Cybersecurity is not the primary focus for hiring new employees but is vital to ensuring you hire the right candidate. I sit down with Ted White with Vertical Talent Solutions to discuss a strategy that lines up suitable candidates with MSPs so that the effort spent to get the right candidate isn't a pleasant and perhaps even enjoyable opportunity.
[00:00:04] .
[00:00:05] Welcome to MSP 1337. I'm your host Chris Johnson, a show dedicated to cybersecurity challenges
[00:00:14] solutions, a journey together, not alone. Welcome everybody to another episode of MSP 1337.
[00:00:25] I'm joined this week by Ted White of Vertical Talent Solutions. Ted, welcome to the show.
[00:00:32] Thank you so much, Chris. Great to be on. So Vertical Talent Solutions is kind of in
[00:00:36] the name a little bit, but it doesn't really say why I would bring somebody in the talent
[00:00:41] solution space onto a cybersecurity podcast. So I want to frame this up for our listeners.
[00:00:48] Every single MSP is challenged by having the right FTEs, having the right employees
[00:00:54] in their organization. And since we do focus on cybersecurity, that talent pool
[00:00:59] obviously shrinks even further really fast. And so as you and I were talking before
[00:01:04] we started this episode, some things you highlighted for me were really big eye openers.
[00:01:10] And so I just thought we would start with if you could just give us a little backstory on
[00:01:14] how you landed here. I know it started somewhere around 2017 working with an MSP.
[00:01:20] Talk to me about that experience and why you shifted the way you did to focusing solely on
[00:01:26] the MSP space. Absolutely. So yeah, I'm located in West Hartford, Connecticut,
[00:01:31] and spent about 15 years in corporate before I started Vertical Talent Solutions 10 years ago.
[00:01:37] Our first managed service provider customer here in town, we kind of taught each other the game
[00:01:44] of recruiting. We went back and forth and basically troubleshooted the scenario and we
[00:01:48] had a lot of fun doing it. I really enjoyed working with them and fast forward like three,
[00:01:54] four years or so. We had 25 hires with the organization. They were able to grow from about
[00:02:00] 20 to 45, 20 to 60 people or so in general and were able to merge with a much larger
[00:02:08] managed service provider. And I didn't really realize what we were doing at the time,
[00:02:13] but it was a lot of fun helping the company. And I thought, man, I'd like to do that over
[00:02:20] and over and over again. And so I did. I went out and sought other managed service
[00:02:27] providers to work with. I let go of some of our enterprise customers because they weren't
[00:02:32] as much fun. And we got along really well with most all of the MSPs that we talk with,
[00:02:39] and especially our customers that we work with. So we're like-minded and I can get
[00:02:46] to the common denominator of what is like-minded and it comes down to being troubleshooters.
[00:02:52] Yeah, I like that you refer to your staff as troubleshooters. I'm like,
[00:02:56] you know about us and it's like our troubleshooters and I'm like,
[00:02:59] oh, do they like have a dev team? Like, is this some sort of like tech support strategy? No,
[00:03:04] I love it. I love it. It's a great way to describe staff in such a way that makes it tell
[00:03:10] me that out of the gate, you're already working to come up with a solution as opposed
[00:03:15] to what do they say? If I come to you with a problem or a complaint, I'm either part of
[00:03:20] the problem or part of the solution depending on what I bring along with that.
[00:03:23] You must have been tapped into my conversations earlier this morning.
[00:03:27] I was not, but obviously we seem to be like-minded as well. I think anybody
[00:03:35] that is an MSP from what you've shared would get along splendidly. I know that your
[00:03:42] recruitment process has about five stages to it. One of the things that I thought was
[00:03:46] super interesting and you and I were talking about this is it's one thing to hire somebody
[00:03:52] and get somebody that has the skill set and the understanding, largely the experience in
[00:03:57] the IT space. It's one of the hardest things to find, especially when you're looking for
[00:04:02] someone that's more in that level two, level three engineer space or as more of that
[00:04:06] salesy account management consultative space. Which all kind of revolves around like,
[00:04:14] how do I find somebody that's the right fit? I think that's your first stage is to find the
[00:04:20] right candidate. Obviously finding the right candidate for you as a recruiter obviously can
[00:04:27] be a little bit different out of the gate before we start talking about the MSP and
[00:04:31] their needs. One of the things that you and I talked about was culture and how culture,
[00:04:36] not just the internal culture of the organization, but I think to some degree we're
[00:04:40] largely seeing an impact on what MSPs and businesses in general are having impact
[00:04:46] through organizations when they go about this hiring process because, and I don't want to
[00:04:51] demographically label it, but there's a large volume in certain demographics that they just
[00:04:56] don't have this like the world is bigger than me.
