Snoop Dogg, Whiz Khalifa, and Ernie Moreno: Staffing At Its Finest

Brian Fink: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to Recruiting Daily Sourcing School with me, Brian Fink and HE, Ryan Leary. What’s going on, Ryan Leary? How are you?

Ryan Leary: Still one and only Brian Fink.

Brian Fink: Snoop Dogg! Okay, so everybody who doesn’t follow me on Instagram or on Facebook, Ryan and I were just talking about it. I went to go see Snoop Dogg the other night.

It was fantastic. If he’s coming to your tent. If he’s coming to your town, you go see him. Snoop Dogg was great. Wiz Khalifa was a whole separate dimension. It was incredible.

Ryan Leary: Nice. Snoop Dogg is 51 years old. Brodus! 51 years old. That’s crazy. Eminem is 50 years old.

Brian Fink: I don’t want to think, I don’t want to think of Eminem or Snoop Dogg being 50 years old, because then that makes me…

Brian

Ryan Leary: Fink is 53 years old.

Brian Fink: Thank you. I appreciate that, Ryan Leary.

Ryan Leary: [00:01:00] I’m just kidding. So what’s going on, man? What was what’s important in your week? What went down?

Brian Fink: So what’s important in my week? We had a great we had a great session on Tuesday with RecruitingDaily. And you can go back and you can watch it if you’re a RecruitingDaily insider.

Where we talked about skills based hiring and I think that was really, I know it was the beginning of the week, but my week has been filled with highlights. And what about you, Ry?

Ryan Leary: You know what? For me, it’s just been more of the same and a little sadness. I shared it with the team this morning and two things came out.

A couple of things came out on call. One, you had 62 slides. On your webinar, Brooke told me, she said, it was amazing. You put so much, I didn’t get to see it. I was doing other things. I’ll go back and watch it, but I heard it was amazing. And 62 slides, man, you put a lot of effort into that.

That’s why you get so many people that come on. They know you care about it.

Brian Fink: Look, my, my deal is all about us having fun. Okay. So you said two things, right? So that was the fun. We went with a fun [00:02:00] theme. We had a lot of fun. We’ve got a, we’ve got an awesome H R T X coming up in the next couple of weeks coming to you live in September.

What, what

Ryan Leary: else is going on? Oh, man. So there comes a time and everyone with kids will know this, right? You let your kids win the game. I shouldn’t say that. I don’t, I haven’t always done that with, in certain things. I let the girl win, right? I let one of them win until they can’t, until they beat me.

This week, the last two weeks I’ve realized that I no longer need to let Maddie, the nine year old, beat me at fishing tournaments. Oh, so she beat you? Two times in the last two weeks, straight up, just bigger and more than I did. She beat me again this morning, and I’ll say it was, it’s amazing seeing her pull them in and do her thing.

But I was like. This little bitch

she just beat me she legit just beat me she’s not winning [00:03:00] ever again, I’m not letting her do this, and I didn’t let her, it’s the second time in two weeks, and I think it’s officially over, it’s time to just no more participation trophies.

Ernie Moreno: It’s so hard to

Brian Fink: say

Ryan Leary: goodbye. But there’s more important things to talk about

Brian Fink: today.

Yeah, so one of those big important things that is happening this week is we’re getting to collaborate on this episode of Sourcing School with Ernie Moreno, who Ernie is, he’s a pillar of the community. He’s been a big supporter of what we do. I love the fact that Ernie, like Ernie really turned me on to using ChatGPT a few months ago.

I was very dismissive about it. You remember that, Ryan? And Ernie was like, Brian, you can use it for this. Why don’t you use it to save yourself time doing this thing? And I was like, Ernie, what are you talking about? And for those of you who don’t know Ernie, Ernie is a, is an entrepreneurial recruiter.

He runs his own shop. He builds his own, he builds teams for some of the most [00:04:00] recognizable brands in the country or in the rest of the world. I’m glad that I get to call him a friend and a mentor. Ernie, welcome to The Big Show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being a highlight of the week.

Ernie Moreno: What’s going on?

Thank you. Thank you, Ian. Excited to be here, man. And I’m big time now on the show.

Ryan Leary: We’re not going that far. We’re not that big.

Ernie Moreno: I always enjoy watching your shows and learning. And that’s always good. Learning every day.

Brian Fink: Actually, so that’s one of the things that I started this conversation with is like learning and teaching and being knowledgeable, what have you.

