Recruiting Is Marketing in Disguise with Dave Vu

Dave Vu (00:00.162)
think the talent team that starts to have that mind shift, I think are going to win in the future and are going to win big in the future. The talent market is shifting, as you can see under our feet.

But still, we're in 2025 and I know, because of the conversations that I have daily, that a lot of companies are still resistant to this. Not everyone has managers like you or like me who believe in brand building as a recruiter.

And I see very often now where the recruiter, they become their own brand in some ways. The worst thing you can do is be a recruiter that nobody remembers or knows. Everybody's afraid to say things online, but I think then people craft a narrative that doesn't feel genuine at all. You start doing it and like you look back and you've just been doing for so long, you forget what was the purpose. Maybe that individual crafted the interview flow.

Most recruiters think they're filling roles. Dave Vu thinks they should be building brands. While the industry obsesses over whether AI will replace recruiters or not, Dave's making the case that recruiting is actually marketing in disguise. And the companies that figure this out first are going to attract the best talent. From his days as a recruiter to co-founding Ribbon, he's proving that when you treat hiring like brand building, everything changes. Dave, welcome to Workfluencer.

Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Rhona Pierce (01:22.37)
So I'm excited to have you here, but for folks who aren't familiar with you, can you give us the 30 second elevator pitch?

Yeah, absolutely. But my background has been in talent for about 15 plus years in a variety of capacity, an agency, in-house, early stage startup. And I've been doing this for a long time. And I realized I wanted to be on the other side, being a builder and building solutions to help out these problems that I saw constantly within my 15 years.

amazing. Some of the best products are built from someone who was on the other side. So I'm excited to talk to you today. And you said, I've seen it all over your content, that recruiters should really think like brand marketers. But most of the recruiters that I know and that I've worked with can barely get candidates to like even respond to their emails. How are they supposed to become marketers on top of everything else?

I mean, it's not an easy task, right? Because that's where the differentiation occurs. There's too many people that are doing the same things and it becomes very tiresome for candidates. And it's really hard for candidates when they're looking at an opportunity, they're looking at it and saying, wow, this seems so similar to something else. It doesn't really entice me. And there's so much opportunity that's out there now that it's really important to build a very unique, genuine brand. And I think...

The talent team that starts to have that mind shift, I think are going to win in the future and are going to win big in the future. think in this day and age it's too competitive to just to do the same things over and over. And the talent market is shifting, as you can see under our feet. know, people are not staying at companies as long as they used to be. It's much more competitive. There's just a lot more opportunities available and people are applying very easily to these roles now that you need to differentiate yourselves.

Rhona Pierce (03:19.882)
Was there a time when you were working in talent? Was there like a moment where you were like, you know what, we're doing this all wrong?

Yeah, there was a couple of times and I can point out the first time that happened was probably in my older startup at Ezra. This is where I met my co-founder, by the way, at Ribbon. We were really trying to hire really top candidates around the world very, very fast. This is around 2018. like social media was starting to become like more prominent within the talent space. And I just realized that the messaging that I was putting out there

wasn't resonating with the people that I really wanted. And so I started to become myself a little bit more, being a little bit more genuine and creating messaging that it wasn't have to be very polished. It just had to be very genuine, direct coming from me. And I noticed that those candidates related to me and we started building a better relationship. So that's when it really started to hit home for me. And then ever since that point, especially at Ribbon,

That's really where we try to make that happen more and more with our candidates that we're attracting.

Yeah, it's definitely I remember those times the 2018 2019 times where we we saw things start to shift. And but a lot of recruiters have seen the shift. And they still think that like, posting we're hiring with a stock photo and they're doing marketing, right? You spoke about like being yourself and stuff like that. But there's lots of people who aren't that comfortable. How does like

Rhona Pierce (04:58.882)
being a marketer, a recruiter as a marketer, how does that really look like?

