Recruiting on the Edge with Sam Kuehnle: AI, Automation & the Future-Proof Tech Stack

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast, the recruiting role is literally on the cusp of just so many crazy things that in tech, that has never been available before. The world's changing fast, so there are things that you could do to be part of it, prepared for it, so that way you're not waking up, like, a few years from now like, oh, crap, what the heck happened? Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. Cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Sam Kuehnle [00:00:40]:
All right, Ben Mena.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:42]:
I can't believe it's been, like, two years since we had the conversation.

Sam Kuehnle [00:00:46]:
Since the last one. It is. I don't know. And we were saying, you know, a lot's changed in that time. We both had kids in that time. And just how I'm like, oh, it's so quick. We spoke a couple months ago. Not a couple years ago.

Sam Kuehnle [00:00:57]:
Like, what is this? But yeah. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, we're back for round two, so I hope you get to enjoy this one. We might be a little bit loony. I'm drinking some coffee. Ben, I know you're just coming back from. You've got some. Some bugs floating around the house, a little one, and you're finally on the back end of it. So, yeah, we'll.

Sam Kuehnle [00:01:13]:
We'll see where this one takes us.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:15]:
Well, I mean, it's kind of crazy. Just, like, what, you know, was, first of all was the realization that it's been that long since we've had this conversation, which is just insane. Literally, like, you. One of the people feels like it was yesterday, but. But then, like, once you start looking at, like, what has happened and what has changed in recruiting for some people, nothing's changed in recruiting. Like, the recruiting world is literally on the cusp of just so many crazy things that in tech, that has never been available before.

Sam Kuehnle [00:01:42]:
In your mind, what's changed in the.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:43]:
Last couple of years we talked about AI. AI was just, like, searching and talent matching. Now you can actually type things in with natural language processing. We are now just in the very beginnings of the agentic AI now touching. And, like, coming into recruiting, I think everybody's like, a little bit of a race to a joke at the moment.

Sam Kuehnle [00:02:00]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:01]:
And just like AI was, most people were probably using AI to just write some basic content that now looks like crap when you post it online.

Sam Kuehnle [00:02:09]:
Yeah. All right, so three topics today that I want us to get into. One we've kind of touched on a little bit, which is just like AI and recruitment. What's been going the last couple years, what are people looking at today? One's going to be unpacking modern recruitment tech stack. Not just like what is it today? But theoretically, like if we could build the perfect X stack, what would it be? And then we're going to talk proactive talent pipelining and actually using your CRM versus starting every job from scratch. So which one you want to get into first?

Benjamin Mena [00:02:37]:
I think we should start with a proactive talent pipelining because I think that'll roll into like the other parts of the conversation.

Sam Kuehnle [00:02:45]:
Okay, so this is an interesting one. Everyone, everyone always says like, especially when you're agency recruiter, I need an atscrm. It's one word to them. ATSCRM just rolls off the tongue. Most of em only use the ats, they don't use the CRM. So like you were saying before this, so many recruiters will just start from scratch every single job. I need to hire a software engineer, I need to hire a head of marketing, I need to hire a finance leader. I'm not gonna make an always never statement.

Sam Kuehnle [00:03:13]:
But a surprising minority leverage their CRM and the database that they've already cultivated to start their search. Why do you think that is?

Benjamin Mena [00:03:22]:
I think there's a few different reasons for that. First of all, many times if the, the position gets posted and the people that apply, that's the easiest thing that you can ever do. Sure, if they're, if they're actually qualified. But many times like it's maybe a 1 or 2% of the people that actually apply. You know, we have, there's candidates are using AI. But I think the second part is like databases are just so dirty and it is so hard to go back and find that person. How many recruiters actually take good notes? I know very, very few. But you know, that's also one of the benefits that I see with AI now coming into play with atss and CRMs is you can use like a natural language search in there.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:01]:
But prior to that you have a database of 80,000 candidates, 100,000 candidates, 25,000 candidates. First of all, how many of those resumes, phone numbers and emails are out of date already?

Sam Kuehnle [00:04:11]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:12]:
So the data enrichment behind the scenes is something that needs to be done. But many systems aren't typically set up for data enrichment. So they're old candidates, you might not have the correct number anymore. So these just, it's a long laundry list of things why recruiters don't successfully use their database. And also the second thing or the next thing is how often are we working the same jobs? Typically, like we're not narrowed down or niche enough. And that's something that's definitely like a struggle in the govcon space because government contracting is a bit all over the place. It's not like you're running the same search. So you're able to cultivate this.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:44]:
A true pipeline of the top talent to be able to work, but the recruiters that do it just absolutely crush it.

Sam Kuehnle [00:04:51]:
Yeah. And that's one that I've seen people go back and forth because you have one camp that says broaden yourself. It's too hard to niche down only right now and only go after something like, you know, we have to drive new business, we have to take on new jobs, then you have the other side. That's just like. No, like if you can truly cultivate. I have mapped the 8,000 people in the US that have this specific skill set from junior to senior level. I've got relationships with them or I'm one degree of separation away from them. I can get a conversation going with them.

