Securing Talent's Voice in Headcount Strategy with Mario Espindola, Senior Director of Talent and Operations at SignalFire

Can talent leaders establish themselves as essential players in headcount planning?

Mario Espindola, Senior Director of Talent Operations at SignalFire, shares his insights with Shannon Ogborn on how talent acquisition can secure a seat at the decision-making table. They discuss how understanding business metrics and collaborating with finance can improve efficiency and drive better outcomes. To learn more about startup headcount planning, you can check out his article on the topic here.

Mario explains how talent leaders, once excluded from strategic discussions, are now becoming essential players in today’s tech-driven landscape. By mastering data, talent leaders can participate in key conversations and lead proactive, informed recruiting efforts.

Key Takeaways:

1. Data-driven decisions foster credibility: Reliable market data and internal performance metrics position talent leaders as indispensable in planning processes.
2. Eliminating silos enhances focus: Aligning talent strategy with business goals increases precision in role definitions and prioritizes impactful hiring.
3. Real-time feedback refines clarity: Regular updates based on performance and market shifts support adaptive strategies that meet current business needs.
4. Team integration builds successful outcomes: Collaboration across functions turns hiring into a comprehensive exercise, ensuring all voices are considered in the journey to recruiting success.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Redefining Hiring Excellence: Structured Hiring and Role Intakes
(02:41) Why Talent Leaders Were Historically Absent from Headcount Planning
(04:38) Downstream Effects of Excluding Talent from Strategic Conversations
(09:03) Transforming Recruiters into True Talent Partners
(11:15) Mastering Market Data to Influence Headcount Planning
(13:10) How Talent Leaders Gain Credibility and a Seat at the Table
(17:46) Data Talent Leaders Should Always Have Ready
(22:11) Preparing for Leadership Meetings on Headcount Strategy
(25:38) Defining Hiring Excellence: Structured Process and Team Collaboration
(28:30) Recruiting Hot Take: The Inefficiency of Evergreen Catch-All Job Requisitions

Transcript

Mario Espindola [00:00:00]:
And I think that hiring excellence is rooted around structured hiring and the notion of proper role intakes. Having the talent team and the recruiter become a real true talent partner, I think relies on the intake process and the way that you are able to really dive deep into the construction of a role. It's that notion of like slowing down to get ahead. That's the way that I look at intakes and structured hiring. Again, taking that kind of racy daisy mindset of understanding like who is really a key critical part of a hiring process and what your responsibility is. How we align on pitching this role, pitching the challenge, pitching the company. That to me is hiring excellence, it's been said once and it'll be said a million times because it rings true, is that hiring is a team sport. Doing it in a silo, relying on just recruiting to drive the outcome is completely unrealistic and it yields suboptimal results.

Shannon Ogborn [00:00:57]:
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. We are here at Transform and I'm super excited to bring on Mario Espendola.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:39]:
He is the Senior Director of Talent Operations at Signal Fire. He has over 15 years of experience in TA and People Operations which spans from in house leadership roles at venture backed companies to two publicly traded companies to executive search. He has built and scaled global TA teams leading talent functions from the ground up to full scale global operations. At Signal Fire. Mario applies his hiring and talent expertise to advise and support portfolio companies from seed to growth stage across various innovative industries. Mario, thank you so much for joining us.

Mario Espindola [00:02:10]:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here during Transform Week in Las Vegas and going off of the great energy that we are having as part of this conference experience. And you're on the podcast now.

Shannon Ogborn [00:02:20]:
Amazing. Well, I know we are going to get to the topic here in a little bit of how talent leaders can get into the room when it comes to everyone's favorite topic which is headcount planning. But first I would love to hear a little bit more about why talent leaders have historically been left out of that conversation because I feel like that is something that we hear pretty often.

