Episode 65: Luke Carignan - Unleashing the Power of Data with Special Guest: Phenom

Speaker A: M thanks for trenching in. You're listening to TA in the Trenches, the podcast for HR and TA leaders making workforce decisions with real financial and business consequences. I'm Matt Reimer, co founder and COO at Rogue Hire. Rogue Hire runs the largest healthcare TA benchmark program in the land, where we know one thing acutely, that top performers don't have more applicants. They waste fewer of the ones they have. Each episode I sit down with CHROs, VPs of TA and recruitment operation leaders living at the front of that problem, Operator to operator. Less opinion, more evidence. Let's get into it.

Speaker B: M Talent Acquisition in the Trenches is brought to you by Rogue Hire, the team behind the 17 year Healthcare TA benchmark program and the makers of medics. Your ATS tells you what happened. Medics tells you what to do next. A patient monitor for every open rec, continuous vitals, early warnings, one clear signal on track, watch or critical. Your team works from the same truth. Your dollars go only where hiring risk actually exists. Learn more@, uh, roguehire.com.

Speaker A: Luke, we appreciate you joining today and I, uh, thank everybody, uh, who has trenched in, uh, with us live for this special Monday edition. I am your host, Matt, uh, Reimer, co founder and COO at a company we call Rogue Hire. And, uh, this is part of an ongoing series that we've been hosting, uh, tackling some of the biggest challenges, uh, in our healthcare field, uh, really unleashing the power of data, um, finding ways to advance automation and then leveraging, uh, AI, uh, specifically in safe, uh, and the most important ways, uh, that we can. And so for today's conversation, um, we have a special guest here, uh, a podcast master. And so I'm sure he's going to put me to the test a little bit, uh, on, on the show, um, but we're going to dig into things like, uh, practicing as a recruiter, uh, even maybe as a TA leader at the top of your license, uh, something that we all know in healthcare. Uh, well, uh, we're going to dig into these, uh, ideas of AI boot camps, uh, a new and novel idea that, uh, uh, Luke, uh, I've heard him talk about multiple times. Um, we'll probably start the conversation with the idea of ROI every single day. And so, you know, we all are faced with, uh, a lot of buying decisions when it comes to technology and AI and automation. Um, but how do we prove it out, uh, that whatever we make from a decision standpoint, um, drives, uh, roi. And we may get into this idea of synthetic humans and we'll see where the conversation goes to. And so here at Rogue Hire, we just released um, our annual uh, benchmark, um, study. And I'd be remiss to not prime the conversation a little bit with that, um, the top five themes and I think maybe Luke, um, for you uh, to think about as we work our way through this and introduce you, um, five themes that we're seeing this year. Number one, um, time to fill in, um, general staff, um, generally improving. Um, however, uh, some of the high skill clinical roles like therapy, sonographers, specialized, uh, radiology and specialized nursing are worsening. Um, we believe and the data suggests that as so that at times the talent shortage could um, be overstated. Um, and so, uh, idea number two, that um, we've got a lot of talent in our database. Uh, 61% of external candidates that we hired last year were already in your database. Um, and so that's idea number two. Idea number three is that more applicants don't always equal better hiring. And so we see volume up in certain areas. Uh, however we see conversion is down and so one in three candidates are stuck in process. Um, and that process is meaning stuck in stage. We saw that in last year's data set. Um, we see the spread between top performers, performers that are innovating, performers that are um, dialing in, uh, their team and their ex, uh, uh, their um, uh, tech ecosystem work widening. Um, and so the top performers are getting better and the lower or median, uh, are worsening. And then last but not least, uh, we see in spots, uh, that healthcare is still running a post Covid, maybe a 2021 playbook, ah, overly reliant potentially on job boards, um, sometimes maybe recruitment, marketing and um, under investing in advanced analytics, candidate engagement and rediscovery. And so, uh, we'll talk about all of those points as we work our way, uh, uh, through this conversation. Today's guest is Luke Kerrigan. He's the strategic Director of Health Care at Phenom, a 15 year uh, industry vet, including uh, in the trenches as a CEO at a healthcare staffing company. So uh, he has certainly a deep knowledge of um, what the industry is, where the challenges are. And then he uh, brings to us that broader, uh, landscape, uh, in, uh, addition to his role at Phenom, uh, he knows uh, the industry very well, recording over 200 uh, podcast episodes, uh through Astra, and he regularly drives the national conversation on uh, what is happening in healthcare ta m today. So, um, joining me, uh, for today's episode, as always for our live events, is Ryan Affilter. Uh, he focuses on uh, really our recruitment, uh, marketing strategy and stack, uh, here at uh, Rogue Hire, uh, specifically leads implementations of uh, a product we call Signals. Ryan, um, let's keep us honest here today. Uh, what are we hoping to dig into and what are some of the learning objectives for those that have joined us live?

