The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Help Wanted: How to Find and Keep Talent in a Forever-Tight Labor Market by Jerry Rubin, Steven L. Dawson

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

Help Wanted: How to Find and Keep Talent in a Forever-Tight Labor Market by Jerry Rubin, Steven L. Dawson https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262054396/ https://www.helpwantedbook.com/ How employers can compete in a challenging labor market—by hiring differently, redesigning job quality, and rethinking their government relations strategies. From two leaders in business and workforce development with a proven track record in innovative workforce strategies. Over the past ten years, the U.S. labor market has been buffeted, with demand shifting dramatically. At the same time, demographic trends mean that U.S. labor supply will steadily tighten into the coming decade: Relatively fewer native-born workers are entering the workforce; a greater percentage are choosing not to work; and an aging baby boom generation is exiting the workforce. What’s worse, this systemic tightening of the US labor market has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s decision to dramatically constrain immigration, the primary source of recent labor market growth. Welcome to the “forever-tight” labor market. In Help Wanted, Jerry Rubin and Steven Dawson combine their 80 years of experience in management and workforce development to offer employers an “employee-focused competitive strategy.” This strategy includes a wide range of practical, well-researched tools and detailed case studies from a breadth of employers that will help readers compete for talent and retain a productive workforce. Since the underlying cause of the tightening labor supply is structural, employers—whether for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental—must respond in kind. They too must undertake structural changes in finding, hiring, and retaining workers. Now equal in importance to an organization’s customer-service strategy, an employee-focused strategy is no longer simply a competitive advantage—it is fast becoming a competitive necessity. About the author Jerry Rubin is a Senior Advisor at the Harvard Project on the Workforce, a Foundation Fellow at the Eastern Bank Foundation and Co-Chair of the MassSkills Coalition. Most recently, he was CEO and President of JVS-Boston, a 250-employee organization that consults directly to businesses seeking job candidates recruited and trained by JVS. About the author Steven L. Dawson was founder and President of PHI, which consults on job-quality redesign to a range of private long-term care businesses and public healthcare/employment agencies. Earlier, he was founder and President of The ICA Group, which consults to and finances employee‐owned enterprises nationwide.

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Chris Vos show. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortresschuschristchristvost. LinkedIn.com, Fortresschuschristch, Chris Voss, and Chris Voss won on the TikTok-a-dy and all those crazy places. Today we have two young men on the show. We're going to be talking about their new book called Help Wanted, How to Find and Keep Talent in a forever tight labor market.

Jerry Rubin and Stephen L. Dawson. Join us on the group today. We're going to be talking about all their good stuff and all their deets, as the kids like to say. I don't know that the kids like to say. Jerry Rubin, Lenin founded several highly impactful workforce and community development organizations and initiatives in the nonprofit and public sectors over the past four decades. He's written extensively on workforce and community development issues, including monographs and book chapters. He is a senior advisor at the Harvard Project of the Workforce and Foundation Fellow at Eastern Bank.

Stephen L. Dawson worked in the field of business economic development for 45 years. He helped create and lead a range of for-profit, non-profit economic development enterprises, and for decades wrote and consulted extensively to organizations on frontline workforce job quality issues. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. How are you? Great. Good. Very good. Thanks for having. Very good. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms, where people can find you on the interwebs, social media, wherever you want people to look you up.

All right. First, I just want to thank you for the introduction and particularly saying we're young men because I wish we were. But the book is coming out soon, August. So we're just about there. And it is being published by MIT Press. It's being distributed also by Penguin Random House. And you can learn about the book and order it at our website, which is help wanted book.com. And lots of information there and a way to order. Of course, you can also order on Amazon Prime, which is help wanted book.com. And lots of information there and a way to order. Of course, you can also order on Amazon Prime, which I imagine many of you will. Do you want to jump in here? That's how you find us. That's how you find us. We have a joint agreement on the topic. So guys, give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside the book?

