Balancing Data and Humanity in Hiring with José Benitez Cong, CPO at Humane

How do you balance data-driven recruiting with a deeply human approach to hiring?

José Benitez Cong, CPO at Humane, shares his perspective on balancing the art and science of recruiting, showcasing how the right mix of data, AI, and personal connection can transform hiring into a long-term strategic advantage.

In this conversation with Shannon, José discusses moving beyond transactional recruiting to build trust with candidates and teams. He also explores the critical distinction between quality of hire—an early assessment of a candidate’s potential—and impact of hire, which validates long-term contributions. You’ll learn how companies can measure and optimize both metrics to build teams that drive lasting value.

Key Takeaways: 

1. Rethink the hiring lifecycle: Success isn’t just about hiring the best candidate—it’s about supporting their entire journey, from onboarding to offboarding, to maximize their impact.
2. Leverage AI to enhance, not replace: Tools like GPTs can supercharge efficiency by automating repetitive tasks. It frees up recruiters to focus on building meaningful connections with candidates and hiring managers.
3. Prioritize human connection: Recruiting is not a numbers game. Building trust and understanding candidates’ potential ensures stronger cultural fit and long-term success for both the company and the hire.

Connect quality of hire with impact of hire: Quality of hire is just the starting line, but the real win is in the impact they make over time. To connect the two, keep the feedback flowing, measure what matters, and invest in helping your hires grow. It’s about setting them up for success so they can make a real difference, not just for now, but for the long haul.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction

(02:37) Transitioning from transactional to strategic recruiting

(04:57) Redefining the hiring lifecycle: Onboarding to offboarding

(09:18) The importance of re-recruiting and retaining top talent

(14:38) Leveraging AI to streamline hiring processes

(16:51) Building trust with candidates through personalized experiences

(22:04) The balance of human connection and data in recruiting

(26:29) The future of recruiting in the AI era

(33:22) Achieving hiring excellence through strategy and empathy

Transcript

José Benitez Cong [00:00:00]:

To me is not about identifying the best candidate possible. For me, it's identifying the best candidate possible that has the highest probability of coming in in a reasonable time frame and join the company and be a good fit within the subcultures for the organization and be a supporter for the major culture of the company and create that impact. Ultimately, I am not going to judge the recruiter right or the team by any of that. I'm going to judge them by the impact that their hires are having. Use data to prepare you and put you in a position to have that impact and then measure that impact.

Shannon Ogborn [00:00:43]:

Welcome to Offer Accepted, the podcast that elevates your recruiting game. I'm your host, Shannon Ogborn. Join us for conversations with talent leaders, executives and more to uncover the secrets to building and leading successful talent acquisition teams. Gain valuable insights and actionable advice from analyzing cutting edge metrics to confidently claiming your seat at the table. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of Offer Accepted. I'm Shannon Ogborn, your host and this episode is brought to you by Ashby, the All in one recruiting platform. Empowering ambitious teams from SEED to IPO and beyond.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:19]:

I am here today super excited with José Cong. He is the CPO of Humane. He has 25 years experience in the field. So really excited to get his perspective on our topic today. And to boot he was even mentioned in the bestselling book by Tony Fadell, the Founder of Nest - Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. José, thank you so much for joining us today.

José Benitez Cong [00:01:40]:

Great to be here. Shannon, thank you for the invite.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:42]:

Pretty cool to be talked about in a bestselling book.

José Benitez Cong [00:01:46]:

Yeah, it was interesting for sure. I was anticipating the book just because I have so much respect for Tony, who I consider to be a mentor in my career. And the day the book dropped, I was getting all kinds of text messages and I couldn't keep up with them and finally someone sent me a picture of the chapter and yeah, he definitely goes into the formula that we crafted when we were ramping up ipod, perfected it when we were building iPhone and really executed it extremely well to perfection when we did nas.

Shannon Ogborn [00:02:17]:

Amazing. You have such incredible experience. So I'm really excited to get into our topic today. You said something when we first spoke that really stood out to me and really spoke to me, which is your job is not done when the person starts, it's done when they leave. Can you tell me a little more about that philosophy?