Mario Espindola [00:02:41]:
Yeah, definitely. I would emphasize historically, I think the kind of light at the end of the tunnel of this conversation is that talent leaders are becoming more prominent in those conversations. And I think that's mostly driven around this whole like, ushered in year of efficiency that's kind of become an era of efficiency across the tech industry. And a lot of the expertise that is kind of driven around workforce planning really relies on talent to be the tip of the spear. But to your original question, why talent has been historically, you know, left out of that conversation is that predominantly in the startup environment, recruiting is just so focused around execution. Hiring is done with like a skeleton team oftentimes. Sometimes a talent leader that is doing both strategic work, but also tactical work and hiring and execution is just like the headline. It's the name of the game there.

Mario Espindola [00:03:32]:
So balancing, you know, those requirements of being the boots on the ground recruiter and then putting your strategic hat on sometimes has been passed over to an operations leader or finance leader and has kind of just been their responsibility. The recruiting leader has just kind of been off to the sides and, and unfortunately sometimes just kind of like waiting for that headcount plan to hit their desk so that they can direct themselves or their teams to the task.

Shannon Ogborn [00:03:59]:
Execute.

Mario Espindola [00:04:00]:
Like I said, execute. Yeah. And I think it's really important to ensure that you're making the space to do both. I know that in startup environments you're already kind of burning the candle at both ends, but when I think back to experiences I've had or experiences that I've seen peers have, it's oftentimes like that that kind of boils down to the why of, you know, why talent leaders have been left out of that conversation, which is so strategic in nature across the whole organization. But it really dictates and kind of illustrates like what your job is going to look like and what kind of this new year or timeline, you know, of headcount planning is going to look like for. For that function.

Shannon Ogborn [00:04:38]:
Definitely. One thing that I love that we talked about before when we were coming to this conversation is that even in your own experience, this wasn't necessarily a strong skill set for you and you've really grown in this area. So I love that it's possible for people to take this and grow from.

Mario Espindola [00:04:55]:
Is so possible. And I have to give credit to peers and mentors in the space. Shout out to Adam Ward and Mike Joyner from Growth by Design. They have incredible resources that helped me through this experience. This was before there was digitized platforms like Team Ohana that helped kind of guide this experience through kind of a digital platform that embeds into ATSS and HRS's. This was just like spreadsheets only, but with those resources from those firms and just like mentors and friends in the space, like I was able to really be able to master that. For my first head of talent role, I, I came straight out of an agency and so headcount planning wasn't something that I had mastered yet, but my first head of talent job, like, I knew that that was something I had to do. And also giving credit to great finance leaders and operations leaders that I've worked with before really kind of pulling me in and my responsibility there was like to really define my what, why and how of how I added value in that conversation.

Shannon Ogborn [00:05:58]:
That makes total sense. There are downstream effects of excluding talent from that headcount conversation. Can you walk me through, like, what those are?

Mario Espindola [00:06:07]:
Yeah, I mean there, there's a handful I think I'll state. The most obvious trade off that's negative is that the recruiting team is kind of left sourcing for the wrong roles, building pipelines for the wrong roles. But ultimately there's kind of this like unknown discomfort within the talent team of knowing, like, are we gonna have a banner year that I need to prepare for and start building pipelines for now? Are we deciding to have a flat year? And you know, we're putting our money and resources in different business objectives that aren't gonna require more hiring. I think also with like the advent of AI and the mass adoption of AI, there's a lot more that you can do with less of a staff. So to summarize that first comment, it's more about alignment across the business, alignment within your hiring managers that might be expecting hires to be on their teams, but also utilizing the talent team to the best of the abilities that you can. Right. Like if you have a fully developed talent team, you want to be able to use them as effectively as possible. Right.

