When Getting the Hire Wrong Costs Lives

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Are you still trying to grow your recruiting desk or business on your own? Join the Elite Recruiter Community and connect with recruiters who know your challenges. Members get unlimited access to replays from the AI Recruiting Summit, Finish the year strong and all our past events plus biweekly roundtables where we dive into sourcing business development and mindset. You'll also tap into our Billers Club for accountability and a split space to partner on roles. Join the number one growth environment for recruiters. For just $49 per month, you'll be part of a tight knit group that pushes you to grow and you can cancel anytime. Visit the link in the show notes and click Join now to get started and start mastering your craft today. Coming up on this episode of the

Jake Frazer [00:00:38]:
Elite Recruiter Podcast we started this company not as a recruiting business but as a software company. We wanted to build a SaaS platform. Kind of think of a Tinder. This is before Tinder was a thing. We wanted to build a Tinder for GovCon recruiting. Right? And in our industry I think is more important than any industry in the world. I mean banking, fmcg. What else would rival the criticality of what we do in government contracting?

Benjamin Mena [00:01:05]:
It's the only place where people die if we don't get it right.

Jake Frazer [00:01:09]:
That's right. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and planning placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:28]:
You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email, their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform. Built to eliminate admin, it captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year. It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:02]:
No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities. You can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for Agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:36]:
Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com I'm excited about this episode because here's the thing. This podcast has given me the opportunity to get a chance to like, get to know my peers in the industry that I've been working in for now decades and get to know them better. There's enough business around for all of us. But here's the cool thing. I am so excited because this guest is actually one of the top in the industry, one of the biggest, best executive search firms in the govcon space. And I'm so excited that he's here to share with you guys. Jake, real quick, welcome to the podcast, brother.

Jake Frazer [00:03:21]:
Hey, Ben, thanks a lot, man. I've been watching your stuff. I'm on the treadmill or the elliptical. I'm digesting all the good stuff you're showing. I love it. Bring a lot of energy, a lot of good ideas and I think you're helping a lot of people. It's awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:34]:
Well, excited to have you here. And real quick, 30 second self introduction before we get going.

Jake Frazer [00:03:38]:
30 seconds, start the clock. Yeah, just, I'm not a recruiter. I mean, I don't think of myself as a recruiter. I get paid to help people. That's how I think of my craft and what we do at Precision Talent Solutions. I'm, I'm an industry guy. I'm from this govcon industry. Literally grew up in this industry from being in the army in the 90s.

Jake Frazer [00:03:56]:
I worked inside one of the big integrators for about six years in the belly of the beast. And I saw recruiting done very badly. And I had the chance to run a Midsize, about a $200 million prime and learned a lot about the importance of recruiting as kind of a core competency and learned a lot about some of the tools that we put into our business now of using assessment tools and psychometrics and yeah, very proud of what we built with PTS. 10 years now. That went fast. And we're kind of entering a new phase with Precision Talent Solutions and also trying to up our game a little bit, representing the industry, connecting this community where we've all grown up and yeah, keep changing people's lives for the better. That is.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:39]:
So two quick questions before we start doing a deep dive. Most of your team is in the U.S. right?

Jake Frazer [00:04:47]:
I think we're in 12 different countries. I mean, I got people spread all over God's world. It's wonderful.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:54]:
Which is amazing. And then secondly, you've told me in the pregame that you personally having a podcast has become a secret weapon.

Jake Frazer [00:05:05]:
I don't know if it's a weapon, but it's a, it opens up a new side of your brain, as you probably know. I mean, you have to study for each guest. And you know, my podcast or the, not mine, the company's podcast, I'm just the one hosting it. It, you know, it's really, it's trying to bring in, if you think of government contracting, govcon is a big PI and it's built up all these slices. And so you have intel, you have cyber, you have logistics, you have medical. I mean, you can, there's so many slices. And to bring in experts for each slice, that makes up the industry. And yeah, have a really deep conversation about them as a person, but then also just get their view of something where they have tremendous amount of expert.

Jake Frazer [00:05:48]:
These are ambassadors, these are three star generals, these are CEOs that know their slice of the pie better than anyone. So I gotta study, get ready for it. So I learn a lot about all these slices and by the end of the podcast I'm just, yeah, I'm just a smarter person about that pie. And hopefully our guest, our audience are as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:08]:
And then I'm excited also for you to share later some of the innovative things that you're doing in executive searches I actually have not seen yet. So we'll touch base on that in a bit. But before we get all into that stuff, how the hell did you end up in recruiting? Like, you are not a recruiter, you're an industry pro.

Jake Frazer [00:06:27]:
It's a good question. Look, if, if you look at your personality assessment, I do a lot of coaching by means of what we do. My personality is perfect for this. I love connecting people, I love bringing people together, I love helping people. Whether I get paid or not doesn't matter. And I just kind of like watch this industry for what? Well, if you don't count the time in the army, 27 years on the industry side and just watched how the industry in general, I'm not saying across the board, but in general, recruiting or talent acquisition has been delegated down to kind of an entry level administrative role. Right. I saw it inside the big integrator and you're like, why do you have people that know the least about the industry and the least about the business as the gatekeepers for who you bring into the company? It's always been a fallacy that I'VE been watching.

Jake Frazer [00:07:19]:
And so, yeah, from being inside of the big integrator. Okay. Kbr. I'll say it. This is back in the logcap days and we were pumping 2,000 people a month into theater for very, very intense Oconus assignments. Yeah. Watched how we did recruiting. And I was brought in as like an in house consultant, not as a recruiting expert, just asking questions.

Jake Frazer [00:07:43]:
And I sat with the. The guy that ran the recruiting shop. He had 70 recruiters in Houston, three floors of a tower. And I was like ghosting their calls and listening in and making notes. And I sat with John. I said, hey, John, so how do you, how do you have this set up? He's like, I have them set up in like commodity groups, as that makes sense. So how do you, how do you incentivize them? What are. He's like, well, I give them goals every week.

Jake Frazer [00:08:08]:
I said, what are they measured on? He said, based upon offers accepted. I was like, wow. Well, that explains what's going on out there. They're giving offers to anyone that will take an offer because that's what you're measuring them against. And it shows out in the field. You know, people get off the plane and they're not a carpenter or they're not a finance person. And it just creates this whole mess because now you have someone in, I don't know, Afghanistan that isn't qualified for the role for which they were recruited. And you have to undo all that.

