Meet the Man Behind the RecOps Community | Jeremy Lyons

Rhona Pierce (00:00.108)
for who might not know what is rec ops and why has it become such a big deal?

Rack Ops is a relatively new field. Recruiting has fundamentally changed in terms of what its scope is, what it looks to do, and how it needs to be done in order to be very much considered part of a business critical function.

There's a segment that I love and lots of other people love it. It's called Plead in the Fifth.

I lead with empathy and I lead with like trying to understand more than I lead with an accusation. Now I know people who have taken my content, thrown it into chat GPT, then put it out as their content, but arguably

Welcome back everyone to the Workfluencer podcast. Here's how most people think about building a community, right? Find your niche, create some content, hope people show up. But there's a big difference between finding a niche and actually building one from scratch. Jeremy Lyons didn't stumble across the REC Ops community. He helped create it. He launched the first REC Ops conference.

Rhona Pierce (01:09.71)
turn recruiting operations into a headline across newsletters and podcasts and build the spaces where the rec ops community now connects, shares and grows. And today I'm so excited. We're digging into what it really takes to go from participant to leader and how to build something without losing the trust that got you there. Jeremy, welcome to Workfluencer.

Thank you for having me. You also said REC Ops more than three times in the intro. And so per the usual, I get someone Blake Beetlejuice. So that's very, very happy to be here. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

That was part of the plan. I'm like, I can't get to 10 times like you, but maybe I can say it a few times. So for people who might not know what is rec ops and why has it become such a big deal?

Yeah, so RecOps is a relatively new field. It's short for recruiting operations. We go by hiring operations. Sometimes we go by talent operations. And effectively, it really caught on in the last 10 to 15 years because recruiting has fundamentally changed in terms of what its scope is, what it looks to do, and how it needs to be done in order to be very much considered part of a business critical function.

So generally when we're talking about recruiting operations, we're talking about four main pillars and everybody who knows me knows I've talked about these ad nauseam, but just to recap, we have our operations pillar, which is generally how most people think of us showing up. It's sort of, these are, we help companies, we help people create better processes, better workflows. We're thinking of the candidates, we're thinking of the interviewers. It's where we do our change management. Oftentimes this is where

Jeremy Lyons (02:58.87)
If a recruiting coordination team rolls up into anybody, this is where it's going to roll up. We have our data analytics pillar because we happen to be closest to the tools. We have a programmatic pillar because if you have the tools and you have the operational lead, you need to teach people how to do the thing. So you need to build the things that are then being tracked back. And then finally, we have a strategic pillar. But when you also think about it, I usually say there's this floating fifth pillar, depending on who you talk to.

And that's employer brand because per the usual within recruiting, we're not really given a whole lot of resources and we're kind of low on the priority list. So when we go and we need marketing tools, we need anything like that. We have to build it ourselves. And so we also oftentimes learn how to do employer brand as well.

Yes, and I'm team five pillars because anywhere I've done rec ops, I've also brought the employer branding piece to it. Like you said, you like, okay, we've got this amazing process. Now we've got to market this thing. Hey, have you subscribed? Let's fix that. It's the easiest way to support this show. So like not that long ago, rec ops didn't really have a spotlight. It was mostly like behind the scenes or like part of someone else's job, something that happened

quietly inside TA teams. But now we've got newsletters, podcasts, entire conferences focused on rec ops. How has the community responded to this surge in attention?

Yeah, well, and it's been really interesting because as you point out, there were a lot of people who did bits and pieces. And so then it becomes how do you carve out this space for this role when everybody sort of says, yeah, but I do that. And I think one of the things that's really unique about our space and the people who are in it is we're people who like to problem solve at scale. And I think that's the thing that separates us from the people who sort of do one little thing.

Jeremy Lyons (05:00.622)
They might do one little thing well, so I don't want to say to anybody, no, no, no, no, you can't be doing that. But I think that the fact that we have, that we've carved out this space shows why we're needed and why we're necessary. And I think one of the things that was very hard about maybe 10 years ago when it was still really fresh was people didn't know how to market towards us. People didn't know how to talk to us. And I think that people had been talking to recruiters for so long.