Ernie, as we get started with our conversation, I said that you really tried to focus me to start using ChatGPT for when it comes to candidate engagement, writing emails, and what have you. I know Ryan’s got some questions that he wants to get started with. I want to get back to the chat GPT thing at maybe the mid sentence.

I’m going to pass the mic over to Ryan and let Ryan kick us off. Yeah,

Ryan Leary: man, just, I’ll tell you what, for the audience, [00:05:00] just how did you get into recruiting? You’ve been in recruiting for eons, right? Yes. You’ve been on your own for a very long

Brian Fink: time. That’s not how he’s made everybody old today. He’s only…

He’s only 33. He’s only 35. Yeah know. He’s 33 years

Ryan Leary: old. He’s been in recruiting for 25 years. It is good. It’s good. It’s all, we’re all good. But , what’s your story, man? Tell us the story. How’d you get into recruiting? I

Ernie Moreno: got fired a couple of times and decided I didn’t wanna get fired anymore. I didn’t want anyone tell me what to do.

I had gone to law school and I just, I didn’t wanna do law, so I got into HR and had some great bosses, and then I had some bosses from hell. And then I realized I need to control what I want and I’ve always been like really super independent. And if you told me to do something, I probably wouldn’t do it.

So I I got fired and got into got into a friend, talked to him about getting another VP of HR job. And he said, why don’t you become a recruiter? And he was in Chicago. He was in LA and I was in Chicago. And I said how are we going to do this? He goes I’ll call you. And mind you, this [00:06:00] is 1990 call you.

Okay? Okay. I’ll call. This is 1998. How Before the internet, before all that other stuff. And so what we did was I started recruiting or learning it and he he would call me every day and his name was Terrence Jones. And I picked it up little by little and then that first exciting day came when I called him and I said, Hey, I got my first job order.

And he very calmly told me, So what? Now go fill it. So with that, I just got into learning. I never worked in another office. I worked out of my home, and I never, like people say, go to an agency and all that. I didn’t want to do that. So I just read books, looked at stuff, listened to stuff, and talked to other recruiters, and that’s how I learned it.

And then that’s when I figured out sharing amongst recruiters was what we did. And so I owe it to Terrence and I owe it to everybody else because I was I was working from as [00:07:00] a VP of HR, I’d leave work at 6 or whatever they’d ask you to, and then you’d come home and 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock, kids told me, you know what, dad, you’re never here.

And I said, yes, I am. What do you mean? He goes we go to sleep. We get up in the morning. You’re not here. We go to sleep. You’re still not here. And I realized, I only see them on weekends and the times you do see them, they’re ready to go to bed. . And so that’s so true. That’s when recruiting became like, I wanted to control my life and I wanted to call my own shots, and I wanted to be the boss of me, and so that’s what I did.

Ryan Leary: No, it’s interesting that you bring that up. It’s gosh, I can remember as you’re saying, I’m like holding back the vomit because I remember back when I was going to it and this is pre 2011, right? So a while back, the kids were still young, but they were younger. I’d have to leave at seven o’clock, 630 to get to the [00:08:00] office on time by eight o’clock.

And then I wouldn’t leave the office till six o’clock. And then by the time I get home, it’s dinner and maybe I see them for a little bit before they got to go to sleep or they could have already been sleeping, right? I remember those times, man. I don’t ever want that back. Yeah,

Ernie Moreno: I’m with you. And that’s something we forget.

I have this new young man that’s working with me that used to hang out with my son. When he was in high school, and my son’s now, he’s doing graduate work, he’s in his 30s, they’re all in their 30s now, but he was a little kid that he knew in 5th grade, 6th grade, now he’s working with me, and he was telling me, he says, I tried to do work, you just started this week, he says, and he’d been doing staffing at other places, and he said, yeah, he goes, it’s different working with you, he goes I tell him, set your own schedule, do your own thing, I’m not your boss, you work with me, so you gotta tell me what you need.

I’ll coach you all you want, but I don’t want to be that guy on top of you. He says, this is the reason he [00:09:00] goes it was a bad day for me. It was my baby, my daughter, who’s 18 months. He says was I was taking care of her and I didn’t have that focus I wanted because I was watching her and not, and all this, I go, bro, time out.

I go, this is why we do what we do. You’re thinking eight to five. She has her own little hours, and treasures those hours with her, because you guys grow up really fast, and then you’re gone. But right now, you get to spend those hours with her, and that’s a gift. And so when you do that, just shape your job around that.

