From A People Perspective

Marty (00:00)
Hey, my name is Martin Hawk and you're listening to From a People Perspective. It's a podcast for HR recruitment and operations professionals. If you're looking for a little bit more, you can check out the community at the people, peoplegroup .com. If you're a business owner or if you're HR person or a recruiter and you need a little bit of extra support, we've also got a fractional consultancy called Purple Umbrella. You can check us out at purpleumbrella .co.

Hilary Wagner (00:25)
Okay, so here's the thing. So you've got John Wick, you've got Harry Potter. If they were to battle each other, right? And here's my problem with Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter. Books are amazing. But I always wondered when you see like Voldemort and Harry Potter and they're just fighting it out with the wands. I'm like, okay, what's happening here? You're just seeing two wands like their little force hit each other. And I'm like, this really isn't like action driven. And they're like, and they're

getting weak, you know? And it just kind of cracks me up because I'm just always wondering, it's not like John Wick where it's very like, kicking the face. Okay, that hurt, right? Like you, that's very tangible, right? The wands aren't tangible.

Martin Hauck (01:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. They need. And I mean, yeah, I think I'd like to see john wick versus Voldemort. I think that would be an interesting thing. Right. I imagine Voldemort would just crush him because of the magic side of things. But if you take away magic, then yeah, Harry Potter and Voldemort are just two random weirdos on street.

Hilary Wagner (01:17)
Yeah, yes, I do too.

Yeah, but John Wick's got

the good soul, right? And like you were saying, like he's the good guy. Like you, feel like you'd have some sort of trick. You can't kill John Wick. You just can't like literally. I don't think it's possible.

Martin Hauck (01:31)
Yeah.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's true. Hillary, thanks for doing the podcast today. so you are the chief people and talent officer at tribe wellness sales, and you're also the operations advisor for rare compute, which is super interesting, but scrolling through your profile.

Hilary Wagner (01:59)
Yeah, yeah.

Martin Hauck (02:02)
scroll

Hilary Wagner (02:09)
right? But I still

was, I still actually was.

Martin Hauck (02:14)
You're a freelance

writer for National Geographic, which is so cool. I have so many questions about that.

Hilary Wagner (02:22)
Yeah, yeah, I,

I'm one of those people, like, if you want something done, ask a busy person and I, I won't show you my office, like I'm building a buffet, like cabinet for my art supplies and I have paintings lying here. I've got like a book I'm trying to finish. so I started writing for National Geographic because I'm an author and I have

three middle grade novels out, came back in, first one I think came back, I can't even remember, came back around 2012, 2011, whatever. Anyway, so they got published and Rick Riordan who wrote Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief, those phenomenal books, which became movies like blurbed my books, which was a huge, phenomenal honor. His kids read them, I was like, my God, this is really cool.

We actually work with this, you him and I have the same literary agency. So that helped. But it was one of those situations where doing that led to so much more cool things. So I wrote the three books, then they got published in France by Alvin Michel, a French publisher. Then Penguin Random House picked up the ebook versions. And then I got invited to

the UAE two times. First for their Children's Book Festival in Sharjah and then their International Book Festival also in Sharjah where like Dan Brown was the keynote speaker and it was just yeah it was a huge deal. I was interviewed by Al Jazeera TV which was really really cool just to be I've never been interviewed on TV you know so it was very very cool and I got to go around to all these schools in the UAE and talk to all the kids.

Martin Hauck (04:08)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (04:14)
I spoke at Disney World, which was really amazing. And that was my first actual big speaking thing. And it was so funny because my agent said, it's going to be short. I thought they said, it was my publisher, actually. I thought they said it was going to be like 45 people. It was 450 people. And I was the most scared rabbit public speaker you can imagine.

Martin Hauck (04:34)
You

Hilary Wagner (04:43)
Like kind of that moment kind of shifted it for me because, there it just you kind of realize like because it was it was very quick and I just kind of just started talking and I probably sounded like an idiot, but it kind of was like, OK, I did it. It's done. It's out there. Nobody booed me. Nobody threw tomatoes, right? Nobody like yawned. We said I could tell. So so it worked out great. And I've just been kind of.

doing that ever since. so, yeah, so I'm the Chief People Officer at Tribe Wellness, which is sales consulting. So it's all for health and wellness brands. Great company. And then I'm also the operations advisor for Rare Compute. And again, that was one of those things where it kind of weaves in like your whole thing. So I have a rare disease called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. And I had

gotten my whole genome done and all of that good stuff. And I actually went through like every thread of that genome to find the variant that was causing my EDS, which is called TNXV. And it's very rare. think there's like, I want to say like 56 diagnosed cases of it. I'm sure there's more and people just don't know it. But long story short, I started looking for anyone who might have what I have. And I actually stumbled across

Martin Hauck (05:45)
wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (06:12)
someone on LinkedIn, literally just put in hashtag TN. Yeah, right. I can find anything. You know, hashtag TNXB. And this guy, John Marlowe, popped up and I reached out to him and I said, Hey, I'm like you and I don't know anyone else like us. And I just wanted to say hi. And you know what an experience this whole health journey has been. And what a nightmare in many levels. And

Martin Hauck (06:17)
Classic recruiter move. Classic recruiter move.

Hilary Wagner (06:41)
You know, he immediately called me. He sent me a text and then he called me, which was amazing. And him and I started talking. He got me involved with Stanford's Research for the People project, because I am an AI enthusiast, a very early adopter of AI. And I worked on the Stanford Research for the People project, which was I was creating prompts for doctors, clinicians, researchers, et cetera.

Martin Hauck (06:47)
down.

Hilary Wagner (07:11)
that you would ask AI. So what would a patient ask? What might a doctor ask? What might a researcher ask about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, right? There's like 13 different types. It's just one of those weird things that I think a lot more people have it than is realized. And it's just one of those crazy things. Everybody's a little bit different. And long story short, so I got involved with that. I did this whole big database of prompts.

It was just a really rewarding experience. I met a lot of fantastic people and that's how I got involved in Rare Compute, which is a decentralized biotech platform. basically, we're out to solve rare diseases. We're about finding cures, finding therapies, finding cures for cancer and therapies for cancer patients. And it all has to do with tokenized compute, AI and being that kind of

really attainable decentralized platform or you can. like think of it, think about it like this. There was, you know, a project like basically helping cure sickle cell disease, right? Which is horrible. It's a horrible, horrible thing. And it worked, right? It worked. But people who got this cure, I don't know, honestly, I don't know the numbers of how many

in the study that this happened to their sickle cell went away, but then they all got leukemia. And that is mind boggling. And sometimes I think to myself, well, which is worse, right? Because, you know, which has a better chance and a better quality of life. at the same token, right? So let's say what they could do with this platform is find out, like model out what the changes.

