EP 214: Building TA Systems and Hiring Recruiters

Liam Naughton grew up in a hyper-competitive environment, from nonstop sports to a 35-day wilderness trip that pushed his limits early on. Now Head of Recruiting at Merge, he’s applying that same mindset to building scalable, AI-driven systems while stepping into a new chapter of leadership and fatherhood. In this conversation, he shares how discipline, system thinking, and learning to push through tough moments continue to shape how he operates.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have Liam Naughton with us. Liam, I didn't say it like I'm from New England. How do you how do folks say it from your neck of the woods?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Liam Naughton. They just dropped a T in the middle. No middle consonants, you know, where I'm from. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Awesome, man. Well, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah. Excited to be here. Thanks, uh, thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Yeah, yeah, we're super excited to have you. And um, so Liam is currently in the head of recruiting role over at Merge, which company definitely making waves, and uh I've I've I've heard of. So I'm really excited to to get to know you and learn a little bit more about what you're building over at Merge today.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, excited to be here and excited to talk through, you know, what I've where I've been, what I'm working on now, and what we're hoping for merge and and me going forward.

Growing Up Hyper Competitive

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Awesome. Great, great. So hey, where are you from?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Uh originally from Connecticut, you know, lived about six years in Bronxville, New York. And then, you know, when I was six or seven years old, family moved to uh a town called Darianne in sort of southwestern Connecticut, real commuter town. Like my dad and pretty much everyone else's parents, you know, worked in New York City. But uh, but yeah, originally from Connecticut.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Okay, cool. Nice. And you were uh pretty competitive as a kid, I think you said, right? You were into a lot of sports.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah, definitely. And that definitely started at home. You know, my dad and mom both played uh D3 college athletics. My mom was like multi-sport, you know, track and field basketball athlete. My dad was a football player. So like growing up, like all we did as kids, me and my sisters, was play sports, everything from just shooting hoops in the front yard where we like always had a basketball hoop or like running races in the backyard. We played tennis, we played soccer, football, baseball, everything under the sun. Um, yeah, it really was everything was a competition. We're all really bad losers, like our entire family. Like my mom wouldn't let us win at Scrabble even when we were like little kids. So, so yeah, that's that's what we grew up with.

Basketball Focus And High School Setback

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Nice, that's awesome. I love that. And so you just like sticking with the sports theme for a minute. I know you ended up playing basketball in college, right? Was that always your the big sport you played when you were a kid? Or or what was your favorite when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

There was always kind of a big three of baseball, basketball, and football. And you know, as I mentioned, my dad played college football. He then like coached our Pee-wee football team as well. So like foot it always was kind of like football. The thing was like I didn't like to get tackled like that much. Um, but I also like to always have the ball, which is a very you can't want the ball and not want to get tackled at the same time. So, you know, by middle of high school, uh drop football and just play basketball, baseball. You know, I really loved baseball, but like just frankly, I knew I was not the best baseball player out there. You know, I was a decent hitter, decent pitcher, but like not that great. Basketball just kind of always clicked and like clicked more and more like as I got older. Um, you know, actually heading into high school initially like didn't make the varsity team one year, but then by the end of the year, I gotten called up and was a starter on on the varsity team, you know, was always very confident in my ability to go and play a U-ball and like summer ball with people all around and was like always like, oh, I can handle this. And just still to this day, like basketball just always clicks. I always feel really good when I'm playing it. I play every week still. So uh yeah, basketball's always been kind of like top two, I would say. But like briefly thought I was gonna play for the Jets, but then realized I didn't like get hit that hard.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Right. Well, that was actually that was kind of hilarious. You're like, yeah, it's like it's really challenging to want to want to have the ball all the time, but never want to be there's there's a good analogy, like a life analogy in there for sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Like there's something there where it's like you know, be careful what you wish for, like you know, take the good with the bad. But right, but yeah, I do remember like going in and talking to the coach in high school and saying, like, I played tight end, and I was like, You think you're gonna throw the ball to the tight end a lot, you know, this this coming year? And he was like, probably not. And I was like, Okay, well then I I I quit go play another sport.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

So yeah, yeah. Well, so that's um so yeah, so you were telling me, so you got I think you said you so you got cut from the varsity team in your sophomore year, and then you ended up overcoming that and actually playing in college. So that that must have been a pretty formative experience for you. Well could tell tell us more about that.

College Ball And Team Lessons

SPEAKER_01 4:56

No, definitely. I mean, they had so how my high school did it, and our high school is like also like not good at basketball, like we just weren't a good basketball school overall. Um, but how they did it every single year was they basically had everyone who wasn't a freshman tried out in like a big group, and then they got assigned to a particular team, either varsity or junior varsity. And I was pretty confident that I was actually going to make varsity. Um, there was a new head coach in place who had some, I think, particular ideas about how he wanted to play. And so, you know, initially I was put on the junior varsity team. And how it would work was that, you know, junior varsity and varsity would practice together. A couple of JV guys would dress for the varsity games every single week. The first like five or so games, I was just dressing and like sitting on the end of the bench for the varsity games. But by like the sixth, seventh, eighth game, I started getting time. I would play, you know, three quarters of the junior varsity game, and then I'd get in and be a substitute on the on the varsity game later that night. And then by the end of the year, it was sort of transitioned to I was starting playing half of the JV game and then playing half of the uh varsity game as well, you know, as a starter. And then by the end of the year, I was playing like half the JV game and three quarters of the varsity game. Um, and then you know, junior and senior year was a starter the the entire time. And, you know, again, was not, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I was like getting D1 offers or anything like that. That was never, you know, in the cards. I'm six foot two. I don't like to go inside the three-point line. I'm pretty slow, like, you know, so so it was always like D3, but uh ended up playing at Middlebury College, didn't get a ton of you know, burn there, but our team was really good. We had multiple, like we had an all-American, we had some all conference guys, we won two conference championships, you know, got to the Elite Eight for D3 one year, which was really fun. And yeah, it was really like just it was sort of like the constant, like sort of pillar of my life from like age 14 to age 22, was like being on these on these basketball teams.