Sam Kuehnle [00:05:20]:
I think that is an interesting one. There was this article I almost said the author's name was Matthew Syed and he looked at tennis champions at the time. It was Djokovic, it was Federer, and it was Nadal. And he said, what's the best way to become the best tennis player in the world? So let's go look at those three. Three completely different styles. One's having fun, one's robotic, one's just pure brute force. Three very different tennis styles. All three are champions.

Sam Kuehnle [00:05:47]:
You know, they've won multiple tournaments. So I think the same thing with this is like, it's really hard to say, like, should you niche? I own, should you go broad? But I do think that I don't. Maybe it's almost back to the conversation we had in the beginning last year or two years ago. Sorry. The relationships. Are you developing relationships with people in the space? You can at least be a degree of separation away or be familiar with those people because inbound's just not going to cut it. Like, Easy Apply is doing so many a disservice to us, we're spending more time admitting just like, no, you're not qualified. No, you're not qualified.

Sam Kuehnle [00:06:20]:
No, you're not qualified. And what I've come to realize is you're either going to spend the time, five minutes, get the job posted, slap it up on a job board, wait for inbound applicants to come in, then you spend days sifting through inbound, or you spend a day proactively pipelining, whether that's sourcing hopefully through your internal database first, but then going and proactively sourcing any other sourcing tools that you, that you use here. Spend a day to get 300, 500 candidates and then start your outreach and everything else. And then you have great conversations after. If you look at your funnel and the time, it's like you're going to spend the time either way. Which one has you wanting to hit your head against the wall less and go that route, Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:57]:
Pretty much. I mean, it's also one of those things, like, you know, even if somebody's been in your database but you haven't had a conversation with in years, in reality, they don't remember who you are.

Sam Kuehnle [00:07:07]:
No.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:08]:
So it's, it's like starting over from scratch all over again.

Sam Kuehnle [00:07:10]:
So how, how much do you use, like tags, how much do you use your own CRM for, for the work that you do?

Benjamin Mena [00:07:17]:
So I don't use it as well as I should, and that's why I easily talk about how dirty a database is.

Sam Kuehnle [00:07:21]:
Yeah. You know, firsthand. Okay, so do you have anything in place that helps with updating that? Is it all manual? Like, what's your process been?

Benjamin Mena [00:07:30]:
My process has been a combination of like the manual stuff and if, like there's an option for data enrichment, I just don't offer this, don't often pay for it, you know, because most of the stuff that like we do is in the government contracting sector and in the cleared community. So most of the time people aren't changing their phone numbers or not changing their email addresses. So I feel like I'm typically safe with that. But in a perfect world, like I would love for it to just auto data enrich everything behind the scenes. And now I'm playing with way too many tech tools. And I don't recommend playing with too many tech tools. I just being a podcast host too, like, everybody comes to you, but, you know, looking at like backend enrichment, like plugging into clay, plugging into this, plugging into some agentic sourcing tools, it's going to be there. And I think the modern tech stack for a recruiter is going to absolutely change.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:19]:
But it's like we're coming on to a lot of exciting things that I truly believe like a, an agency of like 10 people, they can have a system running behind the scenes, making sure everything's cleaned up, tagged up and everything. Compared to having a VA doing it Which I had for a little while. Or, you know, having somebody in your office just sitting there trying to clean things.

Sam Kuehnle [00:08:36]:
Yeah. And so. Okay, so we're in an interesting crossroads here. You talked about, like, the legacy version of this was purely manual. Like, you can either spend the time going in and manually updating. You can get an assistant, you can get into VA. That's kind of the V1 of the space then we're moving into today. I promise I'm not plugging Loxo on this, but like, we have an automatic updating database feature like that's built in because we own the data set.

Sam Kuehnle [00:08:59]:
But you can. This isn't limited to loxo. Like, look at clay. You can run waterfall tables that can do the exact same thing. Apollo. Like, you name the platform. Like, more or less organizations are doing it, but I'm almost wondering. It's super easy on paper.

Sam Kuehnle [00:09:11]:
But you mentioned you're not doing it because of cost, because of prices. So do you think that, like in a perfect world, and I know we were almost going to talk about like a perfect world tech stack, and we're going to bridge the gap here between CRM and that. Like, do you think this should just be included natively with plans? Do you think that that should be a per usage? Because, like, you're. You get to see the future where things are going, but you also are an end user. So you straddle this line, which is really interesting to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:33]:
Yeah, it's a weird place to be at. I mean, it's. I fully understand why, like, it's on a cost per credit basis most of the time because, like, how many companies walk in and like, hey, I have a database of 80,000 people. Do you know how much data enrichment in Clay and all those other backend software, it would be for 80,000. That's more than the cost of like your per month, what you're actually getting with your ats. So, yeah, you know, and that's like the ATS has a backend database of everything and they're able to enrich everybody's data at the same time. But even then you think of the database as your own database. This is my little world that you own.

Sam Kuehnle [00:10:11]:
Yeah. So it's this interesting spot because it's like, do you value your database enough? That's going to be one variable into like, is this a value to you too? How much of a competitive edge does this give you? If you're in a super niche space where people aren't really changing their information, you can probably get Away with refreshing it once every six months, once every 12 months, and it stays up to date versus if you're in a highly competitive space, very finite pool of people or anything else that could be applicable for you. Like, they're changing a role. Hiring manager leaves an organization leadership turnover. Like, you need to know that information pretty quickly if you want to have a jump on other people. So.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:46]:
And the crazy thing is, like, you're going to laugh at this. Like, I can get that set up in a clay table, but, like, how can I get that set up back in my ats?

