#14: Ditch the Cold Calls: Build a Talent Community Instead - with Taylor Desseyn

Rhona Pierce:
00:00

What if the key to successful recruiting isn't in your outreach strategy, but in your ability to build a community?

Taylor Desseyn:
00:07

I mean, I think community building is everything. And I think, I mean, I'm gonna say this, if you're a recruiting firm and you're not focused on building community in the Discord through email newsletters, through virtual events, you are going to be left behind.

Rhona Pierce:
00:21

That's Taylor Dessen, a recruiter who's turned the traditional talent acquisition model on its head. He's built a following of 1,000 across multiple platforms, not by cold calling or mass emailing, but by creating content that resonates with software engineers.

Taylor Desseyn:
00:38

If you let data lead your content strategy, you're not building community. I'm a say that again. If if you focus on data, you're not building community.

Rhona Pierce:
00:45

In this episode, Taylor shares his unconventional approach to tech recruiting. He'll share how he manages content across platforms, why he ignores analytics, and what he believes is the future of talent acquisition. Whether you're starting out with content creation or looking to refine your strategy, Taylor's insights will challenge you to rethink your approach to recruiting. Let's hear from Taylor about how he got started in talent acquisition. So thank you so much for being on the show today, Taylor.

Rhona Pierce:
01:16

Can you tell us a bit about how you got started in recruiting?

Taylor Desseyn:
01:21

Yeah. I woke up one afternoon, and I felt a calling. No. I'm just kidding. Honestly, I fell into it because I was broke playing music, and I needed a day job.

Taylor Desseyn:
01:31

I mean, for real, a lot of people have asked me this question, like, how'd you make the transition? Like, did you have, like, this epiphany? Like, you know, yada yada yada. And I was like, no. Like, literally, I moved to Nashville in 2011 to serve tables and basically was serving tables 6 nights a week and I was losing money.

Taylor Desseyn:
01:49

I grew up in the restaurant industry. My dad owned the Outback Steakhouse in my hometown, for 25, 30 years. And so I grew up waiting tables, you know, started at bus boy, you know, getting paid under the table at, like, 12 years old. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that out loud, but whatever. And then essentially, obviously, worked my way up.

Taylor Desseyn:
02:06

So I moved to Nashville, and I was like, listen. Like, this is gonna be great because I made decent money. Right? Because when you're when you're in a a small town, a college town, this is where I was at, like, everybody eats corporate chain restaurants. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
02:15

So I was like, well, I'm moving to Nashville. I'm only gonna have to work, like, 2 nights a week and be able to play. Dead wrong. Nobody in Nashville eats chain restaurants or obviously not as much as the general population. So I was, like, losing money, and, like, my idiot self was gonna get, like, a a valet job at night.

Taylor Desseyn:
02:32

Like, I just didn't know how to find a day job. And so I basically there was a group of us from my hometown that all moved up together. I asked this one person. I was like, Who do you know? This girl nannied for my first boss.

Taylor Desseyn:
02:44

She's like, Why nanny for somebody? And I was like, Well, if they can afford a nanny, I wanna do what they do. And so so I was like, what do they do? And they were like, well, she's looking to hire a recruiter. I said, great.

Taylor Desseyn:
02:53

So I interviewed, then a few like, a week or two later, I got the offer. And I guess you could say the rest is history.

Rhona Pierce:
02:58

Wow. That's such a cool story. And I used to work for a guy that firmly believes that the best recruiters start out working in the food industry. Like, it was a problem. Yeah.

Rhona Pierce:
03:11

For him, it's like, you've never worked at a restaurant. I'm like, no. But I promise you I'm great at recruiting.

Taylor Desseyn:
03:17

Yeah. I mean, literally, like, looking back on it, I mean, the restaurant industry for sure. I mean, I worked. Did you see that meme on the Internet lately? It's like, for millennials, our World War 2 is working in the restaurant industry.

Rhona Pierce:
03:28

No. I

Taylor Desseyn:
03:28

haven't seen that floating around. It was like this meme that says, like, r v like, our world war 2 is like, oh, you did hospitality or you did restaurant or you did retail. Like, oh, wow. It's like those are the branches you served. So out of the 3 branches, hotel, restaurant, and retail, I did a restaurant and retail.