José Benitez Cong [00:02:37]:

Absolutely. At the beginning of my career I focused primarily on the number of hires and then eventually I started to think about time to hire, cost to hire and things of those natures, but reality is, if one is truly going to build a generational type of talent team, you really have to make sure that you have the entirety of that life cycle in mind. And the reason being is to me, it's not about how many people you hire. It's not about how quickly you can hire them. It's not about cost cutting, right. And managing my finances. It's about really putting together a team that is well balanced, right.

José Benitez Cong [00:03:19]:

And that is going to have a tremendous impact. In the late 90s, when I started in 2000s, you could get away with assuming that your job was done when people started, but reality is that today the marketplace is so much more competitive, it is easier than ever to start companies, right? And if we look at what happened, you know, during the COVID years, there was a massive, massive race to hire as many people as it could. So it's become pretty competitive. So to me, it's not just about finding, you know, amazing individuals, is about providing an incredible human experience, best candidate experience that separates you from your competitors, providing an amazing transition into the company through a great onboarding, but then you have to make sure that you are continuing to re-recruit those individuals. Individuals, because you don't want to go back and backfill them, right? Otherwise you're not really creating that generational platform of talent that it's available to me, re-recruiting them is not just about making sure that they are, you know, happy and engaged, but really to find out what are the things that we can provide from the talent side into the people side so that we can be ahead of the needs of an individual in terms of their development, in terms of their growth, in terms of what, you know, what they want to do.

Shannon Ogborn [00:04:41]:

So there's a lot of conversation now as well on this elongated process of being hired and then becoming an employee that's also related to performance, hiring people who will perform the best. Can you tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that?

José Benitez Cong [00:04:57]:

A great question. To me, the biggest mistake that we can make as companies, as leaders, as recruiters is to focus on hiring for the immediate need, right? To me, if you're just looking to plug that, and that's the only thing that you're really assessing for, you're probably better off bringing in a consultant or bringing in a contractor, right? To me, if you really want to make sure that you are investing into that long life cycle of that employee in your entity, it is important that you have an understanding of what is their upside, right. Of what are the interest in terms of career development, getting a sense for where they are in their vision of their future. You want to make sure that you hiring an individual that not only can do the job today, but an individual that will have an opportunity to develop and thrive, right, and grow and help you to scale. To me, you know, any company in a startup stage needs to be thinking about scaling, scaling, scaling, and you need to make sure that as your company goes through the different stages of growth, that you have individuals that can move along with that scale. Maybe not as, you know, necessary for a larger public company, but if you really want to make sure that you are ensuring longevity right in the engagement of this generational talent, you probably, you know, want to make sure that you act in the same manner as well and that you're investing into the forecast of where they could land.

Shannon Ogborn [00:06:26]:

Definitely. I think what you had or how you had posed this to me previously was impact of hire. Is impact of hire the same as quality of hire? Like, what does that mean to you and why is it so important?

José Benitez Cong [00:06:39]:

I think the quality of hire is probably, it's probably the early assessment of the employee as they get started. Impact is when you get the validation, right, that the quality is there. I go through a philosophy, a framework, if you will, where it's not just about hiring an individual and onboarding them. To me, I go back to something that I call day one. You know, day one is when I am going to start to hopefully validate, right, that this is a high quality individual and hopefully be assure that there's going to be an impact. And so what are the things that I do? Even when I was an individual contributor, I would go and sit with the manager after the first week and I would ask him, hey, do we still think that this person is as good as we thought they were? Are they better than expected? Maybe not as good, but we're glad that they're here and we can mentor them and get them to where we need them to be. Or was this potentially a bad hire? And these are questions that I continue to ask on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis. And the reasons for that is you want to make sure that if someone is as good as you expected, great.

José Benitez Cong [00:07:52]:

How quickly can you ramp them up? How can we optimize their impact? Right? How can we figure out where they can go if they're better than expected? What are the things that we can do to provide more responsibilities, more opportunities, more challenges for this individual? And how hiring someone that has given us more than what we expected affects future hiring within the organization? And is this someone who can excel as an ic or is this someone that has leadership capabilities and we can start to teach them the principles of management? Not as good, but we're glad that they're here. Great. What are the things that we can learn from that so that we can get someone that is as good as we expected or better in the future? But also what are the things that we can invest in to get this person to where we would love to see them from time to time? We do end up making hiring mistakes. And to me, it is important that you address those hiring mistakes as swiftly as possible. And as cold as it sounds, I think separating from an employee that is not a good fit, it's just not beneficial only to the company, but it's also beneficial to the individual.