[00:04:59] Yes, yes. So in those cases, first of all, we did a lot of marketing in 2020. We did a lot of
[00:05:12] figuring out the marketing aspect of our business and reaching out to managed service
[00:05:18] providers and we quickly realized that marketing and recruiting are very, very similar.
[00:05:23] So you've got a market, you go for your target market, you go for the people that you want to
[00:05:30] get in front of and we get in front of people that are not looking for jobs. We're not out
[00:05:34] there posting jobs or anything. We're tapping on the shoulders of people who are sitting pretty
[00:05:42] happy with their current job pretty much but we're reaching out saying, hey would you
[00:05:47] consider another opportunity and not so many words. And when we, we prefer those candidates
[00:05:54] over posting a job and things because the applicants, they're interviewing with five,
[00:06:00] six different companies and they get a little confused. When we're approaching somebody,
[00:06:05] it's more like hey I was either thinking about one or I'm happy where I am and I haven't
[00:06:10] interviewed in a while. It has to be really good. Well there's a reason we're reaching
[00:06:16] out to them. If they've been a tech two or a tech three for three years at their current MSP
[00:06:20] and they haven't been promoted, that's a signal to us that says hey this person wants to talk
[00:06:26] with us. So when we start talking with them, it's all how they interact with my team
[00:06:32] at the beginning. And you know you treat one person the same way that you should treat another.
[00:06:37] There should be kind of no difference. As long as they're polite with my recruiters
[00:06:41] and they're consistent about being polite, good people, hungry, humble, and smart.
[00:06:45] And you know they make it up through the filtering system. You know we talked with them
[00:06:50] and if we enjoy working with them and they're consistent about their expectations, they have
[00:06:56] the right skills, and of course they're troubleshooters. And we can get an idea
[00:07:01] you know based on some behavioral-based interviewing that I've done. If they're
[00:07:06] going to be a good fit not only for one customer, it's more of a collective thing like
[00:07:11] the majority of MSPs are looking for the same type of people. So there's not a lot of variables
[00:07:17] to change in that aspect. So job placement and all that, you know your timing for 2020,
[00:07:23] I mean we're talking about the pandemic has landed so like when you called somebody
[00:07:31] there was a good chance they were answering the phone because they were at the phone.
[00:07:35] True.
[00:07:36] What was that like? Because I feel like we changed the entire world overnight when it comes to
[00:07:44] going to work or having a commute that was largely tied to getting in my car,
[00:07:50] fighting traffic, listening to podcasts like this one, to get to destination and then
[00:07:56] work for somewhere between six and eight hours and then turn around and
[00:08:00] didn't do the same thing all over again. During that process what happened? Was it like an instant
[00:08:06] like oh my goodness we've got, it's a gold mine now from a candidate potential because you no
[00:08:13] longer are saying well I really only want people that are in a 15 mile radius of Hartford or
[00:08:19] fill in the blank right? Like what was that like? It was interesting. There was a little bit
[00:08:26] course of a pause in the world for a period of time but we did target people that
[00:08:38] and talked with a lot of candidates whose employers wanted them to be in the office
[00:08:43] at that time. They weren't too happy about it because they were hearing about their friends
[00:08:47] having some flexibility and luckily for us we had customers that were okay with you know remote
[00:08:53] situations, hybrid situations and they were hiring people just based on doing video interviews
[00:08:59] which as you said was a first. So that was pretty much the game involved there you know
[00:09:07] being comfortable with interviewing and making decisions even not having met somebody in person
[00:09:13] that was new back then. That really really cool. So talk to me a little bit about I
[00:09:20] feel like we've covered stage one and stage two I think anybody listening this is where everybody
[00:09:26] has challenges and I've heard some interesting things that MSPs do on the interviewing side of
[00:09:32] like okay we've got a puzzle situation and I need you to answer in you know 10 words or less
[00:09:38] and then if they can't answer it in 10 words or less they're like yeah we're not hiring.