Taylor Desseyn:
03:46

So

Rhona Pierce:
03:47

Wow. So, so cool. Like many of us, like, no one plans. Like, let's start as a recruiter. Like, hardly ever plans that.

Rhona Pierce:
03:56

So what made you passionate about, like, building online communities for tech professionals?

Taylor Desseyn:
04:03

Yeah. It happened really late in my career, and that's why I tell people if if the people are like, oh, I feel like I'm late, like you're like you're actually never late because I didn't start this until 2020. But if you look back on it, I was actually starting the community building process early in my career. I just didn't know it then. So, basically, traditional recruiter, heads down, you know, grinding.

Taylor Desseyn:
04:25

One thing I did really well is I could out grind outwork anybody on my team. Right? So I was like first of the job boards. I mean, you know, any recruiters that watch this. First of the job boards, led the team in submittals, led the team in screens.

Taylor Desseyn:
04:36

Like, I was just a machine. And and so I did that, and I loved it. Right? But I started to really kind of get started to really become annoyed with the recruiting process. After I I was through 2020, at that point, I was recruiting for 9 years.

Taylor Desseyn:
04:51

I would say around year 7, so, like, 2 years before the pandemic, I started to get restless. I was like, god, there's gotta be a better way to recruit than just sending a bunch of DMs, sending a bunch of emails, getting people on the phone. And so I started to get a little frustrated. And then, like, once COVID hit, I was like, alright. I think now's my time to, like, change things up.

Taylor Desseyn:
05:11

Right? And so that's what I did. I started, you know, to really follow I mean, really, a lot of my success is towards Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm sure if you listen to this and and, you know, probably have heard of him at this point, kind of this master content creator in the business space, really led the first, like, business person creating content, right, like, in my opinion. And so that, like, wasn't a true creator.

Taylor Desseyn:
05:35

And so, you know, followed really kind of his blueprint. Right? I did I started my email newsletter. I started my texting community. I started to put content on LinkedIn.

Taylor Desseyn:
05:43

I started to put on content on Twitter. And and that really kind of started my journey into, like, content community and launched my Discord, I think, a year like, 2 years ago and have about 800 engineers on it now. And so so, yeah, again, spent my entire career, obviously, heads down, you know, doing the tactile shaking hands, kissing babies type thing, but really kinda moved to more of a community mindset, in 2020.

Rhona Pierce:
06:08

Amazing. Amazing. I think that's really the year where a lot of people started

Taylor Desseyn:
06:13

Yes.

Rhona Pierce:
06:13

Doing it and out of necessity for many reasons. So I have a similar background as you as far as, like

Taylor Desseyn:
06:20

Nice.

Rhona Pierce:
06:20

There has to be a better way to

Taylor Desseyn:
06:22

do this.

Rhona Pierce:
06:23

I'm so tired of DM ing people. Like

Taylor Desseyn:
06:26

Like, please talk to me. Please talk to me.

Rhona Pierce:
06:29

Yeah. Yes. So and then when everyone started doing it, it's like, yeah. Now it's cool to do this thing that I've been doing that every I've had to convince every boss of, like, maybe this is a you know, how they are hesitant when you do these things. So Oh, yeah.

Rhona Pierce:
06:44

We all know that content strategies that you use to engage your audience?

Taylor Desseyn:
06:57

Strategies. I'm gonna be honest with you. I wing everything. And to be honest, I think it drives a lot of people nuts, especially, like, businesses I've consulted for because they're like, would you have a and, like, listen. Like, Like, I'm not a polished social media person.

Taylor Desseyn:
07:08

Like, I'm not. Like, I've consulted with businesses and brands to help grow their presence and, you know, I'm I'm very good at, like, knowing the engineering market and knowing the software engineering side of things and, like, knowing how to communicate with software developers. And so but the thing is that what drives a lot of leadership nuts is, like, I'm not organized. I'm like, listen, just put stuff out. And they're like, what do you mean just put stuff out?