Sam Kuehnle [00:10:54]:
Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, you have to go ahead.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:59]:
And I was going to say, like, you know, I know everybody's talking about clay, but at the same time, there's also a lot of people that are burnt out on clay because of a clay expert that did one magical thing and then that same magical thing that's been done for everybody else. So it's not really like a magical thing anymore. And clay's just. Just complex enough that you have to like, actually figure out how to learn it, which I think that's going to change in six months.

Sam Kuehnle [00:11:21]:
But at the moment, yeah, the intuitiveness of it. See, I mean, that's a good point with. When you have a trending best practice is what I like to call it is something new, something novel people aren't doing. Early adopters reap the benefits. But then it starts getting dispersed to the majority. Everyone starts doing it. All of a sudden those benefits are just going down, down, down, down, down, because everyone's running that same exact place. So, yeah, it'll be interesting.

Sam Kuehnle [00:11:46]:
But yeah, I think you bring up a good point of. Data acquisition is easier than it's ever been. But the underlying issue is still, are you getting it to the places that you're living and using that data? And that's where we start talking as recruiters. Like, I just hired like a Rev Ops person, a GTM engineer to handle and orchestrate all of this. Most recruitment agencies, they're like, yeah, that, that'd be nice. That's a luxury hire for me. Like, I. I can't afford that.

Sam Kuehnle [00:12:12]:
I have to figure it out myself. Or, you know, I'm just, I'm sol. Like, I can't. I can't do it. That's not something we're going to be able to do.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:18]:
I mean, it's also one of the things, like, you know, I think recruiters typically are a good five years to 10 years behind in tech. You know, smiling and dialing and shooting emails and LinkedIn messages works like I actually I know firms that have like 50, 60 people run 20, 25 million dollars of revenue. The only two non producers are the CEO and the HR person. So like the recruiting thought process is like I just add five more bodies. There's a way for revenue which I think if you have like a recruitment engineer which is a go to market specialist that is trained in that, in all these softwares you could plug in that GTM or recruiting engineer into your company to start really setting up those structures and all this tech.

Sam Kuehnle [00:12:56]:
Yeah, so it's kind of like the predictable revenue model in SaaS from five years ago it started to fall apart which was BDRs just go higher, more BDRs, make more dials, send more emails. Volume, volume, volume. We started to see the diminishing returns on that. And so if we truly are five years behind, that really faded out. Not faded out, but people saw the cracks in the foundations. 2021, it's 2025 now. So hey, crystal ball Ben. We'll find out, we'll come back love part three next year and we'll see how this is, how this is coming along there.

Sam Kuehnle [00:13:24]:
Let's pull more on this thread of like ideal modern recruitment tech stack. So day in the life of Ben. Like what are you using? What do you wish you could do?

Benjamin Mena [00:13:32]:
Like I wish everything magically worked together and I didn't have to like plug in APIs and do this and do that. Like I love Metaview and I know people love Fathom and Quill and all those. I wish it automatically plugged into all my Software. I use 8x8 and I've thought about switching to RingCentral just because it plugs in a little more better when it comes to my ats like you know, and my applicant tracking system is a crn. I want it to be like so smart that it reads my messages and auto updates everything. If there's a data enrichment program that is like embedded into my system, I want the most up to date data. I don't want to have to go to Clay to figure out like or LinkedIn sales navigator to figure out who moved. I'd love to be able to just pop in, hop in.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:15]:
Okay, these five people just moved. Let me hit them up about new stuff. You know, the sourcing tools. Like I love Seekout, I love People GPT. I use both of those. You know there's a way to magically plug that in also. And I, you know, I think like one of the magical things of what we could have in the future with AI is just a place where it's able to capture all our information, changing information, build out, like, PDFs in a heartbeat, build out candidate reports, build out client reports. Just the stuff that, like in the backend admin that takes time, can just be.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:49]:
You don't even have to think about it anymore.

Sam Kuehnle [00:14:50]:
Yeah. So okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:52]:
Oh, yeah. And I use Instantly also for email, and then I use SensePark also for video.

Sam Kuehnle [00:14:58]:
So the list goes on. You are Clay. You have a stack right there. I'm going to come back to some of the things you said in there, but you're saying, you know, you wish you almost had, like, AI to do a lot of that admin stuff. So keep going down that path. AI is now covering those candidate reports. AI is now covering your initial sourcing. AI's doing your scheduling.

Sam Kuehnle [00:15:21]:
What are you spending your time doing?

Benjamin Mena [00:15:23]:
Having the calls, like, spending time with. With the relationships, spending time on podcasts, like going deeper in the industry, talking to more leaders, talking to more. More candidates. You know, it's. It's one of the things, I think as tech has gotten better, we're now even more spread out and doing more things as a recruiter than ever before. I want AI to fix that. So I could go back to the old days of spending five, six hours a day actually recruiting or selling.

Sam Kuehnle [00:15:52]:
Yeah. Versus five, six hours entering information, updating things. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:57]:
And that's why, like, a lot of stuff, like, you know, there's a lot of, like, small producers or even at the big shops where the data is not clean and the data is dirty. Because what do you have the choice of? Many times it's, do I want to spend an hour or two on data, which is probably going to be even more effective down the road, or the next call, the next client, the next.

