The Recruiters AI Will Replace (And the Ones It Won't) with Jeff Hyman

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Are you still trying to grow your recruiting desk or business on your own? Join the Elite Recruiter Community and connect with recruiters who know your challenges. Members get unlimited access to replays from the AI Recruiting Summit, Finish the Year Strong, and all our past events, plus biweekly roundtables where we dive into sourcing, business development, and mindset. You'll also tap into our Billers Club for accountability and a split space to partner on roles. Join the number one growth environment for recruiters for just $49 per month. You'll be part of a tight-knit group that pushes you to grow, and you can cancel anytime. Visit the link in the show notes and click Join Now to get started and start mastering your craft today. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Jeff Hyman [00:00:40]:
I would document every time I messed something up. So every time a search went sideways, every time I had placed a candidate who didn't work out, every time a negotiation didn't happen. I'd write down what did I learn from it. Any part of the recruiting process that can be automated will be automated. AI is a key driver of that. And if that is your core value added and you're trying to compete with the technology that can do it instantly and at almost zero cost, you're gonna lose. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales else.

Jeff Hyman [00:01:24]:
Marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:30]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:40]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast because here's the thing. It's 2026. You have two options: adapt or go extinct. It could happen now. It can happen a year from now. It can happen 3 years from now, but you need to start making these changes now. But also the coolest thing, let's get real.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:06]:
I'm excited about like actually doing this interview because I look up to this recruiter. He's an absolute legend and somebody I've wanted to actually interview. Probably since about 5 years ago when I started the podcast. He's been on my wish list and I finally get a chance to sit down with him. So excited to have you, Jeff.

Jeff Hyman [00:03:24]:
I'm as excited as you are, and I think we're going to have a lot of fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:28]:
So real quick, quick 30-second self-introduction.

Jeff Hyman [00:03:31]:
As you alluded to, I've been doing this far too long. I've started 5 companies, most of them in and around recruiting. It's my life other than my family. I just— I'm fascinated by it and I learn new stuff and I'm surprised every day. Live out west in Boulder, Colorado. And, um, yeah, wrote a book along the way, just kind of documenting all the mistakes that I've made, hoping to help others avoid doing the same.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:55]:
And I've read the book. The book is awesome. And the listeners can get a copy of Recruit Rockstars, right?

Jeff Hyman [00:03:59]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Later on, if you want, we can give a URL and people can get it for free.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:04]:
Cool. I'll make sure to add the URL to the show notes so that you can definitely click on it. So before we get started, you said something during our pregame chat that really just kind of stuck with me. The train has left the station. You could be on it or under it. What do you mean by that?

Jeff Hyman [00:04:21]:
I feel that there are still people putting their heads in the sand, hoping, wishing, wanting, maybe this AI thing isn't for real. It's going to go away like so many tech fads do over the years. I do think this time it's different and it's here to stay. And so as with any technology innovation, whether it was dot-com or mobile or anything else. You can lead that change and be part of it and take advantage of it, or you can be dragged kicking and screaming into it, which is a much more painful path. And you don't have to be a techie or a tech wizard, fortunately, to use AI in all aspects of your business now. But I think by the end of '26, if you're not, there's going to be a problem with your business.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:07]:
So Let's just say if a recruiter is listening to this and does nothing differently, what do you think is going to happen to them in about 24 months?

Jeff Hyman [00:05:16]:
It's going to be tougher to acquire clients. It's going to be tougher to execute searches in a timely fashion, which clients are always expecting it to be faster and better. It's going to be more difficult to earn a profit, meaningful profit, and it's going to be tougher to keep clients. So all aspects of the business are going to be increasingly difficult.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:37]:
All right, well, let's take a few steps back. Yeah, what's that? How did you even end up in this land of misfit toys?

Jeff Hyman [00:05:45]:
No one went to high school saying, I'm going to be a recruiter when I grow up, right? Nobody. Nobody. I fell into it in my mid-20s, so about 30 years ago. Started a recruiting business. This would— was in Silicon Valley during the dot-com gold rush and, uh, taught myself the craft because, as you know, they don't typically teach it in school. Made every mistake in the book, everything. But I was fascinated, I was hooked, and I quickly realized that building a company has one essential element, which is recruiting the best possible talent. And if you can do that, you can build your own company, you can build other companies, you can be very influential in helping people do the same.

Jeff Hyman [00:06:28]:
And that's what I've been up to for 30 years.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:31]:
I gotta ask, like you said, you're hooked. I've seen you, we've had conversations, like you love this space. Like nobody, like the problem is I think so many people fall into the space and they have to learn to love it. How did you learn to love it?

Jeff Hyman [00:06:45]:
It's a natural curiosity. My parents tell me that they saw this in me when I was 5, just a natural inquisitiveness, a curiosity, playing with the Lego, taking shit apart, et cetera, et cetera. And I do think there are people in this world that are hardwired to be naturally curious and inquisitive, open-minded, growth mindset oriented. And I think there are people in this world who are not. And I think if you're in the latter, this is a tough business because you have to be naturally inquisitive about people. Every search is different, every client is different, every candidate is different. What are the keys in extracting them to find the successful match? And That's what keeps me going. I guess when I get bored with it, I'll, I'll give up.

Jeff Hyman [00:07:29]:
But so far it hasn't happened.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:31]:
Yeah, I mean, this is definitely not a boring space. Yeah.

Jeff Hyman [00:07:35]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:36]:
You've also started like actual startups too, and you've scaled startups. Like, like how did you take— like what did you take away from scaling those companies that you've put back into the recruiting space and how you do your recruiting desk?

Jeff Hyman [00:07:51]:
Probably the most important thing is I had to eat my own cooking. So when you are starting a business from scratch, you quickly realize that you can't do everything by yourself and you do need to be a collector of talent. You have your number one job other than maybe figuring out, okay, what is the business we're going to be in, is building an organization of top performers and putting a top performer in every seat. And if you can do that, the business will inevitably change, the startup will morph and your business model will adjust, but it kind of all begins and ends with that. And so that was the biggest thing that I've learned along the way of starting companies.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:35]:
And, you know, with all those startups, you went back to the recruiting desk again. Why?

Jeff Hyman [00:08:42]:
Starting companies is fun. It's not for the faint of heart. There's a time in one's life where I think it's just more viable. I do think starting a business can be an 80 or 100 hour a week pursuit because you are getting this boulder up the proverbial hill. And once you get it up there and you've got some momentum, then, you know, things get a bit easier. But there is a time in life for that, and I've had that time in life always starting things. But starting new ventures and raising capital from outside investors is something I've done 5 times, and I think that's Plenty.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:21]:
And I love that you've done that because there are very few recruiters that have had to raise capital, but you've— you almost took that into like, like almost like your, your superpower. And that's— how did you start this or evolve into the Recruit Rockstar brand that you built?