Taylor Desseyn:
07:30

I'm like, anything is content. Like, anything is content. And when you start to, like, think of it that way, it's really hard to put frameworks around everything because you just the the whole point is is trying to get your business or your daily life that you consistently do outward onto the Internet. Right? And to do that, people get so muddled with strategies that they don't put anything out.

Taylor Desseyn:
07:52

Right? They're just they're like, well, we should set our pillars, and we should set our, you know, we should set a content calendar. This is a hot take here. If you set a content calendar, that's not content. Because content in my perspective is spur of the moment.

Taylor Desseyn:
08:05

Prime example. Right? Last week, Gun. Io, the company I work for, we put out a product. We dropped a product.

Taylor Desseyn:
08:11

It's really, really cool. We're basically turning our entire database of engineers because we're a talent marketplace into a public ATS. Like, literally any hiring manager, any recruiter can use it to find engineers and then obviously pay us a fee if you wanna use the developer. And so I posted something. What did I do?

Taylor Desseyn:
08:27

I posted about another feature we have coming out, but I forgot to post about discover talent the day it dropped. And I got upset with myself because I was like, oh, no. I missed out because everything is so contextual. And so for me, you know, when it comes to strategy, like, it's a lot of experimenting. That's why I drive a lot of traditional marketers nuts.

Taylor Desseyn:
08:46

I've worked with a lot of traditional marketers, and I've not gotten along with them. And that's okay. Like, I I I totally understand in my past experiences. And for me, it's like, to do content, it's kind of like consistently texting and communicating with your friends at scale. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
09:02

So you don't put metrics on your text messaging with friends. You don't put guardrails on how you text with friends. You have a conversation, and that's how businesses need to think about strategy, and that's how I think about strategy. I just post everything. There's obviously there are some nuances that we can get into it.

Taylor Desseyn:
09:16

But for the most part, post things who obviously that resonate with people, Right? That and show your journey, which is incredibly important.

Rhona Pierce:
09:24

So I know you say that strategy is really not your thing or anything,

Taylor Desseyn:
09:30

but

Rhona Pierce:
09:31

I've looked at your content. I've looked at what you do, and I do think there's kind of maybe some strategy behind it.

Taylor Desseyn:
09:39

There is. I mean, like, that was tongue in cheek a little bit. I mean, so for me, like, I did set my audience in who I wanted to talk to. Right? So as a recruiter, as a traditional recruiter, I kinda sat down.

Taylor Desseyn:
09:49

I was like, alright. Who am I trying to reach? Who am I trying to reach? Reach? 1, I'm trying to reach hiring managers so they can hire from me.

Taylor Desseyn:
09:58

2, I'm trying to reach the software developer community because that was the niche that I doubled down on. So I was like, alright. How do I communicate to those people without communicating to them? I started an engineering podcast based off the job search. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
10:14

So, again, like, I didn't start a recruiting podcast. I started a podcast that had my audience in mind and then I worked backwards from that. So and then based off how I'm pivoting, I'm starting to put out more content around building content because I'm building out content at gun. Io, you know, building more community stuff at gun. Io, so I'm starting to pivot my content.

Taylor Desseyn:
10:30

But for me to at the start, figure out who you're trying to talk to and develop content for that audience. Don't develop content for you.

Rhona Pierce:
10:39

That is the most important thing, and that's so crucial. And that's what I was gonna say. Looking at your content, it's very clear who it's for. It's it's like you see other people's content. You're like, well, who do they sell to?

Rhona Pierce:
10:51

Who are they talking to? It's like, no. I absolutely know Taylor's talking to engineers and obviously to the people who hire engineers. So that that's that's really great. You are everywhere.

Rhona Pierce:
11:04

Podcasting, texting, Discord, Twitter, LinkedIn, literally everywhere. How do you manage your time effectively to maintain engagement across all of these channels and, like, do your

Taylor Desseyn:
11:18

job. Yeah. So it's Lily, as you said that I just changed the calendar invite on my calendar right now as we're talking for something. So, you know, I'm getting this question a lot, and I'm very blessed to have a small marketing budget, to have a content team around me to help distribute this stuff at scale. I did not start out that way.