Speaker C: Yeah, thanks Matt. First off, welcome Luke. Great to have you here. You know, I've been tracking VNOM's impact for a long time. It's fantastic seeing you and the team at our basecamp, uh, summit this past spring. And I think uh, you know, Matt kind of hit the nail on the head today. We'll be leaning heavily into ROI and uh, focusing on the idea that TA has hit a breaking point. Recruiters are kind of trapped in low value admin work while unbedded shadow AI uh creates hidden compliance liabilities. So I'd really love you guys to kind of dive into as well. How do we close that automation, uh, gap and then looking forward to diving into the AI boot camp, uh, and ROI every single day. Let's go.

Speaker A: Cool. So let's start Luke, uh, maybe with the uh, ROI topic, um, and you know, I guess if I'm back in my days at Trinity or at ah, UPMC and in seat and um, I have the barrage of uh, solutions, point solutions in addition to my core ats, my core HR system, my background check vendor, people that are running core, um, these point solutions that have shown up uh, and are professing or claiming um, substantial roi, uh, with the use of AI, the blanket term. Maybe talk to us a little bit about um, how you look at ROI and then this idea of proving it out every single day. What does that mean to you?

Speaker C: Yeah. So

Speaker D: first of all, thanks for having me back. Grateful to be here and I could talk about this all day long. So I'm excited to jump in. But I'm glad we started with this because over my too long career that I've had on the vendor side and uh, I hope the practitioners agree with me on this. ROI has always bothered me, like bothered me a lot. And I know that you can see it on folks faces, uh, when you present ROI to them, uh, sometimes it just kind of comes off as voodoo math. And I think that for the past 15 years or so that's exactly what it's been. Hey, implement our widget and you're going to get a 50% ROI on your cost, cost per hire. Well now what does that really mean? And to me that that is voodoo math. Like it's Anecdotal. Anybody can say it, and it may or may not be true for your exact organization, depending on what problem you're solving for. But health systems are a lot more complex than just giving a blanket ROI for something, especially a number that moves so frequently as, uh, you know, as ROI in a certain position. I mean, you mentioned it in your intro here. We're looking at, um, what did you say? Like, the support positions went up, we're doing well. The specialized positions are going down. That's a lot harder. So cost per hire inherently in health care is not something that can be measured as a blanket roi, because what is the cost per hire for each one of those? You look at the support roles, your cost per hire could be. It could be 100 bucks. I'm not even kidding. It absolutely could be. You could get people rolling in for free on, indeed, you got a ton of volume. Uh, and that's just kind of the nature of the beast. For the specialized roles. I don't know, maybe $3,000 a hire for ad techs. What if we go up to, like, radiologists? Are we looking at $100,000 per hire? So to me, it just. I don't like the way ROI is typically set up. So I think what we need to do and what we've real. What I've been focusing on doing over this past year is switching the ROI conversation towards business outcomes. And so what I'm looking at with business outcomes is I want to look at it a health system almost from the boardroom or the CEO perspective. Right now, we're looking at healthcare, and we're all being constrained by Medicaid reimbursements. Uh, pay is not getting any better. Right? We're not getting. The reimbursements, as we can see, aren't getting any better. The access to care is actually improving with telehealth and access to care for most, for the most part. And so what bets are the health systems making in the boardroom in order not only to thrive at one end of the spectrum or to stay afloat and keep their doors open at the other side of the spectrum, because both are different ROI models that we need to look at to do this. So I want to first look at what business outcomes are the executives making the bet on in order to make their business thrive. Then from there, I want to align what the solution is to match those strategic bets that the organization is making, because a vendor would not be a good partner. If we're over there giving you an ROI number for support positions, you have absolutely no trouble filling at all. I mean, it's, it's, it's actually, I think, bad for the relationship for us to even recommend an ROI number even be appended to that, because sometimes people are good in what they actually do in certain parts of the business. So we'd rather look at two or three things that are going to drive business outcomes and then put an ROI number to that. However, now we run into something else. Another problem with that is I can't give a blanket statement based on what ROI you're going to receive because it's a lot more complex. And this is, I think, where it gets into the benchmarks, looking at your own data and having a realistic ROI that you can give somebody. What I've been doing lately is rolling into organizations and saying, all right, I can't give you a solid like, hey, you're going to save a bajillion dollars over three years, and I don't want to do that. What I want to do is I want to give you an ROI per day. I think that we can get your time to fill down in these specific roles, these hyper cells, we'll call them. Let's pick three roles that we're making a strategic bet on for the organization. Here's what your ROI looks like if we cut it down by one day. Here's what it looks like if it's by 15 day, and if I can calculate it by every single day and not only give you goals to reach towards, but benchmarks that you can get better and improve. Because as we, uh, as we enable more folks on AI and people are using AI in a smarter way, that ROI should get better year over year. So in order to partner with somebody, it should be okay saying, look, I'm going to find you three days on these key roles, and that's going to make sure the solution pays for itself and a little bit more now once you get using it and it's working, well, like 15, 20 days off of that is absolutely, can be a reality. But let's just be honest with ourselves about what that looks like. And if we undershoot that, can that be defended to your leaders and to your board and whoever's cutting a check for this partnership? And to me, it's a much better, cleaner way to partner with an organization. And I, I hope it makes folks feel more comfortable about it as well, because they, they do have control over that roi. Like I said, I could ramble on this all day, but you had it looks like you got some questions.

