Jess Von Bank: See Me, Protect Me, Respect Me.

Full Transcript: See Me, Protect Me, Respect Me

Katrina Collier (00:43):
Jess Von Bank, welcome to The Hiring Partner Perspective, proudly supported by the beautiful people at WORQDRIVE. Welcome. I’m so excited for this conversation.

Jess Von Bank (00:57):
I am too, and now I just heard that WORQDRIVE is the sponsor. You know I’m on their board?

Katrina Collier (01:04):
Oh, I did not know that.

Jess Von Bank (01:05):
And I didn’t know that was your sponsor. Amazing. I’m the biggest fan in the world.

Katrina Collier (01:09):
Yeah, which is…

Jess Von Bank (01:10):
Awesome.

Katrina Collier (01:11):
Yeah, and I just love Tracey and everything that she does and creates and the whole way her brain thinks.

Jess Von Bank (01:16):
Yeah, absolutely.

Katrina Collier (01:16):
Can you tell the world, though, what you do, particularly what you’re doing at Leapgen? Fill us in a little bit about yourself.

Jess Von Bank (01:25):
Absolutely. Well, once a recruiter, always a recruiter. I started in the recruiting talent acquisition space about 20 years ago and fell in love with employer branding, recruitment marketing, talent attraction, when all of that evolution and consumerization took hold. And in that process, fell in love with the tech side of things. The tools and solutions we use to make work better for people, to be honest.

Jess Von Bank (01:52):
And so I’m at Leapgen now. I work alongside Jason Averbook and a ton of brilliant people to do that very thing, make work better for people. Technically we’re HR consultants, workforce experience designers. We talk a lot about taking a whole person approach to designing work for actual human beings, the way they like to operate, the way they learn best, the way they want to thrive at work if given the right tools and support. So, we have a really humane message in the way we approach this stuff.

Katrina Collier (02:23):
Yeah, [crosstalk 00:02:25]

Jess Von Bank (02:24):
And yeah, I’m having a ball.

Katrina Collier (02:26):
Which is good. Okay, so the reason I wanted to talk to you was I saw this amazing quote on one of your posts, “Stop filling requirements and start providing safety. Address the toll of fear and create a culture of hope and health. Do nothing but obsess over the care and nurturing of your own people and you will stop bleeding, just a bit.” Stop their bleeding, I can’t read out loud on a Friday. But I loved what you were saying there, but I wondered if you wanted to delve in more? What was your thinking behind that? What was going on when you were like, “Aaagh”?

Jess Von Bank (03:00):
Yeah, I’m getting tired of all of this talk and shock and surprise over the Great Resignation.

Katrina Collier (03:10):
Is that because we haven’t been designing for humans? We’re not recruiting humans in hiring/employment?

Jess Von Bank (03:15):
Yeah. I mean, what’s happened over the last couple of years is the power has shifted, right? It’s a candidate driven market, that much is clear. But I think employers are having this huge wake up call, that while you have power and authority, and maybe in certain market conditions hold the cards when it comes to making decisions about what happens to talent, I think over the last couple of years employers have realized that people are going to call the shots for themselves. Human psyche has shifted, and what we want is personal safety, psychological safety, our health, our financial health, our physical health, so much has been threatened in the last couple of years. And so we’ve gone into this self-preservation, self-protection mode.

Jess Von Bank (04:08):
Our self-interests come first, and that’s not a bad thing. I mean, we tend to think that that’s an entitlement thing. No, of course, I’m concerned for my own self-interests and the little people that I might be raising, or the household, or the elders I might be caring for. Of course, I’m thinking about that first. And now that the power has shifted and I not only want to, but can make decisions to support myself and what’s right for me and my people, of course, I’ll do that, if given the opportunity. And so I think employers are just sitting here in shock, like, “You mean a ping-pong table won’t do it anymore?” No. See me, protect me, respect me, keep me safe. That means a lot of things. Pay me fairly. Don’t harass me at work. Provide actual leadership. Communicate transparently. We don’t ask for much as human beings.

Katrina Collier (05:06):
No, not at all.

Jess Von Bank (05:06):
And employers still leave a lot on the table.

