Recruiting School with Daniel Benavides

Talking talent to me today is the Director of Talent at recursion Daniel Bennett, VITAS. Daniel, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Daniel Benavides 1:08
I’m great. Rob, thanks so much for having me on. I’m looking forward to this.

Rob Stevenson 1:12
It is a Friday at the time of recording will probably not be a Friday, by the time people are listening to it. But what is your week been like? Has it been mayhem? Are you winding down here at the end of the week?

Speaker 5 1:21
Yeah, Mayhem is a good word. It’s been a good week, right? We’ve had I’ve had folks here from out of town because I’ve got folks that work remotely. Good to see them. We’ve gone through onboarding, a couple of folks from our integrations or mergers and acquisitions that we’ve done to getting them integrated. And so it’s been a great week, looking forward to the weekend. And this is actually the first year that recursion will recognize Juneteenth on Monday as a company holiday. So we’re super excited about that to kind of encourage our employees to go out and educate themselves around systemic racism, educate themselves around where they can make an impact in the communities where they live. So we’re super excited about that. And so super excited to spend the day Monday learning and doing some work there. So yeah, it’s a good week, looking forward to the weekend to

Rob Stevenson 2:07
I’m glad to hear that about Juneteenth. Do you have kind of in general, other sort of education, l&d stuff surrounding DNI and recursion? Yeah,

Speaker 5 2:16
really? Good question, Rob. I think from an l&d perspective, I would say no, from like, oh, we have these trainings and those types of things. But we have kind of an overarching inclusion council that I lead, and we do things on a monthly basis, just getting folks involved within the business around. This is a heritage month. It’s pride month right now. So we do things once a week around pride, and it’s around kind of follows our core values. So our overarching inclusion Council, so what we do is we like I was telling you, Rob, we don’t have anything from the perspective of really strict like l&d courses that will send folks through but we make resources available for our employees to educate themselves and learn everything from it’s a lunch and learn. It’s a podcast we recommend folks listen to we take the time to do and read an article and reflect. And then each week, so Pride Month, for example, is right now it’s June. So for Pride month, we’ll do something once a week. And they follow kind of our core values. So from one week, we’ll learn something new week two will reflect so we’ll do like a lunch and learn we’ll do those types of things. Week three is like we act so a call to action, whether that is writing to a senator, it’s signing a petition, it’s showing up somewhere, you know, those types of things, and then celebrate is our last week. And what we’ll do is we’ll support local bakeries, local artists, local folks in the communities in which we have offices and will support them. And so whether it’s we bring in treats, we bring in pins that people can wear that folks have made just anything along those lines so that we can still one we’re educating folks. And then two, we’re supporting the communities that we’re in. And so that’s a big piece of our inclusion model. And we try to do something once a month, Black History Month, Women’s History Month pride, indigenous peoples month, you know, those types of things as we’re moving throughout the year. What’s a big focus for us?

Rob Stevenson 4:04
Where did the inclusion strategy blossom from was the top down thing? Did this come from employees themselves and er, G groups or when it comes to inclusion?