Jeff Hyman [00:09:36]:
That came a bit later, but the origin story of raising capital from investors was 1996. So this was in Palo Alto. It was just at the beginning of the dot-com era, which is something that, you know, I kind of lived through both the ride up, the ride down, and obviously it's become everything about the economy. But back then it was a gold rush. It was an early thing. Dot-com, what is that? No one even knew. Got my first email address in 1995, and I had an idea that technology could easily be, or could be used to make the recruiting process more easy. Finding people, connecting people, etc.

Jeff Hyman [00:10:19]:
Prior to that, it was a slog. You think it's a slog now. Back then, it was a phone and a Rolodex, and that's all you had. And it was smile and dial, and you were on the phone all day long. And job boards didn't exist. Instead, the newspaper, if you can believe it, we actually read newspapers, and they were filled with these classified ads of job listings. And so, So, so the industry was still very inefficient. And it was my thought that, hey, technology and especially the internet can change this dramatically because one thing the internet was very good at back then, even back then, was connecting people.

Jeff Hyman [00:10:55]:
And that's ultimately what recruiting is all about. So unfortunately, my idea at the time required some funding and it was not something I could self-fund and met with some investors who shared that same vision. Fortunately, many didn't, got turned down. Hundreds of times, but found a few folks who thought that idea was half decent and, uh, we were on our way.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:17]:
I'm kind of curious. You said you got turned down hundreds of times, like, oh, literally. And I know raising capital is hard, but what do you think is harder, raising capital or finding your next recruiting client?

Jeff Hyman [00:11:29]:
I would say raising capital. If you just look at the numbers, the sheer number of early-stage companies that are able to raise capital from professional investors is a fraction of 1%. Most that try are never able to seal the deal and raise capital. Finding your next recruiting client is far more in your control. Part of that is hard work. Part of that is specialization. Some other stuff we can talk about today if you want, but totally doable.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:59]:
Love that. Sorry, sorry for going the segue, but I was just like, you know what, for those that are listening, like most of us are not in the VC world, but I know some, I have some friends that are just like, It is pounding the pavement to try to get that check.

Jeff Hyman [00:12:10]:
It is. And one thing you asked what I had learned is raising money from outside investors should be the absolute last priority, the absolute last path. As soon as you take other people's money, your entire life changes because it is a one-way door. You can't easily give that money back. And once you have outside investors, they have a say in your business, the outcome of your business, the direction of your business, et cetera, et cetera. Fortunately, the internet has made it far less expensive to start a business. You can start a business with $100 and a computer or a phone. Back then, that really was very difficult to do.

Jeff Hyman [00:12:45]:
We were hosting our own servers in our office. I mean, there was no AWS. And so we needed money to start a business. You just couldn't do it otherwise.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:55]:
Well, that's awesome. And, you know, once you got back in the recruiting chair, you started building the Recruit Rockstar brand. You've written a book. You had a podcast that had 500 episodes.

Jeff Hyman [00:13:06]:
I gave up before you did. You have this, you have the stick-to-itiveness that I didn't have.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:10]:
I'm not at 500 yet.

Jeff Hyman [00:13:12]:
Yeah, you will be. You'll be there. You'll be there. The original name of the company was StrongSuit, but for a bunch of reasons, we changed the name to Recruit Rockstars, and that seemed to kind of catch on and captivate people.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:29]:
You sat down and wrote a book, and I think books is a superpower, is like a calling card. Podcasting is a second calling card. What other out-of-the-box things were you doing that most recruiters aren't doing?

Jeff Hyman [00:13:39]:
What was I doing back then in the— in around the time of writing the book? Studying my mistakes, I guess. If I had to bring it to one thing, is I'm a bit OCD, a bit anal retentive, and pretty tough on myself.. And if I have a superpower, if I have a superpower, it's being introspective. So I would document every time I messed something up. So every time a search went sideways, every time I had placed a candidate who didn't work out, every time a negotiation didn't happen, I'd write down what did I learn from it? Ray Dalio does the same in investing. He wrote this great book Principles, which was his notes. So I just started writing down and I, kept coming back to the same mistakes I would make. They were patterns.

Jeff Hyman [00:14:27]:
And, um, that's what the book was all about, is kind of how do you avoid those. Because in recruiting, as with a lot of things in business, if you can avoid those mistakes or avoid a few key things, you're far more likely to have a positive outcome. And so that was, that was what the book was about. So I think what I was doing all along was, was taking notes on what I had effed up So few people, I feel like, actually sit down and do that. It takes some pretty brutal honesty with yourself. Who likes to look in the mirror and say, I fucked that up? Nobody. I certainly don't. But if you hope to improve, if you're on the earlier side of your career, the learning phase, if you hope to scale your business, I don't know any better way than saying, okay, this didn't work.

Jeff Hyman [00:15:12]:
What did I miss so that next time I don't miss it? And sure enough, your brain internalizes it very quickly and you don't make that mistake again. The key is pinpointing what was the mistake. What did that candidate tell me that was bullshit? What did that client not tell me that I missed or I forgot to ask, etc., etc.?

Benjamin Mena [00:15:30]:
And that kind of shifting gears into like one of the reasons why I'm excited to chat with you is, you know, you've helped place over 3,000 people. You have all these conversations with all these companies constantly. Like you're in the executive search, you have such a good heartbeat with what's going on with your clients. You said something has like started to shift recently. The market's making a bit of a move. What's happening that you're feeling?

Jeff Hyman [00:15:57]:
There's a few things, but they're all largely tied to AI in some way. There are companies that are holding off on hiring because they believe sometimes mistakenly that some AI tool is going to magically replace the need for people in their company. And obviously, a CEO and a board of directors, part of their job is to increase profitability of the firm. If the number one driver of investment in the firm is people, if I can reduce my headcount, we're more profitable. All that logic makes sense. So there are a lot of companies that are taking a wait-and-see approach at hiring. I think the bigger issue, something that I have really been thinking about the past few months is many of these companies are still hiring the wrong kind of people. What worked in the past or what kind of people they were focused on in the past are no longer necessarily going to be successful in those companies and in these roles.

Jeff Hyman [00:16:53]:
I call it AI readiness. Are they AI ready? And some people are not, but very few companies are assessing and interviewing candidates for those characteristics. And it's our job, I think, as professionals, as trusted advisors to our clients, to help educate them and to guide them through this transformation to the extent that we can. Some of them will never get it, and we should just move on to other clients.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:19]:
So, and maybe like picture this out, like most of us, like we see our clients right now, what they're doing, how they're hiring. But like if we take this idea and move it forward like 2 years from now. What does it actually look like when you're dealing with these clients?

