Will Bachman 00:01
Hello, and welcome to Unleashed. I’m your host Will Bachman and I’m here today with Jason Sanders, who is a runs fly cast and is a, which recruits management consultants and it consultants for a range of firms. Jason, welcome to the show. Hi, well, thanks very much for having me. So, Jason, I understand that you’re a second generation recruiter Tell me a little bit about what draws you into the business.

Jason Sanders 00:32
Well, I had never set out to be a recruiter actually had planned to be a history professor. But I realized in the 90s, that I was going to do much better financially. And otherwise, my wife did not want to move with me to Germany and watch me read books in archives. And so I decided to become a recruiter started out recruiting for consulting firms that were in a high growth spurt at the time, we’d done work with Accenture and KPMG, and Ernst and Young and a whole variety of other ones. And that was growing out of work that we have been doing, placing CIOs and every piece of it. And, and then at some point, I took over the business from my father, he retired. And I have been really running the firm in the direction of smaller and midsize consulting firms over the last several years. And then also working working with software companies and occasionally do work with some of the large firms. But most of the clients that we work with, are in a variety of different niche areas, and are very interesting companies to work with, to be honest.

Will Bachman 01:43
So a lot of listeners of the show may be alums of large global firms that are named brands that that we’ve all heard of KPMG or Deloitte or McKinsey, or Bain or BCG and so forth. What draws people to join a midsize firm? You probably I’m sure you have to sell people on these opportunities. What sort of is the draw for people to to join one of a firm of that size?

Jason Sanders 02:20
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, it definitely takes some selling to get people to move. Most people that are in McKinsey or Accenture or other large firms don’t have the idea that Okay, I’m going to move and join a smaller and midsize firm. Some do but most don’t. And I think what happens with a lot of folks, this is particularly at levels as they kind of reach a place where they don’t feel like their career is going to develop as quickly or in the way that they would like, they don’t have the kind of flexibility to pick projects that they work on, maybe they’re getting, you know, becoming too much of a generalist and not much of a specialist or the other way around. And there’s something that’s creating some kind of a problem for them. And, and having the look in a different direction. Many go through the process of thinking about going into industry. And some actually, many decide that that’s the path that they want to take with their career. But there are also a lot that look at industry. And they say, well, this really isn’t the place that I want to go. They don’t necessarily know about midsize and smaller firms, at least not not directly, right. So you sort of need to convince them to to consider that as an option. And they need to understand how those companies will help them meet their career goals. It’s really connecting the two and I think this is true. In any kind of recruiting situation, it’s it’s not so much selling the opportunity for as it is to relating what a person wants to do and where they want ahead in their career with the opportunity that you have. And the reality is, is that a turn a lot of people away because I don’t think they fit. I don’t want to sell people into taking an interview with a company where it’s not going to be a good fit either based on their skills or based on their their interests. So in some ways, it kind of sorts itself out but you do need to make people aware of the firm that you’re representing and and let them know what what the benefits are. To get them to at least sit up and take a look.

Will Bachman 04:33
For someone who’s interested in the idea of joining a smaller firm midsize firm. It’s not the dis just even this the discovery of what firms exist is not incredibly easy. Are there any lists or directories that you recommend if you want to find a firm that’s in your niche in your in your space? How do you even go about creating a list like that for a consultant that’s interested in joining a firm that’s focused on a particular area?

Jason Sanders 05:10
Well, that is a question that I need to answer for myself fairly regularly, because it’s a business development question for us as well, who are some new firms that we could go after, because small firms seem to crop up all the time, one of the places that I found to be a good source is consulting magazine and consulting magazine’s list of companies that are top boutique firms, top small companies each year. And the last time I checked, and it has been a little while, you could go to previous years and check these out. So you know, if they have top 10, companies, you can go back over, you know, five, or 10 years, or whatever number they have, and you can all of a sudden build a list of 50 to 100 companies. So that’s a great place to start. And a lot of those companies are high quality. The other thing that I would do is go to LinkedIn, and try to triangulate to companies of quality, meaning if you were interested in it, but kids who love, for example, wanted to be in companies that had people like McKinsey in them, then you could take a look at people who were formerly at McKinsey and see where they’re working now and get some ideas about which firms they’re there. You know, you could they they would be they would be at that would be potential companies that you could, you could get in touch with. That’s more, that’s going to take longer, because McKinsey people go to a lot of different places. But that is one way to do and I probably use those to at least to start.