One of the things that is very key to a recruiter success is at the individual role level, the relationships that they're building. What's key to our recruiting operations person success is can you take the micro and turn it into the macro and make it repeatable and have data behind it? And so when you do everything, it's very hard for people to know where do you sit? And so one of the things that I saw was you'd get like one talk.

at a recruiting conference. And it'd be like very high level, very much not the tactical people in the weeds. And that was something that I brought. Certainly, I was probably not the first. I will claim I'm not the first to do anything. None of this is totally brand new and unique. But I was one of these individuals who basically said, we can't just be, we can't go to a recruiting conference and just have one stage and one speaker.

and one thing, we can't do that anymore. If you're trying to bring up a generation of folks that are going to have to know how to do things at a technical level in order to be successful. So it's been really interesting watching the space spread and doing what I can to help spread it. think a lot of times one thing that people talk to me about is they say, well, Jeremy, you know, almost never get up and deliver your own.

You don't do keynotes, you don't do single speeches. Why don't you do that? And I think that for me, one of the things that's really, really important is showing that there is a wide range of voices, giving the stage to people who might be used to working behind the scenes, because that's what rec ops people do. You kind of have to pull us out. And I think that giving that opportunity for other people to express what they're doing and showing their creativity.

Jeremy Lyons (07:24.374)
It's really, really important. So if I got up on stage every single time and just fought for my own spot, that would not be doing the community a service. That would be doing a community a disservice. And I think that it's important for people to see how other people are doing things that are very creative.

That's amazing. I mean, anyone that I've ever spoke to that does community building, this is really the the approach and the it's it's about platforming everyone else's voice. Sometimes to a point where they forget that they're also an important voice. When did you realize, OK, this isn't just I'm not just part of rec ops, I'm like actually building this community. Well,

And two, I think your point, I think that there are certain communities that do a much better job of not feeding the ego of the people who build it. I think that the people, there's the business of community and then there's the community business. And I think that when you talk to people who very much care about their communities, it's sort of you've created a stage for yourself and everybody else props you up. Whereas if you talk to the other, it's sort of the...

I need to be seen as the leader and the one in charge of this community and I am this community's voice. And I think for me, one of the things that was very, very, very intentional from the beginning was I didn't go into this thinking I'm trying to make myself something bigger. I went into this thinking, how do I help my community? And I think throughout my career, throughout my life, I've never had a difficulty being the first one in. I sort of know that

For the most part, nothing is going to kill me. I'm not doing any, I'm not running into the breach first, but I think that I'm certainly someone who I've taken my hits. I've learned, I learned through mistakes. I always jokingly say that my autobiography will be called the written in blood. But I think what's really been important to me has been the community and keeping the community front and center. So that.

Jeremy Lyons (09:37.964)
I think that comes through when people talk to me. And I think that has been one of the things that has certainly allowed a lot of people to feel very comfortable with putting me front and center on as sort of saying like, hey, here's the voice of our space and of our group. And I think that that's been something that's been really sort of interesting because now a lot of people will say, well, he's the...

You are Mr. RecOps. And I'm like, please don't say that. I don't think that for myself. I'm just a voice trying to create space for other voices to come out and create a space that deserves the respect that it hasn't had for years and years and years.

Yeah, but you're you're never going to escape that like anytime I talk to anyone anytime you think about rec ops, anyone asked me like, do you know a rec up? Yeah, I don't know. But like, Jeremy Lyons, it's like, that's the name your Mr. rec ops. So there's this moment when like, this thing that you're doing is a side project suddenly becomes the thing everyone's looking to like, what was that moment for you?

You know, I think that that moment for me was, so when I started the RackOps Roundup, which is how a lot of people know me, I started it at the time when there were a lot of layoffs happening because of the market shift in 2022. And one of the things that was very, very key to me when I started it was that I wanted to be very, very intentional about the recruiting operations content.

because a lot of people had classified things as recruiting operations. That wasn't. Or if it was, it was so thin to get to like make that thing there that it was a stretch. And that bothered me because I was spending a ton of time trying to read and improve my skills. And per the usual for rec ops people, we're some of the first people that a company weighs off.

