When to Let the Dumpster Fire Burn (and Why AI Is Breaking Hiring)

Summary

Business Lunch with Roland Frasier: "When to Let the Dumpster Fire Burn (and Why AI Is Breaking Hiring)"

Episode Overview

In this episode of Business Lunch (July 23, 2026), Roland Frasier and guest co-host dig into two main themes relevant to entrepreneurs and business leaders: knowing when to "let the dumpster fire burn" in your business (i.e., when not to obsess over solving every problem) and the current challenges with hiring, specifically how AI-generated resumes are sabotaging traditional recruitment. The episode also briefly touches on innovative approaches in tech equity (compute for equity) and the evolving need for specialized recruiting roles. The tone is candid, practical, and laced with dry humor, aiming to provide actionable insights for business owners facing these highly topical issues.

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1. The Value of True Rest and Entrepreneurial “Vacation” (00:14–03:11)

• Discussion on Taking Breaks
  • The co-host shares his annual extended vacation habit, underscoring the difficulty for high-performing entrepreneurs to truly disconnect from work.
  • Both acknowledge the challenge: even on vacation, it’s hard not to work, but the change of pace refreshes creativity.
  • Notable Quote:

    “For people like us… we can’t not work. Rest is work.” (01:14, Co-host)

• Benefit of Rest
  • Even if entrepreneurs keep thinking, the act of decompression leads to renewed productivity and strategic insights.
  • Example: Using downtime to finish a book, work on frameworks, and brainstorm—rest as productive ideation.

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2. When to “Let the Dumpster Fire Burn” (03:21–22:53)

A. Understanding What You Can (and Can’t) Control (03:21–06:00)

• Real Example:
  • Head of Sales Jeremy raises falling meeting show-up rates, especially bad in July—the "summer doldrums."
• Core Principle:
  • Distinguish between problems caused by internal factors (within control) and external factors (seasonality, holidays, etc.):

    “All too often, if you didn’t break it, you probably can’t fix it.” (04:25, Co-host)

• Practical Responses:
  • Control what you can: Increase lead flow, double-book calls if no-shows increase, focus on volume and easy wins.
  • Accept what you can’t: “Don’t try to defy gravity.” (06:08, Co-host)

B. Double Down On the Basics (06:00–09:29)

• Do the “easy and obvious” stuff well:
  • Identify the client’s problem clearly on calls.
  • Strong handoff: Use both email and text introductions between sales staff and prospects.
  • Ensure effective pre-meeting follow-ups:

    “When everything was going great, it didn’t matter as much that the easy and obvious things weren’t happening.” (08:42, Co-host)

C. When NOT To Fix Fires—And When You MUST (14:12–22:53)

• Let It Burn
  • Some "fires" (problems) are cyclical or external and will self-resolve (e.g., summer slump, major events).
  • Example: World Cup and 250th US anniversary in July pulled their high-income leads away and "accelerated" usual August sluggishness.

    “We think it’s going to put itself out. It’s just going to burn itself down.” (16:52, Co-host)

• Know When You Can't Wait
  • If a problem is self-inflicted (internal change, bad hiring, etc.), don’t ignore it.
  • Example: Internal team move (best SDR promoted during slowdown) may not be ideal timing.
  • Quote:

    “When do you need to make sure you put out a dumpster fire? When you are the one that set it.” (20:24, Co-host)

• Strategic Leadership
  • Scaling isn’t about eliminating all fires; it’s about picking which ones to put out.
  • Use Theory of Constraints: always address the biggest bottleneck first.
  • Quote:

    “At scale, what leadership looks like is the strategic selection of which dumpster fires to put out.” (21:05, Co-host)

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3. COMPUTE FOR EQUITY—A Quick Sidebar on Startup Deals (10:49–12:48)

• Brief mention of OpenAI and Sam Altman’s offer to the Y Combinator cohort: offering $2 million in compute credits for equity stakes.
• Notes historical failures (90s compute-for-equity models) but gives nod to its resurgence and possible success due to better “underwriting.”
• No deep dive—would merit a longer discussion in another episode.

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4. Why AI Is Breaking the Hiring Process (23:16–37:11)

A. The AI Resume Problem (23:16–25:01)

• Forbes stat: 67% of hiring managers say AI-written resumes are sabotaging screening.
• Real-life: Hundreds of applications look perfect—but clearly AI-tailored, often with candidates not even recognizing the company in interviews.
• Notable Quote:

  “It’s essentially our AI… just in this grotesque, you know, circle, you know what. And nobody’s able to actually find anybody.” (24:27, Co-host)

B. How to Counteract AI Spam in Recruitment (25:09–31:53)

• Three Steps from Forbes (and hosts’ experience):
  1. Ask Situational Questions:
     • Insert application questions difficult for AI.