She’ll go to sleep, you make her calls, if they call you, if you’re in the middle of a call and the baby needs to go, you tell them, Hey! I gotta go because my baby’s crying, but I’m going to call you back in a few minutes, and that’s okay, but it makes you human, and you’re going, they’re going to wish, they’re going to wish, the person receiving your call is going to wish they were in your shoes, but [00:10:00] remember, you’re in charge of your life, and if that person doesn’t appreciate that, you don’t want to deal with them.

You don’t want them as a client. Yeah. So

Brian Fink: Wait a minute, Ernie. Like we went deeply philosophical on this for a second. Do you think that, I guess I’m wondering, do you think that there is a large portion of people who just don’t have control over their life, that they’ve surrendered to somebody else?

And that this is

Ernie Moreno: I think our society, if you think about it, when you go to school, And you get out of high school or you get out of college, everyone tells you, okay, now go get a job. They don’t tell you, go be an entrepreneur, go do what you want to do, go find your happiness, because it’s always go get a job.

So then you’re off getting a job and you’re working for somebody. And the reality of that is when you’re working for somebody, you’re making them money, but you’re not building anything yourself. [00:11:00] And I also say that, I also say that with there’s some folks that have that in their family, that people do know it, and they say, yeah, this is, go for it, and we encourage you.

But most of us in our families don’t have anybody that’s ever built a business. Because if, I say it from growing up a farm worker and growing up poor, that when people that come to your house, they’re usually poor people too. Because you don’t have the doctor and lawyer jumping into your house, visiting you.

It’s a poor person. So that’s what you’re, that’s what you acknowledge, that’s what you know. And so what we have to teach each other is that it’s okay to take a chance. It’s okay to start your own business. And that’s what we do as sourcers and recruiters and all this, because it’s a crazy group of people.

And I, that’s why I think for the most part, we are not taught to take a chance. We’re taught to get a job. And once you get in the job, you get in that cycle and you don’t get out of it because the money’s good, so I’m trapped. [00:12:00] And that’s what it was when I was getting paid 200, 000 as a VP of HR.

I couldn’t leave until they fired me.

Brian Fink: All right. So I didn’t, Ernie, I always thought that you’d always been a recruiter. I didn’t realize that you had been quote unquote, part of the HR infrastructure of an organization. Understanding HR, does that mean? Does that make it easier for you as a recruiter or harder, or does it have no impact whatsoever?

What’s

Ernie Moreno: going on there? It makes it easier in the sense that I’ve sat at the table with other executives and as a result of doing that it gave me some credibility that I’ve been there, done that. The other part is having the law degree, like all of a sudden everyone says, Oh, you’re smart. Where’d you go?

I went to Hastings, University of California, San Francisco. Oh, you got that? And you’re not a lawyer. But I always did things that were a little different, when I was a little kid, I was five [00:13:00] years old, we were, I was picking out in the fields. This child labor law, you go out there and you’re working the fields, picking plums and peaches and nectarines and what have you, and there’s no toilets.

So you’re out there doing your business, in the fields. It’s always been doing your own thing, but I I think it gives me an advantage, but at the same time, there are a lot smarter recruiters than me.

Brian Fink: Do you think it’s important to be the smarter, smartest recruiter, or do you think it’s to be the one that, that actually does the work?

Because I think there are a lot of recruiters that are looking for shortcuts and I don’t think there’s any shortcut in what we’re building. I

Ernie Moreno: think in order to be successful in this. It’s not because of the money. It’s because you want to learn. And a recruiter learns and they think, okay, got it. But you constantly got to be changing, chat came on, the computer came on the typewriter came back, and people fought all of that, the cell phone, the [00:14:00] mobile, everything fought how you did it.

And so now, you got to adjust with the times. And the only way you adjust with the times is by reaching out to other people. So I like that. I like the fact that I get to talk to young and old recruiters and you learn things, but you gotta be hungry. You gotta be hungry to learn, but you gotta know how to learn.

So

Ryan Leary: that’s okay. So a lot of our listeners and people that we talk to, they’re corporate recruiters, right? They’re in, they’ve got, There’s 50, 000, 100, 000 people in their companies, a team of 100 recruiters, but there’s a large, very large contingent of recruiters in it, in that that we run in circles with here that are one, two, three people company.

And one of, I think some of the biggest challenges, or at least the conversations that I have, the biggest challenges are, how do I get my job orders? Especially when I’m just starting out. How do I get job orders? How do I get clients to trust that I’m going to bring [00:15:00] them solid candidates? And then we can get into the tech later because there’s a whole bunch of questions around tech and what to use and all of that good stuff.