Martin Hauck (08:52)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (09:06)
if they did this to a protein in a gene, what the changes would be and what the repercussions could be. So maybe they could have seen, hey, this is going to cause this to happen, which could cause cancer or something else. So it's really about modeling that out and kind of almost like seeing the future. And there's a lot of health care organizations that are

looking to do this and really looking to develop cures and AI is a huge piece of that. We can talk about AI in recruiting or talent acquisition or HR or any other industry all day long and promote like, the negative aspects of it, but the positive aspects of your saving lives. Like, come on, then it's worth it, right? Then it's worth it. And so, yeah, so I'm involved with them. Actually, I've been meeting with them after this.

Martin Hauck (09:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (10:03)
Brilliant people, they're lovely people. feel like I'm the dumbest person there, but they're amazing, right? Yeah, like they all come from like Stanford and Berkeley and you know, I come from University of Kansas. You're welcome. they're just lovely people. so yeah, so there's, you know, gonna be a foundation, a for-profit, and I'm just thrilled to be a part of it. So, you know, what we were talking about with...

Martin Hauck (10:16)
You

in the morning.

Hilary Wagner (10:30)
with AI, you know, I see online a lot of people, it's that sentiment, AI is rejecting me. You know, like it's set up that, you know, that AI is just rejecting people blankly. That's what I think a lot of candidates think, but what they don't realize is that's not what's happening, right? For several reasons, right? You can set up your system depending on your system, right? First of all, there's lots of systems that have no AI implementation, like there's no AI, right? And I think a lot

Martin Hauck (10:45)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (11:00)
of candidates who aren't in talent opposition assume that suddenly every ATS has AI. It doesn't. Yeah, there's lots of old... Yeah.

Martin Hauck (11:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry,

can you talk about that myth a little bit just in terms of like even before AI like there was this like, I gotta, I gotta pump keywords into my resume. Otherwise, like I'm not going to the top. Like I've been in recruitment for 12 years, you've been in recruitment as well for a ton of time. Have you really ever seen a tool that even has like a good version of like just filtering candidates up to the top free like, this is one one with the most keywords like

That's not a thing. It's just becoming a thing right now.

Hilary Wagner (11:38)
That it is not,

that's a thing. That's a thing. It's not a thing. Right. I think for so long, think candidates feel like there's this kind of shady thing going on where they're getting dumped, right, rejected by the ATS when really here's the thing, like, you know, applications have grown exponentially than let's say what they were five years ago. Right. Like, so when

Martin Hauck (11:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (12:06)
When you put up a role and you get, let's say, let's say 300 applicants, I remember being wowed. I feel like, holy crap, that's a lot of people who are applied for this. Like we are busting at the seams with resumes. Nowadays, you put the same job up for a week and you have a thousand resumes and you're like, holy shit, what am I going to do? How am I going to get through all this? And, you know, so I use team Taylor. Love it. Love the system.

and what they do, they don't reject anyone based on resume keywords, nothing like that. What they do do is they will push someone up who looks like just from what's on the job description could be a potentially good fit. So they are showcasing a couple candidates that might be, wow, okay, they could be a really good fit for your job. Is it always accurate? No, it's AI.

It's not always going to be accurate, but they're saying, hey, take a look at this person because something they said on their resume is very succinctly resonates with something in that job description. And it is on the onus of recruiters to actually go through those and make sure they're correct. You're not a recruiter if you're just pushing paper. If you're just throwing, if you're throwing up candidates that make it to a top of a funnel at a hiring manager, it's not recruiting.

Right. Your job is to actually look at their profile, go through it, look at their LinkedIn, you know, look at the answers to whatever application questions are on there and make the decision. Right. And the thing is, is that a lot of ATF systems have no AI in them or if they're just coming out with it now or have come out with it, let's say in the last year that it is an additional cost to the company to pay for that add on. Right.

Martin Hauck (13:53)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (14:00)
Like Team Taylor, it all comes out of the box, which is fantastic. Like they even, they just came out. Yeah, it's all included first of all. Thank you. But they just came out with that thing we were talking about, right? The the shiny new thing where, where people aren't looking in their database that the candidates they already have, right? This will, they're, they, and they do sprints every six months, which I find amazing because most ATSs you're lucky if you get

Martin Hauck (14:05)
nice.

Hilary Wagner (14:27)
you know, a couple updates every six months or every year. So long story short, what they have now is it will go through your database and say, hey, look at these candidates. They come up as matches for the role you just posted. Brilliant. Thank you. That is what AI should be doing. Right. But yeah, candidates kind of have to have that that myth that every company is using AI when I would say probably not even half are using AI.

Martin Hauck (14:29)
Yeah, yeah, lucky.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

not even not even using AI like for like, if we rewind five years before the whole chat GPT thing, they were still like candidates were still assuming that there was this like nefarious machine behind the scenes just like kicking out your resume because you didn't have enough words. And you've seen those resumes that are just like, literally every square inch of the page is just stuffed with keywords. You know, like, this isn't something that human can read.

Hilary Wagner (15:09)
I'm

Yes.

Yes, I've seen them where they put

it a paragraph at the bottom of the resume that it's just keywords. And I'm like, this does nothing. This is just word salad, right? It's not. Yeah, exactly. And it just isn't it isn't something that's really a thing. And, you know, it's funny, though, like I've seen all the posts about fake jobs, fake jobs, fake jobs. I'm like, why am I seeing so much?

Martin Hauck (15:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, word salad.

Hilary Wagner (15:47)
Where is this coming from? Because I'm certainly not posting fake jobs. I don't work with any company that's ever posted a fake job. And I'm like, why are they thinking it's fake? And the sentiment is I'm not hearing back. You know, recruiter talk to me and then ghost me. OK, that's just a shitty recruiter. Let's be honest. But the other spectrum of that is these evergreen job postings. It is a

Martin Hauck (16:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Hilary Wagner (16:14)
long, old and dirty practice. I've never done it. I don't agree with it. And I think that's what a lot of these companies are doing where, you know, people are thinking it's a fake job post. They're not wrong. It is a fake job post. It's not real. They don't have an actual job for you.