       “Ask for specific situations—give me an example of when you did this thing.” (25:43, Host)

     • Motivational-Based Interviewing (MBI) is effective; AI may hallucinate answers, but follow-up reveals falsity.
  2. Paid Project/Proof-of-Work:
     • Use practical paid assignments, even for executives (e.g., “Build a 90-day plan”).
     • New twist: collaborative paid working session to observe thinking and collaboration style.
     • Quote:

       “He said, we’re going to hop on Zoom for 90 minutes… I want to see how they think… do I enjoy working with this person?” (28:21, Co-host)

  3. Honest Job Descriptions:
     • Clearly state the hard or less-appealing parts of the job to deter wrong applicants.
     • “Here’s why you won’t like working here” is on every job post.
• Bonus Fourth Step Added by Co-Host:
  • Send a reiteration email before interviews, restating pay, role, and what’s tough about the job, allowing automatic opt-outs. About a third often remove themselves, saving everyone time.
  • Quote:

    “So many people don’t know the role or even the company they’re applying for…” (31:53, Co-host)

C. The Future: Rise of the Internal/Verticalized Recruiter Role (31:53–37:11)

• Prediction: The need for internal recruiters (specialized, departmental rather than generic HR) will become essential—even for smaller businesses (1+ hires/month).
  • These recruiters are more akin to outbound salespeople, embedded in functional areas (sales/marketing/fulfillment), leveraging networks over mass ads.
  • Quote:

    “All businesses become banks and recruiting agencies whether they want to or not. The two biggest constraints are capital allocation and people.” (36:23, Co-host)

• Referral Network: With mass job posts losing effectiveness, companies must prioritize referrals and curated channels.
  • Quote:

    “You need channels of employee acquisition… otherwise you’re wasting both advertising dollars and interview time.” (33:47, Host)

• Skepticism toward HR as Recruiters:
  • Most HR teams aren’t equipped for real recruiting, except perhaps in high-turnover roles.
  • Candid take:

    “HR is usually the drama department. It is… not a high output department.” (37:04, Co-host)

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5. Closing Thoughts & Takeaways

• Relief in Accepting Reality:
  • Not every problem is fixable—acknowledging this can refocus energy productively.

    “I don’t have to fix everything… I can take the effort and energy and attention… and we can put it into other places.” (22:49, Co-host, quoting Head of Sales)

• Call for Feedback:
  • Hosts invite listeners with experiences implementing these recruiting solutions, especially the function-specific recruiter role, to reach out and share.

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Notable Quotes (with Attribution and Timestamps)

• “For people like us… we can’t not work. Rest is work.” — Co-host, 01:14
• “All too often, if you didn’t break it, you probably can’t fix it.” — Co-host, 04:25
• “Don’t try to defy gravity.” — Co-host, 06:08
• “When do you need to make sure you put out a dumpster fire? When you are the one that set it.” — Co-host, 20:24
• “At scale, what leadership looks like is the strategic selection of which dumpster fires to put out.” — Co-host, 21:05
• “It’s essentially our AI… just in this grotesque, you know, circle, you know what. And nobody’s able to actually find anybody.” — Co-host, 24:27
• “All businesses become banks and recruiting agencies whether they want to or not. The two biggest constraints are capital allocation and people.” — Co-host, 36:23
• “HR is usually the drama department. It is… not a high output department.” — Co-host, 37:04

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Recommended Segments & Timestamps

• When to Let the Dumpster Fire Burn — 03:21–22:53
• Theory of Constraints Applied to Problems — 21:28–21:44
• The AI Resume Dilemma and Real Solutions — 23:16–31:53
• Rise of the In-House Recruiter — 31:53–37:11

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Actionable Takeaways

• Only try to fix the problems you caused, not those driven by external, cyclical forces.
• Do the basics (follow-up, problem identification, communication) relentlessly—especially when times are tough.
• Recruit using personalized, situation-based screening—don’t rely on generic resumes or mass job ads.
• Consider an internal, function-specific recruiter if you make a couple of hires per month.
• Embrace realism: businesses scale not by eliminating all problems, but by fixing the right ones at the right time.

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Listeners looking for practical business advice with pragmatic (and sometimes contrarian) wisdom will find this episode especially relevant in the current era of relentless AI disruption and complex business cycles.

Transcript

[A]

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Business Lunch.

[B]

After a bit of a hiatus, I

[A]

would say, or hiatus. What do you, what do we say is a hiatus? Hiatus?