Sam Kuehnle [00:16:15]:
Dollar bill, short term, long term. So we're talking investment and return here. One thing I took away earlier that you were saying was it sounds like you value a lot of things being in one platform in an ideal state. But I know the other side of the coin is costs, conscientiousness of every recruiter, especially the small shops. How do you balance those two? Because it sounds like, you know, you're saying that you want everything in one spot, but you just listed off seven different platforms. Part of that is just due to the nature of the techscape. Like, just. We understand not everything can be integrated, but why do you think in some of those instances, you're still choosing to leverage two different sourcing Tools, your ats, a different email system.

Sam Kuehnle [00:16:56]:
Is it cost related or is it something else?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:57]:
It's a combination of cost related and you know, sometimes the best product is not in your ats.

Sam Kuehnle [00:17:03]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:03]:
Like the ability and like instantly to, you know, go through and cycle through multiple email addresses. You know, the ability to have it automatically warm up emails for me through stuff like that and then go, you know, using something like a hey Reach or a Talon where I can automatically set up a structure for a LinkedIn messages. That's it, you know, more messages, more tech.

Sam Kuehnle [00:17:27]:
Okay. So it's, yeah, it's the reality of executing the best possible level in today's world to break through the noise, to do all that because.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:34]:
Yeah, to break through the noise and you know, it's. I don't blame a, a system or a service for not being great at everything when I know that they need to be great at the single thing that they need to be great in.

Sam Kuehnle [00:17:45]:
Yep. I mean it's with jack of all trades, master of none, you know, better to be good at some than. But yeah, to your point, it's really hard. There's so much rec tech out there. You would have to be like, even look at Salesforce, like they're trying to take on so much and see in the cr, like sales CRM and they're still not the best at every element of it, despite. I don't know when the market cap is. Yeah. But like money won't solve these things.

Sam Kuehnle [00:18:09]:
Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:10]:
I mean, so it's like, is there a way, a magical API that it's easy to plug into that integrates everything together? I think would be my perfect world. And I think that's where like we're starting to see the starts of that like you know, perfect example in the sales space, the go to market space. I think it's like attention AI, like everything is automatically updated into your CRM as long as it plugs in there. So like we're on the edge and I know like you guys just hooked up with Metafu, so that's now able to like start being integrated. So like we're starting to see all this amazing tech now starting to work together and I think that's going to be the biggest thing, but I think in about six months, or not six months, but maybe a year from now with AI and with how easy it is to code it, like YC companies right now, 25% of the YC companies that are just coming out in this class, their entire like coding tech is all written by AI. So Like, I see the capabilities of a lot of these softwares to like take on more stuff. It's not going to be like the greatest. It's not going to be like, you know, quill or metaview level.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:13]:
But if it could do it at 80% within the system or 90% of the system, I'm happy.

Sam Kuehnle [00:19:19]:
Yeah, well, because then you're looking at what's the cogs for those company. It's pretty small. So they can race, not race to the bottom on it, but they can offer that product for a heck of a lot less than others. So for those who are more cost conscientious, that's definitely an avenue and it.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:33]:
Goes back to your cost consciousness. Like, you know, it's the simple this. Like how many pieces of software did I list out? I will say because I'm a podcast host, there are pieces of software that I transparency get to use for free. But prior to that, like I still end up spending like 1500 bucks, maybe 2000 just on software just to try it out for a month or not try it out or I like this, I'm going to keep it as a tech stack. So any recruiters on average between like LinkedIn and everything else, easily spending 500 to $2,500 on just tech. What if that could be like 500 bucks or $250?

Sam Kuehnle [00:20:09]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:09]:
And it covers everything in the future.

Sam Kuehnle [00:20:11]:
Would you pay? It's making up a number here, a 25% premium for all that to be in one place in a perfect world, I probably would.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:18]:
As long as it's good.

Sam Kuehnle [00:20:19]:
Yeah, like that's what I was sort of say perma gold. Assume it's going to be like top of the line or at least like top, top three contender across all the different jobs to be done.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:26]:
I mean it's one of the things like if it's that good, can it save me time? And time is money. What else can I do with additional two hours a day? Can I go make another placement? Can I like host a summit? Can I go have another podcast interview? Can I have lunch or coffee with a hiring leader in my space?

Sam Kuehnle [00:20:44]:
Okay, well, I think we're onto something here.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:47]:
As the sales team hits me up right after this. Right.

Sam Kuehnle [00:20:50]:
No, you're on there. I'm not going to let them. Don't worry, it's going to be at least 14 days until you hear from them.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:56]:
Okay, good.

Sam Kuehnle [00:20:56]:
Dang it. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:58]:
The elite recruiter podcast has multiple summits coming up that you need to make sure that you are registered for. We have the AI recruiting summit 2025 coming up and on top of that, finish the year strong. These two summits are going to help you move the needle, help you achieve your goals, help you achieve your dreams and make 2025 the year that you started out and you want it to be. Make sure you get registered and also stay tuned. Got something cooking for you guys. Working on another project that you guys are going to absolutely love. All right, see you guys at the summits and see you guys soon.