Katrina Collier (05:09):
And when I think about it, I suppose I have a bit of compassion, because when I started in the workforce 30 years ago, it was carrot or the stick. There was no transparency by the internet. And we were led by a generation that were very much like, “Be grateful you have a job.” And now it’s, “Actually, be grateful you’ve got employees.” It’s such a switch and I’m not surprised they’re struggling, because they haven’t had the role models, in a way. Maybe I’m being too kind, making excuses for people.

Jess Von Bank (05:42):
Yeah. I mean, I think the relationship we hold with work has changed, and I think that’s a very positive thing. I think one and two generations ago, you got a job because you had to. The squeaky wheel did not get the grease, so you kept your head down and you punched your clock and you took home your paycheque, and you felt lucky if you were recognized or lucky to be promoted. And if you were marginalized, underrepresented, lacking power or clout, there wasn’t much you could do about it.

Katrina Collier (06:17):
No.

Jess Von Bank (06:17):
You just suffered work.

Katrina Collier (06:19):
Yes. Suffered is the word.

Jess Von Bank (06:20):
Yeah, and that’s not acceptable anymore. Here’s the thing I’d love employers to understand, not only is it not acceptable, your business will thrive if you help people thrive. This is a win-win for literally everybody. And it shouldn’t be such a surprise that people, “Yes, we can be fulfilled by work.” “Yes, we’re emotional and passionate about producing good work.” The most powerful force in the world is human emotion. Why would you not want to tap into that for the benefit of business? If you connect organizational purpose to what people care about, what they’re passionate about, you’re going to get nothing but performance. Without beating people with a stick, you will get nothing but performance if you treat them well.

Katrina Collier (07:10):
Yeah. It’s so true, and I think about just the stuff I do and how I’ll end up, I’m working probably all the hours because I love what I do and I’m making such an impact, and it’s excellent, because I don’t care, because I love it. It’s just not about the money, it’s about that impact and that feeling appreciated and the difference you can make.

Katrina Collier (07:30):
Now, before we came on, you were talking about what you would really love recruiters to see because if you are a recruiter of old you get it, the world’s become too big and all this stuff. And, of course, my dog always barks during the podcast recording. But we were talking about what you’d like to see when a recruiter gets a requirement.

Jess Von Bank (07:49):
Yeah. So the role of talent acquisition, this means acquiring talent, and it usually means acquiring them externally on the open marketplace, right? You’re going outside and looking for talent to bring in. Unfortunately, this has become a really knee jerk reactionary thing, where somebody vacates a position or a new opportunity needs to be created. Requisition goes through probably a terrible, clunky, cumbersome approval process. Don’t even get me started on job profiles and workforce management and that kind of thing. We just assume that a position needs to be filled a certain way, without asking too many strategic questions about what the business might actually need. [crosstalk 00:08:31]

Jess Von Bank (08:30):
So, a poor recruiter gets an approved requisition on their desk and immediately the clock starts ticking, time to fill, time to fill, time to fill, butt in seat, as soon as possible. And they’re not really put in a position to be strategic on behalf of the business. I would love to see a world where if a requisition hits… The recruiter role in my mind is one of the most strategic roles in the business. If the req hits their desk, I would love to assume that everything else has been considered, that there is nobody internal for this position.

Jess Von Bank (09:08):
If I have an approved requisition to go recruit outside, we’ve already asked all of the right questions. “Is there somebody hoping for this job?” “Is there somebody who could have been skilled or developed into this role?” “Have we opened this up?” This is why I love WORQDRIVE, I’m a huge proponent of internal mobility. Please tell me, we have considered all viable options for up-skilling, developing, internal transfer, we’ve ruled that out already, right? And we’ve decided that this is the exact role that’s needed for the business. Is this an FTE that should be filled more strategically with another kind of head that can… We’ve asked all the questions, right?

Jess Von Bank (09:47):
Instead, I think what happens is that we get an approved requisition, a terrible job description. The hiring manager has a laundry list, 20 things long that they absolutely need. And the recruiter goes out like an order taker and tries to match terrible resumes to terrible job descriptions, presents to the hiring manager, and then the hiring manager is too busy to give feedback. It’s such a terrible process and for so many reasons. But I think that the disrespect we show to the workforce once we bring them inside the business, by not continuing to recruit them, continuing to develop and recruit them, retention is recruiting too. That’s something that I just get nuts about. So, I started by saying the Great Resignation is driving me crazy. It’s driving me crazy because you haven’t been paying attention, you probably haven’t been paying attention, and now you’re shocked that people are making decisions that are good for them, which might not be you.