[00:09:42] But like what kind of process do you go through because you know the things that I see
[00:09:46] happen a lot in the MSP space is you can have somebody that interviews really really well.
[00:09:51] You know they've gone through three boot camps, they've got four CompT Asserts
[00:09:55] and they you know if the right questions aren't asked they tend to you know excel
[00:10:03] greatly on that tech skills interview and then they're on day three of the job you're like
[00:10:09] oh my word how did we end up with this particular candidate? That's a really great
[00:10:14] question and if I can give and provide takeaways on this podcast that's what I intend to do.
[00:10:21] The main thing Chris that we did initially we were talking to a lot of candidates out of the
[00:10:26] industry in the industry and it would take about you know 15, 20 or so let's just say
[00:10:32] candidates to get a hire back in those days but what we found is if we had a one or two of
[00:10:37] those candidates were from MSPs those are the one or two that we end up placing. So I realized
[00:10:42] efficiently that we needed to switch our target you know again back to the target marketing
[00:10:49] on the right people and the right people are the industry MSP candidates especially the ones
[00:10:55] that have been with the managed service provider for at least three years because that eliminates
[00:11:01] the job hoppers, that eliminates somebody who might join your MSP and then bail within six
[00:11:08] to 12 months or so they're in it but the major play here was you know talking to
[00:11:16] candidates as you referred you know solve this puzzle those companies are trying to figure out
[00:11:21] if the candidates have the ability what level they are with critical thinking. Well if you've
[00:11:28] got a couple variables kind of checked off they're not a job hopper, they're in the managed
[00:11:32] service industry, they know how to handle 20 to 30 plus customers at a given time,
[00:11:37] they're pretty cool, they have a good customer interaction ability. Well let's dive in a little
[00:11:42] bit and figure out if they're you know if they have the chops so what we do as troubleshooters
[00:11:48] ourselves is try to identify what level of troubleshooter they are and what I mean by
[00:11:54] that is you know you talk about hobbies and what you do in your spare time but literally
[00:12:00] I can narrow it down to these few things. If somebody is in their house and something breaks
[00:12:07] or something breaks on their car and they don't like hiring anybody to fix these things then
[00:12:13] they're a troubleshooter. If they have a server of course you know we all have that one
[00:12:17] covered but if they're a former athlete, if they're an artist, if they taught themselves
[00:12:22] how to play a guitar and if they you know do those those fixing things that's all repetition
[00:12:28] and it's all trial and error and it's all practice and making things better and better
[00:12:32] and better so that way we've been able to identify if there's a troubleshooter on the
[00:12:38] other end and somebody who can pass a very strong critical thinking portion of an interview.
[00:12:44] So that's funny you say that because it made me think like you're getting this from asking
[00:12:48] some questions you know what do you do in your spare time like oh I rebuilt a you know
[00:12:51] 97 Corvette whatever. It's interesting because I remember in college or actually was in high
[00:12:57] school taking the aptitude test like and then depending on how well you did meant how many
[00:13:02] phone calls you were going to get from you know navy or whatever branch the military that's
[00:13:07] suddenly very interested in what your potential is for them and you're slowly going I took a
[00:13:14] test called an aptitude test. Basically I understand how you can actually get the square
[00:13:18] peg to fit into the round hole and now someone's calling me like I'm so confused
[00:13:23] but that's what you're describing right here you're saying like proof of critical thinking.
[00:13:28] Do you use other methods like I was thinking like one thing that came to mind for me was
[00:13:32] like the are you familiar with Patrick Lincione's The Working Genius?
[00:13:37] Yes actually that's something I was just looking at a book to see if that's the
[00:13:41] one that I have here now it's the five dysfunctions of a team is the one I have here.
[00:13:45] So that's a good one I mean you can see behind my head I have most of the Patrick
[00:13:50] Lincione books but The Working Genius is kind of like you know the Myers-Briggs or the
[00:13:55] you know disc profile but it's very much about you know the working profile and I was just
[00:14:01] curious as a recruiter that what thought that entered my head is one of the things that's in
[00:14:05] The Working Genius is it talks about the things that give us joy so they have it's like
[00:14:11] um it's like widgets so it's like wonder, invention, discernment, enablement and galvanizing.