Sam Kuehnle [00:21:29]:
Okay, so ideal tech stack pricing.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:33]:
I mean and the ideal tech stack would also be like if I put a job in there, it'll automatically start doing the sourcing, it'll automatically start doing the messaging and pretty much book it on the calendar.

Sam Kuehnle [00:21:44]:
So the agentic side, like where we've been talking about how this new class 25% is coming in, doing that let you do less admin. How much do you trust it? How much do you QA it? Before you let that thing go full bore ahead, just knowing that we've got some people who are like, you should see my, my boolean strings. Like no machine could ever do this. Like true.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:04]:
No machine can also can spend the 20 minutes you put together. Like I love the sourcing side of the house. I truly believe sourcing is going to like evolve into more of like the AI backend and working through all these systems and challenges and this like, I mean give you a perfect example, Paradox. What is it? Paradox AI. I'm sure you're familiar with them. They're helping teams like of 20 recruiters hire 20,000 people per year. Now you're just mostly behind the scenes running the AI and dealing with the relationship. So like we're there already when it comes to the lower level tech.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:37]:
But I truly believe that we're going to have a bit of a golden age of agency recruiting where we can go back to truly focusing on the relationships because of the tech.

Sam Kuehnle [00:22:46]:
Okay, so I think this is where it's going to get interesting. Our companies, you can't just plug in to any LLM. Like you're going to have to have your own type of machine learning because otherwise if everyone's using the same AI data center to source, you've got say you're doing contingent say you've got 10 different agencies vying for the same role. They plug in. Hiring company equals Apple job title equals head of finance. Location equals Cupertino. Are they going to get the same 300 candidates when they all go to source through this agent? Or is that where those yc companies that are just leveraging coding through that. Like, you have to have human element on top of it to be like, how can I leverage other elements? I don't.

Sam Kuehnle [00:23:24]:
I'm. I'm just kind of rabbit holing down this as my mind's. I'm brain dumping on you, more or less.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:29]:
I think, like, if there are 10 recruiting agencies using the same tools, like, they're probably going to get 10 same answers, but also those candidates, are they going to pick up to those same 10 people? Like, where do you have to be a differentiator when it comes to actually, first of all, getting a hold of those candidates. And that's where it's important to have, like, video, which I know video can now be done by AI too, but that's a whole other story. But you have to, like, even as a recruiter, start to figure out how to differentiate yourself just a little bit more. Right. I hate to say, like, AI now has like a thousand different triggers, but find a trigger that's different rather than the, the generalized template that recruiters have been spitting out since 1983.

Sam Kuehnle [00:24:08]:
I have an opportunity for you. That subject line. Yeah. So the outreach side, but I know we were just saying a little bit ago, it's like, I just want to get on the phone calls with them. Are you. Yeah, maybe into some of those algorithms. That's where you're configuring some of that initial outreach that they're going to be using. Are you just like, you have a ton of podcasts? Maybe this is linking back to what you're saying about podcasts.

Sam Kuehnle [00:24:27]:
In just my last five years of podcast episodes that I've been on, Go read my blog, read my emails, understand my tone, understand my point of view, understand, like my value prop as an organization. Train it up on that. I think people will be more open and accepting of receiving AI outreach from that, knowing that it's not just being pasted like, from a crap template, but, like, it truly knows you.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:52]:
But like, in saying that, like, most recruiters also don't have years of podcast interviews that they can plug into. So I mean, you almost like, this goes down a whole nother rabbit hole. Like, you also have to become a little bit of a content creator to become a, a person of influence in your industry too.

Sam Kuehnle [00:25:09]:
But if you're an expert, shouldn't you be like, if you're gonna focus on a niche or if you like going back to the CRM at the beginning, if you're having conversations with certain types of people, just start recording em Start training it on that and that's how you become a trusted partner, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:25:22]:
Yeah. I mean, I hate to say this, like your conversations in quo and metaview too.

Sam Kuehnle [00:25:27]:
Absolutely. Yeah. We just went super meta with all this. This is kind of fun though. I like it. Usually like every Tuesday Vivian and I do a tactical Tuesday episode and we're recording one into in an hour and a half with her where we just like get into just like super detailed tactic, very practical. Right now you and I are up in La La land and I'm absolutely loving it because it's just like, I don't know, we don't get to come these hypothetical conversations often. But I think there's a lot of truth into where we're seeing this going.

Sam Kuehnle [00:25:52]:
Just like me being on the tech side seeing what is being built in other industries outside of recruitment, seeing what's being built by our engineers today. You just being at the cutting edge of this and you truly just enjoying learning like how can I be an early adopter? What can I do to get ahead from a competitive advantage? So I don't know. This is, this is funny.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:09]:
One of the fun things is like I think recruiters need to do if they're a little bit like tech forward, watch what's happening in the go to market space.

Sam Kuehnle [00:26:16]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:17]:
Because the go to market space is like where you're going to see a lot of like the upcoming changes and the things that you could use to be ahead of the curve.

Sam Kuehnle [00:26:25]:
All right, I have a really good example here. Have you come across Copy AI Al Coleman? Okay, so one of the really cool things that he's built is it does this deep account research. So say you want to go after Apple is a and he's trying to sell copy AI to them. It does all this deep account research and understands, okay, what are their pains, what are they probably struggling with. And then it builds a custom landing page that talks about copy AI and Apple talk. It pulls out what it knows to be their problems, ties in use cases to how copy AI solves for it, finds a relevant case study, drops that in. This is a click of a couple buttons. But for recruitment, like think about where this could go for us.