Katrina Collier (10:49):
It’s funny when you say that, because there’s so many different aspects, like, “Who should be making sure that we’ve considered everybody else first?” That’s a big question. But you’re also reminding me, I don’t know if you saw my menopause post that went out the other day because I’m totally celebrating being in post-menopause. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [crosstalk 00:11:08] excited. I didn’t think I would be, because it did really feel a chapter of my life closing, but I’m so excited about it. Anyway, I put in this thing about that 18% of women who are currently going through the menopause, as many as 18%, if you’ve got them employed are looking to leave because they’re not getting support at work. And let alone the women that have already left and that you need to bring back in.

Katrina Collier (11:28):
And I sent it out to a recruiter and a recruiter came back and said, “I don’t understand your post.” And I’m thinking, “It’s pretty obvious. I’m saying you need to retain the people you have, then you won’t be back filling those 18% of those roles. Maybe you should just tell HR to give them some support or stand up, instead of just saying, “Yes, I’ll go find people.” And say, “Why? What’s going on? Why are we back filling?” You don’t have to [inaudible 00:11:53] follow through, but at least start creating some noise. But…

Jess Von Bank (11:56):
Yeah, we don’t.

Katrina Collier (11:58):
Is it recruiters? Is it crime managers? Is it HR? You know what I mean? Everyone just going, everyone else should do it.

Jess Von Bank (12:07):
I mean, I think we need to deconstruct. If you want to view talent as dynamic nimble or this organic thing that keeps evolving, we’re all individually evolving. We go through phases and stages, we gain skills, we lose skills. We have aspirations, sometimes we want to lean back, not lean in. We are dynamic human beings, and if we can create the kind of environment where we can flex work opportunity, we can help people work the way they want to work, and maybe that means I want to work 20 hours per week right now, while I get through this phase of my life. There might be situations that I’m managing that mean I need to lean out of this right now, but I’m still incredibly valuable and will contribute high value to the business. I need to make this shift, or if I’m underemployed, and you are not actually putting me in position to deliver ultimate value to the business and I’m chomping at the bit, what a miss, what an absolute miss.

Jess Von Bank (13:08):
I’m talking salaried now, I know that’s not the case for everything, but every job, we make so many assumptions, Monday through Friday, nine to five, you must want to work full time, this is what you get for that. We don’t flex work enough for human beings who are incredibly flexible. And we don’t really ask enough questions about what people need and want, so that they can deliver the level of value and contribution that they can, and want to at that time, that’s a huge diversity and inclusion statement too, by the way. We don’t ask enough questions and we don’t see the whole person, in order to set up the right scenario and environment where we can empower and enable people to do what they want to do and deliver the value they want to deliver.

Katrina Collier (13:55):
And of course, now we’ve got to this point where people have had a taste of it to a point, because they’re still had to work nine to five, not that anyone really does nine to five, do they? But they’ve been at home. So, they’ve at least had some form of flexibility. And now they’re, “Well now I want it.” And it’s really interesting watching these companies that are really struggling, even if the company’s been so much more productive.

Jess Von Bank (14:17):
Yes.

Katrina Collier (14:17):
Just by having people at home. And I know that’s only one form of flexibility, but they’re still like, “Oh my God.” They’re still panicking, there’s still trust issues.

Jess Von Bank (14:26):
There really are. And I think, we need to continue breaking the rules. And that’s why it’s really important that the power shift has occurred, and that it is a candidate driven market, because employers really, they don’t have a choice. The moment, I’m telling you, the moments an employer announces that their mandatory return to office policy is in effect on such and such date, and you must come in and you must do, I know there are a lot of good recruiters in your network, Katrina. Every good recruiter is looking for those announcements to go start cherry picking, because guess what, people expect choice and flexibility. And if you’re not going to offer it, I’m a recruiter, I can do that for you over here.

