How to be a Talent Maker and Win Through Inclusive Hiring

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In this episode, I'm joined by Colm O'Cuinneain, the General Manager EMEA & Global Talent Maker at Greenhouse Software.

He delves into the art of creating a team-oriented and accountable hiring culture. Discover how data can be a powerful tool in understanding and enhancing diversity and inclusivity in the hiring process. Learn about the competitive edge that a people-first culture and diverse teams can bring to your organization.

Plus, gain insights into the often overlooked aspect of post-sale support and how turnover in support teams can be a telling indicator of quality.

Episode Highlights

How to become a Talent Maker and use it to your advantage
How to build a people first culture
How to attract, hire and create a world-class candidate experience to supercharge business growth

Chris Rainey 0:07
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the HR news podcast. In today's episode, I'm joined by Colm O'Cuinneain, who's a general manager EMEA and global Talent Maker at Greenhouse software. During this episode Colm talks about how to become a talent maker and use it to your advantage, how to build a people first culture and how to attract, hire and create a world class candidate experience that supercharges your business growth. As always, before we jump to the video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on that notification bell and follow on your favourite podcast platform. But that being said, let's jump in.
Chris Rainey:
Welcome to the show Colm, how are you?
Colm O'Cuinneain 0:45
Chris I am delighted to be on the show. I'm good today. It's nice to see you.
Chris Rainey 0:48
I love the I love the accent. I feel like home as well.
Colm O'Cuinneain 0:52
I know I know. There's a bit of Irish in us. It's great. Great to be here
Chris Rainey 0:56
a little bit of Irish but I can't handle my drink still. So I don't know. Maybe not maybe not enough. Good company.We should probably address you're recovering to obviously for people that are watching right now.
Colm O'Cuinneain 1:10
I am a bit beaten up. I had a detached retina reattached two weeks ago. So yeah, I don't normally look like I've been in a fight. But hopefully in two weeks time, I'll be great. And I'm sure I'll be doing this. I've knocked up loads of health insurance premiums. So that's gonna be the cost of the show today.
Chris Rainey 1:30
Yeah, well, listen, first of all, I'm so glad you're doing better. And I'm glad it all went well. So and I appreciate you coming on the show as well, given the circumstance, as well, before we jump in to one little bit more about you personally and your journey to where we are now at Greenhouse software.
Colm O'Cuinneain 1:46
Of course. Yeah, I mean, maybe first family background, I'm Irish from the west for Ireland, one of eight kids on number six. Now, I'm a big family. So I think you know, you learn to influence and get on with people in that type of environment. And I think it helps a business and then I grew up I love sport growing up. And that's still still a big passion for me as well. And then I suppose lasting outside of the worksite to me as a married I've three boys start to move into the teenage years now. So drug jumping, raising kids, and work like lots of your listeners, I'm sure you know, with two broken parents. That's that's what we work through. Yeah. Professionally, I spent the last 10 to 15 years building and scaling teams and companies like Oracle, LinkedIn, and greenhouse. I suppose through that journey, I got involved in HR tech about 13 years ago. So it's been a good bit of time, wow, in this space, and passionate really about building, high performing teams building a positive, inclusive culture, and I'm passionate about hiring, you know, and ensuring everybody gets a fair shot in life. I think that, you know, that's the benefit of when you're a builder, but by nature and you're like scaling teams, you know, a lot of purpose comes with that as well.
Chris Rainey 3:03
So you said you've got three kids, you didn't want eight?
Colm O'Cuinneain 3:10
certainly for me to be doing this, a lot of sacrifices have been made. And yeah, for a period of our life, I hate digestive biscuits because a period of my life, we had nothing else but digestive biscuits in the house while parents were trying to put people to college and so on, ya know, and I went to Turkey, I come from a family of four with with a single parent, my mom raising us and it wasn't easy. But I think a lot of the lessons that I learned from my mom and my siblings to your point is helped shaped who I am today, as well. Big time and kudos to her because I can tell you it's a tough job with two people. It's a really tough job when you're when you're doing on your own. Yeah, I can barely deal with one right now. So
Chris Rainey 3:56
I don't know. When we first spoke you spoke you mentioned to me the importance of of being a leader is that you have to be a talent maker. And that's also in your job title, General Manager, MBA and global talent makers. I want us to start with, you know, what is a talent maker?
