March 1, 2021

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Chris Nichols:
Hello and welcome to the talent tide podcast, the show that ensures you have the information you need to adapt and evolve your workplace culture as you ride the wave of change and talent management. I’m your host, Chris Nichols. And today we’re going to be talking managed service providers vendor management and recruitment marketplaces with Ray Culver, the SVP and Global Head of Growth at TalentNow.

Ray Culver is a staffing industry veteran and Certified Contingent Workforce Professional (CCWP) with 26 years of experience in sales, sales strategy and sales leadership. Serving as the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Growth at TalentNow, a contingent workforce solutions company, Culver oversees the go-to-market sales and growth strategy, assists in developing the product roadmap and helps create and drive TalentNow’s vision. Prior to joining TalentNow, Culver held leadership roles with Scout Exchange, Randstad NA and ManpowerGroup NA, where he was instrumental in creating, and leading, national and global MSP Sales Channels. Ray is involved with multiple non-profit organizations throughout Southern California and serves as a strategic advisor with several startups throughout the US.

Welcome Ray. There’s a lot of a background there. But I want to thank you for being on the show.

Ray Culver:
Hey, Chris, how are you? Thank you for having me – when I sit here and listen to you talk about that, it makes me feel old. And I can see the gray here. So, I earned my credit.

Chris:
Well, I always tell people, whenever my when they’re reading my bios, I get super embarrassed. And I’m like, you really could have stopped reading about four sentences ago.

Ray:
I could not agree more.

Chris:
The only person that wants to hear all of that is our mothers!

Ray:
Exactly. They love it.

Chris:
Yeah. So, we have a lot to cover today. And I’m really excited to talk about your experience and where you’ve been and different things that you’ve done in your career because it is quite varied. And you’ve worked for honestly some of the largest recruiting organizations in the world. Right. And you’ve done those here in North America. So, I think that you have a great perspective on the external recruitment industry. And you know, what you’re doing with TalentNow in the startup space? I think it’s really interesting in comparison to being at a place like Randstad and Manpower, right, who are those global players, and I know you were at Scout, which was also kind of a startup in the last five years or so in, in the recruitment marketplace industry, which is, which is something that has really grabbed a lot of attention and some market share in the last five years. So, I hope we can touch on that a bit as well. But where I want to go first is – I need some help. Because there’s a lot of acronyms in in the recruiting world. We have MSPs and VMSs and ATSs and marketplaces. And honestly, I got to think that a lot of our listeners, outside of those in talent acquisition probably don’t have any clue what most of that means, other than seeing it as a budget line item. So, can you help me with these acronyms, and help me understand kind of the differences and where they all kind of play within that third-party space?

Ray:
I can, yeah. Yeah. So why don’t we… there are a lot of acronyms, and there are a lot that are evolving. So, let’s start at the top: so, MSP is your managed service provider, the MSP, you know, it really sits on top of a group of staffing suppliers who funnel into an end client. So, I’ll give an example: and if you think about, say, Microsoft, and you think about Microsoft has 1000s of staffing suppliers, who supply talent to them on a daily basis. And in between Microsoft and those 1000 staffing suppliers is your MSP. So, it just happens to be, you know, it’s a very large, global MSP. So, we will leave them nameless, but they kind of sit in between there. So, they’re the ones who hold all the contracts, they handle compliance. They’re really the ones who almost run interference for Microsoft, on a daily basis with talent with compliance and things like that.

Ray:
It’s funny because different flavors of MSPs, you have some where….  MSP programs where you can touch the client, and you have some where you can’t touch the client. So, there’s different rules of engagement for all the different programs. Stepping down to the VMS, so it’s a vendor management system. And that is really, it’s a technology and it’s a platform. And what it does is it allows the end client to load all of their staffing suppliers into one tool of record. So that really becomes almost a transaction-based system that records everything from time and attendance to expenses. All of the requisitions are again loaded into the solution. You know, the client reviews a lot of the candidates through the DMS. So, it’s very much a technology solution.

