28 min read
How HubSpot Lead Scoring Can Transform Inbound Recruiting With Richard Rothstein
George B. Thomas
Sep 13, 2025 5:04:55 PM
Have you ever sat back and thought, “How do I really know when a candidate is ready to move forward in the hiring process?” If you’re in HR, recruiting, or even leading a small business team, you know how much time can be lost chasing the wrong candidates or manually nudging folks through the pipeline. The good news? HubSpot has a feature that can completely change the game for inbound recruiting: lead scoring.
Now, before you think lead scoring is just for sales and marketing, let me stop you right there. It’s not. It can also help you build smarter, faster, and more human hiring processes. Let’s break this down together.
What Is Lead Scoring in Recruiting?
At its core, lead scoring is about assigning value to behaviors and attributes. In sales, it tells you when someone’s ready to buy. In recruiting, it tells you when someone’s ready to apply—or even better, when they’re ready to accept your job offer.
With HubSpot, you can create two key types of scores:
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Fit Score: Does this candidate align with the job role and company culture?
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Readiness Score: Is this candidate showing signs they’re ready to make a career move right now?
When you bring these two together, you get clarity. You know who’s a strong match and who’s motivated to take the next step. That means you’re not wasting time on folks who look good on paper but aren’t actually ready to make a move.
How Does Lead Scoring Save Time in Hiring?
Picture this: instead of HR manually sending emails, following up, and trying to figure out where someone stands, HubSpot’s automation steps in. Once a candidate hits a certain score, the system can trigger an email, a form, or even a survey.
For example, let’s say George applies for a role. He hits your “readiness threshold.” Boom, HubSpot sends him an email with a personality survey link, no HR person required. Joan, John, or whoever on your team can breathe a little easier because the system works for them.
This isn’t about replacing the human element of hiring. It’s about freeing your people to focus on meaningful conversations instead of repetitive administrative work.
Why Does This Matter for Inbound Recruiting?
Inbound recruiting is all about attracting candidates in a natural, authentic, and personalized way. Lead scoring and automation make that possible. Instead of every candidate feeling like they’re getting the same cookie-cutter process, you can build paths based on where they are in their journey.
And here’s the best part: when you personalize your process, you send a clear message that your company values people, not just positions. That alone can be the difference between a candidate saying yes to you or choosing someone else.
The One Big Takeaway
HubSpot lead scoring isn’t just a marketing trick repurposed for HR. It’s a powerful tool that helps you spot candidates at the right time and move them forward without bogging your team down in manual tasks.
If you want your recruiting to flourish, combine fit scores with readiness scores, lean into automation, and let your team focus on what they do best: building relationships. At the end of the day, people don’t just want jobs. They want to feel seen, valued, and chosen.
Sidekick Strategies Expert Interviews
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Show Transcription
George B. Thomas (00:00.971)
I'm super excited. Hello to all my Hub Heroes. It's your boy, George B. Thomas, back with another episode of the Hub Hero Sidekick Strategy Show, where we give you things that you need to know. Poet didn't know it. Today we're talking about managing an inbound recruiting process right. And I'm here today with Richard Rothstein. Richard, how the heck are you doing today?
Richard Rothstein (00:24.63)
Doing great, George, always great to talk to you.
George B. Thomas (00:27.771)
It's gonna be fun. Now Hub Heroes, just so you know, Richard is a senior HubSpot platform consultant at, is it fit, how do I say that Richard? There we go, Pixis Growth Partners, a HubSpot diamond solution partner. He works with clients of all sizes on implementing and optimizing HubSpot to support their growth strategies. And he has 10 years of experience in the HubSpot ecosystem.
Richard Rothstein (00:37.55)
Kixus.
George B. Thomas (00:54.503)
around 2012, 2013, anyway, and has earned 35 HubSpot certifications. Let's go! He has helped over 50 companies hit their goals with HubSpot. And when he's not dreaming up new workflows and automated techniques, man, that made me giggle the first time I read it, he's spending time with his two sons and playing D&D. I'm hoping that's Dungeons and Dragons because then we truly are best friends with his friends in Virginia.