I'll give you a shot at that. We wrote this book for a couple of reasons, in addition to the fact that we were both in the process of retiring and we needed something to keep us busy. No, not really. We actually were pretty inspired by a couple of issues that confronted us. One is that the business press and the business community, to us, seem to pay most of their attention to what we call the hiring weather, whether they're hiring, whether

they're not hiring, ups and downs, the kinds of things that go and change on a regular basis. But we were seeing the long-term climate, and that meant the labor supply, which from all the data we could see, the demographic data, issues around immigration, who's working. who's not working. That climate is on a steady downward trend, and we are absolutely running out of people. Labor supply is tremendously constrained regardless of what the demand is. The other thing, honestly, Steve and I both have said this. We got tired of hearing from many employers that we work with and would read about and hear about that they just can't find or keep talent. And it just seems to us like they were waiting for the perfect candidates to come to their door or maybe the

next recession that would send them a whole bunch of people their way or AI maybe to make the jobs unnecessary. And we said, come on, really, we know of companies all over the United States that are large, that are small, that are in manufacturing, that are in groceries, that are thinking really differently about talent and how to find and keep it and make sure that they are competitive by having a really great workforce that they can count on. So that motivated us to write this book, both to show what the problem is, give a little bit of a warning, but mostly to give ideas about how one can change the way they think about talent, have an employee-focused talent strategy. And that's really, that was our motivation. And that's great. Stephen? Yeah, and that's why

we just get frustrated with our fellow employers who sit behind the desk and, mostly complain. And so the book is a friendly kick in the pants to say, get out from behind your desk. And mostly, first thing, start talking to your own employees to find out what's really going on in your business. A lot of employers, like to talk to other employers, like to talk to their colleagues, but they're a little hesitant to go down on the shop floor onto their Zoom and find what's really going on.

why are we not having the type of talent we want? And what are the ideas that come from within our own company? So that's what the book really is. Are you talking about a new way of looking at talent and employment? Can you give us a little bit of tease out on what that means? And what should employers be doing? And I think this book is targeted towards employers, correct? It is.

Yeah, it's really focused on primarily on employers, and those organizations that help employers find and keep talents, so they might be a trainer and an educational organization. But we have a few basic ideas in the book, and it's a thankfully brief book. It's less than 200 pages with the hope that people will actually be able to read. We think it's pretty readable, so we hope you do as well. But a couple of ideas.

One is to really rethink whom and how you recruit talent, So where are you finding pockets of talent and what tools are you using? And we can come back to that a little bit later. We also talk about redesigning jobs so that people actually want to do those jobs and stay in the company. And we've got some really great tips on how to read it on jobs as well as examples of how that's done. We also talk about employers need to stop just playing defense around government relations and get involved in those policies that can help grow a talent pool. So whether it's early childhood ed, child care, or transportation, or affordable housing, and we give examples of that. And then we have great

examples of how you're not alone to do this work. So partners out there that can help you get it done. And then there's a chapter on why you won't do anything we say, which is basically all the resistance to the great ideas that we have, which there will be, and what you can do about. We can go into detail on any of those, but that's the basic, that's a basic outline of the book. Stephen, you know, your version? Jerry and I both for four or five decades have worked with employers, and we found that we can show them and have shown them surveys and reports to prove that if they have a more employee-centered strategy, that their profitability higher, their productivity higher, and they

look at this, but we're different. We're different. Right. And we found that rational argumentation is necessary. You've got to show them those reports. But what you really have to do is understand why they're hesitant to make changes that are perfectly rational to undertake. It's the same as your own health.

You can tell me that if I stop eating as much and drinking as much beer and get out and exercise, I'll be a much healthier person that you can show me all the statistics. That doesn't mean I'm going to go out. And I believe that, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and do that. There's all sorts of reasons why I'm going to not want to change my behavior. Same is true in businesses. There's all sorts of very valid reasons why employers are going to have trouble making change in their own organization.

We are respectful of that. We show what some of the external resistance of changes and some of the internal resistance changes. And that's different from most of the types of books you'll read about how to create an employee-centered business. Most just focus on the statistics to say, hey, we can show you you'll be more successful if you do this. We show that, then we also say,

and we recognize this is why it's going to be hard for you to change your own behavior, change your your middle managers, behaviors, et cetera, and take it realistically and very practically. Yeah. No, we talk about in the title of Forever Labor Market. Is that where we're at? Are we in a forever maxed-out market or where are we at right now in today's world? Yeah, it's, yeah, go ahead, Steve.