Martin Hauck (16:29)
Yeah, that's that's very

real fake jobs are like that's a very simple like that's a fact. John wick and Harry Potter. They're always playing at some point in the US. The other fact number two. Fake jobs are real like it's

Hilary Wagner (16:47)
They're real and they're real fake. yeah, and it's to me, it is it's just an unethical practice because you're, know, having someone fill out the application, having someone fill out application questions. That's a big thing now where you see lots of application questions. Please stop doing that. Two or three is fine. Don't make a candidate who doesn't even know you and you don't know them take 45 minutes to fill out a job application. That's just stupid.

Martin Hauck (16:48)
They're super fake.

Hilary Wagner (17:15)
You can find out that information, ask three pointed questions, done. That's enough, right?

Martin Hauck (17:21)
Can I get your take on this as an alternative is like the, you don't see a job that you like, but you're interested in us, like the open bucket, like you've got the postings. I've seen some companies do this where it's like, here's all the jobs we're hiring for. And at the end is like, don't see what you like. Like just click here. And this is the alternative to like making it look like you've got all these jobs and all these different departments we're hiring for. And like three are actually real out of the 10.

Hilary Wagner (17:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, and a lot of HTSs have that, like where you can connect with a company even if you don't see the role, which I think is great. know Team Taylor does that as well and a bunch of other ones. But also, you know, and I told you, I posted on these evergreen roles and that we literally need to kill them and bury them, you know, right before you and I, like we do, we need to like wear a red dress and jump on their grave. Like they're just terrible practice. is that's just it. Just be transparent.

Martin Hauck (17:51)
Is that a fair conclusion?

Hilary Wagner (18:20)
And if you if you're going to, you know, pipeline resumes for future roles, see that very clearly and say we want great talent. We do not have this role open, but we know this is something we're going to be hiring in the future. Or this is just a bucket posting. If you want to share your resume, you probably won't hear back unless we have a spot for you sometime in the near future. And if you transparency is everything like transparency is giving

Martin Hauck (18:27)
Yes.

Hilary Wagner (18:49)
people the knowledge that they need to say, OK, I still like this company. And I got to be honest, company says to me, hey, just so you know, right? It would encourage me to apply than just a role that like I'm like, OK, I'm going to apply to another role and hope I hear from someone. If they're seeing that, at least I know it's like, have you ever been in a meeting, right? Like a big company meeting and the CEO is talking and you know the company's in trouble, right?

I've been in that where, you know, there's things going on. Things aren't going well. You lost company, lost some big contracts, whatnot. And you hear the CEO speak and the CEO talks in circles, gives a big, great speech. And we're a powerful team. And we're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah. Get our, you know, rallying the troops, all that BS. Right. And you wish and you just want to scream in the meeting, but it would be embarrassing. You'd probably get fired. Tell the truth.

Martin Hauck (19:34)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (19:48)
Just be transparent because you know what? If you're transparent and that same CEO says, listen, you know, we're in trouble and we need to we need to fix it. So help us fix it. Come up with ideas. If you have an idea, I don't care if you're, you know, a junior associate or, you know, software engineer, whatever your title, help us fix these problems. Because I tell you what, if you give that transparency, your

people become so loyal and they want to help you and they want to contribute and they want to help solve the problems. And that's when magic happens. Right. When you give that air of mystery, like, there's something wrong, but we're not going to have to tell you. People are like, this is too vague. I don't like living in vague. I'm out of here. Right.

Martin Hauck (20:30)
part about vagueness is you think you're doing yourself a favor by being a little bit fluffy and like, but the problem is humans for the most part will assume the worst. So even if it's not as bad, even if it's not as bad, and it's like, okay, you know, we've got six months of runway, that might be a terrifying thing to tell your entire team, like we got six months of runway, people might assume people are probably assuming we've got two weeks left.

Hilary Wagner (20:42)
Yes. One thousand.

Martin Hauck (20:59)
And they're going to act accordingly. When you can say, okay, we're going to just be transparent about it. I know it's hard. It's easier said than done. I've not done it myself, but at the end of the day, and I've heard and talked to so many candidates where they were in transparent companies and cultures. And the way they spoke about those companies was always so crazy high. Like they had the CEO and the executive leadership team. They held them in such high regard because they told the truth. They're just like, here's the

Hilary Wagner (21:06)
It's hard.

Yes, they told the truth.

Martin Hauck (21:28)
Here's the reality.

Hilary Wagner (21:28)
Why is it so hard? You know, I think that leaders in business need to understand, you know, their people aren't babies, right? And if you say the company needs help, the company is having some hard times, then that says, how can I help? But if you leave people in that nebulous, vague,

Martin Hauck (21:38)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (21:52)
We know something's wrong, but you're not telling us what's the first thing you're going to do. You are going to stop working, right? Because mentally you're freaked out. You're going to jump on your recruiter or your laptop, polish up your resume, send it out to everyone you know, apply to every job around. And people aren't going to work to solve the problem because they're so anxious. If you say, hey, there is a problem. I want your help solving it. People want to rally behind you. They want they want you to win. They want the company to win. And they want to be part of that.

Martin Hauck (22:22)
Yeah, not everybody's gonna rally around it, but you're gonna get so much more from the people that do rally around it that it's gonna I mean, I can't sit here and say that it will offset it, but the outcome is gonna be way better typically than

Hilary Wagner (22:29)
Yes.

Right. And guess

what? So let's say if if if the people who don't rally around you sometimes it may be just fear, right? Because they have families, they have they need job security, right? And they're like, my gosh, I got to start looking because they're worried and that's OK. But those same people will still know they didn't screw me over. They were very transparent. They let me know. And those same people a year from now, when things are better,

Martin Hauck (22:47)
No.

Hilary Wagner (23:04)
hopefully they're better, we'll come back. Those boomerang people are some of the best, right? Because they didn't leave because they wanted to, they left for whatever reason and they came back. And that says a lot about you as an organization, right? And I think that's a big thing. But yeah, that was my big thing today was just like seeing these poor candidates who have gotten this impression that like,

There's all this crazy shadiness going on in it. It's not. It's to me. It's just stupidity. It's a lack of of honestly thinking outside the box and doing something new or just like we were talking about, just being clear and transparent. These evergreen job posts, think, are making the making recruiters look bad, right? Because, you know, I think a lot of recruiters are like, well, I'm supposed to put this up so we can get resumes for this.

software engineering role that might open next quarter. And if I reject them, then I can't go back to these candidates later and say, hey, so they don't say anything. again, that's like be transparent or call the dude and say, hey, you're amazing, but I don't have anything right now. But then you're in that same boat. Well, they're going to be like, well, then why did you post a job? So there's that transparency again. Put that on there. And if you don't get

The applicants don't worry because you will when you need the role, right? Because you're just letting them sit there while they go find another job. You come back three months later and they're going to be gone. So it's just it's a self fulfilling prophecy that it's not going to work.