Colm O'Cuinneain 4:13
Yeah, I suppose the background has been a tonne of makers, maybe something that both I've observed. And in greenhouse, we've observed that, you know, the companies that really excel in the world, generally that correlates back to the quality of people in your organisation and the quality of hires that they make. So generally, then what we see is, you know, something that's unique in those companies and it's that the leaders who excel in those organisations, they typically first of all recognise that hiring is a team sport, and then lead by example. So you know, lead to lean in and create a culture of great hiring and your organisation are very visible. So you know, it's seen in your organisation that hiring is as a company wide commitment driven by the leaders who see talent as a strategic advantage for the business, and not solely led by the talent acquisition team. And typically they show up in three ways. The first is as a talent leader, so somebody who builds and leads a culture of hiring. The second is a talent magnet. So, you know, we all know people who attract great talent, but suppose to what we've observed is there's a science to art. So they show up as a talent leader, a talent magnet, and then a talent partner as well. So that partner incredibly well with the TA team to make sure that the TA team have the opportunity to get the best work of their career. And ultimately, then, you know, the result is you get to bring great people into your organisation.
Chris Rainey 5:51
So what's your advice on in terms of how do you build a culture of great hiring?
Colm O'Cuinneain 5:58
Perspective? Practically, I mean, the first thing I would say is, it's important that you lean in and maybe give a practice example, you know, firstly, maybe as a talent leader, I worked once with an operations leader. And like, I'm sure in your background, you've worked with leaders who have a weekly meeting with our management team, under recruiters who are hiring open wrecks for their teams. And I suppose, you know, that's not that unusual. But what was unusual was, when they spoke to managers that were new to that team, what struck them was that that person, they held the hiring managers accountable for on blocking, you know, challenges in the system, or blockers to hiring great talent, rather than holding the TA people accountable. So it's really that culture of accountability and ownership at a business level, as opposed to viewing hiring as a some sort of black box that's done by the TA team in isolation. So that's probably one example. Maybe another example would be as a talent magnet. You know, as I said, before, we all know some people who just naturally attract great talent. But again, you know, just practical ways you can do that I was in the UK a couple of weeks ago, and I met a sales leader whose ta team was struggling to hire people. And, you know, what he did, there was healings in he set up a cadence himself and says, How can I help well reach out to your network, and he set up a cadence using his sales outreach to, to connect with, you know, 50 or 60 people in his network. And from that, there are three or four people to find on stage with that company now. So I suppose that they they lean in, they prioritise time to support the TA team, and rock open lots of other way. Other ways, they do things like this, and show up in social media, they like and share posts from other members of their organisation. And we're practically get involved in ERGs, or just simply, you know, show up at the offer stage in the recruitment process, and talk to candidates, you know, deal with their concerns and their objections, basically, in the current environment. That's so important. So so so it's that type of work we need that sets, a tonne of maker apart, and then ultimately, how they work with their ta team as well. So for example, there when I set up green as an EMEA, I was joined at the hip with our TA team, you know, I was really conscious of creating an employee value proposition that resonates and sort of recognise that the opportunity to be one of the first hires in a new organisation in a media that was unique. So we made sure that we could clearly articulate that value proposition to potential candidates. And ultimately, then we made sure as well that everybody else was involved in the hiring process. And we followed a structured hiring process, but everybody else in the process was a message could articulate, you know, the unique opportunities that came with the role, what career progression looked like, and the role. So ultimately, that every candidate that matched or engaged with us, they had a better experience than any of our competitors. And I'm a big believer that when you're a talent maker, you can outcompete larger companies like Microsoft, or Amazon or Google who have deeper pockets, maybe pay more as well by by purely winning on candidate experience,
Chris Rainey 9:26
are our talent leaders born or made because I would say when I became a manager or a leader, those weren't requirements, or things that were even spoken to me or part of my training, part of my coaching any of those I think naturally I kind of fell into some of those areas and kind of wanted to help the team wanted to be more active involved, but who should who's leading that in organisations?
