We're joined by guest Erik Schwartz - CEO of PeopleSERVE, Inc., an IT placement firm, and Hirelytics, Inc., a recruitment analytics firm. Erik is passionate about leveraging technology to further diversity, equity and inclusion in the recruitment and hiring processes. He shares his professional insights with us, as well as his personal story of challenge and growth as an autistic leader and entrepreneur. This episode is both inspirational and practical. It is full of useful information about how teams and organizations can remove barriers between diverse talent pools and their employment opportunities, as well as the importance of Autism Acceptance and embracing the vibrant neurodiversity of our modern workforce. You can contact Erik by email at eschwartz@peopleserveinc.com or find out more about his companies at www.peopleserveinc.com.
Transcript below:
Erica D'Eramo 0:10
Hello, and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo. And this is season four. So today, our guest is Erik Schwartz. He's a CEO twice over in the human capital management field, and he's been in staffing for 20 years. He started his career in a boutique staffing firm, which he then scaled up and took public. Since then he acquired his firm PeopleSERVE, an IT placement firm. And he also founded Hirelytics, a recruitment analytics firm. He's a champion for the modern worker and a Diversity Equity and Inclusion practitioner as well. In addition, he's a fellow member of the neurodiverse tribe. So we are looking forward to hearing his lived experiences and his insights on changes in the modern workplace.
So thanks for joining us, EriK.
Erik Schwartz 1:12
That's great. Thanks for having me, Erica.
Erica D'Eramo 1:15
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your origin story.
Erik Schwartz 1:22
Sure. Well, to start out with, I enjoy long walks on the beach. I am joining you from sunny Florida today. I relocated here two years ago from New England, really happy to be out of a cold. I live with the most beautiful woman in the world. Her name is Roxy. And she's a chocolate lab. I enjoy exercise as an outlet for you know, anxiety and relaxation, and probably work a little bit more than I should. But I'm super passionate about how we can leverage different pieces of technology to enable the workplace to more readily accommodate diverse, diverse workers. So I'm happy to connect with your audience today.
Erica D'Eramo 2:07
Yeah, so what what drew you to this work? What, you know, how did you end up here?
Erik Schwartz 2:13
Well, I started in the staffing and recruiting space 20 years ago. I had mixed feelings about the industry. On one hand, I'm super competitive, I played sports growing up, I really enjoyed the competitive aspect of being in sales. I also enjoyed the fact that I was fortunate enough to start at a small company, and was able to keep up from a personal growth perspective as the company scaled up. So I feel as though I really knocked it out of the park, in terms of luck, and having a running start. And, you know, in terms of growing my or developing my professional skill set. Along that journey, I did feel that our industry was lagging in terms of becoming progressive, leveraging technology, if you look at the staffing and recruiting space, it's somewhat commoditized. And there's a tendency to just keep duplicating the same best practices and business models over and over again. So when I was, let's see, it was 2018, when I decided I want to go back to being an entrepreneur. I wasn't really enjoying my experience at a publicly traded organization. And I wanted to get back to working with staff and customers in a hands-on capacity. I sought out PeopleSERVE as an acquisition. Shortly thereafter, I kind of found what I guess subconsciously I had always been looking for in terms of a differentiator that we could offer to provide a higher value service for our clients and candidates. And I've really enjoyed the journey of learning about data, and how we can use that information to advance social causes as well as my pet project, which is enabling our corporate clients to become more efficient in their hiring practices, as well as achieved their DE&I hiring roadmaps. So, that's a bit about me and my career and how I landed here.
Erica D'Eramo 4:25
Yeah, so I kind of mentioned that you are a fellow member of the neurodiverse tribe. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that, and what that how that's related to your career journey?
Erik Schwartz 4:36
Sure. Well, for starters, I, I was very late in getting a formal diagnosis. So there was a variety of things that happened when I was younger, that I became more acutely aware of and their impact on my professional career which has always been paramount to me. And I made the decision to stop medicating and pursue an actual diagnosis about six years ago. So it was in my late 30s, when I ultimately decided that, you know, look, you can't continue to hide from this problem, and you need to get some help. Number one, because destroying your health, but it's also stunting your personal growth and your professional growth. And, you know, shortly before I bought my company, which is around the time that I'm referencing, I knew that in order to take the next step in my career, there were certain skills that I needed to develop and lean into some of my shortcomings. So I got sober, which was an interesting experience.
Erica D'Eramo 5:46
Congratulations.
