How Organizations Should Reimagine Career Transition - Bob Goodwin

In today’s episode, I chat with Bob Goodwin, the Founder of Career Club, a unique service that uses proven sales and marketing methods to help clients land a career that matters to them.

The inspiration for Career Club was born from Bob’s experiences leading client engagements for global brands like Coca-Cola, Samsung, and P&G.  He saw the opportunity to bring marketing principles, coupled with sales disciplines, to conduct much more effective job search campaigns.  Bob is also the host of a popular podcast called Career Club Live.

Our discussion explored the realities of outplacement strategies in an era highlighted by transformation. The traditional, formulaic approach borne from risk mitigation has been replaced by a more human approach, argues Bob. And throughout our conversation, we discussed how organizations and their leaders need to adapt.

Change is inevitable. We can choose to treat people well when they’re leaving the organization. It was a really fun discussion, and I hope you enjoy our conversation, as much as I did recording it.

Bob Goodwin

Bob Goodwin is the Founder of Career Club, a unique service that uses proven sales and marketing methods to help clients land a career that matters to them.  The inspiration for Career Club was born from his experience leading the client engagements for global brands like Coca-Cola, Samsung, and P&G. 

He saw the opportunity to bring marketing principles, coupled with sales disciplines, to conduct much more effective job search campaigns.  Most recently, Career Club has launched NextPlacement™, an innovation in the outplacement arena that provides mental health support, emotional intelligence coaching, and deep community to employees who have been affected by a layoff.

Bob is also the host of a popular podcast called Career Club Live and is based in Cincinnati.

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Matt Burns

Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, career, companies, activity, job, networking, talent, bob, work, organization, opportunity, leaders, find, sales, search, individuals, marketers, talk, mental health, part

SPEAKERS

Matt

00:02

But what's the mental health support, that's a real person who lost her job. She's just experienced a very significant loss. And yet we treat her like she's just a cell on a spreadsheet that we need to make a number, providing mental health support to transition employees.

Matt  00:33

Strengths drive innovation. Hey, everyone, it's Matt here for another episode of thinking inside the box, a show where we discuss the innovative ways organizations and their leaders overcome complex issues at work. If you're interested in checking out our other content, you can find us at our shiny website, inside the box podcast.com And on all of your favorite podcast platforms by searching thinking inside the box. And if you enjoy the work we're doing here, consider leaving us a five star rating, a comment and subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content and really helps amplify our message. In today's episode, I chat with Bob Goodwin, founder of career club, a unique service that uses proven sales and marketing methods to help clients land a career that matters to them. The inspiration for career Club was born from Bob's experiences leading client engagements for global brands such as Coca Cola, Samsung, and Procter and Gamble. He saw the opportunity to bring marketing principles coupled with sales disciplines to conduct more effective job search campaigns. And Bob's also the host of the popular podcast called Career club life. Our discussion explored the realities of outplacement strategies in an era highlighted by transformation. The traditional formulaic approach born from risk mitigation has been replaced by a more human approach, argues Bob, and throughout our conversation, we discussed how organizations and their leaders need to adapt to fit the new paradigm. Change is inevitable. We can choose treat people well when they're leaving. Or we can choose to do things the way we've always done. It was a really fun conversation. And I hope you enjoy the chat as much as I did recording it. And now I bring you, Bob Goodwin. Bob, I'm looking forward to this conversation. It's been only a little more than a week. But I've been eagerly awaiting our follow up chat. How are you today, sir? Hi, I'm

02:27

doing well. And likewise, I'm very much looking forward to it. Matt, thank you.

Matt  02:30

Hey, I'm looking forward to a number of topics. You are an expert in a number of domains that I'm very passionate about. For those who don't know, Bob Goodwin, maybe a bit about your background, your experiences. And who's led you to today.