Speaker A: No, no, my, my question is, and I'm just kind of curious as we'll kind of compare notes here is, um, as you're in and out of healthcare organizations, right. What are the, from your point of view, the strategic bets, the top three strategic bets that you see the C suite, uh, making, um, specifically a chro, a cfo. Um, and then do those bets from your point of view line up with what the operators, folks like myself, you write the VPs of TAs, the directors, the managers, the recruiters, do those line up, do those match? Or from your point of view, are they off? Um, I, I've got, I've got a point of view on this one, but uh, I'll let you go first.

Speaker D: So I, at, at a high level, I do think they align, but I don't think the board and the leaders are being as direct as they could be to everybody underneath them to align with those goals. Because once we like. What I've experienced is when I align to those strategic bets and I regurgitate those to the folks that are in the TA space, right. Or running TA the organization, it sounds oddly familiar to them that this is what their boardroom and the president has been saying, but it just wasn't articulated super clear that that's how it aligns to their role. So I think they could be a lot more clear. But at least from what I've seen, it's not like what we're saying is coming out of left field. It's uh, typically the bets that I'm seeing right now is a lot of expansion goals. Hey, we're opening up a new location and we need to make sure that it's staffed before the doors open, which is incredibly hard to do. And it's happening all over the place. That's kind of a lay up, right? And then when I say, hey, imagine what your CFO is going to say when you're fully staffed before the doors even open. And then they say, oh yeah, that's all they've been talking about the past few months. So it's not like out of left field. I've also seen really interesting ones happen right now. I've seen health systems that are losing money or cutting out. Medicare Part M, Medicare Advantage, right. And uh, they're suffering, you know, sometimes like let's say like a $500 million loss. They're cutting out that part of their business, cutting out the admin roles and they're expanding into more rural health care and access to care. That is a giant bet where they're Actually shrinking and expanding at the same time. Now, it's the right thing to do. It's the right call from a business standpoint. And it's something that TA has to align to in order for that bet to be successful. And I'm seeing a lot of that in the market right now.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then, and I think like that 100% agree. Uh, I think to add on as I'm out there, the word productivity, um, this blanket word of productivity keeps showing up. And then also the idea of I need my teams to use AI, use more AI, the blanket over top of everything. And so, um, I think that can point leaders down multiple paths because there are obviously in this tech ecosystem a lot of different spots where, um, you know, meaningful deployment of AI makes sense. There are other spots that it doesn't make sense. Right. Um, and so I think it's that connectivity, that connective glue between, you know, what's going on operationally, what is actually real or can be achieved operationally, and then communicating the value of that effectively back to those CHROs and CFO to say, hey, listen, like. And I like this idea of calculated every single day. Um, ROI for me comes down to, as a former operator, kind of like two different spots. One where I'm actually pulling or leveraging a budget line item that I've got a, that I've got responsibility for, um, you know, whether that's FTEs, whether that's marketing expense, whether that's tech expense, whatever. And in ta, those are very thin. Or I am back to your point, uh, leveraging some type of broader business metric, uh, and improving that metric and then tagging a dollar, um, to that particular metric. And so depending upon who you're talking to, um, ah, either of those can be acceptable, uh, or they can be, um, leveraged or used to move the conversation along to the next step. Um, so I'm just kind of curious, like, as you, as you think about it, uh, from your seat, um, is there a real world example where, um, advanced automation or AI was deployed and there was a nice ROI case that, that organization attached to to prove the worth, uh, of what was deployed?

