EP46: Katie Zotos, Talent Acquisition Manager at Supporting Strategies

James Mackey  0:00  

Hello and welcome to Talent Acquisition Trends and Strategy! Today we are joined by Katie Zotos. Katie, welcome to the show, how are you doing?

 

Katie Zotos  0:06  

Good. How are you, James? Thanks for having me.

 

James Mackey  0:09  

Yeah, thanks for coming on today. I am really excited to speak with you today and record this episode together. Before we jump into it though, would you mind sharing with the audience a little bit about yourself?

 

Katie Zotos  0:19  

Yes, so I'm Katie Zotos. I'm the Talent Acquisition Manager with Supporting Strategies. Seems like time's flying, I have been here just over a year and a half now. I actually started in the talent partner role here and I've been in the manager role for about a year. My background is actually, I kind of cut my teeth through the staffing agency, I've started working out in Metro Detroit, hiring high-volume call center reps. 

 

That's how I cut my teeth after college. Then I moved into more professional-level staffing, really focused on engineering, accounting, and finance. Then reached a point where I was ready to make more of a larger impact in one organization. And I found myself at Supporting Strategies. So that's kind of where I'm at today,

 

James Mackey  1:10  

For sure. And so Supporting Strategies, it's around 400 or 500 employees, is that right?

 

Katie Zotos  1:16  

We're over 800 currently. 

 

James Mackey  1:19  

Wow. Okay!

 

Katie Zotos  1:19  

So yeah, I'm eager to hit that 1000-plus number of employees.

 

James Mackey  1:24  

I'm sure it's gonna happen soon. And so professional services, outsource bookkeeping, primarily. It's a franchise model too, just so everybody knows.

 

Katie Zotos  1:33  

Yes, exactly. So just to kind of explain the structure. I'm with our corporate team, so we as a franchisor. And we support the recruitment efforts of our franchisee offices. We have just under 80 total franchisee offices that we support core recruitment for. And then just over 100 network employees.

 

James Mackey  1:55  

Okay, cool. Thank you, I think that gives a lot of great context so people understand where you're coming from there. So that's cool. One of the things that you mentioned is that at scale your team is focused on helping these franchisees hire part-time talent. I'm excited to talk to you about that today because we haven't covered this topic on the show. 

 

What are the biggest lessons learned? I guess we can just start there at a high level when you're recruiting part-time talent, is there any nuance in terms of how you recruit versus how you would for full-time positions?

 

Katie Zotos  2:35  

Yeah, definitely. In my mind, I always say this like a broken record, but it's true. In some ways, hiring part-time people makes our job easier. And in other ways, it makes our job harder as a talent acquisition team. So we are really focused on finding long term fit for people or finding long-term employees for our offices. So with that, where the nuance kind of comes into play is with interviewing folks, we don't want to be just a stopgap for someone. 

 

I think, especially with COVID, it was kind of a unique time period. I started here in March of 2021. So I didn't see the initial post-COVID piece that my team saw. But during that time period, we wanted to screen those candidates out, that might have just been looking for a stopgap whether they were just laid off or on a furlough. So we really kind of dived into how do these folks align with our value proposition and what's driving them to want to work here. 

 

And that's something that I think just comes through experience with interviewing these people, these part-time focus candidates, is understanding what drives them. Have they done their research on Supporting Strategies? Are they planning to work another job? We have people who apply who think they can balance two jobs, a full-time job, and a part-time job. And that's really just not the ideal candidate who works out here. 

 

So I think it comes through experience with asking the right interview questions. But it really is, I always say, just a dance of figuring out what drives them and why us ultimately. So that's one part of it. And then again, hiring part-time folks is different from a talent attraction standpoint because we're not going to be the most successful going on LinkedIn and reaching out to people, those cold leads. We're really going to have the most impact by having people be aware of our brand. Be aware of the fact that they can work completely remotely. 