Sam Kuehnle [00:27:02]:
It's okay. Apple, we see that you're hiring for a head of finance. We've read the job description. We know what you're looking for. Do you build something about how our agency, we focus specifically on finance hires and we have a database of 20,000 people in Cupertino. We're just going to give you a freebie. Here's five candidates that we think are a good fit for you, that we've got, you know, tons more, but Build Atlantic. But just a couple clicks of a button.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:23]:
Like, I'd pay hundreds of dollars a month for that.

Sam Kuehnle [00:27:25]:
Right. And it's gonna come. It's just a matter of time. To your point, like, we're just five years perpetually behind in the cycle. But how do we get to that point? And that's why I do. I don't know. The. It's interesting to me.

Sam Kuehnle [00:27:37]:
It's so interesting to me. You're an early adopter. I'm an early adopter. Part of that's just like, by nature, we're curious people. Right. I look at the recruitment space and look at any space. That's a small part of the curve really. Once you start to get to early majority, the late majority things are good enough.

Sam Kuehnle [00:27:50]:
We've always done things this way. If it's not broke, don't fix it is usually the caring mentality. But then you also have the whole like, the early bird gets the worm, the competitive advantage side of it. So I don't know. To me, it's interesting to watch organizations not want to adapt to some of these things that are so clearly beneficial to them in the long term.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:10]:
I mean, it's one of the things, like, if you're profitable and you don't see how it can move the needle. I understand that, like some of these, if you're $20 million in revenue, the business has been built this way. Like, I think people have to, like, come in and show and like, this is, okay, I've done this, this, and this, and this is how I can increase the revenue. So it's like the combination of the few different business models. And I think there's a lot of, like, very elite gen tech forward. Like, I don't know if you've had a chance to talk with Jeremy Jensen at all on your podcast. Like, half his team is actually not salespeople or recruiters.

Sam Kuehnle [00:28:44]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:44]:
Half his team is like video people, lead gen specialists, go to market specialists behind the scenes. Literally just making and doing all the work so that, like, it sets it up on the recruiter's calendar. Like, that's where the recruiter, halftime has the first interaction is when it's already on the calendar. Because they're running everything behind the scenes. And they do about 40. I think it was like 40 to 45 million with this. I think like 40 people or something like that.

Sam Kuehnle [00:29:09]:
That's great. Incredible.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:10]:
And half are not revenue Generators.

Sam Kuehnle [00:29:11]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:12]:
So it's getting that understanding it and a lot of this stuff is over our heads. But having somebody that can come in and implement it and be able to explain it.

Sam Kuehnle [00:29:23]:
You've had a lot of conversations with recruiters from organizations of all shapes and sizes, types of recruitment that they do. Have you ever had the sense of like, if you almost had to give a percentage or if it's come up in conversation, how many do you treat Is just like, it's a lifestyle business where when I get it to 1 million to 5 million, I'm good with that. I don't need it to grow anymore. It meets my needs versus those who have an insatiable drive. Like next year's has to grow 15%, next year has to grow, like just because that's just how they're wired.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:50]:
I think it's not that. I think that the lifestyle business is about 250 to 400.

Sam Kuehnle [00:29:58]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:59]:
You don't see too many, at least. I don't see too many lifestyle owners that have teams. Like, I've seen a few like that do really well, like, you know, close to the million dollar mark with VA teams and they're like a bit lifestyle. But also when I'm thinking lifestyle is being able to like shut it down and leave the country for a month.

Sam Kuehnle [00:30:16]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:16]:
And when you have like employees and recruiters that you're trying to feed and payroll, it really starts turning into like, okay, now we need to hit this 15 growth. We have to hit this growth number.

Sam Kuehnle [00:30:27]:
More money, more problems.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:31]:
And then I have conversations with recruiters, like, they've had their teams and they've said screw it and let me just go back to being a solo producer.

Sam Kuehnle [00:30:37]:
Yeah. I mean, I'm. I just watched one of our customers do that where they're just like, they just wanted to go. They're like, it's been fun, but I kind of just want to do my own thing again. Are they masochist? A little bit, probably. But I think some people like to have their hands in the dirt. And when they realize that they're starting to get unhappy or they're feeling disconnected. I've noticed that with some of the best practitioners that it's like, I'm not doing the work anymore.

Sam Kuehnle [00:30:58]:
I've lost my pulse for the market. Like, why isn't my team doing well? I've got them equipped with all the best tools and stuff. And then you go and look at it, it's like, oh, the playbook they're using is the same one they've been using as 15 years ago. They haven't updated that. So I don't know.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:10]:
And also, many times, like the Playbook and the rainmaker is the owner. And it's like, it's so hard to duplicate a Rainmaker now that when they have every piece of tech and tool, they can go out on their own.

Sam Kuehnle [00:31:24]:
Or when people realize. I've seen this a lot in the marketing agency side, you have a face of the company. That's what attracts the prospects. That's what attracts the people who want to work with you as a recruiter. And then you get handed off to someone who's not that person. You're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not what I signed on for. But what do we also.