Mario Espindola [00:07:08]:
And so I think it boils down to efficiencies around utilizing the staff that you have the talent lead or the head of talent head of people doesn't have the data and the information that they need to build a capacity plan around. They're not able to sequence hires and be able to inform the business as when they can make those hires based on if these are evergreen, repeatable hires, AES, engineers, or strategic hires that are adding to the leadership, functionality and strength. There's A lot of like operating in the dark. And I think as a talent leader you have to get used to that. Right. Because there is a seasonality to headcount planning typically happens around Q3, Q4. Some companies don't wrap it up until Q1 or they're on a different fiscal calendar. And that's why it's so important for the talent leader to be a part of that conversation and to know when the sequencing of this really important strategy is going to be deployed and developed into the company.

Mario Espindola [00:08:03]:
Because there will be a period of time where like your team is kind of tapering down a little bit more on the motions depending on your current stage and your traction on the market. But yeah, there are certainly some trade offs. I'll summarize and kind of close my comments in saying it's also just a tough credibility pill to swallow when you're not a part of that conversation. You kind of give the perception of your team that you don't have a seat at the table and it's a hard rationalization to make us to why you're not a part of that conversation.

Shannon Ogborn [00:08:32]:
Yeah, I thought a couple of things about that were interesting. Especially with sourcing. It doesn't matter how fast you're sprinting, if you're off course, you aren't going to get to the goal. And it is totally true. When you are looking to your leader to understand why the decisions were made and how they were made and if they can't even tell you that because they're not in the room, I think that does hurt the credibility of leaders. And it's not necessarily their fault.

Mario Espindola [00:09:01]:
Right.

Shannon Ogborn [00:09:01]:
But it is kind of their problem.

Mario Espindola [00:09:03]:
Totally. It also stalls the notion of being a talent partner rather than a recruiter in the ways that if you don't know the what, why and how of this headcount plan and why these roles are being sequenced in the way that they are. If you're front loading sales, hiring at the beginning the year, or you're changing your profile in engineering, like how can you be an effective partner to your hiring manager to either align or push back on some of the responsibilities that they're putting in front of you as a recruiter. Right. I'm saying this now, but I'm probably going to say it again. And the rest of this conversation is like order taking is the Achilles heel to recruiting. Not that you're not wanting to service the business in the right way, but if you're just a yes person, you're putting yourself in a position that's going to be really hard to come out of. And not being in the conversation around workforce planning and headcount planning oftentimes puts you in that hole of not being able to be strategic.

Mario Espindola [00:09:58]:
And oftentimes I want to give companies the benefit of the doubt that it could be an oversight or it's a sequencing of when you bring in the talent leader. But ultimately there has to be that quality assurance. And check with the talent leader, whether it's like you're in a certain phase of the headcount planning process or you're through it all, they are the tip of the spear of making that plan come to life and to actualize the plan. So help me understand as to why they're not there. Right. So you really have to have some bravery and stand up to ask the question as to why you're not in the conversation. But also know what your role is and what you're responsible for producing. Producing as part of that process.

Shannon Ogborn [00:10:39]:
Totally. I also think one thing that some leaders may often forget is that heads of talent and even recruiters, they are the expert on the market. And so they would pretty easily be able to tell you, oh, you're trying to hire five machine learning AI engineers in a month. Okay, we're gonna like maybe have a little bit of a rough time with that plan or we need to start if, if those need to be filled by let's just say July, we need to start working on those in January because of the time that it takes to hire. So I think those are all definitely important.

Mario Espindola [00:11:15]:
I mean, just in the mention of that, Shannon, like that bolds and underscores the very, very important notion of like leading with data the same way that that finance leader leads with, hey, these are the dollars that we're deploying to hiring. This is our budget for hiring in this X increment of time, whether it's a year, whether it's a quarter. Your responsibility as a talent leader is to master comp data, master leveling for the stage appropriateness of this company, master. And know that you've got these reports that show this time to hire data. Right? Like the worst thing that you could do as a talent leader is just to say no because it's a difficult task and you're trying to scramble to find a solution. But you say no in the meantime to buy yourself some time. If you don't have that report that shows you historically this data engineer, this ML engineer in this particular market is really challenging to hire for. You're already kind of putting yourself in the hole of, like, showing this insecurity that you just can't do the job.