Erik Schwartz 5:47
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's not an exciting lifestyle. I don't recommend it for everybody. But in any event, what that did for me was really unveil and clarify what the core issues were, the process of quitting drugs and alcohol was very easy for me, I was very fortunate it was, you know, cold turkey and never went back and never had any issues or cravings. And I think part of that was because I had a really good reason to make that change. And it wasn't even an option to go backwards once I saw what was kind of in front of me if I were able to stay the course. So I, I started out in therapy. Like I said, five or six years ago, I was very quickly diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and ADHD. I was very resistant to accept the diagnosis. I didn't want anything to be wrong with me. And I was leery about having any labels. And you know, it's one of those things where if three or four people tell you you're the problem, well, then at a certain point, you look in the mirror and say, "Hey, I'm the issue." So, you know, I bounced from one therapist to another. And finally, when the third one, on the first session said, "So you know, you have autism, right?" I said, "All right. Well, I guess we can't hide this anymore. And I'm going to accept this and figure out, you know, how to overcome whatever challenges it's presented." And as I mentioned, it became very apparent, the opportunities I had if I were able to work on some of my, my challenges.
Erica D'Eramo 7:32
Yeah. Right, because we are operating in a world built for neurotypical folks. So what presents as a challenge is not necessarily like a deficit until we try to operate in this like, neurotypical world that's not built for the neurodiverse, folks. So yeah, the the disorder that gets tacked on to ASD and ADHD always just ruffles my feathers a little bit, but it is what it is right now. I think it is probably what makes us who we are, though, right? So, so how, if you I'm curious if you're open to sharing? How do you think any of the, you know, the pathway that you took and some of these challenges that you overcame, how do you think that that plays into the work that you're doing now?
Erik Schwartz 8:27
Great question. So first, I would say that the challenges I've accepted will always be there. And the process of have... Part of having a growth mindset is leaning into those challenges and viewing them for what they are, which are challenges. They're not problems that you're going to solve for, and eliminate, which is totally fine with me. One of the interesting parts of my personal narrative is that I think the comp, compensatory skills that I've developed over the years, greatly impacted some of my professional skills. So to provide an example, I had crippling social anxiety for many, many years, I still do. I had a lot of struggles with connecting with my peer group. I had a lot of struggles with interpersonal communication. And what I learned to do, just as one example, was really become in tune with body language. So cues and kind of maybe not knowing what to say or the right way to feel, but knowing that you are supposed to say something. That took me quite a while. I also had a tendency to dominate conversation. I had a tendency to interrupt, and I have worked really hard on those things. And again, subconsciously, studying the reaction of the people I was interacting with, helped me tremendously to understand the "when." And when I tied that into the "why," which, of course is, you know, folks not feeling engaged or not feeling valued in a conversation and how that was holding me back from connecting, just speaking professionally, with my colleagues, but more importantly, my staff, and my clients, I, it was just a very easy equation for me that I needed to spend some time working on those, those shortcomings, because they were negatively impacting my professional capacity. That came to an inflection point for me, when I was up for a promotion that I had worked, you know, my entire career at that point towards, and I was given a variety of different reasons as to why I was not, quote, ready yet for that opportunity. But, you know, intuitively, I knew it was because of these interpersonal skills that I hadn't fully developed yet and my ability to connect with people on a on a, quote, human level, outside of just like, you know, the the hard tactics and the hard strategies that we were trying to accomplish in the business.
Erica D'Eramo 11:28
So that's, that's really interesting to me. I'm also curious, then, in the work you're doing around, you know, data analytics, around recruitment and hiring and helping companies. Has any of this, like informed... Has any of your personal experience as someone who maybe doesn't fit a typical mold, has... How has that influenced you? Or what insights has that given you?
Erik Schwartz 11:58
Well, great question. So this is one of the things I'm most proud of, on a personal level. I was very technology averse, probably all the way up until I acquired this business where we work with technologists all day on the client side, as well as the candidates that we place. And, you know, the the root cause for that was some of those OCD type tendencies that you might have being on the spectrum. Technology itself represents a lot of change. Technology moves at a fast pace, which is hard to adapt to. And for me, it was just easier to compartmentalize and just move it off to the side. So there was a, in my mind, a high barrier of entry to get into this space, both professionally and personally, because of my unique challenges. I was resistant to really digging in at a granular level and understanding technology, it was very easy to go and meet with customers or candidates and different people in our target market, and talk at a high level about, you know, how tech was driving business and change. But really, you know, digging in and, and wanting to understand it took some time. I would say, you know, there was a few things that really drove my my shift in terms of my mindset. But probably about four years ago, this is prior to the CV-19 pandemic, I knew that I wanted to get out of New England, I was always unhappy with the winter, I didn't play a winter sport, I would get depressed and the seasonal depression, all that good stuff. And I didn't want to wait until I was retired. And I had studied a lot of the different staffing business models out there, and I was really interested in some of the, quote, virtual models where you didn't require a brick and mortar operation. So I started by moving half of my team, fully virtual. So all the platforms and systems were set up, had a good idea operationally, in terms of how we would run the business and interact with our target market. And when the pandemic impacted all of us, it was a very easy switch for me. So I was then able to kind of kick the other legs out from underneath the chair and see how it would work in a fully virtualized business model. Of course, as we know, there's a lot of success doing that across different domains. Ours, my personal business, maybe because of the size and the nature of our work was also well suited for a virtual business model. And it allowed me to move to Florida. So that was one of the big changes. And again, that's that's all from technology or technical enablement and technology. The second factor was when we started working virtually, and like I said, this process started before COVID, technologists had already been, quote working from home and working in a fragmented model in terms of geographic geography. So we were meeting with customers over teleconferencing as opposed to in person on a frequent basis. And what I found was that almost... my issues with social anxiety were almost entirely gone. The ability,
Erica D'Eramo 15:40
Wow...