You got it. Okay, there's three things that have been happening and we're going to continue to happen. One is the birth rate in the U.S. has been dropping about 1.6 babies. for a woman that needs to be 2.1 if we're even this whole steady. The baby boom generation is now leaving the workforce, so that means the participation rates are dropping and continue to drop. And the third is most dramatically, and even more dramatically than we had in the book, is that the Trump administration's immigration policies have ripped out most of the not the foreign-born labor out of our workforce. And a half million,

fewer foreign-born workers working in the country right now than it was a year ago. And so those three forces combined, meaning that if it weren't for foreign-born workers since the pandemic, we would have had no economic growth at all. So, yeah, we're in a forever type labor market. You're probably asked about AI. We can answer that. There's no, there's nothing on the horizon suggests that if you're having trouble right now,

hiring people, it's just going to get harder and harder. Yeah. Does Gen Z... I just would add to that. Just the people say to me, oh, yeah, it'll be better next year. It'll whatever's going to change. I always say it's easy, especially when you look at birth data, like, it takes 18 years to grow a worker, right?

We know how many people are born this year. So it's not that hard to figure out how many workers there's going to be. And unless that changes because of immigration or changes on the demand side, Steve mentioned technology. Yeah, it's not a pretty picture. And it's the change has actually gotten worse. It's also, it's all true all over the world. Only in the, I think only in the continent of Africa, China is probably the worst. They have the biggest problem. Japan went through this already. We're an aging planet. And, and we're not having enough babies to keep up with replacement, let alone the workforce. Yeah. There's, there's, I forget who wrote the books on

this stuff, but basically you're going to have some European countries disappear with the baby rate. Like Germany, I think Japan's still going through, right? It hasn't changed. It's still in the shade. Japan is for all the separation countries. Yeah. Most of these countries are going to start disappearing about 2035, 2050. And it's a real issue because like you said, you've got to have that 2.1 to grow. And America, a lot of people don't realize America, We used to have the greatest marketplace. We bought everything. Everybody wanted to be in our marketplace.

And it was because we had a vibrant economy and plenty of people that made lots of money. And, yeah, that was a real key to our success. People don't realize how much that makes a difference. That and our control of the dollar. And can I add in terms of that international reality that other countries? That means that we're competing for labor. We're now a global economy. And we're competing for labor international.

And so as those countries are having trouble hiring people, particularly the higher tech people, we're in competition for those same workers. So if they're short, the globe is short. And the irony is you've got a international world, a planet where many, many, many people are on the move. You've got migration is enormous. And to some degree, countries are competing for that mobile talent, as Steve said. So if your immigration policy is essentially to close off legal or non-legal immigration, you're opening yourself up to a major problem. As you mentioned earlier, immigration has really been the only source of our labor

growth for a long time. So like the policy or not, it's a problem, a real problem. We're really slitting our own throats with the aviation policy that we have. When you understand the visa, the one HB1B visa program and a lot of the workers that come from India, these are people that have do extremely well. First generation immigrants do really well when they, or is it second generation, whatever, the first generation to Americanize when they come to America. First generation that's born here and raised, they do really well.

And they contribute trillions of dollars to our society. I've got an Indian friend who he maps out how all the HP1 visas, contribute to economic production and GDP in this country and wealth in creation. And that wealth spreads. It's a vibrant economy. People don't realize the dollar from the... In Vegas, we realize this. You always, there's a kind of a mentality in Vegas that even though you might be a resident,

you always tip-wo because the money goes round into the Vegas economy. And it's going to come back to you and it's going to make everything vibrant. And so you just always do. In this play-in, I know a lot of employers have not been excited about Gen Z. There's been a lot written about, a lot talked about it. Some people say it's just paranoia or, I don't know, poor employment. But is Gen Z? One of the things I was reading about the boomers retiring is for every seven boomers that are retiring every day or something,

the only workforce to replace them is one Gen Zer. And these people that are retiring, they're like journeymen, trade, skill level, masters of their thing. And the Gen Zer is supposed to replace them and they're nubes, right? Their journey or their apprentices and they've got to learn their way up. And that's a real glut of a workforce. One person replaced five or seven, whatever is it? What are your thoughts on that with Gen Z?

Is Gen Z a factor in all this? We didn't really look particularly at that segment of the workforce. I will say, I think you're exactly right, that it's not. not in a position, the Gen Z group is not a large enough bubble to replace us. Those are stepping out, which is why you're actually seeing labor force. It's one of the reasons you're seeing labor force participation being so low. But that said, that is the pool of talent. And in fact, that's really what we're suggesting with examples that employers think about creating talent pipelines that can tap Gen Z workers as well as other sources of talent.

