Empowering Women in Recruiting: Krista Tan’s Journey and Vision

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony (09:24.759)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspodi, and today’s guest is Krista Tan. Krista is the co -founder of Talent Collective, a member community dedicated to empowering, advancing, and connecting women in talent acquisition.

Krista Tan (09:26.69)
I’m ready.

Anthony (09:53.519)
They also provide recruiting services as well, which includes transforming startups into employers of choice by refining their recruiting operation strategy. They help companies solve recruiting challenges during times of high growth, deflation or turnover. They can even incorporate fractional heads of talent and advisory services. Krista has over 15 years experience in people operations, talent acquisition, and business strategy experience.

She was formerly the head of Premier Talent Partners, who is named one of America’s best recruiting firms. And before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cashflow by implementing one of our proprietary programs.

Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency .com. Now, back to our guest today, Krista Tan. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Krista Tan (11:04.27)
Thank you, Anthony. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and to get to know you a little and speak with your audience as well.

Anthony (11:12.345)
Terrific. So let’s start with kind of the origin story of Talent Collective. How did the idea for this come about?

Krista Tan (11:20.27)
Sure. So a little over a year and a half ago, myself and my two other co -founders and I had all gotten together. We’ve all been in the recruiting field for over 15 years each. And as good recruiters do, we were getting together and having a glass of wine with each other and really just chatting about the market and the…

specifically the talent acquisition market with so many layoffs that had happened over the last couple of years. A lot of people in our industry that have kind of just been in crisis mode, right? Like what is the future of recruiting? What is the future of talent acquisition? There’s AI spooking, I think every industry out there and talent acquisition is definitely included in that.

a lot of people wondering, you know, what is the future of my job? Is AI gonna take my position? So we wanted to help in some way. And so the three of us started brainstorming ways that we could give back to our community and build a place where women could come together and have a safe space to share about their personal lives, professional lives, really connect with each other. I think also after COVID.

there’s really big desire for people to connect on a very personal level because we’re all on Zoom all day and have been locked up in our houses for years now. So that was one piece. And then the professional development piece was another thing that we talked a lot about. Just how isolating sometimes, you know, if you’re working from home, being home all day can be not really having a lot of…

people to share basically like where’s recruiting going and what are the innovative tools out there and just finding out like where things are headed really. So we wanted to provide a place where we could bring in industry experts, we can bring in thought leaders in the space to help our members grow professionally. So that’s how we got started and.

Krista Tan (13:35.992)
We did a big launch party in San Francisco. It went extremely well. We realized within a month that we really had something special and we had women coming to us, getting referred to us that were saying, why didn’t you do this sooner? I’ve been looking for something like this. And again, really it just came out of something that we wanted for ourselves and we wanted to be able to give back.

Anthony (14:02.777)
Cool, a couple of things I want to unpack there, Krista. First, what specifically about AI are people in your field concerned about? What is it doing that threatens or potentially threatens people’s livelihood?

Krista Tan (14:16.142)
Sure, there’s a lot of pieces of the recruiting life cycle that can be automated and we’re learning more and more what those could be. So it could be, you know, sourcing. So sourcing candidates, finding candidates for the job that you’re recruiting on. Those are some of the things that AI is really impacting. So there’s a thing called Boolean search strings when

you know, back in the olden days, recruiters would have to learn how to create these threads of search strings to go find the candidates that they’re looking for. Now, AI and technology can do a lot of that for you. There’s also transcribing interview notes. So when you’re on interviews with candidates, there are tools out there now that can transcribe those, but then also

generate a bio based on those interview notes for, let’s say, send to a hiring manager. I’ve been hearing a lot about tools that will actually screen candidates for you. So that really does, I think, a lot of recruiters’ minds, replace the recruiter. However, the tools that I’ve heard of that do this

It’s on a very surface level, right? Like there’s always going to be a need for the human touch and for humans to get involved in recruiting. But there are tools out there that will do kind of a high level screen. So, you know, if you’re recruiting volume, right? Like if you have 50 hires to make customer service reps or retail people, and you have 3000 applications, you could screen all of those people to get your top.

100, let’s say. So, and then you come in as a human and do the rest from there. So there’s a lot of different ways. Scheduling is another big one within the recruiting life cycle that is tedious and cumbersome and AI is helping with that as well. So few others, but those are some of the ways.

