Gerry Crispin drops into the Chad & Cheese podcast from the Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, sharing 53 years of recruiting wisdom. From Johnson & Johnson to Roche and a boutique search firm, Gerry’s learned the ropes and always stuck to fairness. His advice? Master the basics, especially comp and benefits.
Worried about AI replacing recruiters? Gerry’s not—he thinks it’ll make things smoother, not take over, but he's frustrated that Talent Acquisition leaders aren’t embracing AI faster. His parting wisdom: find a company that aligns with your values, stay positive, and take action. He’s still active with CareerXroads, spreading optimism and know-how.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Podcast Intro: Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark. Buckle-up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel: All right, let's start with who are you and why are you here today.
Gerry Crispin: So, I'm Gerry Crispin for those that don't know me and I'm a lifelong student of recruiting. I have been in this business for 53 years in various ways. In career services in college. In an executive search at Johnson & Johnson, at Shaker Advertising. All right, that's the only thing you get.
Joel: Chad and I... We're both 53, if that makes you feel any older. You're welcome.
Gerry Crispin: You were around after I graduated from college, but when I was in graduate school.
Joel: It was a good time brother.
Gerry Crispin: It was a good time. And I care about how we treat all the stakeholders in recruiting. That's been my interest for a life's work more in hindsight than foresight. First, you try to make a living and do stuff and then they ask you to do stuff and you go "No... No, I don't think I wanna do that." And I was pretty obnoxious about that at J&J. And fortunately, my bosses had my back. We had a Credo. And if we weren't treating employees right. If we weren't treating candidates right. I could step up and protect that. And it was okay. Now, I left J&J thinking I was gonna change the world, and lo and behold I found a company that didn't believe quite in that Credo. And that gave me an opportunity to become a contract recruiter with Roche, working for an executive search firm... A boutique executive search firm. And I learned something in every one of those. So I have no regrets on all of the changes.
Gerry Crispin: The journey. The journey.
Joel: The journey included 10 years with Shakers...
Chad: Gerry's journey. Gerry's journey. So wait wait wait. Give us this. What is your sage advice for any listeners or any viewers that are out there? One thing one nugget that you think is incredibly important for everybody in our space to know.
Gerry Crispin: I think you have to master the elements of what you have decided to make a living on. So, if you're in a job, and your job for however you fell into it, is recruiting. You better be curious about all the things that impact that. So if you find what's going on in rewards that they're telling me I can only offer this much money. You better start learning something about compensation and compensation theory. You need to be able to talk to that person in rewards and argue your case for how their language is. Marketing versus how we look at structurally about this and our philosophy of broadband, or we bring people in in the first quartile, or whatever the hell it is. You need to learn that. If benefits are something that is amazing for some part of the audience that you're trying to recruit then you could give a shit about it. You better learn a lot about those benefits and why they're important to them.
Chad: You'd better give a shit about it.
Gerry Crispin: I'll tell you one thing...
Joel: Gerry what you're talking about sounds like a lot of work.
Gerry Crispin: It is. But it's a joyful work.
Joel: So that brings me... Well to my question we have some people we've talked to that are optimistic about the recruiting profession.
Gerry Crispin: I am.
Joel: Others that are not. You are. Tell me why. Tell me why you've just laid out all this extra work for a recruiter. Now tell me why you're bullish.
Gerry Crispin: It's not extra work. I'll give you one more that I always did. When in every job that I went to. Every time I got promoted or went to a different job I job-shadowed the people who were going to be my clients. So if it was marketing, I went out on the road with salespeople, and I made that as a negotiable deal. You could not deny me the ability to do that. I used to go out on third shift and sit and watch assembly while I'm at work as in the middle of the fricking night and then get yelled at by the vice president of manufacturing. What are you doing spying on my people in the middle of the night? Then I go "No I need to learn enough to be able to do my job which is HR... Which at that time was HR and recruiting but optimism. I've got to tell you it's been waves of three steps forward two steps back. You know that. You've gone through enough of them and I've gone through many of them, and I don't know if we're in the two steps back at the moment. Some folks...
Chad: It depends on the topic.
Gerry Crispin: It depends on the topic and where it is. Yeah.
Chad: It does.
Gerry Crispin: If we talk about the promise of AI. It's tomorrow. It's not today. So, you shouldn't be sitting here getting rid of your recruiters waiting for AI to suddenly replace them all. That's bullshit. But long-term technology will help us capture and more reliably collect information from the people who are interested in our company. If there's 500 of them we should be able to get 500 of them to be able to compete in how they reliably talk to us. Maybe not humans at that point at the top of the funnel. But in a way that's fully transparent where we can say to them look you're talking to a non-human here but I am friendly. I will ask every one of the 500 people the same questions. I know how to probe in appropriate ways and I'm going to organize the data in a way that humans can make a better decision in the future with more reliable data about who goes forward. And if you want I'll come back and talk to you about what you could do to be more competitive in the future for this job or other jobs you might wanna apply for now.