 

They can work flexible hours, and with a reduced schedule in accounting, because initially, that was kind of rare. Now with the kind of post-COVID world, it's becoming way more common for companies to offer part-time remote work, so the landscape that we're competing in for talent has changed. The talent market we're in is also probably one that most people have never seen before. So really where we've put our focus on is brand awareness. And marketing with the right companies whether it's, Indeed or Glassdoor, and putting our spending into the partners that make the most sense for us. 

 

James Mackey  5:25  

For sure. So from a channel perspective, do you have a percentage breakdown? I would love to know the channels that are pulling in the most inbound applicants. So I recruit in tech, like the tech industry, so we do help hire finance and accounting people, but it's for growth-stage software companies essentially. We have across the board for revenue tech, G&A, F&A, anything - terrible luck on Indeed. 

 

Katie Zotos  5:25  

That's funny! 

 

James Mackey  5:58  

Specifically for the tech industry. How is that? Is that a good source of candidates for you? Because I know in different places obviously, they're a huge company, and they're pulling in revenue consistently. So I know it's got to work somewhere, but I just haven't seen it. I saw it when I did my previous job. We did like IT infrastructure roles and it worked pretty well there, actually. 

 

Katie Zotos  6:23  

That's actually really funny that you say that because Indeed is by far our best-performing source. 

 

James Mackey  6:29  

Wow.

 

Katie Zotos  6:30  

Yeah, it's shocking how well it performs for us. And that's where, again, I've been here for a year and a half. So I've at least seen enough, but I'm still kind of looking at - hey, what have we tried in the past? And I think when I initially started as a talent partner, we were very much trying to figure out where else can we get candidates. It was probably the height of the craziness in the talent market the first year that I started. 

 

We have found, really what works for us well is indeed, and I think in part, that's because if people are searching or Googling remote part-time accounting, we're going to pop up on Indeed. It's actually funny because, on Indeed, we are featured as one of the number one employers for accounting jobs. So of course, we have a lot of spend with them, of course, that kind of parlays into the reach that we have within Indeed. 

 

We've also invested in becoming a featured employer with Indeed, we have an upgraded Glassdoor profile. So I think those two sources kind of feed into one another. And really I think from a talent acquisition standpoint, we're in a really comfortable spot, the craziness has subsided a little bit. And I think the market's hopefully starting to soften, maybe not as much as we'd like in the talent acquisition world, but it's softening a little bit, to where we're now taking a step back and thinking about what other partnerships are going to make the most sense. 

 

Whether it's with CPA boards, or CPA chapters, and starting to put some of our spend in some of those niche groups that are really aligned with our ideal candidates. And even going back to some of the basics. When thinking about when you walk into a Starbucks, you see that bulletin board that's there, or even when you go to the library. A lot of our ideal candidates are people who have enriched lives outside of work. That's why they're looking to work part-time, whether it's kids or family or elderly parents. 

 

So we've even started a campaign where each of our managing directors at our offices can print out this recruitment file, pop it on a billboard, in your Starbucks, or in your library and just start drawing people to us a little bit more organically and a little bit more of like an old school way. So those are some things that we're experimenting with because we realized we have to think outside of the box, just reaching people with a cold message isn't the best way. 

 

And I'm going off-topic, so feel free to jump in. But one of the things that's also unique about us is we have so many candidates coming to us. And we're putting together more of a robust tactical plan to reach those candidates in our database and put together those drip campaigns to touch them. So that's something we're going to be putting a little bit more time into.

 

James Mackey  9:46  

Okay. So Indeed is a huge driver and then it sounds like your database is a huge driver, right? Because when people come into the funnel, maybe they don't move forward for whatever reason. Do you have a pretty big database that you're leveraging? And what percentage of hires comes from there, would you say? It doesn't have to be an exact number, do you feel like a lot of hires come through just having access to that database?