Anthony (16:28.717)
Now, is the concern that your clients who have been paying for your services are now going to discover these AI tools and want to take this back in -house? Because it seems like if these are tools that recruiters could learn to use and incorporate into their process, it could make them more efficient, open them up to more client possibilities. But maybe there’s a flip side of that where now because of some of the software tools, people are

Krista Tan (16:48.686)
Mm -hmm.

Anthony (16:57.443)
discounting the value of the human touch of your services. Is that kind of what’s playing out?

Krista Tan (17:02.126)
Yes, all of those things and more. So for example, if you’re an internal recruiter and you work for, you know, a company, let’s say, and you used to have a team of five recruiters. Now you maybe have a team of two recruiters, three of them have been laid off and you’re expected to do a lot more, right? Because you have a lot, a lot more tools and technology at your disposal. So

That’s where I think some of the fear comes in that like those three jobs are not going to get replaced because now technology has come in and is doing a lot of the work. So there’s, there’s many different facets to it, but I think you nailed definitely a big part of it. And then also just replacing the human in actual job positions.

Anthony (17:54.445)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a big question that a lot of people are discussing across many industries right now. And I don’t know that anybody has an answer to it. I’m curious though. I want to focus on the launch party because coming out of the gate, it sounds like you guys had a great kickoff. What did you do? How did you promote yourselves? How did you get people to that first party?

Krista Tan (18:00.764)
Mm

Krista Tan (18:04.322)
Right.

Krista Tan (18:07.982)
Mm

Krista Tan (18:18.008)
Sure. we did a lot of, well, we’re lucky. So LinkedIn is a big place that recruiters congregate, right? So our ideal customer profile, so to speak, is already on LinkedIn. So we used a lot of LinkedIn posts and advertisement and one -to -one outreach to not only our own networks, but also doing a lot of cold outreach.

AI tools out there now as well that will do like automated LinkedIn messaging. So you can reach a lot more people than just doing one to one to one. So we did all of those things. So definitely the warm, you know, there’s three co -founders. So all of us have networks of people that we’ve either recruited with or just other recruiters that we’ve known are heads of talent, heads of people.

So doing a lot of one -to -one outreach, then also, as I mentioned, know, LinkedIn posts and people resharing our content, resharing the invite. We asked a lot of those people to share with their networks. So I think a lot of people were excited about this new community coming in and would reshare it and invite, you know, the women in their network that they were excited to be at an event with.

Anthony (19:39.951)
And so you guys are located personally, physically, just outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, right? So this launch party, I’m going to guess, people who were local to the Bay Area for the most

Krista Tan (19:45.952)
Yes, yep.

Krista Tan (19:51.48)
For the most part, and surprisingly, there were actually a couple of people. One woman had flown down from Oregon, and then there was another woman who is actually from the Midwest and runs a recruiting agency out there, but happened to be in town and caught wind of it. So she was there. She’s actually an advisor for us now. So there were a few people that were not from the Bay Area that attended, but mostly they are Bay Area people.

Anthony (20:18.221)
And so going forward, is the membership look mostly like people from the Bay Area or are there the benefits and advantages for people outside of there who can’t come to the in -person events that you have?

Krista Tan (20:32.206)
Absolutely, yes. we’ve actually, in just the last year, we’ve launched in 10 different locations around the US and Canada. So, and another to come soon in Atlanta. So we have 10 different locations where we have physical events on a very regular basis. So that’s every four to six weeks. And then really a majority of the membership and what we do for the community is online and virtual. So we do a lot of virtual workshops and webinars.

We have a mentorship program where women can connect with each other virtually, of course. And we have peer groups that meet on a monthly basis. kind of like niche groups within the recruiting field that come together and discuss topics that are specific to them. We have a couple of job boards online. We have a toolbox online as well for different resources and whatnot.

Anyone, any woman across the US and really globally, actually our members are global, can join and will get value out of the membership regardless of if they’re in a physical location of where we are right now.

Anthony (21:41.133)
And so to take part in these benefits, you do need to subscribe, pay some kind of a membership fee, correct?

Krista Tan (21:47.21)
Yes, that’s right. We have three different tiers. We kind of have like an entry into the community. We have one that’s a mid tier that really is a majority of the value that you’re going to get. And then we also have a tier for executives specifically. So heads of talent, directors, VPs, and they have a couple of special perks that they get in addition to everything else that the mid level one would get.