Colm O'Cuinneain 9:51
Yeah. So I think that some people are born and if I'm honest, personally, you know, I this is an area where I have a natural aptitude. But I also believe it can be trained. So for example, I worked on one large organisation. And what was interesting, there is the the SVP of revenue for AMEA. You know, if you weren't hitting your numbers, and you had a full team, and you were coaching your team and so forth, you know, you'd questions to ask, but if you weren't hitting your numbers, and you'd only half of the team, you know, you got put under a lot of pressure around your hiring, why isn't your hiring right? Why aren't you partnering with the TA team, and so on. So I do think that again, that's back to a culture where a leader recognises the importance of hiring and, and there are therefore cascades that track the organisation, you know, and I've seen other examples and spoken to sales leaders who they recognise that it's so easy to, you know, go rice have so much to do, and working on deals. And I just got to deprioritize hiring, but ultimately, they know that their ability to hit their numbers, you know, directly correlates with the quality of people that they bring into the organisation, and having the people in seats as well. So I believe it's a learned skill that everybody, you know, if you apply yourself correctly, and a lot of it is just the awareness and the recognition to go, you know, in reality, I suppose for my HR perspective, most of the challenges you deal with further down the HR funnel, they started the hiring process.
Chris Rainey 11:34
Yeah, it's important to recognise that, I think I realised that even more as a as a business owner now, when, when Shane and I was scouting the company, we would say, all we have time to hire, we're so busy. And I said, the reason we're so busy is because we haven't hired. So it's like this vicious circle was like we can't meet our objectives. And we're not hitting our revenue targets. But we're using that as an excuse of why we're so busy. And we can't hire, but I'm like, that's why we're here. And it's this vicious circle. And the moment we made a couple of key hires, we literally free axed our revenue, and all of a sudden, the business took off. And I was like, Oh, my God, we could have done that a year ago.
Colm O'Cuinneain 12:17
Yeah, yeah. To your question. I mean, I worked with somebody who became a brilliant manager and was a brilliant individual contributor. But at one stage, he gave me the feedback that, you know, I know in the first two minutes in an interview, if somebody is going to be successful or not, if they're going to be a good salesperson, for example, that was the role he was hiring for. And in my mind, that was just setting off alarm bells. And that was before I moved to green as an understood the value of structured hiring, you know, where you, you go deep on the attributes that you need for the role. But I've been around and I've been a manager long enough to know that. I've been in interviews that have been really bad for the first or 10 or 15 minutes. And all of a sudden, something clicks, you're asked the right question, and the person lights up. And you see the passion. And it's almost by by working through the process that you realise, okay, how do I assess somebody? How do I calibrate them against some somebody else so so I do believe that it's a learned skill. Embracing structured, hiring is really important as part of data. It's foundational.
Chris Rainey 13:24
Once we get that power, right, it gets even more difficult when we talk about building high performing teams. But at scale. This presents a whole unique set of challenges when you've got a fast growing business, because you have some insights and thoughts around how you've tackled that in previous roles.
Colm O'Cuinneain 13:42
Yeah, for me, I think culture is incredibly important. I think it's at the start, I'm passionate about sport. So you know, I've worked on or I've played on teams, where the standards aren't, aren't where they where they should be, but an awful lot of it, it comes down to first of all, diversity and recognising that if you're building a high performing team, the biggest mistake and I've done it myself is that everybody looks, I call them and they have that energy and so forth. And you realise over time, that that's not how you pick a team, if it's a sports team that folds over because you don't have the right people in the right places, and you don't have complementary skills. So for me, you know, building a diverse team is foundational. And I think that's backed up by data. We did a survey recently of CEOs and 70% of CEOs believe by having diverse team that they've they've better business results. So for me, that's foundational. The second thing is the onboarding process and making sure that you scale up your people correctly during that first 3060 90 days, because that's easy to get wrong. And particularly as we move to distributed and hybrid work. That's harder because in the past I remember when when one of my kids is six or seven, I just hired somebody, a new manager, and he said to me call them, how are you going to train them up? How are you going to onboard them? And I was sort of talking to my process. And he said to me, who's the smartest person in your team? Why don't you put them sitting beside the smartest person on your team? to challenge your question, Chris, that doesn't scale. And ultimately, then you got to follow a structured onboarding process as well. And organisations during COVID have to become much more thoughtful around how they train up and scale up teams. And then it's about the culture that you create, like the inclusive environment, caring about everybody's goals and aspirations. I was listening to podcasts you did previously, I think it was around the time before you set up your, your, your current organisation, and how you really dove deep in terms of the goals and aspirations of the employees that work for you right down to I believe you had a visual of everybody on board.