And we give an example of this company in Rochester, New York, Optamax, that has worked really closely with their educational institutions, high schools, trade, two-year schools, and four-year institutions. And when I say work closely, have faculty in those institutions, help develop curricula, and do internships, right? I want to bring people in. And so what they've developed, they're an incredible lens, high, high-end lens manufacturing companies. And interesting, they told us one of the greatest sources of talent that they find is gamers.

I couldn't explain to you exactly why. Maybe Steve knows that he knows the company better than me. But they've created this incredible cycle, virtual cycle of talent that is grabbing people and making sure. They say, they'll tell you, their competitors are just waiting for the right Gen Zier to walk. through the door and they're all set. It isn't going to happen. But I don't know, Steve, you know the company better than me. And this is a very high-end company. If we've got over 500 workers in the Rochester area, and they're the ones who put

the lens in the Mars rover. This is these crap. This is a, that's why the types of people that hire gamers and musicians and artists is this is a almost a, even though it's high tech, it's a craft high tech. And what they've done in terms of the of the, of the, the way they work with the education system particularly is they turn the community college system on its head where most community colleges, they'll create the courses, individuals go in and get trained, and then they go out looking for work. And instead, Optimax works with their community college to where they create the, they design the courses, they often teach the courses, they hire the individuals first and then to the community

college system to graduate, they're working part-time, they're going to school part-time. So they know when they're working within the community college system, the graduates, that when they graduate, they've got a full-time job. So it just completely reverses the system. And it guarantees it builds a pipeline. It just doesn't wait for the end of the pipeline. And employers, we learned this long time ago. When we were young companies, we would, you come on to an interview.

And if you were, if you really stood out in the interview process, we'd hire you on the spot. one interview, boom, you're hired. And boy, we had so many freaking problems. Finally, I don't know, a light went on or I read something. I used to read a lot of Harvard Business Review. And I read something about longer interviews and hiring. And so we came with a concept where we made hiring. You couldn't be hired unless you made it through two to three, maybe four, if we really couldn't nail you down. Interviews. And then I had to teach my staff to not sell the job and talk most of the time.

Shut up and listen. Because if you shut up and listen, you can get stuff out of people. I remember one time I had a three-year hole in someone's resume as I was going through it. And that's another thing. You always want to check your dates with the people because that's when you find out if they lied or not on their resume. And I couldn't figure out why this three-year hole was with this guy. and he was being dodgy and whatever. And finally I just said, I've had so many times where people hand me a resume

and I'll ask him the timeline and okay, you work for Bob in 1979, whatever. And they'll be like, no, that's not right. Are you sure? And I'm like, this is your resume. You wrote this, right? And they'll be like, yeah, can I see that? I'm like, no, you wrote this. This is the Q&A, man.

It's on the record. I'm not, we're not going to, I'm not giving it back to you so can fill in the blanks. Anyway, it turns out the three years he was in prison for stealing copper wires off of a big copper site. He's literally stripping the telephone poles. It's funny, you're talking about interviewing, and we address this issue. I said earlier, not just who you hire, but how you hire. And like the whole hiring system is dramatically changed. And I just find it so ironic.

A bunch of years ago, right, web-based applications started growing enormously. And as a result, the technology industry created what are now called applicant tracking systems to manage all this flood of online applications. And what's ended up happening is that for a whole bunch of reasons, applicant tracking systems and other now enhanced by AI and other systems of actually hiring people has begun to really screen out talent rather than screen in talent. In fact, I was always struck with Society for Human Resource Management, Sherm, says that they estimate that more than 50% of qualified applicants can't make it past ATS screening algorithm. And great, we set up these

fantastic technologies to help us find people and then to help us keep people from finding us. And now we can't find the right people. And I just, I wonder, and we talk about it, is to going back to some basics, like using, for example, one of the best sources of talent that you have is your own employees, like not only to recruit if they like the company, so that's all another conversation. Check your glass door. Yeah, but in America now, less than a third of vacancies are filled from within a company. And that's dramatically different than it was 20, 30 years ago, where we used to actually

pull from inside the company. So it's crazy. We're using these really expensive, I think, highly inefficient technologies that end up screening out some of the best talent we could have out there. And I'll tell you, the minute these companies need to find talent and we've got less people available, they're going to be in real trouble. So I think we recommend a bunch of different ways to approach this and even to recast some of those technologies. So they screen in better rather than screen out talent. Let me jump in here before Stephen takes it down the road, if you don't mind, Stephen. I put that thought on hold, if you will, because I want to get back to that.