But what’s your recommendation for a recruiter who’s just getting started, which is a good part of our listenership getting job orders?

Ernie Moreno: Number one, I think you listen to podcasts, you listen to things that sort of on Facebook, you listen to the group. Listen

Brian Fink: to Animal Show, where Ernie is on there all the time.

Okay, shout out to Animal, go ahead.

Ernie Moreno: And then you you reach out to them. You call them. I, people are afraid to call. So weird. And I remember, I called Brian and, the thing is, when you call people, they’ll call you back. But I’ve given my phone number to people and say, here, call me.

Because I don’t like doing this little thing on, on, on Facebook where you’re doing a little, you’re answering a question and you’re answering, there’s a lot more to that. But the real part of it is [00:16:00] you develop a friendship and that friendship can lead to a lot of questions that can be answered for you as you’re growing your business.

Like how do you do an MPC? And when I listen to somebody that’s doing an MPC and they’re doing it, I’ll get on the phone and call them. Hey, I heard you, heard your podcast, loved it, you’re great. Can you share with me some thoughts? Can you give me five minutes? And then you ask questions of them, and then pretty soon those guys become your compadres, and you’re their favorite.

They, they love talking. The recruiters love talking, and you can get, you can get their time. It’s like what I learned with in business. When you deal with the president of a company, he’ll give you all the time in the world. When you’re dealing with the underlings, it’s a different story.

So call the president. And then he’ll say, hey, why don’t you call my VP of HR because I’d like for you to work with me. I go, okay, can you give me an intro? Yeah. VP of HR picks up the phone and says, hey, I’m [00:17:00] supposed to work with you? Yep. Okay. And you’re in. But that’s the difference. It’s like nobody wants to call, everybody wants to text, and everybody wants to email.

And they ask for permission. They’ll tell you if they can’t talk, and then you just be real courteous of their time. Does that answer your question?

Ryan Leary: Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting conversation. If it gets more

Brian Fink: questions, if it gets more, I’m sorry, go

Ernie Moreno: right, go. Yeah, no, yeah, it

Ryan Leary: does, I’ll let you ask your question, but it answers a lot of questions, and I think it’s just a fear that people have, and I think a lot of, and I’ll go off track here, I think a lot of recruiters, especially in the one and two person companies, are new recruiters.

Within the last. Call it 10 years. I don’t think they’re 30, 40, 50 year recruiters. And so they never had to use only the phone. And I fall into that, right? Fink, I don’t, I forget when you, I started in [00:18:00] 2001, 2002. And, we, of course we had the internet. But the phone was our main source of connecting that and whatever was in our database at the time if we had an ATS and we’ll just pick it up as my

Brian Fink: own dial.

Dude okay, so I remember that we did two things, is that on Monday morning, You wanted to make sure that you were not late to the office because you wanted to get to that fax machine, you wanted to see what had come through, who had responded to your jobs in the newspaper, right? That was And I’m glad you That was the beginning of CareerBuilder, right?

When CareerBuilder was like, oh yeah, you can look at a thousand resumes a day, right? I don’t know what it’s at now, but that was before they had a thousand resumes a day that you could look at. Yeah, 37 resumes a day. You can check them out online on a computer. So the my, my question is, I want to know what, Okay, so Ernie, I want to know why [00:19:00] recruiters are so scared to talk to other recruiters, to talk to other, to just talk to candidates, right?

I worked for a major technology company, we’ll call them AWS, and recruiters that were successful got on the phone with their candidates, recruiters that, and they would call anybody, they would call through the ATS. And then there were recruiters who simply were like, I’m going to send out 200 in mails and wait and see what comes my way.

What are, why, like, why are they, where’s

Ernie Moreno: the fear come from? The fear comes from that’s not what we do today. People are texting each other, people are, that’s a way of communicating. They say the kids, anybody probably younger than 60 years old is they’re used to texting. And that’s how we talk.

And it’s. It’s got to go back. If you want to be good at this you have to go back. And I can tell you by example, I’ve, being on this show, it’s like even asking, Hey, can I be on the show? I want to talk. I got ideas, and [00:20:00] then from here, I’ll tell you. This is my plan.

Everybody that’s been on the show before, I can now call them and say, hey, I’m an alumni of this program. I saw your recording, bro, and thank you. And they go, hey, I saw yours too. So we like know each other now. And that happened with other podcasts that I’ve done. That’s interesting. That you can use that.