Martin Hauck (24:44)
Yeah.

And in most ATS is if not all of them, you can put it in the job. Like every ATS has the ability to like put it in the job description. You can put it in the title, future future role role for we're hiring this role to be hired in our whatever make it stupid and long, but at least you're communicating if you think that's a helpful strategy. You just want to like put out the net and just see what comes through. Great. But there's no real it like

Hilary Wagner (24:58)
Yes.

Martin Hauck (25:13)
to say that people like I don't know that any company that's like hired someone through that model and was like, my goodness, if we didn't do that, that like they wouldn't, they would have found that that candidate would have found your company anyways, right?

Hilary Wagner (25:21)
Yes, thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

And the only other time I see a lot of evergreen posts is for really high turnover rolls, right? Through the role. Nobody wants that or nobody can last in, right? For whatever reason, it is just perpetually posted. And again, it's like, I think you need to look inward, maybe fix whatever is going on there with these particular jobs that have such high turnover. Because is it is it the people you're hiring? No, it's probably you.

You know, like, come on. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (25:55)
Yeah.

What's what's

what's the hardest role you've you've worked on? Like, what's the one that comes to your mind? Like, I'm just curious, like you've, for recruiter to recruiter, like, there's always one that kind of sticks out or a few that stick out of like, that was really hard.

Hilary Wagner (26:16)
Gosh, so I love recruiting crazy roles. The first, like I would say the weirdest role I ever, this is not maybe the hardest, it was the weirdest, was early in my career, I was at a tech staffing firm and you know, where we were hiring .NET and Java developers and sending them to go work at Wells Fargo and all this stuff. And we had acquired a small recruiting firm, I think it was in Michigan.

Martin Hauck (26:27)
Okay. Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (26:46)
They did tech, but they also did like a lot of manufacturing and other jobs. they basically obviously they're going to take what comes to their what comes their way. Who wouldn't? It's business. And so I my very first recruiting job was at a traditional engineering firm, right? Mechanical, electrical, power and light. And I learned so much in that job. So when I came, got into tech right thereafter, nobody else that I worked with had any kind of.

skill set with manufacturing or engineering, whatever. And so this this company they acquired had this super weird role in Alaska where they were looking for a fish house smoke manager and in freaking Alaska. I'm like, and the manager who knows, like, I like the weird stuff. He was like, Hillary, what you doing? I was like, but it was actually like

Martin Hauck (27:28)
You

my god.

This one's for you. my God.

Hilary Wagner (27:43)
you know, it was really fun to recruit on. it was kind of then, you know, it was very early in my career and I thought to myself, I can recruit anything. And I think the hardest roles to work on for me are not really what you're looking for. It's who you're working with on the role. Right. So sometimes if you know, it's hard to get hiring managers out of their own way. Right. Where you really need like I've always found

Martin Hauck (27:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (28:13)
to come with the data, right? And in the old days, that was like hours of research on Google and finding, hiring data analytics on this or that or that, but now you've got AI. You can come very well armed with the data. Obviously check the data. You don't want to be like that lawyer who brought forth phony claims of court cases from AI. Idiot.

Martin Hauck (28:31)
Hahaha

Hilary Wagner (28:41)
because you will look very stupid, but make sure your data is correct. And you can go to a hiring manager and come up with the numbers and say, OK, hey, like you want this engineer who has closure, right? Which is which is a very, you know, not a lot of people have closure and you want them in Silicon Valley and you only want to pay them this much. And there's only

So many people available on LinkedIn, not even available, who exists on LinkedIn, who have this skill set and you drill that down to California, here's what you have left. And you drill that down to the rate you're going to pay them versus other companies in your area or in your sector, you're not going to find them. So let's work around that. And then it's a different discussion because you are giving them the transparency of things that they don't know. Right.

Because if you're busy hiring manager, sometimes you're like, yes, I need this, this, this, and this. I have to have it. I think that's the dread of every recruiter. So I always tell newer recruiters, come with your data. It's on you. It is on you as a recruiter. To me, you're not doing your job if you're not being transparent and honest. And I that can be scary when it's not helping you as a recruiter, when you're telling them, no, basically, we can't do it this way because it's not going to work.

Martin Hauck (30:06)
Yeah. Yeah. The, and, and when you're in a situation with a hiring manager and you like, you've got two options, right? You've got the option where you come to the table with data, or you come to the table, with like an anecdote, like this role super hard and I can't fill it. Right. Worst is like the relationship. If you don't have a relationship with that hiring manager, like that's the work you kind of have to do upfront that doesn't get really talked about much. So I love this point that you're making on. So it's like,

Hilary Wagner (30:22)
Hmm

Martin Hauck (30:34)
If you don't have the data and you just are just having conversations based on gut and feel and whatnot, like you kind of have to earn that with a hiring manager to a certain extent or with the company. that like you start off with like, do all the research upfront, spend more time with a new hiring manager, especially because at least for me as a recruiter, I'm always, I get a sense from the rest of the company.

whether or not like, this person's really tough hiring manager. So you know, ahead of time, right? So if you know ahead of time, why not just arm yourself with a little extra data? Like, here's the research I did. This is what I'm seeing. What have you what's worked well for you? So then they're going to like, automatically respect you more because you've done the research. And then like you do that a few times. And then yes, later on, like three months, you're working on a different role, like this search is really hard. They're going to think back to like, how did you treat that hiring manager first?

Hilary Wagner (31:09)
Yeah, yes.

you

Yes. You've done the research.

Exactly.

Well, let's say, let's like use an example, right? You have Cassie, the recruiter, and you have, I don't know, Jim, the recruiter, right? And Cassie is the one who comes to you with all that data for the exact same role. And then you have Jim, who's like, you know what, just, this is kind of hard. I can't find a lot of people, whatever. And let's say they're both contractors. Who is that hiring manager going to call again? Right? He's not calling Jim because Jim's a dodo, apparently.

Martin Hauck (32:06)
Yeah.