02:41

Sure. So good. Again, thank you. It's really a pleasure to be here. So by way of background, couple things. One is my background is sales leadership. But my clients have been world class marketers. So I've been in the market research, consumer insights space for the last 20 years, you know, leading engagements with big marketers, like p&g, Coca Cola, Samsung Walmart. And so while my function has been in sales, my clients have been marketers, so a lot of experience past couple of decades in sales and marketing. So it's part one for two is I love to network, I love to connect people. And when you're a networker, you end up meeting a lot of people in job search, because obviously, they're networking very aggressively. And very early on, I saw how much a job search was really a sales and marketing exercise, that people didn't recognize it for what it was even marketers and salespeople. So if you think about what's my value proposition, what problems do I solve? How do I communicate that who's the target audience, there's all things marketers would think about all day, every day. And then there's the sales piece of it, which is I need to build a pipeline of opportunities that are at all stages of development. That's how a salesperson would think the good news is a job seekers, I have a quota of one, I only need one new job, I don't need to change the world. I don't need to build out a book of business, I need one new job. So building that pipeline. And then the last bit on the sales side of it is interviewing and networking are essentially sales calls. You're trying to motivate somebody to take the next step with you, whether in a networking call that's making an introduction or providing something to you, or an interviewing, going through the process and ultimately closing the deal by getting the job offer. Again, if 2021 I started career Club, which is essentially bringing sales and marketing principles to the job search to help our clients find a career that matters to them. Well, I think

Matt  04:40

it's a great story and really speaks to again, that breadth of experience that I referenced and your story resonates for a number of reasons. I mean, a former HR executive myself, I can certainly speak to both my own experiences but also to the peers that I worked with, who often struggled to create that public brand, that public persona. Many of us grew up in an era where That was frowned upon like unless you were in a customer facing capacity, the organization's actively buried you under confidentiality agreements and discourage you from being active on social media. And, of course, that's now started to change. But there was still a percentage of people that struggled with this idea of what is my personal brand? And how do I position myself. And if I wanted to be a marketer or a salesperson, Bible, I've done that already. wise to point that out. I'm curious when you're talking to individuals in the market, you know, what are some of the things that hold them back from doing what you've said, which is being a bit more intentional and thoughtful about creating that personal brand?

05:35

Yeah, that's a great question, Matt. And there's a few things and one is just attitude. At our core, we're fairly emotional creatures. And if you're in job search, if somebody is listening to this, they're going to be like, This guy's reading my mind. It's fear. I'm too old, I'm too young, it's too late, whatever. But I'm just afraid it's not going to work out for me, depending on how you left your last role. Assuming you've left it there, shame associated with that. There's confusion. As you know, math, there's not very well defined process for finding a new job. So there's just a lot of confusion, like I don't know what to do. Last time I looked for a job was 12 years ago, I know the process has changed. I just don't know what the new game is. And then lastly, in some cases, there's anger. And it was really unfair if you knew how badly they treated me. So and I would say, probably the system very first and most important thing is just people's emotions, and getting a handle on your emotions, finding the positive in the job search, that you are going to land, knowing that emotional ups and downs are part of the journey and just sort of acknowledging that instead of being, you know, blown away, or overly excited, or when something looks like it might pan out. The third thing would be expecting the best from yourself and from others. Again, self esteem takes a hit. And sometimes people, you know, really underestimate and undervalue how they contribute at companies. And so they have a low expectation of themselves. And then low expectation of others in the sense of, I don't want to bother Matt, I know he's busy, like, I'm not gonna reach out to him, because I'd probably just be bugging him anyway. And the anger side of it letting go in the past, like, you just have to let go of the past. And I always like to quote Nelson Mandela, where he said, swallowing poison, being angry, being bitter is like swallowing poison and waiting for your enemy to die, you're only hurting yourself. So first thing that I think holds people back is sort of this mishmash of emotions. The second bit is being off message. And this is very much a marketing branding thing. And it tends to fall into camps. Well, I've been in operations and finance and human resources and sales. And what the candidate thinks you're doing is opening up the spigot of opportunities. So like, the more things you say you can do in theory, the more opportunities in fact, it has the exact opposite effect, you end up going into junk drawer of people's minds, because they don't know what to do. Is this a shovel, a spatula, a spoon? What are you, it's I don't know what to do with you, I put you in the junk drawer of my mind. And that basically disables people from being able to help you because they don't know how to help you. The other way that people mess up in their positioning is they don't know. So that's like asking for directions, but you don't know where you want to go. So, you know, somebody might take a networking call with me. And they say, Well, Bob, what are you looking for? Yeah, that's a good question. I've been trying to figure that one out myself. Well, I don't know how to help you, because you haven't told me what help looks like yet. So those would be two things just immediately. And then maybe the last one is just a lack of activity that they don't have enough conversations going at any point in time. This is back to the salesperson thing, if you need a very full pipeline of opportunities, because things are going to fall out for all kinds of crazy reasons. The hiring manager just left the company lost my budget for it, we ended up hiring an internal candidate, we're merging with another company, so who knows what we're going to do with it. I mean, there's a bazillion reasons that things get put on hold, or you didn't get the role. But candidates tend to fall in love with thinks, oh my gosh, this is a perfect job for me. And then when it doesn't pan out, because they didn't have enough other things working their job search takes way too long, because they didn't have anything and now they have to start all over on day one of scaring up another opportunity. So kind of the emotional piece branding and activities.