And people always say you should start a podcast. I’m that one layer below because I’m too, I don’t have enough knowledge to start a podcast, nor do I want the time to do it because it seems very complicated. Look

Ryan Leary: there’s only one rule with that though, Ernie. You can’t talk about endowments and funds and scholarships for alumni.

You’re just an alumni. Don’t be giving our money away. Oh,

Ernie Moreno: wait a minute.

Brian Fink: I was going to ask about the alumni endowment. I was like, who’s running that?

Ryan Leary: Yeah, this is I’ve never thought about this. I never thought about it like that. Oh, yeah, that’s Fink, and then we get right back to it. Turn your shoulder slightly to the back, [00:21:00] your other shoulder. Yeah, what are those white cups? You got two of the same cups there. What is that? Oh,

You like chugging down sodas all

Brian Fink: day? What are you doing? Okay, so I like styrofoam cups. I know that I’m going to get some hater aid because they’re not environmentally…

My my, my straws are environmentally safe. They’re metal straws. But the, but the big ass cup isn’t. Big ass cup. Everybody’s got these… No. So I like drinking our styrofoam cup. Like I grew up in people know that I grew up in the rural South and what have you. And you kept your cup, right?

Like you kept your cup either so that you could have it so that you could get some cold water and keep it cold. Or you used your cup for your dip, right? This is not dip. This is water. And because I just celebrated being nicotine free for the past 10 years, like last last Friday. But no, so I keep my two cups and I also have my giant water jug because got the same

Ryan Leary: one.

Brian Fink: Yeah. I think Tincup is the one who turned me out and onto the big giant water cup mug.[00:22:00] But for those of you who know that this is an audio program Ryan is. Brian is inspecting all of my, my hydration devices that I use to stay fluid with you.

Ryan Leary: Oh, man. Meanwhile, Ernie’s pounding a fifth over.

Brian Fink: I’m learning. I’m learning. I got to get one of those big clips.

Ernie Moreno: Okay. I don’t think I can do styrofoam though. Yeah.

Ryan Leary: You saved the turtles, man. I forget where I cut you off, Ernie. I’m sorry. Alumni, endowments, something.

Brian Fink: It’s okay. It’s okay. You cut Ernie off so that you could make me look like an environmental asshole.

Ernie Moreno: It’s okay. I think it’s as you’re doing things, like when I was talking about That just came to me I, and I started calling people from other programs, that have done it. And I just said what if I reach out to them? Because they all say, hey, we can call me whenever you want.

And nobody calls. Oh, yeah.

Brian Fink: Nobody calls anybody. I tell people that they can call me on Friday afternoons. Yeah. Like three to five. I [00:23:00] usually do nothing but like recruiter

Ernie Moreno: help desk. And I picked up the phone. Like I called you on that. We talked. And then I said, yeah, I was talking to Brian Fink.

He goes, Brian Fink? I go, yeah, I know them now but people are amazed of, there are people on these podcasts or that, that are on, on, on different Facebook programs or whatever. And they the groups and they’re surprised that you know them. But every one of these guys, I can guarantee you that post all the time are open to talking to you.

And that’s a big, that’s a big learning thing because people learn from the podcasts, the groups, talking to people, going to conferences, but they don’t take advantage of it. There’s books you can read, and you’re going to… Yeah, look at that chick.

Brian Fink: I was like, check out my book. Holding it up where people can’t see that.

Ernie Moreno: Your

Ryan Leary: book is sitting in my kitchen on the counter propped up like I wrote the fucking thing. [00:24:00] And when everyone comes in, they’re like, Oh, is that a book you wrote? I’m like I read the

Ernie Moreno: cover page. Get some masking tape and put your name on it.

Ryan Leary: I just hope I said, no, actually, that’s my podcast partner.

I was like, I feel like it’s a real deal, man.

Brian Fink: No, I was actually, I was having lunch with Hope Chernak today, shout out to Hope if you’re listening and we were talking about book number two, and I’m 70 pages into book number two, I’m working on putting that together and as Ernie says, call him, call me if there’s something that you think that I left out of this book, because I want to make sure I put it in the next

Ernie Moreno: one.

And that’s always a good thing to do. I, just, it just amazes me how, as recruiters, we’re… We’re shy to reach out to the people we need to talk to, and, but the other thing is goes back to what Ryan was talking about fear. And even the fear of like internal recruiters not wanting to [00:25:00] learn how to get job orders.