Speaker D: Absolutely. Uh, the easiest one are the voice agents that we have out there. So voice agents, for folks that don't know it, is literally a synthetic human. We need 10 seconds of audio of Matt Reimer and we can make a synthetic mat right now. He can call people, screen them out. It's pretty cool, right? Watch out. So what we did, and this was a large health system down in Texas, all right? A very successful one. And they deployed the voice agent on a number of their jobs. The one that we did the case study on that I want to call out, their results were they got a 734% increase in candidate volume. And these were for like med surg nurses. These were not easy to find. It went from like five candidates on average to 34. All right, so jumped like crazy. Uh, another thing that we could, that we found that I thought was just so interesting was the candidates that are interacting with this voice agent, with the synthetic human. The most common time of the week that they were interacting with them was on Sunday morning. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I, I and ah, another thing is we had about an 80% completion rate from the voice agent as well. That stopped me in my tracks if you I'm in this space and I don't think that many people would be comfortable with it. I thought 25 would be a home run. Right. Because then it takes it off the recruiter's plate. 80% is wild. And I guess it's because they can do it on their own time. I guess maybe that explains the Sunday morning. And it's a lot more accessible. So it also then shortened their time to hire by about two weeks because all the coordination was taken out of it. There's calendar integration so I can talk to a synthetic human on a Sunday morning, pass all my screening questions and get that actual phone screen or that human touch interview scheduled on Monday if I want to, when they're in the office. And all this is done over the weekend while people aren't working. So I think that's an example where we just see some astounding ROI happening. And then the other thing was just saving time. I mean I said med surg nurses, but we're seeing it in like even stuff like patient access, where you might get 2,000 applications in a week.

Speaker C: Well,

Speaker D: who's going to screen out 2,000 applicants? There's no time to do it. We're already pressed for time. So we usually don't. We look at like which 20, pass the smell test on their resume. At the beginning we call them and if they don't work out, we go to the next 20. And what if the person at the end, the 1800th person, was actually amazing, but we never got to it. Those voice agents can call 2000 people at the same time. So now your 2000 candidate pipeline just got shrunk down to it within minutes to who your top candidates would be. And let's be real. And this Is another thing we got to watch out for. I'm going to rant here for a second. Just a heads up, but, uh, a thousand of those people, of those 2,000 applicants don't even remember applying to your job. They're on. Indeed. Quick apply. They're just throwing darts out there. They did not even recall doing that. Right. And it's going to get worse. You see things out there, like AI apply. You were about 30 days away from somebody typing into a chat bot. Analyze my experience and apply to all the jobs within 10 miles of me. And if we think the volume is a problem now, it's about to quadruple over the next year. At least that's what I'm seeing right now is once these companies figure out how to make money off the candidates as well. I mean, game over. We thought that we had a lot on our plate. Now, just wait.

Speaker A: Um, Ryan, I'm going to pull, uh, you into the conversation here, uh, in just a second, but I think there is a few things there. Um, Luke just wanted to unpack a little bit. Any, any resistance from folks engaging with the voice agent? Right. And so I think that would be the first natural objection. Um, and, you know, I'm not suggesting that I have that objection, but I'm just kind of curious. Um, do you get, you know, friction points there from a change, um, you know, kind of management perspective, or is it just about setting expectations in process? Right. Um, and expectations of what that process is going to look and look and feel like. And, uh, you know, I've always been taught by the I.O. psychologists that, um, you know, quantity. Right. Like you had said, can drive quality. And so are you seeing more quality applicants since you're screening a larger amount of them? Enter the funnel in that, in that particular case study.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. You don't find, uh, more gold nuggets in the river by going through less dirt. You just don't.

Speaker A: You

Speaker D: have to put it all through the pan. Right. Uh, for the first part of that, I think it was something to the point of are people, like, weirded out by a voice agent? Like, yeah, definitely. Uh, this is the first time in history we've had five generations in the same workforce, which is wild to me. Right. So it's not only about the voice agent. It's about giving them options to communicate how they want to communicate. So usually the ones that I'm going to go to is going to be the voice agent. A, uh, one way video phone screen, a one way video voice screen where you can just answer questions. So think about a voice agent. But it's just a recording. It's not like an interactive through a bot. Then let's go to a bot. Can we get them through a chatbot? Can we get them through text message? All asking the exact same screening questions of the same calendar integration. And if those five or six that I just mentioned fail, have the people go through the typical, you know, application process if that's what they really want to do. But to answer your question, I don't think that there's one silver bullet. I think you should give them as many opportunities as you possibly can to communicate how they're comfortable doing it. I also want to say all of this, and I am, I am an AI guy. You mentioned it. We're making synthetic humans over here. I wanted to call out, AI is not going to replace people. All right? This is. AI is at a people problem standpoint right now. Now, people that. Say that

Speaker A: again. AI is at a people problem standpoint. Say that again.