Shannon Ogborn [00:08:57]:

And there's definitely a certain recalibration. There's always recalibration opportunities, whether to your point, they're doing fantastically and they have a high potential for even more, whether they are doing pretty good, but like maybe there's some area for growth or whether they're not going to work out. There's always a recalibration. There's always something to learn.

José Benitez Cong [00:09:18]:

Absolutely right. To me, there is an importance in terms of understanding what is happening with each of individuals. As a leader, you want to have a sense for the various personalities, the various skill levels, right? The ambitions and all of that. And not only is it essential in terms of making sure that this high value, hopefully generational talent is going to continue to be engaged, right. And happy and productive, but it also, it also feeds into the notion of what is it that we truly need on the next set of hires based on understanding our employees. Because ultimately, you know, if we really want to. We talked about impact a couple of minutes ago. If you really want to bring impact from a talent perspective, from a people perspective, to me, there is no bigger impact than being able to really, really, really nail down organizational design.

José Benitez Cong [00:10:16]:

Like to me, if you can figure out a way where you're putting the right pieces in place and you're keeping the team balance, right? And you have an understanding of what skill gaps are missing, what traits of personalities are missing, right? The different career stages of the team and the dynamics, that's when you can get to a place where you can be very confident in terms of the impact that not only each individual has the potential in their opportunities, but collectively as an organization, right. Hopefully you're moving Things along aggressively in my experience. Again, you know, we started to think about these things in ipod, really saw in iPhone in action. And Nest. Nest was a company that just aggressively grew, right, and became successful based on that. And, you know, I have taken the same learnings and been applying it to what's happening at Humane with the notion, though, that you can just take a script or a playbook and assume it's going to work. You really have to customize it right to the new environment.

Shannon Ogborn [00:11:17]:

So the burning question that often comes up in the talent community and the people ops community, especially around that elongated experience between hiring someone and their experience as an employee and doing the job, people want to know, how the hell are you tracking this?

José Benitez Cong [00:11:33]:

Early in my career, you know, I. The loss of intuitions played a great role into how I analyze and access information, but I quickly realized that intuition, as important as it is, and it is very important, it just doesn't scale, right? You need structure, you need framework, you need tools. And I went from gut feeling to notes on a notebook to spreadsheets, right, and then tools. The exciting part about, you know, the present and the future of recruiting is that AI, in my opinion, it's going to be able to provide an opportunity to really supercharge our ability to measure, track, and help us with predictions. Ultimately, I don't ever, you know, see AI replacing our roles, but I do see AI really augmenting the intelligence capability, right, of our roles. The opportunity to automate administrative tasks, repetitive tasks that take time away from us being present, being in the moment, and connecting with individuals. And so, you know, right now we are building our own tools.

José Benitez Cong [00:12:54]:

We are creating GPTs, looking to turn those GPTs into agents that are going to help us through, but as I mentioned many, many times, and I think I mentioned the last time you spoke, you know, I'm not in the business of building tools. And, you know, for me to build tools, it takes away from the focus, from the strategy, you know, from driving impact into my company. And so my hope is that there are going to be organizations out there, like Ashby, right, that are going to take some of these ideas and really productize them so that instead of me thinking about how we can build things and how we can track things, right. I will be able to, you know, just have it as part of a package, but as of today, you know, internally, we're developing our own GPTs. And again, we're looking to create a gentech intelligence that can help us to do our job and track all that information.

Shannon Ogborn [00:13:46]:

For sure. I Joined Ashby because I saw the value of our analytics product and obviously things have grown so much since then, especially talent and people ops teams. All of these people, analytics, talent, operations, those roles haven't existed for a long, long time. They've maybe existed in other places like marketing ops, sales ops, but now we have this really interesting opportunity, especially at Ashby, to be able to help people build reports and measures without having to have the knowledge you previously had to have, which is coding knowledge of BI tools. By having tools and AI that can really unlock these things where people don't have to have really high technical skill sets, it's a big win in my opinion for talent teams.