Is it D&D? I can't go any further. Ah, there we go, all right. All right, well, ladies and gentlemen, let's get into the good stuff. Richard, I want to go ahead and dive into this first question. Again, this is all about adding value to things around HouseSpot, around the inbound ecosystem. So let's start with the beginning, the basics. Can you explain what an inbound recruiting process is and why it's essential for marketers and business owners as they move forward?
Richard Rothstein (01:22.942)
It is. Absolutely. Yeah.
Richard Rothstein (01:48.766)
Yeah, absolutely. So inbound recruiting, just in a nutshell, is the idea of creating a candidate experience through employer brand content and marketing strategies that help companies build relationships with top talent. So through that, you can connect with passive and active job seekers, engage with their networks, and delight the candidates through the application process.
This is different than how a lot of people do things right now. And it's really important more now than ever because even when hiring slows down, companies always want the best. And the best are starting to realize that they can be picky. You know, they don't have to just take whatever job is offered to them. So it's important that you really get out there as a company.
and market yourself as an awesome place to work that people want to be and people want to stay. And that's, you know, kind of as much of an industry leader as possible in your field so that people are actively looking for jobs. You know, they may think, oh, I work at blank now, but man, if a job opened up over at, you know, that other company.
I might really be interested in that. And that's kind of the goal of inbound recruiting.
George B. Thomas (03:19.507)
I love this so much because it is true. Hard talent or good talent is hard to find, I should say. And Richard, what's funny is I love the fact of how so closely knit to almost the inbound methodology, the words that were coming out of your mouth. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you heard the words build, right? Build relationships, Richard said. I hope you heard the word engage. Engage with.
their networks, right? Be there before the actual thing happens. And I even heard the word delight. So thinking about it, build, engage, delight and what you can do as a company who wants to have the best talent in your organization. It's all about strategy. So, Richard, as we move forward, what are some of the critical, I love that word, by the way, components of an effective
Richard Rothstein (04:08.354)
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (04:16.663)
inbound process pertaining to what we're talking about today.
Richard Rothstein (04:21.294)
So the first thing is you have to define your process. Everybody has a process, whether they realize it or not. But you got to sit down and do the hard work and go, OK, here's what our hiring process actually looks like. Because the cool thing is, there's a lot of stuff out there that when I say delight job seekers, there are a lot of people that are doing the hiring that are not actually recruiters.
that there may be HR people that are just stuck with recruiting. And they may not really enjoy that process, especially the old school way of doing it. But maybe there's ways you can look at your process of ways to take things off of their plate. Or maybe there are things that you can do, you know, to change it up a little bit so that even though you're giving a more delightful experience.
that maybe you can delight the people that are actually doing it more a little bit as well. So defining your process, number one, that's the first critical step. Number two is kind of really just an openness to redefine that and to say, well, this may be how it's always been done, but let's take a look and see how we can get, you know, what are the let's do some research, see what our competitors doing to get good talent, you know? And I mean.
and see what are the best ways out there to do it. I think the third thing that's important is finding the right tools. There are people out there that are still doing recruiting out of a spreadsheet and trying to find their last note. And that's, I feel so horrible for them. And my heart goes out to those people because they're such better tools that you can be using to keep track of your...
you know, prospective employees.
George B. Thomas (06:15.875)
Yeah, Richard, I'm wondering if one of those tools might be HubSpot, by the way. But I'm sure there are. Hmm, maybe. But hey, by the way, if you're using spreadsheets, we see you, by the way. And Richard, I want to keep digging in because I think you alluded to something that I really want to paint a picture. Us as humans.
Man, when we get in a rhythm, like we've always done it this way, so we'll continue to do it this way. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like all the dumb sayings that we wrap around that. So how does the inbound recruiting process really differ in your mind from what a lot of folks listening to or watching this might consider their traditional hiring methods?
Richard Rothstein (06:59.098)
So a lot of what they do is, it's just very simplistic. You know, they'll post the job, the places that they feel, that they just have a feeling that it would, you know, do best. It's very qualitative in older school process, not a quantitative process where you can, you know, and they may have certain like question rounds or approval rounds that they just kind of do because it's what, you know, it's what
Joe, the SVP of a certain department likes to do as opposed to, is that slowing down your process waiting on Joe's approval or that extra interview with that guy who's always busy? I mean, it's something to think about that good talent goes very quickly on the market. When somebody
Richard Rothstein (07:56.062)
is looking for a job that's a high tier of talent, they're usually off the job market in, you know, two to four weeks. The average hiring process takes six to 12 weeks. So there's a mismatch there. And I think, you know, one of the things that people don't do is they don't market themselves as a company as well. So they're when if you're when you're dealing with that mismatch of process.