[00:14:21] I think I got it man I don't even look at it.
[00:14:24] But you have two letters that you get tagged with for each of those so like mine is
[00:14:30] I'm a I don't even remember.
[00:14:35] Yeah I'm enabler and galvanizing or something to that effect or galvanizing enabler
[00:14:40] which is interesting because then you have like a place that's also your comfort level so it might
[00:14:44] be uh invention or discernment and then you'll have two that are like the area that just
[00:14:50] frustrate you and make you miserable and what's interesting is is identifying you know those
[00:14:55] like when you talk about recruiting like so they've been there two to three years they
[00:14:59] haven't had the the pay increase some of those things obviously very much are important to
[00:15:04] you know no one says no to a pay increase usually unless it's suddenly like what comes
[00:15:08] with it that you didn't want to do but you have things in there like I had no idea that this thing
[00:15:13] that I'm really really good at is the thing that gives me the least amount of joy and if you've
[00:15:18] identified that for that particular candidate and say hey we want to place you over here
[00:15:22] these are the things that you would be doing and they're like well that's what I love that's
[00:15:25] the that's my most I get up in the morning to do that um then it's called playing the guitar
[00:15:30] right like or something along those lines. I was just curious because you know the way you
[00:15:34] described that made me think about some of those ways in which you identify from a personality type
[00:15:40] the love-hate relationship with work. Yeah you know it's really about fixing things quite
[00:15:45] honestly I personally um I have a go-kart and I've never been all that you know I've never
[00:15:52] really done too many things with engines before but this past January I figured all right I
[00:15:57] want this winner to fly by I'm gonna learn how to take this engine off take it apart
[00:16:02] rip out the the governor and just tinker and I and I did that and it brought me a lot of joy
[00:16:08] like I'd come into you know I hit a roadblock hit a bit of a challenge think about it do some
[00:16:14] research look on link uh look on YouTube watch some videos and finally you get it going and
[00:16:20] it just brings you joy brings you pleasure and it's really what I just described was a lot of
[00:16:26] what troubleshooters do as system administrators as tech twos tech threes engineers and if that
[00:16:32] brings them joy to do those kind of things then they're getting paid to do what they love
[00:16:37] and those are the candidates that we like. But the YouTube video thing that makes me pause a
[00:16:41] little bit because I've done a couple you know DIY projects with cars and I'm like oh
[00:16:46] I watched the seven minute video and then it took me three and a half hours to do what they
[00:16:50] did in seven minutes and you're like they should not be allowed to do that without some sort
[00:16:55] of disclaimer that says this is the thousandth time that I've done this and this is your first
[00:17:00] time doing this yeah you will take longer than seven minutes oh yeah yeah I usually say it takes
[00:17:07] me at least 10 to 20 times longer than a professional or you know some type of video
[00:17:12] would do it you're right the repetition and the amount of times they've done those things
[00:17:16] is just unfair. Do you think that sometimes though applying this back to the job spot that
[00:17:21] you also have to take into consideration like okay at what point do they recognize that this is
[00:17:28] taking too long or that this is no longer a realistic task for them to complete that it
[00:17:34] needs to be bring somebody else in or let someone else know that you need help.