 

Katie Zotos  10:17  

Yeah, that's a great question. We use iCIMS right now. And we're debating what makes the most sense to continue basically developing or adding on their CRM feature, to build more of those campaigns and those drip campaigns. I don't have an exact percentage of the folks that come to us, that we might reach back out to six months later, or a year later. But those are some other things that we've realized the need of getting more of those metrics and really understanding, how long are people in our system before we're touching them again. And why didn't we tap them the first time and what changed? 

 

Those are things that I'm really excited about for us to move into the new year, and really create more of a path to developing that. Because truthfully, from where we've been the last two and a half years ago to now, we're hiring at least double what we used to do. So it's kind of wild like in 2021 we hired probably double than we did in 2020. And that number continues to go up. So now is a time when we've realized we need to be making use of those candidates in our database, and we need to put those programs together.

 

James Mackey  11:41  

Yeah, for sure. I think that's so important. And actually kind of a parallel to sales organizations, right now at SecureVision we're actually optimizing what we do when we don't close a deal. When a customer decides to move forward with another solution, for whatever reason or possibly, if we won the deal, but we fill the open roles for a company, and then they don't need us for a few months because they've fulfilled their hiring needs. 

 

What are the kinds of campaigns that those types of accounts are falling into so that we can follow up with them on a regular cadence and reengage with churned customers or re-engage in situations in which they decide to move forward with a different solution, whether that be an in-house recruiter, or whatever it might be? And it's the same on the talent acquisition side. One of the big things that I tried to put out there into the world is that you need to run recruiting orgs, like you run revenue orgs. 

 

It's focusing on optimizing each channel, knowing where you're getting the majority of your qualified leads, working them down a funnel, understanding your top win reasons - why people move forward with you, top loss reasons - why are people dropping out the process, what part of the process they're dropping out of. All of these things that more sophisticated revenue orgs are doing is exactly what we should be doing on the talent acquisition side as well. 

 

I think a lot of companies make the mistake of like not having a robust applicant tracking system, because you need those different, as you were just saying with iCIMS, looking into CRM, functionality, all the stuff. You need a robust system in order to actually run it like a revenue org, and with a lot of the ATS providers, it's more of this out-of-the-box solution that has really bad reporting, kind of not-so-good functionality. And so it's really impossible to run it like a robust revenue org. It's always better I feel to invest in the better tech, and it's honestly, not even too expensive to get better recruiting tech.

 

Katie Zotos  13:48  

Yeah, I mean, when you think about the ROI that it would potentially bring in. I report to our VP of Growth, so Talent Acquisition falls under the Growth channel.

 

James Mackey  13:58  

That's really cool. I like that. 

 

Katie Zotos  13:59  

Yeah, I think it really just makes so much sense. And I think if an organization doesn't have its talent acquisition team aligned with growing revenue, they're kind of doing something wrong. Because talent acquisition is such an important part of the business, but our VP of growth Lin, she's been a huge advocate of upgrading the tech and making the tech work for you. 

 

I think that's really well said, and I think that's something that we've realized, with how quickly we've grown and are continuing to grow that we can't wait on some of these things. And we definitely should be making use of the people who are in our system, versus just going out and spending money with these potential vendors who think that they can get us new candidates because chances are they're already in our database. That's kind of a reality.

 

James Mackey  14:56  

For sure. So besides Indeed, and the database are there any other inbound channels? Are there any other inbound channels that you're leveraging besides Indeed that are effective?

 

Katie Zotos  15:12  

Yeah, let me think about that. You know it really sounds quite basic - hey, we're on Indeed, and Glassdoor. LinkedIn, all of our recruiters hold a LinkedIn seat as of right now. And where again, that's a little bit better aligned for the business development partner roles that we fulfill. Business development partner roles are certainly a very small percentage of the overall positions that we support, most of them are within the accounting realm. But that's where we're a little bit more outbound with getting those candidates, however, otherwise, it really is Indeed. And I'm just trying to think, we do partner with other accounting focus job boards, but definitely, the minority considering Indeed. 

 

James Mackey  16:13  

I saw a bunch of jobs on LinkedIn posted, but I'm not sure if those were just scraped from the internet because LinkedIn will do that. Are those sponsored jobs that you all are paying for on LinkedIn?