The 35 Day Wilderness Camp

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Oh, that's awesome. That's great. And you um you also had a pretty cool beyond like college sports and being competitive your whole life, you also told me about this uh this camp you used to go to growing up. I key waiden or what what was it?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Uh yeah, Key Waiden. Um there's actually a couple branches. There's Key Waiden, uh, which is in Lake Dunmore in Vermont. There's Song of Dwin, which is also on Lake Dunmore, which is their like sister camp. Key Waiden's All Boys, Song of Dwin's All Girls. And then up in Canada, there's Key Waiden Tomogamy, which is like the super hardcore version of this camp. And you know, Key Waiden's awesome. It's essentially a like tripping camp. Like you go and you spend most of the summer on Lake Dunmore in Vermont, you know, living in tents and cabins and like canoe canoeing and hiking and playing soccer and basketball and you know, rock climbing and hike and all this stuff, archery, rifle at the camp itself. So that by itself is like a really good experience, you know, sleep away, get away from the parents with a bunch of guys, you know, your age and this and the counselors, which is awesome. Aculaden also does this great thing where they do trips um and starting, you know, when you're literally like you can go as young as seven. I didn't start going until I was like 12 or 13, but there are kids there as young as seven, and you'd go out on three-day, five-day, seven-day, ten-day, fifteen-day. The longest you could go on was like over 30 days camping trips where you'd have your food on your back and you'd be either hiking or canoeing or kayaking around, you know, national parks and or different areas. The one that I remember most, there's two. There's Barring Dree, uh, which is up in Canada, and then there's a trip called wilderness. Wilderness is 35 days. You you go so far north in Canada, you're technically at moments above like the Arctic, Arctic Circle line. And you you only can bring enough food for like 18 days. So on day 19, they actually airdrop food into you from uh from a plane um that actually like lands on a lake and you go out, you get all this food. Um, and it's an incredible experience. You really learn, you know, when it's just you and like 10 other guys that are also like 14, 15 years old, like canoeing and setting up camps and cooking and cleaning, and like it's really like responsibility. It was it was one of the best experiences of my life. I honestly like can't wait to send my kids to keep in the future.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

So wait, so it's so you were out there for over 30 days?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, so you're the year after you technically like age out of camp, but when you're too young to be a counselor, you can sign up to be you're going this trip called Wilderness, which is 35 days, and like it's a I think like 12-hour drive like to northern Canada, and then you're just canoeing around and carrying like to different lakes, and at different times you're carrying your canoe over land, like to get to the next lake. So yeah, it's a super cool experience.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Wow. That would I mean, even that sounds pretty challenging.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

It certainly was was not easy. There's a couple, a couple days where you're like, you know, hey, we gotta paddle for X amount of miles today, and then at the end of the day, we got to go carry our canoes another two miles to uh to the next lake that we're gonna be be sort of traversing, or like, hey, we gotta go up river today. So we're polling, which is literally where one guy, like a gondolier, is in the back, like sticking a stick in the ground and pushing the canoe up uh upstream while the guy in the front just paddles as hard as they can. So yeah, um, yeah, talking about it just like flood just floods memories back in thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Yeah, that's uh so was it like from start to finish you're trying to cover a specific amount of miles or what's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

I mean, you had to. There was an entrance point and a place where they're like, we're picking you up here in 35 days. And you know, obviously we had like uh count staffmen like counselors, and they had a satellite phone if anything went wrong and they had maps and come like we knew where we were going at all times and like that. But it was like, hey, like here's the trip, you know, we're gonna put you in here. You got to get to here by this day, and you just gotta cover that ground. So, like if you had a bad day where let's say it's storming or raining and you covered less ground than you wanted to, like, hey, the next day, you got to cover a little bit extra. We gotta get up at 4 a.m. and hit the water by five, you know, you know, be out there. We're gonna paddle until it gets dark, set up camp in the dark, you know, just to cover the ground that you had lost. Um again, it was like meticulously planned by the higher ups of the camp and like all that, but also still very like you guys gotta do this. Like it's a challenge, it's in front of you. Just gotta go do it.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Yeah. That's a lot of I that's a lot of responsibility, like for that age, right? To that, I mean that's why it sounds like such a cool opportunity, too. It must have been really hard.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, it was it was really hard, but it was one of those things uh where it's like it's really hard, but it was sort of like, hey, it kind of teaches you this is really hard, but it's not like forever. Like, you know, in that moment where it's you know, I there the longest uh canoe carry over land we had to do was like three and a half miles or something like that. And on mile like 2.5, when you've got a canoe over your head and you're just walking with it above your head, you're like, oh, this is like I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die out here. But invariably 20 minutes later, 25 minutes later, you put the canoe down and you're on the other side of it. You've like made it through. And so that is like something that you can lean back on. It's like, oh, I did this. Or, you know, when you're paddling and you feel it in your back and every second like hurts, and it's like, oh, like this is the worst thing ever. A couple hours later, you're gonna be sitting around a campfire, you're gonna be eating hot food, and you're gonna be like talking with a bunch of friends. So, like it just helps you like learn how to like push through all of those moments that it's like this is really hard, but you just know how to push through it.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Right. You sort of learning how to go on autopilot and just remembering it's not forever.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, a little bit. Uh a little bit. Yeah, definitely. Some of them you definitely would go on autopilot for. But there is others where I was like, no, like hey, like lean into it, it's fine, feel the feel the hardness, it's gonna make everything else feel like better, you know, later.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Yeah, yeah. How heavy was your gear?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Uh so the canoes were like these big, like kind of hard plastic canoes that they could handle if you had to go white watering or anything like that. So they weren't like that heavy, but like they were really uh cumbersome to carry. You had to tie a specific knot. And basically, it's gonna sound it's like all coming back to me now. You had to tie a specific knot so that you could wrap a strap around your forehead and the canoe would sit on the back of your shoulders on the strap and it would distribute the weight down your back versus in your arms or anything like that. So if the canoes were like pretty heavy, but they didn't feel that heavy because it was all distributed. And then we would have our boxes, our wanegans of um of food. And those would be like when you first started the trip, you know, like 50, 75 pounds um, you know, food. Uh, and you're just carrying those again, sort of strapped on your back. And then uh they'd get lighter though. That would be the but the good thing about as the trip went on, you know, they'd get lighter as you ate ate more of the food.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Did you guys uh did everyone lose weight?

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah, yeah. You kind of you look you look great afterward, you know. It's something obviously I should do like now to like drop down because you're basically like working out all day paddling, and then you're like eating you know, the exact amount of calories you need at night, like seven.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Well, that's why so were you was it intentional? Like, were you guys eating enough calories to break even? Or were you guys at a deficit?

