5 Must-Have AI Agents w/ David Weinstock

Recorded LIVE onstage at Recfest US in Nashville!

David Weinstock is a Talent Acquisition leader who isn’t just talking about the “future of work” — he’s actually building it. Think less “post another LinkedIn thinkpiece about AI” and more “deploy AI agents that actually eliminate half the nonsense recruiters deal with daily.”

As VP of Talent Acquisition at New Story, David runs talent across 16 wildly different companies — which basically means he lives in 16 different realities of chaos simultaneously. Before that, he scaled TA at Hopebridge, supporting 7,500 hires a year across 125 locations… which is the kind of volume that makes most TA leaders want to fake a Wi-Fi outage and disappear.

David’s specialty is taking fragmented, duct-taped, “we swear this spreadsheet is fine” recruiting operations and turning them into high-performance, data-fueled, AI-agent-enhanced machines that don’t require midnight dashboard crying sessions, incense burning, or last-minute Indeed panic spends to function. ATS + CRM buildouts. TA org redesigns. Real analytics. Real ROI. No buzzword cosplay.

Enjoy!

SPONSORED BY JOVEO, High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

0:00:00.1 David Weinstock: Occam's razor is a theory, right? Where simple is better. Right. Make it simple and digestible and learn from my mistakes. When I was early in my career, I had a mentor sit down and he was like, Why are you spending 90% of your time on this PowerPoint trying to tell people how smart you are. They don't care. He's like, You sound like a, a jerk. And he said, you just need to tell people about the 10%. He's like, simple is smart.

0:00:28.1 Joel Cheesman: David, welcome.

0:00:29.3 David Weinstock: Appreciate it. Good morning.

0:00:29.9 Joel Cheesman: You're the, you're the first interview, which means we have...

0:00:32.9 David Weinstock: You can only go on from here.

0:00:33.3 Joel Cheesman: Carte blanch to fuck it up.

0:00:34.4 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:00:35.0 Joel Cheesman: Way we can screw it up, basically, big time. So five must have AI agents. Before we get to the, the meat of everything, let's learn a little bit about you, uh, professionally, maybe a little personal stuff.

0:00:47.6 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:00:48.4 Joel Cheesman: Uh, your past, etcetera.

0:00:49.4 David Weinstock: Appreciate it. So how many of you start, went to school for recruiting? Show of hands.

0:00:55.7 Chad Sowash: Anyone? Anyone?

0:00:56.7 David Weinstock: Anyone? All right. Same. So I went to school...

0:00:58.4 Chad Sowash: Little kid.

0:00:59.3 David Weinstock: I went to school for hospitality management so whoever talked me into that, Grade A salesperson. Uh, so I started my career here in Nashville with Marriott, opened a hotel, did a multi million dollar renovation. Uh, so I checked off all the milestones in a hotelier's career pretty early on. But through that experience, I was able to learn that I like the recruiting aspect of it. At the time, I was unhappy in my career and I had an older friend and a mentor sit me down and said, All of your jobs, pick the things that you liked of each and then go find your new job. I thought that was pretty profound and it was pretty simple. Uh, and so I ended up in recruiting. So part of opening a hotel, I was doing a, a staffing model that was a proof of concept for the folks from Bethesda and Marriott corporate. We were doing a blended role. And your company said, Hey, we used to hire three of these people, let's hire one of them and then cross train them. Anybody have had that in the, in your companies? And that's what we were doing.

0:01:58.1 David Weinstock: And so we were able to hire an opening staff of 23 within about 10 cents to budget, which was great. And then I went into agency recruiting, cut my teeth there and, uh, went in house. So currently, uh, I had a great opportunity to work for News Story Management. We're a leader in alternative and special education, predominantly in the Northeast. So think about autism, think about emotional regulation and behavior challenges. We service those children. And so we have, uh, over 80 brick and mortar schools that we own and operate and then we are also, uh, tasked with supporting school districts across the, the Northeast as well to support the public schools. And so with that, um, we have the pleasure of hiring a lot of in demand talent, right?

0:02:40.9 Joel Cheesman: Yep.

0:02:41.1 David Weinstock: Special education teachers. You guys have seen teacher enrollment is down. Board certified behavior analyst, things are down. SLPs, these are folks guys that they don't have to go to a job board because the recruiters are in their back pockets. Or I could post my resume today and have a job by night. And so my career has just been, uh, typically mission driven, mission aligned. I've worked at Vanderbilt, the TA there for all 22 schools. Worked at a company called Hope Ridge, 125 clinics across the country, eight... 9000 hires a year. Uh, and we've broken records at all the places because of our great team. Some of them are represented here at News Story. So I know I'm bouncing around a little bit, but, uh, yeah, that's me. I'm a father too, a husband, um, and I love my boys. And I'm getting... I missed the good luck video today because I don't know about you, public speaking is like, Oh, uh, and that four year old...

0:03:35.1 Joel Cheesman: You're doing great. You're doing great.

0:03:35.9 David Weinstock: That four year old saying, Hey, good luck, Dad. Um, which was awesome. So., um...

0:03:40.4 Joel Cheesman: And, and you're a Florida State grad.

0:03:42.1 David Weinstock: Yeah, I'm a Florida State grad School.

0:03:43.6 Joel Cheesman: How's football season? How's football...

0:03:44.9 David Weinstock: Woo. Go Noles.

0:03:45.4 Joel Cheesman: How's football season going?

0:03:46.7 David Weinstock: Listen. Much, much better than last year, right? So similar to, uh, today's presentation, right? Uh, the next time, uh, next week we're getting better and better. So yeah, FSU, phenomenal. We thought we were on top of the world when we beat Alabama. We were riding high and then reality, just, just like life. How many of you, you always have pride before the fall, right? So we're like, Go, yeah, we're kicking Alabama, right? And I live here in Nashville and so if you don't know that in southern culture, man, college football is a religion around here and, uh, I'm one. I'm a black sheep of my family. Everyone else is a Tennessee Vol. Anybody Vol fans? Thank you. So I'm a black sheep. But yeah, FSU, wow.