Speaker 5 4:14
Yeah, good question inclusion. It’s very interesting. I will tell you that recursion is unlike any place that I’ve been to, I’ve worked at from the perspective of our inclusion, the way we talk about it, the diversity strengthens us, and all of those types of things, really great things from recursions perspective, prior to the pandemic. And I’ve been at recursion about two and a half years. So prior, I was not here when the pandemic started. But prior to the pandemic, we had a women at recursion group where we would host events quarterly, those types of things. And then when everybody went remote, we couldn’t host events and all of those kinds of things. And then when George Floyd and breonna Taylor were murdered at the beginning of 2020, you know, right, May of 2020, I believe there was is a big push for just getting information out into our organization around how the company believes things where we’re taking a stand where we would want our folks to show up. And so that’s where the inclusion Council kind of blossomed from. So it existed for about a year before I started. And then I started in mid 2021, and then took that over. And we have evolved it from the perspective of having conversations and all of those kinds of things to sectioning it out into these Heritage Month celebrations that we’re doing. So we have two er G’s right now we have a women’s erg. And then we have a pride erg. And where my goal is coming from, from a ERG perspective is I can only speak to my lived experience, right. So as we’re doing these monthly celebrations, and having these types of things, I can’t speak to the experience that our Latin ex employees have, or the experience that our black employees have, I can only speak to what I’m living and breathing. And so being able to have an erg group that is kind of focused on that pillar, or that marginalized group is so key to me so that we can ensure our policies are were inclusive, we’re showing up where we can in the community, we are showing up for these folks, not only within their growth and development, but from all our benefits, the way the building is set up, you know, all of those kinds of things is so important. And yes, there are pieces of it in the inclusion Council, what we’re doing outreach to individuals in those communities, but being able to have a strong kind of Employee Resource Group population to then walk through that and have that I think is really it’ll put us in a good spot. And I’m hoping we get there, right? Our women’s ERG just launched about a month ago. And then our pride one actually launched last week. So it is very new. Both are very new for us. But we’ve got a lot of momentum and super excited to kind of see where our ERG is land over the next six months. If we’ve got, do we have two really strong ones? Or do we have seven strong ones, whatever that’s going to be and we’ll be supportive? Either way as we kind of move through that.

Rob Stevenson 6:56
I’m glad you mentioned like where do they land thing because it is somewhat trivial to set up an erg by being like, hey, the here’s the ERG, here’s your conference room, you get once a month or something like Have at it, ladies. But what is your approach to making sure that an erg isn’t merely just a recurring calendar invite on someone’s G calendar is actually a community? Yeah,

Speaker 5 7:20
there is an incredibly important piece of having an executive sponsor that believes in the value of diversity, equity and inclusion and that it makes us stronger. I think that’s really important. And again, recursion does an exceptional job of a top down approach from that perspective, giving your ERGs the autonomy and the flexibility as well as budget to make an impact. And I’m not saying like go out and give them $100,000 to operate. But I think giving them the autonomy to say like, Hey, we feel that this is where we can make an impact and that we can do these kinds of things. That’s so important, while also opening the door to having conversations around like oh, maybe our, you know, the example I will give us like we did a mobility session last year around we had folks kind of talk around like, oh, I can’t access this, or I can’t access those types of things, and just being able to have those conversations internally. And the next day our building was changed and we were updated is around having that conversation. And so I think Rob, pulling through what you were saying around that it’s not just we’re in a conference room, and we’re saying like we’re doing all of these types of things. I think it’s opening the door to having those conversations with your executive leaders, with your benefits team, with your people, operations teams to continue to move things through and bring people into the conversation to help them understand like, I can only talk about my lived experience, I can’t talk about the lived experience of various groups throughout the organization. So being able to open that dialogue and have those conversations so that folks can feel that they can make an impact. And again, we encourage that you don’t have to just do things internally as well, if there’s an external event that you want to attend, if there’s an external event that we want to host as an organization, obviously ensuring it aligns with our core values, and our comms strategy and all of those types of things. But that’s a great option for folks to get involved as well and make an impact. Is it important

Rob Stevenson 9:09
to call out to folks, for example, Hey, we are launching the pride employee resource group. This is not just for people who identify as LGBTQIA plus, right, like, if you’re heterosexual, you’re still welcome at this thing. In fact, it’s encouraged that you come and you, you know, are curious and respectful and etcetera. Do you need to call that out for people, but to make sure that they know it’s not just for the people that in group? Yes,