Matt  09:37

Well, as you're sharing all this, Bob, it strikes me that we just don't do a great job telling people how to go about this process. I mean, whether it's networking or career development, I don't know about you, but I didn't get a heck of a lot of support and guidance along my career, other than people who were individually invested in my success. I didn't know what to ask for and I didn't know where to go to for support and it seems like especially nowadays when do your pull Wait, organizations are going through disruptions, there's mergers and acquisitions. There's restructurings, the days of the 35 to 50 year career are essentially over. In the era where Job transitions are much more commonplace, it would seem like there's a huge opportunity to teach people about how to do this. Well,

10:18

yeah. And that's very spot on, there's really not in one sense that there's a ton of advice out there, tons of advice, some of it not very good, some of it really good. But if you're not a discerning consumer, but also companies could and should be doing a much better job of teaching people how to manage their career, it behooves the company to do this. Because if you're teaching me how to manage my career, and I can find my home with you, awesome, if I find out over time, things have changed. And maybe I'm interested in something else, or maybe the company's gone in a different direction, you know, I'm still can be an ally of the company, I can, maybe you become a supplier to me, maybe I refer talent to you. But companies could do a much better job of really investing in helping people develop career paths, and not just at their company, but really showing them that you care about him as a human being not just an employee pays tons and tons of benefits. We just don't see very many companies doing this.

Matt  11:20

Yeah, I think kind of comes down to a bit of scarcity mindset. I've certainly worked for leaders, as I know, you have Bob, where they may have this belief that I don't want to empower people to find other opportunities, because if I do, Bob might leave. And then where am I as a leader, and I think that is a self fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways. Because talented people are looking for opportunities. And in particular, the millennial generation, the Gen Z generation, the part of their profiles are highlighted by the fact that these are generations that are not looking for job security as much as looking for job opportunity. And if they feel like they're stagnant in their roles, they're going to be more thoughtful about managing their careers and taking opportunities in organizations. So undoubtedly, companies have to adjust their approach and look for more lateral movement opportunities, cross functional training opportunities, to keep these experience centric, passionate for, you know, new opportunity type resources in the fold. And in a lot of ways, if they don't do that set their own detriment, and they probably haven't built to your earlier comment, a pipeline of talent behind those individuals to backfill them. You know, we're entering into an era Bob, I know, we had this chat offline, but we're entering into an era right now where Demographically speaking, there are more people leaving the workplace every single day than entering it. So we just don't have the luxury of assuming that we can put talent in a box and have them sit and do their job for 10 years, the vast majority of professionals in the marketplace do not want that for themselves. And if they do, or even if they are willing to do it, you're gonna have declining performance over time. We know this is just basic science around human motivation. So I think it's a really wise common to talk about a leaders need to be proactive about having their employees best interests at heart, believing that, you know, an opportunity with me is an opportunity to learn and grow. And then if you graduate something else in the organization of the organization, I've done my job as a leader in a lot of ways. So it's a rebranding of that. And to your point, you create ambassadors, you create alumni that can ultimately refer other people, they can have impacts to other parts of the business. But we have started looking at this as a zero sum game, we have to look at this much more holistically. And actually, Bob, you've got me to think about this a bit more broader focus, let's maybe step back for a minute. Think about the broader talent landscape. I mean, you're at the forefront of this working with individuals who are in transition around careers, maybe some individuals that are going through their first career transition. And what are you seeing from a broader talent perspective in the market? Like what is talent saying? What are some of the key themes that you're hearing in the broader talent marketplace?