Erik Schwartz 15:41
Yeah, it was, it was really eye opening. The ability for me to sell and communicate internally and externally, was night and day, because I was no longer hamstrung with these different preoccupations about the interaction. And I was able to focus on the value that I would bring to the conversation and obviously sell and work with my staff more effectively. So that was one component. The other piece of it was that in doing so, or rather, you know, having that distraction eliminated, if you will, it really allowed me to lean into my therapy. So because I wasn't, you know, a nervous wreck, or having panic attacks, and all the things that come along with that, that I'm sure a lot of your audience can relate to, and aside from the fact that I was becoming a more effective salesperson, I noticed that I had more mental capacity to focus on those interactions, study my personal behavior, and really become a better human. And so that was, that was a big deal for me. And I said, you know, here I am trying to avoid embracing technology, and look what it's done for my life. Around that same time, I had this vision for some of the ways that we could leverage these different tools in the workplace. I also, having been in the space for 20 years, saw a very interesting dynamic. Our customers obviously engage with folks from our space, to help them with different hiring initiatives and or challenges. And, for a lot of the people, if anybody from the staffing space is listening, they know that many times it's like one plus one equals two for us when we're troubleshooting and evaluating what the current state is with our clients and what their challenges are. And it's, it was puzzling for me, especially in the technology space and the STEM space. How can these organizations continue to use these preconceived rigid job descriptions, to attract talent and select their employees when the market is shifting, so dynamically, and to me, it was just about transparency. And I said to myself, "Well, the reason that we understand these things is because we're interacting directly with the candidate market." And there's all these different layers. So even if you're not using a recruiting firm, you've got digital marketing, you've got these different levels of HR and TA, and so on and so forth. Plus, then you get to the hiring manager. And a lot of the folks that are on the line or working directly in the business, haven't been trained in interviewing and selling their organizations. So there's a lot of different factors that were very obvious to me, but not so obvious to our customers. If you look at the staffing and recruiting space, we purport ourselves as quote unquote, experts in the market. From a purely mathematical standpoint, the majority of the people working in that domain, don't have 10 to 20 years of experience in recruiting, they don't have 10 to 20 years of business experience and insight. So really what we do, and some of the folks who listen to this might freak out, but what a lot of these organizations do is they hire junior or inexperienced sales people. They teach them a few lines, and then they go out and market themselves as experts for their customer without providing any real value. So that was one problem I saw. The second problem I saw was that over the years when we would meet with a new customer, many of them intuitively knew what their problems were. So a typical meeting might start out with hey, here's the job description. And oh, by the way, I know we don't pay competitively. There's nothing I could do about that. Let's see what you come up with. So I said, well, part of the problem is that... I'll put it this way, I had a really awesome manager, I was very fortunate. The first boss I had in my professional wife ended up being my, my manager for my entire experience at my first organization. And one of his big things was you can't manage what you can't measure. And that really stuck out to me over the years. And so I said, "Well, what if we could quantify these problems so that we could establish baseline numbers, we could create KPIs, and we can help our customers understand what's going on in the market, so that they can try to accommodate." So it was really a culmination of all
Erica D'Eramo 20:46
Accomodate and compete right? Like they're competing in a pool with other people.
