In this special episode, brought to you by Landrum Talent Solutions, a national recruiting firm specializing in marketing and HR positions, we’re going to talk about a few things today, including the state of the job market and how elections, the economy, and AI are affecting the plans that hiring managers and job seekers are making for 2025.
Resources
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Transcript
Note: This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
Welcome to Season 6 of The Agile Brand, where we discuss marketing technology and customer experience trends, insights, and ideas with enterprise and technology platform leaders. We focus on the people, processes, data, and platforms that make brands successful, scalable, customer-focused, and sustainable. This is what makes an Agile brand. I’m your host, Greg Kihlstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on Martech, Marketing Operations, and CX, bestselling author and speaker. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services, and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com. Now let’s get on to the show. In this special episode brought to you by Landrum Talent Solutions, a national recruiting firm specializing in marketing and HR positions, we’re going to talk about a few things today, including the state of the job market and how elections, the economy, and AI are affecting the plans that hiring managers and job seekers are making for 2025. Joining me today is Sue Keefe, Corporate Vice President at Landrum Talent Solutions. Sue, welcome back to the show.
Sue Keith: Hi, Greg. It’s nice to be back.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, always, always love talking about this stuff with you. So for those that didn’t catch the last episode, where we talked, could you tell us a little bit about your role at Landrum Talent Solutions?
Sue Keith: Sure. As you mentioned, Landrum Talent is a national recruiting firm that specializes in two functional areas, marketing and HR. I lead our marketing practice. We help our clients place full-time contract and fractional positions on their teams. Everyone on our team, myself included, spent the majority of our careers in marketing roles. So we like to say we speak the language. I think our clients would agree that we’re pretty good matchmakers.
Greg Kihlstrom: Great, great. So start by talking about just the overall climate right now. I mean, you know, we’re approaching the end of the year and lots of stuff in play. You know, elections are in a matter of days, you know, so things are a little in flux. And You know, in some ways it can be a little incongruous, right? So there’s positive numbers like jobs numbers, inflation, interest rates down. So it’s not all bad news. Certainly there’s some not so great news as well, yet it seems like companies are still behaving as if it’s all bad news all the time. Is this what you’re seeing?
Sue Keith: Absolutely. I think I’ve been saying this for a while, but it feels like it’s been opposite day for almost two years now. In fact, I read a stat the other day that in October of 22, so two years ago, economists predicted there was a 100% chance of a recession. And I think they’re just finally now saying they may have been wrong. So despite all the positive indicators, the last two years have been tough. So you’ve got corporate profits at record highs. Side note, Goldman Sachs just beat estimates by a billion dollars on the top line. They reported earlier this week and reported a $3 billion profit. That was just for Q3 alone. The stock market has been at record levels. Consumers are still spending, seems like mostly on flights to Europe, despite inflation, which to your point has come down since. And, you know, houses are still selling for over list with multiple offers. I mean, and that’s despite interest rates being at, you know. maybe not record highs, but in recent times, record highs. So despite all this positive news, companies effectively retreated, or you might want to say retracted over the past two years. And in response to all these predictions and this constant drumbeat of warning calls about an impending recession. And as you mentioned, of course, the upcoming election has some companies on pause before they commit to investing again. It certainly adds some additional uncertainty into the market.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So what does this do to the hiring climate? I mean, obviously with uncertainty and all this, you know, again, it’s not like this is just happening. As you’ve said, and I’ve been experiencing as well, this has been for a couple of years, but you know, what does this do to the hiring climate?