Katrina Collier (15:10):
Every audience I’ve spoken in front of recently, I have seen, if your company isn’t going to offer hybrid or proper flexible or anything, four day week, whatever, just leave. Because obviously there are recruiters, go and work at a company that’s going to value its people and allow these policies, like you said, diversity, all of it, it’s crazy. And I’ve always thought it’s so lovely running my own business because I get to work when I’m in flow. And there are days like, today I haven’t done much work. It’s Friday, Friday’s not a great day for me. So it’s yeah, but I often work on Sunday because I love it, it’s quiet. I can concentrate, you know? And I just imagine if we got to that point where we really did, we’re going to focus on output.

Jess Von Bank (16:00):
I call that working like adults. What if we all trusted each other to work like adults? What a crazy notion.

Katrina Collier (16:07):
So where does it go wrong then? Is it going wrong in schooling, where we’re not taught to be adults, I don’t know. Where does it-

Jess Von Bank (16:16):
Maybe-

Katrina Collier (16:18):
[inaudible 00:16:18] schooling, and then we lose it when we go into employment.

Jess Von Bank (16:21):
I think so. I mean, school is like work and we broke those models too. When kids had to be sent home from school and we had to figure out how to continue learning in a hybrid or distant model, I think it’s an asynchronous synchronous thing first, that we come to realize, can we actually do this without all being together, even if not in the same physical environment at the same time? And so even the notion of synchronous versus asynchronous productivity, Leapgen was already a virtual company before the pandemic hit and spread out among all time zones, including within Australia, New Zealand Contingent. So, we were already pretty used to [crosstalk 00:17:05]

Katrina Collier (17:05):
Calls…

Jess Von Bank (17:06):
What’s that?

Katrina Collier (17:08):
I’m just thinking of the time difference between myself, you and the Australia.

Jess Von Bank (17:13):
And so, when you work with a virtual distributed team, you’re already used to asynchronous working in productivity. And it was funny watching my kids navigate schooling in the pandemic because they had to get used to not having access to their teacher, or having office hours, making best use of office hours when you did have access. And so, that notion of asynchronous versus synchronous, that’s the first trust thing. I think we have to get rid of the baby blanket or security blanket that says, “But we’re not all in the same room at the same time or we’re not online at the same time.” There has to be, “Oh my gosh, we’re smart people. We can figure this out.” Figure out handoffs, figure out how to follow the sun in terms of work productivity, figure out how it’s good communication in most situations. I don’t know if it’s a trust issue or just take the time to actually design the experience that would allow projects to keep moving, even if everybody’s not working on them at the same time.

Katrina Collier (18:14):
Trying to get my stupid phone to open, so I can look at your email signature, which I absolutely loved, which is along the lines of what you’re talking about. Finally got to it, much of it is in font two. I love this, that just goes to, because when we do that, then we’ve got to set boundaries. Because otherwise people work around the clock, and I see that here a lot, when people are in Europe, but they’ve got American clients and they end up working too many hours or even their boss is American and they’re here. But I love this, “I respect boundaries around my personal time, wellbeing, care, taking a risk. If you receive this message while engaging any of the above, please protect your time. You’ll find no emergencies from me in an email.” I just loved that. And I just thought, that’s the tone of, “I’m sending this one, it suits me. You reply when it suits you.” We’ll be there.

Jess Von Bank (19:02):
Yeah. And some people schedule emails to do the same thing or there’s lots of hacks we can use to be respectful of time and boundaries. But the first thing we all have to do is do that for ourselves, and especially if you’re in a leadership position, you manage a team, people look up to you, you’re not only doing it for yourself, you’re giving everybody else permission to do that. I had that conversation internally on my team this week. “Is that a real deadline or is that an artificial deadline?” Let’s show each other respect and call it what it is, no crying wolf around here, and we don’t jump if we don’t need to jump, sometimes you do need to jump, but is this real? Or is this artificial?

Jess Von Bank (19:42):
We have to stop this slavery to the screen and this slavery to work thing. Our notifications going off in all of our work tools are like this Pavlov’s dog thing. We just jump all the time and that is not a way to live. And we have to do it for each other, one person can’t do it because then they look like the rogue, like, “Why do they get to not check in on weekends?” Well, none of us do, please don’t check in on your holidays, please don’t check in on your… We have to agree, there has to be some sort of handshake and consents around this that we’re going to respect each other and have some healthy boundaries.