Right. In essence, what that says is you have to hit the people right when they're ready. And if you don't do that, you're going to be even if you're doing that, there's such there's you're kind of at a disadvantage already. If you're an average, if you have an average length process. But if you've already got that germ in their mind of this is a good place. I want to go here. You know, they're keeping in mind that this that same.
balance of power that's shifted on the customer side of things as far as knowledge goes now also exists in the job market as well. So that if you can kind of see that ground early so that maybe some of that time, you know, before they're actually actively looking, you've got them. I mean, that's something a lot of people aren't doing and really is a huge difference, especially when you consider that the best.
employees are only probably going to be passively job seeking, right? So the best people you want for your job have a job now and are kind of happy with it. But if you can show them my company's awesome, people here like working here, oh by the way we have an opening for somebody just like you, then all of a sudden then everybody's happy because
You know, I don't know about you, George, but when I when I've had conversations with recruiters and they've reached out to me to be like, you're what I'm looking for, it makes me happy. Right. I'm like, yeah, I'm what somebody's looking for. Right. Versus if I have to actively go out and seek that job, you know, it's not that makes me sad, but it doesn't make me as happy as the other way.
George B. Thomas (10:08.609)
Right.
George B. Thomas (10:20.675)
Yeah, I love this so much. There's a couple of visuals that are coming to my mind on this. It's like you're at a restaurant and you've got this dope burger and you're like really happy with your burger. But then you see like the flame and yawn like show up on the table next to you. You're like, well.
Maybe I want to order that, you know, and then the other thing, too, what's fun is I'm getting this marketing yin yang kind of feeling like you might market your butt off to your potential customers, but you're not marketing your butt off to your future talent. And what's funny is the better you are at your first marketing to customers, the more sales you're going to drive, the more the business is going to scale. But it's like you're leaving half of yourself.
on the floor because you're not focused on this inbound recruiting. Alright, so with that, go ahead, go ahead. Did you have thoughts? Go ahead.
Richard Rothstein (11:09.87)
Well, absolutely. I did have a thought because most of what I help people with is sales and marketing and so often I've heard when I'm networking with people, whatever, man, I will love your services when I have talents in place to take advantage of them. And then I kind of want to go, well, about that, you know, you should be marketing to those people too. And that's a lot of what inbound recruiting kind of is, is.
you know, helping, especially there's so many industries where, you know, maybe it's not long-term jobs, but they still need to be recruiting high level talent all the time. Or maybe the talent pool is super small. Like when you look at like people who build rockets, for instance, right. I'm in the DC area. So that's like a thing. Um, and that pool of people is super small, right? I've got a buddy, he's a recruiter.
for people with only certain security levels, right? So, you know, this kind of thing of already having that network in place, and honestly, really good recruiters that are professional recruiters are probably already doing some of this as far as like they have a, you know, they may have a Rolodex as opposed to a CRM or something, but they have a method where they're already kind of keeping track of people. They're like, ooh, I don't have a job for you right now,
I want to make sure I remember you and you remember me.
George B. Thomas (12:42.619)
Yeah, and I feel like even those type of people, if they were to listen to this, would think of how they could take that Rolodex or the historical methodology or mindsets and even apply it to a more streamlined, easy to use in Boundy, dare I say way of kind of doing that. So here's the thing, Richard, I think we've done a great job of painting. You might want to be doing this for your business. It might be a smart thing moving forward.
Richard Rothstein (13:08.086)
Yeah. Uh-oh.
George B. Thomas (13:10.883)
So let's get into the parts that I really love, and that is the tactics and the strategies. What are some strategies and tactics that can be used to attract these, what we've been calling high quality candidates, through an inbound recruiting process?
Richard Rothstein (13:28.094)
Well, so think of start thinking about it more like a marketing process like you would for your, you know, for your clients. So, for instance, you know, the social media still applies, but now you're heavily focusing on LinkedIn. Right. You know, you want to have LinkedIn ads for your jobs that are really appealing, you know, kind of the same way you would take that same care. You would.
with the marketing campaigns you're doing on the looking for new business. Facebook has a whole section for jobs that's really interesting that a lot of people don't dig into. Things like making sure your glass store and sites like that, that your reputation is really high, just like you would with a Yelp or something like that on the customer side. So it really is about, it's...