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah, yeah, no. We've I mean everyone everyone must have needed like 3,000 calories a day. I'm sure I'm sure. But it was like, you know, you're eating you're everything's super dead. You're eating oatmeal and brown sugar in the morning. You know, that's like you know, every single morning was a big thing of oatmeal. Lunch was usually pretty light, but they'd be like bags of like, you know, the freeze-dried bags with like tuna, basically, like freeze-dried bags of tuna with um mayo and relish in it. Dinner would be something that you'd cook up. You know, one night we did hunt a goose, actually, uh, and catch and eat a goose, you know, while we were out there. So like it was, and we you'd also bring like treats. Like they did bring like they like surprise you with and they busted out like pancake mix. And like one morning, like we left late and they made pancakes for everybody on the fire.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

So uh yeah, it's it's did you guys you guys ever do like any fishing or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Some guys did. Some guys brought some fishing gear. Um, I've not I've never been a big fisher. Uh, you know, I used to fish when I was a kid with my dad when we'd go up to Maine and things like that, but like it wasn't a huge thing for me. Uh most of the time, if you're downtime at camp, it was like reading, playing cards. We played a ton of like hearts, um, you know, because it's a four-person game. We also one day we built, after we got into a certain campsite, we built like a pseudo sauna. Basically, dug a big hole, like built sort of tarps over the top of it, a hole in the middle of the hole with hot rocks in it, and like we're pouring river water over the sort of rocks and like sitting in a sauna. So uh yeah, things like that were like what you did while you were just killing time.

Pain Threshold And Mental Endurance

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yeah, yeah, it's um that's cool. Have you uh have you ever heard or seen the show Alone before? No, haven't. Oh man, you gotta check it out. You probably love it.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Um is it like camping or like what what's the kind of buy?

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Alone is uh they did a season most recently in the Arctic Circle, but it's basically it's uh I guess technically reality TV, but not traditional reality TV. Um it's uh where they take like 10 survivalists and they drop them somewhere like alone, and they all have like their own like little territory and they just have to survive like for as as long as possible. And so they're given like they're allowed to bring some equipment, not a lot, but some different I think like 10 items.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Oh yeah, they get to like pick what 10 items they they bring, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Right, and they have a satellite phone so they can tap out, and then it just and the whole thing is it's like self-footage, like yeah, so they set up cameras, like there's no crew there with them, yeah. So they'll just be like in the Arctic Circle, like next to a river with 10 tools all together for everything from camping to fishing and everything. So they'll have like if they have a fishing line, they don't have a fishing rod, they just have like a little line that they like toss out, or they have like a net to set up like fishing nets. Um, but it's a a wild show because there's like the the the part that is I suppose a little more obvious is just like setting up camp and getting enough food to survive, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Like that's through the night, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Through the night, yeah. The other part of it though that I never really thought about before I watched the show was the psychological element because they're alone, like straight up, there's nobody else there. So what's really interesting is that there's like every season, there's like a bunch of different survivalists, and some of them are maybe even some of the most talented ones that are like the best at fishing and setting up a like a you know camp. Like psychologically, they're on day five and they're in their own head, and all of these like thoughts and feelings are spilling out that have been like suppressed for a decade or longer, and they they tap out, they're just like, oh no, like no, no, no, no, no. I can't imagine doing it alone.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

I mean, even on this trip, you know, it was 10 of us, like eight, eight campers, two counselors, and like by day 20 of spending all that time with like the same nine other guys, you're like going nuts. I can't imagine doing it by by yourself.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yeah, it's uh it's kind of check out this show. You'll you'll definitely check it out. So it's funny. There's um so the first season I ever watched was like the most recent season, and that was like in the Arctic Circle, which the other element which was crazy is that as it started to become winter, not only was freezing, but it was like dark. It was like pitch black. Yeah, so can you be you know alone for two months straight? Yeah, then it's just dark all time. Yeah, like no thank you. Like, I don't know for me, not for me.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

I have a friend who lives up in Alaska now and he says the same thing. He's like the winters are like real stressful when you're just like it's you know you wake up and it's dark, and you you get home from work and it's dark. It's like all right, what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it seems like something you'd be into because it's like these people are obviously like very competitive, they're very hardworking and disciplined, and like uh so I think you might enjoy it, but yeah, it's uh I I don't know, I think it's incredible. Like that the fact that like you guys are able to do that is just um yeah, it was it's it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

And I I mean, yeah, I would I can't recommend that camp announc, frankly, for young men and then young women that song that you would like incredible, incredible experience.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah, I'm actually gonna look them up right uh right now. Um okay, so they have this like big wilderness, like what what'd you call it? It was like the wilderness uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

So so you go to you you can go to camp, it's like eight years of camp. There's multiple age groups, they're all uh it's on weantanog, and muslamu are the names of them. They're all named after like I think winds in the the Native American language from up there. And then once you're between your last year as a camper and your first year as a counselor, you have to be 18 to be a counselor, and there's like a two-year gap there. Um, that's when you can go on this wilderness trip. So it's like key wait in wilderness. Um, but then the other trips, like there's like I think 30 other trips that you can go on during your time there. The longest as a camp you can go on there is like 17. And again, like they have kids as young as like seven or eight out there canoeing for two days uh and camping. And you know, those are in much more like tame areas, like they just go to like a local campground or something like that. But it's still it's just a great experience. You learn how to be really like self-sufficient really quickly.

Alone Show And Survival Psychology

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Yeah, that's really cool. That's um, that's awesome. And um, so just I wanted to also talk to you a little bit about just like so you went to uh to college, you you ended up playing um you know college basketball, and um I know shortly after, or at least a a couple maybe a couple years afterward, you ended up uh meeting your wife, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yeah, yeah. So I met my wife through someone I actually met at Middlebury. Um met this girl Natalie at Middlebury. She was very good friends with Elizabeth, who's now my wife. Uh when Natalie was going away to med school, um, she threw like a going away party. And that's where I met Elizabeth. Uh initially was like, oh yeah, can I have that girl Lizzie's number? And Natalie was like, no, you can't. Um, you know, I know you from college, you can't have her number. And I was like, oh, come on, you know, we're we're 24 now, we're so much older and we're not sure. And so eventually, yeah, she relented and you know, gave me Lizzie's phone number, and we've been together now since, you know, May of May, June of 2019 or so.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Wait, why didn't she want you to have her number? What was the the rationality? She seemed to me as like a college guy, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I was you know, yeah, yeah. I don't think enough time had passed between when you're and no one's well behaved in college, like you know, between being kind of you know out there in college, having a lot of fun, and like now like actually looking to like mean something. I mean something real, you know?

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah, I hear you. That's funny. Um and so you you guys met like right before COVID, right?