I have a question for that, and I want to get back to that. But I want to finish my thought. So what we found is if we did two to three interviews, by the second or third interview, people have their feet up on the table. They're showing up in their pajamas. They're telling you every bad thing they've ever done in their life, their criminal history. They really get comfortable. When they get comfortable, they tell you everything.

And that changed our companies. We didn't have the problems we had anymore, just good hiring. But the setup of that is really important. And now I can't remember why I even started that whole thread. My ADHD has switched gears on me. I interrupted you. I didn't mean to. It's fine.

No, you're fine. No, you're fine. In fact, you started into the next topic that I wanted to talk about. But, oh, that was what it was, to validate what you guys are saying. A lot of these companies are saying, we're going to hold back or we're going to wait and see, or we're just going to dabble in a little bit. What we found, too, is you constantly have churn in a business of employee rotation, whatever it's called.

Employee churn, I guess, was we can't call it. There's a turnover or there's a, I can't think of the word, but there's a constant churn of people at your office. There's just always just going to be, whether they quit, where they get run over, hit by a bus, you're going to have a charn of people. And you, of course, want to keep that low. But on the other hand, you constantly need to be hiring because you're constantly looking for the best you can hire. Now, that man did not show up every week at the interviews, but you constantly want to be out there.

And that was my experience going back to the 90s. That was the pattern that we put into our companies and hiring. And so, yeah, you really want to be constantly open for talent because you just never know when that gold piece is going to roll through. And you're just like, hey, this is it. we got to get this person. This person is spot on, perfect for our company. I don't know any thoughts you're on, and then we're going to move to that next topic. Yes, well, I mean, I think what we were saying before, that even in a low hire, low fire labor market in the U.S., that still means that over 5 million people are being hired each month. So there is constant hiring going on.

And if you're describing your own business situation, and we both of us have managed large or, organizations, you want to, you do have to weed the garden. You do have to remove people who are not a good fit or not making it right. Because if you don't, not only do you have someone functioning at 60%, but anyone who is really good in your organization looks over that person and says, why should I be working so hard? When this guy is working out. Yeah. So you really do have to be, it needs to be a healthy churn. You have to be really making sure that you're keeping the right people and you're getting rid of the wrong people.

And that's even if you've got a sort of flat hiring environment. We believe we're seeing that we're seeing now that the hesitancy of employers to not grow the companies for the last six months or so. That's mostly because of the uncertainty of the terrorists, of the uncertainty of the war. Who's going to make big hiring decisions with this much uncertainty? And that's going to shift again. You can only not hire for so long unless you're really missing out on your opportunities. One thing I just add to the conversation about

constantly paying attention is we make the argument in the introduction to the book that, you know, HR in America is basically a transactional position. Make sure everybody gets paid and make sure we don't do anything illegal. That's kind of the basic idea. And we're making the argument that it needs to be a really a deep part of the leadership team of the C-suite, and it needs to be a strategic

part of the business, because talent is 90% of what most companies are spending on, but it's generally not seen that way. And we've really, we've got to elevate the focus on talent and HR so that it really is a strategic part of the business. So let's get into what you let us into, Jerry, there for a bit. You're welcome to give a second answer on this. The one of the one, the one One thing I found, you know, I've dated all my life. I've been single. I can't afford the divorces. I only have two or three million dollars in the bank, so I'm still saving up for my first

divorce. That's pretty good. My marriage joke. And plus I like my sanity. But why did I pull that joke? I'm having really bad ADHD this morning. It was good. We've been increasing my testosterone in the last six months.

I'm like 15 different things going on. on with 8 HD. But no, so I run a big, huge dating group. And then I've been on the employer side, of course, as an entrepreneur since 18 and hiring thousands of employees. And I think we've got some noise coming in from someone's mic. I don't know if someone wants to mute between any questions. But with A, the one thing I've learned in both those fields of dating and hiring people, you have to meet people to get to know them. I don't think there's any AI that can really read whether the person's a perfect fit. Because sometimes I've had people that maybe their skill level or experience or knowledge

level isn't quite where it needs to be, but they have enough that I can build on. And they have the integrity and the desire and ambition to learn more, grow more, and develop. And there are times where I met people that I'm like, I wouldn't normally hire this person, but they really feel like they're part of their team member, they're part of the fit. They've got, if you give me integrity and ambition and you're willing to learn and grow, that's, that's epic, because some people don't like learning and growing. But with these AI systems, the fronts that they have now, you've got to go through all these hoops and somehow impress the AI machine.