Honestly, George, it's all the same strategies you would use in new business acquisition. Just shift the focus and look at, OK, what can I do a little differently? You know, treat that, treat that career section on your website just like you would treat the rest of your website to attract new business, but only you're trying to attract people to apply for your jobs.
George B. Thomas (14:52.531)
I love that statement so much because, and again, I'm a kind of a weird guy, things just pop into my brain. But I love when you're like, you're kind of doing the same things. To me, I was like, it's the same kung fu. It's just the tiger style versus the monkey style. Like, like, like get after it. Do what you need to do. Now, you mentioned social media, Richard, which is awesome. And I totally believe that's a place where people should be, you know, kind of digging in and getting after it. But I am super curious.
Richard Rothstein (15:05.386)
Yeah. Absolutely.
George B. Thomas (15:22.603)
Most businesses have a website. Most marketers probably are in charge of helping that website be what it needs to be. And so how can marketers and business owners optimize their company website and online presence there to attract potential candidates as well?
Richard Rothstein (15:40.242)
Yeah, so I mean, it goes back to what I was saying, like the same rules of kind of SEO and everything apply just on your career side. And so optimize, optimize the crap out of that thing. You know, make sure you're having content that's good for people and the bots. Also, once people get there, have some engaging content. You know, I'm sure you have happy employees. OK, everybody's got happy employees. Put them in, you know, do a Zoom meeting with them.
interview them and talk about why. Take that video put it up on your career site and you know if you have the ability you know or a tool, wink wink, we might talk about that in a second here, where you can put forms on your website and maybe you know track how people are doing and possibly even, I don't know, score them. You know use that kind of thing to
Um, you know, to know and to, to look at what are some conversion data here? Are people liking these videos we're putting up? Are they, you know, not clicking on them at all? Are they only watching them for a few seconds? Um, are they, you know, clicking around to different things on the site? You know, maybe even have a careers blog. I know that sounds like a heavy lift, but you wouldn't necessarily have to have it be as consistent even as a, as a marketing blog, people say.
Just so you have more content there like anything you can do on your own site to really enhance That experience and enhance the ease for people to go. Yeah, I might want to take that next step. Yeah Let me go ahead and see oh you got a white paper on what it's on What it might be like to work there or you know? What are the things that I need to look for when I'm looking for a new job in my field? Oh?
that might interest me. I might, you know, download that. Well, somebody's downloading. What are the next steps if they're looking for something in their field? I mean, that's definitely something to pass on. And I would also say to that recruiting is very much a marketing function. It just happens to sit under HR. So if you're a marketer, you may have to kind of do some of that intra office communication.
Richard Rothstein (18:07.618)
to be like, hey, HR person who maybe doesn't like recruiting anyway, let me help you.
George B. Thomas (18:14.171)
Yeah, I love that. And by the way, that might be a rewind point in this episode, to be honest with you, because there's so many good pieces of that. One, I love that you brought up a careers blog because the idea of that being separate from your customer-facing content, I believe is highly important. Also, going back to some of the, hopefully, breadcrumbs that people have been paying attention to.
Part of this whole recruiting process is being able to stay top of mind of that top talent. So if it's a blog, it's something they can subscribe to and they might get information over time and start to fall in love with your organization and what you're doing with that process. But then when you mentioned, I even wrote notes down by the way, as we're kind of going along. When you start to mention customer testimonials, video customer testimonials,
and actually being able to display video employee testimonials of their love and passion for either the products or services or the problems that they're helping people solve, the aspirational points that they're leading them to, that stuff, I think it's like catnip to cats for other employees because they're like, oh, there are happy humans in this organization. I too want to be a happy human.
Richard Rothstein (19:27.222)
Uh-huh.
George B. Thomas (19:29.635)
let me see if that's the right direction for me. So I think all of that was gold. Ladies and gentlemen, definitely rewind and listen to that section again. Now, we've been teasing out. We even did a couple like gestures. If you're watching this, if you're listening to this episode, by the way, you could be watching the video version in community.hubheroes.com. But if you're listening, we've made facial gestures. We've wink-winked a couple of times. Richard, when you think about this inbound recruiting process,
Are there any specific tools, technologies that can aid in implementing an inbound process around recruiting?