[B]

A break. After a bit of a break. After a bit of a break.

[A]

But good to see you again. Ryan and I haven't seen each other in, I don't know, like a couple months because you've been enjoying your vacation from work things for quite a while now. So it's nice to have you back.

[B]

Yeah, nice. Nice to be back. I did my annual 30 day vacation practicing what we preach. It was a scalable company.

[A]

It was longer than 30 days.

[B]

So the actual being gone part was 30 days. But what I've kind of done now is I take the week before off and I take the week, I get back off.

[A]

It's like my wife's birthday. It's a season. It's not like on the day, it's the correct.

[B]

Yeah, correct.

[A]

She said her birthday season begins the day after my birthday and then continues until the day of my birthday. So it's, it's a, it's an ever expanding season. I currently, I currently own the full 24 hours of my birthday though, so.

[B]

Yeah, well, it was funny because I, I, I mentioned to somebody, you know, I, I, I posted something about, you know, being gone and doing this 38th vacation on, on X and somebody was like, I can't, you know, I just took a three day vacation. I can't imagine, you know, being away from work, you know, that long. I actually, you know, enjoy my work. Kind of like a, you know, uber type type deal. And what I don't think people fully understand is I work when I'm on vacation. It's just a very different kind of work like for, for people like us, like we can't not work like, but just for us rest is work. And so when I'm on vacation, when I'm on a trip, like I'm thinking, I'm thinking about stuff I can't not. And, and the thing is I want to people like, oh, don't you wish you could turn it off? Not really. I mean, don't get me wrong, there was a day when we just sat on a beach in Nice and I didn't think about anything. I think that's battle war. The hardest thing is you, you've got

[A]

to actually make yourself stop thinking about it. It is good to stop thinking about it, even if you want to do it as you and I both do. But I, I absolutely believe, like my wife always says, it takes You. A week to get, like, to come down, you know, and.

[B]

Right. And so that's. That's what I've got. I mean, I basically had a couple of weeks where I was like, I needed that time just to decompress, transition, and correct. And. And then I was. I was sort of good. And then the. The back half of it, I was incredibly productive. I mean, you and I were going back and forth on framework stuff. I finished my book. I wrote out some memos. I mean, so I. I guess the. The ideas and kind of the point that I would make to people is, is when you rest, the. The benefit of

[A]

just.

[B]

It is productive, I guess, is what I would say. Yeah, I agree.

[A]

I agree. Well, now that we have you back and adjusted a bit, what you had a couple things you thought would be fun to talk about what you got?

[B]

Well, so kind of a timely one I thought it'd be fun to talk about. When do you just let the dumpster fire burn? All right.

[A]

Does that mean that we have a dumpster fire currently burning someplace?

[B]

There's always dumpster fires burning. Yes, of course. But no. I got off. I got off a call with Jeremy, you know, our head of sales. And he was. He called because he's like, man, Show Up Rate has just been really rough the last couple of weeks. And so he had some ideas for, like, how to improve it and wanted to run a bottle me. And I was like. And let me ask you a question. Why do you think Show Up Rate's been bad the last two weeks? And just for context, we're recording this on, you know, July 15, and so the last two weeks. Well, you can. If. If you're in the States, you kind of know it. It's sort of been holiday vacation season the last two weeks. And he's like, well, yeah, people have just been doing a lot of rescheduling. And I said, right. Why do you think they've been doing that? It's like, well, and people are traveling. I was like, right, right. So are we just trying to defy gravity here? And so I just thought it would be worth kind of talking about whether it's seasonality or just other forces in business, it's important to point out and just to kind of ask ourselves when things aren't going well or as well as we would like for them to. Is it something that is called caused by internal forces? So something that you did, something that you broke, or is it an external thing? Because all too often, if you didn't break it, you probably can't fix it. Now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. But ultimately where we landed was that that's not the thing we're going to address. We're going to work on some other things. So anyway, I just thought that that might be something worth, you know, worth worth chatting about.

[A]

I like it. The immediate thing that comes to mind for me is like without making a drastic change, it would be kind of like the airlines do would be okay. I know that show up rates are down so I should book twice as many calls if I have them. I'm not going to worry that people aren't going to show, you know, that I'm going to be over booked. Because it's likely that given the summer, which is historically for all, pretty much every business we've had been a downtime of year, then you just basically understand you've got to book a whole lot more to get the same number of shows. Is that volume available?