Anthony (22:14.637)
Yeah. So most of your members, why do you think they’re joining? What is it that they’re seeking?

Krista Tan (22:22.198)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, I think that goes back to really like our two main goals with the community, which were providing a space for women to connect and network. And we’re big on not just networking just for networking sake, but to actually build long -term relationships. So some women feel very isolated and or, you know, just that they really want to connect with other women in the space and be able to

you know, share war stories and share what’s going on with them and get best practices and tips and whatnot. And then there’s also a lot of women that are here for the professional development piece, right? They might not have a big team around them or a company that has training resources or, you know, other ways of keeping them on the cutting edge of what’s going on in talent acquisition.

So they join for continuous education and growth opportunities.

Anthony (23:23.535)
And so in your industry, is there like a licensure, like is continuing ed required or it’s optional, it’s just for personal growth, hey, I want to level up in what I’m doing.

Krista Tan (23:34.627)
Yeah, great question. There’s actually not a licensure or certification at this point in recruiting in the broader HR field there is. And that’s one of the reasons we wanted to start Talent Collective is because talent is typically seen as a subset of HR, but we really believe that

talent acquisition is its own function and should be, we should have more, again, like a certification or something in place to be able to make sure that people that are practitioners are actually, you know, really quality. So that’s something long -term that we could see ourselves getting into and really investing in is some kind of certification or licensing or something like that.

But that’s like a very, very, very long -term goal of ours.

Anthony (24:32.495)
What are some of the short -term to mid -term goals for township?

Krista Tan (24:36.942)
Sure. So we’re really focused on growth now. right now we have over 450 global members, which we feel very fortunate to have grown to this mark, you know, just in a year. However, we know that we can reach more women and provide value and impact in more women’s lives. So we will be launching in new locations in the next year, and I’m sure, you know, after that as well. And then

A really big priority for me is to not dilute the value that people do get from the membership. So we don’t want to grow at all costs. We want to remain very competitive in the value that we’re giving to our members. So one of my main goals is to really make sure that the programming we’re providing is really giving our members impact and helping them with the day -to -day of their job or…

the connections they’re getting, helping to grow their business, et cetera.

Anthony (25:39.247)
And so how do you think about or how do you structure that growth? I mean, I think you said you’re in 10 different locations already and there are more on the way. Do you have to sort of anoint somebody as kind of a local chapter president? Is that how it works?

Krista Tan (25:55.564)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, so we discovered very early on that tapping someone on the shoulder is not the best route because then that person, like they may or may not organically have the passion to hold events, right? Holding an event and planning an event requires, I think one, a very specific type of person, but then also a lot of initiative, like this person is going to be in that location without us there nudging them along. So

Anthony (26:05.142)
Okay.

Krista Tan (26:25.56)
how we’ve instead grown is as we have new members join from any location, oftentimes a woman will raise their hand and say, I really want these events in my area. So how can we do that? And that’s when we start a conversation with them. They’ve already raised their hand. Oftentimes they’ll either go at it alone and really be that lead point person. And then other times they’ll want a partner in crime. So they’ll go find maybe a friend of theirs.

that is also interested and they’ll partner up. But we really help them do the big launch and we’ll fly out to that location, do a big launch party similar to what we did in San Francisco, help get sponsors there, and really kind of teach them how to launch that location and teach them how to run events. And then they kind of are able to, they know how to plan events from there.

And then we still provide support. So we help them market those events. We help get people there. We provide backend, you know, all the tools and resources that they’ll need to run events, et cetera. And they can be really small events. Like it could be just like meeting up for coffee, you know, once a month or something like that. It doesn’t have to be a huge lift on there.

Anthony (27:44.633)
Do members have a way to sort of trial the value of the membership? Is there some way for them to kind of dip their toe in the water and test it out?

Krista Tan (27:53.518)
Yes, they sure do. So we do have that middle tier membership. We have a free 30 day trial. So they can get in there, see what kind of programming is there, see what kind of groups are there. And that way they can really know and understand how much they’re going to get out of the community before committing.

Anthony (28:14.479)
I’m curious, because your organization is specifically for women in this field, does the field of talent acquisition tend to attract more women than men?