Now, to me, you got to learn the whole thing. You got to learn everything, and then you pick what you want to do. You want to be a sourcer, you want to be internal, you want to be this, but you know how to do everything, and the reason you know how to do everything, or you have to learn how to do everything, is because you never have that moment where I’m looking.

You got to take control of your life. And when you’re you, you may say now I got to pick up a job over here. I got to do this because I’m at the time when I got let go, someone said, so what are you going to do? I said I’m going to go home and turn on the, turn on my computer and start recruiting this afternoon.

And you’re in control, and

Brian Fink: that’s, I want to interrupt there and about that control is that Ernie you’re a 360 recruiter. You do NPCs, you do business development, you do sourcing, and you do recruiting. How do you manage your

Ernie Moreno: time? I don’t. Somebody who’s honest about [00:26:00] it. No, you just do what’s important.

What brings you closest to the money and everything else will fall into place. But I’ve never been the type to say I can structure my life, because I, my mind goes all over the place. But also within it, because I’m working with three other, four other people that work with me I’m coaching them.

We’re doing it because of chat. I’m playing with chat a little bit and seeing what I can do. There’s magic in there. There’s magic. And so you got to figure out, how do I do this quickly? And even you take something like, you can give it a prompt, and then you plug in the job description, and it’ll give you a short summary of a of the job description that you can post that’s exciting to somebody because nobody these days wants to read a job description.

And as people, as I’m talking to people, they will ask me, Okay, Ernie, that’s a VP of Ops job you’re working on, and these are VP of Ops guys. And they’ll say, Can you send me [00:27:00] the website to that company? I go, Sure. They go, Can you send me the job description? I go, How long have you been in this business?

They go, Oh, 20 years. When was the last time you saw a job description that you actually stuck to it? I go, that’s not gonna, they’re not gonna, they only have that for government reasons. Or for doing their compensation, but they’re not going to tell you we’re doing your we’re doing your performance review today.

Let’s go over your job descriptions. They never do that. I’ve never had anybody, because they always have that little line, and whatever else we decide to tell you to do, you better do it. And or people never say, hey, you had me do this and this, now put that in my job description. No, because nobody looks at it anymore.

Hey man, do you

Brian Fink: think we over index on the job description and we don’t… Yeah, you’re nodding your head.

Ernie Moreno: Okay. Yeah, just basically to me, it’s number one, the manager, whoever is your boss, is the company. If I work for [00:28:00] Apple, I work for whoever, if I work for you, you are what decides for me whether my life is good or bad.

But then again, I could say it’s great, I want to work with you all the time. But at the same time, the day you leave, then another guy comes, and I could be a superstar under you, but the other guy thinks… I think he’s the boss from hell. And so my whole life changes. And that’s what I was getting at in terms of you gotta take control of your life.

And you gotta plan ahead and you gotta look at what you wanna do. And you can’t let other people control you. Because if you go to another company, I gotta follow you now. But then you’ve ruined someone else’s life. But, it’s a, it’s an interesting game we play. In terms of jobs but that’s what people don’t see in terms of recruiting.

You see it in terms of, I’m working for a staffing agency and now I gotta make 45 phone calls and I gotta do all this and that. You need [00:29:00] to work for somebody that’ll tell you, just get a placement. There’s some people that say, just give me once a middle of the day, I don’t care how many calls you make.

But all I gotta do is and, if they give me a commission, or some sort of pay during the week. And that’s a whole lot different than if I have to go out and do my own hunting and eating what I kill. And that’s what I like. I don’t like anyone telling me what I got to do, how many phone calls.

And that’s why I never worked for anybody. And the people that work with me, as you notice, I’m very careful in saying they work with me. They don’t work for me. They’re all like, I got four people, they’re all 1099s, and in, in the agency, challenge the agency owners there. They always say, you come work for me, and then you get a, you get up to a 50% commission on jobs that you, and you’re a 360 recruiter.

You get 50%. And I always tell people, why in the hell are you giving them 50%? The [00:30:00] owner, I go, you’re doing all the work yourself. Why don’t you just do it yourself? I don’t know because I need, I like the office atmosphere and he provides, he pays for the rent for the office. And then he pays for all of the software and whatever.

And I said I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve, I figured that if you work out of your home, your expense as a recruiter is about 10, 000 at the most if you go crazy. And. That’s your database, that’s everything, and there are a lot of things that are one time buys, like your computer, your monitors, your chair, everything else is like under 10, 000.