When I was young and would go for jobs, I was always able to get those jobs because I would always show my energy and my excitement and my desire and my integrity and how I wanted to work hard. And so people could sit there and go, he's ugly, but he'll probably do the job well. But AI, I don't know how you get through that filter. And like you say, a lot of, I think Jerry said, a lot of it is dissing itself from talent. And to me, that one-on-one in-person human-to-human evaluation is so paramount. And I can't imagine throwing that all to a computer and then waiting what's left over. I've never done it, so I don't know.

But give me your thoughts on whether this AI is really good for a workforce or not, the gatekeeper sort of thing. We've got a situation where AI is generating the resumes and AI is reading the resumes and making technical decisions. And there's no human judgment going on. So it's not only that face-to-face interviewing process you talked about, but clearly going back to who do you know, who your networks, Who can you, if I'm trying to get a job with you, I find out who do you know, who's your friends, who's your influencers.

If I have connections with them, you've got to make sure that people who you trust, the one who's hiring, has someone they can rely on to say, hey, is Steve any good? Have you worked with them? Do you know, then that makes a huge difference. You've got to break through that technical wall. I've got a son who works in the cybersecurity field, and when they now, it's a global company, when they now post a job globally at 10 o'clock in the morning, they have 5,000 resumes by new.

Wow. That's a lot. And I know employees they're sending hundreds. I wonder how many are real. The employees? The applicants, yeah, the five. Oh, yeah. Is there a Bob problem, too?

Maybe we should get to that. I'm sorry, Stephen. Go ahead. The only way you break through that is, hey, if I know someone who knows you, I'm going to talk and I'm applying for the job, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send in my resume,

and then I'm going to immediately find out who you know. It's funny because we're ending up essentially asking hiring managers and seeing a lot of this is to do workarounds, which is crazy. So we've got these technology solutions. and really need workarounds. And one thing that we talk about in the book is skill-based hiring, is to look at hiring people based on their ability to actually do the job

as opposed to their sheepskin, or did they have the amazing ability to get through the AI screens. And we have an example of a very interesting example. I saw in practice at Spalding Rehab, which is a big rehabilitation hospital here in Boston where I live. And they use a skill-based interviewing process where somebody spends half a day actually going through a series of simulated work. So that the interview, the talking part of the interview is, I don't know what, 20 minutes, but the doing part of the interview is huge. And it enables them to be able to see how somebody actually does the work.

Now, that's not always possible in every kind of a job. We'd give that as one kind of example. But I think you're right. it does. There are things that AI is very helpful for and very useful for. Steve and I've been actually using Claude as we plow our way and understand how one goes about trying to sell and market and sell a book. But there are things that it's not as good at. And I think that we maybe have been talking about one of them. In dating, it's the same way, that human interaction. I don't, I can talk to somebody on text all day long. And this is the council I give to a lot of people

in dating because I have a huge dating group. And you just, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, You can text people. You can call them all day long. Until you sit with them face to face across a table or a desk, whether it's dating or business, you have no idea if there's a sympatico human fit, right? And to me, that's just so important. And when I heard about there were more and more making these, the barriers AI, I'm just like, holy crap.

I always got jobs because of my personality. and people could meet me face to face and be like, this guy's got some go get them going on. And they could sense that my values a little bit probably in different things. But you're not going to get that with AI. And I'd really be interested. Has somebody done a study of how effective that is, an A, B test of inhuman one-on-one interview and AI?

I'd really be interested in the back-in results of that. Yeah, I haven't seen the research. I've seen, we saw enough data to suggest, and as I mentioned before, the SHRM data that the AI systems are leaving a lot of talent on the table. So that much we know. Do we know really how effective when AI system is versus a much more human one? I have my guess, but I haven't seen good data on it. Here's book two for you guys. Yeah.

Can I see you say the same thing you're talking about in terms of the human-to-human interaction is basically the same thing that's a thread throughout the book, which is employers, managers, so often don't get out from behind their desks. So they don't have the human-to-human interaction, even with the people they've already hired, even with the people they have currently employed. And there's the old management by walking around that is still so valuable. And we've got a great example of Alan Robinson's, the idea-driven organization. He works with companies internationally.