Will Bachman 06:45
Yeah, I mean, I suppose you could also back into it by looking at industry conferences in some niche area and see what sort of consulting firms are giving presentations at those places. You know, look up the speakers. And if they’re at, you know, like Will Bachman from the Bachman group giving some talk on some topics like, Oh, what’s that firm? Do and you know, to find out the companies in your niche, if you’re in the dog food industry find that, you know, the dog food pet industry conference and see who all the, you know, speakers are?

Jason Sanders 07:22
Because, yeah, I would be that would be a good way to do it as well. You know, I mean, there are also lists on the internet that you can pull up. But I just haven’t found them to be that effective, that that exact sort of older information. And if you were interested in a particular industry, you could dig into lots of different areas around an industry like conferences, as you mentioned, and for that there are other avenues as well, I tend not to do that because I I organized by the industry of consulting as opposed to an industry that I consulted with serve. It’s good idea.

Will Bachman 08:02
There used to be I think, the Kennedy book, that would be a directory of all the consulting firms in the universe. Do they still publish that? Or is there anything like that out there?

Jason Sanders 08:12
I don’t think so. I don’t think so I haven’t seen that in a while. They were acquired also Kennedy. I was looking for somebody to ask me about us compensation survey recently. And I was able to track them down. But it was not an independent kind of organization as it had been in the past. Okay. That’s my mind. I’m it’s a little fuzzy. So I wouldn’t recommend it just I would recommend just taking my word for it. Check on the internet and see what you find. But I don’t believe that that has the same kind of information. And frankly, you know, there are services if you’re talking about just recruiters, there are services that can put you in touch with recruiters. But I don’t know that that’s going to be the most helpful in a job search. Yeah.

Will Bachman 09:01
So for a consultant that’s interested in working for a midsize or smaller firm, what are some ways that what are some things from your experience doing many, many searches that these firms are looking for in terms of skill sets? And, you know, of the of the people they’re hiring? Is that Is it anything different than for a larger global firm?

Jason Sanders 09:26
I think that it is at times and it’s very different. It tends to be more specific. smaller firms tend to be more niche. They tend to focus in a particular area of industry or function, or they have some kind of flavor that makes them different that they use as a marketing hedge. And I think that also is legitimate in terms of the services that they provide many times and they will look for very specific types. To serve as very specific functional and industry areas, many cases, that’s particularly true with people that are further on in their career. They’ll tend not to hire generalists as much more junior people, you get a little bit more leeway, but they tend to be more still more interested in skill sets, or I should say, experiences, then then potential and skill sets. I mean, that tends to be the case. And, you know, I think the good thing I you know, I don’t I don’t fully know, your your audience will be mentioned that there are people that are independent consultants. And I think that the that AV listening, that that for an independent consultant, or somebody that has more experience, that a lot of times, those firms are more tolerant of a non traditional profile, right. So they don’t necessarily need somebody that graduated from MBA school, and then came up through the ranks for 10 years and left, and then went and joined this smaller firm, a lot of times those firms, number one don’t have access to those people. Because, you know, they sort of figure if they’ve paid their dues during those 10 years, they want to go into something other than work with with a smaller Firm A, they will work and work in industry or whatever. And, and so they they the smaller consulting firms, then say, well, that really isn’t my market, and so can talent market. So the talent market, then are people that really know the industry well, which opens up opportunities for people that have those, you know, those industry and functional experiences, even if they don’t have the same resume as somebody that’s coming out of one of the major firms, for example.

Will Bachman 11:46
That makes sense. Maybe you could give us a sense by going through some of the mandates that you’re currently working on now, not showing the client names, obviously. But could you go through a few of the the active searches that you’re working on to give us a sense of the range of what you do?

