Max: Hello and welcome back to the Recruitment hackers podcast. I'm your host Max Armbruster and today I have the honor and privilege of hosting the legendary Greg Savage, who is a principal at the savage truth, a great source of industry commentary on the recruitment and staffing world. Welcome to the show, Greg. 

Greg: Thank you Max. It is a pleasure to be here and I think you may have gone a bit big with the word legendary but fine let's all say it then why not.

Max: I was told it was legendary when I came down under. I don't know if your brand recognition is as powerful and in all timezones but certainly, in my timezone, it applies.

Greg: Well I mean I don't know about brand recognition or anything like that but prior to COVID I used to go to a lot of speaking tours around the world and if you watch the calendar of those speaking to us it always seems to coincide very fortunately with international rugby matches and football matches. But, I can turn up in Manchester or Singapore or Cape Town and we will get three or four hundred recruiters turning up and it's actually a story I tell about brands, because at the end of the day. I'm actually just an aging unemployed extra crud art, and yet I can go to most cities in the world, people will turn up the list, and pay money, still astonishing.

Max: Amazing. Well done. I must say. I read your bio you come from Cape Town, right?

Greg: Obviously yes.

Max: Yes, I made my way to Cape Town or Joburg three years ago to the future of talent event, and it was on my bio I had San Francisco on it, and that opened the doors to the front stage for me and there was an international cache to bring in CEO from an international destination and I was too happy to latch on that. But, yeah, I guess today, the borders are down, the frontiers are down. Everybody can build their brands at the global level because even the advantage of being able to afford a plane ticket isn't an advantage anymore, so there's no more barriers to entry.

Greg: That's true. The only barrier to entry into building a brand is that it's very very hard work. And you've got to have a few things in your kit bag including something useful to say, an ability to say in an interesting way and I think then. And if you're consistent and long term. People often say to me, "Well, you're lucky Greg you've got this brand". Well, I've been blogging every week for 15 years mate, 15 years, and videos and Twitter and LinkedIn. So, it is hard work. But the rewards. I've tried to teach my recruitment companies that I advise them there are, and recruiters, that there are devilish rewards to amplify your brand. As long as your inr real life brand is good, you can amplify it online, you can't finish it, long term anyway because people will blame you and call you out. If you're not if you're not authentic.

Max: So authenticity, okay prerequisite. How about having something interesting to say, some people will, maybe, of course, most people don't have your experience or humbly I may say, my experience. I'm on the wrong side of that equation right and I've got 20 plus years of work experience myself, so for those in their 20s and 30s, the imposter syndrome must feel so overwhelming. How do you have the balls to pardon my expression. Well it’s my show, so I'll pardon, to go out and start to brand yourself as a thought leader. Was there a special moment in your career where you thought okay now I can start to take the front stage, or how did this moment of revelation come to you?

Greg: Well, I'm not a great example but I've got some good, I mean that's a great question you asked about authenticity and imposter syndrome, and have I got something to say. Prior to building an online brand I've been in this so long I spent many many years standing on stages at conferences and I really had a bit of kudos around having something to say or maybe that kudos was in my mind, but I thought it had something to say and I had a lot of experience, even when the internet started, so it was a little bit easier for me, but let's come to your point, two little anecdotes. I often find myself walking down the street and a recruiter will stop me, someone I don't even know, and say, 'Hey, I like your blog' and then I go, 'Oh, that's great. And then they say, 'I don't actually agree with you. But what I like about it is, I know what's your point of view, and I love the fact that you tell it the way you see it and that gets me thinking, so you don't have to always try and be I’m not suggesting you be controversial or rude or anything like that. But people value authenticity, they value a point of view. That's the first thing. The second story is about having that same conversation that you raised about. Do you have the balls to do it, etc. With a young recruiter, well she's an experienced woman with a couple of years experience as a recruiter and I was talking to her about her brand and she said, Greg, I've got nothing to say, who would want to listen to me? And I say, well tell me this, what's the biggest frustration you've got with your clients right now and she said, they're taking too long to make decisions. They say they are desperate for talent and then they drag.

Max: Sorry Greg, your mic is off.

Greg: Oh! I don't know why.

Max: You're back now.

Greg: Just when I'm telling a great story. I don't know if you're going to cut this or whether you want me, where should I start again with that one?

Max: Yeah, we can cut this off, for sure. So Greg you were saying this lady was giving you an anecdote, you had an anecdote about a lady who is saying.

Greg: The short version was that she believed she had nothing to say. And I asked her what her biggest bugbear was with a client she said was taking too slow to make decisions and I said, that is an insult. That's the story, just write two paragraphs, it was a LinkedIn post she wanted to write. She wrote a couple of paragraphs about how while she encourages her clients to be fairer, we've got to move the process, otherwise, we lose the best candidates which is true. And it got traction and people commented and I said that's what we did, you do have insights, and my message to a lot of recruiters is you think you don't, but actually you're in the market 365 days of the year, you're talking to candidates, every day. You've got a view. You've got a narrative, you've got a point of view that's valuable. And that's what I comment about. I think too many people on social media are trying to be funny, trying to be provocative. I don't think that's the way to go. I think you've got to be adding value, which reflects on your expertise so that I think is how we got to build a brand in a professional field.

Max: There is something about a great family name Mr. Savage and you wrote that one for a long time. I'm just reading the Elton John biography right now. He came up with that name because he thought he had a name that didn't work well to be a rock star. But I guess, for me, that's your brand, your brand is savage, your blog is the savage truth, and it just is very punchy, it's very direct. 

Greg: I didn't create my name like Elton John. My name was Reggie Duag, my name was Greg Savage from the...