Jeremy Lyons (11:44.908)
because we're not seen in the same light as the way that a recruiter is, but arguably, we allow the recruiters to recruit. And so if you're gonna cut your team in a lot of ways, it almost makes sense to keep your rec ops person because of the efficiency gains that they're trying to create, you know, for that. And even sometimes when teams get smaller, it can actually make things, it reduces the internal bureaucracy around what we can do. But I think what really started to click

for me was I started including open rec ops jobs. So it wasn't just sort of a, this is a rec ops job. And you're like, what? No, it's not. I started including rec ops jobs. started including, I wanted again to create a space so that other individuals could put their names out there if they were looking. So I, I, I've been very intentional about that. I wanted to give people the opportunity to write, create different voices. And I've been able to do that.

I think the weirder, cooler thing where it sort of clicked was I've had a number of people say, you I found my next job because I saw the job in your newsletter. And that to me was just sort of this like weird moment of kind of going, okay, I know I put in a lot of work every week to do this. And I don't see it as work I do for me. I see it as work I do for my community. And people starting to say like,

I've gotten it maybe 20 times before, like, this is where I found my next job. And that's to me something where I just go, you know, that's the impact. That's what it's doing. And that was where I started giving myself, you know, a little bit of a pat on the back to go, you know, the hardest part of your job every week and finding new jobs is really paying off for other people. And that's the karma that I hope that I can be able to redeem at some point someday.

That's amazing. it give you, like, it put any type of pressure on you?

Jeremy Lyons (13:45.72)
You know, I put that pressure on myself because, you know, like I had said before, I don't do the newsletter for me anymore. I think I started out doing it because I wanted the space to have a place to gather and a place to find good information specific to our space. And I very quickly realized that like, if I was doing it for me, it wasn't the right reason. And so once I

made it more, I changed my mindset and made it about the community. That's when it became very, very important to every week have something for someone there. And even when I go on trips and stuff like that, there's still a part of me that goes, I'm letting my community down by not publishing something this week. And that can be a really hard sort of guilt trip to give yourself, but you have to give yourself the space, you have to give yourself the time, you have to

Sometimes you need to step away from it for a week to just feel a little bit more like yourself and rediscover your passion in it. And I've never lost my passion in doing.

And I'm sure the community understands, it's like you're human. You can take a week off. As you've built the rec ops community and all the properties that you have, like the newsletter and all of that, how did you navigate staying neutral while also working with brands and vendors?

Yeah, so this was something that I was very conscientious of the minute I started putting in product news. And the reason for that being is that I knew the minute I started putting in product news, products would come to me and say, hey, we want to feature ourselves in your newsletter. What is that going to cost us? And part of me sort of said, well, OK, cool. Now I could monetize this.

Jeremy Lyons (15:35.672)
But another part of me said, the minute you start taking money from somebody else, you have to start taking their opinions. And I wanted to be able for us, whenever I was doing the newsletter, even in the future, to be able to be critical. I say critical, not like bashing, but to be critical in the right kinds of ways. And if you're taking money, then there might be this sort of feeling of obligation to

show them in the best light and to push them in the best light. so one of the benefits has been it's been neutral. I've never taken any money from any brand to feature them or do anything like that. Any brand that wants to write an article for my newsletter is welcome to do so. And I have a very strict editorial process that we follow because it's not meant to show, we're the latest and greatest. I want neutrality.

but also through this out there for anybody else who's thinking about a newsletter or building a community and wants to remain neutral. When you maintain neutrality, it can also make it difficult for brands to want to work with you because they don't, even though they understand your position and even though you explain your position to them, there's this feeling that can sometimes be like, well, where do you stand?

Do you stand for us? Do you stand against us? If we go into a partnership with you, what are we doing? I'm very clear with any partnership agreements and stuff that I have that I reserve the right to be openly critical. But I'm always going to be critical to you first. I'm not going to go and air out dirty laundry. Anything that I do say publicly that is going to be critical is not going to be something that you haven't heard because I would have told you or you would have known or this is not

feedback that's specific to me. It's feedback that you can use that is actionable. And so I think that that maintenance of neutrality is not difficult individually, but it can be difficult if you start taking the money. And so I've always been very, very intentional that that's not what the newsletter is for or why I do it. And I don't judge other people for

Jeremy Lyons (18:00.686)
having sponsorships on their newsletters, you know, power to them.

you mind sharing how you monetize or do you monetize at all?

