In His Own Words

Michael

Absolutely. I've spent the last 20 years working in the commercial HVAC and electrical services industries. Primarily, what we do at 2020 Search Partners is help these service clients find the key part of the recurring revenue engine, and that role is often a direct sales rep. The sales rep could be someone used to selling an intangible service, someone good at business development, but also good at building relationships. That is a hard combo to find in sales reps because you need someone who understands how to talk to a financial decision-maker, how to look at the cost of operations, and more importantly, how to drive the contractor's overall recurring revenue model. 2020 Search Partners has been around for the last six years focused primarily on that, looking for the key components to help drive a contractor's service revenue model, which basically creates a recurring revenue engine for them outside of their construction division.

Michael

We absolutely love using EasySource, and the reason we were excited to give it a try was that we were having nothing but frustrations with LinkedIn. LinkedIn being the dominant candidate sourcing platform, they're the giant gorilla in the room; you can't avoid them, you can't go around them, it's there. What we were finding was that our searches in LinkedIn would either produce spot-on results, mediocre results, or results that were completely irrelevant to what we were looking for. Over the last couple of years, the results tended to skew more towards irrelevant, where we were having to spend copious amounts of time going through multiple pages to find the candidates we were looking for. The attraction to EasySource is that it takes that sourcing time, the time to go and pinpoint that exact candidate profile we're looking for, and eliminates most of the frustration. It makes it much quicker and easier to find the exact candidate profile we are looking for. With EasySource being an AI tool, what we found is that the more specifically you can dial into the particular profile you are looking for, the better the results are. EasySource has absolutely blown our expectations away; we dial in exactly what we need for such a unique profile, and we get the candidates we are looking for much quicker, and they are mostly relevant. It basically takes LinkedIn and sources LinkedIn better than LinkedIn sources LinkedIn.

Michael

I think that AI is good at enhancing judgment, not necessarily replacing it. Our business is really a high-stakes driven business as far as who we recruit; you cannot automate the decision, but you can use it as a tool. If we are looking for someone who has the DNA to be a successful hunter that can generate half a million to a million dollars worth of recurring revenue every year, that still requires human evaluation. I can tell AI the profile type I am looking for, but you don't know if that candidate has what it takes until you actually get human eyes and ears on them. I think AI is becoming pretty powerful at finding patterns and surfacing the correct candidates, and EasySource has certainly helped us do that. Instead of spending hours digging through LinkedIn like we were previously, we can put in a search and within 10 minutes we have the relevant information. AI does a lot of the heavy lifting on that stuff, but it still requires us to get on the phone, have those conversations, and listen for those small cues that a machine is just not going to pick up on.

Michael

Honestly, it comes down to three things: with EasySource, it's all about precision, speed, and execution. The other thing we really liked about EasySource is that it's not just a sourcing platform; it's a candidate outreach platform. No longer are we beholden to InMails, which 95% of people on LinkedIn don't even bother checking. EasySource allows us to build a campaign with multiple touchpoints, which could be LinkedIn connections, emails, or phone calls. We can set up a cadence, and EasySource AI will help us write those particular messages depending on what the candidate profile is. It personalizes messages and references stuff on the LinkedIn profile that shows we've actually looked at their information, rather than just blasting out a gazillion connection requests to irrelevant people. It helps us build the pipeline much faster; what used to take a week to map out the candidate profiles in an area now takes an hour, which really cuts down and shortens our sourcing time. Aside from just finding the candidates and building that outreach platform, what EasySource does really well is let us drive the conversation. I can see who I've contacted, when I've contacted them, if they've replied, how they've replied, whether it was positive or negative, and what the last message communicated to them was, so I know exactly where to pick up the conversation when they are ready to get on the phone.

Michael

I think it really boils down to getting out of it what you put into it. If I were to advise anyone else who was shopping for a platform to do something similar, I would steer them in the EasySource direction. The best results you are going to get really come down to how precise you are with what you tell the instrument you are looking for. It's just a tool like any other tool, and you can use the tool correctly or incorrectly. Being as specific and detailed as you possibly can regarding what you're looking for—whether it is attributes, skill sets, or company profiles of where the candidates have worked in the past—is going to produce the results you are looking for. If it doesn't, you can get together with EasySource's customer success team, figure out where you went wrong, and explain to them what you're trying to accomplish. You guys are great at reaching out, walking us through those things, and helping us determine what to do in the future to get what we want.

Michael

Absolutely. This was fun. Is there anything else you guys want to talk about?

Michael

Wonderful. It has been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on, and I am happy to do this whenever you guys want.

Michael

Thanks. Bye.