Erik Schwartz 20:53
Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up not to go on a tangent. But if you just look at the technology space, and how it's changed over the past few years, there's a lot of dynamics making it more difficult for organizations to attract and compete for talent. So for starters, there is an overarching shortage in the labor market, you know, across all domains. If you look at technology in particular, there's, over the last few years, we've moved virtually to the cloud, which is enabled mobile and software as a service products. Because those pieces of technology, I don't want to say they've been commoditized, but the cost has come down quite a bit, and all organizations have access to those platforms, it's allowed small and mid-cap companies to compete on an equal, even playing field with enterprise organizations. So enterprise or you know, if you're picturing the Fortune 5000, say, traditionally relied on their products and services and their benefits to attract workers. And now you've got these smaller upstarts, as well as midsize companies that are not only competing for the work product and market share, but they have more flexibility that they can offer for workers, which is enabling them to now compete for talent on an even playing field, which is an interesting dynamic. Not to say that those larger organizations are negligent, or they're not progressive, or they don't have those things to offer. A lot of it comes down to the market ability of the opportunities, things like pay bands, and, you know, making sure recruitment, marketing is compliant, and just things moving a bit more slowly. So a lot of the folks that we work with, just aren't quite sure the buttons, of the buttons and levers that they have available to them to go out and compete in that, that marketplace. So ultimately, we're using this information that we capture, to better inform our customers how to go about addressing those challenges.
Erica D'Eramo 23:07
It always, I was gonna say cracks me up, but actually just induces an eyeroll for me when I hear companies say like, "People don't want to work anymore." They do they want to work and they want to make money. It's just they don't want to work for that amount of money that you are offering or for that set of benefits that you are offering. You are competing with all the other opportunities that people have right now. And some of those opportunities might be a year off or sabbatical or less money, like maybe people are just measuring their options differently these days. But the same way that you wouldn't invest in a fund that is going to promise a lower return, just "because"? Like people shouldn't be investing their time and their energy, which is their most valuable asset for a return that is lower than what they can get elsewhere. Right? So it's not like a moral failing that people don't want to work for less money. You gotta compete! Just like everybody else.
Erik Schwartz 24:11
Absolutely. And what I think there's an expression that's... I see it all the time on Instagram, not that I like social media, but I do check it out so I stay current. Folks in the upper percentiles of wealth leverage their cash, folks in those lower percentiles leverage their labor. So what's interesting to me, and I, I thank you for bringing up compensation. There's a lot of data out there that talks about the change in the workplace in terms of generational categories. Millennials now make up half of the working population, and as the baby booming, community retires or continue just exit the workplace, that number is going to grow to 60 to 70%. What's interesting to me about that, is that millennials, and I hate using categories, but yeah, everybody else
Erica D'Eramo 25:13
Right. Broad strokes.
Erik Schwartz 25:14
If you can't beat them join them, right? So anyway, the the most recent stat I saw was that 65% of millennials are willing to take less pay in lieu of other criteria that they value when they're evaluating new jobs and new employers. So the problem with that, for a lot of organizations, as I mentioned earlier, they may have things to offer, but they don't know how to market it. They don't know how to emphasize those buttons and levers. So things like social causes, having purposeful work, the interviewers not necessarily know how to position DEI as a competitive business advantage. You know, a lot of them know to talk about it. You know, there's a lot of great programs and policies in place, but not being able to articulate how that's going to help them win in the business arena is a challenge as well. So I think it's interesting... or rather I'd be interested to see what happens with that courting process as we continue to operate in a candidate-driven market across all fields.
Erica D'Eramo 26:27
Yeah, I mean, that comment brings me back to some of the points that you made earlier that just stuck with me a little bit. One was that you, you ended up kind of exiting, when you saw that your development, I think this is what I understand, when your development path was sort of closed off due to like not conforming to these ways that managers should be, and not getting that promotion. You ended up going the entrepreneurial route, being able to define what your workplace looked like, being able to make it a workplace where you could thrive, where people like you could thrive, taking your virtual, which made things much easier in terms of interacting with people clients, probably much more welcoming and inclusive for neurodiverse folks in general, and like you just created it, right? You made that happen. And those those things aren't we're not necessarily tied to the salary number, right? Like those are big value-adds that you could do.
Erik Schwartz 27:37
For sure. Well, Erica, you, you're an entrepreneur, and I'm sure anybody out there who's an entrepreneur that's listening. And by the way, for people who aren't and are considering it, be prepared for less pay, be prepared for more hours, it is not what you see on Instagram and social media. It's a long climb for most people to become successful and, and realize the compensation benefits of being an owner. Obviously, we know having that flexibility and ownership over our work is priceless. But yeah, so it's a step back in a lot of ways.
Erica D'Eramo 28:12
But it was a valuable. I mean, it's a trade off that I made willingly, right? So we see that, there is there is that value there for people. And so it's interesting to me when you talk about how some of these larger companies that maybe can compete on a salary basis, but are struggling to articulate what those more intangible items are. Does the data analytics work that you're doing now help with that at all?