Chris Rainey 16:04
Yeah, the vision board, everybody's ambitions and so forth.
Colm O'Cuinneain 16:07
But for me there, what's really important is development plans, and making sure that you've competency based development plans, that you work on every quarter and cascade throughout the organisation, so that everybody is focused on two or three development areas, as well, as know, knowing their strengths as well. I've done a lot of work in Strength Finders, I'm also a big believer in getting people to play to their strengths. And that comes back to the sporting background. But Strength Finders workshops, team building workshops are incredibly important. And then the last thing is, is the culture of, of being open and honest and speaking up. So allowing people to call things but also when they make mistakes, to call them so that, you know, if you're going to fail, you fail quickly, and you learn as opposed to you failing slowly, or things getting things getting brushed under the carpet, because the environment is wrong. And for me, like environment does everything, go back to the I coach kids teams at the moment. And it's only when you're dealing with maybe, you know, younger, younger kids, and you see the importance of the environment that you create, and how people, if you create the right environment, parents want to bring their kids to you. It's the same in the workplace. If you've create the right environment, people want to join so the best people then come and work for you. And for me, that's really important. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 17:26
managing those kids, the hardest part is their parents.You know, screaming Come on.
Colm O'Cuinneain 17:34
Yeah, it's funny, I think if the environment is right, even there, they gotta like, and I'm not a big believer in, in quiet sidelines, and so on. But they do get it when you go, you know, their kids, not the model, nobody came here to be shouted. But they make a mistake, you know, it's, you move on. And again, I think that stuff that you're gonna bring into the workplace, so you can take a lot from what you do outside of work and bring it into work. Yeah. Something I've spoke to many of your colleagues about. Nanos, a big part of the culture at Greenhouse software, is developing that people first culture for you, for you, when you hear about what does it mean to be people first? Yeah. For me, people first, I suppose it's it starts right at the hiring process. So it's about having a fair hiring process so that everybody gets a fair chance. So I think recruitment, there is a strategic foundation. It's also by doing that you sort of recognise that, you know, as I said, before, diverse teams have a competitive advantage. They outperform. Then, it's about recognising that now, particularly post COVID. People want to work in a flexible, flexible work environments. So, you know, we recently did a candidate survey in the UK, and three quarters of people want to work in a distributed or a hybrid environments and free what, why is that important? Why we both mentioned kids, in our caregivers, people have kids with disabilities. We live in different locations. And for me, I suppose even being people first, and allowing people to work from different locations, again, it allows you to tap into talent pools that your competitors may not be able to tap into so some there is a benefit commercially, and having that approach, and then we're practically I mean, we were on a journey. And I suppose that's, that's so important to recognise that people first as a journey, it's sort of how HR has evolved. Yeah, as companies recognise that, you know, it's it's human resources, as opposed to physical resources that are really important or machinery that are important right now. So, you know, we've launched things like adult passport programme, where we allow employees to work for 60 days, anywhere in the world for Tennessee programme recognising that particularly, you know, nowadays that's you know, that can be a big stressor for a lot of employees. We've gone deep on processes to provide feedbacks to the organisation. And we're very open and honest with that feedback as it comes in as well. So that looks like employee surveys, pulled service that we now do quarterly, having radical candour sessions in place, you know, to get a sense of what's happening at a team level. Ask Me Anything sessions were in our culture, like, very tough questions get asked publicly, and you know, they're dealt with, and are answered, and then also recognising the importance of, you know, how you support people from diverse backgrounds as well, or cares, or so forth. So we've set up ERGs, you know, to help people