[B]

And that's the. Yes. And that's the first. So that the, the first thing is what are the, what are the pieces that we can control? And, and so the first thing that we can control is lead flow. And I mean what, what you said is absolutely true. Historically, summers have been terrible. But as I know, you know, last month, June was a record breaking month for us. Why still summer? But we also had high lead flow and all the other good stuff. So it doesn't have to be as long as you control things, you control. So yeah, let's go and just put more in there. And so that one of the things we said is like maybe we need to start double booking people. If we know the folks are going to show up, maybe we need to start double booking. That was kind of the, you know, one of the areas where, where we landed the other thing. So, so the first thing is control what you can control and don't try to defy gravity. Like that's, that's kind of the first thing because when something's broken, we tend to focus on it and we tend to try to try to fix it. But if, if you can't fix it, there is, there is the law of diminishing return. Sometimes just the number is the number and you're going to have to let that dumpster fire burn. So let's control and control. The other thing is let's make sure that we're continuing to do the easy and obvious things well. So we know that there are certain things that we should be doing in the handoff between the first call and the second call, because when we talk about show up rate, that's what we're talking about. So somebody, you know, they, they booked a meeting, they, you know, they requested a meeting or they, they applied, they're interested in our services, they talk to somebody, we book them into a second meeting and then do they show up or not? Right, that, that's what we' talking about in terms of show up rate. Well, we know that there's things that we can do to, to optimize for that. Number one, we can make sure that we clearly identify what the problem is like make sure that we absolutely know what the problem is that we are solving for. If we haven't identified that, if we haven't made it clear to them, then they're just gonna, you know, frankly, something else is gonna come up in their life between now and then that's gonna be more important because we haven't made it obvious that this is really, really important. That's why you need to show up. We need to make sure that we're following up with that. You know, so in the email, hey, you mentioned this importance. This is what we're going to be, you know, talking about on that next call.

[A]

Hit it.

[B]

And hit that problem really, really hard. The other thing that we know is we need to make not just an email introduction, but a text introduction. So we need to get them communicating between the salesperson who had the initial call and the person who's going to be having the second call. We need to get them communicating via text, stuff like that. Is that happening? And all too often you find that no, some of the easy and obvious things aren't happening. And when everything was going great, it didn't matter as much that the easy and obvious things weren't happening because everything was going great. And so it made up for a lot of shortcomings. But when things aren't going well, let's make sure that we're at least doing the easy and obvious stuff. So if we can control, we can control. And if we make sure we're doing the easy and obvious, then we're probably going to, maybe we're not going to make up the full gap, but we're going to do a whole heck of a lot better than trying to push back against the forces of gravity. And when we do come out of this, we're going to get all the gains from the stuff that we did that was the right way to do it.

[A]

I like it. So what did Jeremy say to that and what was the action step for Him,

[B]

I mean, Ulta. He was relieved. Was, was the thing. I mean, because I think sometimes just the acknowledgement that the number is. The number is the. Is just sometimes what we need to hear. And, and I think that's the.

[A]

Hmm.

[B]

We don't really have enough here, do we?

[A]

I think it's good to. I think that we could take this like that's. I don't know how. Where we are in the.

[B]

You see.

[A]

Do you have a time thing to see how long it is? It's 10 minutes in. So I think it's fine to. Basically it ended really abruptly. I thought we were going to go on longer, but I think it's a cool topic. So I think it's like we could add something else and do something else and that would be fine. Do you have another one? You had another one. Let's see how long that goes and then I'll let Ryan know that. That this one has some parts to cut out. Didn't you send me two or didn't you say you had one other one?

[B]

Yeah, I did. I have something. What are yours?

[A]

I thought it was really, really cool

[B]

what,

[A]

what Sam Altman and OpenAI proposed to the. I think it was 129 current people or 169 current class of the Y Combinator cohort, which was compute for equity. So trading $2 million in token for percentages of their company and the opportunity for all of us to do things like that where, where effectively something that's marked up somewhere between four and five times is traded at market value for something that someone else needs to get equity. And you know, is that a fair trade? Is it a good trade? And then Nvidia two months later did a compute for Rev Share to follow on that. And it's something that some companies tried back in the 90s and failed terribly. And it was because basically there was no underwriting. And so I think that's just kind of a generally interesting thing to chat about.

[B]

Okay. And then the thing that I had was just about how there was some data that came out. I think Forbes published something. Let me see it. Where. Yeah. 84% of business owners are trying to hire. I read that.

[A]

I read it today. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. 67% of hiring managers say AI written resumes are sabotaging their screening.

[A]

Yeah. And. And then they gave a three step thing to basically deal with that. We could talk about that. Talk about the three steps and do we think there's anything else? I'm happy to do that.