0:04:29.2 Joel Cheesman: They're not as noisy as the Florida State fans. They're just kind of like... If it were 1998, they'd be really excited but, uh. Yeah.

0:04:34.1 Chad Sowash: After, after that smashing Ohio State gave them last year, they should be quiet.

0:04:37.6 Joel Cheesman: Yeah, yeah, the Peyton Manning. The Peyton Manning jersey's, uh, ironed in the closet still from 1998. I'm curious, just, uh, general sense for, not just recruiting in your world, but recruiting at large from a macro perspective. What's your take?

0:04:53.9 David Weinstock: Yeah, at large there's a lot of candidate demands. Our candidates are demanding more of us, right? I was talking about this yesterday. AI, I know we're at nauseam right now with the word AI or the acronym, it's all company centric. Right? And so if I'm a candidate, I'm like, what else are you going to do to help me? Right? So all this time savings, where are you going to redeploy that time? Are you gonna be able to give me actual candidate or solid feedback? Right? If we're using AI to assess candidates, we should also... So for all the vendors and partners out there, find and build me a tool, and the larger practitioners here, that can deliver personalized feedback at scale. Right? So if we can interview at scale, we can use AI for interviewing, why can't we give candidates feedback? And so that to me is going to be what gets us to the next level. Right now there's a lot of apprehension to doing AI interview. Like if, anybody go on recruiting hell on Reddit?

0:05:58.3 Chad Sowash: If you haven't, you should.

0:05:59.5 David Weinstock: You should definitely. It's one... Yes.

0:06:01.3 Chad Sowash: Also Indeed, the Indeed, uh, one on Reddit. That one's fun. Like...

0:06:04.8 Joel Cheesman: Recruiting hell on Reddit. Okay.

0:06:06.0 David Weinstock: First of all, go on recruiting hell and make sure you research your own company. Uh, number one, uh...

0:06:11.9 Chad Sowash: It's better than a Glassdoor.

0:06:12.1 David Weinstock: You can go to the Glassdoor and search your company. But two, you can see like the real raw candidate dialogue and perceptions. Right? So we need to be able to give our candidates something if we're asking them to do AI interviews. Right? Because that's the big thing of this year is AI screening, AI interview, top of funnel. Like, make the jobs easier for the recruiters. Right? But what are we going to give candidates in return?

0:06:34.0 Joel Cheesman: Yep. Well, it's good that you have human beings. We'll get to, uh, we'll get to that but this is him?

0:06:37.8 Chad Sowash: He, he has, he has, he has slides, I think.

0:06:39.6 Joel Cheesman: Is he scrolling too?

0:06:40.4 Chad Sowash: I think he has a slide.

0:06:41.6 Joel Cheesman: Yeah, well we'll get to, uh...

0:06:42.5 Chad Sowash: Hit the green one.

0:06:43.3 David Weinstock: Boom. Boom. Bam.

0:06:44.4 Joel Cheesman: Let's get to our first. Let's get to our first. You mentioned these are people who aren't on job boards.

0:06:48.1 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:06:49.1 Joel Cheesman: Let's cover job postings first. How is that changing?

0:06:51.7 David Weinstock: Yeah, so job postings, getting much smaller. Right? Our attention spans...

0:06:58.0 Chad Sowash: Fewer? Or what do you mean, smaller?

0:06:59.8 David Weinstock: Condensed.

0:07:00.0 Chad Sowash: Okay.

0:07:00.9 David Weinstock: Right, so...

0:07:01.4 Chad Sowash: So the actual content on the job?

0:07:02.2 David Weinstock: Content.

0:07:02.7 Chad Sowash: Okay.

0:07:03.1 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:07:04.5 Chad Sowash: Thank God, because they suck as it is. Right?

0:07:06.8 Joel Cheesman: Well, do we, do we need the five line ads again?

0:07:08.6 David Weinstock: What are you guys doing writing this book? I mean, this is freaking crazy.

0:07:11.8 Joel Cheesman: We're going back, we're going back to newspaper ads. We're going back to five lines.

0:07:14.6 David Weinstock: Yeah. Well, look, guys, for all, the majority of our roles, and I want to shout out Susanna, our recruitment marketing manager, who's... It's not just me. Yeah. Raise your hand. Right? Like...

0:07:25.8 Joel Cheesman: Very humble.

0:07:26.1 David Weinstock: She's helped me because I was like, Susanna, I don't think we should do that. And she's like, Trust me, David. And I was like, Okay. Uh, and so at the end of the day, a special education teacher knows what a special education teacher does. And a BCBA has a master's degree, they've been supervised for 2,000 hours. I think by the time they apply for a job, they know what they're doing. Right? And so, um, when I first got to News Story, it was in a disarray, just candidly speaking. And so we were brought in to clean up. And one of those, we were using job descriptions. It's okay to laugh. Okay? We were using the archaic legalese, HR, boring, put you to sleep by the time you were finished.

0:08:13.1 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:08:13.2 David Weinstock: And then we went into job posting. So we used Joveo's optimizer to start and it started to help us with our CTA and we started getting better results. And so, uh, we condensed our postings to make sure we had the right content and we were writing it for our candidates and not for ourselves because too often, uh, depending on most organizations you work at, like, we do these projects, and I'm gonna steal a Jeff Bezos thing, right? Like, we forget the empty chair. Right? He always had an empty chair, which was a physical prompt, use an ABA term, Applied Behavior Analysis, it was a visual prompt to tell us that's who our customer is. And we need to do that with our candidates. Right? So.

0:08:55.8 Joel Cheesman: So you mentioned boring. Jovia helped you condense it. Did you put a little sauce on the, on the job posting?