You

Hilary Wagner (32:10)
he's going to call Cassie because Cassie was right on and really tried to work with him and get it done. And I think it's not about changing expectations so much with the hiring manager. I think it's about kind of changing the way they're thinking about their role, right? And really, like, if you're showing them that you are thinking outside the box, they're going to start thinking that way too, right? And they're going to be on your side. They're going to want you to win rather than, my God, this recruiter is

useless, you And those are the people, I think, who become the leaders in their industry. Those are the people who are great at mentoring teams because they've all been there and they know how to do that. those are the people, you know, you see on LinkedIn posting stuff where you're like, wow, that's a great idea, you know? And I think that there's a lot to be said.

for companies saying, well, talent acquisition is a service part of the organization. Shouldn't we all be service parts of the organization? Shouldn't that be a standard that we're not just serving others. Others should be serving us as well. That's what makes a cohesive team. That's what breaks down silos. recruiters who are kind of scared of their own shadow and just afraid, like, I'm

Martin Hauck (33:23)
It's not a one way street.

Hilary Wagner (33:35)
imploring you to not be afraid, right? What's the worst that can happen if you come with the data and give them actual real information about the role they're hiring for? What's the worst that can happen? I'm going to say nothing but you being better at your job and gaining more respect, right?

Martin Hauck (33:52)
Yeah. And, to add to that, I think the thing that I love about recruiting that like always got me excited about it was just, it's fun looking for people and coming up with new ways. And so there's nothing really different in the activity. Like you might think of like, it's data. It's like a whole different thing. Either it's intimidating or it's not like it's numbers and you don't want to crunch numbers and that's just not your persona kind of deal. Like that's, that's kind of limiting to a certain extent. But if you think of the actual activity, it's like,

Hilary Wagner (34:19)
Yes.

Martin Hauck (34:22)
the only instead of a person, you're just looking for information. You're looking to find facts that back up your suspicion, which is like, Hey, I think I'm having a tough time. Maybe as you're going through all that data yourself, you've you solve the problem yourself. You don't even need to go to the hiring manager because you're like, this is my problem. Like that's a very real, real possibility. Yeah, I guess in terms of you've talked about a bit like in terms of like AI,

Hilary Wagner (34:31)
right.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (34:51)
and some of the tools you use, I guess, what are there sort of like, adjacent aspects of like AI, like, obviously filtering up resumes to the top, like, that's a very obvious use of AI that's exciting. Or even some some of the coolest things about, like what's happening in recruitment and talent acquisition right now isn't necessarily AI driven, like you you've got a pretty strong finger on the pulse, like what what what's exciting for you from your perspective.

Hilary Wagner (34:51)
Mm-hmm.

Well, you you brought up AI. Why'd you do that to me? So I want to talk about it again. So the thing is, OK, and this is one thing I've noticed, like a lot of recruiters are still getting a handle on how to use it, like what to use it for. And I want to say that there is so much you can do. You need to learn how to prompt. You need to learn how to prompt correctly. I always talk to.

Martin Hauck (35:27)
Hahaha

Hilary Wagner (35:51)
any language learning model, like they're a five year old and you go step by step on what you want. Right. If you throw up on the LLM on, whether it's chat, GPT or, you know, llama or whatever the heck you're using, generally it's going to affect the answers. So you do step by step, but here's the things that recruiters may not be thinking about. Right. It's not about writing a job description. It is about so much more than that. Right. So we were talking about, you know,

working with, let's say, a difficult hiring manager, right? You can actually, let's say you have, you know, this email chain between you and, I don't know, Mary, who is just a hell demon fire hiring manager, right? You can actually take that information from those emails. And let's just say for the sakes of ethics, we take out the names and whatnot, and we plug that in, just cut and paste it in.

to your favorite LLM and ask to do a sentiment analysis on these two people. So you do one on yourself. You'll do one on Mary the demon. Anyway, you'll get back all the information that AIC sees on how you can address Mary Butter, right? So it's going to give you their sentiment analysis on her. And then you can ask it now how as you know,

Hillary, the recruiter, can I address Mary in a better way that she will, it will resonate with her. And it will actually say, cut out the small talk, cut out the niceties, just give her the data, give her the deets, that's all she cares about, be precise, be short, da, da, da, da. And you need to be a chameleon in recruiting. You need to kind of work your way.

into how that hiring manager's mind is working and respond accordingly. And it will tell you how to do that. It will also tell you, okay, so I have this job description this hiring manager gave me. I have the sentiment analysis that I just got about this hiring manager. I've got the candidate. How do I fit it all together? Right? So you can actually take that job description. You can take that candidate's resume.

you can ask AI what stands out in this candidate's resume that I can highlight in my submittal and it will tell you. And then it will say, how can I use this information that you've highlighted that goes with job description and submit it to Mary in a way she'll respond to? And it will tell you that too. And so all of sudden, all that like kind of fear is taken out of it. And I will say again,

Check your work, look at everything, make sure it's not saying anything incorrect or anything insane. And then you can package it up to Mary in a way that saved you so much administrative time doing all that, right? And present it in a way that is very effective for her and it's gonna get your message across. And there's just so much, like...

I know you don't wish, but I wish we had like two more hours because I could give you like a whole presentation on this. But there's just so much that that I think a lot of recruiters are thinking about that they can do to to their benefit and how it will help them with difficult hiring managers, how it's going to help them with difficult roles. Right. You can even ask it. Look at this job description. You know, let's say closure is not not, you know,

Martin Hauck (39:12)
No, no.

Hilary Wagner (39:38)
language that a lot of people have. Is there something that is a good substitute to closure, right? Or go or whatever it is. And it will tell you. It will say, you know, this language, you know, is probably the closest. You can also like, you know, do your research, like, gosh, do your research, right? Especially tech recruiters, god darn, do your research. Find out how easy it Like you're asked, you're asking me for

weird language that not a lot of people have or not a lot of people available have it or are interested, how hard is it to learn? And a lot of times you'll find out like these languages aren't that hard to learn. If someone has already got do, do, do, do, do under the belt, they can learn a new language pretty quickly, right? That's why they do what they do. They're good at it.

Martin Hauck (40:25)
Those are some of the two of the most create not, not most creative, but like creative and simple ways of using AI as a recruiter that I've heard. It's just so like, as you said, I'm like, that's obvious, but it's not like it's so it's, it's, it's like, we're just scratching the surface of how we're using it. And that example with like using the sentiment analysis of the manager is like,

Hilary Wagner (40:34)
Mm-hmm.

It's not.

Martin Hauck (40:52)
I've almost gone to the nth degree anytime I'm using AI and I over complicate stuff, but you're just like, no, help me out with this human interaction. I love it. It's such a, such a brilliant way.