Speaker 5 9:35
absolutely. And that’s one thing like our ERG. So we asked them to write a charter to kind of get started. So from the perspective of like, what’s your mission? How are you going to make an impact? What’s your outreach process and those types of things that we call out ally specifically, that there is, you know, systemically marginalized groups and it’s not that you don’t want to continue to put the work on underneath which groups that we have to a high tide rises all boats Rob, like I mentioned. And so being able to bring allies into the conversation, everybody can come to the conversation, get curious, ask questions, ensure that they’re kind of like, oh, or maybe people have a bias, but they’re like, Oh, I think this about this. And so coming to conversations and bringing that out into the open kind of saying, like, Come learn about this topic, or come learn about this, and you can sit in the back of the room, you can listen, you can be present, that is all up to you. But I think being able to create that space so that folks can come, whether they’re allies, they’ve got questions, they’re doing all of those kinds of things. I think it strengthens the group, because you’re not just asking, you’re not putting more work on the queer community, you’re not putting more work on the black community, the women in the organization, you’re able to have those conversations and then so that somebody could say like, oh, wait, that’s my, but I do that all the time. Maybe I shouldn’t do that. Because then that will remove biases, and then it’ll help me understand like, okay, maybe the way I do talk to somebody, or the way I talk over somebody in a meeting, or, you know, cuz systemically, it’s just like, that’s the way I’ve always lived, or that’s what I’ve always done, and helping bring that into the forefront of the conversation I think will help people understand, which then will just strengthen the organization and our culture all around.

Rob Stevenson 11:18
This is why I wanted to bring up the ally ship question because it’s delicate. Like, as you said, you don’t want your ERG to just become like a lunch and learn for the people who don’t identify, it’s like, oh, we’re gonna burden our black employees with educating our non black employees on their life experience. It’s like, okay, now it’s just like you have here’s a scenario, what if you have 12, LGBTQIA plus people at your company, and then 50 allies want to show up to the erg? It’s like, is that now a safe space? Like, are those allies like voyeurs? I don’t know, like, maybe that’s a, maybe that’s a problem. It’s like, oh, we’ll cross that bridge, when we come to it. Like, it will be great if we had the problem of too many people not wanting to learn you have too many guys. Yes. Do you see what I mean, though? Isn’t that like, isn’t that a risk? You want to prevent it from becoming that, don’t you?

Speaker 5 12:06
Absolutely. Right. And that’s where I think kind of talking through as we’re recommending folks get ERG started is that you’ve got, and we’re not saying like, you have to have 50 people, 50 people of this demographic that you have to do to sign up for an erg. But I think being being strategic

Rob Stevenson 12:21
or other 50 of you now your problems matter. Exactly.

Speaker 5 12:25
Yeah. Now you’ve got all these people. So now, okay, now? Well, listen, no, it is not that it is the opposite around like, we want to make sure that you’ve got folks in, you’ve got a good kind of I don’t want to say like core group, but you’ve got a strong foundation of individuals. And I think, Rob, if you’ve got 12 folks from the LGBTQIA community, and then you’ve got 30 allies. I think having people show up and have that conversation. Yes. Like you said, are they voyeurs? I don’t know, right. But I think being able to hear the conversation of those, say, 12 employees, and they’re saying, like, Oh, this is the impact that this is having outside of the company, or this is the impact that it’s having inside the company, me, as somebody who maybe doesn’t experience that every day? How do I then continue to have the conversation internally externally, how I show up who I support, where I grocery shop, whatever that may be. That’s how you change the world. That’s how you make an impact is that you bring everybody along the journey. It’s not just on the backs of one underprivileged or marginalized group, we’re all working towards the same goal and just making the world a better place.