Erik Schwartz 28:43
Yeah, so excuse me, some of the data points that were used. Well, let me back it up. If you look at corporate TA, only
Erica D'Eramo 28:55
Talent acquisition, by the way, yeah,
Erik Schwartz 28:57
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, the people who are in charge of the hiring. So those folks at, I believe this stat applies to all of US incorporated organizations, only somewhere in the ballpark of 18 to 22% of those organizations employ or utilize any type of analytics tool or system in their hiring practices, which is baffling.
Erica D'Eramo 29:24
What??
Erik Schwartz 29:24
But it is, it is what it is. So let's just for argument's sake, say that you have those capabilities in house. Many companies, and again, this is not across the labor market, I believe only nine or 10% of all US workers are contract employees or less traditional workers, however, disproportionately in some spaces, or some industries, they use a tremendous amount of contracting resources. So even for all argument's sake, if they have this information available for their full time hiring, they aren't tracking that same information for their contingent labor population. So if you look at some of the organizations that we support, upwards of 20 to 30% of their IT employee headcount are contract workers. So here's the issue with that. On one hand, you're tracking valuable information in house, maybe, on the other hand, then you're outsourcing that process for a third of your staff, to third party agencies or recruiters. Recruiting firms churn hundreds of thousands of digital pieces of collateral on behalf of their customers, with no oversight. So basically, we get I mean, some companies do it better than others. But basically, we get a job description. And then we engage... Recruiting in its simplest form as a marketing function. So then we engage in all this marketing activity, which now is so readily scaled through digital, robotics, automation. So there's a tremendous amount of activity that's churned, and there's no QCing of that narrative. So the example I use with my customers is, if I were to march down the hall to your CMO's office, and say, hey, look, I'm going to churn out, you know, hundreds of thousands of pieces of of marketing for you, you're not going to see it, you're not going to vet it, you're not really going to have any idea what I'm saying
Erica D'Eramo 31:36
It's your brand that's just going out there...
Erik Schwartz 31:39
And I'm going to charge you millions of dollars for that service, I don't think that conversation is going to fly. And that's essentially what a lot of our clients do. So in terms of the data points that we're providing right now, we inform on salary bands, we use, we use all of that activity that we generate, as a means to capture this, this information. So salary, where people live, geographical fragmentation, skills alignment in terms of how they match up with the position. And the opportunity for us and and the piece that we're starting to navigate through is more around sentiment. So we're starting to use data scales, almost like a net promoter score, to start uncovering why candidates are pulling themselves out of consideration for the job. So if you go out and market? Yeah, so you go on? Yeah, totally. If you go out and market your position, and you only get, say, like a 15% response rate. And I'm not saying those people are qualified or they're automatically interested, but say 85% of your target market isn't engaging at all, and you have no idea, well, then how are you going to go about addressing that, that challenge? So we're starting to dig in. And we've already got, in some rudimentary methodology, we've got some ways that we can track that information, we're going to enhance those capabilities. And then we're also bolting in a DE&I component. So we're going to help customers understand if their message is reaching their target market, and start helping them drive some of those, those hiring roadmaps that they have.
Erica D'Eramo 33:22
This is one of my, like, biggest pieces of low hanging fruit when I talk to companies. I recognize it's a pipeline, right? Like and diversity, equity inclusion, similarly is a whole lifecycle piece, you can't just, you know, debottleneck, the the talent pipeline, and then let people fend for themselves like it has to be all the way through the ecosystem through the lifecycle. However, when you are debottlenecking, starting at the first bottleneck is kind of one of the big opportunities. And if you're not even getting people in the door, then you don't even have the opportunity to retain them. And job descriptions, which is the first slice of your brand that that person may see. I just feel like they they end up being either left to like a hiring manager who has some grand idea of what they want to see out of a candidate. But maybe it's not actually tied to what is truly necessary for the role. Or it's kind of just copy and paste from the last time, it's not actually that applicable to what the role will be. It's just some words on a page. Things like adding on, you know, must have an MBA or even MBA preferred on some of these things. And it's like, do you really need an MBA for that, like you're going to crunch numbers in a spreadsheet. Maybe that's not actually that important. I don't know how many job descriptions I see that people need an MBA and I'm thinking like, how many potential opportunities are you missing? You can take the MBA into consideration once they're in the interview. But like you don't even get to see all the people that counted themselves out simply because they didn't have that piece of paper to show for it. And I just think that is... this is such important work in the grand scheme of things in in increasing opportunity, removing these sometimes arbitrary barriers to entry. Yeah, so that's my little soapbox.