Gerry Crispin: But it's up to you. Now if we had something that could do that and there ain't nothing doing it right now but is that that far away? And if it is what is really gonna change? It may not be the quality of your decision but we might improve the quality of the candidate's decision. We're certainly going to improve the perception of the candidate about recruiting as a profession that actually offers something that's fair and reasonable as opposed to the doubts that many job seekers have now about how they're being treated by so many companies. And that's what makes me optimistic.
Chad: Next question. Looking back in 2024 what has surprised you the most?
Gerry Crispin: It's how slow TA leaders are in doing what they have to do to continue to learn. To upskill themselves. TA leaders should be at the forefront of upskilling themselves so they can help deal with that whole issue. And when I talk to TA leaders about what's going on with you and AI how confusing is it? They go it's still too confusing. And our leaders don't want us to use it. So we're just waiting. And I'm going "You're killing yourself." I said "You have to be fully engaging on your own on your own computer on your own phone and learning so that when we are able to do something you know what's coming. You have some sense of this. You're willing to get to the next level." So I think we're slow to adopt out of uncertainty fear that we're gonna be in trouble. And that's not... In my opinion, it's just not a great way to live. I think we should be embracing risk and enjoying it.
Joel: You deal with some of the biggest companies in the world I think it's fair to say and you more than not most can talk to the question of having a seat at the table that we've talked about for decades. What is your take on the current state of HR having a seat at the table?
Gerry Crispin: The folks in HR who don't pay attention to that, they just step up and do it. They already have a seat. They already have a seat. When I started with Johnson & Johnson, I sent them a note when they made me an offer and said, "Thanks." But the only thing that's really a problem for me is I really asked if I could get access to the computer. The computer in those days. That's a long long time ago. There was a computer building 25 miles away and there was a guy in charge of that. And he wouldn't let anybody like me coming out of grad school have access to the dumb terminal the one dumb terminal in the building that I was in, unless the president of the company authorized it. And my boss.
Joel: The president of J&J.
Gerry Crispin: The president of J&J. So my boss said oh we have accountants who come every single week and you can tell them what you want and in a week or a month you'll have a report. And I go, "No that's not the same thing. I wanna be able to go play and do whatever." So long story short and back to the relevance of this, I said, "I'm not sure I can come but I am waiting for another offer but I'll let you know in the promise of the next week." Two days later I'm told that I have access and please make a decision. And I said absolutely I'm there. So it took two years for me to find out that he went to his boss his boss went to his boss and so on and somebody... VP of HR or whatever, went to the president of J&J and said we'd like to get access for this kid who's just coming out of graduate school.
Gerry Crispin: We think he's gonna do some interesting things in learning how we can make better choices and so on. And the president goes let me make sure I understand. You're in HR and you're telling me there's somebody deep in your organization who wants access to a computer. Our computer. And they go, "Yeah." And he goes, "Give him access but I wanna know what he does." Now I did do some cool shit but that gave me enormous power. And what I'm telling all leaders is you got to decide whether you're gonna take risks and step up and do the right thing. There are principles that your company should be living by and if not why are you there? It's not just about the money that stockholders make, it's also about how we treat employees. It's how we treat our clients and customers and the candidates that come in. So if you're not working for an organization that doesn't value those things at least aspirationally then you should get yourself out period. Find another job find another career. I'm here because I care about this and because there's a Credo on every door in relation to this. And that was a 1932 employer brand the J&J Credo, which I'd love anybody to look up. It's incredible.
Chad: You heard it here first. Kids if you can't do it you can't step up. It's not additional work Joel, then get the hell out. That's Gerry...
Joel: Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.
Chad: Gerry Crispin friends. Gerry, if somebody wants to find out more about you connect with you where would you send them?
Gerry Crispin: They've got to be able to Google my name and spell it right. So it's Gerry with a G. G-E-R-R-Y Crispin C-R-I-S-P-I-N. And yes I founded Career Crossroads 20-some-odd years ago almost 30 years ago now. Dedicated really to understanding and sharing how we evolve recruiting into something that is a world we would like to be in ourselves. There's no sense in doom and gloom. There's no sense in pessimism. That's not the world I wanna be in. So I've got to be able to look at the world I wanna be in.
Chad: That's it.
Joel: Gerry. Thanks for hanging out with us always.
Chad: Thanks for coming on man.
Joel: Enjoy the rest of your...
Gerry Crispin: It's a pleasure.
Joel: Enjoy the rest of...
Gerry Crispin: Thanks for having me.
Podcast Outro: Wow, look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese Podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast-forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell, enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey, or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads instead. Now, go take a shower and wash off all the guilt. But save some soap, because you'll be back. Like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.
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