Mario Espindola [00:12:20]:
And so I know we'll talk about data in a second, but data is everything. If I can leave folks with anything is to master your data sources and be a credible resource of that information so that when you are ready for this exercise, you know exactly what data points you're going to point to in order to align with this team to be able to build as much of an airtight plan as possible.

Shannon Ogborn [00:12:47]:
Definitely. I want to hear more about sort of the how. How can talent leaders establish themselves as essential to the conversation? And maybe put another way, if you were a talent leader joining a company today or already at a company, what steps would you take to make sure you get into that conversation?

Mario Espindola [00:13:10]:
Again, data. It's the arrows, right. That you have in, you know, ready for the battlefield. Right. Like you have to have the data that is going to support either a contrasting narrative or an aligned narrative to the way that the constructed headcount plan looks. Right. There's a number of iterations in the headcount plan. I don't know any company or any leader that has created one.

Mario Espindola [00:13:35]:
And it was the magic headcount plan. Right. And also, like, there's iterations to headcount plans, but ultimately it has to rely on data. And as a talent leader, your conviction has to be driven by data. So whether it's external market data, that's compensation information that's going to help balance the budget or find some efficiencies within the budget and maybe do more, maybe do less with the headcount plan than what was originally intended, that is your responsibility as the talent leader and participation with finance.

Shannon Ogborn [00:14:06]:
Well, to your point about levels, too.

Mario Espindola [00:14:08]:
Yeah.

Shannon Ogborn [00:14:09]:
If you don't know what the levels are for the headcount plan, and then you are up against a budget that maybe you don't even know the budget for the year or for the headcount, and that's the most expensive line item for pretty much every company. It's hard to hire the people that the company says they need and want to hire, because you could have been that pushback to say, hey, there's actually no way that we can hire five senior people at this budget in this time frame.

Mario Espindola [00:14:42]:
Right. And allowing yourself to be that strategic leader that really does a thorough evaluation of the what, why and how skills and competencies for this role. And maybe ultimately you have to encourage them to level a role up. You maybe encourage them to hire a few ICs rather than a manager. Right. So again, I think that's the critical part of being in this conversation. But ultimately championing efficiency. Right.

Mario Espindola [00:15:09]:
I think trying to cut emotions or hurt feelings of not being in the conversation is key. And the bravery of kind of standing up to saying, hey, I'm raising my hand as a needed active participant in this practice and in this work stream because we ultimately need to operate as efficiently as possible. I am the lead here for our talent organization and I'm responsible for charging forward to this hiring plan. You know, you may have a really savvy finance leader and operations leader that are able to be resourceful and find that information. At the end of the day, they're not the person that's hitting the market fill those roles.

Shannon Ogborn [00:15:46]:
They're not the expert in the market.

Mario Espindola [00:15:47]:
Yeah, they're not the expert in the market, but they're also not hitting the pavement and finding those candidates and going through the challenges of what every recruiter knows a hard to fill role looks like in practice of actually it actually.

Shannon Ogborn [00:15:59]:
Changes so quickly because let's just look at like 2020, for example. Recruiters were like at the peak and it was actually very hard to hire a really incredible recruiter. And now the situation has completely changed.

Mario Espindola [00:16:16]:
Where, remember the stat where it was harder to hire a recruiter than it was harder to hire an engineer in.

Shannon Ogborn [00:16:21]:
2020, which is absolutely wild. And now the situation has completely reversed. And so if that's not your full time job to like really keep your eyes on the market, I would find it hard to be able to be as efficient as you could be if you knew the information like talent folks do.