Krista Tan (28:27.438)
So, yes, it does. However, what we tend to see is as you get more more senior positions in the talent acquisition space, there’s more men at the top. And so, you know, let’s just say theoretically there’s 60 % women in TA in the US and 40 % males.

I would say, and this is anecdotal, but that number’s probably flipped at the upper level. know, director level, C level, and, you VP, that a lot of the men are the ones that are getting promotions. And so that is, you kind of nailed it. That’s another reason we started this was really to empower women and help them get those opportunities to get promoted.

and how do you position yourself and how do you speak for yourself and advocate for yourself to really continue to grow your career if that’s something that you want to do.

Anthony (29:30.946)
And so most of your members, they like solopreneurs, maybe just like, you know, two or three people in their firm? Do you kind of have a wide range? What’s it look like?

Krista Tan (29:39.566)
We have a pretty wide range. So we have people that are internal, so internal recruiters, and then we have agency folks. And I would say it’s probably split like pretty 50 -50. And then within the firm side or agency side, a lot of people recently in the last year or two have started their own agency because of their own business because of the way the market has been. You know, maybe they’ve been laid off three times in the last year and they can’t really rely on a full -time job.

to feed their family or to pay the bills. they’ve started their own recruiting company and are maybe piecing together a few clients to make one full -time income, so to speak. So a lot of the women in our community, that’s a huge value add for them that they now have other women who have recently gone through the same thing, starting their own business, and they can share all of those best practices and tools they’re using.

what’s working well, what’s not, and really help support each other and even sharing clients. you you might have a client reach out to you and it’s a job that you’ve never really recruited for, but you don’t want to turn away the business. And so you partner with another solo recruiter in our community to help recruit on that role. And then you both win from it. so yeah, so we have, again, agency, internal, and then everything really in between.

Anthony (31:06.307)
Yeah, I’m curious, how are most people finding you? Are you doing outbound marketing? Is it mostly word of mouth? What’s that look like?

Krista Tan (31:14.978)
We’re doing everything you mentioned and more. we, you know, we’re on social media. We do a lot of thought leadership. So writing our own blogs, but then also partnering with other companies and, you know, co -writing blogs. So again, a lot on LinkedIn, we share a lot of our content and our events, which are a huge draw on LinkedIn and our other social media channels, mostly just Instagram right now, but I could see us, you know,

I’m having like a TikTok at some point, maybe in Facebook, but we also do cold emails. So we have kind of a sales engine running in the background where we do cold emails out to women in the talent acquisition space. We also do one -to -one outreach on LinkedIn. And those are just messages, know, connection requests, and then kind of inviting them to maybe an event we have coming up, those types of things. And then…

of word of mouth. mean, I can’t tell you the number of times I’m on a call with a new member or prospective member and I ask them, how did you hear about us? And they’re like, like three people told me about you. you know, so that’s really neat to hear because yeah, I think like our name brand is really getting out there and our reputation is very strong. So yeah, definitely warms my heart to hear that when I hear that.

Anthony (32:25.081)
That’s awesome.

Anthony (32:40.333)
I’m curious, do you ever envision yourselves maybe putting on something like a trade show? I know that you’ve got sort of these local chapters, but would you ever kind of want to get to that point?

Krista Tan (32:51.63)
Yes, so I personally don’t I’m not the event planner and I like to attend the events. I don’t like to plan them. But my co founder, Natalie, she is our events guru and she’s so good at them. And she has definitely talked about wanting to do something like this. And we do have a goal to do some kind of summit, so to speak. And maybe it’s just a day long summit in 2025.

So more to come on that. And if that goes well, then I could see us doing something longer, maybe a few day show conference, so to speak, moving forward. But yes, definitely on the radar.

Anthony (33:30.647)
Any other growth plans that you want to give voice to at the moment?

Krista Tan (33:35.754)
Sure. So we are in talks with a couple of different partners to expand on this idea of like either a recruiter marketplace or jobs marketplace to incorporate into the community. And again, it’s this idea of like connecting the employers who need to find people with the recruiters who are looking for work. And so, you know, that’s a big initiative of ours is to find, you know, a really good solution for that.

my gosh, we have like a million and one other ideas, but that’s the thing I think we’re working on hardest right now to really find the right solution for.