[00:17:39] Yeah good point I think there are some people that who kind of get lost in time
[00:17:43] when they're focused on something and don't realize how long they're taking
[00:17:47] whereas you know I have one of my employees sets a timer and he does something for about
[00:17:53] 30 minutes or so and says nothing's going to interrupt me for that there you go see like
[00:17:58] one of these yeah yeah and I and there's a tomato theory or tomato thing I don't know
[00:18:04] pomodoro pomodoro yeah yeah and which which I absolutely love I think that you can
[00:18:12] you can give yourself a certain period of time like painting an internal SLA there you go
[00:18:20] doing a proposal creating a contract or painting a ceiling sure you say to yourself man if I don't
[00:18:26] give myself a time limit on the ceiling I'm going to spend all day so guess what I'm going
[00:18:31] to and you go you go totally unrealistic I'm going to say I'm going to give myself 30 minutes
[00:18:37] yeah with what would take me all day if I don't do this I'm going to give myself 30 minutes
[00:18:42] and wouldn't you know it in 30 minutes you're going to be done you might have some paint to
[00:18:45] clean up a little bit sure but you know those are those are the types of people the people
[00:18:50] who you can tell kind of get lost and there I don't think that they would make it in a
[00:18:54] managed service provider anyways which is why we target candidates working for managed service
[00:19:00] providers yeah I think there's exceptions I always look at when I was in the space it
[00:19:05] is one of those things where you look at what is their potential or willingness to be coached
[00:19:09] like they you can just see that they have a drive there they have this innate like to what
[00:19:13] you described of like I'm going to fix the go chart car and take the governor out I'm
[00:19:16] going to go 55 not 25 but there's also that idea that you know if you're self-taught
[00:19:24] you don't necessarily know that that was two hours too long or you know you don't have
[00:19:31] the perspective like I think that in what I learned from then to now on my MSP and other
[00:19:36] MSPs later is that to us in our little bubble we were doing a great job of being an MSP even
[00:19:44] in our peer group like we saw areas for improvement but it wasn't like I had to fix
[00:19:47] the whole company but then I left after selling the MSP and going to two more and I realized
[00:19:53] a lot of things that we had been doing very very poorly and it wasn't until I got outside
[00:19:59] of my own sort of shell that I saw that and had somebody come in and said I want to I want
[00:20:05] to coach you where you are as a level two engineer I would have probably been open to it because
[00:20:10] I wouldn't have known like I wouldn't have had any reason not to be open to it like it wasn't
[00:20:14] like they're coming in saying you're bad at what you do let me coach you it would have
[00:20:17] because that's not what coaches do right so I just wonder like sometimes like do you have
[00:20:21] candidates that you might not even give a second thought because they they're too much
[00:20:25] in the weeds of like well I don't care how many times the timer goes off that's just letting me
[00:20:29] reinforce is that I will figure this out no matter how long it takes
[00:20:33] yeah so we don't we don't really move forward with all candidates and there's there's a lot
[00:20:40] of things that can be involved in that process can we identify if somebody's going to be like
[00:20:47] that I think we can figure that out with a lot of other things like are they going to be on
[00:20:52] time when we agreed to talk with them are they you know what is how timely are they if you're
[00:20:59] talking about time are they are they going to be five minutes late every single time we want to
[00:21:04] do like a kind of you know a touch point or something like that because then you know if
[00:21:09] they're not able to track time or be on time well guess what yeah probably not going
[00:21:13] to be good with time when they're billable sure which I guess that gets into a whole other
[00:21:18] whole other yeah you know showing up late once having a having a really good excuse once or
[00:21:25] twice not a big deal but if you have a great excuse every time we're supposed to meet
[00:21:30] then then we have some serious potential it's not going to work out then it's the speech
[00:21:36] about the difference between reasons and excuses sure yeah and the fact that we're having to
[00:21:43] discuss the differences between the two should already be clear how this is going to go
[00:21:48] yeah sometimes it's like hey they didn't show up again thank you very much it really yeah I
[00:21:54] would never want to you talked about like account managers and salespeople we don't recruit sales
[00:22:00] people we don't recruit account managers because you know we I think they're all good if they're
[00:22:06] if they're a good salesperson or even if they're okay I still think they're good because
[00:22:11] I believe people are typically you know good people so if they're telling me something yeah
[00:22:18] maybe I'm kind of gullible in a way when it comes down to it but salespeople really good ones
[00:22:23] they're all going to be good in my mind and it's like giving him a mechanic a Swiss