Jeff Hyman [00:17:34]:
Many of these clients, many of my clients, I think many clients in general are still focused on things that are not necessarily predictive of candidate success. What companies did this person work for? It's been proven to not be that predictive. What school did they go to? What was their GPA? Do they know this language? This skill, whatever it may be. These are things that are largely not predictive. And yet companies continue to, to look for them, you know, the old keyword method, as opposed to in this new era of AI, thinking about the characteristics that make people AI ready. These are much more focused on DNA, hardwired DNA that we as people have. Anyone that has kids knows what I mean. By the fact that those DNA characteristics are embedded pretty early.

Jeff Hyman [00:18:26]:
Psychologists say by age 8, we are pretty much the person that we're going to become. Well, it turns out the DNA is the most predictive characteristic of how an employee is going to perform on the job. Yet most of our clients don't know that, don't look for it, don't care about that. They're just focused on what used to work. And again, I think it's our job to bring them into this new, this new reality. So that's a shift that I've sensed starting over the past year or two, but I think we're in the second inning.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:58]:
Only in the second inning. Okay.

Jeff Hyman [00:19:00]:
Yeah. Not of the investment boom that we are later there. The markets always get ahead of themselves. I'm talking about on the ground in the field, actually using this stuff to advise our clients on hiring the right kind of people. I think we're very early in the game. And if you can become very good at that, I think you've got a very bright future in recruiting.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:20]:
And we'll just like flip it back to the recruiters away from the clients. Like from everything that you're seeing, how you're doing working with companies, what and how, like, you know, a lot of recruiters like were typically like 5, 10 years like in the past, you know, behind the times constantly.

Jeff Hyman [00:19:38]:
Unfortunately.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:38]:
Yeah. I see it all the time. I'm like, wait, do you guys still do like this?

Jeff Hyman [00:19:41]:
All right.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:41]:
Come on, guys. What really worked, like, even just 2 to 3 years ago that isn't working now for recruiters that you're kind of seeing?

Jeff Hyman [00:19:50]:
Go to LinkedIn, put in a bunch of keywords, see if the candidate is interested, and put them in front of the client because that's what the client is asking for. And I call that fetch as opposed to search. So there's a big difference between fetch and search. Fetch is go get me this and we blindly use keywords and go get it and throw the paper against the wall and hopefully it sticks. And it largely did. And I think those days are numbered. Now it's about search and we're either going to be trusted advisors to our clients and all that entails to the point of firing clients, which I do. But I think that the fetch days are behind us.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:34]:
Fetch days are behind us. When you say search, like, let's break that out. Like, what does it actually look like for those that might be thinking that they're doing search but they're really doing fetch?

Jeff Hyman [00:20:44]:
Sure. Well, it's the, it's, it's the entire process, but it starts with the scorecard, right? Which is chapter 1 of the book, which is what is it we're looking for? And many recruiters, especially early in their career, understandably will take a fetch mindset, which is have a kickoff call, client tells me what they want, that's it. As opposed to saying, why is it that we're looking for that? Why is this a must-have requirement? I'm working to shorten the length of must-have requirements to the things that really are things that are predictive of candidate success, as opposed to just writing everything the client says and that's the project. And that's fetched, right? Which, by the way, is also harder because the client is dictating the terms. So it's almost a negotiation of the scorecard, a negotiation of the terms. Not because I have all the answers, I certainly don't, but because I'm genuinely inquisitive to want to understand from the client, why is that important to you? What does that mean? And quite often the client says, huh, yeah, MBA, I guess that's not that important. We just opened up the candidate pool by a factor of 20 times, right? Just from one question. And so that goes all the way through the process.

Jeff Hyman [00:22:02]:
Saying no to the client, pushing back on the client, always with respect and always with a genuine sense of curiosity. That's fetch versus search. And you earn your place as the trusted advisor, which means the search is more likely to be successful, which also means you're more likely to get the next search.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:19]:
And one more thing, like, we are seeing AI constantly in recruiting. Like, I feel like I'm getting pitched on a new AI company like every 5 seconds.

Jeff Hyman [00:22:27]:
That's not going to stop.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:29]:
Like, word in— within recruiting, like, where do you think AI is going to hit the hardest?

Jeff Hyman [00:22:34]:
I think, I think there's 3 areas, largely speaking. One is using AI for marketing and business development. So what used to work, cold email and all the stuff you'd expect, is going to work less and less and less. And you're going to have to find ways using AI to become better at marketing and business development. By the way, the best way to do that is by doing great search. So that's kind of the third of the three. Second is of course sourcing. You alluded to the fact that you're getting pitched by a new sourcing tool every day.

Jeff Hyman [00:23:08]:
That's never going to stop. They come and go. I've seen— I'm old enough to have seen hundreds of HR technology companies come and go, even ones I thought were going to make it. So it's important to experiment, try everything, but also understand that there's going to be a few that make it, many that don't. And then third is how do you use AI in the search process itself to make yourself more efficient, more effective, more thorough. And so I think those are the 3 main buckets and those that at least try to adapt to those will do very well. And those that stick their head in the sand are gonna have a tough time.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:50]:
And I know within the past, like 2 decades, an entire, like subset of the recruiting, like career became sourcing with AI and everything. What's your thoughts on that side of the career?

Jeff Hyman [00:24:04]:
Sourcing, I believe, is quickly being commoditized. It's still very important. Don't get me wrong. It's vital, but it's not enough. Any part of the recruiting process that can be automated will be automated. AI is a key driver of that. And if that is your core value added and you're trying to compete with the technology that can do it instantly and it almost zero cost, you're going to lose. So you have to consistently find new ways to add value, to layer on top of sourcing.

Jeff Hyman [00:24:39]:
Or one thing we've experimented with, which has worked well, is, is peel the two apart, segment, and offer maybe a sourcing service and a full service, which is what we do. But that's not the right answer for everybody. There's just one answer or one path. But I do think sourcing by itself increasingly will be price point will head to zero.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:01]:
So one of the biggest reasons why I want to sit down with you is just because you seem so like you, like you're very far thinking about what's happening to our industry. You got a good heartbeat for what's happening. But I think like during our discussion, like you really just hammered it in. It was just like, we need to rethink what we're doing or the ones that don't rethink it are going to go extinct. And like, we can— this is probably a whole other conversation for like another podcast, but like most people aren't thinking as a whole. What does rethinking actually look like?