Jake Frazer [00:08:36]:
And haven't been out in the field in ops myself as a young Brown and rooter, I saw the pain whenever you get someone out there that's not qualified or not a fit undoing that is so expensive and distracting. So that was like the first note. I was like, okay, that needs help, right? And KBR is one of the best in the business, even today. And then running, having a chance to run a midsize prime. You know, we first took over the company, started talking about an HR role and, and the board was like, no. I was like, what? I thought you had to have hr. They're like, no, hr. I was like, that's a good idea, actually.

Jake Frazer [00:09:10]:
But we, we used a guy on the board, his name's Chuck, has a big gray beard and J. Chuck was a industrial psychologist. And we put him on a retainer and he taught us how to use personality assessments, psychometrics, and rolling 360s. And we made hiring a P and L responsibility, not a shared services responsibility. And we taught with Chuck's oversight, we taught our hiring managers our P and L leaders in the company how to use these tools to do better hiring and better recruiting. And that just stuck to me. And so 10 years of running that company and saw the success of if you do recruiting right and you bring in truly good people that are the right fit, you don't need a lot of policies and procedures and checks and balances because you got the right people on the bus to quote the book. And that just stuck with me.

Jake Frazer [00:10:03]:
And then we sold that company. I was like, look, if I could do one thing for this industry, I want to help this industry get better at recruiting, get better at bringing people into the industry and getting people in the right seats. And so that was kind of the, the genesis of the idea behind pts. And actually we started this company not as a recruiting business, but as a software company. We wanted to build a SaaS platform, kind of think of a Tinder. This is before Tinder was a thing. We wanted to build a tender for govcon and basically have a subscription model on both the customer side and the candidate side. And the candidates would be pre screened and what we called shortlist ready with personality assessments and video interviews and reference checks and everything done in a system.

Jake Frazer [00:10:49]:
And we started building that software and yeah, I got about a year and a half into it and people kept saying, could you just find me a chief operating officer or a VP of ops? And at first we're saying, no, we're going to build a software, we want to focus on that. And then our non compete payments from the deal we did start running out. We're like, okay, we'll do headhunting. And so we actually took the platform that we built as a SaaS platform and started using it for recruiting for the industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:18]:
So you started building a SaaS platform before SaaS was even cool?

Jake Frazer [00:11:21]:
Yeah, yeah. Not really knowing how you sell SaaS, that's the problem. It's the chicken or the egg, right? You gotta have the candidates to get the customers. You gotta have the customers to get the candidates.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:31]:
That's one of my favorite things when somebody hits me up about a recruiting problem. Like, you need to learn a little more about the space before try selling. But out of curiosity, with like building a SaaS program then is hard. Building a SaaS program now, I'm not gonna say is easy, but the tech's different. Like if you were building this before Tinder, do you think if you started today on that, do you think you would have been successful? Just out of curiosity, I think that

Jake Frazer [00:12:00]:
it's a different business model and it's frankly, one that doesn't suit my personality. Building a software, I think that it was a more of a business decision than a passion decision. And I think you got to follow your passion. And if I got into that today and started. There are experts that know how to build and sell and scale SaaS platforms. And you know, I think, I think what we've done is taken the best of both worlds. We've taken the best of the concepts of a SaaS platform and put it into a highly empathetic, high touch executive search and recruiting business.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:35]:
So as you started having these conversations, we're like, hey, no, the SaaS platform kind of seems cool, but I, I need help recruiting. Was it more of like a. Did you guys dive in more of like a survival or was it like a, hey, this is actually a real business that we could chase.

Jake Frazer [00:12:49]:
It's just a real business, you know, and we were even at that point 10 years ago. So I'm 52, I was 42. I at that point. I had almost 20 years in the industry and built a huge network. My former business partner, Patrick, he had his network and yeah, so we were really well positioned to move into the search space because we knew how the industry was put together. We have our network from the military. Like my classmates, class of 95 are now two and three star generals. We were in the Balkans with Brown and Root, which was kind of the core of the overseas contingency contracting space.

Jake Frazer [00:13:26]:
And then we were at LogCap with KBR. So we touched a lot of souls there and built a good brand. And then running TWI, which was the, the prime we had for 10 years, we touched a lot of companies would outsource supply chain. It was a supply chain company. They would outsource supply chains to us. We just touched a lot of people across the industry. So it kind of makes sense once you get that much experience in the industry to leverage that network, leverage that knowledge of the industry, leverage your Rolodex and pivot into doing search.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:59]:
And before we start talking more about the search and the, the executive search side of the house, I want to go back to a gevcon question. I love that you guys made recruiting a P and L line for the managers.

Jake Frazer [00:14:10]:
There's nothing more important that they do, in my opinion. When you're running a company and you're visiting your P and L team down in Dubai or wherever, it was like, who. Who do you have on the bench? Who are you getting right? Who are you hiring next? And it's not HR doing it. For you who are, as a P now, you don't have to actually do all the recruiting yourself, but you're responsible for.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:29]:
I've always joked around about government contractors being actually staffing and recruiting companies without realizing it, just a little more complex. And like, like you understand like the people are the number one thing, the way that the contracts are written.

Jake Frazer [00:14:43]:
Absolutely, yeah. And, and even more so, I think it's. There's not an industry out there that where recruiting and who you hire is more important than this one, if you think about it. I mean, we're dealing with national security, we're dealing with security clearances for a lot of the. Well, it's domestic and international work. A lot of high pressure, sometimes dangerous, at least intense work. And you look at the OCONUS programs in particular, you know, you're hiring a program manager or a PM or whatever, you want a P and L leader and you're putting them out way, way, way far away from the flagpole. And so getting that person, getting the right fit for that is absolutely critical because if you get it wrong, you're not going to know it for some time.

Jake Frazer [00:15:28]:
And that person probably has direct access to your customers. That person is probably managing a pretty complex workforce, particularly if it's international work. And so if you get that hire wrong, you put the wrong PM out there, it's going to take you a while to figure it out. And once you figure it out, it's going to take you a lot of time, cost and pain to unwind it and fix that problem. Recruiting right in our industry, I think is more important than any industry in the world. I mean, banking, fmcg, what else would rival the criticality of what we do in government contracting?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:06]:
It's the only place where people die. If we don't get it right.

Jake Frazer [00:16:10]:
That's right. It's a matter of life and death in a lot of cases. It really is.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:14]:
And you know, with your experience on the logistics side of the house, I feel like it could have been so easy just to become another government contractor, spin up another government contract, you know, focusing on that logistics side. How did this evolution towards executive search start to happen?