[B]

Yeah. I've. I've Got. I. I've got kind of a hot framework. I don't have so much of a framework. I mean, a little bit. I definitely have, like, a. A take on an interesting role that I think is going to exist, should exist in companies. So what if we do this? Because you kind of had a pause where you were like, what does Jeremy do? If. If you could transition from that into one of these other topics, then I think we could have a clean cut.

[A]

I'll do it like a comedian does. And speaking of Jeremy, how about anthropic and OpenAI? Right? I just have to think of the transition. So, yes, I like it.

[B]

I mean, yeah, it could just be.

[A]

So we were talking about the summer doldrums, basically, and then we were talking about. No, we were talking about. We were talking about the summer doldrums, and we were talking about letting dumpster fires burn. That's what I was curious about, was, like, diving a little bit more into that. I was. I was headed there. But I'm curious. It's like, okay, well, that's a dumpster fire that you can let burn because you know that it has an end date, and so you've got two months that you basically have to adjust for it. But what about the dumpster fires that exist that can't wait? And. And how do you know when it can and when it can't?

[B]

Is it like.

[A]

In that case, we know that it's just a seasonal kind of thing, and we're going to try to figure out how to adjust for it, but nobody's ever really figured out how to adjust for it. But don't make the mistake of having something that you don't have a finite date on, or don't make the mistake of, you know, letting a fire burn that's going to consume the entire house. You know, those are things that would. That kind of came to mind for me.

[B]

All right, so do you want to pick up from there? Yeah, sure.

[A]

So let's see. I'm going to wave my hands just so that they'll know it's 14 minutes. Is that what it says? 14 minutes and 47. Okay, we're at 14 minutes and 47 seconds. So there's the way to find that where we're going to start. So the dumpster fire that Jeremy was concerned about, and he. He brought that to your attention? Or did he. Or were you seeing sales and just said, hey, we should chat about it?

[B]

No, I can't. I mean, nice thing is it showed up on the scorecard, you know, Showed up on the scorecard on the Monday meeting and, and so he looked at it. It's a red metric. You know, when we see red metrics and red for us, red means we're behind and we don't know how to fix it. Right. If it's a yellow metric, then we're behind and we've got an idea to fix it. And so to his credit, he was following the process. I don't know how to fix, I need to come up with a way to fix it.

[A]

Yeah. And so you said don't. Basically don't worry about its seasonality. Let's look at the two things that we can control and try to adjust those. But basically it's not a giant concern because we know that it's a repeating challenge that we haven't figured out exactly how to solve other than the two things that you mentioned. And it's pretty much gonna happen every time this time of year. And it's very limited because it's usually really July and August with August being I think the worst because people are trying to get their last minute vacations in and they're, and they are headed back to school with their kids.

[B]

I think one thing that I don't

[A]

know what the attendance was in the 90s, I think it was 94. The attendance of the World cup was I think 34 million. And the World cup basically did take over for a whole lot of people and I think probably pulled a fair number of higher income people, which is our target, out of, out of their normal appointment setting and business focus and between the 250th anniversary of the United States, people traveling and thinking that was special and doing things for that, uh, I think that more of the even usually deeper August depression got pulled forward into July for those two events. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[B]

Yeah, I'll buy. I think that's, I think that's accurate. I don't even care about soccer that much. I mean I, my kids play it and so I'll watch their games. But I have been locked in to this World cup like I'm, you know, the, the world's biggest soccer fan. Um, so I think the US was in it for a while too. So like you were really? Yeah, they actually made it interesting for us for, for a second. So. No, I, I think that's good. And, and that, and that's why ultimately the decision was we're just going to let this one burn for a bit because yeah, to your point, we think it's going to put Itself out. We think it's just, it's just going to burn itself down. It's. It's going to, it's going to put itself out.

[A]

Starved of fuel by the time. Right. So. So then the opposite side, to me, you know, what's the inversion argument? How do you know when the dumpster fire needs to be attended to because it's going to consume the whole building?

[B]

Think the. If you know, you caused it. That's when I, that's when it is the most concerning. And so that, and that was one

[A]

thing you said, internal versus external.

[B]

Yeah. And that's why the first question I asked him was, have we done anything differently? Like did. Has the team done anything? And he. One thing he did say, he said, you know, we've. We moved. We moved our best sales development rep, our best setter to ae. Well, that's gonna have an impact, you know, on sets as well, you know, so definitely some internal moves were made that were temporary. So there, there were some internal changes we made that there were made for right reasons. Not. Not gonna go back. That's a good point though.

[A]

If, if you know, as we do from many conversations you and I have had, that these are the terrible months, you know, in almost every business that we own, fortunately we, unfortunately, we haven't invested in ice cream shops yet.

[B]

But if you know, businesses, if you

[A]

know that that's going to be the case, then that's the worst time to

[B]

try to do things like that.