Erik Schwartz 35:23
That's all right. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. In fact, I agree with everything you said. What I'm encouraged by and there's a lot of information out there. So I won't, I won't harp on this point. But those guardrails are starting to come down because of the talent shortage, most likely, and there's a self serving element. But organizations know that they need to make their, their opportunities more accessible. There's a couple of other challenges with job descriptions. Since we brought it up. I think it's one of my pet peeves. But so first of all, one of the biggest problems we see with job descriptions is that there's an opening is created, and the stakeholders in that role sit down, and they say, "All right, Bob just resigned, and we need to replace Bob." So they write down all the things that Bob did. Maybe Bob has been there for 10 years, and he's taken on new roles and responsibilities. So job, Bob's job, day to day looks nothing like Bob's job when he started. Then they go out and put that that job out there in the market. And wouldn't you know, there's nobody with that exact set of skills. So that's one challenge with job descriptions. The second is kind of what you were insinuating, with some of the bureaucratic elements of larger organizations, there's a disconnect between the regulatory components of a job description that are driven out of HR or TA or legal, and what the hiring managers actually need day to day. So there's, there's trouble with, you know, conforming the role and marketing the role effectively. The last point I'll make is that when you look at those jobs, and you look at how the position itself, and the organization is messaging their brand, yeah, selfishly, I'm going to talk about technology, because that's the space I work in. But IT workers may only make up, you know, 5, 10, 15% of their workforce, yet, their messaging is geared towards other pieces of their business. So to give you an example, like an insurance company, I just started working with an insurer. And IT makes up 5% of their workforce. Well, I took a look at their jobs, and how they're positioning the organization, and all the messaging is geared to people who just got their series six, or that work in a brick and mortar, you know, retail banking environment, and they don't speak to what technology has to offer.
Erica D'Eramo 38:06
Explain Series Six for the folks who don't know, what...
Erik Schwartz 38:10
And I don't really know exactly what it entitles you to do, but it's basically the first certification step in becoming a broker for different insurance and financial products.
Erica D'Eramo 38:20
Okay.
Erik Schwartz 38:21
Yeah. So so the jobs themselves are automatically not sexy. But what's interesting about this client is they're doing some very unique and exciting things in technology. But the messaging is geared to salespeople. So you know, out of the gate, there's a problem.
Erica D'Eramo 38:40
Yeah. Yeah. And you can see the extrapolation of that for when you're looking to recruit diverse talent. And I mean that across like all ways, and all dimensions of diversity, neurodiversity, socioeconomic diversity, just all of that diversity of thought and experience that helps your company operate more robustly and avoid risk and or at least appropriately tackle risk. Yeah, you could see how that one example easily extrapolates to a problem with just recruitment in general. So yeah,
Erik Schwartz 39:21
yeah, I think there's Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Erica D'Eramo 39:23
No, no, no, no.
Erik Schwartz 39:25
Well, I think so there's other advantages, the technology in terms of leveling the playing field in the spirit of DEI, DE&I, sorry. So first of all, we everybody knows we operate in a global economy. So, you know, there's cultural variance between your workers across the organization. So that's, that's one issue is raising awareness to those differences. They're not challenges and they're not problems. They're just differences. And the other is that, and this has been why widely reported, workers from different ethnic groups, different mental health categories, if you will, and all pieces of DE&I, they overwhelmingly feel like they're being discriminated against. And one of the reasons is because you know, they don't, they don't necessarily feel comfortable at the watercooler. So I think it's interesting, obviously, from a virtual perspective, I already talked about that, that's great for certain people. There's a lot more virtual interaction with your coworkers than there were in person, depending on your job function. And, by the way, I don't think that everybody should work virtually. And I, you know, there's a lot of different discussions we can have around that. But for the audience that we work with, there's a lot of information on the internet that's now available that can help you prepare for different social interactions or working with different groups. And just from a pure scheduling standpoint, I don't know what your experience is, Erica, I know you work remotely too. But there's no more kind of BSing before and after meetings, you know, you kind of get down to business, there's a meeting and then you hang up. So certain workers may not have to deal with some of those different, you know, obstacles, especially if you're talking about people from like an underserved perspective, socioeconomically, right. Their life when they go home from work looks very different than say the the executive that they work with every day. They can feel alienated in social context. And now some of that has been removed or reduced. People are a little more
Erica D'Eramo 41:44
They don't need to worry about showing up for the cigar hour after Mergers and Acquisitions meetings.
Erik Schwartz 41:51
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Erica D'Eramo 41:53
My lungs are so happy.
Erik Schwartz 41:55
Well, for me, you know, aside from the social anxiety, I have found that people live a little bit more predictably, in terms of using a schedule, there's no unplanned interruptions. I can ignore a call, as opposed to somebody coming over into my cubicle. While that may only be a 30 second, or one minute interaction for them. It derails me personally, for half hour.