Now I’m running out of breath… marketplace. You know, there’s a couple of different kinds of marketplaces today. One is a talent marketplace. And that’s where the talent really will go in and build their own profiles. So that’s kind of like almost like an IC-type marketplace of independent contractors or freelancers. And then the other type of marketplace, which you touched on earlier with Scout is a recruitment marketplace. And that’s really somewhere where staffing suppliers, or independent recruiters will exist within the marketplace aspect of it and will funnel candidates up through the technology. So, whether you’re a talent marketplace, whether you’re recruiting marketplace, there’s still a technology solution that’s getting wrapped around some type of a need that the end client has.

Chris:
I think….

Ray:
That’s a lot.

Chris:
It was a lot. And I do think that the easy way to kind of explain it all is… is if you think of it as a roadmap itself, right? You have, you have organization over here, and then you have an MSP that kind of sits here as almost like a… as a, I don’t want to say bottleneck, because that makes it seem like it slows things down. Right.

Chris:
What it does do is it allows the organization over here to let somebody else manage all those staffing providers, because let’s face it, there is no one company that can supply all of the talent in every location that a particular company might have by themselves. It just it’s impossible to do. And anybody that thinks that that is the case is grossly mistaken, at the end of the day. And then you have the technologies that kind of could play either directly to the client partner or to the organization or through the MSP, right. So, the marketplaces can play through that MSP to a certain degree as well, potentially. Right.

Ray:
Good. Yeah. And you’re seeing more and more of that. You’re seeing where the marketplaces are actually building integrations with, say, a legacy VMS. So, a marketplace would plug into a VMS, which kind of sits underneath the MSP. And they actually, that marketplace acts as a supply in that program. So, the marketplace becomes a supplier of record. But really, you know, the marketplace is pushing those jobs and those requisitions out to… it could be, you know, hundreds of recruiters, it could be thousands of recruiters, however big the marketplace is and whatever the geo marketplace is, that becomes your almost your, that becomes your supplier is this huge marketplace.

Ray:
So, you’re seeing more and more of that happen as well. Fieldglass is doing some and has done some amazing things around the ecosystem, and really building out that digital partner network.

Chris:
Absolutely. And we work with Fieldglass some at endevis, as well, so I’m familiar with them. And it’s, what I think that is interesting about my industry, which endevis is a full-service recruitment firm, but we have Recruitment Outsourcing. And we have Contract Staffing and, and Professional Direct Placement as well. And so, what we’re seeing on is that our RPO group and our contract group have a lot more opportunities to work together today than maybe they had in the past. And it’s not necessarily because we’re pushing that, but organizations are saying, “We just need one supplier. We only want to deal with one supplier, right? Can you just take it over for us.”? And it’s kind of being lumped into this total talent solution, which allows an organization to outsource and just say, “You all take this”, which may mean that they’re using a third-party provider for everything, right? That’s totally realistic in today’s environment to do and to be honest, two third party guys talking to each other – I think we can both agree that we would prefer that. And we could also probably make some arguments that says that would be better for the organization because they need to go focus on whatever it is that they’re good at. Right? If they’re making widgets, go be the best widget maker that you can be.

Ray:
Absolutely. And to take it a step further, so we’ll keep talking about your organization endevis. That RPO group – if they were to go out and land a large project or a large client and they needed, let’s say overnight, you needed 100-150 recruiting resources. This is where the marketplaces are starting to really step in and say, “Hey, don’t go hire those 100-150 recruiters! Come through the marketplace and let the marketplace of recruiters act as your scale.” So, it’s like you’re starting to see solutions come together like that, where these marketplaces are supporting RPOs who are selling things, because it’s a way that they can scale up very quickly and in skill right back down. So, you’re starting to see the gig, you know, the ecosystem is getting smarter and smarter and smarter. And figuring out how to work together and how to leverage everybody’s strings, to give that in client a better, quicker, faster, sometimes cheaper solution.