So don't monetize my community and I don't monetize my newsletter. Because I have one of the benefits of neutrality is that I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of different groups who are trying to cater towards the recruiting operation crowd. And so I've been able in a lot of ways to create a space for each one of those places to build up their own community around RecOps principles. And that has been really, really tremendous in there.

But do I make money from it? Well, the thing about it that I tell people is I have RecOps Collective, which is my consultancy. One of the things that I do, one of the reasons that the newsletter came about and the community work came about was when I was starting RecOps Collective, I had a two-fold mission. One was the business side. One was the community side. And my whole idea was I'm going to use the business side to

create the funding for the community side. Now I had very advantageous goals that at some point in time, maybe I could set up like a community fund to help rec ops people who are looking for work or who are out of work that would serve as a thing. I've always wanted to have like a guild. That to me struck me as something that could be really, really cool. But I've used the business revenue to help do the community side.

Jeremy Lyons (19:37.478)
And thankfully, there are a lot of tools out there that keep my costs really, really low. And so I'm able to do the things that I need to do on a pretty cool shoestring budget. that's been how I've helped to funnel some of that stuff towards the social groups.

I love that. I love that. And I love talking to creators and like the different ways that they go about monetizing because yeah, everyone's different. There's some people who take direct money from brands for like sponsorships. There are people who do it like you. just love that all the opportunities and all the different ways that that being a creator can pay off.

And I think the thing about it too that's opened up doors is that because these brands know that I care about the community and do the work community work, a lot of them will invite me to help them with their conferences. I just helped Greenhouse do Greenhouses Open for Ops. That was a lot of work. Gem, that was a lot of work. Even putting together the conference that I helped put together, you know.

I brought it as a community, not as individuals. And I think that, you know, certainly the brands have, you know, paid me for my expertise, but that is a totally different sort of way of everything. And I will say this, the newsletter being what it is, having the following that it is, the GPT that I built being what it is, having the following that it is, and then the expertise that I have in this space that I've worked on for over nine years, you

that has opened the doors for these partnerships and to be involved in events. Even Ashby won. I helped write some color contact and funny content for that. there are ways to find yourself involved with tools and vendors in your space that come about because they know you care.

Rhona Pierce (21:43.822)
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So one of the things that you're known for, I know, you're used to be called hot, but now spicy. you moved away from calling them hot takes, and now you call them spicy takes. What's the story there?

Yeah. So the story there was, you know, this is probably about early 2023. And everybody was talking. For those that, you know, don't know, there was kind of this shift on LinkedIn. It's now kind of shifted back a little bit, but there was a lot of outrage and there was a lot of anger in that time period for about a year. And rightfully so, the market was what it was and people were

expressing themselves in very different ways. And one of the things that I sort of noticed was everybody was calling things a hot take. And sometimes it wasn't all that hot. And people were just sort of saying like, well, it's a hot take because like, I'm setting up this opinion. then to me, I was like, well, but that's kind of mild. Is that really a hot take? And one of the things that has always been very key to me in most of my content and the things that I produce is I want to teach people something.

Jeremy Lyons (23:41.516)
I'm a former teacher. Education has always been a really, really important thing to me. And so one of the things that I did was I was like, all right, what can I do that is differentiated and interesting? And I realized that like, well, Spice has the Scoville chart.

And so I could certain if people had an interest in what the spice was, then they knew sort of it became a grading system for how I would release a take. And sometimes it was as, you know, mild as like bell peppers, which are aren't very spicy. And sometimes I got really, really, really spicy. But I'll give a shout out to Liz Schwerg. Liz, at one point in time, I did one take, I asked her her thoughts.

She said to me, well, that was really like actually quite mild. It was like mayo. So I was like, all right, well, but the idea was try and teach people about the Scoville chart. Try to teach people about how certain spicy things work. Give my takes something a little different that, you you sort of knew if I was going to say this is bell pepper, it's not going to be all that aggressive. And I'm going out and saying it's scorpion X or something that you've never heard of, you know.

is that that's where I'm starting to get like a little bit, you know, more aggressive with the take. And that's and that just stuck. And I think a lot of people ended up picking up spicy as opposed to hot because spicy has a different connotation to it than just hot.

Yes, it totally does. I saw somewhere or did I hear? don't know if I saw or if I heard that you've like, taking this like literally to where you were doing like this spicy or like eating spicy things or something like that with your friends.