Sam Kuehnle [00:31:41]:
Are we that naive to think that, you know, this person running a $50 million company, $100 million agency is going to be doing every single job? Doing all like, that's not possible. All right, let's. Let's come back down to not reality a little bit, but let's come back into some. Some practicality before we. Before we tie things up. AI. So we've covered a lot of different types of AI so far. LLMs, agentic, machine learning.

Sam Kuehnle [00:32:07]:
Let's take a moment just to talk about how they're different, because this is something I've heard in a lot of our sales conversations. As I listen into some of the recordings is I hear conversation. How's AI built into the product? It's like, well, you used to be able to ask that five years ago because there weren't so many types or use cases, but now it's like, what type of AI are you interested in? Is it agentic? Is it LLM? Is it machine learning? What are you trying to accomplish? Is it less time on a task? Is it having a better result?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:30]:
Let me ask a question. How many people asking that question don't know the answer, but just want to check the box? That AI is there.

Sam Kuehnle [00:32:36]:
They just want to check the box. AI is a buzzword right now. And they're just saying whatever I buy needs to have AI built in. I mean, it's like digital transformation 10 years ago. Absolutely. Used to kill me when I'd see that on any marketing site, but I.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:46]:
Think DEFCON is still using that. Okay.

Sam Kuehnle [00:32:48]:
Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You guys are just now going through the digital transformation revolution.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:54]:
Wait, aws?

Sam Kuehnle [00:32:55]:
What's that?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:55]:
Yes, I'm working with. I'm working with that.

Sam Kuehnle [00:32:57]:
Just wait till SaaS comes along. I think A lot of people are wooed by LLMs because it's very easy to see like, oh, it's taking this thing that I'm prompting it and sifting through data. I don't have to use Google. It's a very low entry way of checking the box of saying I'm doing AI because I entered this prompt once and they're treating it like Google. They're not treating it like a true back and forth prompt where you're just iterating, iterating, going deeper, deeper. So tell me from your point of view, like how are you leveraging LLMs? You don't have to give away all your secrets, but like, what are different couple use cases that you're using it.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:31]:
For if you want a good laugh. Recently, I mean, I use it for content, of course. I use it for the podcast. Recently I used the operator from OpenAI and actually had it build out an entire list from my ATS of candidates that I was looking for within a certain like zone. So I gave it the prompt, it went into my applicant tracking system, went into Google sheets, started adding all the information so that way I can add it into instantly. It's not perfect yet. It's got a way. It's like a drunk toddler that's, you know, running around.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:03]:
I've had it like actually go like I told OpenAI operator to go into my LinkedIn sales navigator and build out a list that I'm going to start reaching out to. It went cultivated. That list gave it back to me. I did try to give it more prompts and more things to do, but it got lost along the way. So we're not there yet with OpenAI, you're not alone. But you know, those are some of the things that I'm playing with when it comes to AI. And I do understand that there is AI baked into almost every rectech tool, you know, from candidate matching to natural language search. Went from natural language search to now like the entry level parts of agentic where I can actually give it a prompt, do some checking and then it'll start doing the automatic outreach.

Sam Kuehnle [00:34:48]:
I think that's gonna be like the fun end state. But the agentic is built off of, I think what you were getting into there earlier, like the natural language plus the machine learning because it's all predicated on having the right data and input. So were you talking about in the beginning if your CRM's out of date, if the sources that it's they're pulling from are incorrect? Yeah, it's going to source 300 candidates for you. But that's what they were doing five years ago when they used to live in Montana and now they're in Nevada with wrong phone number of the house that they don't live in anymore. So it's interesting to see how these worlds start to intersect more. One that I do want to touch on as this is something that we've been doing here for a while. It's funny, I go back to see like some of the decks that Matt and Ilya created in like 2016 that say like Loxo AI. And people would be like, what's AI? What's that thing like? Why? Because it used to be a selling point, now it's now it's a buzzword.

Sam Kuehnle [00:35:35]:
Right. But what they were working on then was machine learning. And so this is what we see, especially on the sourcing side where there's so much value in it because you go to. We'll just use LinkedIn Recruiter. So many people use LinkedIn Recruiter. I want to find a VP of Finance in Cupertino who has worked in SaaS. You're going to get, I don't know, 10,000 candidates back that pull into that query. The very best candidate might be on page four, 742.

Sam Kuehnle [00:35:59]:
It's not sorted. It's just, here's what you asked for, here's a return. Machine learning and some of the things that we're doing that I'm like, that makes so much sense. Why aren't more people doing it? But I realized it's a huge resource. Like, you have to train, you have to build in data sets. It's same exact query, but now it also takes in, okay, who's the hiring organization? What's the job description? What are the traditional skills and experiences that feed into that, okay, here's your output. And now it's going to rank. Your first candidate's going to show up as number one, most likely second candidate's going to show up as Number 2.