Katrina Collier (20:24):
It’s funny you say that, because it’s so much of what I teach in my mastermind, it’s all about boundaries setting, and confidence and being a bit fearless… Says the two women who are really fearless. But the pushing back on that like you say, “Is it really urgent?” So, the hiring managers that drop that jobs back and it’s like, Do you ever ask them when they need it filled by? Do you show them how many other roles you’re working on? Do you ever push it back?

Jess Von Bank (20:48):
Right.

Katrina Collier (20:50):
Well, really? So, you’re saying, it’s almost like, “The job’s in, I’ve got to jump.” Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe you could wait three weeks.

Jess Von Bank (20:57):
Yeah.

Katrina Collier (20:59):
Actually they could wait three weeks while they go and check internally.

Jess Von Bank (21:02):
Yeah [crosstalk 00:21:03].

Katrina Collier (21:02):
… WORQDRIVE and [inaudible 00:21:05]

Jess Von Bank (21:05):
Or the business needs to be more responsible. I used to recruit for a Fortune… Well, I’m going to narrow it down really faster, a Fortune Five company. And the recruiting department was the last to know when a huge contract was signed, that required a new hiring class, but yet we were expected to deliver it in six weeks. You can’t tell me you didn’t have that contract in the pipeline, and you knew when it was going to close, and you knew when this was going to come down. There can be better planning on behalf of the business. And why don’t we have pipeline again? Don’t even get me started on pipeline. I mean, we’re going to start recruiting today, there’s no pipeline built for this. When we know that this is the kind of talent the business routinely needs, and these are the growth goals of the business, so we’re probably going to need a few of them this year. We-

Katrina Collier (21:58):
That thing with the TA department, the people that bring in the people and the people make the company succeed, right?

Jess Von Bank (22:04):
Yeah.

Katrina Collier (22:04):
Simple. It’s really simple. But let’s not give them the money for the tech to have a pipeline, or the money for the training to know how to talk to people properly or be fearless and push back and all this stuff, it frustrates me.

Jess Von Bank (22:16):
Yeah. I have this conversation with one of my favorite TA tech providers out there. I think automation is so, so key. And I know your book is called The Robot-Proof Recruiter. I’m not talking about making recruiters robots, I’m talking about helping recruiters assist, help recruiters by giving them good tools to make them more efficient and smarter about their job. I mean, this is like, give me a recruiter assistant and that might be a tool, it might be a better process. It might be a better approval process. There’s so many ways we can assist the job of the recruiter to make sure that they have the time and the skills and tools to be strategic.

Katrina Collier (23:01):
Yeah. I agree. By the way, I know it’s called The Robot-Proof Recruiter, but it is all about using tech to support the human, where it’s around the other way currently, blocking the human getting to the other human to just get hired. I use automation for like… It’s really funny how people are like, “Oh, you must be against it.” No, if you sign up to my newsletter, you will get four emails that all come out beautifully scheduled with a tool.

Jess Von Bank (23:27):
And they haven’t been a recruiter filling racks for a long time. But I have to imagine recruiters probably pick their job, if they’re in house or however they’re engaged in their trade. They probably pick that opportunity based on the tools they’ll have access to, if they feel supported and assisted and they get to work with a decent toolkit and tech stack, versus not, I mean, that’s your entire ability to be successful.

Katrina Collier (23:54):
Oh yeah. That’s definitely happening, because again, I’m saying that, “Oh, they’re not prepared.” So, through the interview process, mind you, I’m mostly saying ridiculous things, sources sent me the outline of what she had been through. I think it was something like, five interviews in a presentation, to then get no feedback for a senior sourcing role. Then I was like, “I’m sorry, what?” “What are we doing?” It’s a bit been out of shape.

Jess Von Bank (24:21):
It is. I’d love to see reform, and I think it will happen, it has to because what’s in place isn’t working right now. I think this is a perfect time for hiring transformation. And by that, I mean fix the processes that make this not strategic within the business, fix how we view and access and prepare talent to be optimized. I mean, the goal of the business, that’s why I say the recruiter is one of the most strategic roles in the business. Anybody who’s responsible for people, activating talent for business outcomes, I can’t think of a more important role within the business, but you have to create the environment where you can activate the right talent at the right time for the right need within the business.