José Benitez Cong [00:14:38]:

Absolutely. Absolutely. To me, one of the things that was apparent to my team a couple of years ago was the fact that we are very focused providing the best candidate experience. Up until we announced and launched the product, no one knew what were going to be working on. No one knew what the product was going to be. So it was, it was essential that we created a strong connection and built trust with the candidates, right, because they were literally accepting a job offer, you know, not knowing what they were going to be working on. And we quickly realized that it was pretty tough and taxing to do both, to be great at doing the little details of administrative efforts, right? And to be present and engaging in a human manner to build that trust. And so we started to invest aggressively into learning, not just about automating everything, but automating the things that could have the biggest impact.

José Benitez Cong [00:15:38]:

It's been pretty incredible the last couple of years to really get a sense for the minute things that we are not realizing that take so much time away from us, right, in which we can truly bring augmented intelligence, AI, I don't call it artificial intelligence, I call it augmented intelligence. And really help us, right, to focus on the things where we're going to have the biggest impact. And so, for example, today we realized that every time there was a new requisition, right? It took days for us to get to consensus. Going from an intake meeting, to emails or slacks back and forth to getting people together to review the job descriptions before we could launch it. Today we have a conversation, that conversation is being annotated by a tool, is being fed into a GPT that we train. And the GPT is providing real time information in a matter of hours, whereas before it used to take days. We're connecting it, utilizing our systems to make sure that the people associated with that specific assessment of that new role have a chance to see it real time. It's Amazing what it's done for us.

José Benitez Cong [00:16:51]:

The job descriptions have gotten better, right? The interview planning has gotten much, much better. And we're at a point where not only have we automated that, but we are also are building the capabilities to automate the preparation to the candidate prior to them meeting with the initial screen or with a panel of interviewers. It's pretty exciting. And again, on the surface most would assume, right, that you know, a tool like that could replace humans, but reality is I don't believe that the tool is going to be able to do that. You are going to need that human connection, you're going to need that trust that is going to be built. And to me, that trust is going to be strengthened, right, by high quality data that goes along with high quality time that you're spending with those individuals.

Shannon Ogborn [00:17:39]:

I'd have to imagine as well that all of these amazing things that you're doing have a solid impact on impact of a hire because you're getting all the right inputs so that you can hire the person that's the best match, but I would love to quickly take a step back to the measurement piece. What do you think are the most important inputs for measuring something like quality or impact of hire?

José Benitez Cong [00:18:08]:

So to me there are a few components. Number one, you have to be able to analyze the decision making process, right? You have to make sure that you have a good understanding of how the decision was made to select an individual, right? And onboard them. To me that is important. And the reason being is that, you know, you can go back and validate the job description to validate the pre planning. To me, there's never going to be a situation where you build it once and that's it, it runs on itself. It's never going to be bad. With each individual that you insert into a, into an existing nucleus, into a team, right? The dynamics change, right? And could be personality, it could be skills. The understanding of how we got there in that selection coupled with is this person as good as we thought. Better than we thought. Not as good, but we're glad that they're here or we made a mistake can really help us to understand that potential for impact and eventually witness that impact.

José Benitez Cong [00:19:13]:

But that information, especially if we continue to utilize it, right, to continue to assess and plan for subsequent strategies, not just on recruiting, but also how do we manage and scale both the team and the individual's careers. That is information discussions that are going to help us to make more qualified decisions, put more confidence in future hires. And so to me, that's how I see it. And again, I came out of retirement to join Humane and one of the main reasons why I came out of retirement is because I truly believe that we are in a period of time in the early days where we're going to see hiring becomes that much more important because things are moving at a much faster, aggressive pace than we have ever seen before. And if we can figure out a way to take the art that is recruiting with the science, right, that is data in augmented intelligence, we truly have the opportunity for recruiting for people to be a very strategic partner at the highest possible level and can have a massive impact in how our companies are able to navigate and compete in a future where AI is going to play such a significant role. To me, this is the time, this is the opportunity where we can truly grab a seat that is going to be respected and none of this is going to happen, you know, without having a great people operations or recruiting operations strategy and individuals that are going to help us to figure out how to customize the right solutions for each of entities for each of our corporations.