13:42

So maybe we can sort of look at this in three chunks. But we'll go back to the point that she made about, you know, millennials, and Gen Z being experiential and valuing experiences, and yet companies see this zero sum game. Another way that that plays out negatively. And this will tie in to the talent acquisition piece is nominally companies would say that they want people who are self starters, people who are naturally curious people who are agile learners, things like that. Yeah, those are really good things to have. Then when you've got those people on board, what are you doing to feed those attributes? You said, were really valuable to you? Or are you then kind of clipping their wings and not giving them the freedom to fly? And they say, after a while, well, this is boring now like, why would I want to stay here? But those are the very qualities that you're hiring for, or at least you thought you were hiring for. The other thing just on talent. I'll speak to about talent acquisition folks, but also maybe empathetically to candidates is these kinds of qualities that we just talked about, like natural curiosity, agility and learning, passion and caring about what our mission is, things like that. There's real things that an employer would say that they want. And yet if you look at job descriptions, applicant tracking systems, initial No screening interviews, very little of that it's present. It's all very much. Do you have seven years of hard experience in this? Have you been in our exact industry before? And that gets on fairly ridiculous sometimes? Well, I've been in the automotive industry, you know, selling cars for 10 years. Yeah. But if you've been selling trucks web and selling pickup truck, I mean, it's just like ridiculous how the level of specificity companies say that they want, you're getting very myopic about some skills that may end up having short shelf lives, because the world is changing so quickly. First thing I'd say on talent is companies need to really kind of behave the way they talk, in terms of hiring for character, and quality attributes. Rather than just sort of skills do I need an accountant that knows how to do accounting honor percent. But there's a lot more that goes to that for somebody who's going to be successful, and contributed at their highest level. The second piece on talent, we sort of alluded to this and touched on for a minute, is really teaching people career skills. And one of the ones I think is the most absent, is networking skills. So you know, we can all go point to a statistic that says, you know, I'm 7080 90%, likely to find my next job through networking. But who teaches me networking? Where do I learn networking, and most people learn it through a very expensive education called unemployment, when they have to go figure out networking for the first time, the analogy I use is, that's like going to an ATM to make withdrawal that I've never made deposit soon. So sometimes sets you I've worked at the same company for 25 years, my network begins and ends with people that work at that company. Or maybe I've worked at several different companies, but you're networking, that's for sales people, that's not for people like me, until it is and you need a network, and you need a community to come around you and help you. So I think that's one of the things that companies could be doing that would benefit not just the employee. But again, as the employee builds out her network, she's finding resources, subject matter experts, talent sources, that would greatly benefit the company in the immediate term, if they were teaching their people how to do networking. And then just the last bit on talent that I'll touch on, because I think this is so egregious, and it's so happening in the moment right now is when companies have to let go of people. And so on the one hand, find any website annual report, people are our most important asset, comma, till they're not. And we have to make some draconian talent decision, you know, say you're venture backed, and you got $50 million a year and a half ago, that was supposed to last you two years, now it's gonna last you five, and all those people that you hired, now you have to let them go, and not giving them the transition resources they really need. And what I mean by that is more than just resume writing, and LinkedIn and stuff like that, which is, in my view, table stakes. But what's the mental health support, that's a real person who lost her job, she's just experienced and very significant loss. And yet we treat her like she's just a cell on a spreadsheet, that we need to make a number providing mental health support to transitioning employees. The second would be around emotional intelligence coaching, again, unless you're in that small percentage of people that is really attuned to networking, and can really read the room and you know exactly how to maneuver in the moment, people benefit from things like Clifton Strengths, and dis there's a myriad of really high quality assessment tools to help people become more self aware, and also others aware. So when they are networking, when they are interviewing. They're not only presenting their best self, but they're also being empathetic to who they communicating with, so that it can communicate the most effectively with that person. And the last thing on off boarding, is making sure that people are going into community. And what I mean by that is, by definition, when you've left the employee of your company, you're losing all your colleagues and your associates and, and sort of your professional, at least today not work. And now you're by yourself. And a job search is massively a team sport, not a solo sport. And there's way more downs and ups in a job search, kind of by definition. So being in community is really kind of back to the mental health part of the mental health equation is we need to be with other people, particularly when we've taken a loss so that we can heal quickly, healthily, and be able to move on to the next stage. So talent acquisition, talent development, and in the case of offboarding, folks, there's lots of things that we're seeing in the marketplace that could be improved.