Hilary Wagner (41:00)
Exactly. Exactly. You can use

it. Yeah. And I did this. I spoke in Austin, gosh, months ago over the summer, and it was all about AI and using it in telenequistion. And you can even like I use my friend as an example. And I basically just got on his LinkedIn profile. I went into anything he posted, commented on, et cetera, right. Public information. I literally dragged it.

and copied all of it as long as it would let me. So I think it was like 60 interactions I got out of it. I plugged that into AI and I said, hey, how would give me sentiment analysis on Jim? His name is actually Jim, Jim Deline. And anyway, so it told me exactly the sentiment analysis. And I say, OK.

Martin Hauck (41:32)
Hmm.

Hilary Wagner (41:56)
here's my job description. And now how is it, what would be the most effective way to address Jim to get him interested in this job? And so I plugged it in and it said, Jim is, he's loyal. He's very excited about what he does. He works in sports tech, he's a product guy, and this is what we think will excite him about the role, right? And so you can actually.

Like having point out to you, this is what is exciting Jim about what he does. And this is how you as a recruiter can reach out to him about a new role and what might get him excited. And that's, that's the magic, right? That's the magic because sometimes, you know, you can just be clueless, right? Like sometimes it's, it's, hard and think of the time it would take to scroll through all those posts yourself, trying to get a handle on who someone is.

Martin Hauck (42:32)
Yeah.

You're, going in completely in the dark with nothing. Typically it's like, they've got the keywords on their profile, right? Like pre AI it's like, you've got the keywords on their profile. You're going to connect with them. Maybe you see something on their LinkedIn profile, like one thing you're just like, what's the one thing that I think I can tie to this conversation. And it's like, I see you went to so-and-so university and then

Hilary Wagner (42:52)
Mm-hmm.

Martin Hauck (43:15)
And like maybe they didn't really even like it there, right? Whereas like you've used one data point into your in comparison to like 20 data points or even 50 data points that you don't even like, think about when it does the analysis. So no, it's really, it's, again, why I guess this is more of like help solve the world's problems. Sorry. I know, but like

Why do you think it's that people are just really scratching the surface as opposed to actually like getting into the nitty gritty?

Hilary Wagner (43:48)
think it's about want, What are you hoping to get out of it? Do you care if you're getting anything out of it, right? think I've always been that person. I love technology. I love learning new things. I would have been a software developer in another life. I would have loved that career. But I went into art, so therefore I'm a recruiter.

Martin Hauck (44:15)
You

Hilary Wagner (44:18)
Like seriously, I have a degree in painting. Hello, here I am. But what I'm trying to... Well, this one is actually Miguel Paradis, these beautiful green birdies. He's amazing. This one is actually mine. And if we go over here, that one is Roy Lichtenstein and the one above it. So the bluebirds are mine. I have others sitting here.

Martin Hauck (44:22)
I love them. These are yours in the background?

Hilary Wagner (44:42)
So yeah, so starving artist. I had some shows in New York and Chicago early on, and then I realized I like money. So I started recruiting once. And hey, have you ever thought about being a recruiter? And I said, no, tell me more. And here we are. Where were we? What were we talking about?

Martin Hauck (44:50)
Ha

while I

mean we were talking about recruitment I I'm still yet no solving

Hilary Wagner (45:01)
yeah, and solving the world's problems. I

think it's about want, right? Like I've always been a seeker of knowledge. I've always wanted, I'm about optimization. about let's make our lives easier. I hate administrative tax. I hate them.

Martin Hauck (45:16)
hate Admin.

Hilary Wagner (45:17)
So

it's a way to help cut down on so much administrative time, if not anything else. And I know a lot of recruiters, they're fast movers. They don't like documentation. They don't like doing that. All right, fine. Have AI do it for you. Take your notes, spit them into AI and said, organize these so I can put them in bullet points for.

documentation in my ATS or organize them so I can send them to a hiring manager and correct the grammar and all my misspellings, right? Like it will do so much for you. I think that take the time and learn about it. It's honestly from a user perspective, it's not hard. You just need to take the time. It's just, it's not hard. It's honestly, the more you use it, you know, the more you're going to learn and you're going to dive right in and

be amazing at it. so yeah, that's my take. And yeah.

Martin Hauck (46:16)
What's the one thing or a few things that you're not ready to let AI do for you yet at all? they're like, you have no, but like if AI is a person is just like, no, no, no, no, no, this is my space. You're you don't touch this. This is

Hilary Wagner (46:32)
I

don't let AI write for me. When I post on LinkedIn, wherever it is my words, I will use AI to get ideas. I love to brainstorm with it because sometimes I'm just thinking, I can't think of a topic. I want to talk about something, but it's just not hitting my brain. so I'll be like, give me a list of recruiting topics. Give me a list of relevant people topics.

you know, analytics, whatever you want to talk about. And it will actually say, you know, and you're like, that's a great topic. Right. And then you can go from there. It's just helpful on that level. I don't I don't like the way AI writes. And I think that will change and it's going to get better. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact also that I'm a writer myself. Right. So I like to use my own words. And I don't know if I have

I've had AI, like, okay, I wrote my own post. I'm like, okay, rewrite this for me. Okay, they always make it like twice as long. And like they include so many like extraneous words you don't need to say the same thing. And they'll use like really like crazy words. Like, you know, this is a stupendous finding, you know?

Martin Hauck (47:56)
Hahaha

Hilary Wagner (47:58)
And things like that, you're like, yeah, that sounds just like me. You know, I'm more likely to say this is stupid finding. Right. But but like what I'm trying to say is I need to have control over that piece. And because there's something to be said when you as a human are putting it in your own words. And it's funny, right, because like a lot of recruiters and companies complain about people responding to application questions with AI. Right. Their responses are

clearly made with AI. And I did a post about this a month ago or something. And I said, I don't care. You want AI to write your answer. Go ahead. But do yourself a favor and rewrite it in your own words. Didn't your parents tell you that when you were plagiarizing in high school? Rewrite it in your own words. If you're going to use Chat GPT for school, rewrite it in your own words. It's just, to me, it's common sense. And if you're not even willing to do that, then you probably don't.

Martin Hauck (48:44)
Yeah.

Well, that's Yeah, it's interesting because you set it up for you set yourself up for failure because if someone gets excited about your profile based on answers that you didn't even do yourself and then they start talking to you there's just like this is like this doesn't even match like I was excited about the person on paper, not just on like if especially even in just communications, right? Like, oftentimes I find that people with the longest resume with the most information this is pre GPT so it's a little bit harder now.