Chris:
And I think the best organizations, that last thing you said, cheaper isn’t always better, right? And it’s important for organizations to understand that cost is relevant when you’re talking about talent.

Ray:
It is, I think, where I would say cheaper, it’s just like, “Can you can you do it faster by leveraging a lot of technology towards, not so much I’m saving you a dollar? Like, here’s a dollar in cash? I’m saving money, because I’m getting that position filled quicker for you, or, you know, just the efficiency. So, I think the industry for so long has focused on cost savings as how much hard dollars are you giving back to me? You shouldn’t look at it that way all the time, you should look at it and say, again, “Am I getting my positions filled quicker? How much quicker? What is the time to have that seat not filled? And if I can get it filled quicker by leveraging all these things…that’s a cost savings.”

Chris:
Absolutely. It’s almost like the recruitment ecosystem, right – has to be – if an organization understands the value of recruitment, and I’m a big believer in the Disney profit chain model, which says, if you put employees first and you have happy employees, you’re going to have happy customers, and those happy customers are going to equal dollars, right? And if you take it another step further, on the top side of happy employees, it’s how you’re bringing those employees into the organization, right? Who do they think that you are before they get there, and that sets the tone and the standard. And that gets into customer – candidate experience, right, and talking about the whole front end of the process. And organizations that are really invested in that, I think, are starting to understand that the cost is relative, because the outcome is more important.

Ray:
Yes.

Chris:
So, I know, we, I think you did a great job helping our listeners understand the difference between all these acronyms. So, I’d like to start at the top and go back to that partnership between an MSP and an organization. They’ve grown immensely in the past decade. And really, for the past 30 years, it’s kind of been an upward climb. But I think that especially in a post COVID environment, where consolidation and remote work and job losses, and all kinds of different things have occurred, I think you’re going to see even greater opportunity for growth in this MSP space. And you’re talking about the gig economy, right, and understanding how we’re going to manage contractors and vendors, etc. So, it’s evolving fast. So where are we right now within the MSP space? Like, what, what is best practices? How would I do it? Just broadly….

Ray:
Yeah. So I think you know, the MSP – it has, and I certainly, I want to be very careful here, just because you know, there are MSP through people who work within that world out there that are the true experts. So, I just kind of sit on the sidelines. But, you know, I think it’s come so far, I would say back, I think staff management, or there was one that was attached to the Ford Motor Company, that was one of the first MSPs that really came into existence. Since that, it’s amazing to see how the MSP has changed and evolved and how they’ve, you know, they’ve learned to work with these different technologies that we’re talking about. I think there’s still a good bit of evolution that the MSP has to do and that they’re going to be forced to do. Because if you read a lot of like SIA research papers, and just industry literature, the MSP is having to figure out, you know, what is their – why are they still in existence, like, you know, what is their value prop to the client. Because if you think about a generation one program, which most companies of size are well beyond gen one programs, but it’s like, you know, we want to save money back in the day, that’s the reason, we want risk mitigation, and we want, you know, compliance, we want things like that to be brought into our contingent workforce program. Most companies have achieved all those things. So, it’s like, okay, you know, and I get this all the time from my clients, you know, what are you doing for me lately? You know, I mean, like, how are we – how are you being innovative? How are you evolving? What are we doing? So, I think the MSP is having to really look and say, “Okay, how do I begin to work with, you know, direct sourcing? How do I begin to work with some of these marketplaces, and really figure out kind of what’s their next move?” With all that said, I mean, the MSP plays a very important part within the equation, though, because you said it earlier, they kind of act as  that middle layer, and they act as someone who can work with both a large supply base, potentially a global supply base. And they can work with a client, potentially a global client. So, if you have a client who has operations, you know, throughout the world, that’s going to be a very large MSP program team. And you’re going to have to be very specialized in each of those locations throughout the world, contractually, legally, everything like that. So I think the MSP plays a very important part, I don’t see that going away, I think they’re going to have to bend a little bit and figure out how to work with some of these new technologies that are up and coming.