Matt  19:52

Hey, everyone, its Matt here. Hope you're enjoying today's discussion. And before we continue, I want to make you aware of my latest creative project it this week at work, presented in partnership with my good friend Chris Rainey of HR leaders. Each Friday, we'll live stream on LinkedIn at 7am. Pacific Standard Time. That's 10am Eastern Standard Time, and 3pm GMT for our European viewers. And together bring you the latest trends, news on topics emanating from organizations. Everything from culture to technology, and the future of work. Joining is easy, just follow me on LinkedIn, click the bell at the top right hand side of my profile. And you'll get notified when we go live each week. And whether you experience the content live or later. If you've been following me for a while, you'll no doubt recognize the fun banter Chris and I have developed over the years. And whether it's been podcasts or digital events, we're so excited to again, bring you the topics affecting today's workplaces and their leaders. And now, back to our discussion. I can't echo that a friend enough on the ladder point as somebody who spent many of their years architecting restructuring efforts in organizations that ultimately, in some cases lead to job loss. The first thing that struck me, Bob, and incomplete those activities was first why me like why am I the one tasked to do this because I promise you it's not an activity that anybody wants to spend their time doing. But as it would turn out my career led me to a path where I did a fair amount of that. And I did so in some cases for really good reasons. And I would define good reasons as necessary changes in an organizational structure or composition to improve survivability of the imbalance of employees in the organization, or if there was a natural strategic pivot that had to occur. But I've also been part of activities where I really can't tell you that there was any good reason why we did the activity, in some cases having to hire back a large percentage of the workforce we let go some months earlier. So I've seen both the best and worst of those activities. from a strategic perspective, one thing that was uniform across all of them was, and this might surprise some people, the lack of compassion that's applied to the activity in the macro economic sense. So oftentimes, we're given marching orders or directions that we need to impact either dollar savings or headcount savings as a consequence of XYZ conditions. And that's the activity. And then it's incumbent upon the individuals within that activity to go above and beyond just that narrow scope, and introduced some humanity in it. And some leaders do that better than others. Now, I've been lucky to have worked predominantly with leaders that had a very strong humanitarian focus. That's one of the great things about being in human resources. But there's also other things that come into play, like stress, and pressure, and self interest and nepotism, and all the things that can pollute the human condition. They all come into play in these activities. So one thing I would just stress for those who are listening, who were at saying to themselves, well, you know what, it's not going to happen to me, I'm a strong performer, my boss likes me, I'm doing good work, I can promise you as somebody who has both built and executed those lists, that in some cases, performance and loyalty and contributions do not factor into the decision making process. So even though you did get a incredible bonus last year, or were rated very highly in performance review, that doesn't preclude you from being included in an activity, if there has to be tough decisions made in an organization. Secondly, I would just add that I think outplacement your point Bob is just absolutely critical for a number of reasons. One thing that we talked about offline, that I pride myself on was, I have a bit of a reputation and had in the corporate world when I was in it, of using the tools at my disposal and trying to introduce humanity wherever possible, even in cases where humanity wasn't the driving principle with things like outplacement. So anytime I wouldn't be architecting, an activity that involves job loss, I would push incredibly hard internally, sometimes to my own detriment from a political standpoint, for the provision of outplacement services for the reasons that you mentioned. Now, I did this, Bob, for a couple of reasons. The first one was early in my career when I was a human resource business partner, I unfortunately was part of an activity that I didn't architect but had to be part of the messaging of. And in one of those situations, we actually had a mental health emergency that occurred during one of those conversations. And one thing people don't often think about, aside from of course, the natural job loss and the shame and the sadness, and the anger is that a lot of people tie their self worth to their careers, and it's taken away from them. People can do things they would otherwise not do. And whether that's a risk of violence to themselves or other people, whether it's mental health conditions, there are things that pop up in activities that unless you're on the front lines of these, you don't see and hear about unless it hits the front page of a paper and for often than not, it doesn't. So for me thinking about the broader impacts of yes, the individuals in the activity themselves, but also more broadly, the individuals who remain in the organization I don't know you Bob, but I I know that if I'm at a company, and some of my co workers have to leave because of things outside their control, I want to know that the company I work with took care of them, despite having to deliver bad news. Those are kind of the lenses that I would look at the activities through and ultimately can feel good looking back at my career to say that more often than not, we're able to realize that, and there is no way for me to quantify the air quotes benefit of that, except to say that I've seen it not happen well, and I've seen the impact to the human being to your earlier point in this conversation, and it's just something that we can't lose sight of, especially in an era where these activities are happening more frequently, and seemingly without a lot of notice. And against the back of inflationary periods, a housing crisis in Canada, the United States, like people are at their limit anyway, if you take away a couple of pay cycles, people can't afford to live and sustain themselves, you run into issues around mental health and addiction and violence and a whole bunch of other social issues that come into play here. So I think your comments are really, really well timed, and well intentioned. And these are the things that we as leaders, and as organizational architects need to think about. As we undertake the activities, you have to think more broadly, because there are impacts beyond simply saving $1 or reducing your FTE or doing what your boss has told you. There's human beings on the other side of these activities, and the impacts stretch far beyond just those simple elements.