 

Katie Zotos  16:24  

Yeah, great question. So the majority of those are scraped, we do have two LinkedIn job slots that we rotate. Since most of our positions are either, the external word would be accountant or accounting manager. We've just figured, even though we might have 50 jobs posted, and they're all scraping to LinkedIn, we might have those two positions actually posted on the job slot to maximize reach, but also minimize our total spend with LinkedIn. 

 

James Mackey  16:56  

Ok, gotcha. I'm just curious, what's the performance of the jobs that are scraped and put on LinkedIn? Do you actually get quality applicants applying through LinkedIn on the scraped jobs?

 

Katie Zotos  17:07  

Yeah, it's kind of hit or miss. And that's where I always wonder, do people apply where they just see us first? Or maybe they see us on LinkedIn first, but they actually submit their resume through Indeed. But what I like about having the job slot, this isn't so much the case for the jobs that are just scraping, so it's hard to actually have real data for how people are clicking on those jobs. But for the actual job slots, what I like to do is to see the Apply starts and start filtering those people. 

 

Then seeing - Hey, these people like this candidate that looks great but they're not in our system? So they actually didn't apply? Why didn't they apply? And we have templates built out where it's a quick reach out. Then from there, it takes it from a cold lead to a warm lead to potentially someone who's interested in us and a viable candidate, for sure.

 

James Mackey  18:10  

And so you'd also mentioned Glassdoor, people can apply through Glassdoor, is that right? Yeah, we never used it for that reason, we just point candidates there when they're in our funnel primarily.

 

Katie Zotos  18:26  

Yeah, we have jobs that I believe now that Glassdoor and Indeed are our partners, I believe that jobs funnel over from Indeed onto Glassdoor. I could be wrong on that. Because we're not directly posting on Indeed, it could feed from our ATS. But yeah, I know some people will specifically apply on Glassdoor. But I believe it's all feeding through Indeed.

 

James Mackey  18:53  

Okay. Yeah, I think I think Indeed purchased Glassdoor, right? 

 

Katie Zotos  18:59  

Yeah, one or the other. Yeah, I would guess Indeed purchased them.

 

James Mackey  19:04  

Yeah. I mean, I tried to reach out to Glassdoor to get a sponsored account. And it was just such a freakin mess. Getting to ahold of Customer Success and setting something up, I think we just stopped. We reached out several times and they were just really annoying. I mean, this was I think right when the acquisition happened, so that's probably why. Yeah, it was pretty tough.

 

Katie Zotos  19:24  

That's too bad to hear. I will say they're very pricey. We do see the value and this is maybe to answer one of your earlier questions about how are we attracting those part-time, folks we've realized with our business since we're recruiting employees that are going to be employees of a franchisee, sometimes the reviews people will leave, they might have a bad experience at one franchise office. They'll leave a really negative review and there's more nuance to it. So that's why we like having the employer profile and being able to take ownership of our brand. And have that control a little bit more. 

 

Because you probably hear this too once you're presenting something to a client, but for us in doing the interviews, it's yeah - I looked you up on Glassdoor I saw some of the reviews, or they'll ask questions that you can kind of tell might have been from a review that was left that was a little negative. But again, I think since each office is its own entity, we really want to get ahead of -hey, that's usually not the case, or hey, I'm sorry, you had a bad experience. Each office is its own entity, blah, blah, blah, and giving those people those answers. Because for a business, it is just unique, where they might have a bad experience and that's always a bummer to hear. It's usually not the norm. 

 

James Mackey  21:03  

Gotcha, that's actually interesting. So in situations in which companies may not have the best Glassdoor reviews for example a franchise situation. Other times there might just be growing pains, right? Companies are growing, and maybe they change up the executive team, or they move to transition to more of a performance-based culture. People that were there before those shifts may not be happy, as opposed to new hires that come in that it's always been that way. So it sounds like how you respond to candidates that maybe are concerned or that you mentioned that each company is its own entity. 