Chris:
Right? Because I don’t even know where to take it. Because there are so many legacy systems, right. And I say systems, and it’s not just systems, but processes as well. Right. And you have Fortune 100 companies that have been using MSPs for decades now. And then you have startups coming into the space as well, and trying to figure out, “How do we leverage our, you know, our private equity money? How do we best utilize our resources here? It probably means let’s not go out and hire a bunch of TA folks internally, right? How do we leverage that?” And how, how do MSPs play into all of that I think is fascinating. So where do you see the most opportunity for evolution over the say, the next decade from MSPs?

Ray:
Yeah, I would say I mean, if you look at the MSP space, the…. again, a lot of the larger enterprise organizations, they’re already tapped. I mean, they’re on like, third generation programs or fourth generation programs. So, I mean, they’re, they’re well ahead. So, the MSP has really started to look at and I think will continue to look at that mid-market. So if you look at contingent workforce programs that are, you know, they have a spend of anywhere between, let’s say, five and fifty million annually, that’s where the MSPs are really going to start focusing a lot of their energy. And when you do that, you really have to look at your operating model, because you don’t have 100 million, 150 million, 200 million pumping through your program. So, you’re having to say, “Okay, how can I find efficiencies within my program management teams, and models track and make this lower spin work from a profit perspective.” But so I think that’s where you’re going to see the MSPs really continue to grow as a mid-market, and I think you’re seeing a lot of smaller, I shouldn’t say smaller, you’re seeing a lot of mid-market MSPs that are just being born, and they’re coming to market. And that’s all they’re going to do is focus on midmarket. So again, these large legacy players, you know, like your Allegis and Tapfin and people like that, they’re having to kind of retool and say, “Okay, how do we, you know, how do we come down to this mid-market structure, and this mid-market spin level, and make it just as good as our other larger programs, and compete with these companies who are coming up in the space?” So, you have a question?

Chris:
Yeah. So, if… I’m going to throw this to you as a complete hypothetical, but say you are CFO or Chief HR Officer of a mid-sized company, right? What would you be looking for today in an MSP provider kind of generally? How would I make a decision on what’s best for my organization, if I want to help streamline these processes?

Ray:
You know, I think, and this is, I want to be clear, this is my opinion.

Chris:
I like opinions! Opinions are good, Ray!

Ray:
I think that a lot of it does come down to company culture and fit. Because if you’re, if you’re a smaller… you’re this mid-market client, then you’re going to be working very closely with this MSP because you’ve probably you’ve never had a program like this. So, you’re again, you’re generation one, your gen one. So, you’re going to be working very closely, you’re going to be learning a lot from this MSP. This MSP is going to have teams who are working with you. So, I think a lot of it is company fit. I also think a lot of it is if I’m that CFO or that CHRO, I’m going to be looking to say, “Okay, how do you – I’m going to go back to technology, everything goes back to technology these days – who do you have partnerships with? How do you work with technology? What can you bring to me? So, like what can you solution around here. Because if I’m a mid-market client, and I have an RFP out for an MSP – usually you’re not going to have the same level of level of expertise in your organization that you can put an RFP out for an MSP and really evaluate that from a speed perspective and be able to put out one for technology. So, you really need to rely on MSP to bring – who is a good VMS to bring? Who is a good direct sourcing partner to bring? So, you’re looking at the complete solution that they can bring.

Chris:
Yes. And that’s what’s fascinating about RFPs, in general, right, is that, I would say that we get them sometimes at endevis as well, and some we choose to participate in and some we don’t. But they are often vague. I think that they’re vague because the wrong people are asking the questions on the RFP, right. And there’s a lot of information that that needs to be understood about how that space plays. And to your point, the VMS that comes along with an MSP is important, because that’s where a lot of the end user application is probably going to be taking place within your organization. Correct?