Jason Sanders 12:04
Yeah, I’m happy to be there, I think we have a client where we’re working with a variety of different sort of mid level positions in financial services. And they tend to hire a project manager types. And we we’ve just get all different kinds of remits from them, just, you know, various types of shades of different skills with the with the ongoing theme of project management. We, let’s see, we’re doing we’re actually we’re doing some work with a with a solo consultant, this is a really unusual one. But this is the kind of work that we pick up because we focus on the on the smaller firms. But this this is a solopreneur and supported by an operational team, but he’s the primary service provider. And he’s just gotten to a point where he’s overwhelmed itself with work and is looking for somebody to join him as a principal. That’s a really interesting role as well, because he doesn’t have the restrictions of even the mid size companies. I mean, he’s looking for somebody that I would say, sort of mid to senior level. But he can hire somebody that has, you know, maybe 10 years experience out of college all the way up to somebody who has 40 years of experience, it’s a really unusual mandate for us. Most of the work that we’re doing right now is in the tech area. That’s that’s just, I think, the cause of the pandemic, there are very few consulting firms that are hiring, we’re seeing a lot of people coming out of the Big Five right now that are being laid off. And these are people that mean, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen layoffs of people of this caliber, and pretty large numbers. So if the smaller consulting firms were hiring right now, they would really have a, you know, their their choice to pick from. But, you know, our smaller clients, by and large, are put things on hold or not firing, and we’re just kind of kind of have to wait it out and see. But in the tech space, they see more in the in the pharma space, for example, we’re doing a variety of different searches that are sometimes out of consulting, some are their post sales, consulting, implementation type consultants, but we’re also doing work in the sales area, VP, sales, account executives and a variety of other positions that support the organization. And that’s a way that we go to market we look to support an organization, regardless of what type of person they’re hiring. And this is something that we’re that we can do because of the clients that we deal with. Most of the client relationships that we have are at CEO level and we position ourselves to be able to work You know, at everything through somebody that’s a couple of years out of college to their most senior executives. So yeah, I mean, that’s that’s kind of where things are right now, as I see it.

Will Bachman 15:13
I often get asked by consultants, how should they try to interact with a recruiter such as yourself? should people be sending you like a resume? Some people? I mean, should people like request a call with you? Or do you only talk to candidates? If they if they’re, you know, pertinent to a current search? Tell us a little bit about what a, you know, a candidate should expect if they want to get you know, your attention? And what’s the best way to do that, if a candidate wants to just be on your radar screen?

Jason Sanders 15:52
Okay, so I’m going to pull back from that question a little bit, and just talk about, you know, how, what it looks like, from a recruiters perspective, please, before talking about how to get in touch, okay. So a recruiter has a certain rack and they were retained search firm. I’m sure that this is true for probably most contingent firms. And certainly, for firms that are not in the business of of placement, right of taking money from somebody to help them whether it’s outplacement or to help them find a job to put the resume out into the universe, and so forth. So we get a certain number of racks, the number of racks that we get, relative to the number of people that we know, or that we get in touch with for search. And anyone time is very small, the number is very small, I don’t know 1%, maybe a fraction of 1%, maybe 2%. But whatever it is, you can figure that if you know a recruiter, it’s good thing you should know recruiters, they should be part of your network. If you’re professional, there’s no doubt. But you’ve got to figure that the chances of you being able to find a position through a recruiter, particularly if it’s at a specific point in time, right, because I will place people sometimes that I’ve known for four years, sometimes I’ll place people that I met yesterday, right that I reached out to so you know, if you take a specific moment in time where you are unemployed, let’s say looking for work. And you figure Well, you know, I want to get a job through a recruiter, the chances are going to be very, very, very, very small. That that’s that you know, you’re going to catch lightning in the bottle could happen. But it’s it’s not likely. And that’s general there are certain people it’s going to be more likely with, there are certain people’s going to be less likely with but if I go across the board, it’s going to be less less like. So what is the reason for having conversation with a recruiter? In my opinion, the best thing that you can get out of a recruiter is an introduction to somebody else and introduction to somebody in your field. And it’s probably going to be outside of a particular individual search, it’s really important when you’re getting in touch with the recruiter to have an idea of what it is that you want to get out of that conversation. If it’s interview, practice, that’s fine. But make sure that that is what you really want. Because if if you are looking for something specific, you’ve kind of got one chance, and you want to make that clear, and you want to make your best case for it. And in my opinion, that would be the number one thing is who to know, that can help me get to my ultimate goal of finding a new position. With that in mind, the way to the best way to get into a recruiter, the best way to get to me for sure is to know somebody who I know. And to ask for an introduction. People that send me resumes blind, almost universally, I delete the bad part. The reason is, is that the blind resumes I get are not anything near the area that I focus in. So there’s no point, right? So but the but when somebody makes a recommendation, I almost never say no. It’s just, you know, that’s the way that the world works, you know, somebody recommend somebody good to me. Or it’s somebody that I know, well, or I want to do a favor or whatever it happens to be, I’m happy to carve out 15 minutes or half an hour to have a conversation. The best conversations that I have in in those wise feel like I can be most helpful is if I understand that person’s background really crisply, and I don’t feel like I’m being pressured for, you know, their next job, or that they are calling me just so that I can keep that in mind for when a wreck from comes across their desk at my desk. You know, and I have if I’m, you know, brutally honest, it feels selfish to me. I mean, you know, you’re if you’re calling me, I’m happy to help but you know, it’s not just all about you. But if a person comes to me and they say hey, listen, you know I am I’m a pharmaceutical expert. I have a you know a background that’s specific Take in. And pharmacovigilance, for example, will I hear from the vigilant, I had a client in the pharmacovigilance area, all of a sudden, I can think of two or three people that I can introduce that person to may not be their next job. But I could certainly help them, move the needle. And I’ll always look for those kinds of opportunities, make those introductions, even outside of particular searches. And I can only do that if I understand what that person wants and what they have to offer really clearly, if it’s too broad, then, you know, as with my best intentions, I can’t help. But to specifically answer your question, the best way to get in touch with a recruiter, certainly with me, is through an introduction through somebody that I know well.