Jake Frazer [00:16:29]:
Look, I've never considered, I've done a lot of logistics. I ran with Brown, Rood, with KBR and with twi. I was set up supply chains all over the world, very complex. But I never, like, I still don't know how many pallets go in a container. It's all about people. And to me, there's a gap in the market that has needed to be addressed around talent and trying to fix this problem of doing better, hiring, getting the right people in the right seat. So for me, I do still take a little bit of a supply chain mentality into how we've designed the processes for pts. You know, it's about getting the spec right if you're buying product.

Jake Frazer [00:17:12]:
If you don't get the spec right, how are you going to get the right product? And you know, the same principles I think have come into the talent acquisition and how we've set up precision talent solutions. So I think I've taken some lessons learned from supply chain and government contracting and being a prime and knowing all the compliance stuff and then wrapped that into the delivery platform that we have here at pts that I think is second to none of that in the industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:38]:
Those early days when you first started and you started getting those initial searches, how did you start learning the quote unquote recruiting game in those early days between you and your partner?

Jake Frazer [00:17:49]:
That's a good question to some extent. Made it up, but also leaned on lessons learned. From what I saw the good, there was some good in KBR that I watched front row seat, there was a lot of bad. And I also looked at how we did it in twi, how we did recruiting and hiring there. And I learned a lot from that and from Chuck, a lot of the tools I knew that had to be part of it. Now the actual, like, I didn't have a LinkedIn recruiter seat when we started. We used X ray, you know, freed bullion search builder tool. And get this, the first project we did was for the program manager at the Baghdad embassy program in Iraq.

Jake Frazer [00:18:30]:
So basically running a small city of thousands of people and diplomats and very critical infrastructure, you know, its own power plant and elevators and building automation systems and complex threat environment and a very difficult customer with the Department of State. The customer asked us to find the head guy for that program. And I did it myself because I didn't have anybody else. And Patrick was working on some other stuff. And so, yeah, kind of started working my network, working X ray search, mapping the market, thinking about, okay, there are only so many guys that could do this in the industry. This takes a really senior person that's run major programs that can do real P and L, that has good bedside manner with the customer. And I, I found the perfect guy. He was on another program and got him to the table.

Jake Frazer [00:19:23]:
I don't want to say anything to disclose who it was, but he, anyway, he got excited about it. I got him back to D.C. he was on his R and R, he was deployed overseas. He came back, he went to dc, he met the program team, had lunch with the CEO, met hr, signed his offer letter. And I'm like, well, that wasn't too hard, right? Pretty good fee on that level of a role. I mean, that guy's got a lot of uplifts, pretty big gross comp package program that he was on that his company had lost it. That's why he was up for a change. And then during the process of like getting his screen done and drug test, the government canceled the award for the contract that he was on.

Jake Frazer [00:20:05]:
They had gone to another company. So basically he's like, I don't need to go anywhere. So he backed out of his offer. He'd signed the offer letter, shook hands with the CEO, backed out and said, jake, I got some bad news for you. I said, you're backing out? He's like, yep, like, okay. So now I had to make a decision is this industry for me, My first search, my first and only search just went upside down. And the customer said, okay, what you got? So I went back to work, decided, okay, I know what they want now, and went out and found a guy I didn't know. I never company.

Jake Frazer [00:20:41]:
He's working a company in Japan that I didn't even know existed, and wound up getting him on board. He was my first hire. I'm still friends with him. We stay in touch. I think I placed him two other times since then. He stayed three years in Baghdad and was a hero, which is really hard to do. So that was my first recruiting trick and I really did question, is this for me or not? And as you know, I think anybody out there listening, if you're in this business, you got to have a gut. You got to be able to ride the ups and the downs because you're going to have them.

Jake Frazer [00:21:14]:
And I, I had my first, My first mandate was a bull ride for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:20]:
When did you guys start to grow? And real quick. How big is your team now?

Jake Frazer [00:21:26]:
About 25. Yeah, 25. That's everything. That's sourcers, recruiters, we have account execs, we have finance, marketing. So it, so it's, it's about 25. I mean, that's not my headcount's, not my metric. But yeah, we've just been adding smartly. And now with AI coming in, kind of move people around that know a lot about the business that can help in areas where AIs kind of absorbing the research side and a lot of the screening and that type of work.

Jake Frazer [00:21:56]:
We're moving people around, but very, very loyal to my people. I think our average tenure in the company is probably four and a half, five years. And we've really been in operations eight years. I mean, I started the company 10 years ago, but it was just me for the first couple of years working on the software project. So yeah, about five years is our average tenure. And very close family culture, I think within pts.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:21]:
What position did you hire first and about how long did it take for you to hire that position?

Jake Frazer [00:22:26]:
One of the first positions I hired was an invoicing to help with just the administration. Just because that's my demon, like I'm not a very good paperwork guy. I need someone to keep things organized. The invoicing, you know, the basic admin. And I hired a great person and she's still with me and she moved from doing invoicing to sourcing to recruiting. And now she's an account exec.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:49]:
Absolutely love that. Now you've also told me in the pregame that you do not and maybe would not hire somebody with a recruiting background. You hire people that you could train. What are you trying to avoid with a recruiter?

Jake Frazer [00:23:05]:
I think in general, let me. A lot of our people have, have exposure to recruiting and ta, but they come out of operations and they come out of the industry. I'd say, by and large, I'd say 70% of our team never did HR or recruiting or TA at all in their careers. But they were, they've been out on programs, they know the mission, they know how important what they're doing is. They know what hard work is, they know what an 84 hour timesheet looks like. They have empathy, they've been a candidate, they know what it's like to get ghosted by a recruiter. They know how painful that is. When you tell your family, I think I got this job, you get mentally prepared to make a move.

Jake Frazer [00:23:48]:
A lot of, I think everybody on my team's been in that candidate seat and a lot of them have been on the hiring side too as a PM or somebody out in the field. So I think what's really important for us is the drive, the empathy, not necessarily the recruiting skills that you might learn working inside of a big integrator.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:09]:
And I'll just say this, working at a big integrator might not actually mean you get good recruiting skills.

Jake Frazer [00:24:13]:
Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:24:14]:
That's a whole nother. That's a whole nother story for you.

Jake Frazer [00:24:17]:
Could bring in a lot of bad habits too. Right? We've Seen that we've tried. I mean look, we haven't always been successful. We've tried some different hires and yeah, I think just doing it our way, following our gut tends to work out the best.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:30]:
If you want a really good laugh. I think it was maybe like 17 years ago, maybe 18 years ago when I was working at Lockheed Martin right before I left, they took away like all the job boards, told people that you cannot source externally. You're only allowed to look at the app people that have applied. And I was like, wow, well that's a nightmare. What if the person I need like is sitting across the street like, no, no, no, you can't do that. That's not allowed.