Ray:
It is. And I mean, when you step up into the enterprise level program, you find a lot of MSP, let’s say agreements and VMS agreements separately. So, I mean, they easily will go out to complete separate RFP for those two purchases. And they remain like that, where, you know, you see a lot of movement in the space. If an MSP loses a certain client, chances are they’re going to retain that VMS, that client is not going to leave the VMS, they’re just going to break up with the MSP, get a new MSP and the MSP will manage the VMS. Within the smaller mid-market, you’re seeing a lot of MSPs that can kind of bring that technology along with them. There might not be a direct contract, you know, directly with the end client and the VMS, it could be a contract with the MSP and maybe just some type of kind of a rider, legal agreement. But it’s just –  it’s a lot more, “What is the entire solution that you can bring to me?”

Chris:
Absolutely. And I think that’s a good segue into HR tech, because it is exploding. I feel bad for HR leaders, because I can’t imagine the number of emails that they get daily from HR tech companies, right? It’s kind of like the wild wild west, in HR right now. Because there’s a there’s a plenty of opportunity. And in software as a solution companies are seeing HR as a great revenue source. And so, you have startup companies popping up. And we’ve already mentioned plenty of acronyms, but we have legacy systems that that organizations are, you know, trying to move away from, to try to find maybe a more cloud based system or a system that integrates within more of the technology stacks that they already currently have. Right, because I think we understand, unfortunately, that some of the organizations that are using older technology are outdated, and unfortunately, it’s probably significantly harming their TA ability right now, because it’s not cross functional usage amongst, you know, the right people. And so how do all these tech platforms integrate within legacy systems in the companies? What do you think are some best practices companies and leaders can take with them as they evaluate what’s next for themselves?

Ray:
You know, I think they should definitely look at, and you just touched on it, the integrations, I mean, if you, if you as an HR tech platform, whether you’re a VMS, whether you’re an SOW solution, you’re a marketplace, if you don’t have integrations directly built, you know, how easy is it for you to kind of get those built and work with some of these other systems. I think that as the end client is evaluating some of the tech that’s out there, you know, they need to look at again, how do they work together? For instance, the VMS, does the VMS have the ability to have direct sourcing platforms directly in their environment? Or is it that the end client has to be in the VMS, and they have to log out or be in a whole different system? Do they talk to each other? Do they integrate, can you see talent from the direct sourcing platform in your VMS? Does it look like a supplier? You know, just how friendly are they to one another. I go back to Fieldglass – Fieldglass is doing a great job of building out their ecosystem. They’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money over the years to build out that digital partner network. And within that, you know, there are marketplaces and all sorts of different platforms that can plug directly into a program. That’s powerful.

I mean, that’s, you know, that’s important to look at, if that’s important to you as the end client. I think you’re seeing a lot of the smaller players. (I’ll plug my company –  TalentNow is one) you’re seeing a lot of the smaller players coming up who are saying “We have the ability to integrate. We have the partnerships in place – 100% seamless to the client.” But we stepped back and said, “Okay, do we really need to have partners for all this? Or why can’t we just build it internally? Like, why can’t we just bring one system to the client that has multiple different things that typically, and up until this point, you would have to go to multiple different platforms for.”  So, you’re seeing companies who are getting smarter and smarter – goes back to the very first part of our conversation. The ecosystem is evolving so much, and end clients and technologies, you know, they’re having to evolve and figure out, you know, how do you make it easier for the client to buy?

 Chris:
Absolutely. And my advice to organizations right now, because everything’s evolving so quickly – at endevis, we have went to this model as well – we’re no longer signing agreements with any organizations for more than a year, from a tech stack perspective. Because so much changes so rapidly, that we don’t want to be caught with outdated technology, right? We just can’t afford to. When we partner with an organization, especially the RPO level, the expectation is that we’re bringing them the tools and technologies that would be difficult for them to implement, or they don’t know how to implement. And so, we have to be there for them to make sure that the tools that  they have are cutting edge, right. And so that flexibility allows us – and I would tell organizations, enterprise companies the exact same thing, don’t – avoid signing long term agreements. However, I will say, don’t change an applicant tracking system, just because your recruiting is not going well. I don’t know how many times, you know, organizations – somehow, and God bless ATS companies, because they must be really good at selling their product. But so many organizations think, well, if we just change the ATS, that’ll solve all of our problems. And that could not be further from the truth. The problem is much further upstream than the toolbox that you’re using.