I mean, there's a variety or a range of talent marketers in my opinion. Like you don't have to be that super vocal, like in your face. Like you can just be yourself ultimately, right? And that's what I was looking for when I was hiring great recruits on my team, or at least the recruiters I started to train, I can see the best ones that were bringing great candidates and resonating with them was the main thing was just storytelling. whatever you can tell a story,

and tell it really well, concise, have your own voice. You start building those relationships because whatever you're saying, you're going to resonate with a certain type of candidates that we're going after. And I think that was really, that's really where I got a lot of my recruits to get out of their shell and to be themselves and to create more candid materials and social media posts and videos and things like that and capture real moments.

within the process, but also within our culture.

If you've made it this far into the episode and you're not subscribed yet, now's a good time. How do you define culture?

Dave Vu (06:12.11)
Yeah, so for me, culture, I hate the term culture fit, right? Because I think culture fit is, it forces everybody to be the same. But ultimately, if you're building a company, you have a North Star, we know what type of individuals we're looking for. However, anybody that's coming in should be in the culture ad. And those individuals are going to add something slightly different that's going to improve the culture that you currently have and make it even that much better.

And I think for me, culture add is probably the most important thing. It's really hard to define because you have like a set of values that you as a company have. However, there's going to be slight differences within a team because within a company, you might have the company culture, but you also might have the department culture, the team culture, subculture as well. And so those, to me, is really important is to be able to bring in your authentic self and create a genuine culture within the company itself.

And the reason why I ask that is because as you were saying, and I know you're an advocate of like sharing your culture and like your hiring process publicly, but most companies, really guard that stuff. if they were state secrets, what, like what happens when companies actually show the true culture and like their true process?

Yeah, I mean, that's challenging because you also want to have a unified message within an individual. So there's a fine balance you need to strike. You have to have a unified message of what the company values. What are we trying to accomplish? What is that North Star? So that's to me the basic. You got to get that down right. The other piece is really pulling back the curtain on the process. Too many times it feels like there's a gap.

between the interaction with the candidate and the recruiter because it feels a little bit cold. It feels a little bit transactional. It feels a little scary to be honest with you, right? And people are applying to a job feeling like they're being judged and they don't know what the process looks like. So that creates a little bit of anxiety. In my opinion, I don't think you want that because when I'm talking to a candidate or an individual,

Dave Vu (08:30.862)
I want them to be as comfortable as possible so I can go and dig a little bit further of who they really are. I don't want them to have the anxiety and put up a guard that's not who they truly are. That makes my job a lot harder. It makes my team's job a lot harder to identify those individuals. So I think pulling back that curtain, showing them what that process looks like in advance so they can anticipate what the stages looks like, make it feel like it's more of a conversational, even though it is still an interview.

Make it feel very comfortable for them, being available to them to answer any questions. I think that's going to play in your interests as a company.

And I like how you position it as like, if you're not making it comfortable for them, they're acting like we already know, everyone's on their best behavior during an interview. And I like how you said, and it's something that I've always believed as well too. If you make people comfortable, they will show you who they are as much as possible, right? They'll still be on kind of their best behavior. And that actually helps you make a decision.

on whether they have the skills and whether they will fit into the team because guards are down, everyone's like on a human type of level. But still, we're in 2025 and I know, because of the conversations that I have daily, that a lot of companies are still resistant to this. Not everyone has managers like you or like me who like believe in brand building as a recruiter. How can recruiters listening to this

bring that to their management and like make the case to allow them to be themselves and like show the actual behind the scenes of what's happening.

Dave Vu (10:20.256)
I mean, to me, there's two things you can do. The first one is showing what can work. And I think the main thing is really testing it out. You don't have to roll it out to the whole company. Sometimes people expect talent acquisition strategy to be like, well, this is one size fits all. We're to roll it out to the whole organization. That's always challenging because we're going to try different things and some things are not going to work. I always say start small.

You know, start with one particular job, for example. could be, you might have like a hundred jobs and you might say, let's just pick one job with my particular team in this particular department. Let's try something different, see what the results are, put in a specific timeline and what the results can be, get feedback from the candidates. I think all those things are super important. I mean, that's partly why we built at Ribbon is making sure that it was very comfortable for those individuals to try this really quickly, spin up an AI interview.

those conversations and measure that. And I think that's the best thing you can do. The other thing is there are the brands out there that you can look to and you can use that as a guide or a beacon of what works and then show that to your manager. And then from there, you can take some of the best practices and then tweak it for your own.