0:09:02.0 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:09:02.8 Joel Cheesman: And how, how did that work?

0:09:03.9 David Weinstock: So we did an opener, uh, which is great. So we have a two line opener. Thank you, Susanna. Because I tend to ramble, if you haven't figured that out by now.

0:09:11.8 Chad Sowash: Just so you know, Susanna's, you can't see her face, but she's got this I told you so, look.

0:09:16.1 Joel Cheesman: She wants to die. And she wants to die a little bit.

0:09:18.5 Chad Sowash: So very I told you so.

0:09:20.1 David Weinstock: So, we, uh...

0:09:20.3 Chad Sowash: But that's good. I like that.

0:09:22.2 David Weinstock: We have these two, just a, a quick opener, nice little hook. And then we have put the qualifications right up to the top. And that's where I was like, Hold up.

0:09:30.6 Chad Sowash: Hello.

0:09:31.3 David Weinstock: Hold up. This is con, this is contrarian. Like, why, like. And I had, we had, went back and forth and so we put qualifications up. And then we did work with, uh, an external consultant named Jason Pastelka. He's around here somewhere. We got rid of preferred requirements because what, what is preferred?

0:09:46.7 Joel Cheesman: Might be new.

0:09:47.7 David Weinstock: Yeah, it might as well be required because that's what our hiring leaders are going to hold us accountable to.

0:09:52.2 Joel Cheesman: Yep.

0:09:52.8 David Weinstock: And so we condensed our requirements. We got rid of over, over, uh, complication. Like, we started questioning and, and Lindsay helped me out with this one on my team. Like, why do we, why are we requiring a bachelor's for this job? Like, why? It's not 1990, it's not 2000. Like, yeah, tell me how a bachelor's makes this person, that, like, makes it for this role. And it just... So we started to really challenge the status quo because how many times have you guys come into new companies and they're like, Oh, we've just always done that. No one's really asked why. Well, my company. I always ask why about everything. And so we just started to disrupt. So we want to make sure that we have the right content. We didn't even have zip codes on there, which is how all the job boards start indexing. And so it was just a nice reset and refresh for us.

0:10:41.1 Joel Cheesman: And plenty of stock photos, I'm sure, in the job posting. Yeah. Yeah. Were you using any interactive stuff? Video, imagery, culture stuff?

0:10:48.7 David Weinstock: So with our new ATS, uh, we will, 10/17 we go live with phase one and phase two is 11/27. Uh, so if I look like I'm tired, it is because I am. But we will go live in Ashby, uh, by the end of next month across our entire footprint.

0:11:04.8 Chad Sowash: Nice.

0:11:05.7 David Weinstock: And then we will use our day in the life videos to have on the job postings, right? To make them more visually stimulating. You talk about overall state of recruiting, we're all visual people now. We don't read, we don't have a lot of time to read. We're used to micro learnings, we're used to micro bits. And so how do we meet the candidates where they are? And it's...

0:11:25.4 Joel Cheesman: You were doing TikToks earlier, I think out in the, out in the field there. Uh, yeah. So everyone is seeing.

0:11:30.2 Chad Sowash: So are you, are you using like a, a standard platform for your videos to be able to, like, house all the videos? Manage the videos?

0:11:38.4 David Weinstock: Yes.

0:11:39.2 Chad Sowash: Make it easier for your, your employees to give you more videos?

0:11:40.1 David Weinstock: So there's... Yeah, so that's the, that's the long term goal. Right? So we want to drive employee generated content or EGC. Right? Because our candidates, and again, going back to your first question of like, what is going on in the world of recruiting? What I'm stoked for, do you guys remember when everything had to be perfect online? Thank you. For anybody else, we just have one person? Come on.

0:12:05.4 Joel Cheesman: Define perfect.

0:12:05.8 David Weinstock: Thank you. Appreciate it. Right? Everything had to be curated. Oh my gosh, you have a typo. Isn't it crazy with the invention of AI, a typo is now a good indicator that a human actually did it? So if you're like me I can't send a single text without a typo. My team will tell you that. My wife will. Uh, and look, now I'm getting credit for it for being real.

0:12:27.2 Joel Cheesman: So with improved job postings, what does that meant to your job postings? Have you eliminated job boards? You mentioned Joveo. Like, what does that strategy look like now?

0:12:36.6 David Weinstock: Yeah, so we went through, we started going to Programmatic. So we were actually paying a third party recruitment marketing firm to do both Programmatic and PPC and it was costing an arm and a leg. And how many of you have an unlimited budget?

0:12:52.9 Joel Cheesman: One person.

0:12:53.7 David Weinstock: Unlimited. One person.

0:12:55.2 Joel Cheesman: She'll be on stage after.

0:12:56.4 David Weinstock: Limited budget. All right. And so our dollars, we have to fight for. Right? We, in recruiting, are seen from the finance folks as a cost center. Now, all of you are incredibly intelligent, and I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job of translating hires into revenue. And you can cost a vacancy and all that, where you can start to prove that you are a profit center. Um, but that takes time and so...

0:13:20.7 Chad Sowash: Say that again, because I don't know that everybody's focusing on that aspect.

0:13:25.4 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:13:26.2 Chad Sowash: Because we've been seen as a cost center for far too damn long. Company doesn't run without us. We are the profit center.

0:13:34.3 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:13:35.2 Chad Sowash: If you don't have somebody there to create the product, to sell the product, to service the product, to be able to drive revenue, to be able to retain revenue, to be able to open wallet share. How in the hell are you going to have a business? You know, I'm sorry.

0:13:51.1 David Weinstock: Yeah, so.

0:13:51.4 Chad Sowash: I'm sorry. I had to have my rants. My, my bad.

0:13:54.4 David Weinstock: Yeah. So that's, that's been my bread and butter. Right? So you talked about my career. I've been able to translate like, recruiting math. Like, we're all really good at conversion and we're good at, like, recruiting math and insert metrics here. There's like 10, 20, 30 of them now, right? But how do you translate that to talk to a CEO in a finance, A CFO?