Will Bachman 20:44
And it sounds like the best way or a good way to make use of that time would be to come prepared and say, Hey, here’s my background, and just one minute, and here’s how you can help me. Jason, it’s like, here’s maybe, should they share with you a target list of here’s kind of the companies that I’m thinking about would be great fits for me. And here is the sort of roles that I’d like, you know, do you know anyone at any of these companies? Or what do you think of this list? Like, how should they know?

Jason Sanders 21:16
I think it’s a little more subtle than that. You know, I mean, I think, you know, I’m a person, right? I mean, I like to be talked to, and I mean, like ever, like anybody, right? I mean, you know, you just kind of want to have a talk, How’s the weather? What’s new? Yeah, I mean, it’s, there’s a part of that social element that I think needs to there’s a bonding part that needs to kind of come out of the conversation. And that’s part of it. So it’s, it’s not, it’s not a five minute call, you know, let me present my credentials. This is what I’m looking for. I’m sorry, we really want to take your time. It’s not that it really, you know, it’s sort of unwind. At least this is for me, right? I mean, I don’t know about other recruiters. For me, it’s, you know, have a conversation, get to know the person understand who they are. And then yeah, I mean, if they’ve thought about a list of companies that they’re interested in, that’s definitely helpful. You know, please don’t put it in the first 30 seconds of our conversation. You know, but, you know, if we get there, then then we get there. And, and it’s helpful to be to have a, you know, to be prepared, but to also be flexible, and to be ready to adjust to the time that you have, I try to make time, I mean, I make half an hour, if I’m going to talk to some, it’s just, I don’t I don’t rush phone calls. So you know, what, there may be other people that, you know, okay, I’ll give you 10 minutes. And if that’s the case, then, you know, you’re dealing with and then adjust accordingly. So,

Will Bachman 22:45
if someone if you offer to make an introduction to the pharmacovigilance, you know, executive that you know, what do you like the person that you’ve spoken to do? Do you ask people to draft an intro in the third person on your behalf and send it to you? So you can edit it? And, you know, forwarded along? Or what’s what’s sort of the best thing for a candidate talking to you to help help facilitate that?

Jason Sanders 23:15
Sometimes I do that, yeah. But it will be, you know, three to five sentences. And it’s just if I need something clarified, a lot of times if I know I can, I can do it myself with a sentence or two, depends on how close I am to the people that are involved. But yeah, having something like that is usually pretty helpful. Yeah.

Will Bachman 23:38
Okay. Many of the listeners of this show are independent consultants. In your experience, how do the partners at midsize firms view that experience? How do maybe, you know, executives at companies view that experience? Is it viewed as a negative? Is it viewed as similar to a period of unemployment? Or is it viewed as entrepreneurial and drive? And that’s what we are looking for? What are some ways that it’s viewed? And how can people make sure that they present themselves in the best light if they’re seeking to transition out of the independent consulting world?