Mario Espindola [00:16:37]:
Definitely. I think it's, it's really important to just be really clear around the directive and be really clear about everyone's role in this work stream of headcount planning. You really have to put your operational program manager hat on as a talent leader in this point in time. And also not always just a point in time, like I think based on market conditions, your products, positioning on the market, a product pivot. Like you may be doing headcount planning a few times over in the year. Fundraising. Yep. Potentially you require a company.

Mario Espindola [00:17:11]:
I don't know, there's so many reasons as to why you would recalibrate your headcount plan. And I encourage it. Right. Like your headcount plan, again, I don't know one company that's done one version of it and it rode true until you know that next fiscal calendar year, whatever period of time you operate on. So again, you are the expert on the market that's boots on the ground hiring. You are the person that is steeped in the data and the metrics, that's running the function. And you have to just have the confidence and ability to know that you've got the keys to a lot of those resources. And just owning your data is just key critical.

Mario Espindola [00:17:46]:
It's again, it's, I believe it's the Achilles heel of the talent leader. If you're not so steeped in your data that you can read it like the back of your hand. And one more thing that I'd like to add that I think the talent leads really need to pay a lot of attention to is like these conversations are not only talking about hiring data and compensation data, but it's about business metrics. It's about how many customer logos are we looking to acquire? Are we breaking into a new vertical? Are we launching a new product? What's our cost of customer acquisition? I'll be a hundred percent real that like that. In my first head of talent role, I was surprised by, I thought like I was just like going to lead the talent function and like operate. I learned very shortly, thankfully after starting as the first head of talent coming out of the agency world that like I had to understand all the business metrics in order for me to then make the best and most informed decisions as the head of talent and people at that company. And if I didn't have that data, I would be operating in like a very siloed data set around just the motions of filling a rack.

Shannon Ogborn [00:19:00]:
Well, there's impacts of ARR and what you hope to achieve with that and how much can each rep bring in or how what book of business can like a customer success manager manage from an ARR perspective?

Mario Espindola [00:19:14]:
Totally. Ratios.

Shannon Ogborn [00:19:15]:
Yes, ratios. I mean the things are endless. But if you were to pick like a couple of pieces of data, what data should talent leaders have readily available to ensure they're a credible source?

Mario Espindola [00:19:28]:
In this conversation, I'm going to start with recruiter capacity planning. But I'm going to note that it's something that follows and precedes the headcount planning process. But I think knowing how many recs historically your recruiters handle at one given time is really important. It's essentially the construction of like how you're going to execute on that plan. And while the headcount plan informs a capacity plan, you also need to know the skill sets that you have on the team in order to effectively execute against the hiring plan. So I think it's important to have the data of knowing like, hey, what skill sets do I have on my team internally and externally? Where do those folks like really optimize their skills in? And how can we like build a scenario plan to utilize these people in headcount scenario 1, 2 and 3, right? I've mentioned this before, I'm going to say it again. Comp data is really important. I know we're in a place where there's a lot of platforms and some that are performing better than others when it comes to comp data.

Mario Espindola [00:20:28]:
But I think it's really important in terms of driving your value as a participant in headcount planning, especially in your partnership with a finance leader. They care a lot about a lot, but the dollars and cents, like really ultimately run the business at the end of the day and that information will help again, develop the strategy around, okay, we're going to really double down our capital to hire a new cto or maybe we need a lower level engineering leader at this point in time and we can wait until our next fundraise to hire the CTO that's going to take us public or whatever outcome we've got in mind. So I'd say those are the like, key critical data sources that you have to keep in mind. In summary, it's your team's performance historically. Where does that data live? Do you have a dashboard that's readily available for that info? And what external resources do you need in order to drive key decisions? And in this case it's like, what's your reliable comp data set that you rely on to be able to help kind of build those scenarios?