Jeff Hyman [00:25:39]:
It means, uh, starting with who are the clients that I want to serve? How am I going to differentiate? There, there are at last count, 350,000 recruiters in the U.S. So you are not going to win by being the biggest, by being even the best, but certainly being very specialized is a great start because you can control that. So when I say specialization to the point that it's almost uncomfortable, you almost feel over-specialized, that can be done by industry, by function, by geography, by level. By skill, and it can be combinations of those. So there's infinite ways to do it. You can focus on just women or just a minority group or just people in this city or whatever it is. But owning that niche, that, that specialization is a good place to start. And I see a lot of people that are afraid to do that because of— obviously they want to be generalists that can take in the money from all sources.

Jeff Hyman [00:26:45]:
And ironically, it backfires because most professional services firms tend to start as generalists, and then the industry morphs and becomes more and more specialized. It happened with management consulting, accounting, the law field, you name it. Recruiting is no different. And I do think it's a game of specialists now, ultra specialists.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:05]:
So it's a game of ultra specialists. And those are the ones that you think are going to survive past, we'll say, 2026, 2027?

Jeff Hyman [00:27:13]:
I think that's an ante that gets you a seat at the table. It's not enough by itself, but I do think it's a start. I think generalist firms are finding it very, very hard to compete.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:24]:
Yeah, I think we're seeing that in the numbers, like especially some of the larger recruiting organizations.

Jeff Hyman [00:27:30]:
Look at Korn Ferry, Heidrick, and the other biggest search firms in the world. They are adding new services, non-recruiting services. To their, to their bundle, to their offer of services. They were 100% of their revenue was recruiting, and now it's like down to 50%. They're doing consulting and they're doing advisory services and compensation benchmarking and all kinds of other stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:55]:
And I actually, I was going to ask this question later on, but you just brought that up. Like, these big companies are doing more and more things. Like, as a recruiter or a small firm, or you're solo, Should you think about like somehow monetizing different parts of the process and how do you protect the core search money when you're doing these other things?

Jeff Hyman [00:28:18]:
As a small firm, as a small shop or a solo practitioner, it's pretty hard to do those things. The examples we were just talking about were the biggest recruiting firms in the world, right? The Shrek firms. That's working for them. Where they can literally have specialized divisions offering different services. For a small firm, I think the key is specialization. I think the key is ensuring that every search goes well and not taking on searches that you're not confident will go well, which I think a lot of people unfortunately continue to do, which is, hey, I got a search, and they love getting paid, but then the execution doesn't go well because it's something they've never done before. You're never going to get repeat client from that. You're never going to get referral clients from that.

Jeff Hyman [00:29:05]:
That should make up— those two should make up 80% of your business, referrals and repeats. And so only taking on searches where you're very confident you're going to crush it. And the way to do that, ironically, is by being specialized, because the more specialized you are, the more confident you feel, the more you know the candidate pool, the more you know where to find those candidates, how to assess those candidates, etc., etc.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:27]:
And I know you're huge on scorecards, and I think like more recruiters need to be doing those, including myself. But that was a big sigh. Were you gonna say something?

Jeff Hyman [00:29:36]:
No, just I don't know how you— I don't know how you look for a candidate if we haven't agreed what the hell we're looking for. And I refuse to take on— I'll know it when I see it. I'll just— I walk, I fire the client. I'm like, if you don't know what you're looking for I'll try to help you figure out what you're looking for, but if I, if I can't do that, you still don't know what you want, I'm not going to waste my time. Move on. Let's move on.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:03]:
So you were talking about DNA and how the DNA— back to what you were chatting about, how the, the future hire needs to be based on validating the DNA. Like, how do you start, like, even looking for that? How do you start validating that? How do you convince a client like this is actually important compared to like this person that has like 7 different keywords and interviewed like really good?

Jeff Hyman [00:30:25]:
Yeah, it starts with understanding why a client wants the keywords. They want that because— put yourself in their shoes, which is what we as trusted advisors do with our clients. The client is late in starting the search. They should have started 3 months ago. They're under pressure from their boss. Sally quit 3 weeks ago and now we have to find her replacement. The client wants someone who will not— where placement will work out and it won't backfire. They want someone who will ramp up immediately.

Jeff Hyman [00:30:59]:
And so the way that manifests itself is the client says, I want a clone of Sally. I want someone from this industry, from these 3 companies, who's got 10 years experience and these skills. And of course they also want to underpay. To hit their budget. And so I understand why they want the shortcut. The problem is it usually backfires because those things, as I said, are not predictive for a lot of different reasons of a candidate's success. And so having that conversation by respectfully asking and pushing back, why is that important to you? Why are you looking for that? Sometimes there are some valid reasons. Quite often it's just they don't know any better, or they learned how to hire from their boss and their boss didn't know how to hire.

Jeff Hyman [00:31:44]:
And so this just kind of gets passed down, right? And then pausing to internalize what the client has said, sharing data with them— and this data is very easy to get, it's also— my book is full, full of it— which is what is predictive. And again, what is most predictive are the hardwired DNA characteristics of an individual. Are they creative? Are they curious? Are they diligent? Are they detail-oriented? Are they information seekers? The list is endless. You either typically are those things or you are not those things. And those are the things that are most predictive. Because if the candidate is not, if the hire is not, then your client is going to be micromanaging and babysitting that person to try to get them to perform. And so helping the client understand that that is way more painful. And because they've done it before, they've micromanaged and babysat and made bad hires, and they're like, oh yeah, I don't want to do that again.

Jeff Hyman [00:32:45]:
Then we're going to need to try something different. We're going to need to find someone who has these characteristics and you can teach them the rest. They can learn the rest. You can send them to a course. And that's where AI comes in because with AI, there's nothing you can't learn. The question is, Is it a learning person? Is it a growth mindset person? Do they have a learnability factor? Sadly, I think 70% of people in this world don't, and you can't afford to hire them anymore.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:11]:
I'm going to be honest with you. I really believe that 2026 is your year. I truly believe in you. I truly believe with everything in my heart that this is the year that you can own it. This is the year that you could hit your dreams. And to help you do that, we are kicking off a summit called This Is Your Year. You are elite. You were born to be elite.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:35]:
You were born to be the best. You were born to be the greatest. And I'm pulling together some of the industry's best speakers to help you get there. Going to be kicking off April 27th. You do not want to miss this. Make sure to run to the show notes, get registered. All the live sessions are free. I'm bringing in Mike Williams, Brianna Rooney, Mark Whitby.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:56]:
We have an entire week of stacked speakers that are going to help you achieve your dreams. This is going to be the industry event that you do not want to miss. I believe in you. I believe in you so much that I'm pulling the best to help you achieve your dreams. 2026 is your year. You help your client understand this, but now you're doing the recruiting. What kind of questions can you ask to like really pull this out so that way you can share that, hey client, this has the DNA that you guys are looking for?