Erica D'Eramo 42:21
Especially with ADHD.
Erik Schwartz 42:23
Totally. Yeah. So anyway, I think there's other ways that tech can be leveraged to level that playing field and make people just, quote, feel more comfortable in the workplace, which is probably half the battle
Erica D'Eramo 42:36
I mean, this is a data point of one or two, I'll share two. But during my time working in corporate one of my roles, I was based in the US, and I was the only person based in the US. It was, I was in a global deployment manager role for an agile technology project. And we had folks in the UK, but even they were spread across multiple offices in London, like some people were in with IBM, some people were, you know, in the, in the corporate office, we had folks in Trinidad, Angola, Azerbaijan, all kind of participating. We were just generally spread out and not co-located. And even the people who were co-located in the same office, we would all just dial into the same calls from our desks. It's not like there would be a room of people, and then you'd have a couple of people dialing in. And it was one of the most tightly knit groups that I had. So the narrative that you can't have personal closeness, or you can't have that, like spontaneity of conversation and ideation when you have, like geographically disparate groups, I reject that, like, I think you can, if you want it, and you want to build that in. That's not necessary for every group. We don't need to be friends with all of our coworkers, but at least in that group, it was very much possible. And I've seen that repeated in other in other roles that I did you know, when I wouldn't be in the US, I'd have people in the UK, people in Angola, we would all kind of be able to stay on the same page now that calendars can schedule across time zones. You know, it's, it's been... it's been an interesting experience. I think the difference is when you have a core group of people, that is co-located and you have a couple people that are remote, we see that that is a challenge for inclusion. And I think that then people look at that and extrapolate it and are like, "Oh, see, remote working doesn't work because we're here in the office and this person is you know, not proximal to us anymore and
Erik Schwartz 44:55
Right.
Erica D'Eramo 44:55
So, yeah.
Erik Schwartz 44:57
Well, I'm a I'm a big culture guy, or like to think I am And to clarify my message, I am not saying I'm 100% into remote work. I do not think it... Yeah, I do not think it works across the board. But I think if used properly, it can be a great tool for organizations to expand their their reach and hire some of the folks that they're at least representing that they desperately want to hire.
Erica D'Eramo 45:23
Yeah, right. I mean, certainly, I've done jobs where I couldn't do that, and I had to be on site. I think remote working is probably more feasible, then many people have given it credit for at least before the pandemic, and even still coming, you know, out of the pandemic, this push to get everybody back in the office, just for the sake of it is probably short sighted. I think that there is a right time, and there is a time when you will pay a high cost for that. And that cost might be limited access to talent, less accommodations available for people who need them, or would benefit from them, and less flexibility. So
Erik Schwartz 46:10
Yeah, I think it demonstrates a lack of grit. So my staff and, or I should say, my colleagues and my my teammates, they know that our currency in our organization is grit. And to me grit is about mental toughness. It's about embracing challenges and problems and trying to solve for them. I think that just saying, well, we gave everybody a VPN and Teams and that didn't work out. So now we have to go back to the office is sort of like the easy out. And I'm in the mindset of let's let's solve for the gap and see if we can't do a better job, because it's a great recruiting tool as well.
Erica D'Eramo 46:49
Yeah. And I think so I have a complicated, I have complicated feelings about grit and toughness, just because I think that but it often gets like misused in a different way than what you how you just used it. But what I hear you saying is like that agility and problem solving and the curiosity of like, the growth mindset that we're just gonna take, we're gonna take these challenges and solve for them, and we're gonna fix them. And it's not about like, Well, I tried to give up.
Erik Schwartz 47:17
Yeah, well, you just you just said it way more, much more elegantly than I did. Thank you, Erica.
Erica D'Eramo 47:22
I think we sent the same thing. So, you know, for for anyone that's listening, what would be some, like, just key takeaways that you would like them to have from our conversation today?
Erik Schwartz 47:39
Is this time for my shameless plug?
Erica D'Eramo 47:42
Oh? No, it's not time for the shameless plug yet. Yeah, I will ask you for your shame.
Erik Schwartz 47:49
Okay. All right. So I think the takeaways would be forget labels and forget what's in vogue. I think it's a good best practice just as a human being to first have the introspection to give your, acknowledge and give yourself credit for whatever challenges you've overcome. And then to make that second leap and say, "Well, geez, probably Erica's life and what she's overcome to get where she is," regardless of if I think you're doing a kick ass job or not. We've all got our challenges. And I think having the awareness and having the ability to give people the benefit of the doubt is important. I think that particularly if you're in a leadership or management role, yes, we need to have best practices, yes, we need to create scalable models. But identifying that there's flexibility within that and identifying that different people communicate differently, and that every employee is unique. I think that's important. That would be another takeaway. And then I would say, it's very difficult right now in a tight labor market, to engage and attract and retain the right players for your team, which I think is, you know, everybody says people are our most important asset and all that. But I think there's a lot of opportunity for companies to want to really examine how they go about bringing workers into their organization, because not all companies do it. So I think those would be my my highlights.