And his work and his theory is 80% of innovation for a company can and should come from the front-line workforce. Not your middle managers, not your senior managers, but the frontline workforce. They're the ones who are interacting with the customers. They're the ones who are on the shop floor. They're the ones who's dealing with the AI. and if you're not talking to them, if you don't know who they are, and if you don't actually create systems by which communication flows up from the front line, rather than just trying to define communication as we need to talk more to them,

and you're missing out on the real value of what you've already got inside your company, which is the people you've already hired. And so that's a thread throughout the book as part of the solution is, you've got to be out there. You've got to be first talking to your own employees, finding out what they care about, what they know works, what they know doesn't work. So that human, human reaction is the scenes around.

Hiring as who you already got employed. Attrition was what I was looking for earlier when I couldn't find it. So you constantly have attrition. And you've got to be able to address that. Like you said, you've got people you lay off. I know we adopted evaluations is the lowest 10%. I know companies like Microsoft, I think, were the ones who started it

or something back in the day where they would say, we're going to turn over 10%. That's Jack Welch. That's GE. That was the famous. It was it Jack Walsh? And you would basically turn over your lowest 10%. We'd give it a good analyzation. And okay, we were like, okay, who are the bottom 10%? Let's just see what they're doing. Let's assess them. Is there room for improvement? Do we need to send them down the road? Are they slum in on the job? Usually these are the employees who are spending two to three hours a day on the phone with their significant other, babbling about some home crap, and you're just like, you're on company time, bud.

I'm not paying you to talk to your girlfriend or wife. It's insane. I'm like, what do you guys talk about for two to three hours a day at work and then at home? Like, I go to work to get away from my significant other. And so I can be freshen when I see them again. I can be like, oh, it's wonderful to see you. I don't want to talk to them 24 hours a day. because they'll get sick of me. They're already sick of me already.

Anyway, that's why I'm still single. But yeah, this is an interesting thing. What are some aspects, I know we're going a little long here, but it's a great show so far. What are some other aspects in the book that you want to tease out to people that I haven't asked you about? We haven't discussed. We haven't talked too much about that issue of retention and what makes Steve Chiefs have kind of hinted at it, that theme of walking around. But American workers are not happy at work, right? I don't know. Steve, I think you found this. The Gallup poll showed tremendous dissatisfaction

with work. And we make the argument if you're going to go through all the trouble of finding talent, you should damn well do what you can to keep it. And people say that people leave jobs mostly because they have terrible managers. But it is more complicated than I think we have a chapter that I think is really important on how to actually redesign jobs so that people feel good about the job, that you bring out the best in them. And you also take advantage of what they have to offer for the bottom line, the success of the company. So I'm going to throw this to Steve, because his expertise is the quality of work. Good, Steve. And this is also important to anyone who might be interested in reading the book is that even though we've focused on the problem a lot

in the book we only have one chapter on the problem and then we have five chapters on what to do about it so it's enough to be very very practical and the psychologists call it admiring the problem that you spend all your time describing it and complaining about it but what we do is just we we make the case that about the forever tight labor market and how supply of labor is really constricting and so if you're having trouble hiring now, it's going to get worse and worse and harder and harder for you. And so then we lay out all these very practical ways that we suggest you can start making changes within your own company. And we do that by having, I think it's over 24 different small, short, two, three-page case

studies of organizations that have done very, very different things. Businesses in all different parts of the country, in all different industries, long-term care, cybersecurity, manufacturing. We have a great case study of Messer Construction in Cincinnati. That's a multi-billion dollar construction company and how they use employee ownership, among other ways in which they really keep on reinvesting in their own employees. So I just want to emphasize that anyone who wants to pick up the book should be prepared to not spend all their time just talking about how hard things are. This is a book about what you do about it.

And what you do about it is you start with your employees, you start small, you test things, and then you start finding out what works. Because every business is different, and every industry is different. And so there's lots of organizational consultants who say, hey, I've got a model of change for you. Here's the seven steps that you can take to make your company more profitable, more employee-centered. And that might work for some, but it won't work for most because every single business is a different kind of business. So what we do instead is say, start with your own company, find out what's really going on there, talk to your own employees. And then we lay out a whole list of resources of once you get to know yourself a little bit better, then you can start going to some of the models that we're going to, some of the models that we're going.

we promote that are Zane Uptones out of MIT. She has a good jobs institute. She has a great way of working particularly with big box stores and retail businesses. So you just want to make sure that people are clear that we're not just describing the problem. This is a book of, this is a toolkit. I like you guys. Anything on your guys' website, any offerings we want to promote or plug, consulting, coaching, any of that stuff? Not consulting or coaching because we don't do it. We're done. We're retired. We got a guard. Yeah, really. I had to really pull Steve out of retirement to get him to write this book. He's still mad at me about it.