0:14:12.5 Chad Sowash: Amen.

0:14:13.5 David Weinstock: So in my roles, I've actually, there was a period of time in my career I didn't even have a boss for about six months, which was cool. But, uh, I've reported to the CEO, the CFO, the chief marketing officer. I've had every boss under the sun, and it's been a great experience. Looking back, now during the time I was like, cool, like, all right, you only care about numbers or marketing guys, all metrics. Right? But it was great experience. So challenge your companies, y'all. When they're like, Hey, this role is so important. Uh, and you're like, I don't want to spend more money on advertising. Well, I'll let you in on an industry fact. For a board certified behavior analyst that works in an autism therapy clinic. Okay? They can bill about a million to $1.2 million a year in insurance revenue. So do you think spending 10 grand to get a quality hire, doing something out of the box, like sending them, like, Silicon Valley swag bags and just doing stuff out of the ordinary? I think I would spend 10k to make 1.2. Right? So that's how we've been able to buy these fun tools, and, but we have to paint that story and we have to be able to articulate the why into their terms. My CFO does not care about recruiting metrics.

0:15:29.0 Chad Sowash: No. And they never have.

0:15:30.9 Joel Cheesman: Mm-mm.

0:15:31.5 Chad Sowash: Like, and they never have.

0:15:33.3 David Weinstock: My CEO doesn't care. And that's okay.

0:15:35.5 Chad Sowash: And they never have.

0:15:36.9 David Weinstock: So it's my job to manage up and translate it from recruiting math to finance math. And that's been really helpful.

0:15:44.2 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:15:44.6 Chad Sowash: So on the, on the agent side of the house, if you got one, obviously that is... How does, how does that actually work? You have a job description, feeds into the system. It automatically goes through what process? When we're talking about job advertising and then into the career site.

0:16:00.8 David Weinstock: Yeah. So this is how you know this is not a sales pitch. Um, I took Joveo's methodology and then I rebuilt it myself in chat GPT. And so I built an agent by myself. Uh, and so what we did is we scraped all... We also own and operate 16 companies, so your volume likely exceeds ours. Right? Like HCA, the head leader there, she was yesterday speaking. I think she did 467,000 hires in five years. Like, incredible, right? And that's a challenge in and of itself. But where we struggle with is we have 16 unique companies and they rightfully so want to tell their brand story because they have 20 years, some cases, 25 years of brand identity. And if we just roll them up into our management company, we lose all of that social capital and reputation. So what we did is we built a custom GPT, sent an agent out and it scraped all 16 websites. I loaded it into AI. I used Joveo's optimizer. I built the thing myself. And so this is not against Joveo, but Joveo is in our business. Right. So we were able to rewrite our postings in our brand voice for 16 different companies.

0:17:18.2 David Weinstock: Because, guess what? Anybody surprised that I'm not allowed to have 16 recruitment marketing leaders? Right? No, we don't get that. It's not a one for one cardinality. It's a do more with less. And so AI has been helpful. So we started with Joveo, Joveo is like the tip of the spear where we're like, Hey, we, you know, we need to do some work here. So we used that as level one and then we continue to refine. And with Ashby, I'm so thankful for this, we will have a job posting library that has templates and it's one to one cardinality. And so that means I don't have recruiters. Any companies out there, please tell me, we're copying and pasting from old regs. Anybody got like rogue word documents that you're copying and pasting? Thank you for your honesty. I won't call you out. Like, my goodness, we can't wait to get into that.

0:18:02.7 Chad Sowash: Copying and pasting off of Google searches.

0:18:05.4 David Weinstock: It's wild.

0:18:06.4 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:18:07.5 Joel Cheesman: What else about career sites? And you mentioned doing more with less, which I think is a nice segue into chat bots and how you utilize those to do more with less.

0:18:14.8 David Weinstock: Woah, that was not me, y'all. Uh, so anyway, we are going in process with Joveo to get conversational bots. Uh, I think it's not a chatbot. So anybody who's been an early adopter, remember a few years ago where you had to, like, wireframe it on the back end in Excel, like, if candidate says A reply with B.

0:18:35.1 Chad Sowash: Decision tree. Yeah.

0:18:36.3 David Weinstock: Right? Like, that's a much better. Sorry. Not articulate. A decision tree.

0:18:40.6 Chad Sowash: I do this for a living, it's okay.

0:18:42.1 David Weinstock: Um, and so we do that. Right? And so now we're gonna have a conversational chat bot and a conversational bot to capture those candidates before they drop off. Right? Because we want to educate. And, what we're really stoked about is, how many of you have had candidates apply for one job, get rejected from one recruiting team and they're a perfect fit over here. And you're like, Guys, why did we not share that candidate? We could have filled this role, like, 30 days ago. And we're having that issue. Like, we have folks apply for a teacher support role and they're actually qualified to be a teacher. So they can actually take a higher level role, higher paying role that impacts them positively and their families to make more money, and do that. And so because of the way we're structured, I have three verticals, three recruiting verticals, support, license, and our in district services team.

0:19:34.7 David Weinstock: They're not always communicating because guess what, recruiters? They're busy. They're getting tasked with their KPIs. I can't hold them accountable for, Hey, did you make sure you scratched someone else's back by pushing that candidate forward. No, because I'm gonna make sure that they're hitting their own KPIs. And so the conversational chat, the career site will be able to educate our candidates to say, Hey, you, you applied for this, but we think you're better over here.

0:19:58.7 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:19:59.0 David Weinstock: And guess what? Our candidates are gonna be happier because they take the person, they take it so personal. And look, some of y'all, your company's gotta get better. And one of them was mine. We were posting jobs and I'm like, who the heck knows what this title is outside of these four walls? Like, that is an act of, like, that is some mental gymnastics. Right? Like, that is not what it worked... Like, for us, it was an academic and behavior support specialist. Like, I can't even count how many characters that is. And at the end of the day, it's a special education paraprofessional. Right? One of those is going to perform much better and relate to a broader audience, and the other one isn't going to perform well at all. And so, good segue, Joveo helps us with AB testing, y'all.