Speaker D: It's AI is at a people problem standpoint or even stand still right now. All right? And there's a couple. There's a couple reasons why I say this. First of all, you can have the best AI software on earth and the people at your organization aren't pulling it through, nothing's going to work. Hey, it's just common sense, right? The second thing is that AI is not going to be a competitive advantage in a year or two. And I say that I'm a guy that sells AI, right? And I say that because anybody can buy it, AI is a people problem. Now let me land the plane on this one and tell you exactly why AI is a people problem. If everybody can buy it and within the next year or two, everybody could have the same amazing software if budget's permitted and they just all got it, then where does the competitive advantage lie? Well, now it goes back to the people who's using it the best and what companies are investing in AI now at the beginning and being an early adopter so that they have the people kinks worked out a year or two down the road when every, when anybody and everybody can buy it. Because the point of AI is to free up time for that high touch so that you can sell the opportunity so that you can be a talent advisor to where the point where regardless of what job, uh, that anybody applies to at your organization, you have enough knowledge and enough time on your plate to get them to the right role and the right hiring manager, no matter what AI can take everything else off their plate as long as we can teach people how to use it. But really the problem that organizations are going to have is not having the people to implement the AI properly. And if you can't do that, nothing's going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah, love that riff. Um, Ryan, we're uh, cruising right along here, uh, almost a half an hour in. I just wanted to kind of pause and kind of see how we're tracking and uh, if you had anything, uh, agenda wise you wanted to make sure we are grabbing out here, uh, on the show today.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think we're tracking good for time. Uh, I'd like to lean into one area that we uh, wanted to explore and kind of thinking about these voice agents, right, The AI synthetic Matt Reimer calling all of the med surg nurses out there. Um, I think it's obvious this kind of AI is a massive competitive advantage, at least in this state. Right, Luke? But uh, kind of adoption without strict governance can be a little, kind of reckless. So I have these conversations and these questions kind of come up regularly. If your recruiters are using, you know, unbetted consumer grade tools to draft communication or screen resumes, uh, you're exposing your brand to those hidden biases and data leaks. So I guess broadly my question is how should TA folks leaders explore or think about uh, what to expect from AI that's intentional enterprise grade, you know, how do they get started? Who's in the conversation? Is that it? HRIs, legal, AI, governance committees,

Speaker D: uh, it's all of the above, Right? It's all of the above. I would say it is something you really got to watch out for and the target on that is moving day by day. You

Speaker C: know,

Speaker D: I think from what we're seeing, you need to invest in tools where it's more of a walled off garden of data where you can control the information that goes into the large language model. Right. So as long as the leaders have control as to what the generative AI is going to say and that is going to say things that are true, you should be okay from that standpoint. You also want to watch out for any software or tools that are going to knock anybody out of the hiring process without having it be a human decision. You always want to and this for everyone on the call. When you think about AI, it's not human in the loop, it's human in the lead. It is going to make a great tool for you to use as long as you are in the lead with it. And if you always lead with that, you're going to remain compliant. And from a legal standpoint, that's very defensible. Also, it can be a tool for you to be more compliant, because let's think about what AI does. It records absolutely everything you do, every single action. So now if things are going wrong at your organization that you didn't even know about, you can uncover that and teach and train on it. Now you can go to the spots where this is happening and improve the way that people are doing things now. Um, also, it is all going to be housed there so that you can use it from a defensive standpoint as well, should those things pop up. Uh, but Ryan, it's something that we got to keep our eyes on. I think that especially you look at like, I use Claude every day, I think Claude code is absolutely incredible. But the other side of that is you can kind of make whatever you want. And so if you don't have any legal expertise and like, you know, Luke just graduated from college last month and I made a free internal tool on CLAUDE code that I want the recruitment team to use. Yeah, uh, a little dangerous.

Speaker A: So to kind of maybe button this one up. You talk a lot, uh, in your podcast about this idea of top of license recruiting, similar to the way that, you know, we talk about nurses, uh, at the top of their license on patient, uh, care. Um, so in your mind, I guess, Luke, is that, you know, simply, you know, this adoption of AI to expand, you know, my capabilities as a, as a recruiter, as a leader, so on and so forth. Um, you know, I guess like from, from, from your vantage point, is that a moving target or is there a very specific target for, you know, recruiters and teams to practice at the top of their license?