Jeremy Lyons (25:40.504)
Yeah. So I can't wait to see when it drops. Brandon Jeffs and I decided, let's have a little bit of fun with this and let's do some spiciness with different founders. Steve Bartel at Jam was kind enough to be our first sacrifice and played along great with it. Thought it would be good to do, it's a riff on spicy, on hot.

but we called it spicy ones and it's a good way to have some fun. think people need some whimsy in their life and I can't wait to see Brandon release that because there's some heat in there.

I can't wait. And yeah, now that you said it's like, yeah, I think I saw or Brandon said something that he was going to do something about like that. So, I can't wait to see that. So what's your advice for someone who wants to start creating content, but isn't sure like where to begin?

think you just start. find something that you're interested in and just press on that button time and time again. I think that there's a lot of folks out there and like, you you're Brian Finks, you're Steve Levy's. There's a lot of folks out there where it's just consistency. You need to, you know, because you're to call another great one out there.

Monica Evie as well. You can do content on just about anything and everything. And if you have a unique enough voice, you can deliver it in a number of different ways. Some people it's, look, I love to edit and I'm going to do everything as a podcast and there we go. To other people, you're better at writing, but it's just...

Jeremy Lyons (27:39.104)
It's committing yourself to that five to 10 minutes every day of just doing it. And for eventually, it no longer becomes this thing that takes a lot of work to do. You just, you can pump it out very, very quickly. One of the things that I still do, know, yeah, could I go to, you know, with the GPTs that I've built with all the AI out there, could I just go and be like, hey, I want to write an article about this and this and this and this, pump something out for me?

in my voice. And that's the other thing too, is like now I have enough content out there that the internet could easily be like, I want to know Jeremy A. Lyons' tone and style and all of that, and could very easily mimic it. But to me, I still write a lot of that content without it. I I use Grammarly, but Grammarly is not exactly like writing something for me.

And I do it because it's a really good meditative exercise for me at this point. And that's how I sort of sometimes process my own thoughts is by sitting down and writing week over week, post over post to everything. And then I think the other thing too is I think people think that when you start doing content, you have to do massive amounts of content. You have to have a content calendar. You have to have all these different things that you're hearing about the successful content creators do.

And I think really the simplest thing is if you're going to write a long form article is what you said, could that be a short form? And if it's short form, could it be a post? And if it could be a post, could it be a one sentence? And you start your work back and you start to realize like, okay, no, what I'm trying to say couldn't be expressed in one sentence. So now I'm going to need more space. Okay. It needs even more space than this needs more space than that. And I think one of the things that I found.

about writing is that I tend to be very verbose. And so one of things that it has helped me to do as well is become much more succinct and much more, I'll say pedantic sometimes, because being able to have that has now actually also made me better at writing and other things, so emails, prompts, stuff like that. And I think that the advice that I would give to people is just like, start small.

Jeremy Lyons (30:05.174)
start, start, you know, start with a notes app on your thing. Just like somebody says something and you're just like, I have something to say and I don't want to put it out publicly. Do that. Or have a friend, have a friend group. have a number of different chats with different folks in our space where it's like, this is my opinion on blank. And they're like, that's good. Don't publish.

You

And I think that it's always good to have somebody there who's a filter for you, somebody who's there, you can bounce ideas off of. then you can find your community within whatever you're writing about, whatever you're building, because it'll start to resonate with newer people who maybe have never seen it before. New introduction. There's a lot of times I don't repeat my content. There's a lot of people who are like, hey, I'm just going to do this thing, and I'm going do it over and out.

people will say, but Jeremy, but you talked about the pillars thing. Aren't you repeating content there? We've kind of heard that shtick before. And I will say this, there is a moment when you've been doing content for a really long time where it sort of feels like you're the musician or the comedian where they're like, get up there and play the song or like, tell the joke. Tell the lucky joke again. It was funny. Why are you not funny this time? And you're like.

because I want to do new material. And so I think that, you know, there's a lot of different ways, a lot of different places, a lot of directions that you can go whenever you're doing it. And you're the one who can create that universe for yourself to do that.