Sue Keith: It does a lot. And as you mentioned, so it’s been about two years since we started, not to go back too far, but we had COVID in 2020, 21 hiring exploded. I’ve been known to say maybe a little bit recklessly. And then there was just this seismic shift to the other direction late 2022. And that’s where we still find ourselves. And it really was reaction to the recession fears that I just talked about. Companies pulled back on investments, investments in new technology. So I know a lot of folks who run startup SaaS companies who they just can’t, none of their clients are willing to take the risk on investing in something new or haven’t been willing to. Strategic consulting projects, the big consulting firms are really struggling, at least on the commercial side of their businesses and then notably in hiring. And not just hiring, the concern about the economy has meant not just frozen head counts, but many, many layoffs. And unfortunately, marketing teams have been particularly impacted. We probably talk to a dozen marketers every week at every level who’ve been laid off. Many of them have been looking for several months. So these can be really tough conversations. And on the flip side, this means that marketing teams are running really lean right now. And so what we’ve seen from a hiring perspective is a market increase in demand for interim contractors. So someone to come in on an interim basis, either fill a gap on your team, help launch a new campaign or a product, help with a big upcoming event. And it makes sense. Marketing leaders still need to get the work done. And if they can’t hire, they bring on interim support.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, again, there’s some short-term things like again you know this this episode’s airing a few days before before elections you know so there’s a lot of talk about that we’re you know towards the end of a calendar year you know there’s probably, you know, there’s lots of other factors at play here. Do you think it’s likely to settle down anytime soon? And I mean, the job market, not necessarily the political landscape, because we’re going to steer a bit clear of that right now. Yes, we are.
Sue Keith: So, you know, to answer your question, Yes, to the settling down, I do think it will, or maybe better said is we’re cautiously optimistic. So there are a few positive signs we’re seeing. So first to the point I made earlier, all those, the recession is coming, the recession is coming, which are now likely wrong. I think most economists agree at this point that we may have accomplished a soft landing that we’ve been shooting for, maybe hoping for. So this should make organizations more comfortable with stepping up their investments. Hopefully that means in hiring as well. Secondly, as I mentioned, we specialize in positions in marketing and HR, and our HR practice has seen an increase in our clients building their talent acquisition teams back, meaning companies are hiring internal recruiters again. So that means it’s a great leading indicator that companies are gearing up to hire either later this year or probably more in 2025. And then the third thing we’re seeing, well, this is definitely less scientific, but it’s just as encouraging. We’re seeing a lot more marketers post on LinkedIn recently. They’ve got to do jobs. You know, that badge that LinkedIn puts up there. There’s a lot of those going by in my feed right now. So that’s another good sign.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So given all that, you know, we’ve got the context here. Let’s talk more specifically about hiring managers and what they should be keeping in mind just given all this and even if uncertainty may be reduced in the short term, what are you hearing from hiring managers as far as their priorities and how they’re approaching hiring?
Sue Keith: Right. So as I mentioned, marketing teams are running really lean right now. But the expectation, excuse me, the expectations on what they’re supposed to deliver haven’t changed. And in some cases have gotten even more aggressive, but they don’t have headcount. So they’re getting creative and they’re bringing on, like I mentioned, interim contractors to augment their teams. And so typically the budget for contractors comes out of marketing’s program budget, not out of the headcount bucket. So CMOs are, you know, they’re working on finding a balance between using that money to invest in programs and then investing in bringing on people to help execute those programs. You know, there’s also this interesting thing that’s going on too, that, you know, we’ve had several clients tell us one of the reasons they’re bringing on a contractor with us is they actually have an ulterior motive. What they’re doing is by, they don’t have headcount, right? So they’re bringing on a contractor to help them make the case to their management team that they really do need to have this position, a full-time position on their team for the work the contractor is doing. You know, basically they’re bringing on the contractor as kind of a proof of concept for the role. Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite stories related to this is we placed one of our best event contractors, I guess it was a couple of years ago with one of our clients who had wanted to hire a full-time employee, but couldn’t get the headcount approved. And that client called me a few months later and she’s like, get this, our contractor is doing such an amazing job and kind of demonstrating the need for that role that her CEO gave her approval to actually hire for the full-time position.
Greg Kihlstrom: Nice. Nice. Yeah. No, I mean, that’s, I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen that work as well. And, um, I think I’ve even done that, you know, from a strategic position as well. So it’s, there’s lots of work to be done as, as much as we talk about AI taking jobs or whatever, there’s, there’s too much work to be done as, as you were saying, you know, teams running. running lean and stuff like this. So, you know, speaking of AI, how are hiring managers thinking about this? And, you know, what effect is this, you know, all this talk and potentially planning around AI and, you know, affecting hiring plans and decisions?