[A]

Like you should pretty much. I, I'm going to argue that that's not the time to run experiments because now you won't know if that new AE moved setter person is like great or not because there's going to be a significant decrease in volume for them to deal with. So, you know, the other alternative argument would be that's the best time to do it because the damage will be

[B]

the least if it didn't work out.

[A]

So what are your thoughts on those two things?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it is exactly what you said. I tend to say let's try to test in and try new things in good times. Let's do it when we have a surplus. The. But the reality is, is you want to fix things that are broken when they're broken. And so in this case, this particular person had earned a shot, right? They had done everything that they were supposed to do. And so it was their time. They had earned the promotion based on the way that the schedule was set up. You know, we have a career escalation path in our sales department, and it was their time. And so to deprive them of that would have been, I guess, uncool, even though it was. When it. When it was arguably could. Should we have said, hey, you know what? Maybe we're not going to do this over the 4th of July holiday? Yeah, I think that would have been a case we made. I think that's a solid lesson learned. But, you know, there you have it. But I think. I think the case, you know, a good question to ask, and going back to your original question is, did we cause it? Because if we caused it, then, then we can probably fix it.

[A]

Can we reverse it at least to

[B]

get back to just go back. Can we just go back to doing what we were doing before? And this was a combination of, no, we didn't cause it. It was seasonal. And yes, we did cause it, but we can't. We can't change it because we did it, you know, for a good reason. But I think that. When do you need to make sure you put out a dumpster fire? When. When you are the one that said it. Like, I think that's really important now. The reality is there's never just one dumpster fire in a business. There's never just one. There's always many. And I think one of the things that business owners get frustrated by is they feel like they've got to put all of them out or they feel like when they get to a certain stage of scale, that they're finally going to put out all their dumpster fires. That's not what happens. And what scale looks like is the strategic selection of which dumpster fires to put out. And usually what it looks like is putting out the biggest one right now or the one that is preventing you from getting, you know, from going down the street that you want to go down. And that, frankly, is what leadership looks like.

[A]

Would you just apply theory of constraints to that? Which dumpster fire is creating the biggest bottleneck and that's the one to work on first?

[B]

That's exactly it. Yeah. It's just. Where's the biggest bottleneck? That's the dumpster fire to put out and the ones that aren't. We're just going to have to let those. Those dumpster fires burn.

[A]

Interesting. I like it. And then you had one more thing that you wanted to chat about. If we move from. Unless. Do you have other dumpster fire thoughts? Yeah.

[B]

No, no, no. I think. I think we. I think we smacked that one around. If I just mostly want people to what the look on Jeremy's face when we got off this call ahead of sales, it was just this sense of relief. Like, oh, you know, okay. Like, so the number is the number. Right? And. And I. And I don't have to fix everything. That's kind of what I want people to feel right now. Both because you're not able to. To. You're not always going to be able to fix anything. But what it did. And his response to it was exactly the right response. He said, I can take the effort and energy and attention and the resources that I was going to put on trying to fix this, and we can put it into other places, and I believe we can close the gap much faster and easier and build assets that will be able to carry forward in the future months. Speaking of.

[A]

Go ahead.

[B]

I was going to say that's the lesson. That's what I wanted people to hear.

[A]

Okay, well, speaking of dumpster fires, one that seems to be kind of raging right now is challenge in filling positions. And that happens for lots of reasons. But there's a reason in particular that it seems to be happening right now to the point where a lot of businesses are giving up. I know that there was an article that you and I both read. You want to chat about that?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So saw this in Forbes. The title of the article was why Small Businesses aren't Hiring and what they did. The stat in it is 67% of hiring managers say that AI written resumes are sabotaging screening. Because basically what you have and they highlighted, there was this one job post, 400 resumes came in, and it looked like they had basically all been written by the same robot. And I know we've experienced this where you need to make a hire. So you put up a job post, a bunch of resumes come in, and all the resumes are basically written by AI to perfectly met. You're like, oh, my gosh, this person's perfect. Oh, like everything they've done in their past, it perfectly lines up with everything that we need. Amazing. I can't believe it. Oh, this person too. How amazing. Like, and then you realize you're like, God dang it. AI is just fricking customizing their resume to perfectly match. And then on our end, we've got AI that is trying to surface the perfect matched resume. And so it's essentially our AI is just in this, you know, grotesque, you know, circle, you know what? And nobody's able to actually find anybody. And then when we do actually interview. So this happened a couple of hiring cycles ago where when the hiring Manager would get on the phone with somebody, they didn't even realize what company we were like, we get on and talk to them. They're like, wait, who, what company is this again? So, yeah, this is a huge problem right now.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And you had some thoughts about. I think the article suggested three ways of dealing with it. Do you remember what those were?