Anthony (34:16.865)
That’s pretty cool. I want to go switch gears a little bit and talk about how you first got involved in the talent acquisition industry. What drew you to it? How did the door open for you?

Krista Tan (34:29.422)
Sure, so this is, stems back to childhood. My mom had always told me, if you find something you love to do, you’re never gonna work a day in your life. So that’s kind of the story that I grew up with, which I loved, and I’m very grateful that she instilled that in me.

So moving forward to college, as everyone who goes to college does, what am going to do with my life when I’m done here? I knew I wanted to give back. I knew I wanted to help people, but I didn’t really know what that looked like. So in that process, I went to the Career Center at my own college and ended up developing this really lovely relationship with one of the career counselors there who I still am in touch with and I just adore.

And through that process, you know, she was like, okay, there’s like the nonprofit route. There’s like, you could be a social worker. And, and it really had me going through the process of like speaking with people in these industries or doing internships. did a couple of nonprofit internships in college and really through that process, I was kind of checking those boxes as like, okay, I know I don’t want those things. And so I still had this idea that I wanted to help people that I didn’t know how. One day.

it just dawned on me like I would love to do what she does. I’ve enjoyed this relationship that we’ve built so much and she’s helped me so much that I would love to be able to do that with college students. So I asked her, how did you get to where you are? She said, I went and got my masters and it was a…

counseling degree in career development. So I said, my gosh, that’s what I’m going to do. So that’s exactly what I did. Luckily the college I was at in San Diego actually offered that exact degree and that I think there’s only two programs in the entire US that did. So I stayed there. Yeah, yeah, there was, think Boston college was another one at the time and then University of San Diego. So I took a little time off in between, but went back to school there for my masters. So.

Anthony (36:22.179)
Really?

Krista Tan (36:35.33)
through the same idea happened in grad school where I did a few internships in career centers and I realized it just was not the right environment for me. I loved helping the students and I loved the one -on -one with them, but the university setting was not right for me. It was just too slow, too antiquated.

very bureaucratic and I found myself bored, right? So I knew coming out of my master’s degree that I wanted to get into corporate and recruiting was a clear path for that. So moved up to the Bay Area. My dream job was to be at Google doing like university recruiting for them. Cause then I would still get to recruit college students and I could work for an amazing company, you know, in

Google or something like that. fast forward, it’s 2008. I moved to San Francisco. I had no idea that there was like a huge economic bust at the time. You know, they don’t tell you those things in a counseling program in grad school. So I move up here, there’s no jobs to be found. And I just was in this moment of desperation, like meeting anyone I could. did a million like

Reach out on LinkedIn and in those days LinkedIn wasn’t even big, but reaching out to any recruiter that would give me the time of day and doing informational interviews and just really trying to network as best as I could. And through that process, I had gone through a recruiting agency to try to find a job. And one of the three agencies that I went to, I actually really enjoyed. I got along with my recruiter.

great relationship. She was so just personable and empathetic and really helpful to me, helping me redo my resume and all of these other things. So had a good feeling about that agency, but I did not want to work at a staffing agency. Like I was like, I’m not a salesy person. I like I’ve heard these horror stories about agencies that it’s like cutthroat and you know, it’s really salesy and all of these things. I’m like, that’s not me. Fast forward three months later.

Krista Tan (38:52.482)
I’m running out of money. I’m like, still just like no jobs to be found. And I was at a networking event and somebody said, I think Premier’s hiring, which is where I ended up. And I was like, okay, I’m just going to reach out to my recruiter and just see. And she said, well, yeah, we are hiring, but I thought you didn’t want to work in agency. And I said, well, I had a great experience at your agency. So let’s just, let’s try it, right? Went through the process, ended up getting the job and I was there for.

13 years, it was like the best fit. I still don’t consider myself this big salesperson, but realized through that process, because I landed at a really good agency, that it was more about the relationships than like a hard sell. And some agencies are like that, right? There’s a reason recruiting gets a bad rap sometimes. But I was very fortunate to land somewhere that didn’t take that approach to recruiting. So grew from there and

the rest of its history.

Anthony (39:53.815)
Yeah, and you, you grew the company or you helped to grow the company pretty significantly while you were there. What was the in the intro? We said they were named? What was the award that they got one of America’s best recruiting firms?