from, you know, different different backgrounds. And I suppose, ultimately, you know, there's, there's a business performance that you get from from that, you get a vibrant culture. I know myself, if I go back to when I started working, you know, why did I work initially, in large multinationals, it was a diversity of the teams, I wanted to work with people from different countries, spoke different languages, and so forth. So So I believe that, you know, people first is a journey. It's an aspiration. We're all far from perfect on that journey. But I think the goal is something that, you know, it's we should be certainly planting the flag and aspiring direction, because there was a bit of business benefit in it as well. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 21:37
Well, on that point, and then, how does this then show up? How does being people first show up in your product? And what you do have your customers? Yeah, well, 100%. First, in terms of you go to the hiring side of things, having structured hiring, so where you build an interview kit, and you identify, Okay, why attributes are you're hiring, and it makes sure that people are being honest, fair questions, are appropriate questions. You know, we recently, again, did a survey, where I think was about 40% of people in an interview had been asked inappropriate questions. And if you're from an underrepresented background, that increases further, so structured hiring is really important, we have noticed in the product as well. So to give, you know, just when you're answering this question, think about A, B, or C or, you know, sometimes these prejudices come up, be conscious of it, right through to then, you know, the reporting in the product. So, you know, oftentimes, for example, when you're talking to engineering leaders, you know, we hear that, okay, you know, I'm really finding it hard to have a balanced engineering team from a gender perspective, because it's a top of funnel problem. There aren't enough female job applicants. But when we look at the data, that's generally not the case, you generally find far more female applicants, for example, in engineering roles than people who are actually hired sedan, it's important to go into the data and figure out okay, what's happening during that funnel, during the hiring funnel? Is it the questions that are being asked is that the take home test, is it that the interview panel is an all male panel, and they're, they're interviewing the female candidates, and I suppose the benefit of what we do in greenhouses is we provide the tools for customers to interrogate their process. And even the data will also go through to, you know, where you source the best candidates where you source candidates from under representative backgrounds, where you get your best return of investment, all of that is built into the greenhouse platform.
Chris Rainey
I love that. So yeah, it's it's looking at end to end seeing where perhaps, you can be more inclusive seeing where there may be some bias that creeps in, as well. But having the data right as well to back it up because you know can be based on people's opinions or their gut feeling etc.
Colm O'Cuinneain 24:12
Data is key. And for me, that's suppose you know, we get asked again and again, where do you start? For me, it's don't move into action, get into the data, understand the data, what's on understand what's happening in the data, and then start to make decisions because you're right, we all have our own narratives. I always tried to, there's not enough female engineering candidates, candidates top of funnel because it's, it's an obvious data point that comes true. But there are other less obvious more subtle things that you need to interrogate into to go back to the hiring team and have conversations. You need to have conversations in your organisation with people from underrepresented groups as well. So for me, the data is key. Yeah. I love the idea of the nudges. Right? We've, you know, we're not we're not perfect as managers as leaders. So having those practical nudges saying, Hey, Chris, you Have you thought about these things? Or here's some questions that you can ask. And just having that as your sort of nudge Copilot to help you for it, because you're not going to remember all those things. And and we're the way we're built is our bias is going to creep in, unfortunately, 100% and we all have them. There's no point in pretending we don't. But it's I think recognition certainly helps.
Chris Rainey 25:27
What are the, you've kind of worked across, you know, mentioned some of the companies like LinkedIn, obviously, greenhouse, what is it about greenhouse that attracted you start a business?