Hilary Wagner (49:03)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Martin Hauck (49:25)
But people with super long like resumes when I would talk to them, I'm this is going to be a 45 minute phone screen instead of a 15 minute like you could just tell. But then when you have the short snappy one page or like, right, I'm going to have to push this person for answers because there's so much they're just

Hilary Wagner (49:41)
I'll be

honest, if you're a senior professional, I completely disagree with one page resumes. think it's whoever came up, whoever was the a-hole who said, one page resume is the rule, like needs to be punched in their own face. Like it is seriously so dumb. Who can like put their entire career on one page and expect anyone to really know what they do in a meaningful way? Like, I don't care. If you have a three page resume and you've been doing this for 20 years,

Martin Hauck (49:48)
you

Hilary Wagner (50:10)
I'm fine with that. I could care less, right? You have, I did have, so this is a long time ago. I was working at a Microsoft consulting firm and a friend of mine, her husband, she's like, he's really good at what he does, but he can't get a job. He had a 14 page resume, 14 pages. And I was like flummoxed. And he just, here's the thing. He didn't know how to write a resume. So.

You know, and that's the thing. And I wish recruiters would think of this. A lot of regular people who aren't in our field don't know how to write a resume, you know. And I would always go for the software engineers that had really crappy resumes because I was like, you know what? If I'm a really good software engineer, I'm probably going to be really crappy at writing a resume. So I would go after them because I know nobody else was calling this person and they would be phenomenal. And it's like

I don't know. I don't want to get off on a tangent about that, but feel free to write along a resume. One page is stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. If you're a junior out of college, you give me more than one page, I'll kill you. You know?

Martin Hauck (51:13)
Yeah, it doesn't.

Yeah, that's

fair. That's fair. No, yeah, we've, there's very much like your background. There's no there's such a you're talking about like the the company that you were working with on the rare disease and you're like the table everybody's so smart at the table. I'm like, by far probably the most exciting person at the table because of all the extra stuff that you that you do.

Hilary Wagner (51:44)
I'm definitely

the loudest and most energetic. I think this is like two weeks ago, we had our weekly meeting and I said, I'm sorry, because everyone is like so smart and like kind of quiet. I'm like, I must just exhaust you because I'm that loud. I'm, you know, I'm the devil's advocate. I'm the one who's just the loudest in the room. Renee, who is just amazing. And she said to me, she said,

Martin Hauck (51:58)
Yeah

Hilary Wagner (52:13)
It's honestly really refreshing. I'm like, thank you, finally. Finally, I get the respect. But yeah, really, really wonderful, smart people. And I'm just really excited about where that's going. So it's going to help a lot of people. And I get to be cool and be at a biotech company.

Martin Hauck (52:18)
You

Ha ha ha.

Yeah, and that that's

stuff on the blockchain as well. Like I spent a bit of time in crypto and that's a whole, whole other space. And yeah.

Hilary Wagner (52:37)
Yeah.

That is a whole other space. I

think that that would be, and I'm sure they're out there somewhere, but a wonderful training course for recruiters is to learn crypto recruiting, right? Because it's very nebulous. I I think there's a lot of people who still really don't understand how the blockchain works. They certainly don't know anything about decentralized platforms or L3 or NFTs, right?

They don't get it. It's hard to understand because it is not a tangible thing. It's almost like some people don't make great tech recruiters because code is not tangible. It's not something you can hold in your hands. They might make great engineering recruiters, like traditional engineering, because they're creating something tangible like a car or a piece of machinery or something that you can see and feel and touch.

Martin Hauck (53:36)
Mm-hmm.

Hilary Wagner (53:41)
And the world of tech is nebulous in that way to someone who doesn't visualize like that. They can't get it. And so I think if like a big crash course, the best thing I ever did was I had two recruiters with minimal tech experience and I put them through this tech bootcamp recruiting thing. And I went through it too. I needed a refresher myself and it was amazing. And I'm like, everyone should be doing this, like every recruiter, right? And it clarifies things that

People who don't understand it don't understand. They didn't understand the difference between a platform and a database and a language. just helping them get those things clarified opened up more windows for more discovery. And I think that's the same with some of these really complex industries, such as crypto and blockchain.

Martin Hauck (54:32)
They kind of riffing off of your idea previously was like, this is a great use case for AI, right? Where it's like, okay, I'm recruiting for a crypto role. know nothing about it. Explain it into, and just choose the way that I learned is like, I'm a huge metaphor analogy person, right? And just, just tell it to be like, teach me about, you know, programming, but

Hilary Wagner (54:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Martin Hauck (54:59)
as if it were Game of Thrones, right? And then all the examples are gonna like, sink in your brain like, okay, so like, this is this and this is that and you just making connections to like for Game of Thrones that will work for me. I'm a fan of it. I'll watch the show, right? But like, choose whatever like analogy or like even say like, what are some good analogies based on based on what you know about me, right? Because it obviously knows about us if you've been using it enough, like based on what you know about me, what are some helpful analogies that you could give to me?

that like resonate with me that I would understand really well. And then just teach me about this thing. Like I did that previously when I first got into like tech recruiting, I would just sit down with engineers and I would be like, you know, let's go for coffee. I want to learn about what you do. It's so complicated, blah, blah. And that was super helpful to me. One of the one things that was the most helpful was by actually talking to junior developers. It was actually more helpful to me because they were still so close to like

Hilary Wagner (55:53)
Mm-hmm.

Martin Hauck (55:58)
Not gonna call it. Yeah, they were still like, it was like, they could bring it closer back to reality where it's like, if you've been a developer for 20 years, it's like, you're stuck in the jungle. And like, you come back to like mainland and like, everybody's just like, yeah, this is how I make food. And they're like, what? Like, it just, it just doesn't translate as much,

Hilary Wagner (55:58)
Learn like, yeah, like learning that, yeah.

What? Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's just one of those things like, you know, tech is obviously ever changing, you know, as is like blockchain, you know, the speed of light. Right. I mean, look at AI. It's like every it's where every week there's some new big thing happening or whatever. And it really is like I think it's got to be continual learning on our own behalf.

Right. You really, really like just need to learn and really need to stretch yourself to stay relevant, to stay active. I will tell you, gosh. So this was, I want to say, four or five months ago, I was consulting for a company that was hiring a TA manager. And I interviewed a lot of wonderful people. Right. And they're looking for very specific skills.

in performance marketing. And I talked to one candidate and she was explaining to me what bullying recruiting was. And I think she thought she was a lot older than me, which I was probably older than her, but I wasn't going to share that. She was talking to me like I was 20 years old. And she was explaining to what bullying was. And she's like, yeah, that and all the other.

you know, innovative best practices and recruiting. I'm like, like, what else do you really like to do? And she was like, I like using x ray and things like that. And I'm like,

Martin Hauck (57:57)
Kinda dusty.