Jeff Hyman [00:34:31]:
What was the last thing your boss asked you to do that you had no idea how to do? Walk me through what it was, how you learned it or taught it to yourself. What did you try? What worked? What didn't work? Did they experiment? What was the ultimate outcome? What were the metrics? What would you do differently next time? In the course of answering that question over 15 minutes, a candidate reveals their learnability, their comfort with ambiguity, whether they can navigate through the fog, their resilience, or their metrics orientation if they have it. The whole world is revealed in that answer. That's just one question. Obviously there's others, but I'm That is very hard to fake if a candidate walks me through that story. And then of course I ask them, tell me another example, another example, right? Eventually you peel it back and the rockstar candidates, just the stories hang together, and B and C players, it just kind of falls apart pretty quickly. Now, whether your client is open to that or not, that's a different story. And if they don't find that compelling or persuasive, then you've probably got the wrong client.

Jeff Hyman [00:35:38]:
And it probably is time to part ways, which I know is heresy in a time when it's not a boom time, but I think you're just kind of wasting your time. You're never going to have a successful placement in that situation, which then begs the question of retain versus contingency, which we could touch on later if you want.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:57]:
Actually, you just brought it up now. Like, let's talk about it now.

Jeff Hyman [00:36:02]:
I learned— you asked earlier, Benjamin, things I learned earlier in my career, and I basically learned that contingency is a is a road to nowhere. It's, we as humans tend to not value things that are free. And even though contingency search is not free, the engagement is free. The initial upfront is free. The time spent is free. That's all we have as people, right? Is investing our time. And so the sooner you can get off that contingency drug and work your way to a retainer model, which by the way, doesn't have to be fully retained. You don't have to be Korn Ferry or Heidrick.

Jeff Hyman [00:36:34]:
Put $1,000 down, put $5,000 down, put a third down, whatever it is. The difference in behavior of a client who has put even a penny down versus zero is night and day. They had to get a contract signed. They had to get their legal to review it. They had to— you're of course signing an exclusive deal, right? So not a non-exclusive deal, which is the second piece that is a non-starter for me is we only work on exclusive. That is what engages a client or gets a client to engage with you because they put money on the barrelhead. And so now we're having a discussion where you value my counsel. I'm your trusted advisor, and I'm telling you, you're about to make a mistake.

Jeff Hyman [00:37:17]:
Very hard to do that. I think impossible as a contingency recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:22]:
When did—

Jeff Hyman [00:37:22]:
like, what happened to you and for you to be forced into I spent, as many have, months and months, probably a couple years spinning my wheels on searches, working my ass off, and then the hire was not a candidate that I had introduced. It was a candidate that someone else introduced or was promoted internally, or the search was canceled, or a million other things. My time's valuable. Everyone's time is valuable. It's all we got. And so I quickly realized contingency does not value the outcome, which is ultimately what we're looking for. And so there's got to be some money on the barrelhead. And so we started charging just a little bit, and then you can increase that over time.

Jeff Hyman [00:38:08]:
Maybe you get to fully retained, maybe you don't. Doesn't really matter. But I think being at zero upfront is very tough.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:16]:
And this might be a while, but like, that first few conversations that you had of trying to go contingent to retain, how was that?

Jeff Hyman [00:38:24]:
It's difficult, but you need to simply find a client that understands why contingency is bad for them too. Most clients think— many clients, not all— think that contingency is good for them. What's not to like? I pay for results. I don't pay if I don't get results. No risk. Knock yourself out, sounds great. What they don't realize, of course, that we all do— our dirty little secret— is as soon as the search gets difficult, the contingency recruiter moves on to the next one because there's no assurance they're going to get paid on this one. And so the harder the search, the more contingency works against the client's best interests, because when it does get hard, you want your recruiter to double down and keep at it, not say fuck it, I'm moving on to the next recruit search, right? So I've had to educate clients.

Jeff Hyman [00:39:16]:
There's a whole chapter in the book on this, why contingency is bad for them too, not just bad for us. It's just bad. Doesn't mean bad people, just means it's a bad financial model. And so if a client doesn't get that, you're probably never going to convince them, and it's probably time to move on to a client who does appreciate it, because that logic is not hard to understand, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:39:36]:
Somebody that's making the initial move and like we got a lot to talk about comes against like a lot of pressure back from the client sometimes. Like, why does it work? What's been one of your favorite rebuttals?

Jeff Hyman [00:39:47]:
I do as much as I can do to reverse the risk. You can add a money-back guarantee. Give me your— give me X dollars in the barrelhead. And if the search isn't done in X time or haven't introduced you to the right person, I'll give your money back. I have no interest in keeping your, your money. That's not what this is about. This is about locking in my time, showing me that you're serious about making a hire with me, which is the exclusivity part. So there's money-back guarantee, there's progress payments— pay me a little, could be every week or every month, or at certain benchmarks after I've introduced 3 people or 5 or whatever it may be.

Jeff Hyman [00:40:23]:
So there's all kinds of ways to reverse the risk, but don't make it Don't make that the barrier. That's not the barrier. The barrier is the client wants what they think is a risk-free situation, which is they want to pay when there's a hire and then try to weasel out of that too, of course. And I explain why that's in their best— why that's not in their best interest. And if that's what you're looking for, I'll introduce you to 5 other recruiters. Keep your 5 worst competitors on speed dial. Give their name out to that client and let them have them. Let them Find it out for that.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:57]:
Do you have that, your 5?

Jeff Hyman [00:40:59]:
Sure do. I sure do. I give them out to everybody. I love it, man.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:06]:
Jeff just like sent me another company again.

Jeff Hyman [00:41:08]:
This is amazing. And the best thing is get a referral fee, get a referral arrangement going with those guys.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:15]:
That's awesome. I love this. Well, you know, as you're moving over to this retained and like why you need to be retained, like you, you're becoming this trusted advisor, and you're able to do so much more. What are some more things that a recruiter needs to be thinking about if they want to take this path to being this trusted advisor so that way they don't become extinct?

Jeff Hyman [00:41:37]:
It means, uh, a number of things. And there's a phenomenal book— we can talk books later— but David Maester, M-A-I-S-T-E-R, who passed a few years ago, was known for writing books about building professional services firms and recruiting, whether we like it or not, as a professional services firm. He wrote The Trusted Advisor, and it has so many dimensions. It means not like letting your client make a mistake. It means knowing their business intimately. It means thinking about them night and day proactively. It means pushing back and you get the respect to push back. It means firing clients that are not aligned with your business model and/or your values.