Jake Frazer [00:24:54]:
But that's. Yeah, well. And as you know, most people that are applying are probably not the right fit. You're probably the best people are probably

Benjamin Mena [00:25:03]:
working and whole nother story for a whole nother day. Yeah. So these people and like I know the govcon space pretty well. How do you spot people that can become an elite recruiter for your team?

Jake Frazer [00:25:17]:
It's a lot about just kind of drive and attitude and they go through the same process that we use for our customers. We use it internally, we take our own medicine. So they go through the same assessment process, the personality assessment, the cognitive assessment. So they go through the whole candidate experience. We're able to see a lot about them before we even interview them. And it's the same thing with our customers. They go into our platform, you don't even need to look at the resume. We have so much other information on that person and so that helps us identify kind of the right fit.

Jake Frazer [00:25:51]:
And you know, we're always trying to look ahead at where the market's going. Right. Probably like you, very focused in the govtech space area. We have a guy, an account exec who comes from that he was a software engineer working inside a big integrator and set up his own search business, left the big company. Then he realized how hard sales is and so we hired him. But I mean he knows he's done the work. He's been a software engineer. So when he's talking to technical people, he knows exactly what to ask them.

Jake Frazer [00:26:24]:
And I think that's what you want recruiting. You want people that know the subject matter area. Right. We have people that are experts in Department of State, we have people that are experts in kind of the contingency world in the intel space. So we try to hire around domain expertise. More than which ATSs have you worked with before?

Benjamin Mena [00:26:43]:
You've mentioned about your Your virtual assessment center that you've built and how it's become like a key part of the business for internal hires and also for the clients. Like what are you doing? Can you like walk me? You know, I'm sure a little bit's proprietary, but can you walk me through what's not proprietary and why you're doing this?

Jake Frazer [00:27:00]:
Well, look, I think that the resume, particularly now with AI has become just doesn't reveal much at all. Right. So you got to look at other ways to identify key characteristics and experiences and potential. Like so much. I think typical corporate recruiting is backwards looking, like what have you done instead of being able to look at potential and what a person would be able to do in the future. And that's what you're hiring them for. You're not hiring them for what they've done before, you're hiring them for what they will do in the future. Now past is a good indicator of future of course, but a lot of our tools are built around looking at everything.

Jake Frazer [00:27:42]:
There's a nine block predictor, there's a cognitive component. So you see basically with a small bit of what their intelligence quotient, their IQ would be, you see their chance of leadership success, you see what their work motives are, you see any watch outs, things to be careful about, you see how trainable they are. There's a whole section that looks at how trainable they are, how open they are to new ideas, are they whimsical? There's some common traits like I'm a creator, are they a catalyst, are they a whole bunch of Cs they use in that, in that tool. And then they do video interview with customized questions so you can see what their critical thinking skills are on demand. And all that also gets run through the filters of a very experienced account executive who's been out in the industry not doing AI write up, but real notes, real insights from a real person. So I think we're ahead of like getting ahead of AI, right? Because we've been using AI for years from particularly on the personality and the psychometrics, but also bringing in people that really know the, the industry and the, the fit, right? How that person's going to fit into the company and the culture, but also into the mission.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:56]:
So with saying all that you've also placed or worked with about 50 plus generals, right?

Jake Frazer [00:29:03]:
Yes, yeah, yeah. Kind of a passion project, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:29:07]:
Explain that, like how do you start working with that level of people and how do you make this like a quote unquote passion project that ends up having return even though it wasn't expected on the other side.

Jake Frazer [00:29:20]:
Yeah, it really was not a, not a business move. When I got out of the army, I got lucky. I ran into, just happened to run into like the Brown Root theater planner. Next thing you know, I'm on a plane to the Balkans. Had no plan. I just got out of the Army. Yeah. My brother retired out of the army after 20 something years and he worked with a non profit called ACP American Corporate Partners.

Jake Frazer [00:29:44]:
He said, hey Jake, you ought to try volunteering. Because what they do is they take industry people and transitioning military and they put them together for mentoring. It's a nonprofit, no one gets paid. So I started volunteering through ACP and it was a good organization, but I also felt like the match wasn't always. I couldn't do as much to help them. So I just started, I don't know, through my network. A lot of my classmates from class of 95 were getting out, so I started helping them. So I've worked with sergeants and captains and colonels and then I got into.

Jake Frazer [00:30:16]:
The first general I worked with was Steve Lanza who was the I Corps commander. And yeah, started building a process to take these transitioning senior military through because they don't really, they don't have a resume. I mean they got a military career which is great. And a lot of them don't know how industry is put together. So built a process which starts with a personality assessment. I have them do a Myers Briggs and there's a nice career report. And it's very revealing to see kind of their core personality from before. They strapped on a uniform and they go through and there's a, there's a differentiator exercise.

Jake Frazer [00:30:53]:
There's a passion, a thing that identifies their passions, kind of their career highlights. It looks at their corporate core values. What do they value in companies? It looks at what types of companies they would want to work with. And a lot of them don't understand the importance of governance. When you join a company, are they publicly traded, are they private equity owned, Are they a startup? They don't understand how that drives incentives. And so we talk a lot about that, talk about types of roles. You know, I always say there's three tracks in general. You have shared services, HR finance, supply chain.

Jake Frazer [00:31:25]:
You have P and L, which usually doesn't go to an outsider or a general officer. Then you have business development. And most say I don't want to do business development. But they don't understand that business development is very complex, multi layered thing but anyway, built this whole questionnaire and started, you know, if you work and do a good job with one general, they pass you off to their buddies. And so yeah, just over the years have worked, yeah, I'd say over 40, 50 generals up to four star level. And by doing that, also don't charge them a dime. Sometimes they owe me a favor. There'll be a speaker at one of our events.

Jake Frazer [00:32:02]:
You know, they get on board, some of them getting jobs. It's just a good way to help people while building our network.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:09]:
This sounds very high level, especially, you know, with the connections that you have with generals and this and that. But if somebody's back at home listening to this and they're like, hey, how do I like I'd love to start building a high level network. What are some of the first things that I should actually be doing? I don't want to say to duplicate what you're doing, but like to have their own spin on this.