Taylor Desseyn:
11:37

I literally started in March of 2020 on my content journey, posting manually to LinkedIn, using the scheduling tool on LinkedIn, and then posting to Twitter. Those are the 2 platforms. Right? You gotta figure out where your platforms are. For the most part, people who watch this podcast or list this podcast, you're mostly gonna be on on LinkedIn.

Taylor Desseyn:
11:53

Right? Yeah. Maybe on Twitter, but mainly LinkedIn. And so for me, like, you know, a lot of people wanna do all the things at one time, and then they get burned out, and then they just get dizzy, and they're like, ah, forget it. I can't I can't do this anymore.

Taylor Desseyn:
12:06

For me, I I have built my audience and my growth on each platform year over year. So 2020 was LinkedIn, Twitter. That was it. 2021 was I think we added TikTok. 2022, we added Instagram with Discord.

Taylor Desseyn:
12:23

2023 was YouTube, and then 2024 this year is much more YouTube and, like, educational content. And so, again, like, for those of you listening, like, I started posting my own self. Just to let you know how far along, like, I've I've come, I used to sit down in the pandemic, and I bought a $20 Amazon phone stand, and I posted 3 minute long videos on LinkedIn shot horizontal on your phone. I don't know if you know, but, like, no one does that now. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
12:52

You can say, well, that that's that's YouTube content, and it is. But, like, now it's everything's vertical. Everything's off your phone. Everything's short because none of us got attention spans. So, again, like, I've kind of walked through this process and and experimented experimented with a lot.

Taylor Desseyn:
13:06

But, again, I started with just myself. But now I have a team that helps me, which I'm very, very grateful for. How big is your team? So I have a ghostwriter to help with emails. So I write my own e I write most of the email newsletter.

Taylor Desseyn:
13:19

My ghostwriter writes, like, the summary of the video I put out. My ghostwriter also puts out TikTok and Instagram posts because those platforms aren't really focused on community building. It's more just the actual video. It's not the text. So I'm very particular to make sure that my voice comes through, and I'm very particular on who writes it for me.

Taylor Desseyn:
13:41

I'm very fortunate. The girl who actually does my ghostwriting, who works for my content company or my buddy's content company, She's like BFFs of my wife. Like, they grew up together. K. So it's like a really small world, but she's an amazing writer and really writes like I do, which is incredibly important, which, you know, we can dive into about tone and stuff like that from a business perspective.

Taylor Desseyn:
13:59

But for me, I try to make sure I control the platforms that, like, are like, you have to have tone and knowledge of the market, which for me is Twitter and LinkedIn. So I always control my Twitter and LinkedIn. We have another guy that does part time stuff for my YouTube because he does all the thumbnails and curation of it. I have a video editor, so 3 people. 3 people.

Taylor Desseyn:
14:18

And then and then we pull in fractional video people depending on what the project is.

Rhona Pierce:
14:22

Cool.

Taylor Desseyn:
14:23

Yep. Yep.

Rhona Pierce:
14:24

Very, very cool. Have you faced any challenges in, like, building your community and, like, creating content?

Taylor Desseyn:
14:31

Yeah. I mean, a lot of challenges. Right? I mean, I think experimenting what works. I mean, if if you see some of my old stuff, it's awful.

Taylor Desseyn:
14:38

And, I think I posted a video on Twitter the other day. Everyone's like, you don't look that bad. And I was like, I think I look awful. I think the biggest challenge is is you can't do this for the likes and follower count. You just can't.

Taylor Desseyn:
14:48

Like, I've stopped looking at analytics a long time ago, and I would say that for businesses. And I sold that to Gun. Io, and they were very appreciative. I was like, listen, we can't look at analytics for, like, the 1st year. And so, like, everything's gotta be organic.

Taylor Desseyn:
15:00

It's about building if you get caught up if you let data lead your content strategy, you're not building community. I'm a say that again. If if you focus on data, you're not building community. Right? What I mean by that is if if you let the data dictate on how you post, you're not gonna be posting relevant stuff that your community wants to listen to because data shows a lagging indicator, not a forward indicator.