But we do have, one of the thing that the book has, and you'll find it in a consolidated form of a PDF on our website, which is help wanted book.com, is a resource list of all the methodologies we're talking about and who you can actually talk to to learn more about them, including the companies that are practicing these methodologies. In a way, we've written to make sure that nobody calls us for advice when we're done because we're busy doing other things. You're just like, read the book. Yeah, and there's a lot of it. You can read the book and it's a map. You can go off and do all this work and there's a lot of resources there. Just don't call us.

That's all. It is the opposite of a prescription. It is a map. Here's a menu. You can, what appeals to you when you talk to your employees, find out what they think a good job is. Good job for you might be not a good job for me. So there's no one definition of a great job.

And so it gives you just a lot of different ways to kick your thinking. That's what we're trying to do. Yeah, but the website has lots of resources, blogs we've been writing, materials you've been pulling on. So check it out. Check it out, folks. Give us that.com as we start to round out at the show. Yeah, it's www.

of course, help wanted book.com. Not help wanted because that's a novel, which I hear is very good, but ours is help wanted book.com. So give people a final pitch on to pick up your book guys. As we go out, I'll give each you guys a shot in it. Feel free to grab it. Yeah, as we said at the beginning, it's just a kick in the pants to stop complaining about you can't find talent because you can. You might just have to do things a little bit different. And also, don't just wait because AI isn't going to save you. The job constraint and the constrainative labor is tight and it's going to get worse. There's no question about it. So the time to get started is now. I think this book can help you. Both Jerry and I have been employers for decades. We were very

respectful of how difficult it is to run a business and to hire what we're talking about. But it's not complicated. It's hard. There's a different. There's a difference between things being complicated and being hard. It's not complicated to get in good shape. You put on your sneakers, you go out, you start walking. It's just hard to do every day. The same thing with running the business. It's not complicated to do this stuff. It's hard to do. It takes discipline. And you got to start. You got to get out behind your desk. Yeah, yeah, most definitely. It's a real big deal. And hiring, once we switch to, once we switch to those most interviews and getting to know people and shutting up.

I had to teach my staff to shut up. You listen. If you let people talk, I learned the people will give you some, they'll answer question. And then if you just stay shut up in the interview process, and you go, hmm, and you just give that space, they'll fill it. And they'll fill it with stuff like they'll start.

I'd find all sorts of stuff out about people. They tell you about their criminal history and times they're in jail. I'd find all sorts of stuff that they wouldn't tell you, But if you gave them the rope, sometimes they would hang themselves if they were that type of person. And you'd find out the good, the bad, and the ugly. And you're like, this is it going to work. And, oh, oh, you're a felon. Oh, okay.

Sorry, man. That's not really our gig. So it's really important employers do this. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Thanks to you guys for being here. Thank you, Jerry and Steve. Thank you. Thank you, man.

Thanks for the great insights, too. Help wanted. How to find and keep talent in a forever tight labor market. market and man I got to tell you when you own a freight train of a business and you need people to feed the machine and you're in a tight labor market it it hurts your business it hurts your growth and sometimes it can spiral you because you can't get the people to feed the machine and especially if you're trying to grow and there's what's the old rule in business if you're not growing you're dying so you got to you got to constantly be working on your attrition and and filling the holes and

And I think hiring from the inside, too, is really important. A lot of people, it's just insane how people don't value these people that work for the company. Their loyalties, probably were there. Check your glass store reviews. But there's loyalty there. And then there's, I remember there's one of my favorite stories is, I think it's an IBM story where a vice president lost $11 million. Tony Robbins, I think, tells the story. He lost like $11 million on some deal he did.

And so he walked in the CEOs. office to resign. He said, I'm sure you want to me to tender my resignation because I just cost the company more than I get paid. And the CEO went, no, hell no, we're not letting you out. We're not letting you quit. We just spent $11 million educating you on what not to do. You think we're going to throw that away? And so more people need to have that. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortunes,chus,christch,ch,christ,ch,ch,ch,ch, LinkedIn.com, fortunes,

Chris, Fox, YouTube. Forum, Ford Christmas, Chris Foss. All those crazy places in the Internet, folks.

I'm losing it here. On a, on a, what day is it? Wednesday. Anyway, anyways, thanks to everyone

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