Richard Rothstein (20:07.97)
Number one tool has got to be HubSpot, George. You know, even this being a inbound process really hints that it's something that HubSpot leans into, you know, those three key words that I said in the, in the beginning of, you know, engage, you know, attract, engage and delight. It's very much something that actually even came out of HubSpot. And actually is, there's a whole chapter devoted to inbound recruiting, actually in the book, Inbound Organization.
which was written, co-written by Dan Tyre of HubSpot fame. So definitely HubSpot. Some of the things that we've touched on briefly that HubSpot can let you do in this process that are super helpful. One is just acting as a CRM. Just having the applicants, and even before their applicants, being a contact record is huge.
Right? Because then that's something where your notes are separate things attached to that record. It's not like, oh gosh, this cell in Excel is so long. You know? It also allows you to do lots of cool stuff from that. One of the biggest things, you know, early on we talked about your process. That has, I've seen organizations really like using the deal pipelines.
to kind of outline their process. Now, a lot of HubSpotters are probably listening to me right now and they're going, oh wait, but can they use ticket pipelines too? And yes, you can, but the thing that you miss out on is the close percentage. Like if they're in this stage, how likely am I to actually hire them kind of thing. So that gives you some additional metrics that hiring people tend to really like. So.
Even though it's not actually a deal and you would think, oh, this is an internal process, so I'm going to do it with ticket pipelines. They will, the, the people tend to like the, the deal pipelines better still. Um, yeah.
George B. Thomas (22:16.623)
That's a nugget, by the way. I just want everybody to realize the... And I want you to keep going, by the way. I am not cutting off to go to the next question. I just hope that people realize, because here's what you'll historically hear people say in the HubSpot ecosystem. If it doesn't deal with revenue, it doesn't need to be a deal. But the fact, Richard, that you're actually leveraging the percentages to hire.
Richard Rothstein (22:23.069)
Okay, sure. No.
Richard Rothstein (22:43.128)
Mm-hmm.
George B. Thomas (22:43.427)
is actually one of the one ways that I agree I would break that revenue rule and use that pipeline for something like that process. Sorry, I just wanted people to know the weight of that. So go ahead and continue.
Richard Rothstein (22:52.706)
No, that's right. Yeah. Absolutely. The other cool thing it lets you do is, and this is huge to me, is lead scoring. Right. So you can know if you have a job opportunity for George, right, you can say, oh, when I look at George, based on these different criteria, he looks like he's ready to move jobs, and I just got a job open that he fits for, right, which can, by the way, also be a separate score.
Um, so you could both create fit and readiness scores for the people you're looking to hire. What? Oh my gosh. Yes. This is advanced, advanced HubSpot level stuff that you can bring to this inbound recruiting process and really see a ton of value because now you're saving so much time and I haven't even spoken to the there's, you know, you can set up the automation of setting people. Hey.
you're to this stage in the deal process, we're sending you this email to let you know, go here to fill out this personality survey, right? And now Joan in HR doesn't have to, or John or whoever in HR, doesn't have to write that email by hand. It just happens, right? So those are the things, I mean, obviously HubSpot is...
tailor-made for this, not tailor-made for it, but the process I will say is actually tailor-made for HubSpot, actually the other way around, so.
George B. Thomas (24:27.719)
Yeah, love that. And it's interesting. I want to dive deeper into experience here in a second. But I do want to unpack. If you're listening to this or watching this, I have to ask, have you ever been annoyed by a recruiting process or recruiter? Most likely, the answer might be yes, which is not a good taste that you want your employees to have at your organization. And the fact...
that these words, Richard came out of your mouth, fit and readiness scores. Like it's the right time. Oh, like again, if you think about the inbound methodology, the thing that you have always heard is it's like the right people at the right time with the right thing, right? And of course we're talking about email messaging and messaging and social and stuff like that. But even this recruiting process, fit and readiness.
It's the right information, the right reach out, the right whatever with the right human for the right job, right? It's still the same formula. It's just different things. It's so good. Going. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Yep.