[00:22:28] army knife to fix the car can he do it probably is it the right tools that he would
[00:22:32] normally or she normally use probably not and I think that's one of things you see challenging
[00:22:36] with account managers and salespeople is are they being given a Swiss army knife to try and pull
[00:22:41] off selling something or are they actually being given the appropriate tools to be successful
[00:22:47] and if you see them be successful with the Swiss army knife you're like that one that's
[00:22:51] the one I want yeah it's it sometimes it's the real strategic ones who know how to answer
[00:22:58] questions really really well sure and they get plugged into a tactical position where they're
[00:23:02] not set up to succeed because they're strategic so they look like they've failed but they just
[00:23:07] haven't been put in the right role at the right time in their career yeah so I want to
[00:23:11] cover a couple other categories that I think you guys focus on and only we need to spend
[00:23:15] a ton of time on this one but I wanted to bring it up anyways the salary discussion
[00:23:20] obviously this is on two sides of a coin you've got the discussion with the MSP you're
[00:23:24] helping to recruit you know what's your budget look like setting realistic expectations
[00:23:29] what does that look like when you start going after does that make it harder like so if I'm
[00:23:35] if I'm the MSP and I'm like hey our budget is you know we're looking for a level two our
[00:23:39] budget's no higher than 85k you're immediately like we can work with that but if they're
[00:23:44] like our budget is 55k and we want a level two level three does that create pause for you
[00:23:51] with the MSP or is it like you now you're looking at like what's the demographic area
[00:23:55] that we're looking for candidates for this job that we know probably are going to get
[00:23:58] plugged in remotely anyways yeah cost of living is definitely taken under consideration in that
[00:24:04] case but you kind of have to take what the MSP says at face value they also the partners
[00:24:10] that we work with tend to want to know what my take is on that and we have all the data
[00:24:16] in the world to kind of support uh you know the salaries that have been accepted at different
[00:24:21] levels at various positions all over the country and different so what I like you can level set my
[00:24:26] expectations of not understanding because they don't do this every day true true and the ones
[00:24:31] who come in a little bit lower are used to hiring uh getting you know hiring applicants
[00:24:37] who might not be from the industry so yeah they are going to be a little bit lower but guess
[00:24:42] what an extra 510 on on the salary to get somebody who doesn't require as much hand holding
[00:24:49] who gets up to speed quicker who you know is going to be able to handle the volume of the
[00:24:53] tickets and the customers and all that there's absolute value in there and I have plenty of
[00:24:58] testimonials of customers even this year saying Ted we hired this guy it's a night and day
[00:25:03] difference the next time we need to hire come back to you he's already paid his fee and
[00:25:07] it's like six weeks later um so now you're interviewing you've got the candidate yeah um
[00:25:14] what does that look like uh what's that salary salary we're stuck on salary yeah right right so
[00:25:20] let's say we figured out we've got salary figured out now it's like determining okay I've got this
[00:25:24] candidate or these three candidates they want one um what is your average uh interview process
[00:25:30] look like are you trying like hey maybe fingers crossed the first candidate I give them they're
[00:25:34] like yep we want this one or do you generally try to get two or three in front of them so
[00:25:38] it's not like a uh you know did I get the right candidate and if so then obviously that's why I
[00:25:44] hired you right you put you you found the right candidate for me if it's a match we're done
[00:25:49] because who wants to keep interviewing in a highly populated area like let's say Chicago
[00:25:55] or New York City it might take a little bit um higher number of candidates than an area
[00:26:00] that's not as populated like uh you know the college station Texas or so there's absolutely
[00:26:07] no MSPs or Eureka California where there's two MSPs right so in those cases it might take only
[00:26:15] one the I'm a kind of a statistical recruiting nerd so on the average one in every five candidates
[00:26:22] that we send to a client gets an offer and gets hired so I know that somewhere statistically
[00:26:27] that's all going to have to balance out at some point there's going to be some customers
[00:26:31] who hire um you know who have a larger number or some that have a smaller number there was one
[00:26:38] situation where we had a rec open we submitted a candidate who we already had in our pipeline
[00:26:44] the candidate was scheduled to interview they finished their entire interview process that
[00:26:48] afternoon we got the request to do an offer we made the offer close the offer in one day
[00:26:56] but that's not what you lead with on your website because that would be like sorry we
[00:26:59] failed you this is the exception to the rule yeah you want to you want to you don't want to
[00:27:05] promise over delivery yeah yeah it's a two to four week thing um but the salary thing just