Taylor Desseyn:
15:21

Right? And so so when it comes to content, you gotta be constantly listening. How do I listen? I live on Twitter. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
15:27

I literally have TweetDeck open 247. I follow a bunch of developer blogs. I follow a bunch of developer podcasts. Right? I follow a bunch of conferences.

Taylor Desseyn:
15:35

I follow a bunch of quote unquote tech influencers. Right? To try to keep, like, updated and listen and follow the industry because I'm not in the industry. Right? Like, you gotta remember, I'm a recruiter that is wolf in sheep's clothing.

Taylor Desseyn:
15:48

Right? And I'm very aware of that, so I take my role seriously to basically be like, listen. Before I speak, I need to know the industry. Right? I went out on a limb today and posted about back end engineering and AI.

Taylor Desseyn:
15:59

It was very aggressive, very techie for me. Fortunately, it was well received, but it's because I've listened and I've observed before making posts. And so I think the biggest challenge is is I always wanna grow faster. I always wanna put out more interesting content. But what I've realized is this thing's a journey.

Taylor Desseyn:
16:16

It's like going to the gym. You're not gonna get in shape overnight. Your content, your community is not gonna get better or grow overnight either.

Rhona Pierce:
16:22

Yeah. And and I think the difference that we have as recruiters, as TA professionals in creating content and why what you said is so important. It's not about likes and follows and stuff like that. It's about building community because it goes back to traditional recruiting. People want to work and they're gonna go with people that they trust.

Rhona Pierce:
16:43

Just your content isn't gonna build trust. It's building that community behind your content that builds that trust. And at the end of the day, you're doing it to recruit. Right? You're not doing it to be an influencer.

Rhona Pierce:
16:54

Right.

Taylor Desseyn:
16:55

Yeah. And it is interesting. You know, I I hate the word influencer. You know? I hate the word content creator.

Taylor Desseyn:
17:00

It's so funny. I I went to the dentist yesterday, and they're like, so what do you do? And I was like, I was like, I literally can say recruiter or content creator, and I hate both words. And so so for me, yeah, again, I think, like, you have to want to help people, and the best way to help people is to give back at scale through content. Yes.

Rhona Pierce:
17:21

That reminded me of your video that you did a few days ago or was yesterday about, like, what you do and explaining it

Taylor Desseyn:
17:28

to your

Rhona Pierce:
17:28

mom when she asked. I was like, I need I need to

Taylor Desseyn:
17:31

do one of these. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor Desseyn:
17:34

Yeah. No. I explained it to my mom. Yeah.

Rhona Pierce:
17:37

I explained it to her, and she's like, so you're an influencer? No. Let's not use that word to describe me.

Taylor Desseyn:
17:42

Well, we've we've gotten to the point. It was really funny. And listen, I'm super blessed. I don't say this to brag, but, like, my wife even's gotten to the point now where if somebody comes to her, like, so my wife's a photographer and a commercial photographer. She's on set right now at a week long photo shoot for doing some product stuff.

Taylor Desseyn:
17:59

And one of the managers on set, their son is trying to get into software development. And my wife was so funny. She she humbles me. I love her to death, but she keeps me in check. And she but she did say she goes, listen.

Taylor Desseyn:
18:12

She was actually my husband's, influencer in the software engineering space. And for her to say that, I was like, alright. Thank you. But basically, like but it was really cool. We were at Mother's Day lunch on Sunday, and the guy that served tables for us knows me through my content, through career advice stuff.

Taylor Desseyn:
18:27

So really cool to be able to go out. I've started to get that more Nashville, and it's it's really humbling, but it also makes me more motivated, and it puts more responsibility. Like, people are watching, and and I take that very seriously.

Rhona Pierce:
18:40

Yeah. And that's something very important to keep in mind as recruiters, as we're creating content. It's for job search. That's a life changing situation in anyone's life. Like, and it's a huge responsibility what you're saying, what you're putting out there because it's potentially impacting someone's livelihood.

Taylor Desseyn:
19:02

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Rhona Pierce:
19:03

How do you decide, like, what type of content resonates best with your community? Because you do all of these things. How and you don't look at metrics. So how do you decide, like, okay. This is the one that works the best, this type?