What are some of the brands that you think are doing this well?

Yeah, I would say, you know, I think Nike is doing a really good job. Like they really try to, they almost don't sell the company. It's weird, they don't sell the company at all. They make it feel like we're going out there to identify the best fit between an individual and this is the place that you should be in. And they create this great process. I haven't obviously applied.

Dave Vu (12:07.882)
in a long time, but from what I've seen and admiring from afar, they seem to have the branding piece really well. And I think there's a couple other ones like Duolingo does a great job as well. And it feels like for me, if I was a candidate, I saw that type of employer branding or recruitment branding, it will attract me definitely to those jobs a lot more.

Yeah, it's definitely I think the brands that you have mentioned from what I know, heavy like influence or even participation from their consumer marketing teams in their employer branding and in their recruiting, recruitment marketing. So it's aligned with what you're saying that you need to think like a marketer and like build a brand or like a brand builder when you're recruiting.

I think one thing I did notice and you make a very good point is that they blur the line between a customer and a candidate. And I think that's a good thing because ultimately those candidates that don't get a job in that process will come away with a great experience. They're going to, word of mouth is going to spread. if they, the best thing you can do as a talent leader or a talent team is those that get rejected or don't get the job, tell others about it.

the process. I think there's no better branding exercise that you can do. So if you can do that, you can also create potential customers from that process as well. And if you get that right, I think it's the ultimate TA strategy.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I can already hear a recruiter saying, I don't have time to be creating content. I have recs to fill. Like, what's your response to that?

Dave Vu (13:56.142)
Yeah, I mean, don't think of it as you're doing it on your own, right? Even for us, work with our, you know, we have a marketing process and we work with that process very deeply. I think you can, larger teams, you can work with the marketing team and you're able to like craft out a message, have those individuals help you craft out that message. I think from a personal branding standpoint,

It's up to you as an individual, but that will ultimately help your career. And I see very often now where the recruiter becomes, they become their own brand in some ways. And then you look at the company's brand, but they're kind of interchangeable and intertwined. And I think that's a good.

And it's interesting because as someone who's very out there when I was getting recruiting jobs and recruiting recruitment leadership jobs, it was always like hit or miss where people were like, yeah, she's got her own brand, come here. And other people or in other companies were like, no, we don't want someone with such a strong brand type of thing. But I've never really understood it because recruiting in general, go back to remove all the internet, remove all of this back to the beginning days.

people wanted recruiters who knew people in the industry who could bring them in. So if you were praised in the past for having the strong network of people that you knew and you went to every career fair, every networking event, everything, why is it the opposite now when we have like it at our fingers literally?

And also it's amplified now, right? With all these channels and sometimes I don't know this happens to you, but sometimes I will recognize that recruiter. And I don't know where I've seen this person, but it's probably because they've created so much content. They've been at events. They've been introduced to me by other people, but it sticks with me in my mind. And so the worst thing you can do is be a recruiter that nobody remembers or knows. And so you'd be just become, you know, very transactional and then

Dave Vu (16:06.382)
you're not really building those relationships. Many times you're going to have a situation where those candidates might not go with you for the job, but they'll remember you and they'll come back later on. And I think that's the ultimate aim of this game.

Yeah, I remember back to times where I've had people say like, Hey, Rona, I'm on the job hunt now. Where are you at now? Because I'm a startup gal. So I worked at many startups. They're like, where are you at now? Like, what's interesting? It's like, wow. So how does AI fit into this like recruiter as a marketer transformation?

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's more about allowing the going back to what we were saying earlier is allowing those candidates to feel very comfortable and have our conversations. We've had many feedback from candidates that said this didn't feel scary at all. I was able to ask a lot of questions. It was a two way conversation. In a weird way, they almost felt not judged as much, even though they know that the AI is going out there and asking questions and bringing out those those answers to our

But the AI was built with, you know, the best AI should be built with empathy, the ability to listen. You know, I always say if you want to build something, you want to build it mirroring your best employee or, you know, the archetype of employee that you're looking for. And for in this instance with TA, it's really somebody who is actively listening that does has asked great follow up questions, has done this research of the candidate is very empathetic. I think if you have those things combined.

you're going to create a great experience for the candidate.