Ray:
No, I agree, and I think that the –  you’re hearing so much in the industry now about, you know, different talent channels and multiple talent channels, and where do you find your talent? How do you find your talent? And, again, kind of going back to even the ATSs and stepping into the VMSs – I think the winners are going to be the ones who are able to bring to the end client the ability to access multiple talent channels, through that one solution. Yeah, I think that’s the way of the future. And I think if you asked a lot of very, very smart consultants and just thought leaders in our industry, they would tell you that that is the future  – is to be able to access to multiple talent channels within one thing. And it be seamless. I mean, it’s got to be a seamless experience,

Chris:
That is the most important piece of it, because it – it does not behoove anyone to work in multiple systems just to try to find and do, you know, do talent correctly, right. And that goes back to even an HRIS. Like, all of these tools from an HR, under the HR kind of umbrella, without them working together, your data is not going to be good, you’re never going to be able to like analyze where you were, where you are, and where you’re going without some form of integration. And the companies, the tech companies that are willing to integrate with the systems that you have, and are willing to go through that effort of making those integrations happen, I believe, are the ones that are going to grow rapidly. And the ones that are refusing or putting up walls to integration, are those that are going to suffer the greatest losses. What are your thoughts about that?

Ray:
No, agree, I think that the more partnerships different technology solutions can have and the more that they can figure out how to – how to play together how to, to some extent sell together, you know, where it makes sense. If I’m going into a client, and I’m helping my client to kind of understand the entire landscape, if I have trusted partners who I can bring in, if that’s a of interest to the client, it just makes sense that I would bring them in. Because we know we can integrate. We know we can play well together. We know how to do that. But I want to go back, you touched on a point, talking about like, integrations and data analytics and stuff like that. I do think you’re seeing more and more solutions come up these days. Again, I’ll plug TalentNow. You’re seeing it more and more – solutions come up these days that have some level of data and analytics built into the platform. And, you know, obviously I don’t think they – it’s not data that they necessarily own. It’s data that they’ve integrated with outside data sources to bring in. That’s very important, I think, for the end client to be able to log into their VMS or to log into whatever system, see market rate data. See, you know, if I am wanting to pay a developer 80 bucks an hour, is that above market? Is it below market? Is it right on point and talking about market data down to the city down to everything, they truly know that they’re making a very informed decision. You’re seeing that more and more, and I think you’ll see more of that.

Chris:
Yeah. And yeah, those data points are so important, I think as well, if you think about, and we weren’t going to talk about data that much. But now that we’re kind of beating that horse, while people are listening to us, or if they’ve, if they’ve tuned out by this point, they’re going to be missing some good stuff here, right. But I think the number one thing that an organization can do with data is define it. So many companies, they don’t even know what their time to fill is. Or if they say they have a time to fill, you talk to two different people and they might have two different numbers. Because this person over here is measuring the time that the req is open to the time and offers accepted and that person is measuring from, you know, when the hiring manager sent the job req requests till the time that the person is sitting in the seat. And there’s such a lack of data integrity, I guess you could say, within HR, which is actually kind of mind blowing, right? Because I think we usually think of HR being this legalistic black and white community. And finally, we’ve been slow to bring data integrity to HR, especially when it relates to kind of the softer side of HR, talent, acquisition, attraction, management, etc. We’re really good at the benefit side, the compensation side, but we’re still struggling with those softer sides. So that’s my soapbox.