Colm O'Cuinneain 25:38
Yeah, for me, it was a couple of things. The first is I had, so suppose there was there was me. And you know, back to your vision wall and my ambitions, I sort of made a decision that I wanted to move into smaller startup scaled up type of environments in greenhouse were a scale up. For me, that was a natural pivot. The second thing was, it was in a space that I was very comfortable with. So it was in the TA space. The third piece was because I worked in LinkedIn, you know, in the same ways, we have a view of our ecosystem on what's happening, what companies are growing, I could see the growth and greenhouse as well. So for me, it was like, this company is coming in to Europe to do a job that I'm really passionate about, and an area that I'm passionate about. And that sparked my interests initially, the second thing was candidate experience. And for me, I'm a big believer in candidate experience. And what that looked like was, every time I did an interview, people rocked up, they were prepared, they would organise the Osmar questions. But what was most interesting was, in every interview, you know, they were asking different questions, they were going out different attributes. That was massive, because normally how many times you do an interview, and you're just asked, saying, did you 10 interviews and you've been asked the same questions. 100 times was was that was unique. The other piece was the feedback. So every time we did an interview within 24 hours, Arianna moon, who caught actually now has our TA team, she rang me, she gave me feedback, she gave me pointers for next interview. So as coach to the process, and again, that's really important, because in our candidate surveys, 70% of people want feedback after interviews, whereas in reality, you know, various, yeah, 100% is, in fact, we this week, we have a UK candidate survey out 56 people, or 56 percentage of people have been ghosted after an interview. And that's enormous. And again, it gets amplified. So I think it's 20 presents higher for people from underrepresented groups. So, so getting that feedback, you could go, Okay, this company uses own products, and I was more bought in and more excited by that great candidate experience, tried to process so at the point of decision, then it was a no reflection of the internal culture, right.
Chris 28:12
And also, they're living, they're not just selling as a product, but they're living and breathing it internally. So you could
Colm O'Cuinneain 28:17
100% And I felt like a conversation. And even afterwards, like people give me feedback, might the interviewers give me feedback and sentiment, and it didn't mean that they're going, you're gonna get this job, but I knew that they liked me. And I knew that they, they believed in my ability, I didn't know what my competition was, was, conversations were happening, but at least those be treated with a huge amount of respect. And I suppose, then, when you got off the stage, if that's your process, if you're killing it on candidate experience, you know, I was sold, when John Strauss, who's one of our co founders had a conversation with me, before he went to offer to check out my head was in the right place, so that if they went down this road, and let other people out of the pipeline, that there wouldn't be an exposure, and green has a side as well.
Chris Rainey 29:08
What would you know, for many of our leaders, right now that they're overwhelmed with the amount of the amount of technology and the growth into ta space to track digital transformation is waiting for, what advice would you give to them when choosing the right ta partner? Because there's, there's so much noise out there and everyone's claiming to solve all of their problems. You've been across multiple organisations, what advice would you give to them?
Colm O'Cuinneain 29:37
The first thing is, we all have networks. And I think, you know, lean into your networks and the TA space. You know, so many of our customers are involved in WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups, and so forth. In a recruiting brain food I'm doing an event with next week. Like there's loads of places where you can pick up sentiment and for me, that's the first thing that that's really important. The second thing is the reference piece. So that, you know, if you're looking at buying ta technology, look to talk to customers, because customers will be really honest with you, they'll give you, they'll give you the good stuff, but they'll give you the development areas as well. That's the second thing. And then the third thing, you know, it's, it's where your goals are. So it's you really got to double down in terms of what are you trying to change the needle on? Is it sourcing? And, you know, how you source? Are you sourcing for speed? Or are you sourcing for diversity? Or what what are your goals? Because ultimately, your business goals will dictate your results? You know, our story will dictate your technology, if you get them. Right. Yeah, that's it. That's a good old great advice. But I think that one, especially start with your goal in mind. Yeah, then work backwards. Sometimes I see companies invest in platforms, and they're trying to solve everything at once. Yeah, why is important as well, you know, that's something that we've seen quite a lot, particularly when, you know, hiring was, you know, ta teams were under real pressure for speed hiring and so forth. Probably wasn't enough focus on the ROI of the tools as well. And that can also be that the cheaper tools aren't necessarily, you know, they're not going to scale with you, potentially depends on the tool. So it's almost like to go, Okay, what what, you know, what, again, what our goal is, here is a tool that will do is for right now to that we can scale with for the next number of years. You know, that type of thought process is really important. So the ROI and how you partner with organisations as well as is particularly important.