Jeff Hyman [00:42:18]:
It— so it, it works on so many levels, but it all starts there.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:23]:
And in being this trusted advisor, is this where you became— you came up with this idea of the shortlist?

Jeff Hyman [00:42:31]:
No, shortlist was, um, something that we began thinking about in 2020, the pandemic. Hiring convulsions that we all went through— stop this, everyone stopped hiring, then they started hiring, and then it all went remote, and oh, it was crazy— revealed something very interesting to me, to a lot of people, which is there are many clients out there that don't want full search or don't need full search or can't afford full search When I do traditional search, I'm really expensive. Not everyone can afford that. Not everyone needs it. We have clients that are amazing at assessing candidates. They just need the candidates. And I've also got plenty of clients that do need the whole, the whole enchilada. And so the thought occurred to us to maybe unbundle or offer a productized sourcing service, which became called Shortlist.

Jeff Hyman [00:43:33]:
Which is for those clients don't need search, don't want search, can't afford search, don't have time for search, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, I only take on 3 searches at a time. So there's also a capacity constraint. And so if my calendar is booked and I can't do a search, I can offer them this shortlist service. And so that was the, that was the idea that was back in, in 2020.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:59]:
And for those listening, what is shortlist Like, what does it look like?

Jeff Hyman [00:44:04]:
Shortlist is a, a productized service that guarantees a very specific outcome, which is that we introduce 10 people in a week to the client who meet the key criteria on the scorecard, who are interested, but we have not interviewed them. We have not assessed them. Because if you think about it, that's what takes the bulk of my time. I invest at least 3 to 5 hours of interview time with a finalist before I put them forward. And so there's only so many hours in a day. And so shortlist, we're very clear, we don't do that. That's not what this is. If that's what you need, you need traditional search.

Jeff Hyman [00:44:41]:
But if you know how to interview, and I'll give them the book and the interview guides and all that stuff, if they can make their own, cook their own fish, and they just need that fish, that shortlist can do. And so you've automated a big part of it, but it is not a tool. It's an, it's a process. It's a— the client's not touching any technology, um, and so that's what Shortlist is. And it's, it's $3,000 for a month. We'll do as many searches as they want, as long as they understand we're not interviewing these people, we're only introducing them, and then the client takes it from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:12]:
If you want a really good laugh, when you first launched it, I, I was so tempted to actually buy a month. I'm like, what can he spin up in the full-scale poly world? Like CIA, NSA stuff.

Jeff Hyman [00:45:23]:
And I'm like, sure, sure, sure. What? You never know, right? We've learned that it works about 90% of the time. We've done a few thousand of them now. And so we turn down shortlists where we know we're not going to be successful, or we tell the client we're not going to hit 10 on this. And some clients are like, shit, if you can find me 2, I'll be happy. But normally the guarantee is that we'll introduce 10 people. And the reason for 10 is I have found over the years that if I can introduce 10 people who are somewhat qualified and interested, there's usually a pony in there somewhere, right? The client's usually going to find 2 or 3 of the 10 that are spot on.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:03]:
Okay, you've done a few thousand of these. Like, has it taken away from your search business or has it helped it?

Jeff Hyman [00:46:11]:
Uh, that's a great question. Probably both. We segregated it so it doesn't distract me. So we've kind of two divisions, two focus areas. It hurts in that, yeah, I probably cannibalized my core business, my search business, a little bit. A client said, why pay me $30,000 to $50,000 when I can just pay $3,000? It's a fair question. And then it's helped us in that we've picked up some, some search clients where we started the relationship with a lower-cost option shortlist, and then later they— we were there and they thought of us for search. So it probably has been a net positive.

Jeff Hyman [00:46:47]:
The key though is listening to clients and offering and experimenting with different options, different ideas, different things that differentiate you, I guess, is really the headline, right? You don't have to copy shortlist. Doesn't mean I'm right. It just means we're always trying to differentiate and try to do what different groups of clients need.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:08]:
And want to jump back on this trusted advisor train a little bit. Like, you're— picture this, you're— we're looking to tail into 2026, going into 2027. For a successful recruiter, what should they be spending their time on in and out every single day to be successful?

Jeff Hyman [00:47:21]:
The easiest way to build a successful long-term franchise in recruiting is to be successful on every project. I know that sounds so unsexy, but to make sure every search goes well and then reverse engineer into that. So what does that mean? Well, it means I need to spend enough time on each search, which is why contingency becomes difficult, right? Because I'm incented to take on as many searches as I can, hoping that something will hit, versus only taking a few. Then I can devote my time to just those few to make sure they go well and really invest the time to understand my client, to understand the industry, to understand the candidates and assess them for AI readiness, all the things we've been talking about, which then means picking your clients very carefully, firing clients that don't make sense, which then backs into that specialization, ultra specialization that we talked about. I think this is the year where people that do that will it'll be very instructive and predictive of how their next 5 to 10 years in recruiting are going to go. And people that don't, I think some AI sourcing engine that adds almost as much value and costs almost nothing and is almost instantaneous, that is a real risk. It's the same thing I saw because I'm this old in 1995 when travel agents were an enormous industry, right? So you would walk into a travel agency, you would meet with a person, book a flight, they book your hotel, they'd give you a printout of it, and they earned a small percentage of the fee, of the travel fee. Obviously that's ridiculous now, right? That industry is literally gone, just about gone.

Jeff Hyman [00:49:16]:
And so complete ways of doing business have disappeared. And I think this will be the year that recruiters who don't add value beyond just sourcing will have a difficult time.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:28]:
So maybe to add on that, what best practice in recruiting outside of sourcing do you think is going to be obsolete or is almost now dead?

Jeff Hyman [00:49:37]:
In recruiting? Yeah. I think applicant tracking systems. We think of the internet as our applicant tracking system. Right? If the internet can keep track of each candidate and update their profile in real time, whereas an ATS is just a bunch of stale old data, and I'm paying for it, which makes more sense? I'm not saying all ATSs are going to die. What I am saying is that I think there will be consolidation. That segment will become a lot more difficult. But I do think the idea that we pay for an ATS and we keep everything in it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I think that's, that, that's going to fade away for a lot of people.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:16]:
So before we jump over to the quickfire questions, because I literally just looked up and we're like almost an hour and I'm like, oh crap.

Jeff Hyman [00:50:21]:
Oh my God. Oh crap. I wasn't, I wasn't paying attention.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:25]:
Neither was I. If you had to give recruiters do this now directive, what would it be?

Jeff Hyman [00:50:34]:
Like do it this, do it today.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:36]:
This is something that you guys need to do like as soon as possible or make these changes?