Rhona Pierce (31:41.836)
Yeah, that's really the beauty of it. you actually like you said, you have to start if you don't start, then it's just it's never going to happen. You're just going to sit there and think about it. Look, like I've always said, I was talking to I think it was Andrew Lewis or in a previous episode. And we're like, you know what, does everyone really have this content calendar and all these pillars and all of that? It's like

Usually the people pushing that are the people that are selling some sort of service around that. As I talk to more and more creators and like you said, everyone has a creator group chat or like colleague group chat. Most people don't have this huge structure. Like I would love to have like two weeks planned of content, right? I would love it. I have all the tools to do it.

I would love to have it. It's not the reality. You just have to start somehow. What I do is like the podcast. Yes, I have six weeks out of podcast episodes. That's the most I can do. Now what happens, what those posts turns into, how it gets edited. I don't know, but I record six weeks ahead. So like you can just start small. Like if you're going to start a podcast, start recording the episodes with a few friends. If you're going to start writing, like you said, start writing in the notes app, just start.

Yeah. Well, and I think to your point too, I mean, one of the reasons why I even know what the mentioning of a content calendar is, is because I was very lucky that my long form content resonated so well with the community. Because that afforded me the opportunity to have a conversation around community work with Ashby back in the beginning of end of 2022, beginning of 2023.

And so my role as the expert in residence, I was within the marketing team. And so I had the opportunity to really learn from some very, very good marketers who are willing to sit down with me and sort of say, okay, this is what this looks like. And this is what this, this is the professional side of the marketing pieces. So I learned that. I mean, I'll never look at a URL the same.

Jeremy Lyons (33:54.414)
ever again, which is fine because now I know what a UTM is and I know like, okay, this is why you want to change UTMs and things like that. Like learned a ton and I love the people that I learned from there and have great relationships with the people that are there. And that has helped me in other elements of business and how to think about marketing and think about my content. But to your point, like I have a podcast that I'm working on with a friend of mine, Ben Abear called The Quiet Sh- Out Loud.

You know, we're recording those episodes and it just took us like, did we start off with this like really complex document? Yeah, we did because we wanted to be able to focus ourselves and that's, very operationally minded. But what does our content calendar look like? Hey, that person looks really interesting to talk to. Let's reach out to them and see when they're available and we'll record an episode and then we'll get into like the...

trying to figure out how to edit, how to do this thing or that thing. And so it really, it just comes down. It's like, you got to put your fear, you put your fear behind you and just try it. And you know what? You can try it, figure out you don't like it and no one is going to hold it against you. Exactly. You know, try the simple things for free and see if you have stuff. Substack is free. Riverside has free accounts. Record a couple of episodes.

See how much time it takes you to edit. See how much time it takes you to do something or another. And you know what? If you find after the end of all that, you're like, this sucks and I hate it. Like no one's going to sit there and be like, you've agreed to this. You've signed your soul over and now you must do the dance monkey. Do the dance for me. Forever. Yes, forever. You know, no one's telling you that. And that's, think something that can be also very overwhelming is, all right, so then what happens when you stop doing

over.

Jeremy Lyons (35:47.886)
It's like, will the world keep spinning? And the answer is 100%.

100%. Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation. And if you've watched the show before, you know, there's a segment that I love and lots of other people love it. It's called Plea to the Fifth. I asked three questions. You can answer them all or you can plead the fifth, but you can only plead the fifth to one. And you're not going to know what question comes next. The funny thing is I have a spreadsheet with all of my questions where I

categorize them by spice level. Mild, spicy and super, well, I knew I was talking to Jeremy. So all of these are like extra hot spicy. So are you ready?

Like it?

Jeremy Lyons (36:37.068)
Only if I can be, when I say the fifth, can use Dave Chappelle's faith.

Stanley will understand if he listens to this episode. We went on a whole tear.

on that. All right, let's get started. So name a creator that you secretly think bought their way to success.

Jeremy Lyons (37:01.134)
That is such an interesting question.

Jeremy Lyons (37:07.022)
All right, so when you say bought their way to success, tell me a little bit more there.

don't know, they bought followers, they... whatever that means to you. It could be that they just paid for ads.

man.