Jake Frazer [00:32:31]:
I think it has to come from a good place. You got to want to help people. It can't be Machiavellian or even, I guess it could be driven by profit. But I mean, I think people will sniff that out and you got to have some value to add. And I think a lot of the value we add to our, I call them our experts is our industry perspective. I mean, these are great leaders. These are some of the smartest people you're ever going to deal with. They just don't understand the difference between working for a private equity owned company and a publicly traded company.

Jake Frazer [00:33:03]:
Just have, why, how would they, they haven't been around it. So I think you have to have value to add because these folks, their time is valuable and they were going to look for value in any kind of conversation that they have.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:15]:
I'm going to be honest with you. I really believe that 2026 is your year. I truly believe in you. I truly believe with everything in my heart that this is the year that you can own it. This is the year that you could hit your dreams. And to help you do that, we are kicking off a summit called this is your year. You are elite. You were born to be elite.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:39]:
You were born to be the best. You were born to be the greatest. And I'm pulling together some of the industry's best speakers to help you get there. Gonna be kicking off April 27th. You do not wanna miss this. Make sure to run to the show, notes, get registered. All the live sessions are free. I'm bringing in Mike Williams, Brianna Rooney, Mark WHITBY.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:00]:
We have an entire week of stacked speakers that are going to help you achieve your dreams. This is going to be the industry event that you do not want to miss. I believe in you. I believe in you so much that I'm pulling the best to help you achieve your dreams. 2026 is your year. One of the things that I also thought was super cool is like, you have this new program that you guys have spun up, like, where was it renting flag officers or fractional flag officers? Can you talk about that? Yeah. So this is a bit of a

Jake Frazer [00:34:36]:
spin off of just the pro bono support that we've been doing for years. And we built this process and, well, two years ago, we turned it. We turned that process into a business line. And you'll probably get this. How many times do people say, look at my resume. Can you help me find a job? And if you stop and help everybody, they ask you for help, you'll go out of business. If you ignore them, they're going to think you're a jerk. And if you tell them no, they're also going to think you're a jerk.

Jake Frazer [00:35:01]:
So we set up a very nice business line called Career Concierge, which is built for individuals looking to do a career pivot. And we took the processes that we built for the generals and we made it for everyday executives out in the industry. Okay, so we have a process and it has very much the same components that I just took you through, plus helping them with the resume, social media, personal branding. And then last year, I remember as February, I was flying across the Atlantic reading the Economist and just reading about Doge and the mass exodus from the government. I was like, well, somebody's got to do something about that. Someone's got to step in and help these people that are either being cut or a lot of people took the DRP, the deferred retirement program, and a lot of SESs. Senior people who maybe had thought about leaving government, but they saw this as a sign, hey, I'm going to take the plunge. I'm going to take the drp.

Jake Frazer [00:35:58]:
So using our network and networks and networks, we hustled. And in April, so February was idea, March, April, april, we had 55 sess in a room. And I had the former Corps of Engineer commander, three star there as like my testimonial because I'd helped him get out. And he went through our whole process and he's a believer and he got a great job. And we took him through this process kind of in mass. And they sat on the edge of their seats. They took notes and they asked a lot of questions. And at the end we ran a survey.

Jake Frazer [00:36:29]:
I said, what do you need help with? They said, we need access to industry. I was like, well, I can do that. And so in June, so that was April, May, June, we hosted our first event. We launched Precision Experts. Now this has been on our strategy plan for some time and it's not like a brand new idea, but this was the time to do it. And we brought together about 60 sessions in Generals, up to four stars and some very, you know, from any agency you can think of. And we did a matchmaking event with our customers and using AI and just knowledge of their background and our customers, we tried to get them matched with the right people. And on that day in June, we launched this Precision Experts.

Jake Frazer [00:37:13]:
And so yeah, it's a fractional subject matter experts platform. And so we have sess from any agency you can think of and as well as a lot of our transitioning military. And they're looking for board work, they're looking for consulting work, they're looking for advisory roles, fractional work. And we built all the infrastructure and the agreements and 1099s and we added annexes for all of our customers. We already had agreements and said, hey, let's just add this on if you need any help with fractional part time experts. And we built a catalog now of about 100 SESs and flag officers from across military, government, NATO. Now we have European flag officers coming in and yeah, we offer them to our customers for fractional consulting work with the option to hire. That's the end goal, is to try and get these people to work.

Jake Frazer [00:38:07]:
And we're not marking it up much because we're trying to get these people to work, trying to get them back out. And I believe in the long game. And if you help these people now, it's going to pay off later. And it's been a great success. We've got a great guy that runs that. He's a former foreign service officer and Deloitte consultant. So he knows, he's been in their shoes and understands the language and what they're looking for. And we built all the infrastructure.

Jake Frazer [00:38:30]:
So now, yeah, we're doing fractional sess and flag officers to our customers.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:36]:
Do you see this as part, you know, not only in government contracting but across the board as like almost a bit of future of executive search?

Jake Frazer [00:38:44]:
I could see this going a lot of different ways, right. I could see, I could see as having a board practice because all these Generals and sess are great board candidates for companies that are like, I've always thought about putting together advisory board or I have a fiduciary board and it's getting stale. These are people right out of government. Fresh perspective, good connections. And I could see this heading into the direction of providing our customers with board search support. It gives kind of a temp to perm option even for some senior hires because we have all the infrastructure built out and we do a lot of BD people. You know, half my business by volume is business development talent. So capture price to win solutions, architects, cgos, you know the deal.

Jake Frazer [00:39:31]:
And hey, you do one project, one guy gets the job and the other nine don't. And probably a third of those are interested in doing consulting. So there's a lot of different ways that I think that this could go. And right now we're having a lot of success just getting them into fractional roles. We're trying to figure out what the market's looking for.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:51]:
I want to switch gears talking about your podcast. You turn your podcast into a great tool and I see a lot of search firm owners, recruiters talk about it, but they never pull the trigger. How did you end up pulling the trigger to get us started?

Jake Frazer [00:40:08]:
I was having dinner with my old business partner Patrick at AUSA a year ago October. So it's been about a year and a half now. And we had a bottle of wine and we said we should do a podcast together and be hilarious because he and I go way, way, way back and he has a funny sense of humor. And so that's when it got in my brain to do the podcast. And then he's busy. He just bought another company. He's in defense manufacturing now. He's doing his own thing.