Sue Keith: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. And really a timely one, because for most companies, we’re about to head into budget season. You know, there’s so much buzz right now about AI and how it’s going to potentially replace humans, especially marketing humans. What I’d say is as of now, what we’re seeing is marketing teams are using AI tools to be more productive. So typical use case is using ChatGPT, Claw, Gemini, insert AI tool to generate content and our graphics faster. So they’re producing more content, more stuff. What we’re not seeing yet, and I stress yet, is positions being eliminated due to AI or org charts changing. due to AI. So what we’re thinking for next year, 2025, we don’t see AI or the threat of the AI significantly impacting hiring decisions for next year. But I do think there’s a good chance it will start to impact hiring in the near future. And there’s also, you know, we stress that every marketing leader needs to be prepared now, especially like I mentioned, if you’re heading into budgeting season, Just be ready for your CEO or CFO to challenge the size of your current marketing team or your hiring request for next year by suggesting that with AI, maybe the marketing team should be smaller. So even if that’s not going to be the case, be prepared to respond and hopefully refute that question.
Greg Kihlstrom: So I mean, given and you’ve certainly given some some advice along the way here, but you know, what would you your advice be to hiring managers right now? And, you know, also keeping in mind, are there any missed opportunities right now that hiring managers should keep in mind?
Sue Keith: Sure. So, you know, I’ve mentioned that marketing leaders are turning to contractors since they can’t bring on full-time employees, but we’ve been seeing a lot lately is what I’ll call a disconnect between the job description and the required years of experience of the person they want to bring on. And what I mean by this is often the job responsibilities say they more likely align with someone with say 10 or 15 years of experience, but then the job description says two to three, And the reason for this is budget. So the hiring manager really does need a more experienced marketer, but their budget can only support a more junior person at a lower hourly rate. So in these cases, we can certainly find more junior level candidates. That’s not always the case, but in this environment, there are earlier career folks who are not employed and are willing to take on a contract role and hopefully maybe even a contract to perm. But we also encourage our clients to consider more seasoned people. So in that case, it’s a win-win. As I mentioned, there are a lot of experienced marketers who are in between jobs right now. And for some of them, they’ve been in between jobs for quite a while. So they are more than happy to do tactical work on a contract basis. Maybe not a job they would want for a full-time role, it might be too junior for them, but to just get in there, you know, they’re willing, they’re looking to get back to doing some work, keeping their brains active, you know, close, keep the gap on their resume, make new connections. And, you know, they’re often willing to take a lower hourly rate than what they normally would have because of the environment. And, you know, and for some of them, they just simply want a break from job searching. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 12 years and I’ve yet to find somebody who says, this is fun. You know, so, and in fact, when our, one of our recruiters likes to tell like, especially this time of year, because we have a lot of these going on right now, she likes to tell her more senior candidates that look at contracting as like a holiday gift from us. So, and then on that hiring manager side, so you get, you get someone who needs to work or wants to work and is willing to do a more tactical role. at a lower rate than they would be able to normally command in a stronger market. But for the hiring manager, you get the level experience, you actually really need to do an effective job in the role. And someone who has the experience to jump right in and make a difference and doesn’t need to be coached, mentored like a more junior level person. But you’re getting that person at a rate that aligns with your budget. So it’s a pretty good deal right now.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
Sue Keith: The second thing I’d like to mention that I think is really important for hiring managers to consider is actually the opposite of hiring, it’s retention. So as I mentioned, the marketing teams are running really tight right now. And we talk to a lot of people who are employed and are really burned out. So what we’re telling marketing leaders is be paying attention to your teams right now, get in front of retention, you know, make sure your people feel appreciated, even if you can’t do it with raises or bonuses. But make sure the work they’re doing is they feel like it’s being noticed and appreciated and maybe think about career pathing plans for your people. So even though I’m working really hard right now, and I haven’t had a raise for a year, may, you know, maybe my manager has told me, well, there’s, you know, that’s the career path I’m heading towards. So there’s a reason to stay and stick it out because the job market is going to turn. I mean, it has to turn at some point. And as soon as it does, your people are going to be tempted to see what’s out there. So making sure they feel valued and really importantly connected to the organization, you know, with everyone, still mostly working remotely. It’s hard to, we’ve lost that, what I call that connective tissue with amongst the people who work for a company, not just in marketing, but across the organization. So do what you can now to make sure people feel really connected to the company and to the team before the job market does turn and companies like mine start reaching out to them.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and to look then a little bit, from the job seeker perspective. I mean, you mentioned a few things already that relate, but I just wanna highlight that from a strategic standpoint as a job seeker, much like the strategic aspect of a hiring manager, get a contract, kind of get the foot in the door, so to speak. Certainly, I think that really resonates and it is a way to, for job seekers to think, you know, what are you seeing from the candidates that you’re talking with? Are there any themes that you’re seeing from those job seekers?