0:20:42.6 David Weinstock: We had recruiters and hiring leaders asking us to post three, four, five different jobs because they read an article one time and they knew that job title performed better. Literally. Right? And now we don't have to do that. Like, we use AI's, Joveo's AI agent. I looked at it this morning because I typically over prepare when I, when I get nervous. And in case you didn't know, I was nervous. And we have done three million jobs since, uh, April 1st.

0:21:15.8 Chad Sowash: Wow. So when it goes through, take me through this real quick.

0:21:19.7 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:21:20.9 Chad Sowash: Um, so I'm into the chatbots. Your system, your system does some type of matching in the background to be able to say, Hey, look. Oh, yeah, no, you're applying for this job, but you're really, you're qualified for this job over here.

0:21:33.4 David Weinstock: Correct.

0:21:33.7 Chad Sowash: And, or, if you're a silver medalist, didn't get the job, you can get kicked over into another job.

0:21:38.5 David Weinstock: Yeah. So that's the end goal. So our linchpin right now is getting into Ashby.

0:21:43.4 Chad Sowash: Gotcha.

0:21:44.8 David Weinstock: My team is probably rolling their eyes. I bet they can quote me. "It will get better when we're in Ashby." I won't name who we are currently with, but I'm telling you, we're operating at about 2000.

0:21:53.0 Chad Sowash: Heads are nodding. Heads are nodding, yes.

0:21:54.9 David Weinstock: Uh, but we're gonna level up pretty soon. And so it uses keywords, it also uses generative AI, so it gets smarter over time.

0:22:02.1 Joel Cheesman: Yep.

0:22:02.9 David Weinstock: So it's not gonna be perfect.

0:22:03.8 Chad Sowash: Right.

0:22:04.8 David Weinstock: Don't... Hear me out. It's not gonna be perfect, but it'll be a, a much better experience.

0:22:07.4 Chad Sowash: So question, so question. So, obviously, humans have never been perfect.

0:22:12.6 David Weinstock: Really?

0:22:13.3 Joel Cheesman: Speak for yourself.

0:22:13.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah. Except for Cheesman. He's, he can, he's perfect at eating a cheeseburger. But when it comes, when it comes down to AI, we expect perfection right out of the gate. Knowing that, I mean, AI is like a puppy. It's gonna piss on the carpet. You gotta train it to be able to get to where we need it to be. Right?

0:22:32.0 David Weinstock: Yeah.

0:22:33.2 Chad Sowash: So, I mean, when you're going through this process, are you setting expectations not just for the team, but also for the leadership team that, Hey, look, we're getting into this new age...

0:22:42.6 David Weinstock: Absolutely.

0:22:43.4 Chad Sowash: Okay, so talk a little bit about that, because this is. I mean, this is change management, which is a bitch.

0:22:49.1 David Weinstock: Yes. So I work in 16 different schools. I know y'all are not surprised that each of them thinks they're more important than the other one. I know you aren't surprised where each one of them wants to do their own thing, right? And that's their rights. They've built these companies, and so that's not a dig. That's just reality. And guess what? We service them. So it's our goal to meet their needs. A reminder, uh, you all in shared services, like, you don't exist if your company doesn't exist. So we're here to support the company. Okay? I think sometimes we forget that. We get a little cocky, a little confident. Well, if they don't have me, we're not gonna be anything because we do all the hiring. At the end of the day, like, guys, we're here to support the business, right? Servant leadership. So, um, there's a lot of change management. And I learned in my career, I had an opportunity where I came in. I was hired through an acquisition. They had already selected an ATS, and my C-Suite executive already went through the entire business and told everyone it's going to solve everything. And I had to go back through behind all that.

0:23:51.4 David Weinstock: So with this ATS implementation, we have been framing it of, it will solve a lot of our problems, but it won't solve all of them. Right? And also, if we don't change behaviors, right? We're just gonna have a very expensive, nice ATS, and the same problems. Okay? And so I've had to challenge them, because how often do we confuse behaviors with tool efficacy? Well, I don't like this tool. This isn't working. This sucks. Why'd you do this? And it's like, well, if you used it like the SLA and how we trained you on it, it probably would work really well. Right? So change management is tough because it's not just like the technology, the vernacular, the nomenclature, the systems. Your behaviors have to change with that technology. And so that's been a really big primer because it's also intimidating, y'all. My first and last name is literally like almost a signature for this system. Like, it's a pretty nerve wracking position to be in when you're like, all the hiring and how smart you are and how you designed it, it's, it's you.

0:25:05.2 David Weinstock: And that's a lot of pressure, right? And so I've been nervous and I have framed it to say, Guys, I've done the best that I can. I've done pilots. I got an ATS advisory council from different functions. Right? Which has been super helpful. They're like the guardrails, right? Because some of us recruiters, we can, we can be renegades, right? Like we're gonna push that... That's why I can't work in HR. I stay in the gray, y'all. So we, uh, we have some of this stuff in place. But, man, change management's tough. And I think with AI, people think perfection or they think a new tool is gonna solve all the problems, and that's just not it.

0:25:36.8 Joel Cheesman: Yeah. Solving problems. A growing problem with a lot of employers is the tsunami of fake applicants.

0:25:44.8 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:25:46.2 Joel Cheesman: Between conversational AI, your interviewing technology, let's segue into that. How are you guys combating the flood of fake applicants?