Jeff Hyman [00:50:41]:
Yeah, I guess I'd be recapping some of the things we talked about. Getting off the contingency drug as quickly as you can, even if it means you're only charging $500 upfront or $1,000 upfront. That money on the barrelhead makes all the difference in your client's focus and attention and treating you like the professional that you are. Second is exclusivity. Insisting on exclusivity, at least for some time period, even if it's 30 days so that you're not competing with a billion other recruiters to try to find the right candidate. Those two changes will make a big difference. Third is ultra specialization. What can you be in the top 5% of recruiters at? And keep drilling and drilling until you say, yeah, I can viably be the best or one of the best at this niche.

Jeff Hyman [00:51:31]:
Could be industry, function, geography, level, whatever it may be. I think if you do those things, you will at least buy yourself the time and the space to figure out how can I use AI in my business development, in my sourcing, and in my candidate assessment. And I would add one last thing, which is there's been a lot of debate over the past few months with regard to phone, AI-driven phone screens. And there are an infinite number of vendors that have popped up that have a tool that does phone screens, and there will be an infinite number more, and most won't make it, but that's okay. I was pretty skeptical when they first started and we dabbled with it, and my biggest objection was I really didn't think candidates would be okay with it. As it turns out, candidates prefer it. I was dead wrong. The data is now showing that candidates prefer it, and I was like, how the— how could that be possible? Turns out candidates don't really like phone screens.

Jeff Hyman [00:52:28]:
They don't like having to do it during office hours. They don't like bias. Who does? They appreciate the chance to just talk to an AI. I don't mean 100% of people, but the majority said, I prefer an AI voice to a human voice. And so I think this is the year that that tool gets some breakthrough. Experiment with it to see if it fits into your business. If it doesn't, that's fine, but at least don't let it be because you didn't try. Try it out.

Jeff Hyman [00:52:55]:
And there's some great vendors out there. But the point is that before, I had to phone screen— I only had time to phone screen maybe 30 people. Now I can phone screen 1,000 because the technology is doing it for me, and it tells me who are the best few candidates against the scorecard, which of course you have to start with. Which goes back to your question, what should you do now? Don't take on another search without doing a scorecard. But if you can feed that to the AI and say, here's what I'm looking for, and it phone screens 1,000 people against that scorecard, you will likely wind up with a much better match because statistically I'm looking at 1,000 people, whereas before my schedule, my calendar limited me to 20 or 30.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:38]:
Would you do AI phone interviews or AI video interviews for all levels of search, or is there like a certain like level you're like, eh, We're not touching that.

Jeff Hyman [00:53:49]:
Yeah, it seems to be working best so far from what I have seen at junior to mid-levels. So executive, it hasn't quite penetrated yet, although I, I bet that's going to happen too. But frontline workers, high-volume workers, sales engineers, etc., etc., it seems to be the way of the world now, or will be by the end of this year.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:12]:
So we've talked a lot about a lot of different things. Before we jump over to the quickfire questions, Is there anything else that you want to go deeper on or jump in and cover that we didn't talk about?

Jeff Hyman [00:54:26]:
As with any friend that I would talk to, I asked them to do some real soul searching, which is why are you doing what you do? Recruiting is the kind of profession where unless you really love it, there's a lot easier ways to, to make a living and to build a profession. It's hard for all the reasons we've talked about. And now it's about— I think this year it's going to get harder before it gets easier. So if your strategy has just been, I'll just hang in there for another year, it's going to get easier, the job market's going to improve, I think you might be wasting your life unless you really love it. So that's the piece I would ask people to be introspective and honest with themselves about. And I know plenty of recruiters, just like I know plenty of dentists who hate what they do. The problem with dentistry is you've invested so much in education and that's all you know how to do, it's tough to get out of the field. Being a recruiter, you can quit tomorrow and there's 50 other things you're qualified to do that I can think of.

Jeff Hyman [00:55:22]:
So make sure you love it. I, I'm lucky I fell into it early, but a lot of people I think don't really love it.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:30]:
Jumping over to quickfire questions, and they do not need to be quick answers, same theme. Like, picture this, like, actually you've probably gotten this You know, with how out there you are in the industry, somebody that just started recruiting this year, it's 2026, never have done it before, but they're like, hey, I see your success. Like, what's the one piece of advice that you would give me to be successful in this field?

Jeff Hyman [00:55:52]:
And the person just started, just started recruiting. Do your first 5 searches for free, but they have to be exclusive for 30 days, and the client has to agree that if they're happy that they will give you an unbelievable testimonial and an introduction to a friend. And if you crush those 5, you will feed yourself for the next 2 years.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:15]:
Love that. What's the number 1 piece of advice that you would give to a recruiter that's like— I would say being average, but they were like, hey, I want to make the decision and go elite with my career, get better clients, Fire your shitty clients.

Jeff Hyman [00:56:32]:
Most of these clients, again, no fault of their own. They're asking you to do something that is impossible or near impossible. They're not contracting exclusively. They want you to do it on the come, meaning pay you upon hire. The odds of success are less than 1%. Get rid of those clients and get some better clients. They're out there. There are some clients that genuinely appreciate talent, that are willing to pay for it, that pay above market.

Jeff Hyman [00:56:57]:
And see search as a strategic ally, not fetch. Stop fetching.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:04]:
Stop fetching.

Jeff Hyman [00:57:05]:
I should get a bumper sticker. Stop fetching. Stop fetching. Nope. We're fetching with a red circle through it.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:11]:
Yeah. Love it. Now, I know that you're a reader because I know that you've also helped teach an MBA class. You've 4 startups, 5 startups.

Jeff Hyman [00:57:22]:
5.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:23]:
Yeah, 5 startups.

Jeff Hyman [00:57:24]:
Sorry.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:24]:
You are an active reader. What's like one book that's had a huge impact on your success?

Jeff Hyman [00:57:32]:
I mentioned, uh, The Trusted Advisor earlier, so that's a, a crucial one. I don't think they get any better than Who by Jeff Smart, which is about assessing candidates. And there are some wonderful books on rainmaking and business development., and they're not about cold email and sending LinkedIn DMs. They're about how to really ingratiate yourself into a community, a sector, which is again a huge benefit of specializing because you can actually go to those trade shows, go to those conferences, get known in the online communities, and become a domain expert. Those are some of the best books I've read.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:12]:
There's countless. And I think I know the answer to this probably, but for the listeners, you had a 500-episode podcast. How did that impact your recruiting desk?