Sue Keith: Unfortunately, not much has changed from our last conversation and probably last couple of conversations. It’s still really tough for job seekers at all levels of experience. You know, the market is super competitive. There are hundreds of applications for every job. And unfortunately, oftentimes the candidate experience is pretty awful. And, you know, I’ve talked about this before, maybe I should say I’ve preached about this before, but I really encourage companies to review their candidate experience from application to offer, and especially how they handle candidate rejections. Not only treating people kindly is the right thing to do, but you really should keep in mind that a candidate is a potential future consumer of your product or buyer of your product. So bad candidate experience with your company could actually hurt your company’s brand.
Greg Kihlstrom: yeah yeah and this is i i know i’ve shared this anecdote on the show before but i had somebody from kimberly clark on a few this was years ago at this point but they they literally calculated the basically the the potential loss of revenue from a customer of their, you know, they do all kinds of like paper products and all that kind of consumer products. They actually calculated the potential loss if they gave their, you know, candidates a bad experience, and they just chose to choose their competitor on the, you know, on the shelf next door, next to it. So it’s like, this is, you know, this is not just a theoretical thing, right? This is a, this is a real, you know, it’s a real thing. And, you know, maybe not every, every organization can calculate it in that way. But that just highlighted to me, you know, exactly what you’re saying, which is there, there is a cost. And, you know, there’s a long term effect of, of all of these things.
Sue Keith: That’s amazing. I think it’s brilliant that she did that. They did that because I find that, especially on the consumer product side, right? That’s, this is, or any consumer business or product, that’s really important, but it’s just, you know, that same, even if you’re talking about B2B, like let’s say it’s a SaaS company, that, that candidate just had a really bad experience, could eventually be a future buyer, potential buyer of your software at wherever they land. And I think there’s, you know, we put, we as mark, and this is where maybe marketing needs to get more involved, we as marketers, oh, we think very every day about the customer experience, you know, from starting on the, when they land on your website to conversion and beyond. But I don’t think a lot of companies that we haven’t been seeing a lot of companies are really thinking about the candidate experience. And like I said, maybe this is where marketing needs to also maybe partner with HR and bring those experience skills that we’re used to deploying to the candidate side.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, absolutely. And if nothing else drives this point home of how important the Canada experience is, let’s put some dollars to it and illustrate that. And hopefully that moves the needle and nudges people in one direction over the other. I would love to see that. Or more of that, I’ll say. Absolutely. What other advice would you give to job seekers in the months ahead?
Sue Keith: So two thoughts. The first one is going to sound really weird and honest or obvious, I should say, but be honest when applying for jobs. Like I said, it sounds really obvious, but we’re seeing some bad behavior. And what I mean by this is so where we see it most often is, you know, a lot of times when you apply for a job, not only do you submit your resume, but the company or we have put in some screening questions to really like just make sure we’re getting some of the must haves. You know, in our case, questions may be something like, do you have at least five years of product marketing experience? Or do you have people management experience? Or are you able to commute to the company’s Washington DC office two days a week? And what we find fairly often that people aren’t truthful when answering these questions, because they want their resume to get through. But what happens is that’s really short-sighted, because we’re gonna take a look at their resume and very quickly determine that they don’t have five years of product marketing experience, or they live in Chicago, and that you don’t have a job in Washington.
Greg Kihlstrom: So- It’s not that hard to find that out, right?