Jason Sanders 24:19
Generally, and this is actually in direct contrast to one of the searches I’m working on right now. But generally, my clients don’t specifically look for independent consultants. That doesn’t mean that they won’t hire independent consultants. But the situations are variable. Sometimes they are more open and one of the things that make somebody more open to hiring an independent consultant if there’s a specific area that they focus on, sort of like what we were talking about earlier, if they can if they can put a brand on themselves as being excellent in a particular industry or function or both. Even better. Then there’s a greater chance. And frankly, it’ll be easier to conduct a search, because it’ll be easier to find companies that are in that particular area. You know, to be able to approach so. So that is one good way to capitalize on being an independent consultant. Another way is if you build a book of business, if you have business that you can bring with you to a client or relationships, or something that indicates that, that they’re not just bringing in the skills and experience, but that you can actually bring money and put it on the table, it’s another good thing to be able to do. If you’re doing more general work as an independent consultant, frankly, if you unless you want to stay an independent, independent consultant, I would try to get out out of that role as quickly as possible. Because the more generalist you are, the more smaller assignments that take up, they can take on, the further away that you get, the further away you get from something that is identifiable as a specific, functionally focused Industry Focus consultants, the more difficult it will be for you to rejoin a firm. If you if you have that, that focus that I mentioned, though, before, then you’ve got more, you’ve got more running room and you know, may never expire, it just depends. And part of this also will has to do with your relationships that you have with people, because a lot of times I mean, I come to this from the point of view of a recruiter and who can I place. And a lot of times it’s different if you have relationships, I mean, if somebody knows you, and they know, your skills, capabilities, and they you know, they know you as a person, and I think good fit with the organization, then some of these answers kind of go out the window. They’re just they’re they’re not as relevant because of the personal connections that already exist.

Will Bachman 26:56
Can you walk us through the process of once you have your initial call with the with a client and you have the mandate? How do you go about sourcing the candidates for that

Jason Sanders 27:11
there are two primary sources that we use. One are the relationships that we have. And the other is LinkedIn. I shouldn’t say that we have another another source for it, as well. And we get some it rolls in. And then we use different, different resources. But those are the two primary ones in management consulting. And it’s actually I mean, within our within our network, I mean that those are people that I know, generally, sometimes they’re connected to me on LinkedIn as a first level. And I might look through my first level people that are in let’s say, financial services or something and see some people that I recognize that reach out to them or whatever. So that’s kind of step one. The other one, which may be more relevant to your audience is we will do research on a program or a portal called LinkedIn recruiter, which is basically LinkedIn on steroids. And so it’s really fascinating. I mean, it’s the kind of thing where I would love to do a screen share with your audience. Because it works very differently than regular LinkedIn. I mean, how well the profiles, but the way that it organizes the way that it searches what you see the keywords that picks up the way that you can organize people, once you’ve identified them, whether you can reach out to them, put them in folders, put notes together, all kinds of different things that I think people that use LinkedIn are not aware of. And you can, you can most certainly optimize your LinkedIn profile. For a particular area. The most important thing if I were going to get advice, just based on the knowledge of what we’re doing with that LinkedIn recruiter portal, is to try to be specific and to try to be to try to move your specificity as high up on the profile as you can, including the subtlety of the headline, which is right under your, your picture, because and your name, because that is the area that people are going to see first, it’s going to stand out first. And from what I can tell, LinkedIn favors SEO for that. for that. That headline, I don’t know that that’s the case with your algorithm is secret. And I don’t think anybody can tell you specifically but it seems to me like it picks that up in that in that headline first.

Will Bachman 29:38
Yeah, give us some examples of a crummy headline and have a headline that is awesome.

Jason Sanders 29:45
Okay, so crummy headline with the I’m going to assume that Bob’s consulting is a is a midsize consulting firm Vice President at Bob’s consulting know now if consulting is McKinsey becomes a little bit different because there’s a name brand. And so that so the advice changes a little bit right partner at McKinsey, people understand what that is vice president at Bob’s consulting, nobody understands what that means. It’s a terrible headline. And what happens also will, it’s important for people to know is that, that LinkedIn defaults to the most recent title and company that you’ve worked with. So a lot of people are running around with LinkedIn profiles that just have the title and the company. And if the company is known, or if the title is ambiguous, then you’re putting something out there that a recruiter can’t relate to.