So you, you made this guy, you billed 200, 000, you just gave this person, you gave her 100, 000. What’s the logic in that? Given that, the people that work with me, they get 90%. I get 10%

Are you [00:31:00] hiring? Okay.

Brian Fink: I just gave him the boga lot. I just like, whoa. Yeah. I’m sorry. I need a job. .

Ernie Moreno: Yeah. You guys are qualified. , . No but it’s I want them, and the thing is this, these people have become my family, they are my family, my son works with me, I got a cousin, I got this kid that lived in my house when he was a little kid, and he’s, he’s now a man with a wife and a child Hey, I don’t need his money.

I’ll take I want to train him. I want to work with him. And then I have another friend that was one of my clients that decided during COVID she didn’t want to do HR anymore. So she asked me if I would show her how to do it. And we took her to the dark side and she now knows how to do recruiting.

And that’s what she’s doing. And so given that they become, they’re like family. And I said, I want, I don’t want to take money from family. I get a little bit, 10%, just to [00:32:00] teach them, but I enjoy that, and that’s what keeps me motivated, and it’s a challenge, but at the same time, there’s so many rewards, like I mentioned before the show, I got, I think after all these years, 23 years since 98 of doing recruiting, I finally got a website, and in getting that website, Adam did it for me, Adam’s my cousin, he says, what’s going on bro, you don’t got a website?

I go, yeah, I don’t need it. Let’s get a website. I’ll do it for you. So he contacted his friends on the East Coast who showed him a website. He liked it. He showed it to me. I said, yeah, I like it. He goes, I got a friend here that he’s my buddy. And he told me he would do it for me for free.

You want me to do it? I go, hey, go for it, do whatever you gotta do. And so today we launched a website. And we have a website now, and it’s pretty badass, because it connects with the ATS and the whole bit, and now I guess I’m legitimate and I gotta work harder to [00:33:00] make it work. But it’s the start of

Ryan Leary: your downfall now.

Yeah no. You got technology, you’re going to have technology issues. Candidates are going to get all pissed off at you. I’m

Ernie Moreno: going to get one of the mobile phones next. The

Brian Fink: mobile.

Ernie Moreno: We’ll get the mobile phone. Get some internet. But no, it’s really, the truth of it is you can have people that work for you, they can think like it’s their business.

Number one, your job as, I don’t know what you want to call me, a mentor, a teacher, whatever, working, somebody works with them. We got to teach each other, and I’ve seen so many people that Are afraid to let people learn and, even if you work with clients, that sometimes they have some very talented people under them, but they don’t want them to know anything.

I don’t get that.

Brian Fink: I don’t get that, man. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to empower people to be bigger than themselves. I don’t fucking get that. Sorry about that.

Ernie Moreno: No. And that’s the real trick to it is I’ve told people, I [00:34:00] said, my goal is if you’ve never done a job, Or get a client.

You’re going to have to get a client. That’s your goal. Go find a freaking client. I’ll teach you how to do it. Get on the freaking phone. Talk to people. Just go for it. And have fun with it. And make mistakes. And if you make mistakes, I’m going to fix it for you. But don’t worry about it. Just make mistakes.

And don’t have any fear. And if you don’t care, because all you, if you make a phone call and you screw up. What’s the remedy? Hang up. And that’s it. They’re not going to call you back let’s finish my conversation with you because you upset me. No, hey, bye. And you go on to the next one.

And you don’t keep, you don’t, you get over it. You got 30 minutes to get over it. 10 minutes. Whatever you give yourself. But life is not about negatives. You gotta be positive. And that’s what you got to do, you just got to make it happen for yourself, because I told them, I go, we’re all like, all of us working together is one, [00:35:00] you can get a stroke tomorrow, you can get this, you can get that.

And I don’t want to leave you guys saying, God, I wish he was still around because I didn’t learn enough. I want you to be able to say, you know what I know I learned a lot and thank you. And I want, I said, the other thing I want is should they decide to leave? Cause that’s what I want people saying, you trained for two years and then they go.

They trained for two years because they figured out you done took 500, 000 from them and they realized they could make it on their own. That’s why they left. So the goal is, I tell them, your job is to train so you can go on your own. My job is to make it nice so you don’t want to leave. And you’ll say, you know what?

I like working with Ernie. ’cause we learn a lot and it’s fun and that’s the only way I know how to do it. I said, because if it’s not fun or if you bring drama to me, then I’ll catch you. I’ll let you go. ’cause there should be no drama because I don’t wanna get an ulcer over this. I wanna work with people I [00:36:00] like.