Shannon Ogborn [00:21:31]:
Right. I mean, I think a lot of headcount plans become like pie in the sky, optimistic. Like in a perfect world, we would hire this and that at this level and that level, but we're not in a perfect world. So it's definitely something to keep in mind in terms of structuring the conversation. If you were to be walking into leadership's meeting and trying to position and structure that conversation in a way that would ultimately hopefully get you into the room for headcount planning, how do you do that? Is it like, are you asking, are you seeking to understand, are you kind of standing firm on a.

Mario Espindola [00:22:11]:
If I were to walk in, into a startup as a head of talent again, as I have a few times over, I would be bold and confident enough to come into the conversation relying on experience that I've had to our audience of people that are maybe first time heads of talent or people that are aspiring to be ahead of talent again, using Business outcomes as the key driver here is like something that everyone should be grounded on.

Shannon Ogborn [00:22:36]:
Yeah. Tying it all together, it. You just have to make it easy for them to say, yes, you should be in this meeting. And we understand that and we know how you're going to contribute because you've already created a document, a plan.

Mario Espindola [00:22:49]:
Totally. Yeah. I mean, you've been proactive enough to say, here's my point of view. Here's how I can be a partner to you. Here's how you can be a partner to me. Here's the key data that we can use to inform these decisions. Tying it up in the beautiful line bow of saying we're doing what's best for the business hard are you that. Exactly.

Mario Espindola [00:23:08]:
You took. You literally took the words out of my mouth. If somebody is going to argue about doing what's best for the business, you've got bigger problems than your hands.

Shannon Ogborn [00:23:14]:
Totally.

Mario Espindola [00:23:14]:
You might have joined the wrong company.

Shannon Ogborn [00:23:16]:
At that point, for sure. Well, any last thoughts on headcount planning?

Mario Espindola [00:23:20]:
I'm inspired by the conversations that are happening around headcount planning, this one in particular. But others I've seen in the industry, I think are putting a lot of light on teamwork. And again, there's just a different construction of teams these days based on a lot of different factors, like AI, distributed workforce. In some cases, some people are coming back into office. There's a lot of talk around how the future of work and workforce planning looks like. And I think we're having a lot of conversations around who is responsible, who's a key contributor, the data that support these efforts. And quite honestly, I think more than ever I've been hearing that a talent leader is part of that conversation. So I'm hoping that we listen to this podcast in a year or two and it's like, more centered around how can the talent leader be more efficient in part of this process, assuming that they're a key contributor every time.

Shannon Ogborn [00:24:17]:
In an ideal world, although we always like the conversations to be relevant, it would almost be great if this conversation wasn't relevant in two years, because that means we've trended in a perfect trajectory that every talent leader is included in every headcount conversation.

Mario Espindola [00:24:33]:
Totally. I truly believe that everyone is being pushed to be more efficient today. And I don't find that to be a bad thing. I think the downside of it is obviously decreased workforce. And, you know, you hate to see rifts and downsizing. But the ultimate goal that I see in those key drivers of reducing workforce is because there has to be more efficiency on staff because of the mass adoption of AI. So, yeah, you know, there could be a future that I feel optimistic for and that, like the construction and the definition of what headcount planning looks like always includes talent, always includes people. I think we've made it pretty clear as to why, and hopefully this message inspires a lot of other people to really feel confident in being able to stand up and be that credible resource and figure out how to drive a lot of conviction around being included into outcome planning.

Shannon Ogborn [00:25:26]:
I'm optimistic with you. All right, well, we talk a lot at Ashby about hiring excellence, and I'm always so curious to hear from our guests. When you hear hiring excellence, what does that mean to you?

Mario Espindola [00:25:38]:
So hiring excellence, to me it is one answer that, like, in some cases feels a little controversial for some people in that, like, process, in some stages of company feels like the forbidden word. People just want to, like, move fast and, like, not feel bound to any sort of restrictions around how to do things. There's a lot of experimentation in startups and in tech in general, and I celebrate that. But I. I'm a big, big fan of structured hiring. And I think that hiring excellence is rooted around structured hiring and the notion of proper role intakes. Having the talent team and the recruiter become a real true talent partner, I think relies on the intake process and the way that you are able to really dive deep into the construction of a role. It's that notion of, like, slowing down to get ahead.