Richard Rothstein (25:34.742)
I want to mention one thing before we get into anything else though is that as far as that automation and delight piece, I don't know about you, the most annoying thing for me when I apply for a job is that I never hear back, right? Even if I don't get the job, right? I at least want to know that I, you know, need to cross that off my list of things to hope for down the road, right? And one of the simplest pieces of automation you could is
When that prospect moves to prospective employee, moves to closed lost, send them an email saying, hey, you weren't a good fit for this one, but we still liked you, so keep us in mind as you continue looking. And that one thing that recruiters frankly, it's because they're too busy to do on their end a lot of times. And they're just, again, like I said, most of them are that HR person that
that doesn't really, you know, recruiting isn't their passion anyway. So they're like, okay, it's on the dump pile. They don't have time to go through their, you know, reject stack and send an email to every person, but you could set that up as an automation. Now you've personalized it. You're treating people more like a, I know Georgia's big buzzword. I'm going to say it, a human. And you've also saved time internally. So I wanted to point that one out as well.
George B. Thomas (26:53.383)
Yes.
George B. Thomas (26:58.595)
Yeah, I love this so much. And yes, I do. I do really love the humans, by the way. What's interesting, Richard, and not to get too sideways on this, but my brain even started to go to holy crap. You could have potential candidate types as personas in HubSpot and leveraging some sort of version of that.
Richard Rothstein (27:18.071)
Mm-hmm.
George B. Thomas (27:22.743)
around in the segmentation and communication. Think of the negative Nancy persona for your recruiting process. And now there's some automated messaging that happens around that. Anyway, let's dive into this because it really is about experience. On the customer side, on the marketing side, we're usually like, you gotta create a great user experience. You gotta create a great customer experience. How important is the candidate experience?
in this kind of inbound recruiting process and what steps can be taken to ensure that it is a positive experience that we're creating for these humans.
Richard Rothstein (28:00.422)
Well, it's all you know, it that's at the core of this right is You know creating that experience that's positive We've all been to a website where you upload your resume and then the next step is to Fill out your resume painstakingly by hand
George B. Thomas (28:21.575)
Yep. What's going on?
Richard Rothstein (28:23.214)
I mean, it's a horrible experience. You know, I mean, circling back to HubSpot, you could, at the very least, for initial levels of interest, if you're using forms, and you already have some information about somebody, you can pre-populate a lot of that. You know, so those are, anything you can do to make it kind of a better experience, I mean, that's kind of what the content goes to too, right? Of like making the experience as smooth as you can for that person.
any automations you can put in place where like the second they meet a criteria, you know, that means that you can send them something and have it not feel like, oh my gosh, this annoying email where nobody knows who the heck I am. You're sending it to them because they're, you know, the, the human that you want and that they're, they, they appear at least like they're going to be looking for a job. So you know, those
George B. Thomas (29:17.352)
Mm-mm.
Richard Rothstein (29:19.946)
those kinds of things, just even just, I mean, it's gonna be a little different for every business, but I would say, you know, those are kind of the big things of just looking at it as where you can, you know, where you can make sure that you're sending the right thing to the right time to people. Probably the best.
George B. Thomas (29:39.771)
Love it. Love it. Love it. So one of the things that we need to do is we need to give the sidekick strategy listeners the bulls eye. Right. And so, Richard, can you share any success stories or examples of companies successfully implementing an inbound recruiting, dare I say, inbound hiring process that you're like, yeah, they're knocking out of the park or something that we can kind of, you know,
Focus in on and be like, okay, that's what I need to do.
Richard Rothstein (30:11.274)
Yeah. So one of the great examples of this is services like professional services organizations. So like accounting firms. And I worked with a particular accounting firm where we kind of went to their recruiting page and they're like, OK, we know what our goal for recruiting is, but we don't think we're going to hit it. And I was like, OK, great. Let's get to work so that we can make you able to hit that goal. And so.
you know, first we looked at their website and they were looking to do a big re redo of their whole website in general, cause they knew their website wasn't great. But I said, well, hold on, let's just focus on the career side. Let's just do what we can. Let's move stuff around. You know, let's make sure people know on each page what they're talking about. These people were actually a step ahead of where I expected because it wasn't just like one careers page with a set of listings. They did have a few different pages in their career section, which was awesome.