Speaker D: I, I think to me, recruiting at the top of your license is what I said before, like being a talent advisor. When I think about the ultimate of being at the top of my license, it's the simple statement that regardless of what a candidate applies to, I'm going to find the right job for them at the organization. That would just be the greatest result that we could find from anybody. Uh, it also means not doing just some of the redundant or manual or administrative tasks that we're forced with doing. Every day I talk to folks, uh, you know, we talk to health systems all over the country and it will blow your mind. The top of type of things that I see that folks are doing manually. I'm talking one recruiter handling 30 separate spreadsheets, then copying and pasting one lines of code over to onenote. Then copying that over to an email campaign, then copying all 30 of those spreadsheets, the OneNote links and those other and the results of the campaign back up to a M Master spreadsheet for leadership. And as you can imagine, the last thing that is getting done is really thoughtful outreach to the candidates because we're too busy working in the business and not on the business. So when we look at working at the top of your recruiting license, that's like, that's the goal that I think we all need to get to is doing the human element that makes the company great. I will tell you, I think that a lot of organizations should we look at things that can be switched over to AI right now. So let me talk about things that can AI are intakes, intake meetings with hiring managers. That can all be done with AI sourcing can almost all be done with AI screening, AI scheduling, AI interviews for the most part, especially those initial ones as we're getting people into the high volume AI, we even have onboarding agents now that are going to help onboard through that experience. So I'm seeing the really successful health systems recalibrate their teams towards more of a human high touch. One of the lowest hanging fruit that I think we have right now is onboarding and pre boarding. I think the more people you can shift over to that and make it be like a real celebration joining the organization. If you can keep the pipeline you have that you are making offers to and ensure they have the start date and that's a good experience that goes right to retention, that reduces the amount of open recs that you have. And I think it's where you can see some of the greatest results right now. And let's be honest, it just kind of feels good. That's a fun job to have is to bring in new people on their first day. That's exciting.

Speaker A: So you get this um, engine running, right? That, that the way that um, it can be in a modern, you know, sense. Um, you know you get the automated scheduling, you get the synthetic humans working and you know you're, you're, you're expanding this productivity, right? And you're ensuring that you're not creating waste with the organic uh, talent that shows up to your organization. Right. And so like I'm driving all cylinders here. What, what is the, the future from your point of view as it relates to. All right, I still can't hire enough pts or I still am challenged to and I need to go out and source uh, in this digital environment. Um, you know, people that are taking These digital journeys, um, I need to source talent and bring it to my organization. Is that evolving, uh, as well? And can you talk a little bit about, you know, I guess, your or phenom's point of view of the very top of the funnel and filling that up?

Speaker D: Yeah, I think it goes. So we have actually have a sourcing agent for that. Right. But that's only going to take you. I want to caveat this because it's different on different positions as well. Right. So what does sourcing mean for physicians? What does it mean for pts? Ultimately, it comes down to how many people are employed in the United States and in your region, how much is even accessible. So first we got to go to. And Rogue Hire loves this. You got to go to your candidate inventory. You got to figure out how many folks are there and get your baseline. Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If we're using, uh, let's use pts in Pittsburgh, Matt. Why not? Right? So go find your candidate inventory in Pittsburgh. How many do you have? Right. Do you have 50% of the candidate pool? Do you have 30%? Whatever it is, let's get our baseline, go to the bls, figure out how many pts are even employed in Pittsburgh, and use that as your baseline to see how much you have to go. If you have 50%, I'd say you're doing pretty darn well. So, okay, now you can do email and texting campaigns. You can automate that sourcing, but you still have 50% to go on that. Then I'm going to probably look at benchmarking where I own each market. So let's stay with Pittsburgh for a minute. I personally consider if you have 85% of the employed market in your candidate inventory, you own that market, and you shouldn't spend a dime on marketing or advertising through. Indeed. Or anything else. I think you can do that all through internal texting, internal, uh, email campaigns. Heck of voice. You. You own those candidates, right? I'd go to every other single one, and I'd see where I have 85%. And wherever I have 85%, I'm pulling that budget. I'm, um, pulling that spend. And I'm putting it. To get back to your example, I'm saturating that PT role in my market. It is a race to go from 50 to 85% in candidate inventory. And once I hit that on those pts, I'm moving on to the next one. And just what I described. I didn't ever say that you had to spend one penny more. I just said Stop sprinkling budget and focus in and dial in on where the business needs. Right. Or the outcomes in that case of the pt demand it. And then that's just going to keep paying for itself later on once you get that 85%.

Speaker A: A lot of um, and Ryan, maybe even you can talk about this. Um, you know, a lot of changes, you know, happening. Um, you know, with indeed, um, and really their relationships to organizations. You know, we're day in and day out, um, you know, here working on uh, and working with the programmatic vendors and, and really the blanket theme there seems to be ensuring that what is being sent for paid media, whatever that is, uh, actually needs recruitment done on it. Right. And so that I've got um, fresh, um, budget against my hardest to fill um, roles. And so I guess Ryan, from your point of view, like what Luke just described, does that match your mental model with also what's going on, uh, in uh, the broader market marketing landscape?