Shannon Ogborn [00:20:57]:

Could not have said it better myself. Hiring intentionally and strategically has never been more important and will only continue to be super important. So I think the earlier companies can start thinking through these topics and considerations that they need to build into their process, the better off they're going to be in the next one to five years.

José Benitez Cong [00:21:20]:

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, again, this time for vendors, right, to really start to think about how they are going to deliver the tools that are going to make this a reality, but it's also time for people to truly embrace, you know, this opportunity, right, and not be afraid of it. For those individuals who are fearful of technology replacing their roles, it's not going to be the case. You know, someone, and I don't know who said it, but I'm truly subscribed to this philosophy. It is not technology that's going to replace you, it's someone that knows how to utilize AI that is going to replace you. And again, you know, I think that we're in for one of the most exciting periods, if not the most important period in the history of recruiting and the history of talent.

Shannon Ogborn [00:22:04]:

Something you said about vendors got me excited because as a vendor, as Ashby, we have seen a lot of our customers utilizing Ashby get promoted, move into new exciting roles for them. And it's not because of the tool per se, but it's because the tool is enabling them to showcase their value. And as vendors, I think we have a really exciting opportunity to help our community grow and show that strategic element of this role and job function that has oftentimes been overlooked from a strategic perspective amongst other parts of the business. So I'm really excited about how vendors can play a role in, you know, lifting the community up and providing them tools that will enable them to be more strategic.

José Benitez Cong [00:22:56]:

No, absolutely. I mean, today I don't know where I would be, right. If I didn't have access to Ashby. It allows me to tell the present story of what's happened, allows me to be retrospective right. In terms of what has transpired and combine it. It allows me to be predictive in terms of what we could expect. And yeah, sure, that we survived without it in the past, we did, but we were very efficient right in ahead of someone collecting the data and crunching this data could be better repurpose to someone who's going to have the opportunity to be an amazing ambassador, an amazing talent experience to great candidates, right.

José Benitez Cong [00:23:37]:

For someone to have a great partnership with hiring managers and teams and truly understand what they're doing. To me, it's an easy, easy, easy repurpose of that budget. I will 10 out of 10 invest in creating a better human experience both internally and externally, right in 100% exchange that budget from hiring someone who is eventually going to be bored, right. Dealing with all the data and just augmenting, you know, the impact by bringing in the right tools. They're going to do, you know, the work behind the scenes for us.

Shannon Ogborn [00:24:11]:

On this thought process. This is one of my last questions here on measuring an impact of hire. Since you all have started looking at this more closely at Humane, have there been any results or outcomes that have really benefited you all?

José Benitez Cong [00:24:26]:

You know what? I have a recent experience. Earlier in the year, we started a search for probably one of the most critical roles in the company, VP of AI. We are an AI company. A VP is essential. And it was incredible. We were able to get over a thousand applicants, whether they applied directly or they were sourced by our incredible team. From there we went down to 84 individuals that we actually made contact with and initiated the assessment. We dwindled down to a small group of amazing, amazing candidates that went through, you know, the final rounds.

José Benitez Cong [00:25:06]:

We selected an individual who actually turned down, I won't say the names, but it turned down three of the biggest names in AI for Humane and accepted a role for us. Unfortunately, you know, life happened and something that they're facing prevented them from joining the company. All that work that we did because the data was quantified, it took us a week, a week to be able to find a suitable replacement who not only went through an aggressive last minute process, but they were able to accept the role and started almost immediately. In as much as I wish, you know, the other person would have been part of this amazing team, we are super excited, right. With who we ended up with and we are looking forward to the growth. I'm not sure that that would have been the case had we not had a very strict control on the data, right. I'm not sure that that would have allowed us to build such a relationship where we pass on someone that was incredible because we thought we had just a slightly better fit somewhere else and were able to go back and resuscitate that relationship and to get that individual to join in such a short period.

José Benitez Cong [00:26:29]:

And to me, that is the ultimate example of the power of both data, right. And tools and systems, but also the human connection. Like to me, those two combined, it's going to be a connective tissue that again is going to propel our industry, right. Our profession into one of the most important roles in corporate America over the next quarter of a century.