Krista Tan (40:08.494)
Yep, and we had a few different awards, fastest growing in the US. we did go through a period of very, very high growth. would say coming out of the 2008, 2009 recession, the first few years were so tough. mean, it was just cold calling like no other. And then about 2010, 2011, it really started to pick up. And so we saw very high growth from 2011. So I want to say like,

2016, 2017, something like that. And so I feel like it was like a little bit of right time, right place. I started in a down market. So like, I knew what it was to work really hard and like fight tooth and nail for business. And I kept that work ethic up through the upswing, right? Like it was like this huge snowball where now we had business coming in the door. We didn’t have to work for it as hard.

But I still really have that work ethic to gain new business and to really make sure we were doing well and providing white glove service for the clients and customers that we did have. So, yeah, so grew the business over those years. then, and I was managing our highest performing team. So that was a really great honor. then,

Basically, after having my first kid, I came in a non -recruiting role. So I came back on the operations side, the management side. We were opening new offices in several different locations. So then I got the business side and I got to know and understand how to open an office. I got to know and understand the P &L and how to grow and gross margins and net income and all the things.

So my second half of my tenure there was on the business and operations side.

Anthony (42:08.015)
You mentioned that you managed the top performing team before you took maternity leave and then came back to run the business side of things. I’m curious from your 13 years there being able to see this, what do you think it was that separated the top performers from everybody else?

Krista Tan (42:27.222)
You know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna use a term that I think kind of gets thrown around a bit. And, but I really do think it, made a difference on our team, which was psychological safety. And, you know, I think Google has done studies about this, like the highest performing teams have psychological safety. And that was absolutely true with our team. Every single person we added to the team were A players. Like we just did not.

except someone underperforming for sure, but even just like an average performer. So we were kind of like fast to hire, fast fire. So if someone wasn’t getting it within a couple of months, we were like, you’re out. And we had a shared commission pool, which is very rare on the agency side. Usually it’s like, that’s why it gets a cutthroat perception is that oftentimes you’re competing with your colleagues.

for the placement, but we had a shared commission pool. So we were all working hard together for the same goal. And we just hired really quality people who worked hard, were humble and just

Anthony (43:50.765)
So does the psychological safety just it’s innate to the person or is it something that you’re fostering because of the environment that you’re building like that shared commission pool?

Krista Tan (44:03.694)
I think definitely the shared commission pool helped. also think, and I don’t want to toot my own horn here, but I think my management style rubbed off on the team, right? Like I’m a very supportive person and I support the person and I understand things happen outside of work. We also like, we would talk about our personal lives, right? Like we had relationships outside of work.

I really fostered that kind of environment where we were not only friends, not only colleagues, but also friends. But then I have a very high bar for performance and how we treat our clients. So I held everybody else to that bar.

Anthony (44:52.857)
You know, there are different types of firms sort of under the staffing umbrella, right? You’ve got like temp agencies, you know, where they’re placing people that, you know, may work for short periods of time. That’s obviously not your focus or, the people in your membership group. And then as I understand it, you know, you’re sort of more of a, you know, what’s the term like?

Krista Tan (45:04.152)
Mm -hmm.

Anthony (45:21.772)
hire for placement, right? So they pay you a fee and you help to find somebody and you place them there.

Krista Tan (45:23.522)
Mm -hmm.

Krista Tan (45:28.078)
Yeah, so the different models are, so contingency recruiting is when a company comes and says, here’s a job we need, they don’t pay anything upfront, they only pay the agency if they end up placing someone. And that’s the type of firm I worked for. I now after having 15 years of experience, like I think that model is absolute crap.

Where else do you ask someone to work for free? You know what I mean? Like other professional services firms, except for real estate. Like real estate, think is probably one of the only other industries where they work for free until you deliver something, right? So there’s plenty of contingent agencies out there. I think they oftentimes just work so, so hard and then you do all of this work and then the company hires a referral.

or goes with another agency or what have you. So that’s what I did. There’s also retained search and those are typically executive search firms. again, there’s different payment models and fee structures, but typically the company hiring will pay a third of the fee upfront, a third when the interviews start and then a third at the placement.

And then there’s also, like we mentioned earlier, people that are out there being solo recruiters and sometimes there’s like a monthly retainer that they’re working off of. I’ve done that recently where I will tell my client, I’m gonna commit X number of hours to this search and then they pay me upfront that month. And then we renew if the role hasn’t been filled at the end of the month. There’s hourly.