Chris Rainey 31:55
Yeah, that's a very important one. Because one thing getting the tool in place, or buying the tool is another thing, the actual digital transformation you have to and cultural transformation, you have to go for it, which is an ongoing process.
Colm O'Cuinneain 32:06
Yes, yeah. 100 Present. And I suppose then your your back ends, the reference ability of post sale support, what does that organization's customer success team look like? What does that organization's implementation team look like? For me, that's key. And you can sort of see that too. When you look at organisations, you know, you get a sense in terms of okay, what sort of churn is happening in their support teams, that gives you an indication, it's an interesting data point. What's the churn in their support team. And they report that as a data point, but it makes sense. To me, that's really interesting, because because I was sort of taken aback a bit by that. A, we had a customer event in Berlin, and a customer that had worked with us, this is their target organisation. And what you know, what she said to me was called what's happening in greenhouse because I've worked with you. For five years, I've worked with lots of different sub CSM. So customer support managers. And what's unique is when I look at other vendors into ta space, not everybody was a lot of movement in those teams in terms of people leaving their organisations joining different organisations, and you're gone. What are you doing, right? Because the folks that we've been dealing with, they might mean the same job, but they're buying are still with your organisation. So what's happening there, but it did give great confidence when they moved from company to company to say, okay, it makes sense a team that I can partner with, yeah, because if they're happy, it means that their customers are happy, and they're having a great relationship. Right. You know, and again, it's one of the things about being a people first organisation, that revenue is down all the way to your customer. 100% customers feel that? Yeah. as well. Listen, before I let you go, we've covered quite a lot. But if there's one parting piece of advice to our audience, what would that be? And then where can people connect with you? Personally, they want to reach out and say, hi, yeah, in terms of parting advice, gosh, that's, that's a good one. And never underestimate the power of talent. And what people can go on to do. That, for me is something I see again, it goes back to the sport, you know, we learn at different paces and somebody can be a really quick learner and they can get to be bait grade really quickly. Otters with a bit more time, a bit more support can get that A A plus grade. That's so important, but be generous with your time. So you know, your your your your vision board really resonates with me because that's something that I'm passionate about myself if I get that, you know, if I was talked about what I get most energy from it's sitting down, having a clear conversation with somebody giving them the gift of time understanding what they try to achieve because ultimately, if you can tap into that, like where somebody is trying to go
As you get used discretionary effort, they get huge energy from achieving their goals. So for me, it's like double down on developing people. Because you'd be surprised what you how many people you know, that have gone on set up their own companies have been amazing. And there are points and points in time where you're going. I didn't see that initially. I was sure. That happens all the time. Yeah. Well, clearly, you're in the right job. One thing we've established.
Chris Rainey 35:32
Where can people connect with you? Where's the best place?
Colm O'Cuinneain 35:33
Yeah, the place is on LinkedIn. So reach out to me on LinkedIn, in mail. Send me voice message, whatever you want to do. voice messages are really good at the moment.
Chris Rainey 35:43
I've done that a few times on LinkedIn, because people don't realise that that's a good feature. It's a good shout out.
Colm O'Cuinneain 35:50
Yeah, yeah, it's fast. And also you get tone as well.
Chris Rainey 35:54
It's also a personal way, because sometimes it feels like you're just getting a copy and paste message on LinkedIn. Sometimes it can feel that way.
Colm O'Cuinneain 36:00
Well, 100% and then for learning more, I mean, it spoke a lot about talent makers a disservice if the Google Green has talent makers are going to tell it makers.com certainly can learn more about that.
Chris Rainey 36:11
And there is a book you mentioned, can you learn about talent making?
Colm O'Cuinneain 36:14
Yeah, we've written a book as well, which gives practical examples on how to become a talent maker. If you're in breakfast next week. They'll be up to stand drop over you can collect one amazing, amazing well appreciate you next week, so striking.
Chris Rainey 36:29
Either way, the links will be in in the comments below. So wherever you are, wherever they are listening right now, you can grab a book below you can connect with calm below. Appreciate you come on the show. I wish you a speedy recovery. And I'll see you again soon. Thanks so much. Thanks, Chris. It's been my pleasure.