Rob Stevenson 13:31
Yeah, I guess the true north is always does this erg serve the group? It’s meant to the group who founded it, right? And then you can ask the people who are running it ought to ask that question constantly. And then they can confront the problem of too many allies if they win. And if it ever is an issue. Yeah. But again, it’s just like, Let’s protect these spaces meant to be for it’s meant to be a safe space, like it should be protected. And even in the best of intentions, I can see how enough people not in that group would make the people in the group feel like but I thought this was supposed to be a space for people who understand the problems that like we’re going through, you know, so I know this delicate thing I want to call out but I

Speaker 5 14:07
have yet to see that happen in my career, Rob, truthfully, around more allies. But what a problem to have. I think if people were like, yes, like we’re here for this kind of thing that would be but I think it’s more around one of the things that we tend to see is that it’s a lot of the same people that show up to the events all the time and like having conversations. So again, how do you continue to extend that olive branch to bring folks into the conversation so intriguing?

Rob Stevenson 14:29
I’m very intrigued. But Yeah, same. Well, Daniel, we jumped in at the deep end here, which is great because we’re just you know, having so much fun chopping it up here, but we should probably get to know you a little bit. Would you just mind sharing a little bit about your background and how you wound up in this current role?

Speaker 5 14:44
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I always love to talk about you get me on a topic. I love Adidas, Shania Twain, amen. So all things diversity, equity inclusion, I met on that too. So but so I like I mentioned I’ve been at recursion for a little over two years. I started in Our role I was recruited to do our recruiting operations. So back in 2021, and early 2022, we went through enormous growth like we went from, I think it was just a little over 200 employees to over 500. And about a year. So we grew a lot. So a lot of growth from that perspective. And so coming in and looking at a lot of our processes, we had an ATS, we had all of those kinds of things. But we were not leveraging that our ATS that way we should be we were not leveraging data the way we should be, you know, all of those kinds of things. And so it was a really, an eye led recruiting teams before I had not done strictly operations, each of my talent management roles had been having a piece of operations, but I had never owned it specifically. And it was a lot of fun, right being able to come in to find process to find structure, set up our ATS the way we want it to build LinkedIn build process, leverage data, as we’re looking at, like, oh, what’s our time to fill? Or what’s our time to schedule? And how do we make an impact to kind of change that, and nobody had done this role before. And so it was really a lot of fun to come in and make it my own and take us where we are. From there, I moved into our director of operations. And then I have since moved into our Director of Talent Acquisition. So I lead our talent acquisition org right now, as well as a piece of our people operations function as well. So looking at all of our processes, our systems, our data, and just ensuring that we’ve got kind of all of our ducks in a row there, our systems are talking to each other, we’re working smarter, not harder. And that’s the other thing is like I’m not, I don’t want to just buy a system just for the sake of buying a tool or a system just to connect it, we’ve got tools right now that we can have talk, if we’ve got tools that we can remove steps in our process and industrialize functions and process, let’s do it right. And one thing my team will always hear me say they’re probably tired of hearing me say it is like, the only way we’re going to find out is if something works as if we try it. So let’s try it. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, we know that we’ll pick ourselves up or dust ourselves off. And we’ll try again. And recursion operates a lot that way as well. And so it’s been such a breath of fresh air to come in and have the backing of an organization that thinks that exact same way that it’s like now I can do this, we got this and we’re going to fail fast. And then we’re going to learn just as fast as well. And then we can know for next time. So that’s recursion, pre recursion. I was an analyst years and years and years ago, and I thought that was my dream job, right, like living breathing Excel spreadsheets. You know, there’s nothing better than writing an Excel formula the first time and it works like chef’s kiss that