Mario Espindola [00:26:27]:
That's the way that I look at intakes and structured hiring. Again, taking that kind of racy daisy mindset of understanding, like, who is really a key, critical part of a hiring process and what your responsibility is, how we align on pitching this role, pitching the challenge, pitching the company, that, to me, is hiring excellence. It's been said once, and it'll be said a million times, because it rings true, is that hiring is a team sport. Doing it in a silo, relying on just recruiting to drive the outcome is completely unrealistic and it yields suboptimal results. So to me, hiring excellence is driving those tactics that feel so effective that they're contagious across the company. And hiring managers crave to be a part of your process. Right. Like, they can't wait until they have an open rack that's sequenced in that timeline so that they can work with you and your team.

Mario Espindola [00:27:25]:
Because it's a fun, exciting experience.

Shannon Ogborn [00:27:27]:
Yeah. I mean, most people are excited to add to their team and the better the partnership, the better the outcomes. A hundred percent.

Mario Espindola [00:27:34]:
You have to always be a partner to your hiring managers and to the team. So you know, having a little chip on the shoulder sometimes helps, but there's nothing better than the moment of alignment and you hired the best person for the job and you know, it's a 10 out of 10. And like that just that still lights me up after 15 years of being in the industry is like knowing that the best hire was made and that the process worked.

Shannon Ogborn [00:27:58]:
Yes. It's hard to do all of that in a chaotic environment. So definitely that structured and like all the data shows that structured interviewing is far more effective at job predictability. So that alignment of not only talent understanding that, but hiring managers understanding that, I think is goes a long way.

Mario Espindola [00:28:20]:
Yeah.

Shannon Ogborn [00:28:21]:
Well, we are at our final question here. We've exchanged a few hot takes. I'm curious to hear what is your ultimate recruiting hot take?

Mario Espindola [00:28:30]:
So there's a lot, but the first one that came to mind when you asked that question is the tactic of having that open vague evergreen catch all rack on your jobs page is completely inefficient.

Shannon Ogborn [00:28:45]:
Woo.

Mario Espindola [00:28:46]:
Hot take.

Shannon Ogborn [00:28:46]:
That is a hot take.

Mario Espindola [00:28:48]:
I, I'm, I, I'm already anticipating the comments section of Blow up here. I'll break down as why I think right now, in this current time we are In March of 2025, there has been a supply and demand shift on the market. Right. There's more talent available than there is roles in tech. Right. And when somebody's on the market and they see an open job, they expect some sort of reciprocity. Right. Some sort of response to an application.

Mario Espindola [00:29:17]:
Yes. Reasonable for sure. When a talent team is operating at its best, most optimal state, they are operating against a role that they need to fill to, you know, maximize business outcomes, get the best people into the business. They're not spending time usually looking at an evergreen open rec that gets hundreds of applicants a day. Your chances of finding like the needle in the haystack there are pretty slim. I think that I boil it down to two things in making this my hot take is one, it would be a bit of a waste of time for a recruiter to spend time just combing through that mass volume of applicants. There are some great tools that have helped you pattern match based on AI to like rank and score the applicants that come through. Ashby has a great one, but a lot of TA functions don't have that sophistication and it still requires the manual scanning of a recruiter to look at that profile.

Mario Espindola [00:30:13]:
But ultimately the talent is awaiting a Response I hear from so many candidates that they've been ghosted, that they've applied to hundreds of jobs and never heard anything back. And that's for recs that actually are defined. Yeah. Think of the response rate for recs that are just like, join us. If you're interested in X company, you should throw your hat in the ring. Like, I think that might have been effective in, like, the years past, but it still required a lot of time for recruiters. Just comb through a lot of unqualified folks.