Sue Keith: No, it’s pretty quick. And what that does is not only does that mean we’re not gonna talk to you, for the position you applied for, but it also means, you know, there’s always a possibility that person could be a good fit for another role we’re working on. So for example, just this morning, someone referred somebody to me for one of the positions we had, and I was like, you know what, she’s not qualified for that, but she actually is qualified for this other one, and I think one of our teammates is talking to her today. That won’t happen if we see someone who could, looks like a good fit for a different role we have, but is just, let’s just say not been truthful in those questions. They’ve given us a reason to question their integrity and we’re probably not going to talk to them. So that’s a big one even though, and I will not disclose where, but you’d be interesting to know that we see this, a regional thing where different regions of the country, people tend to answer those questions more honestly than others.
Greg Kihlstrom: Oh, interesting.
Sue Keith: Fun fact. The second thing I’d like to suggest to job seekers is, you know, recognize that you may need to be more flexible with your location requirements. So even though most people are still, well, I don’t even know if you can say most people, but a good number of people are still working remotely. more and more companies are requiring hybrid work schedules. You see this everywhere. Dell just got a lot of press because they’re requiring their salespeople to be back in the office with two seconds notice. But more and more companies, leaders are really thinking that some productivity, innovation, a lot of things are lost if everyone’s 100% remote. So if you’re locked in as a candidate, if you’re locked in only considering remote-only roles, you’re really gonna be taking yourself out of contention for many jobs. it may be time to start figuring out, okay, if you haven’t, you’ve been working remotely and haven’t been paying for child care or worrying about child care, these are some of the things you have to start thinking about.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Sue, thanks again for all your insights and ideas and definitely love to check in with you on this stuff. I mean, I know there’s a lot of people out there, you know, this affects people’s jobs, this affects people’s hiring and just the way companies are able to get work done. So always appreciate checking in with you on these things. One last question before we wrap up, I like to ask everybody, What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do that consistently?
Sue Keith: I love this question. I think my best answer is, so I talk to CMOs and marketing candidates every day, and that’s really the best part of my job. You know, I may not be doing marketing anymore, but I get to talk about marketing strategy, org structures, martech platforms, all the good stuff with really smart people. And not only do I enjoy this, but it also has a benefit. I’m able to bring these insights to bear when I’m talking to our clients and advising them on, you know, maybe how to shape their teams or really digging into a gap on their team they’re trying to fill. And, you know, because we find that oftentimes the initial job description is really not an accurate depiction of what the hiring manager is really looking for. So by having these informed conversations where I bring all the intel I’ve gotten from all the other marketers I’ve been talking to, when we’re talking to the hiring managers about what they really need, we’re able to identify what that true skillset looks like, both quantitative and qualitative, that will be best able to meet the needs of their team. So I think just my job requires me to talk to people day in, day out, and that’s how I just stay really current on things.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I feel the same way about having, you know, the opportunity to have a podcast like this, because I get to talk to people like you and, you know, like three times a week. It’s, I think it’s just, you know, it’s amazing what you learn by having conversations and talking through and, you know, even, you know, listen, listening to conversations. It’s amazing what you hear kind of even in between the
Sue Keith: the details right right you know it’s i sometimes think you know after i’ve had a really good conversation with somebody and i’ve learned something that you know is really important in some way whether it be personal professional and i think what conversations have i missed right right why don’t i know because i didn’t talk to someone yeah a bit of an existential question but i sometimes wonder
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, I love that. And yeah, we’ll, uh, we’ll, we’ll leave everyone with that then. So, uh, again, I’d like to thank Sue Keith, corporate vice president at Landrum talent solutions for joining the show. You can learn more about Sue and Landrum talent solutions by following the links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand, brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show more easily. You can access more episodes of the show at www.GregKihlstrom.com. That’s G-R-E-G-K-I-H-L-S-T-R-O-M.com. While you’re there, check out my series of best-selling Agile brand guides covering a wide variety of marketing technology topics, or you can search for Greg Kihlstrom on Amazon. The Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina-owned, strategy-driven, creatively-fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging, and informative content. Until next time, stay Agile. the Agile brand.