Ray:
I’d like to add to that for just two seconds –  I do agree. I think coming from the industry and my past 26 years, you’ve seen so many, both internal staffing organizations, as well as clients who it’s like the time to fill or anything like that had a different definition, depending upon who you spoke with. And it’s like, you know, for the last 26 years, it’s like, “Can we not just all agree in the industry on kind of what this means?” Because they’re just one of those things that you kind of scratch your head out? Because it just doesn’t make sense. So I do agree, I think that you need to define the data, I think you need to understand kind of where it came from, what it means and like, what are the exact parameters that this data is representing. Within the MSP /VMS space, a lot of that is handled during kind of implementation. And really having, you know, very one on one conversations with the key stakeholders within the end client, is to say, “Okay, you know, almost like, I mean, you define this for me, and I’m going to define it for you. And let’s come to a common ground, to where when you see it within the VMS, you understand what it means, you know, and let’s really try and push that down within the organization to where your team understands that as well.”

Chris:
We’re maybe having a separate podcast episode about data, Ray?

Ray:
I will… I’ll refer you to someone who could speak much better than I can.

Chris:
So, we’re getting to the end here. And I do want to talk about TalentNow a little bit, right, because we don’t normally do this with any of our service provider guests. But you’ve been in the industry for 26 years, like you just mentioned, you’ve worked with the Manpowers and the Randstads of the world. So, tell me what intrigues you about what’s going on at TalentNow and why you decided to join that that organization right now, today?

Ray:
Yeah, you know, I think coming from –  and you mentioned it at the top of the program – so Scout, where I was before, that was kind of a very good taste of HR tech, and just kind of how, how, getting into it every day. I think that technology is the way of the future. And that you know, anybody if you read anything, you would see that way of the future. I think that TalentNow itself, we are really looking at a lot of your legacy systems like your VMS, like your SOW solution, and saying, “What is – what’s missing, like you know, what, what can we how can we evolve this? How can we make this a better user experience for not only the end client, but the MSP partner, and for the talent who’s going to exist within these different solutions?” For instance, SOW, the solution that we will bring to market, it will have. SOW management, project management, contract management, so you’re going to be able to do everything from creation of your SOW, all the way through till the very end of it. So, you know, we really try to take a hard look and say what’s missing. And let’s create that before we bring it to market. You know, the marketplace itself, it’s going to be extremely unique, because we’re going to focus on the entire career continuum. So, within the marketplace, you’re going to have everything from interns all the way up to experts. So all the way up to, you know, if you need to bring a SNE in for two to five hours to really focus in on a project and kind of give you thought leadership, you can get that through the marketplace. If you want to bring in a group of interns, you can get that through our marketplace. If you want to focus on just the career type individual, of course, that’s going to be there as well. So, I mean, we’re just we’re doing things differently. And that’s what’s exciting to me.  It’s just, I have done this for so long. So, to be with an organization or to be with a technology who’s like, you know, what, let’s look at everything that’s been done. And let’s – how do we improve upon that, that was exciting to get to go on that journey. So, it’s going to – it’ll be fun.

Chris:
That’s awesome. I’m excited to watch how you all grow over there and, and how you, you start to integrate within the rest of the recruitment and talent ecosystem, right? So, if people want to reach out to you, how can they – how can they find you, Ray?

Ray:
Yeah, they can. TalentNow.com is the website and then my email is [email protected]. You can find me on LinkedIn and also on Twitter.

Chris:
Like it! Ray and I – LinkedIn is definitely a great place to connect with Ray. That’s where Ray and I originally connected almost a year ago that it seems like so definitely reach out.  Connect/follow Ray on Twitter and LinkedIn. Like he said, if you have questions, reach out to him at talent now.com. As a guest, we hope to have you back on again in the future. Maybe we can talk about what TalentNow is doing in the marketplace., Ray. I appreciate you being on!

Chris:
For all of our listeners, please give us a like or subscribe depending on where you’re at. We are on every podcast platform imaginable, I believe. We’re also on YouTube now. And make sure that you comment below and tell us what you liked about the episode, what you didn’t like and how we can improve. Thanks for joining this episode of the Talent Tide Podcast and we look forward to chatting with you again soon. Thank you!

Ray:
Thanks, everybody.