Shannon Ogborn [00:30:46]:
If your company doesn't opportunistically hire and you're not going to even look at them. I think that's the problem. Right. One, when people come across this and they're like, this is the company that I want to work for. I just know it. It's. This is my passion. Then they write these like, really long cover letters that don't get read.

Shannon Ogborn [00:31:03]:
And so like, I think that's a problem because they put effort in and they deserve a response. But moreover, people just aren't reviewing them. They're not utilizing them. If you're not going to do anything with them, don't ask for the information. Right. Like, if you're doing strategic talent community, that's way different because you're nurturing them. You're getting them into a flow that keeps them engaged and lets them know what the open roles are. But so many people are building these databases to do nothing with them.

Shannon Ogborn [00:31:34]:
It doesn't really make any sense.

Mario Espindola [00:31:36]:
Awesome point and thank you for pointing that out because I do want to draw like, some clear distinction between network development, which is what VCs do, and what we do at our firm is, is very focused around, like, network development. And like, the flow of people coming in is different than a tech company that has like a certain roster of jobs that they need to hire for at any given time. That's what's like, outlined in their careers page. And oftentimes those talent teams are operating in a lean capacity that sometimes they can't even keep up with the real defined open rec. So, so like building this kind of like black box of applicants and not doing anything with them and not having a TRM function or an application scoring function within your ats. Like, you're basically just like throwing a Hail Mary in the black box and hoping that, like, somebody will read it and, you know. Yeah, well, ultimately what, like, my, my reason of making this a hot take is like, it could affect your talent brand pretty significantly. People are pretty vocal about how difficult it is to find A job in tech right now.

Mario Espindola [00:32:42]:
TikTok Instagram people make videos. Yeah. Putting it on blast. Right. Like you know, you get. You get a canned response to something and you're.

Shannon Ogborn [00:32:53]:
I see at least one a day.

Mario Espindola [00:32:55]:
Right. So ultimately I think it. You want to keep the recruiting team as efficient as possible and running towards the right roles that they should be hiring for in time to make the business as successful as possible. But you also want to keep your talent brand as strong as possible in any market. It's important for you to keep your talent brand as relevant as your customer brand. Yeah, I think that those well intentioned open Evergreen non defined roles posted on a job site just like don't yield any results. So then why even do it?

Shannon Ogborn [00:33:29]:
Catch all that doesn't yield results like you said.

Mario Espindola [00:33:31]:
Agreed. So did we just agree on a hot take?

Shannon Ogborn [00:33:35]:
I. I'm not gonna lie, I actually agree with a lot of the hot takes on here because they're hot takes in a certain sense, but when you break them down it actually makes a lot of. It's very logical. Why? I think it's just because someone or a lot of companies do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Mario Espindola [00:33:55]:
There we go.

Shannon Ogborn [00:33:57]:
Well, I think we are coming up on our time here. Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

Mario Espindola [00:34:02]:
Oh gosh, yeah. LinkedIn. I try and post as much as possible, but I'm always open to connecting with people. At the risk of sounding corny, I. I definitely love that part of my job a lot is meeting a lot of people and always expanding my network. So LinkedIn predominantly. And yeah, hopefully this podcast and other resources that I've participated in.

Shannon Ogborn [00:34:22]:
Amazing. And where can people learn more about signifier?

Mario Espindola [00:34:25]:
Yep, we're all on every social channel. We have a great website that does exactly what we do. Tells you a lot about our team and our investments. So yeah, LinkedIn, every social channel and our website.

Shannon Ogborn [00:34:37]:
Amazing. Well, can't thank you enough for chatting with me about this. I think it's going to be really helpful, especially for people newer to being a talent leader in a company that may just not be as far progressed with getting talent folks into the headcount planning. So thank you for joining us.

Mario Espindola [00:34:52]:
Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Shannon Ogborn [00:34:54]:
This episode was brought to you by Ashby what an ATS 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.