Rhona Pierce (17:42.2)
And for listeners who might not be familiar, you're talking about Ribbon, your product, right? And how it does the interviews. Can you just give them like a quick preview of what Ribbon does?

So Ribbon, essentially, as a hiring manager recruiter, can craft a custom AI interview in less than 30 seconds. And then you ultimately can pick the different personas for a recruiter. We also have 12 plus different languages. So can make that a recruiter now speak in Spanish all of a sudden. then you ultimately, after that process, you've put in place the questions that you want the AI to ask, and then a simple link with AI is attached to that.

So very simply, because it's a link, you can integrate that anywhere that you're attracting candidate. I always say cast a really wide net because you're going to find great candidates. And as a candidate clicks on the link and then starts screening with the AI, it all comes back to one, the job requisition that you've created. And then from there, you can go through and filter for the different candidates. have their transcript, you have their video interview, and then you can decide who you want to spend most time.

to dig a little bit deeper into that particular candidate's experience.

So definitely this frees up time, but like paint me a picture, right? In your ideal world, what are human recruiters doing while AI handles the interviews? Because I know you're not trying to replace recruiters. So like, what's the vision?

Dave Vu (19:11.522)
Yeah, so it's, we think, and I firmly believe in this philosophy, it's human in the loop, right? We think this is one of the biggest decisions you're gonna make in your life, buying a house, getting married, finding a job. And so we always wanna have a human in the loop to have that conversation. But we know that hiring requires multi-stages and sometimes it takes a really long time. And so we want to speed up that.

the top of the funnel screening process really fast. It allows the recruiter to free up their time to pick and choose the best candidates that they're going to spend. Instead of 30 minutes, they're going to spend now. They can have more time because they can spend an hour with this candidate, build a relationship, sell that candidate, also free up their time to think more strategically how to go out there and market themselves like we just said, or at the same time, maybe go hunt a little bit more. And so that's the ultimate aim is to be able to

have any recruiter 10x their productivity, but allow them to do the best things that they're good at, which is building relationships with those candidates.

So yeah, definitely frees up time for the brand building piece that we're talking about. So every HR person I know is terrified of saying the wrong thing online. How do we get past that?

Yeah, I think it's a wider cultural issue. Everybody's afraid to say things online, but I think then people craft a narrative that doesn't feel genuine at all. And it goes back to what we're saying is you're trying to build genuine connections and relationships. And I think for me is don't overthink it. I was in that shoe not that long ago. Like a few years ago, I would craft out

Dave Vu (21:04.428)
my LinkedIn posts and then I would read every single line, every single word. And I realized when I posted it, didn't really like people digest that, but it wasn't like you had to scrutinize every single word, right? It was more about the general content and the themes that you were putting out there and a string of messages. And I think the best thing you could do is just get out of your head, not overthink it, be yourself, obviously be respectful in whatever message that you're putting out there. But

create that very genuine tone of who you are. And I think that will like serve you really well.

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Rhona Pierce (22:24.248)
So let's talk a little about like your actual story and how you're building Ribbon. Are you using your own brand marketing playbook to build Ribbon or are you doing something different?

Yeah, I mean, I'm starting to post a lot more on LinkedIn and I think it's starting to resonate with people. It's just things I've been thinking about for a long time and you have to sit down and craft out what you want to. You have to consciously think about what you want to write. But once you start creating that stream of consciousness, it gets easier because then you're not. It's more about your own. It's yourself blocking yourself from posting. And so.

I started posting a little bit more. have certain ideas and themes that I've seen, whether it's relevant in the market that I love to talk about or something that I've seen in the process of building as a founder. And so I try to think of like different perspective that people will be interested in. And so for me, my perspective comes from a talent leader with a certain amount of user experience that now is a tech co-founder. I think that's kind of unique. And so sometimes I will wear my

my founder had and I'll speak from that perspective. Sometimes I'll speak from the recruiter talent acquisition perspective and then everything in between. But I try to put myself in those different shoes when I write my content.