Taylor Desseyn:
19:17

Again, it's it's listening to the market. Right? So the content I put out today that's doing very well on LinkedIn is around back end engineering. And so what I did is, like, I was like, alright. So it's kind of a twofold.

Taylor Desseyn:
19:27

So the so I created this post, and I talked about how AI and machine learning are gonna fuel more back end engineers and that there's not enough back end engineers right now because everybody went front end over the years. So I pulled this so to kinda get you in my brain to see how I create a post. So I was like, well, I was like, well, first off so main thing is is I tease my topics through Twitter. So Twitter is a brain dump for me. I tweet everything.

Taylor Desseyn:
19:50

Right? And I probably so people, like, try to play the game and get paid by Twitter, which I get. And so they tweet less and they try to give hot takes or they try to give, like it's more of a scarcity mindset. Set. That's not me.

Taylor Desseyn:
20:02

I tweet everything. I tweet probably 15, 20 times a day. I never get a ton of impressions. But what I do is I experiment with the content that works. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
20:11

So the post I made today about LinkedIn, I made a post yesterday about back end engineering and how people need to focus on that. That did very well. A lot of great conversations. Like, okay. So this is good.

Taylor Desseyn:
20:20

So then I expanded on my LinkedIn post a little bit to make it a little bit more for LinkedIn, not quite as short form as Twitter. And I was like, alright. What are some other data points I can pull from my experience? I remember recruiting React when React first came out and companies were like, like, if you could spell React, you get you got hired. And so I was like, alright, well, I'm gonna put that into my post because it's my experience, and it's what worked on Twitter yesterday.

Taylor Desseyn:
20:42

And so the 2 come together to make a really meaningful post on LinkedIn. So that's what I do. Again, it's I grew up playing drums. I moved to Nashville to do music to play drums. I've taught drums for a long time.

Taylor Desseyn:
20:56

Sometimes with drums, you either have it or you just don't. And I think a lot with content creation is kinda that way. You either kinda get it or you don't. And so I can tell you how I do it, but to me, it's like any sport. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
21:10

I play ice hockey. We won our championships last night. Shout out. Very excited about that. When I go out on the ice, I don't think.

Taylor Desseyn:
21:16

I just do. If you play football, you don't think about where your hand like, when I play hockey I'm not even gonna try to do football. I've never played football. I was a band nerd. But, like, you know, like like, play hockey.

Taylor Desseyn:
21:25

Like, when I get the hockey stick, I don't think or the puck on my stick, I don't think, okay. The puck's on my stick. I gotta skate forward. I gotta look up. I gotta pass the the offensive guy on my left.

Taylor Desseyn:
21:34

I don't think that. It's just it's fluid, and that's the way it is with me with content. But that's probably the best way to break down on how I think about posts.

Rhona Pierce:
21:43

No. That that totally makes sense. So talking a little bit about the the sourcing aspect of it, do you find that people in your communities recommend each other for opportunities?

Taylor Desseyn:
21:55

What do you mean by that?

Rhona Pierce:
21:56

So you have a Discord. You have people on just followers. When you tweet about a job or something like that, do you find that they share it organically that they tell other people about it?

Taylor Desseyn:
22:09

Yeah. So, I mean, I'm I think in this market, I think it's a fascinating time, especially for recruiters that that listen to this. I I think you have such an amazing opportunity to share your jobs on social like like, when I was a traditional recruiter and at my last company and I started to train the team on how to put out content, the easiest content you could put out as a recruiter is what job you're working on right now. Like, post it. It'll spread like wildfire.

Taylor Desseyn:
22:32

Why? Because people genuinely wanna help people right now because the market sucks. It just does. Like, let's not put a sugarcoat on it. I'm not going to be the recruiter.

Taylor Desseyn:
22:40

It's like, everything's good. No. It's actually probably gotten a little worse in the last, like, 45 days based off some data I've been seeing. I think it's finally starting to come out that the government may be giving some false data around job stuff. Like things are starting to get a little weird and I don't like it because between me and you, I thought we'd be out of this mess at this point.