And if I don’t like you, I’ll kindly ask you to, to please be not part of the organization. But you can always call me and I’ll give you advice, but I do not want trauma in my life. Because, it’s, life is too hard and I don’t want to get an ulcer.

Ryan Leary: I like that. I think one of the greatest compliments you can get from a current employee, especially one that you invest the time in, is when they go off and start their own thing.

Even if they hated you. I’ve always looked at, even if they left on a note of saying, you know what, you were an asshole. But. You’ve given them the tools for the last two or three years to now get the courage, go out on their own, start their own thing. And in the back of their mind, they’re either thinking, this is what Ernie would do.

Or, you know what, he would do this, so I’m going to do this. One way or the other, you’ve helped shape [00:37:00] them. But I think that’s the biggest form of flattery is just… Getting more people to get out there and start their own thing. We’ve had it happen here, RecruitingDaily. And I think it’s amazing. I, even just down to our writers.

Some of our writers and our trainers have blossomed into like full businesses. Out of just doing webinars and stuff. And it’s amazing.

Ernie Moreno: You reminded me of a story where I was working as a VP of HR. And then two of my people that worked with me came into the office. And they said, Ernie, we got a problem. We want to know what you would do.

And then they said, I said, okay. So they gave me the problem. I go, why don’t we do this and this? And they go, okay. And so one hands the other one a dollar. And I said, what happens? He goes, we play this game, what would Ernie do?

I said she goes, so I won. That’s because we said, this is what you would do. And I found out that as we went along, I had [00:38:00] less and less work to do because they were doing it the way I wanted them to do it and the way I thought we should do it, but they were improving it, and that even came to like things like a social event in terms of a company party.

Before, when I got there, I’d have to do everything, are we doing this? Are we doing that? Later on, it was just, what are we doing? He goes we just give you the microphone, you go up and talk to the people and that’s it. I go, what about cleanup later on? He goes, nope, we got that taken care of.

What about this? We got that food, boom. What about the gifts? Boom. And they go, yeah, everything’s taken care of. And so that, I go, wow, right on. It got boring. But you’re right. You can give people have a lot of power and people want, they want to learn, they want to grow. And if they’re not going to grow with you, they’ll grow with somebody else.

All right,

Brian Fink: so we have covered so many things that were not on the agenda. I thought we were going to have a conversation about ChatGPT. We went into fear, we went into entrepreneurship, we went into, [00:39:00] in effect, owning your life and being responsible with it. Ernie this is the part where Ryan wants to say, give me three things that would that you would, but I think it’s different is that.

What’s one thing that you could, if you had a if you had the opportunity to talk to 300 recruiters that had less than six months of experience?

Ernie Moreno: What would you tell them? Don’t be afraid. I would tell them, learn how to learn. And people assume that everyone knows how to learn. But figure out within yourself, what’s your best way of learning?

And then, do that. In other words, some people prefer podcasts, some people prefer books, some people prefer Just being on chat or, whatever they want to learn, but it’s, you gotta understand that you have to continue learning. And for all the years I’ve done it, I don’t think I stopped.

I go on to YouTube in the morning [00:40:00] to get, before I start to work and see what popped up last night and who I can hear from and just go through them all. And I will do things like people, I was doing chat in January and before it became. Yeah. And people were telling me, they go I’m never going to use it and whatever, and I had a doctor friend of mine who I went to kindergarten with and we’re still friends and I called him and he’s, I was telling him about chat and he goes, I’ll never use it Ernie.

So I said what are your problems? And I told him, we just went through it, and I said, let me just show you. I showed him, and then he called me up, and he told me, hey, I just want to thank you. I had a project I was going to do for some medical issues that I had, and it was going to take me all weekend.

And I ran it through chat, and I did it in an hour. This report I had to write.

Brian Fink: It scares me about a doctor, but that’s great.

Ryan Leary: I was just going to say that. Yeah. I had this case and the guy’s arm was all fucked up.[00:41:00]

Oh my goodness. Ernie, thank you so much for for coming on, man. I know we went 37 ways, but I think it was worth it. I think people are going to get some good value out of this. And yeah, man, thank you so much. And just hope to talk to you again soon.

Ernie Moreno: Thank you guys. I appreciate it and it’s a lot of fun and thank you for all that you guys give because I got to keep learning and you guys got to keep working.

Yes, sir.

Brian Fink: Thank you.