0:25:54.4 David Weinstock: It is a battle and I, I feel for a lot of the folks here in tech. We're a little bit insulated because of our sector. It hasn't hit our sector yet. Typically, education lags private sector by quite a few years. But for those of you who are tasked with hiring, like, software engineers and just technical talent, that's tough. Uh, Ashby just rolled out a feature that, uh, has fraud detection. Uh, and so they're looking at, uh, a myriad of things. I, I don't know enough to speak on it just candidly, um, but if that's something of interest, they do have a token system where you can vet their resume. Uh, we've also rolled out BrightHire, which has been super helpful for us because it's all recorded and it uses AI notes. And so we can really start digging in deeper and making sure and equipping our recruiters to ask higher level questions. Because again, where we were before, anybody have recruiters that were like the four basic recruiter phone screen? And I need your honesty.

0:26:50.6 David Weinstock: It's not a reflection of you. Uh, can you fog a mirror? Uh, how much do you want to make, or why did you apply? Uh, how much do you want to make and how quickly can you start? Right? That's a pretty basic phone screen. And so with BrightHire, we've been able to educate our recruiters to sound clinic, like clinicians.

0:27:08.3 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:27:08.6 David Weinstock: And sound like educators and not like every other recruiter under the sun. And so BrightHire has equipped us to go digger, deeper, uh, to dig deeper.

0:27:17.5 Joel Cheesman: So it sounds like you're confident that we'll find a solution. How many of you are dealing with fake applicants as an issue? Pretty good number of people. And that's only gonna get worse, I would suspect. It's good to know that we're looking at, uh, solutions there. So let's talk about tracking this stuff, analytics. Do you take... Is that your seat at the table? You take a numbers to the, to the C-Suite? Talk about that.

0:27:38.8 David Weinstock: Yeah. Uh, again, my team, love them to death. Uh, they'll tell you. They're like, Dude, like, you can't just come talk to my team and just, like, pull up and start spitting out numbers. Like, Lindsey called me out at dinner last night. She's like, dude, like, you came in hot last Wednesday. You're like, looking at the numbers. Blowing me up at 8:00 in the morning. She's like, I already know what kind of day it is. They have a group chat, y'all, without me. And they're like, Looks like David's on one.

0:28:05.4 Joel Cheesman: That's great.

0:28:05.6 David Weinstock: Right? So, uh...

0:28:07.7 Joel Cheesman: It's great that you know about it too.

0:28:08.6 David Weinstock: Yeah. They should do that. They should challenge me, guys, like, I want them to push me out of my job, right? So my seat at the table is analytics, right? Um, we've been operating in a black box historically with our current ATS that will, that will go away. Uh, In my previous life, I was able to predict within like, 10 to 15 cents how much my applications would cost in about six months. Uh, I could tell the C-Suite, Hey, if you're gonna scale, you're going to need, based on your funnel math, this is how much it's going to cost you, right? So I started understanding and being able to tell it. And guess what the beautiful thing is with numbers, it's no longer just my opinion, right? And so when they get, they don't like the numbers? Okay? That's reality, Right? So it removes the emotion from it. And so we look at analytics, um, we look at how our CPA is doing, how our CPH is doing. What we're really stoked for is we used to do CPA was the whole... First it was CPC, right? Uh, then it was CPA, then it went to CPH. Right? We're going deeper in the funnel where we're starting to say and holding Joveo accountable.

0:29:15.6 David Weinstock: And they can tell you, I'm a fun client. I'll put it in that, in those terms. But we hold them accountable for phone screen onward. Like, we don't care how many apps you got, how many of them were qualified and we measure qualified as phone screen. So I don't care that you promised me and you got me a bunch of junk resumes. That's not what I'm paying for. I'm paying for quality applications, which means a recruiter decided to pick up the phone and call. We are eventually going to get smarter and help Joveo with our new ATS because we're gonna have our hiring manager spilling out quality of survey surveys at day 30. And so we'll then backtrack up the funnel and say, Oh, I'm okay to pay 2-X, 3-X on source A because candidates that come from source A stay 50% longer, which obvious is less... There's no background check. There's, like, it's more revenue. So you start to get smarter around where you're getting your people from.

0:30:13.2 Chad Sowash: Do you also start to challenge the hiring managers because hiring manager A has turnover X, hiring manager Y has turnover, you know, two has turnover Y, right?

0:30:25.2 David Weinstock: Yo, I'm about to nerd out and I apologize in advance. Okay?

0:30:28.2 Chad Sowash: Bring it.

0:30:29.2 David Weinstock: We are going to get to, uh, and I owe it to Jason Pastelka, w are going to give our hiring managers baseball scorecards with batting averages, right? So what we're gonna do is say, Hey, when you interviewed, you said all 10 of your candidates, everything's great. And then day 30, you rank everybody terrible, right? So that's a discrepancy.

0:30:49.2 Chad Sowash: That's on you.

0:30:50.4 David Weinstock: That's a, so that's a discrepancy, right? Like, or someone's a super hard interviewer, but they love their candidates at day 30, they should be an interview trainer. Right? So we are going... Because how many times, you guys, our practitioners, are creating a world class experience from talent attraction and awareness all the way to offer accepted. And maybe some of you even have onboarding, right? That's a pretty common, uh, pairing, right? And then you get blamed for everything else. And you're like, you still interviewed them, but they're like, Oh, application quality is terrible. That candidate, I don't know why recruiting put him in front of him. I interviewed him twice and gave him an offer. But that's your fault.

0:31:31.9 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:31:32.8 David Weinstock: Right?

0:31:32.7 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:31:33.7 David Weinstock: So it's not about blaming. It's not an us versus them. It's about context and it's about education. So this isn't a gotcha for our hiring leaders. This isn't a gotcha for the recruiters. It's about creating a scalable recruiting engine. We can't have a world class experience from talent attraction to offer, accept or even first day. Or recruiter screen, phone interview and then they get to the on site and it's like... Or the hiring manager and you're like, Wow, we, recruiting can't fill that role. And it's like, No, we can. We had 10 of 10 candidates drop out at your hiring manager interview. It's probably you, right? Uh, so we'll have data. Because if I don't have data, y'all, it's just my opinion. And then opinions become subjective and then they get riled up with emotions and then some people can't handle, uh, constructive feedback, right? And it can be politically charged depending on the department. So we're gonna bring data to help educate and make sure that we're having a fluid process.