Meeting His Wife Before Covid

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yes, we started dating. I was still because my job at the time I was with a company called Diversa Partners. So I was working in Connecticut for three days a week in New York for two days a week. So I was living in Connecticut. Um, and then in October of 2019, I moved to New York, was there for about six months, obviously until like March when when COVID hit. And then when COVID was initially hitting, I mean I fully fell for like the fake like propaganda that they're like gonna shut down the bridges and like isolate New York City. And so I was like, we have to like escape New York as quickly as possible. And my parents still had a place in Connecticut at the time, and so I was like, hey, Lizzie, do you want to just come quarantine with me for two weeks in New in Connecticut? You know, because we'll it'll be two weeks, it'll be fun. We'll just get to live in my parents' like big suburban house and it'll be nice. And that turned into like seven months of living in Connecticut, living in Vermont, going to be with her mom in the Berkshears for for a couple of weeks. Um, and so we went from very quickly, like kind of just like starting a relationship, like being about five or six months in to we're a little bit longer that, like seven or eight. To like, oh, we spend like every waking moment together. Because also in quarantine, you're not really doing it. It's not like you're going out at night. So it's just like we'd we'd work remotely from like nine to six each night, nine to six thirty, and then just like hang out like for the entire night. So put put poured some accelerant on uh on that relationship.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Oh yeah, for sure. Definitely. Yeah, that's um and uh and then shortly after, I think you said you ended up you guys ended up getting a dog together.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, in 20. So we moved in together. So after like kind of COVID didn't end, but like when in November of 2020 we got our own place. We moved in together. We then were immediately like we both grew up with dogs and like really wanted the dog. And so we uh ended up in November of 2021 getting our dog Louis, uh, who's the best. Uh he was supposed to be a mini bird doodle when we got him. Like we told our landlord, like, oh, this dog will be like 30, 40, 40 pounds, yeah, max 45. Louis is 80 pounds, he's tall, he's thick, like he's huge, like um, but he's the best dog ever. Uh he's smart, uh, misbehaved, all those good things. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Nice, nice. Well, you guys um you got some big news, right? In terms of another family coming up, huh?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah, Louis Louis's our first baby, you know, that we've had now for a few years, but we're having we're having a human baby uh later this year. Our first, our first kid, uh a little girl due in September, actually. So uh four months away from you know when we're recording this. So yeah, like very excited and very much like uh next chapter for for us, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

Congratulations. That's that's awesome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Thank you. Yeah, we're we're thrilled. We're we're sort of over the moon. Um Lizzie's been amazing, uh, you know, sort of dealing with it and then sort of being being on that. And I'm just trying to support her, you know, any way I can right now.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Do you have a name picked out yet?

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Uh no, we've got a list. You know, we're slowly working our way through the list. It's funny though, it's like every time we talk about the list, like two names that we like thought we liked, we don't like, and then like two names that we haven't considered before, we like put so the list is not like shrunk at all. Like it's staying the same. Yeah, we haven't narrowed anything down.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

I think we've got like 10 or so names that that we're you you don't have a front runner, or is that dangerous territory to come out in?

SPEAKER_01 25:02

I think I don't know if I can share a front runner publicly right now. I mean, I probably like do mentally have a front runner, but but uh but yeah, it's it's always back and forth. And like, you know, how it goes, like and then you meet somebody with that name or something, or you remember someone you know with that name, and it just like changes how you think about it. Exactly. You're like, oh no, like, or like we both you know really love certain names, but like we love like just we love the name Claire, but my sister's name is Claire, so we can't name her after my sister, unfortunately, you know, because then I have another sister, Lizzie has a sister, so it's a whole back and forth. But uh yeah, it's it's a very, very interesting sort of process of getting to name a person.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Oh yeah, it's uh it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yeah, yeah, it's daunting though, you know. You don't want to make a mistake.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Well, yeah, but you're gonna end up loving the name regardless. So you know what I mean? Like because then you're gonna associate it to so it feels like, yeah. Every once in a while you'll meet you meet somebody with like you're like, oh man, what were their parents thinking? It's like very rare, but every once in a while you'll be like, Do their parents?

SPEAKER_01 26:05

I think it's like uh I was doing some research on this. I think it's Iceland, or maybe it's it's some it's one of the like Nordic countries, like Iceland or Denmark or something like that, where it's like they have a list of of names that you're actually allowed to give your kid, and you have to get like special permission to like go off that list.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Really?

SPEAKER_01 26:22

I think so. I remember reading something about it.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Like how many like terrible names do people have or they had to make a list of it?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

There's some more where they're like, we need to know more of this. This is too weird. But but yeah, no, I think and I think it's obviously probably a pretty all-encompassing list, but I'm sure that there's like yeah, maybe that's a good thing. Like, there are some names out there that I'm not gonna say any because I don't want to.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Oh, of course not. Yeah, this is funny.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

But there are some names you're like, just where'd that come from?

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Like, I just don't so you're like, what in the world? That's like this joke, like, what would the parents did their parents hate them?

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Like, why would they yeah, yeah, and yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny, man.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Um, well, that's cool. Yeah, so we went the the path my daughter, like we ended up picking uh her grandmother's, her great grandmother's name. Oh beautiful, her mom's grandmother's name. So it's kind of a safe yeah, a family name growing.

Dog Life And Baby On The Way

SPEAKER_01 27:12

You know, yeah. My one of my sisters' names is is like uh I think our great grandmother's maiden name, actually. So so yeah, that was where that one came from. Uh can't go wrong, you know, with the the family names.

Merge And The 2026 Obsession

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah, for sure. Well, that's um that's exciting. So I mean you're like right in the the middle of it, right? Like things are heating up for you. So you're you know, you're running head of talent, director of talent over at merge. And working in tech in a leadership role is just about as competitive as you can get in your career. It's a very demanding workload to keep up, to continue to evolve, to push. Like you're you know, entered this place in your career where you really are like becoming like top of your field, like you're in a leadership role at a very competitive growth stage company. Um and you're having a kid, right? Like all this happening at once. Yeah. So I guess like just to like let's just talk about work for a little bit. Um, right now in merge, like I I would love to dive into you like what your obsession is for 2026. Like, what are you really focused on to make sure that merge is on point from a talent acquisition perspective?