You know, so you could come in and just be, you know, contracting with the company hourly. So there’s a lot of different models out there. There’s embedded recruiting, RPO models. Yeah. So a lot of different, different models out there.

Anthony (47:38.572)
So you are still with your partners, you’re still offering your own talent acquisition and recruiting services. Talk about the approach that you and your team take.

Krista Tan (47:49.678)
Sure, sure. Yeah. So I still recruit and I absolutely love it and I don’t ever see myself not recruiting. For years, like I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t recruiting. I was on the operations side. was growing the business and I still like knew in my head that I liked recruiting and that I was into the industry and I believed in it. But it wasn’t until I left.

premiere and went in -house, was head of people at a small startup, so I was recruiting again, where really my passion and love for recruiting was reinvigorated, would say. So I knew then that, okay, I need to still stay connected with recruiting. I need to still be recruiting to keep that passion for it.

So when I started Talent Collective, I still have the goal of at least having one client that I’m recruiting for at any given time. again, my model is I’ll do a monthly retainer. That way I’m getting paid something upfront. And really my goal is to fill their job that first month because then they’ll keep providing more opportunities for me to work on. I’ve been very fortunate to work with companies that move quickly and I have

been able to hit that goal of filling their roles within a month. So I mostly recruit for non -technical positions. anything, know, GNA, go to market, operations, finance, et cetera, know, sales, customer success. And yeah, again, it’s a monthly retainer and I provide very, very high level of service and

you know, kind of like that white glove approach to my clients. But yeah, that’s a little bit about what I do there.

Anthony (49:44.167)
Talk a little bit more about that, Krista. I’m curious to hear what kind of separates you from other folks in the space. Obviously, when somebody is going to hire for this kind of help, it’s a big deal, right? Like this is a really important role to fill so that they can get the right team members in their company. And so they’re probably shopping around before they say, Krista’s the right one. And when they make that decision, why have they made that?

Krista Tan (49:55.842)
Mm -hmm.

Krista Tan (50:05.25)
Mm

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. You know, it’s so funny because after leading and managing teams for so long, there are people that just get recruiting and are good at it naturally, and then there’s people that have to work really hard and really long hours, and it just doesn’t come naturally. And so I think, one, it’s just a very natural fit for me. I actually, when I got back into recruiting,

You know, I had not recruited for six or seven years. And so I was a little like, I had a little bit of insecurity, like, my gosh, am I going to be able to do this again? And you know, how am I going to be and just immediately got right back into it. And my most recent client that I have been with since October of last year,

She just gave me, think, the most meaningful and impactful praise. She’s worked with a lot of recruiters over her years. She’s CEO of a marketing firm. And she told me, she’s like, you aren’t just marginally better than all of the recruiters I’ve worked with, but you’re like significantly better. And when I heard that, it just gave me so much confidence that like, okay, I love what I do, but I’m also really good at it. And I think part of that is

Anthony (51:28.239)
That’s great.

Krista Tan (51:29.672)
I am fast, but I also have high customer service skills and high touch. So I can get my work done very quickly and I’m good at picking top, top caliber candidates, building relationships with them so that they’re committed and loyal to me throughout the process of placing them at the company. And I also like

If I believe in the company I’m recruiting for, which luckily I have with all of the companies I’ve recruited for, I can get people pumped. The people that I recruit don’t bail out of the process because they’re lukewarm on the company. If that happens, somebody at the company made them lukewarm. It was not me. I get people super excited about the companies I’m working for.

Anthony (52:22.489)
So I’d like to better understand what the qualities, the personality traits are that make a great recruiter. Obviously, from what I’m hearing you talk about, like you have to be really good at developing relationships with the people that you’re trying to recruit. You know, this isn’t, you know, an hourly job at a fast food restaurant. Typically this is, you know, a more prominent position and people probably have a pretty good job already. And so you’re trying to lure them out of a comfortable situation. So

Krista Tan (52:35.31)
Mm

Anthony (52:49.715)
Developing that rapport and getting them psyched up about this other company is probably a big deal. Would it be correct to say that it’s also a lot about being able to judge somebody’s personality pretty quickly to see are they the right culture fit?