Jake Frazer [00:40:36]:
He just got busy and I was like, well, he's not going to have time. I'm not going to wait on him. I'm just going to do it. And so we launched the podcast about the middle of last year. It's a good platform for these experts, first of all. So all these folks that have just come out of government, if you look at some of the guests we've had, SES is out of dhs. We've had ambassadors who were the ambassador, ambassador of Lebanon. Fascinating discussion.

Jake Frazer [00:41:01]:
Just had the MCOM commander, three star was ran entire installation Management Command. We had the DHA director, three star that ran the Defense Health Agency, then have also moved into bringing in politicians. Like we had a member of parliament from Ukraine to give some good perspective what's happening behind the curtain there and brought in some think tankers from csis. We're recording this week with another senior think tanker and then also bringing in CEOs and giving kind of a CEO perspective. But it's all to support our audience, really, so they can get perspective from all these different experts about specific areas across the government contracting industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:46]:
Now you already have a successful search firm with a team that's doing fantabulous. What do you think? Adding a podcast to the repertoire of what you guys are doing, how has that impacted business?

Jake Frazer [00:42:00]:
Well, look, it gives us a good chance to get some deep, deep expertise that benefits our customers. Last week we did a podcast on this whole Sledgehammer Tribal 8A ANC issue and brought in someone that knows a lot about that because there's a lot of people wondering what's going on? What are the implications? So it's just another way to add value to our customers. And I think you wouldn't agree, and I don't agree. Recruiting is not a commodity, but you got to figure out ways to differentiate. And I don't think of myself as a recruiter. I think of pts and the way we built this company as insiders from the industry with a lot of perspective that helps our customers and our candidates. So the podcast is just another way to add value to our customers. It's a way to spotlight a lot of our experts because they come on the podcast.

Jake Frazer [00:42:49]:
It's basically an interview. So it's a chance for our customers just to go, oh man, maybe I want to engage the MCOM commander to talk about contracting opportunities or board positions. So it's a good way to advertise our experts. And I think for us, it's. It has. Has us upping our game a bit. Right. We're having to learn more about the industry and we're coming out of every episode smarter about another slice of the industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:17]:
Now, it sounds like you've had multiple people from across Europe, across the uk including Ukraine, and watching the news and what's happening on this side of the pond, it looks like a European defense is about ready to explode. How are you structurally setting yourself up for what could be a large piece of the business?

Jake Frazer [00:43:39]:
Yeah, I think we're uniquely positioned for that. I mean, 70% of the teams over in Europe, including me, and I've spent 30 something years living in Europe married to a European. I have a European passport. I mean, I very much feel like part of this mission. And, you know, the things that the administration has been doing and shifting the responsibility for Security onto the European allies within NATO. Some tough love, but it's what's been needed to be done. And I think at the end of the day, NATO will come out stronger. And this idea of this NATO 3.0, where my dad was a career soldier and he was NATO 1.0, you know, waiting for the Russians in the Warsaw Pact, that was the original mission of NATO.

Jake Frazer [00:44:27]:
Right. And then NATO 2.0 got a little bit convoluted with the global war on terror and deployments outside of Europe and distraction from the investment in the European defense base. And now this move to Europe to the NATO 3.0, where, you know, the Europeans can have some say and some investment in their own security and investing in their own defense industry. And so if you think about this from a talent perspective, the Europeans within NATO going to 5% of GDP implies massive investments in defense industrial base, which implies they're going to need talent, they're going to need insights, they're going to need lessons learned from the US which is decades ahead in terms of how to scale defense industrial base. There are going to be transatlantic partnership opportunities where it's clear that the euros are going to flow, mean they've committed to 5% of GDP. So they're gonna be joint venture opportunities and transatlantic partnership opportunities. There are opportunities for European defense companies to invest in manufacturing and development in the US and we see that happening as well. And then you have just the pure play, European defense contractors and companies that need to build more capacity.

Jake Frazer [00:45:46]:
And in particularly around services, I think there's quite a bit of manufacturing capacity, whether it's being utilized, but there's a lot of manufacturing capacity here. Building kit. But the Europeans need to build a services industry to deploy, sustain, maintain, transport this kit. And I think that's a big gap over here. And that's an area where we have a lot of expertise and insights to share with the European defense industry. So I brought on a great guy, retired British, one star, who's been on the industry side for a decade. So he knows both sides. He knows the speak.

Jake Frazer [00:46:24]:
Yeah, we're focused on this side of the Atlantic to help this industry get on its feet, scale. And it's all going to come down to talent at the end of the day.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:34]:
Now, up until a lot of these changes with the NATO 3.0, most of your business has been mostly focused on the United States, right?

Jake Frazer [00:46:41]:
Well, I think we got a few pie charts flying around. We started as the OCONUS guys, right? So our strength has always been international, but generally on programs Funded through the government. But we've started doing quite a bit of work around NATO companies that do contracting with nspa. That's a NATO supply procurement agency. I think it is ncia, which is kind of their IT procurement group. We've done projects around UN programs as well. So it hasn't always been pure us And I think that we're very well positioned to pivot to support ministries of defense projects increase. We have a really good toehold into NATO and NSPA procurement knowledge and insights.

Jake Frazer [00:47:26]:
We have an expert that lives in Holland, who's retired colonel, 10 years working in NATO around NATO, knows their contracting inside out. We also help some of our American companies that want to do work with NSPA because they see the macro trend coming as well. So, yeah, I think we're ready to support either side of the Atlantic.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:46]:
Since you're over in Europe and you've been doing a lot of stuff with the U.S. like, you probably kind of laugh at me, but how have you dealt with the time zones and managing teams across so many different countries and business across so many different countries?

Jake Frazer [00:48:00]:
I think it's a differentiator for us and we have a lot of productive time. We have like 20 productive hours a day within the company because of how we're spread out from the UAE all the way, you know, across into the US and our teams, you know, most projects have a team of three that are spread out. So you have, you have 20 hours of productive time that are going on on any given day. We got a great team there in D.C. with Julie, my COO, and Andy, who's got a tremendous knowledge and reach across govcon. We're eyeballing Huntsville as a key market as well. But I think our geographical setup actually helps us have better reach and more productive time. And I'm back in D.C.

Jake Frazer [00:48:47]:
a lot now.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:49]:
One of the things that you told me in the pregame is like, you've stepped away from delivery about five years ago. How hard was it to actually do that in the role that you have?

Jake Frazer [00:48:59]:
There's a running joke about who's the best recruiter in pts. And I always say it's me, but it's not. I got some really, really good people at doing the delivery and the recruiting. And I still support a lot of projects from like a customer perspective, particularly we get up and we're doing a lot more of C suite searches and board searches where our network, some networks become more important in insights. So it's not like I completely step away from it, but my team is so good at delivery. I mean, I don't add as much value as they do. So I focus more now on up and out doing the podcast. I'm on the board at an association called isoa.