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah, I and I think we talked we talked a little bit about this earlier, but I I also want to I I've been thinking about it kind of as we've been chatting a little bit. I think like the obsession right now is like system building. And I think what I mean by that is you know, I came from the agency search world, you know, it's where I spent, you know, diverse partners, amazing training ground for learning how to be a recruiter, and then you know, it's a great place. Um, I then was at another agency for two years. I've now been in-house with Merge and then another company called Shift Smart for the last like three years. And like coming from agency, you get really good at like, hey, I'm point and shoot, I figure out how to close this project, close this deal, recruit this person. Now I'm in the phase of coming where I'm like thinking about systems. And so the obsession now is around systems, and systems can mean a lot of different things. Like I'm building an AI agent system right now. I've spent, you know, every night for the last like multiple weeks, like just putzing around in clawed code and like trying different things and like what can I automate that I haven't automated? You know, what reports can I build out? How do I build like a system of all these different agents and tools that actually like talk to each other and interact with each other using Merge Agent Handler to do a lot of that? So, so yeah, a little plug for for merge there. Um, so that's like a system just becoming more AI enabled, or the system of actually building my team. You know, I'm right now I'm in the process of rebuilding the uh IC recruiting layer here here at Merge. And you know, that's gonna be a team of hopefully four or five by the end of June. And so like the system of that team is like an obsession of mine. Like who supports who on what, who plugs in where, how do we utilize people's skill set correctly? Um, and then you know, merge has some really ambitious growth goals. You know, we're 130 some odd employees right now. You know, the goal is to be like well over 200, I think, by the end of the year, or just around 200. And so, like, how do we grow from this number to 200? How do we grow from 200 to 400, 800 to 1500? How do we do that in a way that is scalable and systematic across the org? And you know, those things are never linear, but but sort of system building is like what I'm thinking about right now.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

So how about in the next one to three months? So when it comes to systems building, like where do you start?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, I think it's kind of how I'm thinking about utilizing AI right now is around taking the things that are very manual that kind of interrupt the flow of the system because someone needs to spend, you know, 45 minutes manually scrolling through a greenhouse pipeline to find feedback scores, it's time to submission and things like that. You know, there's obviously reporting functions within all these ATSs, but just having something that can jump in, grab that information, pull it out, relay it to a recruiter, to me, or an IC recruiter that I have on my team to identify the gap and improve the system. Like, hey, if that tool can go and pull out, like, hey, like, you know, the whole process runs great, except for this one step takes on on average eight days to complete. The rest of your process runs in 10 total days. So you're basically doubling your process time for this one step. Pull that out here through recommendations, and then let the recruiter go finagle with the actual back end of the system or with the the other team members here to shorten that down. So that's a lot of what you know the next three months are gonna be. Is like, what are we manually doing right now that is causing tension, causing slowness? And how do we like pull those things out and and ease that and make it more efficient?

SPEAKER_02 31:39

You said you were messing around with the claw code a lot, right? All the time, like too much.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Like it's actually like I I got onboarded to it a little bit late and like you know, I am like the least technical guy like out there, like you know, studying liberal arts in college, you know, my history major, right? History major, you know, poly sci. Um, and like, you know, my computer at home is basically like, you know, I watch YouTube on it and you know, send the occasional personal email. Like I'm not a very technical person by nature, but I got onboarded cloud cloud code and it is addicting, informative, helpful, like all of those things. Um, you know, I'm learning more intricate ways of using it right now and talking to the engineers on our team. I think it's actually made me a little bit better as like a technical recruiter now that I'm like spending some more time on some of these things. So yeah, it's been really cool. Um, you know, I'm cloud, I'm cloud coding in bed, you know, right before bed right now. I've got the terminal and the shells pulled up and I'm just typing things and seeing if it runs. At one point last night I was working on something and I it wasn't working the way I wanted it. My wife just goes, Are you mad at your computer right now? And I'm like, Yeah, a little bit. Like I'm a little bit mad at my computer at 11 p.m. for not figuring this out right now.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Yeah, well, this is how I know you're gonna do just fine as a dad. Like you're already working the long hours, like dedicating yourself to getting stuff done. So it's you're gonna be all right. You're gonna be all right, man.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Well, and hey, I you know, you gotta be, I mean, you mentioned you know this being a dad and also being in, you know, a really competitive, really fast-moving field is like you gotta be on when you're on, and when you're on something else, you gotta be on to that. And so yeah, that's a lot. You know, I've got the to-do list that I write every single day. I've got a million different like reminders and things like that. But the goal here is to like also build a system where I can handle all of this work that needs to get done, you know, during the hours and then be there, yeah, be there as like a very present parent as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah, yeah. We I mean there's the differences in our upbringing and background, but similar in a sense of um technically I didn't play college sports. I was uh competing in Muay Thai in boxing. Oh, very cool. Um it's not part of a college program, uh, but I was doing it at that age full time, and I actually that's how I made a living. And so I kind of came up in that competitive uh uh space mindset, you know, and all the attributes and everything that you kind of develop. Maybe you have it and that's why you go into it, or maybe you develop it, maybe it's both. Probably a little bit of a little bit of both. Yeah. Um, but uh, you know, then going into tech, right? And and then and then boom, you hit you hit your 30s and you're married and you and the kid and everything and you're balancing. But um, yeah, it's uh I I think like yeah, the you know, the thing you were talking about with your camp, honestly, is like experiences like that, like I feel like are so valuable because then when you hit these like these moments where it's like you have to elevate and find ways to like make the time, right? Um push yourself uh to the next level. Like there's always like that fifth gear, like there's that hidden gear that you can tap into, yeah, right? Where you just like you can do more than you thought you could.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah. It's helpful when things are going, you know, going well but needs to go even better, or it's helpful when things aren't going well and you need to turn it around. Like, you know, example from just last month. I think you know, had a great Q1, hired a lot of people going into Q2 of this year. You know, recruiter on my team decided to leave, you know, wish them all the best in the next role. It's a really good next career opportunity for them. We also like the same week had like three offers in a row, like all get turned down for roles that were like pretty critical for us. And so it was like, I think, you know, something that I've learned from playing sports from the camp, from just right in that moment, you can either kind of like wilt a little bit and like, oh, bad things are happening, just kind of like shell up and like let it hit you, or you can like push through a little bit more and like work a little bit harder over the next you know two weeks to get things back on track. And yeah, you know, we haven't closed water rolls since then. We're back in a really good spot, but like yeah, that fifth gear that you mentioned, like finding so key.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

My buddy has this um I don't know, I gotta get better at storytelling. Like, I'm I'm working on it. It's like one of the things I want to do to continue to get better at. Yeah, like but he he tells this story of his uh grandfather who worked on on cars a lot. He's actually my co-founder over at June, uh, the AI screener and interviewer. Yeah. Um and so his grandfather, who's essentially like his dad, right? Like worked in a garage and like he remembers this one specific moment where he was, and I'm not a car guy, so but like you know, he's okay, cool. Yeah, like I'll tell you all about town acquisition, but like you know, cars, like it's just not yeah, it doesn't flick the same way, yeah, yeah. Not quite as cool, but I do do some stuff, I guess. But uh yeah, so he was like working on a car and he's like trying to pull out this car part, um, but like it's it's stuck, right? And so his his grandfather, like they there there wasn't like a specific tool for this type of part. So his his grandfather would just like he just went back in and he pulled harder, it still didn't come out, right? Yeah, yeah. So he just went back and he just pulled harder and eventually dislodged the piece. And so like it's a very simple lesson, but it's like there's there's just more harder, like just keep going. Like there's that next level that you can just kind of break through to. Like, you can we could do more than like a lot of the times, like there's always that next level we could push them break through. And I feel like you know, we're we're honestly both at like in our careers, like we're in a similar stage of life. It's like is this level of like uncovering what like that next level of what we're capable of achieving and like balancing, yeah. You know, because there's there is that next level. There's like we can we can often push and go so much further than we're at, even when we feel like we're at the max level. It's like, no, there's like three more levels after this that we can go get to, you know. It's like seven.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