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, absolutely. I think we're always in recruitment marketing tasks with um, the mantra of doing more with less, uh, and finding ways to be a little more precise and targeted with our budget. So some of the things you're leaning into, Matt, is, uh, once you have your kind of target market defined, that 85% that Luke's leaning, uh, how do we ensure we're effectively spending the right, right budget in there? And it's uh, you know, looking deeper than just the available jobs in the available market, but, uh, looking at the health of our pipeline and ensuring we're focusing on requisitions that are truly at risk and taking spend away from those that may not be at risk or have other issues, maybe process issues or bottlenecks or maybe the funnel is sufficient. There's candidates sitting at offer stage or not. So, uh, it's about being more precise. Right. Kind uh, of moving away from that shotgun approach. I think, uh, Luke, you were leaning into and uh, targeting at a more exact precise point.

Speaker D: Yeah. Just don't sprinkle budget. That's. That's the only thing that sets my hair on fire. Spend it however you want it. Do billboards, I don't care. Do what works for your region. For the love of God, just don't sprinkle the same amount on every single job and call it a day. Like, just be very intentional about it. Double, triple down on those pts. Do whatever you need to do. And I'll also say, you know, to prioritize it. I, uh, encourage everybody to really go and have a conversation at your organization about business Outcomes figure out. If you don't know what strategic bets the organization is making, it's not even that hard to figure it out just from Googling some things or seeing what your board or the CEO is saying. And guess what? You already have a seat at the table. You're already an internal employee. Go have those conversations, align yourself to the business outcomes and the bets that they're making, and focus your budgeting dollars and your time and efforts on that. I mean, it's, I hate to oversimplify it, but it's kind of a great recipe for success in what you're doing.

Speaker A: So we're coming up on optimal, uh, podcast timing, uh, here 40, uh, five minutes. And so I'm going to do, um, just a little rapid fire, uh, kind of close out here. Ryan, before I do that, uh, is there anything else that you'd like to ask Luke while we got his, uh, brain power here today?

Speaker C: We do have one question in the chat from Nancy, Nancy Nelson. Uh, kind of on the topic of AI hallucination. So how do you handle situations where the AI malfunctions during the screening process? What happens when a star candidate accidentally gets rejected?

Speaker D: Ah, Nancy, thank you so much. So that will, at least in our platform that will not happen. Uh, all rejections are only triggered by humans and humans only. The candidate will never be rejected because of AI, unless it is a knockout question that you actually put in there. Now that knockout question that you determine could be like, are you, I'm, um, sticking with Pittsburgh. Are you licensed to practice medicine in the state of Pennsylvania? That is an absolute requirement and they do not have that. That could knock them out. Nancy. AI also, though, now knows to ask follow up questions. So we even have it structured into these workflows where if they were to even say, no, I don't have a license, we know to ask why, which is really cool advancement, right? The answer could be, well, I'm still in nursing school. Awesome. When do you graduate? Let's keep that conversation going. Right? Or maybe they're relocating to Pittsburgh and they're about to be licensed. So that's great as well, uh, the, the malfunctions. So the system that we have is kind of wall. So there really aren't a lot of hallucinations because it'll tell you that it doesn't know the answer because we're controlling the info that's going into it. Whereas, like chat, GPT, things like that, uh, are just going to the open web and they're trained to give you an answer and they don't know what's right or wrong on the websites that they're seeing. Your job descriptions are a lot easier to see what's right and wrong within. And there's a source of truth that we can give to it. Does that help? I'm reading Nancy's question again just to make sure that I got that one. Okay,

Speaker A: good.

Speaker C: She's typing.

Speaker D: Yes, excellent, Nancy.

Speaker A: Oh, all right, uh, last, uh, maybe last question here for today, Luke. And again, appreciate you coming, um, in to the trenches live. So you've recorded 200, over 200 podcast episodes. What are the three biggest learning lessons or, uh, interesting things that came from those 300 episodes, um, for maybe your development or things that you think that would be valuable, um, to the team here today? Could be healthcare related, could be not. Uh, doesn't matter to me much. But, uh, we are trying to do some teaching here. And so since you've talked to so many people, what are three things that stand out from all those interviews that you've done?

Speaker D: Yeah, and they're not even necessarily healthcare related. I'm glad you called that out. They're more like life things that have helped me out. But, like, one is definitely Seb Gerard, who's a chro over at Navant right now, really taught me the importance of unlearning what you know now to prepare yourself for the future and really looking at yourself with a sense of humility. And I can't imagine a time where that is more important than what we're facing right now with AI taking everything over and moving so fast and just unlearning so that we can focus on success. Uh, number two is that, I guess don't ever, ever think that health care is this way just because people say healthcare. That's. That is this way. That's not true. Look at Maxine Carrington. We talked to her. She's Chro over at Northwell Health. I can't tell if Northwell Health is Google or if they're a hospital. Like, I'm not kidding. They're innovating like crazy, putting AI everywhere. They're building high schools. Did you know that? They're building high schools now? Yeah, creating their own pipelines with high schools. They even have their own intrapreneurship program where I think. And, um, I might get this wrong on the recording so Maxine can correct me, but I know I'm close. Anybody can share an idea to help fix business problems at Northwell. And then they have, like, a Shark tank presentation, and if they're Right. They get like a half million dollars to grow their own business division internally at Northwell. Well, and then I asked her, I said, you know, or is it. Do you. Do you, uh, expect, uh, you know, uh, innovation at your company? And she goes, oh, no, we don't expect it. We demand it.