How has it been received by people? I know, like, okay, AI that's seemingly like that's doing interviews, right? So as a recruiter, you can look at it and be like, whoa. So how has it been received by your audience?

Dave Vu (24:08.782)
I would say the honest truth is that it's polarizing because I think it's really new and it is scary and people have this assumption about AI. The joke always is it's like Skynet, Terminator. I think people go to like the extremes when it comes to AI. And so it is polarizing. People have a lot of questions. A lot of it is just misconception of what it is. And I think

That's where you can have a conversation. But you can see sometimes, and when I do a post, there is people that are very opposed to AI. That also tells me that we're onto something, just because I know with the technology adoption curve, that means we're early enough. And there is something that we need to dig a little bit further into. But there are always going to be people that are not going to always agree. And that's OK.

That's where you learn the most. And that's where I always have dialogues with the individual. I'll give you a quick anecdote. There was a post that I did about AI and how it would replace some of the recruiter's responsibility. And there was a lot of recruiters that were up in arms. And they were making a lot of comments. And I think I had about a million plus impression on this post. I actually answered every single comment. And I booked time with a few people that had

really insightful comments. I had a conversation, I realized that we were thinking of the same thing but different perspective and I was able to learn a lot. He was able to learn a lot from me. Subsequently, he posted something weeks later saying, I was surprised that Dave would even jump on a call with me, spend some time but I learned a lot and this is what, you know, changed my mind on a bunch of things. And I think that's really the discourse.

of a dialogue, I think it's really important that we're missing sometimes today in our society.

Rhona Pierce (26:09.804)
That's such a great story. First of all, replying to all the comments on a post with so many impressions, I can imagine took some time. But it also shows kind of like where we're at as an industry because yes, lots of companies have weaponized, think, in my opinion, AI and their playbook, especially HR tech companies, their playbook is to go out and be like, we're replacing blah, blah, and it's like,

Why would you talk to your target audience about you're replacing them? Like that's, I don't know how that's a good sales playbook in anyone. But oh well.

Yeah.

And also the truth is, if you go back to when LinkedIn started, I think about this story all the time. When LinkedIn first started, the message was, my God, LinkedIn is going to take over every recruiter's job. We're going to have less recruiters than ever before. It actually went the opposite way and exploded more recruiters because all that meant was you allow more people to be able to create networks and then go and recruit. And hiring didn't stop. It just increased. And now you have a tool that you can use at your disposal. People thought that

with LinkedIn, you don't need recruiters. And it was like, you can just go out and find those individuals yourself. But no, you still have to go through the legwork. You still have to manage it. It is still an interview process. And I think this is no different, in my opinion.

Rhona Pierce (27:34.488)
Do you think that candidates are taking to or like adopting or accepting AI in the hiring process faster than recruiters are?

I would say yes, and I'll point to a couple of interesting data points. would say people below the age of 35 are adopting at a rate much, much higher and faster. And I did notice, you know, for our initial data is like people 40, 45 and above, I think are resistant, but I think that's really normal with any new technology, especially in technology like AI where people are not as comfortable or not as familiar. And those same individuals might be the ones that are

are accustomed to doing things a certain way as well, which is okay, right? And you're never going to get 100 % adoption on any new technology. But the people that have gone through the experience, and we asked this of every candidate that goes through our RUBMAN experience, we give them a very quick feedback page. And now in the tens of thousands of candidates that has interviewed, the average score is typically four out of five or five out of five, and they write a little comment. And the common

theme or a comment that we hear is, wow, this allows me to have a voice and speak more than just being screened with a resume. Sometimes, you know, that is just powerful enough so that an individual feels like you're not throwing your resume into a black box and being screened and filtered by keywords. Somebody is looking on the other side and showing your true personality. The other piece they love is the accessibility component.