I I'm not like sort of an advocate of like, hey, it's never ending. Like you can always work a little bit harder, but like I do think that you can always probably, or I think a lot of people can work a little bit harder or do a little bit more than they give themselves credit for. Um, you know, because I know that everyone kind of has you, there's something in there, especially if you're at that phase where you need to go find it. I mean, I look at my dad who, you know, lived in Connecticut, you know, every single day was up at five in the morning so he could take, you know, he could work out and then take an hour-long train into the city, work in the city, you know, come back at seven, or come back even earlier on some days that he could like coach our teams and be there and help us homework and things like that. And like that took a ton of work. And I'm sure there are multiple times during that frame where he was like, Oh, and don't like this is really hard. But he just pushed himself like a little bit more, pulled a little bit harder on the piece till it it dislodged.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Or sometimes pulling hard is it's like the discipline thing. Like, one thing that you know, I know we're gonna be talking about today is like something that's consistently that you're thinking about, like, in terms of getting the most out of your career and uh soon to be as a father, too. Like, it's thinking about like the discipline and the focus. And like to me, I I feel like I felt like I'm maxed out on just like raw hard work. Like, there's not, I can't do any, like I have to like sleep and take care of myself so I like don't you know like maintain my health.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

There's this other element of like focus, like of like discipline. And to me, that's where I'm at when it like with the pull harder like piece, you know, story, like that's where I'm at. It's like focus in more, like, you know, just just really that the attention to detail or or just like being able to focus in the moment or holding myself accountable to being like productive, like more so, or creating boundaries for discipline. It's like those types of things, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah, like yeah. There's a yeah, I'm thinking a lot about that. I mean, there's an Anthony, I think it's Anthony Bourdain where he's talking, he's like, there's like a hippie inside of me where like that just wants to like sit on the beach and watch TV and like smoke smoke weed all day. And it's like, you know, he's like every day I have to go like fight that hippie inside of me so that I can go like work hard. And like, yeah, like I've got a you know, maybe not a hippie inside of me, but I got a really lazy guy inside of me who likes to sleep in and you know play video games and watch, you know, watch every Nick's game with his buddies and like you know, do things like that. And it's like, okay, you can maybe let that out every now and then, but you know, to get the most out of what you want to do, whether it's you know professionally or like personally, as I'm at through this next phase of my life, I do know like I gotta fight that lazy guy a little bit. I gotta, you know, overcome him and and sort of push myself a little more there.

Hiring Recruiters Who Use AI

SPEAKER_02 40:04

It's like the whole um putting it like short-term discipline uh and short-term pain, long-term results. Yeah, that whole like shift. Um well, so okay, so you're you're cloud coding till like you know at 11 o'clock at night, yelling at your computer, you're uh voting systems. Um you're also so you're hiring right now, you're rebuilding your team. And I'm curious, like, so you're putting a big emphasis on building systems, thinking about how to become AI native in appropriate ways, AI enablement to get rid of like bottlenecks and workflows and things of that nature. Does how you think about building systems, is that influencing the type of recruiter that you're hiring? Like, how do you think about like what does the quote unquote like right recruiter look like based on how you're thinking about systems at AI?

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Yeah, it's a really good question. I don't think it necessarily changes too much of like the core recruiting skill set. Like, I still need people who love working with people, are personable, are interested in learning. I think that's one of the biggest signs of a good recruiter is someone who like really wants to learn, whether it be about a new role they've ever recruited for or a new person they're just meeting and interviewing that day. Like you have to want to learn about them. Um I do think though, like I don't know if I will be able to hire anybody who does not want to incorporate AI workflows into their day-to-day. Like I think that there is, I think recruiting is one of those functions that I don't think it'll be like fully replaced by AI. I just don't think that'll that'll happen. I don't think I think what will happen though is that it will make every single person in these functions incredibly more uh efficient. And I do think you can probably get away instead of hiring a team of 10 recruiters, hiring a team of five and five people that are motivated and interested in figuring out like how they can make their day easier every every single day. Um I will say I think also like I view AI usage as like a uh call it like a 99-yard technology to use like a football metaphor here a little bit. Like I think that AI can really help push you to the to the red zone, get you into the five-yard line, the 10-yard line, the one yard line, but you still need that person at the end of it to kind of say, okay, this is what all this is telling me. And like I'm now this decision maker who has these options and these information. I'm gonna now push us over the goal line. So like AI can call out that, like, hey, maybe we do have a, you know, a uh a gap in our process where we're spending five extra days with the candidate. But the recruiter is the one who's gonna be able to go and figure out, okay, is that gap because we're having the wrong people interview, or is it because we're not submitting feedback in time, or is it because we're talking to the wrong, the wrong type of candidates, and that's leading to a slowness in decision making because we're not thrilled about the candidates. Like, they're the ones who's actually gonna like figure out what the drag is once they've been, once it's the AI has helped them identify, like, here's where that pain point is.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

Well, also like they're there, like people are gonna have to be able to like tweak the AI systems. Like, even if you build out like the perfect system and workflow, like companies are gonna evolve, the types of hires are gonna evolve. Like, it's gonna it requires like constant fine-tuning and tweaking. It's not something that you can even set and leave. So it's not like, hey, we'll set up AI and then we can cut down on staff. It's like, well, maybe there are efficiency gains, but there there is a need, even if it's like agentic and AI can move somebody from one stage to the next, like it's constantly gonna be tweaked and evolving too. Like, and yeah, we need people that can completely.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

