Welcome back to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, where Chad and Joel serve up spicy takes and recruiting truths hotter than a Nashville summer. This week, they wrangle Courtney Dempsey, the tech-savvy maestro behind Southern Rock Restaurants’ hiring empire. With 160 restaurants and a hiring strategy sharper than a deli slicer, Courtney spills the secret sauce: targeting job seekers while the rest of us are dreaming about tacos at 3 AM.
Hear how she uses LLMs like they’re her personal AI attack dogs, outsmarts bigger competitors with zero chill, and recruits AARP members because, frankly, Gen Z already got their fill of side hustles. If you’re not advertising your dishwashing gigs like prime-time Super Bowl spots, you’re doing it wrong.
So, grab your headphones and brace yourself. By the end, you’ll either want to revolutionize your hiring strategy or question all your life choices... possibly both. And remember, in this game, speed kills. But in HR? It also hires.
Warning: Side effects of listening include spontaneous outbursts of laughter, strategic epiphanies, and reconsidering your entire recruitment budget. Proceed with caution.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Podcast Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
[music]
Joel: Thanks for hanging out with us today. Who are you and why are you here?
Chad: That's helpful. That's helpful.
Courtney Dempsey: That's a very... It's a loaded question. [laughter] I appreciate that. I'm like the token non-TA person here. And we're the largest licensed franchisee in McAlister's Deli. And we're located here in Nashville.
Chad: Very nice, very nice. So, let's look forward real quick into 2025. What advice would you give your peers in the new year, moving into the new year?
Courtney Dempsey: Embrace technology.
Chad: Embrace technology. Do they have a choice?
Joel: Say more.
Courtney Dempsey: I think there are a lot of people still fighting it. Look for companies that have open API. I cold call a lot of open API companies. And I ask to beta test them and see if we can integrate their open API systems into the current system that we're utilizing, which is Paradox. I love LLMs. It's like my bestie.
Chad: This is your time now.
Courtney Dempsey: This is my time.
Chad: Yeah.
Podcast Intro: I'm a one-woman show.
Joel: Did you love them when they weren't cool or before they were cool?
Courtney Dempsey: I had to teach myself. So, I was Python back in the early days of that, as did Professor Chuck taught me how to follow data. And I just kind of rolled with it. And I listened to your podcast, and any company that talks ill of another company, I'm like, I'm absolutely 100% calling them. [laughter] Because they obviously don't like them for a reason, and I will become their best friends. So, we make sure we integrate that too.
Joel: So, what are some tools technologically that you find invaluable in your everyday life or business?
Courtney Dempsey: Speed is essential. In the QSR...
[overlapping conversation]
Joel: I said tech, not drugs.
Courtney Dempsey: Tech?
Joel: Okay.
[laughter]
Courtney Dempsey: Oh, you have to be...
Chad: Or Keanu Reeves.
[overlapping conversation]
Courtney Dempsey: You have to be fast.
Joel: Speed kills.
Chad: Yeah.
Courtney Dempsey: Yeah. You wanna be methodical in your approach, but I will run you off the road 'cause I have to. And we're a mom-and-pop shop. We have 160 restaurants. I can't compete with the larger organizations, but I sure try. We average between 2,900 and 4,000 applicants a week...
Chad: Wow.
Courtney Dempsey: With 20% spend. We save almost $2 million in ad spend, and 80% of that is organic.
Chad: How do you do that?
Joel: Yeah, how'd you get... Say more about how you're doing that.
[laughter]
Courtney Dempsey: I might have to come on your show the next time.
Joel: 'Cause you can't open that box [laughter] without pouring a drink.
Chad: Just give us a little bit. We'll do an extended version later.