0:32:30.3 Joel Cheesman: So sticking with data and seat at the table and at risk of all the vendors bum rushing you at the end of this, how has the numbers impacted maybe getting more budget or, or fighting for more dollars?

0:32:44.0 David Weinstock: Yeah, for the vendors, like please, I have ignored some of y'all, the 16 LinkedIn messages. Yes, I live in Nashville. So, like if you're asking if I'm in Nashville, yes, I am in Nashville for RecFest. Um, I'm just kidding. You guys are doing a great job for what you do. Um, but I do get a lot of sales solicitations. Uh, but anyway, so yeah, I have an incredibly supportive executive leadership team. Uh, my CHRO is, she understands it. She is not Pennywise, pound foolish, right? She understands sometimes we need to make the hard decision and spend more to get what we need. Like, she understands. And I've worked for the opposite, right? Where it was like tooth and nail, a six month process, business case ad nauseam. So my CHR is great, my CFO, my CEO are great. By the way, my CEO is an ex CFO. So we have the joy of two CFOs, uh, in our C-Suite. And then our board has been incredibly supportive.

0:33:42.2 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:33:43.1 David Weinstock: So we paint a business case, y'all, like, it's one or two pages, right? Simple, right? Occam's Razor is a theory, right, where simple is better, right? Make it simple and digestible and learn from my mistakes. When I was earlier in my career, I had a mentor sit down, and he was like, Why are you spending 90% of your time on this PowerPoint trying to tell people how smart you are? They don't care. He's like, You sound like a jerk. Uh, he used different language. And he said, You just need to tell people about the 10%. He's like, Simple is smart. And he was a VP of IT and now a CIO, and he was really impactful. So we just put together a simple two pager. Like, this is X, how much it costs, here's Y, where's the cost savings? Here's the impact. And get granular, y'all. If you don't... I'm gonna show y'all, just to bring you down, my C-Suite thought I was crazy. I did a time audit of my recruiters on each of their tasks, and then I multiplied that across an entire year. And I said, So you think clicking a button to download a resume to view it in a second tab isn't a big deal, but when you do it 200,000 times a year, this is how much it costs you in labor. And they were like, Okay, we don't want to see, like, the productivity math. Like, let's just look at hard cost. But I was like, Bam, I got 'em.

0:35:00.8 Chad Sowash: So what, so what does the perfect system look like for you and the team? And is, is anybody on the team kind of afraid that agents are going to take their jobs? Because that's what we're hearing. AI is coming for your jobs. Talk a little bit about that, because you've talked a lot about your team, so it's obviously a tight team, but talk a little about that.

0:35:22.7 David Weinstock: It is a... Look. Uh, well, first, I, I couldn't be up here without them. Right? Like, I, you know, I got my team that's not here. We've got a team that is here. Uh, I'm only one person. I can put in a lot of hours, but I got two kids at home. I'm a dad. Like, I don't want to work 24/7. Uh, and so I have a team that I can count on. But as far as a perfect system, it's reducing the administrative minutiae. So I know this talking theme is probably not new for you all, but I've shared this with my team and our recruiters, and I can be a very direct individual if you haven't picked up on that by now. Uh, and I sat them down and I said, Guys, if you're worried about Ashby and Joveo and BrightHire and Juicebox, like, doing all these things, like, this isn't the job for you, and that's okay, right? I think sometimes we forget that you... My mom always told me this when I was struggling with friends coming out of college and moving to Nashville. And she said, David, it's okay. Like, you're going to have some friends that you're blessed with that can come stick with you through season, through season, through season.

0:36:23.4 David Weinstock: And then you're also gonna have friends that are just sticking with you through one season, and that's okay. Recruiters sometimes don't evolve at the pace that we need them as, at organizations. Because of the, the last probably 10 years, every company's got recruiters. It wasn't always that way back in the day.

0:36:41.7 Chad Sowash: Yeah.

0:36:42.5 David Weinstock: Only the big companies, like, big companies, like you guys were like, it was like phone book, it was sourcing, it was like true bullying, like X-ray searches. And then, like, because the labor market tightened up, everybody needed recruiters. And now we have this like, talent pool of recruiters that's absolutely, incredibly hard to evaluate hire because you got recruiters on all types of the spectrum, right? How many of you got recruiters that you're like, all they want is inbound and you want, they want to work 8:00 to 5:00 and they want to, they just want to process applications. Anybody?

0:37:16.9 Joel Cheesman: Quite a few.

0:37:17.7 David Weinstock: Thank you for, I appreciate your vulnerability. Right? And that's okay. There's companies that are okay with that. I'm not. And we're not. Doesn't mean they're bad. Let's attack the problem, not the person, right? So as we think through that, perfect system is reducing the administrative minutiae like automate, like, hey, phone screen, boom. In Ashby, I click one button, uh, and it sends a phone screen link. Uh, once they sign their offer letter automatically sends their background check. Um, everything's timestamped. So if you're a recruiter on my team and I've shared this, guys, if you're worried about the visibility, I would encourage you to look for a new job. Right? I'll help you. I'll help you write your resume. Right? I'm literally just like one step short of the Zappos guy that does, like, pays them four grand to leave. And that's nothing against the folks who, they're not ready for it. But I want recruiters who are gonna be, go out and source and add value. And so if you can't bring and showcase how you're adding value. And a reminder, recruiting is the act of influencing a person's employment decision. I think sometimes recruiters forget that.

0:38:23.6 Joel Cheesman: Yeah.

0:38:23.7 David Weinstock: Right. You're not ready for my, you're not ready...