Will Bachman 30:44
Right now, and that could even though partner McKinsey is well known, it would be better probably to say, you know, automotive practice partner at McKinsey and, you know, leader of the, you know, digital automotive transformation initiative, or something where, you know, you get specific on what, what it is. So those are some crummy ones, what would be some much better titles that are going to headlines that are going to catch your attention when you’re doing a search?

Jason Sanders 31:12
Well, you just gave one. So now, that’s assuming that I’m looking for a strategist at a high level, in the area of automotive, and let’s say digital, so I could say digital strategist, right. So the three things that are important to have are the level and the level, you want to be, you know, specific about it and realistic and sort of modest a Down to Earth about it. I mean, if you haven’t been a CEO, I don’t know if I put CEO in the title unless you really confident that that was your next step. Vice President principle, those are things that are a little bit ambiguous. So you need to be careful in using those senior managers is pretty clear, or associate or consultant, pretty clear partner, or, you know, practice leader or, you know, pretty clear. So you want to be clear with that. The other thing is, is you want to have an industry don’t want to have too many industries, you don’t want to have you have you want to have industries that are related to each other if you have more than one. But it’s a good idea to have an industry so that people can, can put you in a box in their mind. Right, you’re going to with automotive, you’re going to eliminate non automotive, but you might say, you know, heavy industry and automotive right, this way you capture a little bit more, you put financial services in automotive, I don’t think people will really know where to go with. And if you put financial services, automotive and health care, people are going to get all kinds of confused. So you know, it’s good to have an industry, if you don’t have an industry, focus, don’t force it. But if you can put it there, it’s way better. And then functional focus. And that could be you know, I don’t know process engineering it program management, this strategy, digital, whatever it happens to be, I also wouldn’t try to stuff too many things into it. So those are the things to keep in mind. The general idea of your level general idea, the industry general idea of your function.

Will Bachman 33:11
So question for you is, you and I are both friends with David A. Fields, and he’s been a real mentor to me. And David talks about having a fishing line and his book, The irresistible consultants guide to winning clients. And in some cases, I’ve advised people to have more of a fishing line as their headline, rather than the title if they’re an independent consultant. So instead of saying, you know, like president at the Bachman group, which isn’t gonna mean anything to anyone, you might say something like, I help supply chain executives reduce, you know, cost of excess inventory, or something like that, whatever it is, you do, or I help chief financial officers, you know, you know, implement Lean principles in their, you know, accounting function, right. So telling it, who you serve, and what’s the problem that you solve? What’s your perspective on that advice? And if it’s terrible advice, I’m okay with that. But you know, in terms of rather than saying what your title is saying more is what problem that you solve as your headline.

Jason Sanders 34:26
It’s great advice for certain people. That’s the kind of headline I use. If you want to look me up on LinkedIn, you’ll see something like that as well. That makes more sense for somebody who has their own business or their own independent consulting business that wants to stay in it, because they’re there. They’re hanging out the professional shingle. It’s not a great line necessarily for somebody that’s looking for a job for employment opportunity. There are ways to mix it into both and you know, there are exceptions to the rule. But in general, I would say that that approach is better for somebody that is an entrepreneur.

Will Bachman 35:07
How much weight do you put on of content creation? So if someone has a set of white papers or articles or a podcast or YouTube channel, or newsletter on a specific topic, does that make them much more credible in your view, or kind of marginal? If somebody has been writing or creating content on a particular topic area,

35:38
I would love for you to tell me that. With giving your show, I have had next to no success, I’ve been creating content since 2008. I had a podcast in 2008. I’ve done all kinds of things to get put information out into the marketplace about recruiting and hiring. Right. So both sides of my job about sometimes different industry things I had authors show up and I interviewed authors, I mean, you know, I just, you name it, I tried it, I have a YouTube channel. And some of it I refer to my blog, I mean, just all kinds of things. I just never found it helpful in developing business. People have complimented me Oh, newsletters, like, you know, monthly kind of email sends. People told me, I’ve seen your stuff looks great, you know, I’ve gotten nice compliments and things like that. But no business has ever come out of that. So I stopped. I mean, I just found that, for me is much more valuable just to talk to people. I mean, I stay up with my network. And I find that, you know, one phone conversations probably worth like, you know, 25, blog posts, or whatever. I mean, it just, I don’t know, other people say that it works great. Maybe it’s me, I don’t know, but but it hasn’t worked for me. And so I find that, that networking is something that is much more effective tool,