I hear a few of these stories that I think really resonates with me is a single mom, they work a shift, they come home, they put the kids down, they wanna look for that new job. They can't schedule a call with a recruiter at 11 p.m. And we see data now that a lot of our candidates are doing phone calls post 7 p.m., sometimes post 11 p.m. on the weekends. And so this gives you accessibility like you've never seen.

Rhona Pierce (29:42.638)
Yeah. I think we're getting closer and I love that there more and more tools and like tools like Ribbon that are really helping us get to where we need to go. So like if recruiters start thinking like marketers, what dies? Like what sacred cow in recruiting goes away forever?

Yeah, would say we would love to see the initial resume filtering die in some way or form or fashion. And I don't mean that like in a very like, know, facetious negative way. It's just more, I just don't think that's the best way to identify a candidate these days. A candidate on their side is using a lot of AI tools to like improve their resumes. And so the resume ends up looking all the same.

And so if you really want to know who that person really is, I still think the first best step is going to be a phone screen of some way or form or fashion. If we can make every recruiter do a phone screen because they have unlimited time, that would be ideal. But of course, in this day and age, you can't because people are applying at mass, people are applying five to seven times more than ever before. And so I think that's an area where if

resumes disappear, but you can still get a lot of the information you're looking for in a conversation with AI. I think that would be ideal.

Yeah, I definitely think so. And I think you posted about that recently about how everyone's resume is going to look the same. Like, it's true. Like, people are using tools. They're going into Chad GPT and just saying, hey, I'm applying for this role. What should I write on the resume? Well, everyone's going to look great on paper. How do you figure out who's actually great?

Dave Vu (31:38.636)
Well, I a lot of times people will take the job description, throw it into an AI tool like ChatGPT, and say, craft me the resume that will allow me to get through the keyword filters or whatever your case may be. And then it just becomes a game then, because you end up going to found out or caught in a screening call when you start digging a little bit further. The beauty of a screening call is that you get to dig a little bit further. You can't really anticipate what the next question is going to be like.

And so you end up going, okay, well, if you said this, I want to know more. Like I want to, I'm going to probe a little bit more about the example you provided.

favorite question as a podcast host and as a recruiter has always been tell me more.

That's great. That works all the time.

It's like at that point people just have to like literally tell you more. So someone's listening to this in their car probably in the parking lot before walking into their recruiting job. What's one thing they can do today that would actually move the needle?

Dave Vu (32:42.252)
Yeah, the one thing I would say is from a marketing brand building standpoint, I would say probably pulling the current back and explaining what your process is going to be like, but in a much more genuine way is a really simple way of solving that. Of course, I can go on about other things you can do, but I think that's a really simple thing you can do and explain what that looks like, making it feel less cold.

explaining why those process exists. Sometimes there is, I don't know if you've ever been an interviewer, there's seven different interviews and then you realize what's the purpose of this interview? I'm not even really sure. Like how does that fit in? Ends up being very redundant. And by doing that, what it tells me is that you're to have to look at yourself and your recruiting process and step back and go, does every stage here make sense? What are we doing?

What is the message we want to get out? And then it allows you to refine that process because you have to explain yourself why to the rest of the, to those candidates.

Yes, I love that. And I would even take it a step further. Yes, share your process. Second post or second piece of content. What questions are you asking? Because a lot of people, and I know this is a controversial one, giving questions ahead of time and stuff like that. Some people say yes, some people say no. But share the things. But that will force you as a recruiter and the hiring team in general.

to ask yourselves, why are we even asking this question? Because when you have to explain to someone, you're going to be talking about this, then you're like, wait, why are we even asking that?

Dave Vu (34:24.866)
Yeah, yeah. think that's really important. There's many times, especially in large organizations, you start going down the interview process and you go, who built this? Like, well, what are we doing? You start doing it and like you look back and you've just been doing for so long, you forget what was the purpose. Maybe that individual crafted the interview flow five years ago, left the company and now it's like the company's changed so much. It's okay. Like you're able to like change that up.

The other thing I would add actually, if you were going to ask me a second thing that would work really well is, is be able to show truly what your team dynamic looks like and culture. It goes back to what we're saying. I think that's harder because, you know, people want to craft the narrative a certain way, but if you can somehow do that and do that very genuinely, I think you're just going to track really good.

