand on it from there, but it's. It's coming.

Speaker B: I love it. So where. Where's the best place for people to connect with you? So anyone who's listening, they want to connect with you. Where's the best place?

Speaker D: Absolutely. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I m. Am the only Kirsten McGinnis on LinkedIn, so I'm very, very, very easy to find.

Speaker B: Yeah. If you can't find it, you are not a real recruiter.

Speaker D: The trick is to spell Kirsten. But, um, that's the best place. Just let me know how you found me and would love to connect.

Speaker B: I love it. And are you planning on being here next year as well?

Speaker D: That's the plan. That is the plan. Travel schedule allows. Absolutely.

Speaker B: I love it. Well, thank you so much for spending, uh, this time with us today. I hope you have a good rest of, uh, the conference. And, guys, thank you for listening and tuning in. If you're listening live. Great to be with you guys at Rackfest and if you're listening afterward, it's great to have you on the podcast as well. Recruiting is no joke and I want to give a special shout out as well. The purple acorn and Basic Capital as well. And speaking of which, we do have a uh, special gift from Basic Capital as well.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker B: Can't get, can't go wrong with a gift. Always remember that gifts are great. So thank you so much, Kirsten. It's great to meet and hopefully we'll talk soon again.

Speaker D: Thanks.

Speaker B: All right, thanks guys.

Speaker C: Bye. Thanks so much for tuning in to

Speaker B: this episode of Recruiting is no Joke. If these conversations resonate with with you, don't forget to hit the follow button to stay updated on our latest episodes.

Speaker C: To stay connected with me, head over

Speaker B: to therealistrecruiter.com it's your go to place for more content, connections and a deeper dive into the world of recruitment. See you next week.