[B]

Yeah, they, I mean they said, and I think that these are all good. They said an application question that's so situational that AI slop can't fake it. And we've done that. Like so if, when you're doing a job post, if you don't have some type of an application where people need to fill in questions, you are definitely just wasting your time. But those application, the questions themselves, you really need to think those, those through to where AI is gonna really struggle to answer them. So that's where I would think that,

[A]

I would think the MBE, that motivational based interviewing, which is to me like just the best of the best way to interview people, would be very good there because it's asking for specific situations where you did something that you know that did something. And then that's exactly it. You know, I guess AI could hallucinate answers to that, but that would help, I would think.

[B]

Yeah, give me an example of when you did this thing. And obviously they can lie. And we had that happen. I mean we just ran a hiring thing for a marketing manager and when Matt Swan, our head of marketing was interviewing people and he was asking them follow up questions about this project where they did this thing, Matt's like, I mean I could tell they were talking around and it was clear that they didn't even know that they had put that in there. Like just their AI made up what they did. And so you will have people who will lie and they're going to get exposed. But most people, if they know they lie, they will at least have enough self respect to not show up for the interview. And so having application questions, but making sure that the application questions are just that questions around, Give me an example of when you did this thing. And it's going to be difficult at this stage in the game asking for proof of work. But for the extent, to the extent that you can, where it's appropriate, like for designers, hey, drop a link to your, you know, portfolio, those kind of things like that.

[A]

The suggestion I think was, was paid work, right? Some, some sort of paid thing to prove which is, which is how we do Even executives like CFOs, it's like, you know, we'll pay you, but you need to build a 90 day plan for what you would do or something like that.

[B]

And yeah, and that was the. Yeah. So that was. Number two is to have a small paid thing. And that's helpful when you get past a certain point of the process. Right. So that's pretty deep into the hiring process. I don't know how much that's really going to help with this initial interviewing phase, but I do think that that's important. And going back to again, this most recent hiring cycle that we did for a marketing manager, we didn't just have them do a paid project. What we did. And I got to give Matt credit for this. Matt's like, I want to see how we're able to work and collaborate together. So he said, we're going to hop on Zoom for 90 minutes. And he said, I want us to work together on this and to kind of brainstorm thing and hash stuff out. He's like, because I want to see how they think. And that way also I know they're doing it. He's like, and I don't even mind if they're using AI while they're doing stuff. I just want to see how they. Of course they are. Of course, yes. He's like, but I want to see, like, do I enjoy working with this person?

[A]

So taco and tacos and tequilas test Van Gogh.

[B]

Yeah, this is somebody I want to go eat tacos and drink tequila with. So the. So when you think about a paid project, can think about how could we do this collaboratively and collectively with them. That's a good way to think, to approach it. Okay, nice.

[A]

Looks like my camera's in the process of resetting.

[B]

So I'm still here. Yeah, I'm pausing. Until your camera comes back.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then I'll get to what number three was and then I'll share what kind of a take that I. That I've got.

[A]

Let's see if that makes it come back on. Yes. Okay, good. But now I have the dancing light thing. So this lights out. But. But we're still going.

[B]

So it'll all.

[A]

We'll figure it all.

[B]

Yeah. So the. So the, the paid thing was number two. The third thing was a. A job description that tells the truth about the hard part. So the wrong people select out. And this is something that we've always done. Like we literally have had at the bottom of every single job post. Here's why you won't like working here. And we've listed out like, you know, we're we're not a massive Fortune 500 company. Like, we're a small company, which means we're nimble. But, you know, you get to do stuff. But we also want to have tons of resources. We're this like, so basically telling the, being honest, telling, telling the truth about like, what makes you great, but also, you know, what are the things that certain people won't like about you? That is, that's big to me. That's obvious. There's a fourth thing that I, that we added to our hiring process that mega helped with this whole AI problem. And that is in between when you've approved somebody for when you basically you're ready to move somebody on to the interview process. So in between that and the actual interview itself, we send out an email and this goes out literally from an, just from an assistant, where it's congratulations, you're being moved on to the next phase of the, of the interview process. We, you're going to be interviewing with, you know, so and so. But, you know, before. It's something along the lines of but before, you know, before you show up for the interview, we want to make sure that you fully understand, you know, the role and all the details about it. So just as a reminder, this is the role. This is the description of the role. This is what it pays. So we tell them what it pays and we reiterate, this is what you won't like about working at this company. If after reading this you would like to opt out, let us know if after reading this you're still excited. We're excited to talk to you as well. We had about a third of the people who opted out after receiving that email and it definitely saved a lot of time. We also had a number of people who responded and say, after seeing this, I'm even more excited, you know, to talk to you. So that email where you just are reiterating what the job is because again, so many people don't know the role or even the company that they're, that they're applying for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that makes sense. That's a fourth thing that I would add to their list. And it got me thinking. I believe that a role that companies are going to be adding to their team sooner than they, you know, might have done in the past is an internal recruiter. I think internal recruiters is going to be a kind of one of those must have roles.