26:21

Wow, all I can do is say amen, and amen. One thing just to go back to something that you were saying about the individual who got a big bonus, gets a great review, whatever, whatever hashtag blindsided is like, such a common thing that I hear from clients is like, I never saw it coming. Prepare for the you know, unexpected, because it's likely to happen. So you're right. I mean, people just need to be thinking about how am I insulating myself and beyond insulating, because that's just sort of maybe protecting from a negative is how am I preparing myself for the career that I want to have, and not be just on the receiving end of somebody else's decision. You're one of the things and this is back on mental health. And we started our own outplacement service and full transparency to be called next placement. And one of the qualities it's an epiphany, believe it or not, for a lot of people is this notion of agency and autonomy, that I actually have agency, it's not up to somebody else to dictate my happiness, I satisfaction with my career, where I work, how I work, and I've done a lot more control over that. And when that light bulb goes off on people, they are like, genuinely new people, like almost in the moment, you can see the countenance on their face. It's like I do have control over this, like, I may not have chosen these circumstances and how I got here. But now that I'm here, and now that I'm able to reframe what's happened, not as just like this horrible thing. But I have choices that I get to make now. And I've got the ability to take advantage of this pause, maybe change the trajectory of not just my career, but my life to something that's more satisfying. That's a big deal for people and to be able to impact folks at that level. You're a human resources professional. So you notice at least as well as me, that is extremely gratifying that gets very near to my personal why of why career club, if even this thing is because it just touches so much of our lives, our work does. And when we can reframe how people think about it, that's a day worth going to work. Yeah, I

Matt  28:35

couldn't agree with you more, Bob. And I think this is a good opportunity to talk a bit more about career club, because, you know, I'll be honest, and I don't mind saying this, when we had a conversation, I was really struck with just your awareness of the market. For somebody who spent their career to your point in marketing and sales, for the most part through that lens. I was really touched by just the level of humanity, you've introduced into the creation of the organization, you've clearly done your market research, you've clearly spoken to people that are going through career transitions, if you wouldn't mind just maybe talking a bit about some of the parts of the organization that comprise what career club has to offer. And some of the ways in which they support people who might be in career transition, or they're trying to get ahead of it before that might happen for them.