[00:27:10] to drive that home yeah is that if a candidate it's another touch it's another data point from
[00:27:16] a candidate to know that they're good if they're reasonable on their salary expectations
[00:27:21] sir if they're not reasonable on their salary expectations if they're totally out of line
[00:27:27] we we you know tend to nicely decline them because you're right are they going to be a headache
[00:27:33] are they are they not going to be a fit for this reason are they always going to ask for a
[00:27:37] raise every three to six months or so is it going to is that what drives them or is what
[00:27:42] drives them the ability to solve problems and be around people that are cool that like to do
[00:27:48] these things great so on the first phone call we talk about salary we get an expectation
[00:27:54] i like it when a customer says we're we could pay up to 85 and we find a candidate that says
[00:28:00] i would accept an offer at 70 and we ultimately end up getting that candidate an offer of 75 000
[00:28:07] because it's more than what they expected because they were so reasonable and maybe
[00:28:12] just not they don't know the market but they're still getting negotiation really right
[00:28:16] because if i need more money than what you've offered me that's always tough on a candidate
[00:28:22] uh so that kind of goes in the full circle but i think if we could wrap this up or tie it all
[00:28:26] together one of the things we talked briefly about is the whole why behind this like why does
[00:28:30] why why would an msp going back in time i think i think i know a little bit of the answer like
[00:28:37] the amount of effort an msp is going to put into finding the right candidate so talk to
[00:28:42] me a little bit about that the things that you're solving for that i get what you're
[00:28:46] solving for in the doing it part but what what are you offsetting that we didn't talk about at
[00:28:51] all in the last 30 minutes so typically when i have my new business development calls with
[00:28:57] new managed service providers i ask them what they're currently doing i ask a lot of questions
[00:29:01] on their current process and it tends that the owner it falls on the owner of the company
[00:29:07] who actually administratively post the jobs they're the ones that want to look at the
[00:29:12] applicants and look at the resumes review them and even talk to the first round of candidates which
[00:29:17] in most cases is the magical 50 number i don't know why but you know somebody uh i have a
[00:29:23] customer out in california who said all right i need to i need to hire somebody went on to
[00:29:28] a you know one of the well-known websites posted a job and was like oh i hope i get
[00:29:33] some applicants well 30 minutes later he had 700 applicants and he said yes i've done it
[00:29:39] and you know then he had to pause the ad and he's like oh my gosh this is going to be so easy i
[00:29:44] heard it was so hard he looked at the first applicant and they were in the restaurant industry
[00:29:49] he looked at the next applicant and they were a mechanic and you know and then so forth and
[00:29:54] so on but somebody who doesn't have an eye for reading resumes yeah takes sometimes five to
[00:30:00] ten minutes per resume yeah so open for work right yeah yeah open so i'm i'm a stickler
[00:30:08] when it comes to efficiency it's one of my core values and i'm not the i wasn't always in corporate
[00:30:14] like the most popular for taking you know being a new recruiter in a company and taking all 20
[00:30:21] interviews that they're having per week and then saying no we're not interviewing that person
[00:30:25] not that person not that person hey ted we're all the interviews well you guys are going to
[00:30:30] start interviewing one to two people and they did and they would ultimately make hires for
[00:30:34] the majority of the people that they ultimately that they interviewed so the value is giving time
[00:30:40] back to the to the owner and my calculation the owner is spending 10 percent of their salary per
[00:30:47] week doing the recruiting themselves if they could have that time back and that money back
[00:30:52] to put in and invest in better things while we're being efficient with our process and
[00:30:58] scouting for their company we're scouting constantly i have all the data i share the
[00:31:02] data with anybody who wants to know i have them even look at my applicant tracking system and say
[00:31:07] these are the candidates we're talking we're following up and calling and texting emailing
[00:31:12] sending notes in linkedin with this amount of candidates for you in your area and they're all
[00:31:18] qualified they've all been with their managed service provider for at least three years
[00:31:22] and they have x number of total years of experience sooner or later one pops up two pop
[00:31:28] up three pop up and most in some cases if we can have three interviews go on great what ends
[00:31:34] up hiring is uh what ends up happening is um perhaps there's another reason to hire more than
[00:31:39] one person so last thing i know you guys post job openings on your website for some of these
[00:31:46] positions you're trying to fill and we've talked about a little bit on so far on the
[00:31:50] show about you know whether they're level one or level three do you provide criteria to the