Taylor Desseyn:
22:57

So for example, Prime is April. I have a video post that I did that my video guy edited that I was gonna put out today, and I listened to it. And it's me saying the market's getting better. That was, like, 6 months ago, but I'm not gonna post it now because it's not. That's what makes it so difficult.

Taylor Desseyn:
23:11

But, yeah, going back to putting out content, like, jobs, like, everybody wants to help each other with jobs. And so if you're listless and you're a recruiter, I think the best way to get because I get a lot of recruiters. I'm sure you do too. Like, how do I get started in my content journey? Just just post a job.

Taylor Desseyn:
23:23

Just once a day, just post a job you're working on. But give some context. Right? If you're working on a developer, don't say, hey. I have a JavaScript developer that pays 90 k.

Taylor Desseyn:
23:30

Say, hey. I have a JavaScript developer that specializes in React and Node. Need that's paying a 150 ks. You really need some AWS with some Lambda services. It's fully remote, but they want this person like, tell a story.

Taylor Desseyn:
23:42

And if you can start getting in that habit, you're gonna be able to source candidates from the internet. Like my candidates that I find from the internet are way better than anything you're gonna find on the job boards.

Rhona Pierce:
23:52

Yes. A 100 a 1000000 percent on that. I don't think I've sourced from a job where I'm not recruiting actively right now, but I don't last year I was or 2022 I was. I don't

Taylor Desseyn:
24:03

think

Rhona Pierce:
24:03

I source from any job boards. No.

Taylor Desseyn:
24:05

It's

Rhona Pierce:
24:05

all online. It's all all that. So looking ahead, what are your thoughts on, like, the future of online talent communities?

Taylor Desseyn:
24:15

I think community building is everything. And I think I mean, I'm gonna say this. If you're a recruiting firm and you're not focused on building community in the Discord through email newsletters, through virtual events, you are going to be left behind. Because now you could be a $1,000,000,000 organization listening to this right now. And if you are, thank you for listening.

Taylor Desseyn:
24:35

I appreciate it. But, like, you gotta focus on community. Like, people want to feel a part of a brand, and people wanna feel a part of a community these days. And, like, there's been a huge shift. There's been a huge shift in sales.

Taylor Desseyn:
24:48

Right? Everything's content focused now. Everything is top of the funnel awareness and kind of massaging. It's this terrible term, but massaging that person through the process to get a sale. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
24:57

I saw a great TikTok the other day from a from a CMO and she was like, long gone are the days. If you wanna make more sales, make more sales calls. She goes, you wanna make more sales, put up more content. Right? And so I think every recruiting organization right now needs to be focused on building content, creating content.

Taylor Desseyn:
25:13

I wanna give a shout out to SpyGlass Partners. Some of my old team is there that I managed, and they are encouraged to have a live show podcast. Like, every person is encouraged. And so 2 of my old colleagues, shout to Sloan, shout to Joseph Jewell, you guys, and Sloan Bartley, you guys are the greatest. They've both I've been very proud of them watching their content journey.

Taylor Desseyn:
25:33

They've both started morning shows and turned into podcast form. And I think every recruiting organization needs at least one. I think I've pitched this to other recruiting companies in the past. Depending on your specialties, I think you need to have a podcast per specialty. So if you do cybersecurity, you need to have a cybersecurity podcast.

Taylor Desseyn:
25:50

If you have an accounting practice, you need an accounting podcast. Right? And it's very easy. You just interview people within your community based off topics that community would wanna know. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
25:59

So, again, I'm not an accountant, but I'm sure there's topics that accountants are passionate about right now. I don't know what they are, but I'm sure they're out there. And so I think moving forward, I think every company needs a Discord. Every person needs to I think marketing teams are different now. They need to look different instead of hiring traditional marketers.

Taylor Desseyn:
26:15

I think you hire content teams now. You hire video editors. You hire copywriters. You hire people who literally just press post on a post. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
26:23

Like, that's what it looks like moving forward. I think the companies that can truly understand that are gonna be able to move so much faster and have such better candidate quality for your clients.

Rhona Pierce:
26:34

Yeah. And for those listening, I have 2 episodes where I spoke to 2 different organizations doing podcasting to attract talent. It blew my mind how easy it is for them to do it, the topics. Because like you said, maybe you don't know about a content topics. But if you're recruiting for accounting, you should know what the things they're interested in.