Yeah. Nicely put. Okay, shameless plug time. So if anyone has been listening, and they think like, yeah, maybe my company isn't doing this the right way or they want to get in touch and maybe leverage some of the services that you or your, your firms offer. How should they do that?
Okay, so, first and foremost, we practice what we preach, and our entire business model runs on the data platform that we offer to our clients. I will bore you to death if you call me up with all the different KPIs and benchmarking and how well we outperform the market. So the recruiting capabilities just from a standpoint of providing humans, we're doing a better job than market and I can give you a lot of reasons why. If you're interested in learning about, maybe, maybe you don't want to be a customer, or you don't use staffing services, but you're interested to learn about how we're creating these processes, and you want to bring some of that into your organization or raise awareness to those opportunities and look good, I'm perfectly happy to talk with you. And we are still in the process of onboarding, quote, early adopters, to our methodology and our service. It's still free, we haven't white labeled it yet. We will at some point, but you know, you're going to spend these dollars on recruiting anyway, it's a free service, you really have nothing to lose. And I think it might be interesting for certain people to understand how they can leverage different pieces of technology into that process.
Erica D'Eramo 51:14
That process being specifically...
Erik Schwartz 51:17
Well, I would say, hiring the right person. While that might be the yield, I think the engagement starts with the very first interaction, whether that be something that you're creating directly as a company or something you're outsourcing, and the value, or the employee value proposition needs to be prominent. And it needs to be meticulously prepared. In that first interaction, which may start with an ad that's seen online, it may be a cold call from a recruiter, it could be a post you see on LinkedIn, wherever it comes from, you need to make sure that from an end to end perspective, the value that you offer to a future teammate, is there and you need to message that properly.
Erica D'Eramo 52:02
So am I correct in saying that people who need to fill a role in their organization or roles, plural, that they might be the right people to reach out to you?
Erik Schwartz 52:14
Absolutely.
Erica D'Eramo 52:15
your firm's? Yeah,
Erik Schwartz 52:16
Yeah. If you're a buyer. Oh, I'm sorry, you want literally? So I welcome anybody to connect with me on LinkedIn, I'm always up for networking. I love meeting new professionals, especially in different spaces. And you can feel free to email me. It's, should I actually spell out my email? I'm just gonna provide it in the chat someplace.
Erica D'Eramo 52:38
I'll put it in the show notes. Yep. We'll put it in your LinkedIn link. And we'll put in the show notes, your email address, and we can link to your company websites as well. So do you want to just give us a little refresher on which firm does what?
Erik Schwartz 52:58
Yep, so our IT placement firm is called PeopleSERVE, we provide permanent or full time placement services, as well as contract or contingent, and the analytics company has called Hirelyitics. However, in some sense, it's one of the same because the tech is leveraged in both companies. So we offer it simultaneously.
Erica D'Eramo 53:23
Cool. And we will provide those links in the show notes. And on our website, as well. So we provide for accessibility purposes, we've provided a transcript, both on our, our platform, on any of the platforms, the transcript is embedded. And then also we provide it on the website. And so it'll be embedded in the transcript. It'll be in the show notes, all the places. So...
Erik Schwartz 53:50
Great. Well, if there's any marketers listening, and they think what we've got out there sucks, I'm open to feedback as well.
Erica D'Eramo 53:56
Awesome. We love that again, growth mindset. So I just want to like specifically, thank you as well, this is April, it is Autism Acceptance Month, where we both raise awareness and try to remove some of those barriers that make it more difficult for for some of us to operate in the workplace, and in the world, and society. So we really appreciate you sharing your insights for anyone out there who maybe is pre-diagnosis or you know, post-diagnosis, and is just wondering what that means for them and their world as they navigate it. I think that you had a really powerful message and a really impressive kind of career and growth path. So thank you for sharing that.
Erik Schwartz 54:44
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed the chat. And for anybody that actually listens to this end to end. I really appreciate your time and hopefully there's something of value in there for you.
Erica D'Eramo 54:54
Yeah, awesome. For anyone looking to learn more about Two Piers, you can visit our website to piers consulting.com. And you can find us on all the typical social medias at @twopiersconsult. So, we thank you for listening to this episode and we will see you next episode.