[00:31:55] candidates or like do you have a like clear understanding from the msp's request of level
[00:32:01] two level three to like when you're talking to can't because i feel like in my experience
[00:32:06] there's been a lot of like oh yeah i'm a level three possibly a level four if there was
[00:32:10] level four you're like okay so they're like handle project management they don't need to
[00:32:14] be managed at all um they're probably not someone i need to put in front of a client
[00:32:18] they're probably involved in both the project bid process and making sure we're charging the
[00:32:22] right amount of money and they're part of the project completion process because they architected
[00:32:26] the whole thing versus no i'm more of like i understand your principal is not working hold
[00:32:31] on let me remote it and recite your principal yeah titles are different with a lot of the
[00:32:35] msp's out there so a tier three could be an engineer at another company so what we do is
[00:32:42] by figuring that out it's called calibration we when we talk with the new customer or the
[00:32:48] repeat customer we'll kind of calibrate if it's a repeat customer we'll kind of know where there
[00:32:53] are where they are with their titles and what they're talking about but we can calibrate by
[00:32:59] asking them you know about firewalls routers switches servers cloud and what level that
[00:33:04] person might need to know if they need to have some familiarity with it or if they
[00:33:09] actually had to do it thousands of times then you're talking sort of a skills uh
[00:33:15] oh certification uh yeah have they been initiated on these types of services
[00:33:22] that yeah starting point yeah yeah and one more one more point would be salary you know
[00:33:28] if if all of a sudden they're saying that they need somebody to configure on the command line
[00:33:33] and then they say 80 000 it's like well are you in florida you know because that might
[00:33:38] make sense but you know somebody who's on the command line uh you know configuring firewalls
[00:33:45] routers switches servers and all up the line that's going to be a lot more so then we have
[00:33:49] a different conversation about what's in our data yeah all right is this a cisco type you
[00:33:54] know ccna or or is this a uh no no i just know how to use command line to get into my
[00:34:00] you know sonic wall yeah yeah or yeah oh no i've done that a billion times oh you did
[00:34:06] well actually i was on a team that did it actually the engineer and the team did oh i
[00:34:10] thought you were the engineer well that's what they called me well i'm still here i've been
[00:34:16] here 10 years yeah yeah oh that was great um i think that pretty much sums it up um is there
[00:34:24] any last sort of pieces of advice i know we didn't really dive into like cyber security but
[00:34:28] the reality is cyber security is either a job role or part of a job role uh it's probably
[00:34:34] not when i'm hiring an engineer i'm like are they cyber security certified that's probably not
[00:34:39] the approach i take so if they have understanding of the importance of cyber security and some of
[00:34:44] those other things awesome so i guess my question is uh where can people find you
[00:34:49] and you know if there's anything that we missed to go ahead and please share that with
[00:34:53] the audience oh absolutely well let's start with that and uh as far as the cyber security
[00:34:59] piece um the managed service providers who i talk to i usually ask about their marketing
[00:35:05] strategies and you know if they have a strong marketing strategy then they're going to have
[00:35:10] a strong need to hire if they're getting referrals typically they're not going to
[00:35:14] need to hire all the time if they don't you know if they're not out there doing marketing
[00:35:18] if they don't have cyber security services to offer i usually um you know end up talking to
[00:35:26] the managed service providers who grow the most that offer cyber security services right now it's
[00:35:31] hot it's hot as can be if you're an msp out there and you're looking for a gateway to more
[00:35:37] customers offer cyber security services for sure right now it is the key in my opinion
[00:35:43] your listeners can find me on linkedin that's my uh as my one of my friends called me i'm
[00:35:48] never on facebook or any of the other things uh typically uh my kingdom is linkedin i've got
[00:35:54] like 12 13 000 followers or something like that my my website is uh vertical talent solutions.com
[00:36:03] and uh linkedin though is is where if if i get a message from somebody who has a question
[00:36:10] i typically respond pretty quickly unless i'm asleep uh and just so everybody knows
[00:36:16] i found ted on the first try on linkedin whoa how about that i saw white and ted correctly
[00:36:24] i think was the kicker nice so that's good to know that there's only one ted white out there
[00:36:30] i didn't say that it was the first one that popped up i didn't actually read to see if there
[00:36:34] were more i just saw that it matched uh the the job function was consistent with the person
[00:36:39] i'm talking to so i thought that would work uh i appreciate your time uh for those of you
[00:36:44] listening this has been an episode of 1337 thanks and have a great week thank you