 

Do you have any advice for talent acquisition leaders that maybe aren't in the franchise model but they're dealing with situations in which there are some Glassdoor reviews that aren't great? Is there any kind of objection handling that you recommend? How should companies tackle that?

 

Katie Zotos  22:00  

Yeah, I know it's easier once you do have the employer profile. And if you have a review that isn't a justified review, this is nasty or it's not the case, being able to have a rep that you can escalate it to, and if it's something you can justify, they can work to remove that. However, that's typically not the case. And I don't think that's directly your question. I think being able to respond to them; we have kind of our slated responses of explaining whether it's - I'm sorry that was your experience, I think that goes a long way just recognizing - Hey, I'm sorry to hear that. And telling them maybe what steps you're doing to help that never happens in the future if it was a specific scenario they're explaining, I think just very simple responses are sufficient. 

 

I don't think it needs to be anything drawn out. Just a few sentences responding to a review is helpful. The other thing that Glassdoor does is, it takes the weight. If you look at the 1 through 5 scale of an employer's ranking,  if there are 3 and a half, basically. So with the reviews, the way Glassdoor looks at it is they look at the time, or the year a review is left, I forget the exact parameter. If a review is older than 1 year, it's weighted differently than if it was new. 

 

With that kind of understanding, reaching out to your team and team of employees, not just your team, and having them leave reviews to get that overall score up I think is a benefit. And also just getting more responses and a greater number of people explaining what their experience was at whatever company, I think those are little things that you can do that will help. The same thing on Indeed, we are a Featured employer on indeed, I believe you might be able to do this if you're not, but you can respond to reviews, there's also a whole Q&A section where you're supposed to respond to candidates. 

 

Sometimes they ask us - Hey, can I just work weekends? And it's like - no, that's not the case here, just kind of explaining a little bit more about your company. So I think those are some areas where it gives you just some control. And if a candidate is really doing their due diligence of reading the reviews and looking at the Q&A, and Indeed they might see that - hey, I am aligned to this position, or I'm not aligned and potentially not apply which ultimately we want people who are aligned applying.

 

James Mackey  24:52  

Yeah, for sure. And I think, just getting back to Glassdoor. One thing that I found to be very helpful. Well, one thing that I think is really necessary to overcome Glassdoor reviews is actually to implement employee feedback and make sure that there's a feedback loop in place. Sometimes that helps. Or sometimes there are just shifts in the business. But either way, as a recruiter, it's very helpful to say - hey, at that point in time when that review was left, we had just gone through XYZ transition. 

 

We brought in a new leadership team, or we were going through this acquisition, or we were rolling out this new metric or performance thing, or whatever it might be. Or we realized that as unfortunate as it is, we had to kind of shift the skill sets required for XYZ type of position and that required us to hire some new people and provide severance packages to some people, we took care of them. But the reality is that that was the business need at the time. And we did our best to help people land on their feet, we gave them generous severance packages, those types of things if you can explain it and talk about it as a growth pain or a transition period. 

 

That's something that I've been able to leverage in the past that's really helped. And obviously, try to stack good reviews on top of some of those negatives. And then also when people leave those good reviews, also asking them to provide detail, like don't just say, Good place to work, or a great place to work, like say - Hey, I've been working alongside my manager, for now, you know, 10 months, and what I really appreciate is XYZ, that type of stuff is going to be more important. 

 

But generally speaking, employees, if they feel like they are heard, and they feel like improvements are being made, are typically not going to be the ones leaving a bad review. When people feel ignored or something like that. I think just having that constant feedback loop, and I feel like in a franchise model, that's definitely harder, because it's like you're trying to protect a brand, but then you don't have necessarily control over how each entity is actually operating. I think the primary objection handling being - look, each franchise is its own entity, here's what I can tell you about the one that you would be working with. And here are some references specifically for this franchise or something like that, right?