29:15

No, thank you. And that's very generous of you to to ask. So thank you. So again, the DNA of career club is bringing proven sales and marketing principles to the job search to help people find a career that matters to them. We service both individuals, and they can be individuals who are actively in job search. They could be people who are in a role that's not satisfying to them right now. Or they could be someone who's just like, I want to step back and make sure I'm in control of my career, working with individuals. We started next placement which again, is our answer to outplacement because we started taking on some clients who had come from not great experiences without placement, and they just felt like they were coming huddled going through a processing plant, instead of a human being that, like, wasn't ready to talk to the resume writer yet, they still needed to process some emotions. And call it a career club has always been the idea of we want to encourage people, we want to empower them. And that's through teaching them some principles around branding and networking in interviewing kind of the air, quote, more tactical kinds of things. But the thing that we also want to enable them. And so it's not enough to have the head knowledge, you need to be able to actually go activate these things. So we've built a tech stack, using CRM tools, primary databases, helping people really kind of leverage their LinkedIn connections and other networking tools. So addressing human being, then there's, let's learn some rules of the game and how to play the game and win. And then here's some tools we can bring to you and come alongside you to actually activate against these things. And so whether it's with individuals, or now more broadly, working with companies who really do want to live out their values of taking care of that person, not just the cell on the spreadsheet are offering feels very different to them, what we're not trying to do is be the low cost provider, within the range of, you know, under the bell curve of what the services costs. So not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but be very true to the value proposition of being more empathetic, more people centric, to folks who are going through career transition,

Matt  31:27

but this for you. I mean, obviously you're innovating within your own space, making some significant, you know, tidal waves in that placement marketplace, and more broadly, the talent marketplace. But what's next for you?

31:37

So that's a great question. So today, most of career club is looking at the outplacement side of it and the career transition piece of it. We're actively working on a couple of partnerships on the talent acquisition side, I think that you know, that model is right to be broken. Also, you know, whether it's the retain search, charging 30%, you know, when there's a lot of information transparency today, but gone are the days of information opacity, where your Rolodex is everything that's like why anybody can go on LinkedIn and find talent. So what's the 30% of your one? So we think there's a lot smarter way to do that. And then kind of in the middle of the talent continuum, is around career development. And specifically, as we were talking just some of the things around networking architecting, a very intentional career path, learning how to do like informational interviews with people who are in jobs that you think would be really cool. And you would aspire to over the next three to five years. Well, how do you go from just dreaming about that to actually building a plan to get there? Again, we don't see companies doing enough of that. And we believe that there's a lot of opportunity in that. And then the last thing, and you and I have also found each other and a common passion for podcasting, we've been very blessed to like, you have to have some phenomenal guests come on, whether it's in the HR space, or in another side thing because of my background in consumer packaged goods, you know, bringing on subject matter experts in marketing and consumer packaged goods and retail. And so those are two things that I'm going to continue to want to do because I like learning I like talking to smart people. Hopefully I pick up a couple things along the way that it helps us continue to grow and get smarter what we do.

Matt  33:24

Bob, thank you so much for chapter two of what's been a great conversation looking forward to following you into like all your details in the podcast show notes, including details to your podcast, which is fantastic. Otherwise, just thank you so much for your time today and look forward to keeping in touch

33:38

man, this is awesome. Thank you again, it's really a privilege to be with you. I appreciate the time.

Matt  33:50

Until HR is a digital transformation consultancy, working at the intersection of strategy, technology, and people operations. We partner with organizations private equity and venture capital firms to accelerate value creation and identify the organization's highest leverage initiatives. And this can take place in many forms, from strategic planning and alignment to technology procurement, implementation and integration, along with organizational design, process reengineering, and change management. With our proven track record of working with complex high growth organizations, we provide a lens that goes beyond the balance sheet, increasing enterprise readiness, resilience, and value. For more information, check us out at bento hr.com