But we did expand that a little bit. We made sure it just had a more modern layout and feel. That was stage one. Stage two was something that I actually haven't talked about is referral program. And people are like, oh, yeah, I do that for my clients. So I'm going to get new business. Right, it goes back to that same thing, that it's the same process. You're just changing the target.
So I say that over and over again to people, it's the same process. You're just changing the target. So, um, so we looked at their referral process because their referral process wasn't garnering as many people as they expected, but the people that got from it, they left, right? So I said, okay, well, let's do some internal surveying. HubSpot does also have a survey tool that, you know, you can use for this purpose.
Oh, I'm talking so much, George, to you. Sorry about that. Those coughs there. And so we started there. And so what can we do to improve this process? And so that was kind of led to like, okay, what we wanna know from employees is like, what could we do to have them give us more referrals? In essence. And so that improved the number of referrals they got. And also,
George B. Thomas (32:11.363)
Nah, you're fine.
Richard Rothstein (32:36.942)
We did start to see more people moving through their website. We got them set up in HubSpot and we created again that deal process of their hiring process so that they could figure out where things were. The other cool thing about that is it lets you know are there choke points in your process. Like, whoa, we've got a lot of people that are...
just staying in this phase for a long time. You know, that's helpful as well. But in the end of it, they did hit their goal, so.
George B. Thomas (33:10.608)
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (33:16.563)
I'm glad that you tied it back to the goal, by the way, because I literally wrote another note, and I hope that the viewers and listeners heard the fact that you started this out with a goal for recruiting. We don't know if we're gonna hit our goal. I'm gonna ask you, ladies and gentlemen, are you sitting here today right now with a literal goal for your recruiting efforts, or is it like, no, in three months, we're gonna run around like we're on fire because we need three people in seats, like...
There is a big difference between starting with that goal. Now speaking, oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Richard Rothstein (33:47.21)
Well, yeah, and this is an important thing, too, because if you, you know, it ties back kind of to growth, right? Of like, if you have a growth goal, you're going to think, well, I need marketing to do this, you know, to convert to this for sales to be able to sell this. Okay, but then you need to deliver on that goal, because otherwise you're not actually going to be able to hit it. You're going to have to stop wherever you can deliver. So anytime you have that conversation.
You also need to step back and say, okay, what level of recruiting do we need to do to be able to deliver?
George B. Thomas (34:23.751)
So good, so good. And I think it actually almost is a great handoff to the next question that I wanna ask. And that is like, listen, if everything is the same and it's just different directions, right? We know that what gets measured.
makes sense and we pay attention. So what metrics or key performance indicators, KPIs by the way, should marketers and business owners and HR teams track to evaluate the effectiveness of their inbound recruiting and hiring process that they're now building?
Richard Rothstein (35:02.754)
Most of the same conversion metrics you would look at in a sales process. So what, how many viewers are you getting on that part of your website? Right. What are the lead sources? Oh, we're getting a lot of stuff from this random thing. You know, this random blog post that somebody wrote about us. That's weird. Let's take a look and see, is that worth doing more of that kind of thing? And then all the way through, what are your conversions looking like?
What are your form fills looking like? What are your downloads looking like? Because, again, part of it is you don't want it to just be like, we got jobs. You want there to be other content for people to engage with before they're ready to fill out the job application. You want it to be things like webinars. Okay, so how are people... What's your webinar attendance looking like?
You know, things like if you can have a white paper download of like, you know, Hey, what, what are the salary guidelines in your industry? Right. Like, because we all know salaries go up and people are more likely to get that higher salary if they jump to another job. So that's always something that's a good tool.
Richard Rothstein (36:25.13)
As well as you know, so and then just conversion all the way through, you know All the way once you get them into that deal pipeline. Okay, where how are they converting in each stage, right? All right. Is there a stage that word people are dropping out? Because we can't get them an appointment with you know that SVP that's always busy but is demanding He have an interview with people
Is there a point where, is there a stage where we're always going, you know, well, no, these people don't fit after all. Okay. Then you can examine that and you can go, well, wait, if at this stage we're realizing people aren't a good fit, how can we push that all the way back to the beginning and say people like this, we don't want to be a trek?