Will Bachman 37:08
when you’re evaluating candidates, or selecting between candidates does that if one, you know, if you’re looking at two candidates, and one of them has a, you know, a blog on a topic, and one of them doesn’t, and one of them’s been writing about a topic for three years, you know, I don’t know artificial intelligence or supply chain optimization, or pharmacovigilance. And one hasn’t, how much of a factor would that play? in the minds of, you know, your clients in selecting that candidate? Or in even just getting your attention? Um, have you ever found a candidate from finding their content instead of, you know, through LinkedIn, I’m curious, you know, to hear if that content creation, building a personal brand, how much weight that would play in your, in your mind,

37:59
I don’t think it’s going to do much in terms of identifying candidate we used to do web research that was sort of, you know, scanning the web for articles and contradicts, like you’ve just described, we don’t do that anymore, that. So I don’t think it’s particularly useful as a as a fishing line for recruiters to come and find you. However, I do think that it could be very useful for somebody that’s looking to move into a specific area. And it just goes back to what we were talking about before. If somebody has a very specific area that they focus in, that they’re interested in, that they have a name in, that they may be able to bring relationships and business in. And that can be proven through blogs, white papers, presentations, anything like that, that adds credibility. That’s great. I mean, that’s gold, I would absolutely say that that’s extremely helpful. You know, if you don’t have it, I don’t think it’s, you know, it’s terrible. I mean, you can build a career without blogging or writing lots of white papers. But if you do have it, I’ll definitely try to leverage it. I, this is interesting, what happened just, I think was last week, I had a candidate is fairly technical guy, and we had a conversation, I was really unsure that presenting him I, you know, didn’t really fit what we were looking for, but he seemed to have a great background. And he said, you know, Jason, I’ve got this this long deck, you want me to send this to you, you know, the share with your client or not? And I said, Yeah, you can share I don’t usually like these things. I don’t usually like, you know, it was like a 30 pages or 20 pages or stuff that I had, there’s no way I could read. So I but I said yeah, just send it to me anyway, and I looked at it. I said, you know, it looks nice. It looks you know, it’s well done. It’s well present, but I said my climate client loved it. And they wanted to meet him and I think I think that a part of it for sure I, they may have wanted to meet him anyway. But that definitely tipped the scales in his favor. So, you know, the end of it is it’s not exactly what you were asking. But that kind of supporting information about projects that he had done and the impact that they they had had put in a really nice PowerPoint presentable form was something that was definitely beneficial to him.

Will Bachman 40:29
So I wanted to ask you here, as we are close to the top of our hour, what’s the best place for consultants that are listening to the show to find your firm, and it sounds like you aren’t interested in just receiving going to random resumes in the mail. But if someone did want to chat with you, it sounds like they should see if there’s any mutual folks that they have in common and get an introduction. So maybe you could share just what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and to follow up.

Jason Sanders 41:03
So two places Our website is fly cast llc.com. And that’s FLY ca ST. LLC COMM And the other is on LinkedIn, and Jason Sanders. And you could, you know, take a look at my stuff there. There’s something to YouTube, and you could probably look me up there if you felt like it. And I’m happy to you know, if people want to get it, reach, reach out and send it out, say, Hey, you know, I heard you on we’ll show and, you know, I’d like to talk or hear something about your practice. If I don’t get swamped with that. I’m happy to take that as an option. I mean, no problem. Well, I’m, you know, happy to, to, you know, at least have an email exchange, if not, actually get on the phone and talk to somebody if they want to. Oh, probably want my email address to Jason at fly cast. llc.com.

Will Bachman 41:54
That’s great. And we will include those in the show notes. Jason, thank you so much for joining today. This was a really fantastic discussion.

Jason Sanders 42:04
Yeah, absolutely. What was a pleasure? Well, I totally do and thanks for the opportunity to share some of the stuff that I’ve been building up over 25 years.

Will Bachman 42:14
My pleasure.