Yeah. What do you think about this? What I usually tell people is to show your culture, show, start with the things that you reward. What do you reward at this company? Who just got promoted? Why did they get promoted? Tell that story. That gives candidates an idea of like, oh, people who do X, Y, if it means people who work 20 hours a day get promoted here. Do I want to work 20 hours a day? No, but

there's other people who might. So like that type of thing, you're showing your culture, you're celebrating your employees and you're just telling a story.

I love that. I totally agree with you on that, which is the worst thing you can do is set a wrong expectation. You know, you're going to say, well, we're like this and we're like a family. I hate those quotes, right? You're like this. And then you come in and the expectation changes. Well, you didn't do any favors to anybody. That person is going to be resenting the fact that they came in and were, you know, create a false narrative or a false expectation. That's not what you want. You just want to match up to who you are.

Dave Vu (36:20.652)
And it's okay if people self filter themselves out of the process. I think that's a really good thing. Like if they can self filter that because if they ask more questions and they don't want to join, that saves you and your team a ton of time, right? And you don't have to convince that individual to join you. But I think a point that you made that I think is really important is instead of just saying show what that can look like. I think that's probably more important. Too many times companies just say it without giving you an example of what.

that looks like.

Yeah, and we're having those conversations every day anyway, because great candidates are asking you more than just what's the culture like, they ask you specific questions about the things that matter to them. Tell those stories online. That's content right there.

Yeah, and I think those individuals are savvy. And those are the types of candidates that you want on your team because they're questioning things. They're asking great questions. They care. That's why they're asking questions. The ones that don't do the research and are just asking you very surface level questions, you can kind of tell like this is probably one of 20 jobs that they just applied to. And so I think those are really good questions and it gives you a good indication of the type of individual.

that may be joining your company.

Rhona Pierce (37:40.408)
All right, so I've enjoyed this conversation, but before we wrap, there's a segment that I like to do towards the end. It's called Plead the Fifth. So this is how it works. I'll ask you three questions and you won't know what questions are being asked. You can only plead the fifth once or you can answer all of the questions. Are you ready? All right, what's your hottest take about AI and recruiting that would piss people off?

I'm ready, let's do it.

Dave Vu (38:10.28)
Ooh, the thing that would probably piss people off is a lot of bad recruiters are going to lose their job. I don't know if that's a hot, hot take, but I just think the industry is going to shrink. And I think that's a really good thing. It's going to filter out people that don't really care about this space, and it's going to elevate those that really care. And so I think there's going to be a lot of people that lose their jobs. But I think for the right people, they're going to lose their jobs, in my opinion.

like that. If you could delete one thing from LinkedIn forever, what would it be?

I don't know if I want to plead the fifth is more I just don't remember. I've so much. I don't even know if I can go back long enough. I would probably say.

Actually, you know what? There's nothing that I would delete, to be honest with you. I think it's all part of that journey. I remember my first post and I thought about it. was like, oh, it's very cringe. Like I just didn't like it at all. And I'm being very self aware of like what I posted and it sounded like, in my opinion, cheesy. And then I realized, yeah, that's just one post for one day. And then next post is the next time and nobody remembers or cares. So I don't think there's anything I would delete, to be honest with you.

Amazing. All right, last one. What's the dumbest recruiting trend that everyone's still doing?

Dave Vu (39:36.571)
Ooh, that's a good one. I'm gonna plead the fifth, not because I don't want to answer it, just because I don't know what the answer is. so, I'm using that one card for me to plead the fifth.

Amazing, amazing. So I've really enjoyed this conversation. How can listeners connect with you?

Yeah, absolutely. I you could come to my LinkedIn and find me on LinkedIn. And then if they want to, they can always connect with me on an email. I try to answer a lot of people. It's harder and harder these days. But Dave at Ribbon.ai and go check out our website, Ribbon.ai.

Amazing. I'll link all of that in the show notes. Thanks again for joining me on the show.

Dave Vu (40:22.411)
Absolutely, this was a pleasure.

Rhona Pierce

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.