Courtney Dempsey: I think if you utilize LLMs, you're able to target the exact audience that you want at the exact time. So, I can tell you within 100% accuracy that Wednesdays at 8:00 AM today, for instance, was the perfect time for me to advertise for all of our restaurants in Missouri. What I don't advertise is more than one position. I coach down hiring is critical. So, if you're running or advertising for a shift lead, whether that person is qualified to be a shift lead or not, they're gonna apply for it because the money's better than an hourly. So, you lead with your best foot forward, and you trickle down from there.
Chad: Wow. So, in 2024, what has surprised you the most?
Courtney Dempsey: The Great Stay.
Chad: The what?
Courtney Dempsey: The Great Stay.
Chad: "The Great Stay."
Courtney Dempsey: Managers aren't leaving, and those that are lifers have already expired out in our side of the business. So, the influx of retail that I'm seeing right now is about 85% to our lack of 15% of actual people that work in the restaurant industry. That is extraordinary to me.
Chad: Yes.
Courtney Dempsey: So, we have to coach on how to read a resume from the bottom up now versus the top down.
Joel: I love your attention to the strategic element of timing. I assume that speed to connect is very important to you. What are you finding is the most effective? Is it SMS text messaging? Is it iMessage? Is it WhatsApp? Is it phone? What mediums are the most effective for you to get that sale, get that lead quickly?
Courtney Dempsey: So, for us, we utilize Paradox, obviously. So, the conversational aspect of that is critical, the constant engagement. And then we utilize Indeed. I do all my advertising with some exceptions for XML scrapes. I will say that 85%, and we just did a data poll on that 'cause I love data, I love analytics, that 85% of our applicants are between the hours of 12:00 AM and 5:00 AM. So, just the engagement process with that has been critical. The speed of posting those ads, knowing the attention span of our applicants are less than 72 hours is the fly time of our runs. I don't want to oversaturate the market with our ads. We only have 160 stores, so I wanna make sure there's no market fatigue. So, I'm very strategic on the days and times that I post and when they should expire out. And then I have our competition chasing us, trying to figure out how it is [laughter] that we're doing. And as long as it fits in on a device, so I don't do any garbage. You're a dishwasher; I don't need to list out the 75 plus pages.
[overlapping conversation]
Joel: Sounds like your totally automated. You got the right ads at the right time, and you have an automated 24/7 communication device to get them whenever they come into the door, which I think is impactful.
Courtney Dempsey: But I also realize that unless it fits on the phone, then the applicant is not gonna go scroll through a job description. So, why would I have to advertise a job description? You should be leading with benefits, the culture, and then close out with the culture. I want you to work for us, so I'm selling you on our company. And then the reception, we've captured a higher rate for us now than most companies...
Joel: Are you leveraging video? And if so, how?
Courtney Dempsey: For our managers, we are. It's not mandatory. For our management applicants, we do encourage them to upload a video, a 30-second to a minute-long video on why you want to work for our company. And I will say the engagement on that, it's about 50/50. We just introduced that within the last 90 days.
Chad: Nice. So, in 2025, what's your main priority?
Courtney Dempsey: To maintain our 100% perfect record of fully staffing. I'm more open into more OpenAI. I just think that that's just the way of the future. The more layers you can add within your own platform. Because you're only as relevant today as you were yesterday. You can't become stale in this space. You have to be more creative, and you have to target more traditional markets that you want to. For us, we're not targeting Gen Z anymore. The Gen Z market, we've oversaturated, we've infiltrated. I'm intentionally targeting AARP members and veterans.
Chad: Wow.
Courtney Dempsey: We want an adult in the room, in our space. We need an adult in the room.
Joel: Speed kills, baby. CREAM, Cash Rules Everything Around Me. [laughter] Thanks for hanging out with us today. For our listeners and viewers who want to connect with you, learn more about employment opportunities, where should they go?
Courtney Dempsey: LinkedIn, Courtney Dempsey, and I'm with Southern Rock Restaurants.
Chad: Thanks, Courtney.
Courtney Dempsey: Thank you, guys.
Joel: Enjoy the show.
Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.
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