George B. Thomas (37:15.155)
So good measuring it, being able to diagnose patterns, making those patterns equal insights and those insights changing or iterating the process. So much good stuff. Richard, in your mind, how can the inbound recruiting process contribute to a company's growth and success in the future?
Richard Rothstein (37:35.99)
Well, you know, we mentioned that a little bit earlier about, um, if you don't have the right people and the right team and you're not staffed up properly, when that growth comes, you're going to fall flat on your face because then you're not going to be able to deliver what you're selling. And it's going to be harder to regain the trust of those people, um, of those humans that just, that, that have, that bought from you and have expectations. You're not going to be able to delight them.
and have them tell other people how awesome you are if you can't deliver on what you're selling. And that's what inbound recruiting really comes down to from a growth perspective of you can sell all you want, but if you can't deliver on it, now people are gonna be telling people how crappy you are versus how awesome you are. And that can be a really hard death spiral for companies to come out of.
George B. Thomas (38:32.975)
Yeah, you take so much time building trust, building brand, equaling reciprocity, and then it's your own lack of a engine or axle or transmission or whatever part of the car you wanna call it that is your own demise. That's never a good place to be in. Speaking of which, this is making me start to think about...
Like, we've got people rare and ready to go, Richard. They're like, OK, call Jimmy, get Susie in here. We need to create a recruiting process. We need a blog. We got all these ideas. What are some of the common mistakes or pitfalls that they should look at avoiding when they start to build or implement an inbound recruiting process for the people that they need to hire for the seats that they're going to need as they scale to that success?
Richard Rothstein (39:24.014)
So I think some of it is, um, know your own business and know what's too fast to adopt a new process. Because if you try and do everything I've talked about in this, in this interview all at once, you're going to get tied up in your own shoelaces. Everybody's going to be like, I'm not going to do that. And you're going to get really overwhelmed. You know, start kind of slow at first, like start working in the CRM, you know.
I'm assuming you're going to, I'm assuming people are going to start using HubSpot, right? Like, you know, because it's the best for this, but, um, you know, get your data in the CRM, play with it a little bit, build your process out as a, as a deal pipeline, you know, and, and just take it from there. You know, take each step incrementally. Like you're here to talk about fit and, um,
readiness, lead score, that's not a day one thing. Okay, you're gonna need a minute to get to that point. But you can start keeping track of people in a way of setting up tasks for yourself of, hey, I need to reach out to this person in 30 days or whatever. And they're in my system, so I have notes about them. And I have the process written out. Those kinds of things. Start with those, build from there.
George B. Thomas (40:50.063)
Yeah, this interview has been so good. So many things that people can do around a recruiting process. Richard, are you ready for your surprise question?
Richard Rothstein (40:59.976)
Couldn't be anymore ready.
George B. Thomas (41:01.231)
been waiting the entire time, haven't you? So the surprise question is actually relatively easy. And it's just, what is one thing, hashtag one thing that you hope people take away from today's episode, from today's interview?
Richard Rothstein (41:03.604)
Absolutely.
Richard Rothstein (41:18.18)
that they can be doing recruiting better and that they can get better people if they look to improve their processes. So even if they don't go all the way to the stuff we've talked about today, at least take a look at what you're doing and find hashtag one thing you can be doing better.
George B. Thomas (41:39.603)
I love that one thing you could be doing better, one percent better each and every day. And all the things that we do in our business and where you will end up will be dramatically changed. Richard, if people have questions for you, where do you do what you do? Where do you want to point them? Like, where should the conversations happen?
Richard Rothstein (41:55.842)
So I'm definitely on LinkedIn, pretty easy to find, Richard Rothstein. And you can also email me at richardatpixisgrowth.com and we can keep the conversations going those ways as well. I have threads now. I'm trying to do, yeah, but we'll see.
George B. Thomas (42:17.828)
Wow.
George B. Thomas (42:22.76)
I love it. Ladies and gentlemen, time flies when you're having fun. We, I believe, have added a ton of value for you around a recruiting process, hiring the right people into your organization. If you're listening to the audio podcast of this and you want to see or watch the video version, remember you can head over to community.hubheroes.com.
Until next time though, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human. And of course, we'll see you in the next episode of the Hub Heroes Sidekick Strategies. Good job, Richard. That was amazing, brother.
Richard Rothstein (42:58.382)
We'll be sure.