Rob Stevenson 17:29
it’s like getting a star and Marya

Speaker 5 17:31
Exactly, exactly. Like I did it. I leveled up. Yeah. And so I did that for a variety of years for Comcast. And then I worked very closely with Comcast recruiting in house recruiting team, because I did our forecasting and scheduling for our call center. And so I would say, Hey, we’re low on this many people that I need to work weekends. So can you go out and recruit folks and do all those kinds of things. And so I worked very closely with their team, and they had a recruiting coordination position open up, and they’re like, Hey, we think you’d be a great in this role. I was like, I don’t know. Like, I don’t know if I want to do. I’m an analyst. Yeah, I’m an analyst. I love what I’m doing. And then I applied and got the job. And the rest is history. I moved up in recruiting at Comcast, did some high volume contract work for a little bit, worked for ancestry. And then CHG, which is a local healthcare staffing company here and then recursion. And it’s been so interesting, because I love spreadsheets. I love data. And I love people. And so being able to morph the two of those together in talent acquisition and recruiting, it’s like the best of both worlds. And I couldn’t have I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had. And being able to leverage, like I said, the amount of data that we do need in talent acquisition and leverage and talent acquisition to then make informed decisions on the back end, and our systems and all of those kinds of things. I’ve been able to merge the two and it’s been awesome. So my biggest takeaway is like, I still get to mess around with spreadsheets and data. And then I get to interact with people every day. And so I love it. I love what I do.

Rob Stevenson 19:03
So that moment where the Comcast recruiting team was like, we had his role, we think you’d be a good fit. And you’re like, Well, I like these people. But I’m an analyst. I like my job over here, but you still applied. So what like what made you say, You know what, go on all apply and see what happens.

Speaker 5 19:18
I think it was their recruiters. They were incredibly persuasive and getting me to apply. But it was more around. I was young in my career at that point, still, right kind of going to school, is this what I want to do, what do I want to do? And I had a couple of family members that were in HR at the time and I was like, That looks fun. Like that could be fun. And then I sat down actually, I remember doing job shadowing with the team, right sitting down with them. I think I went to a career fair, or I it was either a career fair, I sat in on a couple of phone screens, and then just did like a two hour like Job Info Session with each of them. Like what does this mean? How are you doing this? How can I make an impact and I was hooked. But right, I was like, I think I could do this. I love people. I’m that kind of person that I’m like, I will meet you in the grocery store. And I’ll know your life story in 30 seconds. So it’s like, that’s my, I love that and love being able to connect with people and talk through, what are they looking for? What do they want to do? And then being able to help them get to that point was really helpful. So I think it’s, it clicked for me from that. It was like, That’s my sweet spot, being able to connect, work with people help them see their true passions within their career, and I’ve never looked back.

Rob Stevenson 20:30
Is that what you say? In the grocery store? When people ask you why you do what you do?

Speaker 5 20:34
I do, and then they walk away, because they’re like, that was way too much. Too much too soon. That’s you. It’s not you. Or it’s not me. It’s you like I’m out of here. Yeah, exactly. So,

Rob Stevenson 20:47
no, that’s a great reason. Thank you for sharing that, that you you know, I love to hone in on that reason why people stick around doing this job because a lot of people find it by accident. You know, people aren’t like majoring in recruiting sciences in college, and then going and getting a recruiting internship and blah, blah, blah. It happens by accident. But then people, people stick in the job because it’s a great career.

Speaker 5 21:09
Yeah, it’s so funny, because people say that all the time, Rob around like, oh, did you just wake up one day and be a recruiter? I was like, No, truthfully, I didn’t even like know what the job was when I was looking at it. And then I truly fell into it and fell in love with it. And it’s so funny, because everybody that I’ve talked to that lands in a recruiting gig, it’s the same story, right? I fell into it. And here we are, we all stuck. We all stayed in. So

Rob Stevenson 21:33
yeah, and we have to do something better. I mean, launching, like curriculum in colleges that feels like, look, we have a long shot. But like what if, like sending someone like you to career fairs and be like, Look, I’m here representing recursion, but really, I’m representing the trade of recruiting like, Have you ever thought about doing this? Like, here’s the job like, this is an option for you?

Speaker 5 21:56
Yeah, I’ve actually that’s a great idea. Do you want to start that? Rob, we could do that a recruiting trade school me and you we could You could be the voice? And then I could teach people?