0:38:25.9 Joel Cheesman: All right, we're gonna, we're gonna see if you're ready to give us some value. Can you go to the last slide?

0:38:30.3 David Weinstock: Thank you. I think I can. Oh, okay. Got it.

0:38:35.4 Joel Cheesman: All right, if you guys want more information, you want some numbers, data, uh, get out your smartphones, flip phones, whatever, and Sidekicks. Take a screenshot and get some more information. Um, let's hear it for David.

0:38:48.7 Chad Sowash: Q and A.

0:38:49.9 Joel Cheesman: I know, we'll get to Q and A. Thank you, David. Do you have, do you have time for some questions? Um, some questions.

0:38:55.0 David Weinstock: Not, not hard questions.

0:38:56.6 Joel Cheesman: No hard questions?

0:38:57.7 Chad Sowash: Sexy, sexy, sexy Scott's been over here, the man in the kilt.

0:38:59.1 Joel Cheesman: They're like, should we raise our hands? No, we shouldn't.

0:39:01.4 Chad Sowash: He'll, he'll hook you up. Hands, anyone? Questions?

0:39:04.7 Joel Cheesman: Bueller?

0:39:05.9 Chad Sowash: Questions?

0:39:06.4 Joel Cheesman: Bueller?

0:39:07.2 Chad Sowash: We've been asking, we've been doing all the work here. Come on, guys.

0:39:08.5 Joel Cheesman: Come on, guys. Agents. Conversational AI. Career site. Oh, there we go.

0:39:14.6 David Weinstock: Mistakes I've made.

0:39:16.2 Joel Cheesman: Just be robust and I'll... Oh, we gotta, okay, we have a mic. Good job, Steven.

0:39:20.0 Speaker 4: Sir, question. Regarding the last piece where you mentioned that when you are approaching to your team, especially with like empowering with AI tools and they are probably reluctant to it, how do you feel about explaining first, like the benefits and like, when do you like, you know, say, Gosh, this is that lost cause. You might be better in a other team or company where like, we cannot train you for this. How do you tackle that?

0:39:46.9 David Weinstock: Yeah, great question. So I always start with why. And so my team's now rolling their eyes because they, they know that I literally, I say explain the why, like tell people the why. So I tell them I'm very transparent. I do start with the benefits for them, right? Sales 101. Hey guys, BrightHire, recording your interview notes. Cool. Right? Because they first thought like, Hey, this is a gotcha. And I told them, I said, Guys, I don't have enough time to watch all your interviews. I said, Surprise, I do have a life outside of this job. Uh, I'm not gonna be sitting at home at 8:00 at night watching football and your interviews, right? So I give them explain the why. And I'm very transparent. I share with my team all the metrics that I can see. Because my opinion is if you're gonna hold someone accountable for what you're holding them to, they should be just as smart and then they can start to self lead and self manage. Right? It's called lowering the decision threshold. Right? I don't need to be there for my team to run like not in ideal state.

0:40:44.0 David Weinstock: So I do, I explain the why, then we go live. I share in that why, I say what's important for them and then I say, why is the business doing it? Right? So there's two audiences. This is what, the benefit for you, and then this is the business reason. Right? Because you gotta be transparent. And then we go live and then we monitor. And I do it like a 30 to 45, 60 day, like 30 to 60 day period. And oftentimes that fear is because change, it's not the actual tool itself. I don't like change. Okay. I'm very routine driven. Like staying in a hotel throws me off. Okay. So I now have people who come to me and say, Oh, thank you for doing this. Like, I get it now. This is great. Some of those people were doubters, those people were doubters in the beginning. So you do have to just stay to your, you have to stay to your mission and your conviction to know that this is the best decision. Most of the time, people pull through and for those that don't, it's okay.

0:41:41.7 Joel Cheesman: Maybe one more?

0:41:42.9 David Weinstock: Yep.

0:41:43.4 Speaker 5: Hi, David.

0:41:44.2 David Weinstock: Good morning.

0:41:45.2 Speaker 5: Um, you talked about the value of outbound sourcing. Can you help me understand how you're doing that today?

0:41:50.7 David Weinstock: Yes. So last year we weren't doing it at all, uh, but this year we're using, uh, Indeed, uh, smart sourcing. So Indeed, uh, at $4 a credit, my goodness gracious. But we also use LinkedIn, uh, but not LinkedIn recruiter. So we actually found better success with adding, waiting two days and then connecting. Uh, and then we're also using Juicebox, who's got a, a table up here, where we were early adopters of Juicebox. And so it's an automated outreach so you can create projects and it starts putting your candidates on sequences and trips. Uh, and then we also are fortunate that we have a few licensure registries. So for board certified behavior analyst, uh, this is recorded, but if you look there, you get first and last names and where they live and how long they've been certified. And so there's your nugget. Now go find the information. And so, uh, it is multi channel. Uh, we use a lot of resume databases. And with Ashby, what we're gonna do is start building out our own CRM. And so we look internally. My goal is to adopt the Robert Half model, which is, build a killer database and then just go inward versus always going to the expensive market.

0:43:03.9 Joel Cheesman: One more time for David.

0:43:05.1 Chad Sowash: There it is.

0:43:05.7 Joel Cheesman: Thank you, David.

0:43:06.5 David Weinstock: Thank you.

0:43:07.3 Joel Cheesman: Appreciate you.

0:43:11.3 Chad Sowash: Thanks so much.

0:43:12.4 David Weinstock: Appreciate it, guys.

0:43:13.5 Chad Sowash: Dave, and uh...

0:43:14.0 Joel Cheesman: For your next thing, or just get comfortable here for our next presentation.

0:43:15.9 Chad Sowash: Yeah, you can get comfortable here, and.

0:43:18.1 Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to what's it called? The podcast, the Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology. But most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know. And yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese. Not one cheddar, blue nacho, pepper jack Swiss. So many cheeses. And not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.