Sam Kuehnle [00:36:31]:
And that to me is. It's a different side of AI where I think people are. We have to start to break out those two different use cases of what AI looks like. But to me, I feel like this is still the untapped side of a lot of recruitment is how are you leveraging the data that you already have, the systems that you have in place and inferences. That's where it's going to make your job a lot easier too. Like, as nice and fun as it is to prompt things, like, there's a Lot of behind the scenes AI stuff that people don't see that does make a huge impact.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:58]:
I mean it's like give you a perfect example of like a smart search versus a just a bullion search, you know, looking for a capture manager for a company, a government contractor in the D.C. metro. And I put together by search string, put it in there. But here's the thing I want to do is I want them to actually be focused on, I want them to have a background of supporting small to mid sized government contractors but focus on winning NOAA or other scientific programs. And like you can do the bullying string, like it gives a good answer but like some of the AI tools now can give like that inferences like okay, they've helped win like this size programs, they've like been able to like go through the profile like okay, like this person has supported that work but it's all been like multi billion dollar stuff. So it's not the kind of person that you need. Like I'm seeing those changes with AI personally when it comes to the searches. If you do it properly you're getting even better results.

Sam Kuehnle [00:37:51]:
And how much faster are you able to move through that? Because now like you're getting faster to the conversations. You don't need to sift through all like page after page after page. You've got great candidates early on because you been very specific about what you want and then you get to do what you want to do. Talk, have the conversation, start that part.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:06]:
Be a recruiter.

Sam Kuehnle [00:38:07]:
Yeah, right. Who would have thunk it going back.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:10]:
To like your thing? I think a lot of people don't understand the difference of what AI is versus what is just a Chat GPT wrapper. And like I love ChatGPT, I love Claude. Like those things are freaking amazing. And if you could like plug it in the back end of like all your information on all your data, like it's still great. But when it comes to your tech, like I actually want a recruiting company to have their own built in stuff just in case like ChatGPT goes down or something of that nature. But also in the future, how can I have within a rec tech system my own almost LLM with all my data and every conversation and everything I've done just packaged into one where the machine learning happens just on me.

Sam Kuehnle [00:38:50]:
Yeah, you didn't hear Nvidia's most recent chip, but you just stick in the back of your head, everyone becomes an LLM.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:56]:
I mean give it like five years, we'll be there.

Sam Kuehnle [00:38:59]:
It will be there. Oh man, Ben, this was fun. Any other parting thoughts or things you want to get into before we. Before we wrap?

Benjamin Mena [00:39:06]:
I think the future is exciting. I think we need to kind of at least know what's happening. You stay above the breasts, stay above the curve. You know, it's one of those things. Like, we also need to recognize that our own. The clients that we're supporting are going through AI changes, too, and they're doing AI within their companies, which also things they might start thinking about of, like, okay, what positions could get eliminated over the next few years, and how do I shift my recruiting business to kind of handle that? And that goes into focusing on what makes an elite recruiter and how to stay an elite recruiter. And it comes down to the relationships. It comes down to becoming a person of influence and influencing the conversations.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:47]:
It's becoming that consultant that your client needs. The world's changing fast, so there are things that you could do to be part of it, prepared for it. So that way you're not waking up, like, a few years from now, like, oh, crap, what the heck happened?

Sam Kuehnle [00:40:00]:
Yeah, yeah, that scary thought. So.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:02]:
And I've had too many recruiters tell me, like, oh, it's just like, you know, this is like the fax machine. This isn't like, anything different. And I'm like, you understand, like, the AI can actually do, like, by the end of this year, 60% of a recruiter's job.

Sam Kuehnle [00:40:14]:
It's the first little bit I didn't downplay AI, but I didn't realize the impact that it'd make. But now when we talk, I'm just like, I'll tell my wife. This is going to be in our daughter's history book is like, industrial revolution, agricultural revolution. Like, this is one of those inflection points just with the giant leap in innovation that's occurred. We're in the middle of it, so we can't zoom out and see it for that perspective. But I can promise you that we're going to probably, for good or for bad, we're probably going to see that there.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:40]:
Sam, for everybody listening on the elite recruiter podcast, how can they find more about you and Loxo and everything and.

Sam Kuehnle [00:40:45]:
Your podcast so you can find me listening to Ben's podcast now? So Loxo, we're just Loxo co. We've got becoming a hiring machine. That is our. Our podcast where I'm not a recruiter by trade. We needed a content engine. When I got started here as a marketer, and I'm like, well, I need to start having conversations with people. But instead of pretending that I'm a recruiting expert, which I'm not, I'm just gonna ask questions and talk to people who know what they're talking about, because I'm sure that those who are curious and want to learn from them, I'm just gonna ask those questions. I'm like, wait, hold on a sec.

Sam Kuehnle [00:41:15]:
What's that acronym Meme? Or like, no, no, no, stop. That's great that you just drove 800k in bookings. How'd you do it, though? What was the playbook? What were you doing to get to that part? Because there are so many people that are either. I know for a while in my marketing career, I was scared to ask those questions. I didn't want to look like that person. So now I'm just. I'm gladly just the naive one that's like, tell me what you know, treat me like I'm a 6 year old who's never heard a thing about recruitment. And I get to learn.

Sam Kuehnle [00:41:35]:
Our audience gets to learn. It's a. It's a win, win all around. So, yeah, that's where you can find anything related to this.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:41]:
Well, and I can't wait for us to chat again in a year and just see what's changed.

Sam Kuehnle [00:41:44]:
Oh, yeah, it's going to be fun. All right, Ben, appreciate you joining.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:48]:
See you later.

Sam Kuehnle [00:41:48]:
All right, bye all.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:50]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.