Rob Stevenson 22:06
And you can be the face? Yeah, yes. Done? Exactly. No. I’m

Speaker 5 22:09
curious. Because I wonder why that’s always been because I remember years ago, right? There was a local college here in Utah in Salt Lake City. They had a sales degree. And I was like, that’s, that’s interesting, right. And so at Comcast, that’s where we would go is like, because we needed door to door salesman. So we would go and be on campus and recruit sales folks that were in that program. And why isn’t there a recruiting program, as I’m kind of thinking out loud, like we should do? There should be something like that. Because I think even within HR type courses, and those kinds of things, they just touch on recruiting and talent acquisition that I think, whether it’s a and I don’t even know if there’s an exact science to recruiting either, right? I think it’s all kind of what works for you as an individual contributor, what works for your company, it’s all kind of it varies, as you’re moving through that and having those conversations with folks. So I’m talking about two sides of my mouth, where it’s like, yeah, I could have a recruiting school, or it’s like it works. And as you’re kind of job shadowing, connecting with people, but that’s where I think the sense of community also comes in, right? Like you’re able to connect with folks that kind of say, like, Daniel, how did you get into this or so and so how did you get into this? And kind of, I actually had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, where somebody I know, had gotten into a agency recruiting job and then was laid off and they were like, do I still want to go into recruiting? Like I did this for six months? Do I like it? And so sitting down with them and kind of talking through, there’s a lot of avenues that you can go within recruiting? Where do you want to go and helping them understand kind of the full picture. And they were like, this makes sense. Like, this is where I could go, and this is where I would want to go. And so that was helpful. So I think just having that sense of community and doing outreach to people I think is important as well.

Rob Stevenson 23:47
What did you ask that person? Ask them? Like, what do they want to do? Or like you were kind of consulting them and coaching a little bit to help them hone in on that? How did you extract that from them? Yeah, I

Speaker 5 23:57
think the biggest thing that I asked them was like, what did they enjoy about the role? Right, because they had just fallen into the role, I guess we could say, like, we were just talking about Rob, they had fallen into the role specifically. And then as they were kind of going through and looking at it, they were like, Oh, I liked reaching out to people. I liked connecting with people. I liked learning about somebody’s background, and then helping them land somewhere. And it was very much like that’s recruiting, if that’s what you enjoyed about the job is connecting with people getting to know what they want to do in their career, getting to know what they want to do next. If you enjoy that you’ll enjoy a career in recruiting for the rest of your life. Because there’s something new every day you’re connecting with people, you’re learning something new about people and I think that’s really helpful. And that’s how I extracted that it’s kind of just talking through what you like, what you didn’t like, I think there’s pros and cons to every recruiting gig that you would jump into and so walking them through those types of things and then helping this individual understand like high volume recruiting, technical recruiting, corporate recruiting, agency recruiting versus in house like all of those types of things and helping them kind of see the full picture. That was really helpful. for them as well of like, okay, I was doing agency, but do I maybe I want to go in house? I don’t know. And so I think just again, opening that door to have that conversation is really important too.

Rob Stevenson 25:09
Yeah. Do you remember what they said they didn’t like? Was it just that they got fired?

Speaker 5 25:14
Yeah, laid off, right. Like that was the that’s fun. Maybe?

Rob Stevenson 25:17
Maybe I’m not cut up for this. Yeah,

Speaker 5 25:19
yeah, I think what they didn’t like, it’s so funny, you hear this a lot. Because I think if I remember what am I remember, I think it was sourcing, right, like sourcing and having that like putting your head down and sourcing on LinkedIn and those types of things, any recruiter, depending on who you talk to you, they may not like to source but and then I think it was the amount of I think it was high volume agency recruiting, if I remember correctly, I think it was more around just how many contacts you have to make, to kind of get something to stick. And then moving folks forward, where and I said, like, that’s not every recruiting role, like, right, you could be in house and it could be different. You could be doing high volume, you could be doing another agency gig where you are then responsible for going out and finding new business and all of those kinds of things. And so I think that was so if I boil it down, probably rejection is if what it was right, like people telling, you know, as you’re doing outreach, people telling, you know, as you’re getting to an offer stage, and all of those kinds of things. And so helping them understand like, that comes with the trade, that’s going to happen, but that doesn’t reflect on how good or bad of a recruiter you are. If people are telling you no timings everything, right.