[A]

The question would be, I guess, based on need, because we, we have three recruiter recruiters in our tax prep business. We have multiple internal Recruiters at our business services business. And it really is essential, you know, you have turnover. I think it's a turnover, you know, in sales because we have salespeople in both of those. When you've got high turnover, you've got to have it. When you've got rapid growth, you've got to have it. And, and I guess as a question is just like at what size does it make sense to have that and is there now like a fractional internal recruiter? Does that work or is that too hard? Those are all questions that I'd be kind of curious about the thing I was thinking as another potential. And then I'll shut up. Another potential thing would be you really need more of a referral network that, that I think you're basically seeing the end of mass advertised job fulfillment. And it's more. You've got to, you, you've got to figure out just like you've got channels of customer acquisition, you need channels of employee acquisition. And, and that those might be paid in terms of referrals, kind of like a search type thing. But for businesses that need lower level people, someone qualifying those people to send you real candidates is important because otherwise you're wasting your advertising dollars to find them and you're wasting the time of your people who have planned in their day to be there to interview these people who you know, aren't, aren't worth interviewing. That's, that's, those seem like some things to think about. What do you think?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, exactly that and that, that kind of is what I'm, what I'm thinking on the recruiter front is they are more of almost a sales function. So when you bring this person in, I would actually look for them to be. I, I bet the person who could do this role really well is somebody who has background in sales specifically like outbounding and they, they, they just, that, that wasn't quite their thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Because, so, because so much of recruiting is you're, you're doing outbounding and, and so I, I think if you're going to be making a hire or two a month, that's probably when it's time to bring in an in house recruiter is what I would say. And I'm. This is me thinking out loud by the way. Well, I think if you're going to be making a higher or two a month like at that point, which is not a giant company, then it, and

[A]

does it need to be a, does it need to be a full time person or could that just Be part of someone else's job, like somebody in HR or somebody in some other part of the company.

[B]

I think I would hire this role before I would even hire anybody in hr.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I would. To me, this would be a hire that I would make and I would probably. And where I. What I think it's going to happen is I think they're going to be in the specific functions. So I think you're going to have a recruiting role in the sales department, in the marketing department, fulfillment, and each of these departments are going to have their own recruiting functions, recruiting people who are in those roles working directly with the hiring managers as opposed to in a separate, you know, HR department. I think that makes a lot of sense because so much of it is about, like you said, the network. Right. And so if you get somebody who knows a lot about these areas, like, let me go and find somebody who has a lot of connections in a particular area, let me bring them in as our internal recruiter and just say, hey, go find more people like. Like this.

[A]

Yeah, I agree.

[B]

It's. It is, it is at scale. All businesses become banks and they become recruiting agencies whether they want to or not. Because the two biggest constraints are capital allocation and, and people. Those are the things that you need and you gotta figure out. So it makes sense that. And I don't think that most companies do it well right now. And I don't think that HR is, is the best place for recruiting in the way that HR is done in most companies. HR is usually the drama department. It is, it is usually not a high production, high output department.

[A]

Yeah, I agree.

[B]

Just my experience though.

[A]

I like it. Any other thoughts on that? No.

[B]

I mean, hopefully, hopefully we can. And I would love. If somebody's doing this like, internal recruiting role, especially the verticalized, you know, function specific, let me know because again, this is completely thinking out loud. Haven't tried it yet. But if you're doing it, I would love to hear how that is working for you because it makes sense. But full disclosure, it's not something we're doing yet.

[A]

I like it. I like it. Awesome. Well, I am temporarily back with my camera that keeps turning on and off on its own will. So I was trying to get the studio display to come up, but it's not coming up for some reason either. But I think we pretty much covered everything we wanted to cover for this time. Anything else you want to say before we sign off?

[B]

No, sign us off.

[A]

Awesome. Okay. Well guys, hope that you enjoyed the topics today. Couple of topics that were a little bit less time, but we did two of them and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear your feedback. If you like this, please share the episode. Tell other people about it. We always appreciate having more people come on and we'll see you next time on Business Lunch.

[B]

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