Jeff Hyman [00:58:22]:
It was a great way to get clients. So I didn't enter— the strategy was I didn't really interview recruiters, I interviewed CEOs. And everyone loves to hear themselves talk. I'm no exclusion, which is why I accepted your invitation. And, um, many of them became clients, some became friends, others really pushed my thinking, others completely changed my thinking, and I landed some interesting guests. One was my, my business idol, Tom Peters, who wrote 20 best-selling books, um, and, uh, it was a lot of fun. And after 500 episodes, I, I just felt like it was time for a change. Love that.

Jeff Hyman [00:59:01]:
I give you a lot of kudos.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:04]:
What is one of the biggest challenges in your recruiting world that you really had to work through?

Jeff Hyman [00:59:10]:
You know, it's— it happens so often that it's cliché, which is the counteroffer. Because I insist that my clients only hire A players, almost always get counteroffers. B and C players don't get counteroffers because their employers, like, yeah, they leave, no big deal. A players always get counteroffers, almost always. Well, I've been burnt countless times by that, to the point where I've learned how to have that counteroffer discussion proactively with the candidate. How are they going to handle that situation? You know, the outline is in the book. Every candidate, you say, are you going to get a counteroffer? The candidate's not— another— not a problem, no counteroffer. Sure enough, they get a counteroffer.

Jeff Hyman [00:59:52]:
So that was the second lesson I learned, which is always have a backup candidate. Always. I'm always recruiting for two equally acceptable finalists., and you almost never have to redo a search when you recruit for 2. When you only recruit for 1, because the offer acceptance rates and counteroffers being what they are, I learned the hard way that I was redoing a lot of searches, and I don't like redoing searches.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:18]:
And this is going to be the last question before I let you go. Sure, sure. You've got a chance to interact with a lot of recruiters. Like, you wrote a book that I know a lot of recruiters have like talked about and picked up themselves. I'm sure you get questions all the time, whether it would be like, what's the best business development secret for 2026? Or how do you do this? Or how do you like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah. You ever, like, in these, like, emails and phone calls and text messages, like, you're like, I wish you would just ask me this, but you never do. What question would that be? That, like, has just bugged you in all these conversations? And what would be the answer?

Jeff Hyman [01:00:59]:
If they asked me the question, what's the key to being successful in recruiting? That would be the question. I mean, over the course of a career. So I want to do this for 20, 30, 50 years. What is the key to being successful? Not how do I get today's search? How do I find this candidate? How do I negotiate this deal? Whatever. That was very tactical. But strategically, if I'm going to spend the next 30 years in recruiting, investing my life in this, how do I build a successful career? I would say it starts with search, not fetch, which means, as we discussed, picking the right clients, pushing back when appropriate, disagreeing, enter the danger with them, firing clients that just don't make sense or don't know what they want. That ultimately has freed me up to find the clients that do appreciate how I can help them. That was the key.

Jeff Hyman [01:01:55]:
That's been the key after 30 years, I think, of search versus fetch. And I see a lot of people that are willing to fetch, and I just think life's too short.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:03]:
I feel like that needs to be like the podcast title for this one.

Jeff Hyman [01:02:05]:
That should be. I think that's— I think we just came up with the title.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:08]:
I hope I wasn't too repetitive, but, uh, it's perfect. So in reality, I got 2 more questions for you before I let you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If somebody wants to follow you or connect with you, how do they do that?

Jeff Hyman [01:02:20]:
My email is super easy. It's jeff@recruitrockstars.com. I reply to every single person, so that would be the easiest way. He does. I do. And I'm on LinkedIn, so that's an easy way too.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:34]:
And is there anything else that you want to leave with the listeners before I let you go?

Jeff Hyman [01:02:38]:
You mentioned earlier the book, so if they want a free copy of that, happy. I don't want people paying Amazon $18 to get the book, so it's free. It's on the website recruitrockstars.com, and it's, it's right there, totally free. The book is not the way to recruit. The book is the way I recruit and many of the mistakes I've made. But the point of the book is to have a process. It doesn't have to be my process, but have a process. I've met a lot of recruiters who were engineers or think like engineers, and they do very well at recruiting because they think of it in a methodical kind of way, step after step.

Jeff Hyman [01:03:16]:
What do I do with this? What happens if this happens? Contingency planning, backup plans. I don't know, there's just something about it that engineers, architects, people like that have done very well. If you don't have a process, you're screwed. So I'm not saying use my process, but at least have a process.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:33]:
And one more thing that you wanted—

Jeff Hyman [01:03:35]:
we spoke about in pregame. Oh yeah, yeah, we talked— so we talked about shortlists. So I'm happy to give a free shortlist to people if they want. The point is to see if using AI-driven sourcing and taking it off your plate can free up your time to do some of the things that we've been talking about, which are time-consuming. So imagine if you didn't have to spend your days and nights sourcing for candidates anymore, which I think the technology is largely going to do for you. So I'll give a free shortlist. It's $3,000, no catch, no credit card, just to try it out. Might work for people, might not, but I'm happy to do it.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:10]:
So instead of $3,000, you're doing it for free for them for one search? One search. And how do they go about like getting that?

Jeff Hyman [01:04:18]:
Yeah, go to the website, go to recruitrockstars.com. The form is right there on the, on the homepage and We'll see if we can be helpful. And if we can, the way to use that time is, I think, not learning pickleball. It's finding better clients. It's learning how to assess candidates for their AI readiness. I think that's going to be the make or break this year. And at least so far, I don't think technology can do that. Maybe one day Elon's going to solve that too.

Jeff Hyman [01:04:47]:
But for now, I think that's our last stand, which is how do I assess a a candidate in such a way that I can present them to a client and say, this is the person. I'll put my name on them. I'll give them a 12-month guarantee. This is your person. And I think that the only way to do that is to invest time in the way that the place that time comes from is, is AI, is sourcing. I just think that's not worth spending half your time on anymore.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:14]:
Jeff, I just want to say thank you for coming on to the podcast. Like I said, I've actually been looking forward to this interview for about 5 years now.

Jeff Hyman [01:05:23]:
You're very kind. I had a lot of fun. You're asking all the right questions. I've listened to so many of your episodes and I hope that listeners will take your counsel because you're very introspective about it and I very much appreciate your approach.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:37]:
So it was a lot of fun. For the listeners, this is the year. This is it. This is the time where you need to think about everything. Rethink, adapt, or die. Make 2026 yours.

Jeff Hyman [01:05:50]:
Thank you, Jeff.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:52]:
Thanks, Benjamin. You know, the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email, their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use. With Magic Search, you can ask Atlas questions like, "Who talked about wanting a 4-day week?" or "Who mentioned they're open to relocating next year?" It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:27]:
No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier. With Opportunities, you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, well, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:01]:
Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.

Jeff Hyman [01:07:09]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.