And and it's why I also like so like and the reason I still think recruiting has always given me that human element is like you have you have systems now that can make an AI video avatar if you or me to ask a candidate a bunch of questions. But at the end of the day, is that candidate then when it comes down to like a difficult negotiation, gonna want to like talk to an AI avatar? Are they gonna want to talk to Liam or James and like have a conversation with them about, you know, hey, this is why I'm asking for this much comp. This is where my like levers actually are. Or on the flip side, you know, a hiring manager can just go give an AI agent a bunch of information about what they want to hire, but then you know, they the the AI agent can't have the conversation with them where it's like, yeah, the person got in the room with me, and there's just like not a great feeling, and like the vibe wasn't quite there, like the culture wasn't quite there. Yeah, it could be like, oh, culture fit, like I need to screen for that, but it doesn't know how to do that the same way.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

It's it's hard. I mean, I like so there's actually there's like several things that I that you're making me think of.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

So sorry, I'm rambling a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

No, you're gonna do this is great, like it's like super like interesting. So um, you know, two things. One, so what I'm seeing with uh like for instance with June with AI interviewer, is that it's it's like so it's it's screening inbound applicants. So that's where like my product fits it, like screens cans that come inbound, it automatically reaches out to them and conducts an interview actually through SMS. And it's just it's matching, so based off the hiring team's criteria, and then it's It's shortlisting them for recruiters. Right. So it's actually not the 99 hours.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Like you're getting the goal line with the right candidates. And then you know I do this next step here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Exactly. So we're actually not like it's not the technology is not replacing recruiters. It's what it is doing though is it's it's like teeing it up for recruiters to work a lot more productively, right? Like it's like that motion, but there's still this motion of like, okay, for now the qualified people, we want to have a deeper level conversation with the recruiter, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Right. Like I don't need to ask things like what's your tech, what's your tech stack? You know, have you ever managed, you know, X? Like, like I'm looking at my calendar after we wrap up today. I've got I get on the phone at 12:30 and I'm on it till seven today, like with candidates. So you know, it's a full afternoon. You know, part of that is because I'm going on a trip tomorrow for for the last three days of the week. So trying to just jam everything in I can before I leave. But like I have a decent sense of if those candidates are good fits. But if I had a tool or, you know, there are tools like the one you're talking about there in your tool that like would give me a 75 and 80 and 90% confidence that this person is going to be like technically a good fit. Now I just need to spend my time on like, is this person a culture fit? Are they a work ethic fit? Are they a personality match with what I'm doing? Those are the things that I can spend my time on.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Yeah, for sure, man. It's uh it's a really interesting time to be in town acquisition. And yeah, I'm thinking about that. Like, I do think that there needs to be I I would like to see even more recruiters, I just lean into AI uh workflows. I think part of it too is like this idea of relinquishing control that can be really challenging for some folks, particularly if they're a senior level recruiter, because they're like, of course, very quality focused, which they should be. But like sometimes when you're incorporating the like you're trying new things in different workflows, and you're you're you're you're building these agents, you're using these different tools. It's like, well, you gotta be willing to try stuff and to stumble and to learn from it, but like to to just not do it is not the answer because ultimately you're gonna, you know, completely.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Like it's a whole like things will get worse probably a little bit before they get better. Like, I'm working on this tool now that's I'm trying to use to help me like use GitHub to identify like top engineers. I know there's tools that like actually do this that like you know, companies have made whole tools. I don't really want to pay for one of those right now. So I'm trying to build it myself. It just like frankly, like sucks right now. Like it was what I was getting mad at on my computer last night. Like, it's not good, it's constantly like kind of off. Like it's good parts of it, and then I'm like, okay, like it's pretty good. Let's change this. The change will break everything, we'll have to redo a bunch of things. So, like, but like you have to be willing to do that and like take that step back. Um, so that's one part of it. And then I do also think, particularly for folks who have been doing this a while or have their way of doing it, there definitely is a little bit of fear of lack of control or fear of like, you know, am I not getting to influence this the way that it's I think recruiters, you know, we we come from a position of like influence because we're spending time with these candidates. We're learning them, we're spending time with the higher readers, we're learning them or kind of the bridge there.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

You know, there is a little bit of fear of like, am I giving up that bridge to like and I and I see it hands-on because I mean, like, so um at uh Secure Vision, which is like services and better recruiting company, one of um, for instance, like we we have we have some customers that use both, or some customers that just use one or the other, and like the recruiting or are the the recruiters or the AI or both. And so we have one customer. Um, I I I can say their name, I don't think they care. Auguri, uh, which is a growth stage. Do you know Auguri?

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've known them from like LinkedIn research and things, like I've seen them things.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good good company, and and their head of talent is awesome, by the way. I should introduce you guys. Um, he's like one of the coolest guys I know. I've become a good friend. Um but uh yeah, so so Andrea, we have one of my recruiters over there. She's worked for me for about a decade. Um, she is a brilliant senior recruiter, right? And I remember we started talking about like AI in like June, and like, look, like we can, you know, some of the proposals we're putting out, it's like we're gonna save recruiting teams like we're gonna give them like 240 hours of additional productivity a month with this product. Like, this is huge, like literally giving weeks back uh per month, right? But there's the hesitation because like someone like Andreas was like, Well, yeah, but like I am really methodical and you know critical about each interaction and this, that, and the other. So it was a bit of like a learning curve going, like, well, look, like you're getting thousands of resumes for every thousand resumes, you're spending eight hours reviewing those, and you're not we're not even getting to you know 50 to 80 percent of them in some of the jobs. We're not even getting to all those applicants, and like so it's like this learning curve and this like trying to get folks on board because sometimes it's like it's interesting, it's like the most qualified folks that I'm working with where it's like a little slower, and now she's using the product and she's giving me the best freaking feedback because she's so smart, but it's like getting getting folks to get a little more comfortable is just taking it's taking me time. I think it's gonna get people, you know.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

I think it's gonna take a while, but I do think it's gonna be something that like the best folks and like it sounds like Andre is one of the best folks. Yeah, she's she's awesome. I also think some of it, and this just thought I'm having like as we're talking, is like a lot of recruiters, you know, came up in environments where you know volume was kind of the name of the game, you know, like is your calendar full? Are you reviewing the amount of resumes? Are you moving the amount of candidates forward? Where it's like we always talk about being targeted and who we're gonna bring in. But at the end of the day, like, you know, if someone's just glancing at your calendar and they see that you only had two calls that day, they might not care that those two calls are like the best possible candidates if you know the guy next to you has eight calls. So I think that there's some level of like, oh, I'm also like, you know, I like to keep some of those like maybes on my calendar so that I can like chat with them and see if they're good fit. But at the end of the day, it is like, you know, a waste of an hour to talk to two maybes, you know.