Speaker A: Demand it. Yeah,

Speaker D: yeah. And to me, I was like, okay, now that's really cool. And that's somebody that is not thinking, hey, this is just the way that healthcare does it, uh, this way. And they're doing. At the time when I was interviewing her on this, and she's talking about building high schools and innovating, they're going through an epic implementation. They're switching out their erp. Like Matt, they had multiple projects going on that I've seen make chros implode. Just one of them. And they had like five things in the air. And she's just doing great and going forward, innovating. Um, I think one of the other consistent things that I see pop up with everybody, uh, comes back to, and this is. We don't talk about this a lot. It's usually when we stop recording is the importance that the financial success of a business has on culture and how hard it is to make happy people when a company is not doing well financially and how much easier it is to make them happy when they are. And the ones that are focusing on culture and being really successful at it, they all pretty much have healthier bottom lines and they focus on that money aspect a lot. So I think that relationship is a lot more closely connected than people typically think. And I have seen that. And, uh, that really changed my. My thought process on it because I was like, wow, some folks are like some chros out there focusing 90% on driving money and 10% on culture. And they have the best culture because they can afford to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Huh. I never even connected those two dots or even remotely thought about that idea until you brought it up here today. I mean, make sure makes total sense. And we talk about culture a lot, but as a prerequisite, uh, you know, foundation of, um. It's a very interesting, you know, idea. Now I have record, uh, hopefully by the time I get to the end of the year, I'll have recorded half maybe of the episodes that you have. But, you know, this. This consistent theme that, um, you know, that always shows up for me and I. One reason that I appreciate you and appreciate you coming on the show today here is, um, you know, everybody's got a voice, you know, regardless of kind, um, of who you are. We got a lot of value to add. Whether it's this show or the folks that are listening in today or hearing this live, um, lean into that. I think the uniqueness of your experience in combination with a lot of what's happening, uh, with AI is where some magic can happen. Um, when we take some of our products out, um, and we work with the end users. By working with the end users and having that voice, uh, and enabling that voice from the end users, you really build stuff that is super nuanced and much better for that human to bot, if you will, interaction. And so I just would challenge everybody on the call here today. Um, you're obviously listening for some reason. Um, but make sure that as things go forward that your voice is heard and that you take a point of view on the technology that you're using day in and day out. Um, I think that's a critical attribute. And, uh, you know, trust me, the companies and the firms that you work with, they want that feedback. Uh, and if they take their partnership seriously, they'll take that feedback and incorporate it into your day to day environment. So, Luke, we appreciate you stopping by today. Um, if folks want to learn more about you, Phenom, um, get on your podcast. What's the best way to reach, uh, out to you, Luke?

Speaker D: Oh, easy. Lukeenom.com is my email address. I'm very quick at responding to that. Uh, LinkedIn is always great. Luke Kerrignan on LinkedIn from Phenom Bo and Lukeshow.com I'm pretty darn easy to find anywhere online. So however you want to throw up a smoke signal, I'll probably respond. I'm in sales, so I'll respond to pretty much anything, you know, so go ahead.

Speaker A: We want to make sure we're getting the, uh, real Luke, not the synthetic. There

Speaker D: is

Speaker A: no

Speaker D: synthetic. There is no synthetic Luke. But I do have it going through all my emails, my calendar, things like that. I've been making my life, I've been doing my lawn. Like my analogy is I have it doing my laundry so I can do more of the fun stuff.

Speaker A: There you go. Cool. All right. Yeah, we appreciate you stopping by. And uh, Ryan, thanks for coordinating everything and uh, being on the show today, I guess. Until next time, uh, and thanks to the folks that joined us live. Uh, we'll see you back in the trenches. Thanks again, Luke.

Speaker D: Thanks, Sue.

Speaker A: Seeing out.

Speaker D: See ya.

Speaker A: M. Thanks for trenching in with us today. If a benchmark, a framework or a question from this conversation is worth taking back to your leadership team. Please, please do that and let me know how it lands. You can always find me out on LinkedIn. For more on Rogue Hire's Healthcare TA Benchmark program and medics the Decision Intelligence Layer for talent acquisition, visit roguehire.com if the show is useful to you and your peers, a subscribe and a review always go a long way toward getting it in front of the leaders. Making these calls day in and day out until next time.