Shannon Ogborn [00:26:57]:

That's an amazing story. The thing that I love the most though is that this belief in the human centered part of talent is not new to you. You used to show up to your hired candidates orientation at Apple to meet them on their first day.

José Benitez Cong [00:27:16]:

Absolutely. You know, the one thing that I would say about recruiting is that it is not transactional. Unfortunately, many, if not most make it transactional, right. And is dialing for dollars, right. It's throwing spaghetti at the wall for me. I realized early on that exceptional individuals, most likely no exceptional individuals themselves, right.

José Benitez Cong [00:27:40]:

And so what I used to do at Apple, Every Monday at 8am all of the new hires gather at the main lobby. And at Apple, they were hiring hundreds of people, you know, per week. And I quickly realized that that experience was going to be one where it was going to feel impersonal, it was going to feel scary. You just made a tough decision, right, to move on from, you know, a set of people that you have known for a while, a commute that you're comfortable with, and now you're going to a new place. And I realized that, you know, it took me back to the first day of school, right. And how intimidating it could be. And so what I started doing was I would show up, you know, 15 to 20 minutes before I would make sure that I would gather their stickers as new employees to be let in.

José Benitez Cong [00:28:38]:

And instead of somebody coming in and looking at 200 name tags I already had theirs with me. Instead of being in a lobby, right, that was completely compressed by so many people, I was able to, you know, get him past security, to get him to the coffee station, right, where they could be comfortable. They had someone whose face that recognized. Hopefully, there was a trust that was already built in. And to me, what I realized when I was looking at the people waiting to be called in with those that were with me, there was a significant level of confidence in the decision that they made, right? The stress levels was lower. And by doing so, it reminded them that my job was not done. It reminded them that everything that we talked about leading to their decision to join Apple. And by the way, in my early days of Apple, Apple was not the great company that it is today.

José Benitez Cong [00:29:35]:

You know, it gave them that confidence. And that confidence allowed for my relationship with them to expand, for that trust to continue to grow, right? And I would follow up a week later, I would stop by the desk to make sure that everything was fine. You know, I did it again within a month. And I checked in with them as often as I could. And after a while, I think that people around me were probably wondering why they never saw me sourcing, right? They never saw me on the phone calling candidates, but I was able to bring in great candidate after great candidate after great candidate. How do I do that? Well, guess what? I would just call those people whose relationships were expanded by the trust that we created, right? Not just from the recruiting process, but from the onboarding process and forth. And those individuals were able to help me, right, to identify and secure those great generational talents that I was bringing in in the subsequent months.

Shannon Ogborn [00:30:34]:

I love that humans in recruiting is not lost, and I think we agree that that will not be lost soon. I would love to take, like, a million steps back. I feel like from our conversations, I sort of know a little bit of your answer to this, but I would love to hear. When you hear hiring excellence, what does that mean to you?

José Benitez Cong [00:30:56]:

The fear that I have when I hear hiring excellence is that most will make the mistake again of assuming that if the wrong data checks up, because there is such thing as collecting the wrong data, there is such thing as overemphasizing on the wrong data. And again, if you're just focusing on time to hire, if you're focusing on costs, you know, hire, if you're focusing on the number of hires that your recruiters are delivering. Yeah, right? A broken watch. It's right twice a day, right? And to me, you really are not looking at excellence. You Know, you're looking to validate, right, Your existence, your impact. And to me, you know, what you really want to do is you want to make sure that you have a great strategy of prioritizing the hires, right? So that you can empower the recruiters to work on less requisitions, but have more time to study the market, to connect with the hiring manager, to enable the recognizance of what it is that you're looking for with the interview team, the panel, right. And be able to do research and analyze, right.

José Benitez Cong [00:32:16]:

You know, that talent pool and get a sense for what it is that the company really needs to me is not about identifying the best candidate possible, right? For me, it's identifying the best candidate possible that has the highest probability of coming in at a, in a reasonable time frame and join the company and be a good fit within the subcultures for the organization and be a supporter for the major culture of the company and create that impact. You know, excellence. To me, as much as I love data and I talked about data for most of the podcast, ultimately I am not going to judge the recruiter, right, or the team by any of that. I'm going to judge them by the impact that their hires are having, right? By the ability to be able to do something like, goodness gracious, we thought we had an amazing executive about to join. It didn't work out. What do we do? Great. Within a week, we find a suitable replacement. And so to me, how do you quantify that through data? You know, you almost can't.