Jess Von Bank (25:06):
And there’s a lot of things we need to de-silo, there are problems with how we’re able to do that. We don’t let talent flow, the right hand doesn’t talk to the left hand. We can’t properly deploy people on behalf of the business, if our own processes and tools and systems aren’t allowing us to actually see, what we have and what skills they have to offer and to do that matching and alignment in a timely fashion. And then there’s the process itself, of course you’re going to have to acquire talent from time to time. If they’re not, you’re going to have to go by if you can’t build or rent them for the business. So of course, there’s the buy scenario. And that experience for the recruiter and the hiring manager, as well as for the candidate could be much more elegant, much more respectful.

Jess Von Bank (26:01):
The current, it just shocks me the way we post the fact, and it’s pretty apparent right now in the current talent market where we set up these talent acquisition departments to be inbound. We make it, come find me. It’s this game, come find me, I’m hiring, but you have to do all the work to find me and to sort through my career site and my ATS and figure out what I call this mystery job, because it’s probably not what you call it, and then read this terrible job description that’s all about me, nothing about you. We play this sleuthing game with candidates. That’s gotten better, but you know what I mean? We still make this, you have to come find us, seek us out, instead of setting up this really good outbound function that builds a community and builds a pipeline of people that you’re probably going to be interested in at some point, and then making it easy for them to fall into your laps when you need them or for you to have a conversation with its time.

Katrina Collier (27:05):
That’s my other thing. Actually, I wish I could remember what website I opened, but I loved it. I opened it. It was definitely a HR tech, and I opened it and it said, “We are hiring.” And I refreshed the page and thought, have I landed on your careers page or something? No, it was the homepage, bold letters, “We are hiring.” And I thought, “Wow.” Usually it’s tucked down the bottom and you can’t find it. And yeah, I agree with everything you’re saying. And then the older responder doesn’t say, “Oh, you’ve just applied. It’s Jess. I’m your recruiter. I’m going to…” You know…

Jess Von Bank (27:34):
Yeah. I’m telling you, what you just said, consider eCommerce, if jobs were products, we would never buy them. The candidate experience of attempting to procure a job through all of the things that you make them procure it through, it’s ridiculous. If it took me that many clicks in two weeks and all these steps in a process to actually buy a product, I’d be like, “See you later, I needed this yesterday.”

Katrina Collier (28:05):
But its tough, isn’t it? Think about just an incident last night. So, I randomly live with my ex-husband, most people know, that’s odd but whatever, we get on. And my phone came up and said, “Richard’s been in an accident.” So, it was like, “Okay, his Garmin’s telling me that he’s stopped suddenly. Okay, fair enough.” So I open another app, and I can see he’s physically moving on his bicycle. Okay, so he’s fine. And I did that in two seconds, and I was slightest bit bothered. And if he’d stopped moving, I’d called him. But it was like, I can see. And I was like, “Why aren’t we making recruitment that?” We all know that we can check in on our family, we can know exactly where we are on the planet. Its-

Jess Von Bank (28:45):
Why can’t I see that my application… And if you’re at least [crosstalk 00:28:50] acknowledgement, that’s fine. But I should be able to see my application move through a hiring process, just like I see my pizza being moved.

Katrina Collier (29:00):
I really do wish the pizza place wasn’t across the road, so bad. And it will say, “In the oven.” And I’m like, “Dammit.”

Jess Von Bank (29:11):
If I could smell fresh bread or fresh dough baking, I wouldn’t have a problem.

Katrina Collier (29:16):
It’s very dangerous. I am actually moving in the next few months, which will be so good for my waistline, because I’ll have to actually come over here and get one. So, this has been absolutely amazing, of course.

Jess Von Bank (29:29):
Well, I loved catching up with you and talking about [crosstalk 00:29:32]. I know, definitely.

Katrina Collier (29:33):
I haven’t seen you in person in like, four years? Three years? Oh, bloody pandemic.

Jess Von Bank (29:35):
Too long.

Katrina Collier (29:38):
No, we have to rectify that. I think your boss needs to send you to London for a visit.

Jess Von Bank (29:42):
I have a reason to go too. I’ll have a new client there soon, so maybe we’ll make this happen.