Jeremy Lyons (37:24.878)
You know, it's so funny because it's just like, if there are those people, I don't know them. So it's like, I can't even plead the fifth. mean, there are certain folks that I've looked at their content, and I've certainly like had like kind of like cocked an eye out sometimes, but then I've like had conversations with them and kind of like understand the angle that they took. So like,

Chris Mannion is one of those where I was like, I don't know your angle, but I don't want to make any assumptions about what you're doing. So I just reached out and said, hey, can I have a conversation and learn more there? Brian Blair is another one. But I lead with empathy and I lead with trying to understand more than I lead with an accusation.

Now, I know people who have taken my content, thrown it into Chad's GPT, then put it out as their content. But I don't think that I would get on that soapbox to say like, you bought your way to anything other than to say like, maybe. Yeah, there was maybe a little bit of ethics there that I don't necessarily agree with.

Get your way.

Rhona Pierce (38:45.006)
Hmm, are we gonna name names of those people?

I don't need to name names, but those people who have done it will certainly know who they are when they look at themselves in the mirror. I will say this. One of those people, because they did that, forced me actually. you know, talking about the newsletter, the newsletter started as a response to them copying my Wong form, because what I realized is that in order to counteract that,

Bye!

Jeremy Lyons (39:18.814)
needed to, if I switched up my short form, they were going to need to do much more work to get a long form article out of my short form content. And it was going to be very, very obvious to anybody who was reading that, that that's what they were doing. And so the newsletter in many parts, I can thank them for that, for pushing that to start because I very quickly figured out what was going on and figured out my response to

what they were doing.

Love that. Love that. So second question, name a company that you would never work with again and why? Like a brand.

Jeremy Lyons (40:05.302)
You know, I haven't worked with that many brands to be able to call anybody out. I think that there are certainly some, I've, there are certainly been posts that people have asked me to interact with. And I've basically said to them, no, like not going to happen. think that what you're asking me to do is wildly inappropriate and I'm not going to do it. But I don't think that there is anybody that I've worked with.

out there. Actually, you know what? There is one brand that I would never work with again. Not going to name names there.

All right. We're taking this as you pled the fifth because you didn't say it. You didn't name a name. Let's see. Last question. If your audience saw your unedited drafts or DMs, like what would surprise them the most?

Okay, that's fine.

Jeremy Lyons (41:03.7)
I think that they would be incredibly surprised at how raw some of them are. I think the other thing that people would be very surprised about is, look, I have a lot of, I know some really great HR people. I also have very, very strong opinions on HR. And I do separate HR from TA.

Yes.

And I think that there are to the outside world, TA is part of HR. To the people team that we are, we are effectively like stepchildren. We're step siblings. We got thrust together. And I have, I think something that would surprise people is just how forward I can be about my feeling about that relationship that TA and HR have. And, and yeah.

Yes, I dream of a world where everyone understands that we are not the same.

I I sort of say, yeah, mean, yes, there's that. I if I'm getting even more critical, think that all HR folks should do a tour at Waffle House in order to validate some of the things that HR people sometimes say. I think it would be very different.

Rhona Pierce (42:29.006)
would be interesting. I would love that. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. You survived Plead the Fifth. What's next for you? Like any new conferences, collaborations or anything that we should keep an eye out for?

Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, I'm really looking forward to the podcast that I'm releasing with Ben Aver. That's going to hopefully happen in July. We're just editing some episodes. We're going do a full season drop. So Quiet Shout Loud is something that I'm really looking forward to. Conferences this year, I'm playing it a little bit by year. There are some fun things that might be happening in my personal life. And so I want to leave the

leave the schedule a little bit open there. But if people wanna collaborate, people wanna talk about things, I am always available. People should hit me up on LinkedIn. I do respond to everything or they can message me through RecOps Collective.

Amazing and I'll drop all of those links in the show notes. Thanks again for joining me on the workflow and Serp today.

Definitely. Thank you so much for having me.

Rhona Pierce (43:38.958)
Thanks so much for listening. If you're enjoying the Workfluencer pod, share it with someone who's changing how we talk about work or who should be. And hey, if this episode gave you ideas or inspiration, leave us a five-star review. Reviews help other listeners find us. And honestly, it makes my day. Workfluencer is produced by Perceptible Studios. Learn more about how we can help you use video to attract, engage, and retain qualified talent at perceptiblestudios.com. Thanks for listening.

and I'll chat with you next week.