Metrics That Matter In Recruiting

SPEAKER_02 50:50

So yeah. Yeah, that's uh well, activity metrics are always a uh kind of a pain and and talent acquisition to drive alignment for executive teams. Sometimes executive teams, if they don't see high activity, they're like, What are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 51:03

What's going on? I mean, that's why I pushed at this this company and in my last role. Like the metric that I really highlighted was talent pass rate into next stage pass rate. Like that was really all I cared about. Like, what's our talent pass rate? And then the round immediately after talent, what's our pass rate at that round? And like that was the metric that I really judged our success on. Cause you know, if we have 10 candidates meeting a higher manager, but they only pass two of them, that's way worse than if we have four candidates and two of them pass, like same amount of cans, but it's 50% of people versus 20% of people, and that's sort of my my metric there.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

Yeah. Even like pass-through rates, like those can be tricky too sometimes, like because it's very situational, like yeah. So you could argue like a high pass through rate is I I you know at certain points of the funnel, right? Like right.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Well, so then that's why you know you also want to check if anything's getting too high. We also do then look like, are we doing this kind of as we move through the funnel? Like, so are we starting selective and then trusting the reasoning of the people before us?

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Yeah, so like my goal is right, but by the time we get to on-site, like I want us to be very confident that the person we're like bringing into our office to spend two and a half hours with our team is probably a good fit for what we're looking for.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

I honestly prefer, like, and this isn't always happen, but I would love to see like 80 to 90 percent pass rates after a screening interview. Yeah, I truly do like I think I think we should you know know enough about the role and make screens valuable enough to where like I mean like recruiter screen, right? Like um, like a real, not like a human. Yeah, I gotta start clarifying. Yeah, like 80, 90 percent, which not all we sometimes it's close, we see a lot more frequently, like closer to 50 percent, but or like maybe like one third, but um keep it tight, right? It's better.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Exactly. And everyone always wants you know those high numbers, but then you also start running into like, you know, let's say you have a higher manager and they meet four candidates in one day, they're gonna pick their top two and like move those top two, even if all four are like good, they're gonna be like, yeah, well, like Sally and Bill were better than Jim and Ted. And like that'll be like, even though Jim and Ted are pretty good, but like that they'll have that going on.

Discipline Time And The Next Version

SPEAKER_02 53:14

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's wild. And so um, just to keep keep things moving here, uh, I we we talked a little bit more about like in terms of moving forward. Um, you know, you're you like holistically, this this is a a really kind of important formative chapter in your life, right? Like you're yeah, you're building at work, you're kind of you're building systems that scale, you're hiring for your internal team, you have a lot of critical hires you have to make for the company as a whole. Um, you know, you're you're gonna be uh a dad in a few months, which is wild. That's awesome. You know, when you think about like the just zooming out for a minute, like the next best version of yourself, um, and how you think about your own kind of professional and personal growth and development, you know, what insights could you share? Because I mean, again, it's like everybody tuning in, they're most of us are in similar places in life. So it's it's always really helpful to hear how peers are thinking through like getting the most out of life and and developing. So what's what are you gonna be focused on the next few years for your own growth?

SPEAKER_01 54:20

I think it's it's something we've been dancing around a little bit during the conversation, but just continuing to be like continuing to find ways to do everything that I want to do to the best of my ability to do them, you know, and and so that includes I think being really disciplined about how I am spending my time when I where I'm allocating free time, what I am prioritizing. And so I hope, you know, not to again come back to my parents, but I hope I can end up a lot like them, frankly. Like both of them worked incredibly hard, found time for their family, and also had like personal interests that they pursued, you know. You know, they weren't ever sacrificing too much of one to give to the other, and they found the balance. And yeah, sometimes that balance is a little bit different. For a few months, does like work need to be absolutely top priority while something else takes a step back? Yes. For a few months, then is you know, you know, getting to every single your coach and a Pee-Wee soccer team, being there every single day for the games, like that's gonna take priority for a couple months. Or, you know, hey, maybe you're burnt out and you need to take two weeks on a full vacation and just completely unplug and like really look at the free time stuff. Like, yeah. So I think being really good at being disciplined and considered about how I approach my time is is really important to me so that I can find all of that balance. Um so yeah, when I'm you know, four or five years from now, I want to be someone who's kind of looks like like things are just flowing smooth. Like I've built the systems at work that we're that I can rely on. I've built a team that I can trust to run autonomously with like just coming to me for advice and for help. And I'm, you know, getting to spend a ton of time with my my kids and my family are like the things that matter to me.

Birthday Trip And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_02 55:55

I love it. What are you doing for your birthday? It's coming up on Friday, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:59

Yeah, turning 31 in a couple days here. Um my wife's actually gonna be in Puerto Rico. Um, so we're flying down tomorrow morning, gonna spend you know, four days down there on the beach, you know, in the sun. You know, that's really the plan.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

Puerto Rico's a fun city. Or a place. San Juan's a really fun city.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

I have not been, so I've been to you know other Caribbean islands, but my wife has been. She went when she was in college and she got sun poisoning while she was there. So actually took some convincing to get her to go back because she blamed the sun in Puerto Rico.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

So yeah. Yeah, San Juan's uh a lot of fun. I went there a couple uh years ago, and uh I am trying to get back. So and I keep talking to people who are going, so I'm like, oh man, like I'm I feel this like FOMO now. Like I was uh talking to uh a customer several weeks ago and she was going for like a bachelorette party. I was like, well, that's gonna be wild. That's gonna be a good time.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

Um I I was just at a bachelor party a couple weeks ago in in New Orleans. Um and I was laughing with some of the guys because I was like, I preemptively took the Monday after the bachelor party off work because I was like at this stage, you know, I just I need the extra 10 hours of sleep, you know, after after after that weekend.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

Well, so you you know what it's like now you into your 30s. It it you have like the multi-day hangovers, it's not you can't just it's it's real.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

So I mean that's what I'm talking about. If I want to be there for you know all the good things, I gotta maybe you know, yeah, just take it a little easier on those trips, you know, like that early one.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

For sure, man. Oh man. Well that PR sounds like a a great time. I'm looking forward to hearing how that goes. Uh but uh very excited. Liam, you got all sorts of cool stuff going on, man. And it just seems like such an exciting time uh in your life. And I um I'm really grateful that given everything you have going on, that you dedicated the time to come on the show and share your story with everybody. Um, I've I've had a lot of fun getting to know you. So thank you for coming on the show and joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

Yeah, thank you, James. This was great. This was really enjoyable. It's it's nice to talk about these things like out loud a little bit. It helps you, I think, crystallize a lot of them. So yeah, I really appreciate the time and been great chatting with you over the last couple of weeks. And yeah, excited. Excited for what's coming next, you know, on all fronts right now.

SPEAKER_02 58:09

I love it. All right, and hey, everybody for tuning in. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next time.