 

Katie Zotos  27:30  

Yeah, absolutely. And that really is one of the tougher parts about the role we play. There's a lot that we can do, but there's also a lot that we can't do once an employee's placed with an office. They're not our employees, legally we do have that line of separation. One of the things I think is worth mentioning is we have a knowledge and engagement team, that works with our franchise offices. And I always say they're kind of like the stepbrother and sister to talent acquisition because we work closely together. 

 

They're kind of closer on the line of defense if an office is having a specific employee issue, or maybe they're having a structural issue and need some help aligning their team better. So that's the role that our knowledge and engagement team plays, but also explaining - here's what this specific office has to offer. I think that's where our talent acquisition team and our talent partners do a really great job of kind of selling the candidates on the phone. As you know, this is very much a sales role. And you can kind of tell when a candidate's read maybe a review that they're asking you questions about, and I know a couple offhand, where you can tell where this question is coming from. 

 

With that, I think there's an element of getting them excited about an office, and explaining how is it different, and why it's potentially a good fit is so important. So there's definitely a layer to that. And then just being transparent with what the office is about - Hey, these are the things you need to do better. Hey, these are the reviews that we're being left with. So that's definitely the unique role that we're playing as the partner, as the advisor.

 

James Mackey  29:28  

Well, you guys are doing a good job, I'm on your Glassdoor page right now. 4-star overall, which is awesome I feel, for a franchise model that's really impressive to see.

 

Katie Zotos  29:38  

Thank you. Yeah, we're definitely happy with where it's at. And that's where I think, again, you've had some challenges with Glassdoor, being able to feature the review is always a cool feature that we appreciate. But yeah, I think generally it's definitely trending in the right way.

 

James Mackey  29:59  

Oh, I see that, a featured review. I didn't know that you could do that. It's probably on the paid model. 

 

Katie Zotos  30:04  

Yes, that's part of the paid model. 

 

James Mackey  30:06  

Yeah, that's a good spot right at the top.

 

Katie Zotos  30:09  

Exactly right at the top. So yeah, just kind of lets you control the narrative a little bit, and in a way that I do feel is more reflective of our business and the things that we're proud of. So we also did, just with regard to branding, and especially for us - we really promote work-life balance, and flexibility so part of our knowledge and engagement team helped us create a talent video. 

 

When you go on our Glassdoor page, right on the banner, you can click on this talent video, and it shows people talking about why they like working here, and how it gives them time for other things. So those are things that I think are unique, especially if someone is weighing us against one of our competitors that is also doing part-time accounting work. It gives a better lens into really who we are and who our employees are.

 

James Mackey  31:06  

For sure. I see that video right at the top of the banner. I feel like that's so important, I haven't seen that before either. What I like about how you all are doing talent acquisition is I feel like a lot of service companies are just so bad at branding and online positioning. They're doing talent acquisition like it's the 90s. 

 

They're just not putting any effort into candidate experience or the word use talent attraction. I could see why it's working, and you would have an advantage over the competition. It's actually taking the time and putting in the effort to make it a better experience. Which is really cool to see. That's awesome.

 

Katie Zotos  31:54  

Yeah, and still so many things we're still working on but I do feel like that's such a crucial part of the candidate experience and, also for our team, automating steps like personal rejection notes and automating these things that save our team time, but also create a positive experience, even if we're not moving forward with someone.

 

James Mackey  32:17  

Right yeah. I mean, I feel like the ultimate goal is, even if you don't move forward with somebody, they say - Wow, I really appreciate the quality of this experience, and actually, I have somebody in my network that I think could be a good fit. I mean, I feel like when you're really crushing that experience, those things start to happen.

 

Katie Zotos  32:36  

Yeah, that's definitely really well said. And the other piece to that is, as we kind of build out new roles and new offerings next year, some of the candidates who we may have passed on in the last six months - a year, might become viable candidates again. So it's also how can we repurpose them? They're probably only interested in working with us again if they did have a positive candidate experience. 