Rob Stevenson 26:23
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just ask because these are the questions people need to be asking themselves constantly, whether they’re like happy in a role or not. What do you hate doing? What do you like doing? How do we find ways to do less of the former and more of the latter, and if you just like, come back to that, that’s, I think, for any career, that is just a way to feel more fulfilled. But I encourage people to do that to perform that introspection. That’s why I wanted you to kind of detail how you help that person do it. Cuz I think it’s an important thing for people, not just an a transition moment to be doing for themselves. Right? Absolutely. Well said, Well, here we are, Daniel, well, past podcast length, we’ve just kind of totally ignored all of the things we said we were going to talk about. But those are my favorite episodes, because you’re just too fun to talk to you. So we’ll have to have you back for a round two. So we can maybe get into stuff or just a whole bunch more stuff that we didn’t plan on talking about. But absolutely, I’m going to ask you to bring this episode home and delicately thread the needle here. In the end. What is the best career advice you ever received from someone else?

Speaker 5 27:23
Oh, I love this question. The best career advice I had from somebody else, I remember, it’s so funny. If you ever have those moments in your career, like, I remember where I was, who I was talking to, where I was standing in the office, like those kinds of things. And this moment, I remember it was I was at ancestry. And I was talking to my boss, actually, I reported it directly into our Director of Talent Acquisition, and we were trying to do, and I may jumble the details. But I think we were doing a sourcing event where we were, we just opened our office, a brand new office here in Utah. And we were going to do an open house. And so we’re like, let’s get tech talent here to kind of go through and make connections in the community. And I was like, I do not, I don’t have time, right. I don’t have time to source, I don’t have time to do this outreach, I don’t have time to do all these kinds of things. And I remember telling that to my boss, and she stopped me. And she said, No one is ever too busy to be innovative. And that has stuck with me for that was almost seven, eight years ago. And that has stayed with me. And that’s where I think what I was talking about earlier, Rob around like I’m telling my team around, like the only way we’re going to find something if something works is if we try it. And so be innovative question the status quo in that example that I was just giving around, you know, sourcing and all of those kinds of things. It was like doing Strategic Outreach, and being innovative about how we get folks in, and that has stuck with me for so long. And it’s kind of been one of my core values throughout my career that I then coach to my team around, like, let’s just do it. Like, let’s try it. Let’s try something new, let’s be innovative, and within talent acquisition, be innovative, right, whether that’s a process, whether that’s the way you’re outreaches, whether that’s the way your career pages, landing, whatever that may be just doing things a different way. Not that we have to reinvent the wheel, but do things just a little bit differently is that kind of sets yourself apart as you’re moving in and getting folks interested in your careers. And so that’s what I would say you’re never too busy to be innovative is what I would say is the one that I remember at least.

Rob Stevenson 29:17
That’s fantastic advice. Thank you for sharing that with me, Daniel. I love hearing that it’s so important because it’s like you can let yourself get bogged down in like the minutia. Yep. And you’ll stay busy and you’ll be really busy and you’ll feel like you’re productive and you’re doing your job, but you won’t have the opportunity to make these larger strides when you like take back and and take a chance to sort of reimagine everything.

Speaker 5 29:37
Yeah, and like I said, it’s like you don’t have to reinvent the entire wheel but just tweak things just here and there and see what reinvented start by reinventing a spoke exactly once spoke at a time you got it.

Rob Stevenson 29:47
So Daniel, this has been a delight. Thank you for being here and podcasting with me. I’ve loved chatting with you today.

Daniel Benavides 29:52
You bet. Thanks, Rob. Love to be back.

Rob Stevenson 29:57
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