Jake Frazer [00:49:37]:
That takes a lot of time. That's really good for the company, good for the industry. Being kind of the ambassador for the company, which I very much enjoy doing. And I got a team that's top notch on the delivery side.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:50]:
When you first stepped away, what's the immediate thing that you started doing? Because he had more free time.

Jake Frazer [00:49:58]:
Customer stuff. Spending time with customers. And if you look at my calendar, I'm talking to customers all. And I'm not selling, I'm talking, I'm getting information. I'm helping them. Yeah, just spending more time with customers. I think that's where I'm super passionate. I get a lot of joy.

Jake Frazer [00:50:12]:
A lot of them are people I've known for literally decades and they're navigating, you know, their CEOs or C suite and different companies and everybody's in their own foxhole. Right. That CEO has his head down. He's digging every day on his foxhole or her foxhole. And I have the benefit of kind of working across the battlefield and knowing kind of what everybody's doing and what's going on and the latest trends and the impact of this decision from the administration or this program or this contract. And so I can come in and help my customers that are rightfully focused on their fighting position and their foxhole be like, hey, this is what you look like from the outside. Do you realize that? Or do you know what's going on right next to you over here or just over. So I think that's a lot of value that I can add me personally to PTS customers.

Jake Frazer [00:51:06]:
And, you know, Andy and Julie also are doing that with their kind of accounts as well and their teams. So it's scaling.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:14]:
With everything that you've gone through, the ups and downs. If you had to rebuild pts literally from scratch today, what would be the first things that you would do?

Jake Frazer [00:51:26]:
That's a good question. I think I probably would have started getting my clearance back. We do a lot of classified placements. Right. And I think that. And we work with a lot of companies. 60% of our placements have a security clearance. Probably would have started that process early on before things got complex.

Jake Frazer [00:51:48]:
It's going to take time and effort and it's still on our roadmap. I think the other thing I would do, we're doing it now, but getting involved in the defense manufacturing side because there's such a growth area. We're built so much around services and now we're building out into being able to support composites and manufacturing. I think moving there earlier would have been a good idea. But look, we have good, steady, measured growth every year, year on year growth and we can't do everything. And I think we have some big priorities right now. European defense is one of them. Kind of in the near midterm.

Jake Frazer [00:52:26]:
We're focused on helping this tribal 8 ANC space as they have to pivot their particularly the business development teams. And we continue to be focused on technology, supporting our customers with technology talent. So there's plenty to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:41]:
You also mentioned earlier on and just before we jump over to the Quick Fire questions, you guys are doing a lot with AI. Does it feel like you're doing different things with AI than most other search firms or.

Jake Frazer [00:52:52]:
It's mind blowing. You know, I. And I'm the grandpa, but man, my team is all over it. I went down, spent time. We did a workshop in November and I was just, I thought maybe we're behind or I mean we're way ahead. We're using AI in clever ways to streamline and improve our delivery. And I feel like maybe I had a little bit of Are we keeping up? I think we're leading, we're ahead on how we're using AI right now. So I'm really proud of the team because that's not been my area of focus.

Jake Frazer [00:53:26]:
But we have some really strong tech natives within the team that are driving this from within. So I'm really proud of the team, how we're doing on AI.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:35]:
Awesome. Before we jump over to the Quick Fire questions, is there anything that you want to go deeper on that I should have asked a better question or you want to share?

Jake Frazer [00:53:44]:
Well, look, we're. I'll just say this. There's some, some good books around recruiting that I've been reading and one is this guy named Greg Savage. You ever heard of Greg Savage?

Benjamin Mena [00:53:56]:
Working on getting him on the podcast really soon.

Jake Frazer [00:53:57]:
He's fantastic. Great guy. Little story. I had lunch with Greg at a recruitment expo a couple years ago and I had the whole company reading his book the Savage Truth. And I said, hey, it would mean a lot if you could come in. We're going to do a book club meeting within just internal team. And I said, Greg, it would mean a lot if you could just pop in. It's all online.

Jake Frazer [00:54:19]:
Just pop in the first five minutes and just say something because people think you're Wonderful. He's like, I think I can do that. When are you doing? I gave him the time. I sent him the link, he showed up, he stayed on for an hour and a half holding court with my entire team and everybody had read both of his books and nothing he said, nothing he said do I disagree with the guy speaks the truth and he's a real mentor for me and our team. But he always talks about a hundred cups of coffee, right? And we're always recruiting, we're always looking for the next member for our team. We have a kind of a running recruitment, internal recruitment campaign going. But I think for anybody in this community that's interested in GovCon, you have a strong experience in government contracting. Maybe you worked inside of a big prime or maybe you have a shingle out, you're trying to do it on your own.

Jake Frazer [00:55:10]:
But you know, we're always looking for people that want to be part of a team, part of the PTS family, people that are self driven, like making money on their, you know, on commission but with a lot of support. I think we're the best resourced executive search firm. We have every tool you could possibly want and I'm happy to invest to make sure that the team has everything they need. And we got this brand, the snowball that we're building. So I would just say to the community out there, you know, we're always looking for the next person we're going to add to the team. Right now we're kind of gunning for someone that's done C level, senior VP level search because we're just growing in that area. We want to add more capacity there. So yeah, if there's anybody out there that wants to talk about what we're doing at pts, see if there's a fit for you here, it's a great team, it's a great mission, it's a growing brand.

Jake Frazer [00:56:06]:
So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and we can have a talk. A hundred cups of coffee is what Greg Savage, you should be drinking a hundred cups of coffee with people that you're looking to bring onto your team. That's why I talk.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:20]:
And I'll have his LinkedIn link in the show notes. So just scroll down, click on it. Connect message.

Jake Frazer [00:56:26]:
Yeah, he's fantastic.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:28]:
Yeah, jumping over to the quick fire questions and they don't need to be quick answers. Okay, well say if somebody hits you up, they're a recruiter that's been in the space. They're like, hey, I want to go from average to a Lead. What's the piece of advice that you would give them?