 

James Mackey  33:05  

For sure. For instance, I'm on your interviews tab on Glassdoor, it's your top two is - offer -a positive experience. It's - easy scheduling process and quick responses. That's what you want, right? Because then it's alright, somebody's not moving forward, but we still preserve their experience and set up the relationship for success. And we're not treating people like numbers, we're treating them as human beings. We're building positive relationships with people, that's the way to do it. 

 

And I think that's something companies should do a better job running campaigns around getting Glassdoor reviews for interviews, because a lot of the time they're thinking - Okay, I gotta wait till somebody has been here three months, which is usually what I recommend for Glassdoor reviews, having some kind of cadence built out within onboarding so that there's some kind of, you know, 90-day check-in, hopefully with the manager at the franchise. 

 

Or if it's not that model, just with the hiring manager, or the direct manager to go ahead and ask for that review. But when the offer goes out, before the candidate starts, when the excitement is at a peak - Hey, can you leave us a review on Glassdoor for the quality of your interview experience? I feel like that should be baked into more companies' processes, but I hardly ever see it.

 

Katie Zotos  34:30  

Yeah. And you're totally giving me great ideas as we speak, capturing them at peak excitement. And I think for us, another thing of how can we automate that drip campaign. So it's kind of out of thought, out of sight out of mind, but it's still happening, and it's still making that impact. 

 

James Mackey  34:49  

I wonder if iCIMS could do that. If you could set custom workflows for an offer out, can you do anything after the offer is out or maybe that's in HRIS where it's the first thing? But yeah, I feel like reviews should need to be both on the revenue side and talent acquisition side, there should be a process built around getting 5-star reviews. 

 

And it should be something that's consistent, hopefully automated, but if not somehow tied to an OKR, some kind of performance metric or something where talent partners are held accountable for getting X amount of reviews per quarter, or whatever it might be to drive that performance. I feel it's really important, but again, hardly ever seen. So just really interesting stuff. And I think too if you don't have a brand that everybody's heard of, it becomes more important because the burden of proof falls more on you as an employer. 

 

If you work for a big tech company or whatever, a big company that's well known, people might decide to work for you regardless because it's the brand recognition and being able to level up their careers. But a lot of service companies may not have that type of brand in the marketplace, right?

 

Katie Zotos  36:09  

Totally. And that's something I evolved in my role and through the support of our VP of Growth, I've definitely recognized that brand awareness is so crucial. I always say, for us, we've been since 2000, really, from when we were founded, granted we were much smaller back then, and we've been hiring for part-time remote accountants. So for us whenever someone is looking for a part-time remote accounting job, they should always be coming to us, they should never be going to our competition because we've been doing it for longer. 

 

We have the technology baked out better, we have processes baked out better. In my eyes, I'm a little biased of course but they should be coming to us first. The goal is instead of them searching around - hey, what else is out there? Let me look at all these different companies. It's - Oh, yeah, Supporting Strategies I have heard of them. I've seen a flyer of theirs. 

 

James Mackey  37:08  

Yeah, I totally get it. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And it makes sense why it's going well and why your team is growing. The better the candidate experiences, the more talented folks that you can have come work for you, which are going to provide better experiences to the end client that's paying, and generating revenue. So I think it all makes sense. It all starts with the quality of the people. So this has been really interesting. And again, this is a unique vantage point. We haven't really had this type of perspective on the show so I really appreciate it. And we're coming up on time here, but I just wanted to say thank you for joining us today on the show.

 

Katie Zotos  37:44  

Yes, it's fun. Thanks so much for having me. 

 

James Mackey  37:47  

Yeah, for sure! And Katie, if people want to engage with you online, what's the best way for them to reach out?

 

Katie Zotos  37:53  

LinkedIn is probably the best method, I'm Katie Zotos if you want to email me I'm kzotos@supportingstrategies.com

 

James Mackey  38:04  

Okay, for sure. Thanks, everybody for tuning in! Thank you for joining us and Katie, will we'll talk again real soon.

 

Katie Zotos  38:10  

Thank you!