Rhona Pierce:
26:57

The podcast is really their top strategy for attracting

Taylor Desseyn:
27:01

That's it.

Rhona Pierce:
27:02

Talent.

Taylor Desseyn:
27:03

That's it.

Rhona Pierce:
27:03

I was it blew my mind. So I'll link those also in the show notes so that people can see. So we've talked a lot about online. But now that people are back into, like, going to conferences and and things like that, how do you think that in person is playing a role in this community building?

Taylor Desseyn:
27:22

In person is everything. Right? So so if you wanna look top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel in terms of marketing terms, top of the funnel is your content online. Bottom of the funnel is shaking hands and kissing babies. Right?

Taylor Desseyn:
27:31

And so right now, like, again, if I had it my way, if I built my own recruiting agency, right, the way I wanna build it, I would hire I would build a content team, not a marketing team, and I would have somebody lead the content team. And any event we go to, I would bring a video person to document it. My success has exponentially increased over the last 3 or 4 years because I've had the opportunity with the companies I've worked for that have supported me, and shout out Gun. Io for supporting me in this, they allowed me to bring a video person with me. And we capture moments, we capture conversations, we edit it, we give it back at scale.

Taylor Desseyn:
28:11

And that does multiple things. It it like, social proof is everything right now. Like, people to be trusted, and we all know this in the recruiting space, you have to, like, break bread with your people to be accepted with your people. And I think, really, I think a lot of recruiters miss out on that. They wanna sit at their desk.

Taylor Desseyn:
28:29

They wanna pound out a bunch of calls. They wanna be done for the day, which is fine. I know a ton of recruiters at my last company. That's all their job was. They never went to conferences.

Taylor Desseyn:
28:38

They never put out content, and they made way more money than me. But that's not what I want. I really want that community, and I will tell you this. Like, going to conferences is everything. Shaking hands is everything.

Taylor Desseyn:
28:49

And and I think recruiting firms right now need a budget for your recruiters to go to conferences, not just sponsor. And this is a whole another thing. Just sponsoring a conference is not enough these days. Again, the playbook has shifted because of COVID. And, like, the sooner a recruiting organization obviously, I'm very passionate about this right now.

Taylor Desseyn:
29:07

It's between the iced coffee and the little sleep because I was up last night. You know, again, it's just it's just so, so important.

Rhona Pierce:
29:14

Yeah. It really is. And last thing, I also come from a background of talent marketplaces. I really believe in them. I real believe in the differences between recruiting agencies, which I'm not knocking, but I know that talent marketplaces bring a lot more value, especially because of this community building aspect that they have and how quickly they can fill roles.

Rhona Pierce:
29:39

Is there anything you wanna say about Gun. Io or how people can contact you and learn more about your talent marketplace?

Taylor Desseyn:
29:47

Yeah. I mean, I'm on all socials, t dessin, t d e s s e y n. I'm on every social media platform but Snapchat. Reach out to me at, this is your taylordessen@gunio. But, yeah, again, just just hit me up.

Taylor Desseyn:
30:00

We'd love to chat. And, like I said, I'm constantly online, so you all always give me.

Rhona Pierce:
30:04

Perfect. And I'll link in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for this conversation today, Taylor. I think it's gonna be great for everyone who's wanting to get started with content and building communities.

Taylor Desseyn:
30:17

Love it. Thank you.

Rhona Pierce:
30:19

Wow. Taylor shared a ton of great information. Turns out, you don't have to create the same type of content every other recruiter is creating in order to build a talent community. Be sure to connect with Taylor. His contact info is in the show notes.

Rhona Pierce:
30:33

Speaking of content, next week, I'm chatting with Joel Lalje. If you haven't heard of him, you've definitely been living under a rock. Joel's content is everywhere. Subscribe to throughout the playbook wherever you get your podcasts so that you don't miss out on our conversation. It's a free masterclass in content creation for recruiters.

Rhona Pierce:
30:53

Thanks for listening, and I'll chat with you next week.