Krista Tan (53:05.716)
Yes, absolutely. And there’s a whole hot topic out there right now in recruiting and that has to do with like, you the hard skills of a job and can someone actually perform the job versus the whole culture fit idea. And there’s a lot of bias in that and how do you mitigate that bias and do companies care as much about culture fit anymore if they’re all working remotely? Like, so there’s a lot of ins and outs of all of that.

As a recruiter and someone who, again, I feel like I’m good at what I do, there’s this term recruiter’s intuition. When you have it and you know it, you just know it. You just have this gut feeling about certain people. Every single time I’ve gone against my recruiter’s intuition, it has blown up in my face. I’ve really learned over the years to listen to that. I think that the best recruiters out there,

know that gut feeling and listen to it. And it’s hard to say what it is other than a gut feeling about people. So it is reading people’s personalities for sure. But then also you have to know the company and like, what kind of personality fit or culture fit. And there’s also like culture ad, like are they adding to the culture, not just like fitting in, like, you know, being another duplicate of someone that already works there, right? But yes, gut.

Anthony (54:36.109)
Listen to your gut, true across many industries. Chris, I’m curious in all your experience, what are some of the most common hiring mistakes that you see companies?

Krista Tan (54:37.578)
What’s in your gut?

Krista Tan (54:49.102)
Hmm. This is a good one. I’m going to say moving too slowly. So there are companies that are so afraid to make the wrong hire that they make their interview process like eight steps long or 10 steps long, and they make the candidates go through the ringer, right? Like they want them to do all of these different assessments or homework projects or, you know, other, other things of that nature.

And I think to some extent, those can have a time and a place.

Anthony (56:08.087)
You know, I haven’t, obviously hired at the scale that you have before, but, but for my own companies in the past, I, you know, I’ve developed my own kind of recruiting and vetting process. And, you know, I made the mistake with, you know, some of my, earlier hires of doing exactly what you’re describing, making, that upfront process too difficult. And then, you know, was wondering why am I not getting sort of more people in the funnel for this?

And so when I took a step back and I recognized, okay, I need to make this simpler. But I still wanted to include some kind of a test task to be able to gauge the quality of their output, the work that they were submitting. And I realized that earlier on I had made the mistake of asking too much. And I wasn’t paying them for that effort that they were putting in. And so I made the decision.

let’s whittle down our list to some people that look good, sound good, come across well, and then let’s pay them for a simple test task. So it doesn’t come across as too much effort or we’re trying to take advantage of them or we’re gonna take this work, this free work that they did and use it. Is that track with kind of what you like to see happen?

Anthony (58:47.607)
I’m curious, Krista, what you, if you had to narrow it down to one thing, and obviously it’s not ever one thing, but what is the most powerful thing that makes someone want to move jobs? Do they buy into the mission? Is it more pay? Is it the benefits? Or maybe even sort of like give us an ordered list of the things that are sort of the biggest triggers for them.

Anthony (01:00:37.595)
Chris, I’d like to shift gears again and this time I would like to ask about maybe a particular challenge either personally or professionally that you had to overcome in the past and some lessons that you learned coming out the other side.

Anthony (01:04:46.937)
Thank you for sharing that, Krista. Obviously, I’m sorry that your father had those struggles, but what a beautiful way that you took his message. Right. We’ve got choices in how we sort of receive things. We can’t control everything that happens in our lives, but we can control the way that we react to them. And you chose to take it in the most beautiful way possible that, wow, I am so special. I matter that much.

my dad that that’s enough for him to stay around and to be here with us. That’s a beautiful story. Chris, I have one more question I want to ask you, but before I do, I want to do a couple of things. First of all, if you’re listening today and you like today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like, or share button on your favorite podcast app. I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. Maybe they’re interested in becoming a member. Maybe they’re interested in becoming a client.

Maybe they just want to have a general conversation. How do they get in touch with you?

Anthony (01:06:12.943)
Great. Now, last question I have for you. You went through, I’ll call it the dark winter of 2008, 2009. And it sounds like there’s maybe not quite as bad now, but certainly lots of struggles in the industry. Where do you see things going in the next five years in this talent acquisition space? What do you think the big changes are that are

Anthony (01:07:50.329)
That’s terrific. Krista, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Anthony (01:08:07.636)
My pleasure. I would say our pleasure. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.