José Benitez Cong [00:33:22]:

And so the way I think about the way I create, my philosophy is use data to prepare you and put you in a position to have that impact and then measure that impact.

Shannon Ogborn [00:33:36]:

I love that. That was very. That was a, like, nice full circle moment also with a couple of hot takes. So, you know, our last question, and I feel like you're two plus decades in the industry, you have to have some hot takes. So I would love to know what is your recruiting hot take, how controversial.

José Benitez Cong [00:33:53]:

You want me to be. You know, here's my hot take. Get away from being transactional. Get away from being transactional, right? Don't make the mistake to assume that just because you find the right person or a person or candidate that is willing to take the role, you know, that is the essence of your role. No, really become ingrained with what it is that your company is trying to do. Really become a true analyst of, you know, from a human perspective of the different components that create a healthy, safe environment, right, where people can thrive, right? And figure out how you translate that into the assessment of not just the IQ, Right. And the skill levels and the expertise, but the EQ of the individual, right.

José Benitez Cong [00:34:48]:

And so make sure that the process that you're following is not one that is transactional. So don't rely on closing someone, don't rely on selling someone, right. That individual may not be a good fit, right. It might be a good fit in terms of the iq, but not a good fit in terms of the eq. And you just dig in a bigger hole, creating massive debt for the future.

José Benitez Cong [00:35:14]:

So make sure that you get away from transactions, get away from being a great salesperson, right. And figure out what it is that will make this successful. And the only way, in my opinion, that you can do that is by creating an amazing experience with your hiring team so that they can open up and tell you exactly what it is that you need, but also with the candidate so you can really have a good understanding. It is okay to find someone exceptional who's not a good fit at the moment, right. That relationship could lead you to the right hire. That relationship could lead you to a future higher, right, but you have to be. You have to create a sense of trust so that you can have a high level of confidence in the quality of that individual so that you can hopefully see the impact into the future. So to me, that's a hot take. Don't let's not turn this into a, you know, sales organization, because it is not, and stop being transactional. Really invest in the human factor.

Shannon Ogborn [00:36:14]:

Couldn't agree more. When I was at Google, I was surprised how many recruiters didn't emphasize to their candidates that just because you got a no today is not a no down the line, like, let's stay in touch, keep working, keep working on it, keep working on your skills, and we will reconvene. You know, like, there is opportunities for us to come back together. And I hired many people who failed their first interview honestly, kind of badly. Like a lot of recruiters would say, I don't think this candidate will ever get to the bar that is necessary to get hired. In my mind, it's, why not give them a chance to prove you wrong on that? And so I would always say to my candidates, a no, today is not a no a year or two years from now, keep at it, and we will stay connected. And it means all the world to a candidate because then they feel like the door is not completely closed. And so I think that's, that's definitely really important, so agreed.

José Benitez Cong [00:37:13]:

Love that. Absolutely love that. The right philosophy.

Shannon Ogborn [00:37:16]:

Well, I think we are coming up on our time. Where should people go to learn more about you and Humane?

José Benitez Cong [00:37:20]:

Humane.com and for me, you know I'm on Twitter, on LinkedIn. Tend to be more active on LinkedIn than anything else and feel free to reach out. I'm always open to having conversations with individuals. You know, even though I've been in the industry for over two decades, it's amazing how much I learn from every conversation that I have and every new person that I meet.

Shannon Ogborn [00:37:40]:

Amazing. Well, José, your insights are so valuable. I can't wait for folks to hear all of it. Thank you again for joining us on offer. Accepted. Really appreciate you spending some time with us and we'll see you next time.

José Benitez Cong [00:37:53]:

Thank you so much. Had a great time.

Shannon Ogborn [00:37:56]:

This episode was brought to you by Ashby. What an a TS should be? A scalable all-in-one tool that combines powerful analytics with your ats, scheduling, sourcing, and CRM. To never miss an episode, subscribe to our newsletter at www.ashbyhq.com/podcast. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.