Jake Frazer [00:56:42]:
I think that if you want to go from being someone that's making the donuts to someone that's leading the pack, I think you got to really focus on the level of empathy that you bring. Right? Hey, AI is going to commoditize a lot of this industry, right? So you got to really be able to connect with your customers and connect with your candidates. Use AI to do all the research, but bring that person to the table. That's going to be the differentiator going forward. Everybody's got AI. And if you want to go from being middle of the pack to an elite recruiter, really focus on genuinely caring about your customers and your candidates and treating them with the same level of respect and gratitude. I think that's what's going to make you an elite recruiter going forward.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:34]:
Do you have a favorite tech tool that you love?

Jake Frazer [00:57:37]:
My favorite tech tool. Jake's favorite tech tools to God. I mean it's chat GPT. I mean I, I keep it open. I'm, I'm coaching myself with it. I'm, I got probably three or four different projects going on anytime, whether it's researching for a podcast or tracking agencies or foreign policy stuff. So yeah, I think that's, that's probably everybody's in some sense.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:04]:
Have you ever been tempted?

Jake Frazer [00:58:05]:
A bunch of LinkedIn recruiter stuff. I mean we, we 27 LinkedIn recruiter seats, so we've invested heavily there. But yeah, I think you gotta, gotta have your chat going on.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:16]:
Do you have a book? I know you just talked about Greg's book, but do you have like a, a book that's had a huge impact on your career?

Jake Frazer [00:58:23]:
Yeah, we use, we use Traction eos, the entrepreneurial operating system by Gino Wickman. If you see it on my bookshelf here. And there's a whole, there's a whole ecosystem of books around Traction. So if you're running any firm, small, medium sized business. I think my CFO asked me one time, he's like 10 years older than me, which makes him really old. He's like, what's your management process? I was like, that's a tough question, but like, no good answer. We put in EOS and Traction 3, maybe even four years ago. Everybody got a copy of the book and that's how we run the company.

Jake Frazer [00:59:02]:
And it's just built an infrastructure for me and for the team. We hold meetings the same way, we have the same agenda. We track scorecard, we do quarterly rocks and it's not me running things, it's this process that's running the company. And I think that's very refreshing. It allows me to be able to step back and actually have a lead on Eos and it isn't me. Andy is the lead on Eos and he's always studying the next tools. And so I think retraction. And if you're starting to scale your team, you got more than two people, consider putting EOS in your business.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:37]:
So you've been out in the community, I've seen you talk to recruiters. You know, you're working with the people in your team. I'm sure, like a lot of the questions that you've gotten over time are like, how do you do this? Or what's a great bd? What's working in BD right now? Or how do I connect with these high level people? Or how do I add value? During all these conversations that you have with recruiters and account managers and like, you know, people in our space, you ever just wonder, just like, hey, I wish you would ask this question, but they never do. What would be that question and what would be the answer?

Jake Frazer [01:00:11]:
I think the question would be, if you're going to survive in this rapidly transforming industry with executive search and recruiting and it's clear that this thing is going to get gutted by those that are doing high volume contingent work, what do we look like? What does this industry and this is, it's the question that I ask all my guests on the podcast. What do we look like three years from now? What does this industry look like three years from now? What does executive search look like three years from now? Like, really stretch your brain to try and define that. And the sooner you can get there, the more successful you're going to be. Right. The sooner you can define this is what this industry is going to look. And in 2029, then you have kind of a guidepost this, this plan to head towards whether it's technology, whether it's how commercial terms are done, whether it's your delivery method and platforms. I think that's the question we all need to be thinking about in this industry to keep moving the industry forward. I'm talking about the recruiting side of the industry.

Benjamin Mena [01:01:14]:
Three years from now, what does it actually look like or what are you thinking it's going to look like?

Jake Frazer [01:01:18]:
Super. It's got to be driven by insights, market knowledge, empathy. These are the things that are gonna allow you to. There'll be a lot of people falling out of this industry because of AI the matching of a resume to a job description is gonna get completely done. Do you know this May Talk? Do you know this idiq? Do you know the industry? And are you taking the time to treat people like human beings? Are you taking the time to really understand your customers problems? Are you treating your candidates with the same level of care and love that you give to your customers? Because at the end of the day, they're all in it together. Right? And those are the people you're supporting. So the companies, the search firms that are successful I think will have deep industry expertise, will really be focusing on full life cycle care of their customers and their candidates and be super high. Touch.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:21]:
Love that. Two last questions, actually.

Jake Frazer [01:02:25]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:26]:
If somebody wants to follow you or connect with you, how do they go about doing that?

Jake Frazer [01:02:30]:
You know, just go on LinkedIn. We're always there, easy.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:34]:
And before I let you go, is there anything else that you'd love to share with the listeners?

Jake Frazer [01:02:39]:
Look, Ben, I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing for the community, both the GovCon community, but also the recruiting community. And I think you've helped a lot of people that you don't even know, people that have watched your podcast and have gotten inspiration and, you know, had some introspection or changed something. And I think it's really cool what you're doing. And so I salute you for that and doing it, you know, kind of similar style as me in a. And a lifestyle keeping the balance between life and work.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:09]:
Yeah.

Jake Frazer [01:03:09]:
I think for anybody. If you want to check out our podcast, if you're around GovCon, you should be watching it. Check it out. There's some really good stuff. It's the future of GovCon. It's on all the channels, Spotify and itunes and everything. Go check it out. And I would just say, yeah, if you want to engage, like super accessible, super available.

Jake Frazer [01:03:28]:
Our entire team is Andy and Julie and Candace and Jason. They're all there in the D.C. area. They love meeting up with folks, so feel free to reach out anytime.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:39]:
I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. Like I said at the very beginning, one of the coolest things about this podcast has turned into the connections and the friendships of not just like recruiters, but also people that are quote unquote competitors. I just understand the pie is big enough for all of us at the end of the day, but it's just so cool to be able to get a chance to learn from every single person in our industry to really just help level the game. Like Jake was saying, there's going to be some change happening in the future. You need to figure out where you are going to be three years from now, where the market is going to be three years from now. And make 2026 the year that you dial it in because it's going to be a requirement if you still want to be around. That's right. On top of that, make this your year.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:34]:
Dial it in just to make this your year. So Jake, excited to have you, brother.

Jake Frazer [01:04:38]:
And all right, man, keep it.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:40]:
Let's meet up.

Jake Frazer [01:04:41]:
Let's meet up on this side of the ocean sometime, man.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:44]:
We need to. This will be fun.

Jake Frazer [01:04:46]:
All right, awesome.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:48]:
Bye, Jake.

Jake Frazer [01:04:48]:
All right, thanks everybody. Bye.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:50]:
You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:24]:
No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future of recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:00]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com thanks for listening

Jake Frazer [01:06:08]:
to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.