Hilary Wagner (57:57)
tell

me more, right? And it's like, I couldn't get any of that stuff out of her that was to, you know, tell me about using AI, tell me about, you know, just how you work with candidates, your, you know, your sense of urgency and the most like anything like that was the only thing she could bring to me was bullying. And I'm like, dude, that was around before I became a recruiter. That was a long time ago.

Martin Hauck (58:24)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (58:26)
I'll never tell.

long story short, it's like I'm thinking to myself, she's she's kind of become her own dinosaur. You know, you know, she'd been kind of in her own world consulting for small companies and not really like, you know, going out and grabbing AI and figuring it out and all these things. And it's like you just have to constantly educate yourself. Right. Just got to keep doing it. And besides now.

Martin Hauck (58:51)
Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (58:55)
You can go to your language learning model of choice and give them a job description and say, hey, write me a Boolean string for this. So much easier, and probably more accurate. Yeah, just keep learning. I want to learn. I feel like it will prevent me from getting Alzheimer's at a certain age. Probably not, but we can hope.

Martin Hauck (59:17)
Yeah,

it's there's so there's so many angles with it. There's so much potential with it. And you've clearly like carved a amazing path in the recruitment space. I, I would be shocked if you like, if we talked five, 10 years from now, and you're like, not still recruiting, because I think once you dig it, you dig it like doing it in some some fashion.

Hilary Wagner (59:45)
Yeah, you know, it's

yeah, it's that, you know, I'm the person like my husband, you know, I'm lucky enough to work from home and I'm the person my husband has to pull off the computer at like, like, honey, seven o'clock, get off the damn computer, you know, and when I was in an office, I would be the person who would work. I always use the excuse that I'm avoiding traffic, but

Martin Hauck (1:00:04)
Yeah

Hilary Wagner (1:00:14)
really was just like, I'm getting stuff done, you know? And I am always like, why put it off for tomorrow when I can do it today? And I don't have to worry about it. I don't like taking work home with me mentally or otherwise. And yeah, I think that I'm just that person that wants to do it all and has figured out a way in some areas to do that. I think it's just about...

Martin Hauck (1:00:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (1:00:43)
who you are. And when I see recruiters who have that drive and that like, want to do it, I want to know it, I want to learn it, I want to kill, kill myself to get this job filled. and like, those are the ones I'm like, this person in 10, 15 years is going to be a leader, they're going to be somebody that is going to be on a podcast like this, and speaking at events. And I remember

sitting in that individual contributor chair, saying to myself, I want to be that person. How do I do that? Because it took me a long time to want to get into management. My husband was like, why don't you be in management? I don't want that. And I think a lot of that was insecurity on my own part. then I started off in my career talking to very high level people in tech.

and I would be intimidated. And I remember I had one in-person interview and the poor guy, like he was this very senior level guy. He was so nervous in the interview, like I thought he was gonna throw up, you know? And he's talking a little old me. And I felt so bad for him. And that is, I think the moment that I realized people are just people.

Martin Hauck (1:01:57)
Yeah.

Ha ha ha!

Yeah.

Hilary Wagner (1:02:10)
They're

just people and we all have our really big pluses and our minuses and everything else. I think when I when that hit me, it's when I realized I do want to be a manager because I feel like I would be better than a lot of people. And I always said if I started my own podcast, it would be called You're Doing It Wrong.

Martin Hauck (1:02:35)
nice. Nice. Have you started it?

Hilary Wagner (1:02:36)
Obnoxious,

but nice.

Martin Hauck (1:02:40)
Have you started it? Is it in the works? You've got enough on the go.

Hilary Wagner (1:02:42)
No, no, no, no, God, no. I don't know that

anybody wants to hear my voice for that long.

Martin Hauck (1:02:48)
No, I get out of here. This is this was this was a really cool conversation. I really appreciated your insights. I learned a ton. I've got some some some tips and you said like, you don't want you don't want hear me go on for two hours. Like I've we got to do another one. You know, give it like call I'll tap you on the shoulder on LinkedIn or weekly. There you go. Yeah, you don't have to start the podcast. You could we could just call it like here's another episode. You're doing it wrong.

Hilary Wagner (1:03:07)
Let's just do a weekly one.

I

Martin Hauck (1:03:16)
we'll go we'll get the

Hilary Wagner (1:03:16)
love it.

Martin Hauck (1:03:17)
AI to make the logo and it'll be yours right we'll just I'll record it and send it send it back to you there you go

Hilary Wagner (1:03:24)
That's another thing, use AI for your employer branding. I, my God, I have created some of the most beautiful employer branding that I had to create myself because of my art background, right? But when AI came along, guess what? my God, beautiful, branded. It looks like the company actually made this, right? Like it's so, it's just so freaking fabulous. I don't know why everybody stopped using clip art.

Martin Hauck (1:03:30)
you

Hilary Wagner (1:03:53)
Stop. You know, that's another one of those, snap yourself in your own face. You know, if you're using clip art of any kind in your employer branding, right? Where you see like every denomination of person and one person in a wheelchair, like sitting there going, let's talk about our culture. And then you look at the picture and you're like, I have seen this picture before on someone else's website. It's like, use your own people, first of all, and then like create really cool branding.

Create cool branding with AI and people like that's another thing. People don't know how to do it. Figure it out. I will help you ping me. I will help you make amazing employer branding. I will show you how you don't have to pay me. Well, maybe that would be nice, but you don't have to. It'll be a quick lesson.

Martin Hauck (1:04:34)
Yeah.

There you go.

Awesome. Now, Hillary, thank you so much for the time today.

Hilary Wagner (1:04:44)
gosh, thank you. It has been wonderful, Martin. I really appreciate it and you have way more pictures than me on your wall. Those record covers.

Martin Hauck (1:04:53)
Those are record covers. Yeah. Yeah. I've got some Led Zeppelin. I got some Queens of Stone Age. I got some Jamie XX. I got everything. No, country yet, but we'll get there.

Hilary Wagner (1:04:55)
Very cool.

All right, very cool, awesome. So great talking to you.

Martin Hauck (1:05:09)
How should, do you want people to get in touch with you? I mean, they know your name so they can find you, but what's the best way for folks to get in touch with you if they resonated or want to get an AI lesson or.

Hilary Wagner (1:05:20)
I would say just ping me on LinkedIn. Hillary Wagner, you'll see the blonde hair and yeah, just ping me, reach out to me and love to talk. All right, thanks so much, Martin.

Martin Hauck (1:05:31)
Awesome. Thanks so much.