Katrina Collier (29:47):
Oh, love it. We’ll do another podcast in person on the edge of the Thames or something, I’ve done that with Jim Stroud before. It was so much fun. So, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way? If they want to know more about what doing, Leapgen is doing, of course, WORQDRIVE?

Jess Von Bank (30:03):
Yeah. I mean, Leapgen.com is our website. We have a community, we call The Now Of Work, we broadcast live for the community every Friday, we have an online community. The Now Of Work, we actually, at the height of the pandemic, Jason Averbook and I looked at each other and said, “what do we do?” “How do we reach people now?” “How do we keep talking?” “How do we help in the moment?” And the future of work became The NoW of work overnight. Forget talking about the future, we’re in the here and now. And transformation is not just imminent, this is a matter of survival at this point. And so we formed a community called The NoW of work. We started talking, gathering, and now we’ve got over 17,000 people in this online space and this crazy number of people hang out with us every Friday. And just listen to us talk with interesting guests. We’ll have you on soon, just talk about what’s happening.

Katrina Collier (30:54):
What time is it at?

Jess Von Bank (30:56):
It’s at 12 noon central time. So 6:00 PM your time. And we have [crosstalk 00:31:03]

Katrina Collier (31:02):
… Of you having like, “Katrina come on at midnight.” And me going. I totally would as well.

Jess Von Bank (31:09):
Oh my gosh. I would encourage anybody to hang out in our community. It’s a safe space, we have each other’s backs there. We do to real talk about work, people, life, TA culture, what’s going on in the world. So, that’s a great place to engage with us. Other than that, I’m Jess Von Bank everywhere on social. I’m probably most active these days on LinkedIn, which makes me giggle because I never found it to be a super engaging platform, but I think it’s getting better or I’m using it better. I’m not sure.

Katrina Collier (31:41):
They gave me the newsletter function, and I’m like, “Wow, I’ve got 7,000 people subscribed to my newsletter.” If they take that away from me, like they did live and all of those, I would just,

Jess Von Bank (31:53):
I got live and newsletter and I haven’t done anything with either. So maybe–

Katrina Collier (31:57):
Live is not worth it, you’ll get two people watch. But the newsletter, as long as I made something really catchy, because [inaudible 00:32:04] recruitment isn’t broken. Because I don’t think it’s broken, it’s bent the hell out of shape though, and that caught attention. So you’ve got whatever you come up with, you’re a marketer you’ll come up with something [crosstalk 00:32:13]

Jess Von Bank (32:13):
Now I feel challenged to do my first newsletter on LinkedIn. I’ll do it.

Katrina Collier (32:18):
Make it once a fortnight or something, don’t make it too stressful. Once a month, if it’s too stressful.

Jess Von Bank (32:22):
Yeah.

Katrina Collier (32:23):
But that’s been quite cool, but I just hope that they don’t turn around and take it away because I just-

Jess Von Bank (32:27):
Well, I love that they’re trying new features. I mean, it’s a professional networking site and there’s nothing we need more than to connect around work and jobs and opportunity and just helping people. This is such a right time for change in making good improvements because we have to, yes. But because we should have. So, let’s do it.

Katrina Collier (32:44):
Yeah. And professional doesn’t mean you can’t have your cat and your dog photos and your children and every other part of your life in there as well.

Jess Von Bank (32:51):
Absolutely.

Katrina Collier (32:52):
[inaudible 00:32:52] out there for the Facebook listeners.

Katrina Collier (32:55):
Jess, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Jess Von Bank (32:58):
Thank you. I so appreciate it, I hope you have a great weekend.

Katrina Collier (33:01):
You too.

Jess Von Bank (33:02):
Thank you.

Katrina Collier (33:04):
Thank you for listening to the Hiring Partner Perspective (Unedited) Podcast, proudly supported by the people at WORQDRIVE. Hopefully you really enjoyed what you heard and have left feeling inspired. And if so, I would love your help to create real change. Please pass this podcast onto your hiring leaders and other recruiters in HR. Even share it on your social channels, if you feel so inclined, but the more reach we can get, the more change we can create. So please remember to subscribe of course, on your favourite podcast platform and do come and say hello at Hiring Partner Perspective on Instagram or a share behind the scenes of what’s going on. Until next time, thank you.