#don’t wanna talk for fewer hrs or whatever like i know so much is gonna be different but. aughhhhhh. i was gonna say smth else but i forget

[pepprs]

damnok im falling asleep sk fast rn which is wild cuz ive been struggling to sleep all week and ofc now it’s hitting when iwwanted to make this post lol ok. basically idkw hat im going to do when im moved in bC i have to take up space which means eating around my roommates and making food / being in the kitchen at the same time as them and talking / singing at a normal volume in my room and sharing a br and shit w them and like. iiiii don’t know if i can do that actually. like i have to but i don’t know if i can

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

Blind Date

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Request: It had to be fate when Steve runs into his work crush on a stroll through his old stomping grounds. 

Word Count: 3,756 - One Shot

Once again, special thanks to @kquel12 and @alexabarnes for letting me pick their brain.

Steve walked around the city. It had been a hot summer day and it seemed the people of New York couldn’t escape it until the moon replaced the sun. There was a nice cool breeze that finally made the heat bearable.

Steve had needed to clear his head. So he rode his motorcycle back to the city. He’d spent all day in Brooklyn, familiarizing himself with his old stomping grounds again. He spent the later half back in Manhattan. Now he made his way down fifth avenue after strolling through the The Met.

It was getting late and there were fewer people in the area. The usual tourists had made their way back to their hotels or were out on the town.

Steve was strolling slower than usual, taking in the sounds and views of the city. He’d curiously look into Central Park from his spot on the sidewalk. It was nice to know that the park hadn’t changed hardly at all since his time growing up.

He was just about to speed up his walk and make his way back to the old Avengers Tower and grab his motorcycle to make his trip back to the compound Upstate. But then he saw a familiar face walking toward him on the sidewalk.

It was Y/N. 

She worked for the PR department at the compound. They’d frequently exchange smiles and polite conversations. Luckily, Steve didn’t need to work with her all that often. It was mostly Tony that had to be talked through how to handle bad publicity.

Y/N was always professional and – from what Steve was told – she was rather amazing at her job.

Sometimes Steve wished he misbehaved more so he’d have an excuse to talk to Y/N more. His little crush was only really noticed by Sam, Steve, and – of course – Natasha. 

On multiple accounts, Bucky had to jab Steve in the stomach to stop him from staring at Y/N with heart eyes when she was in the same room as them. Steve was grateful for the wake up calls. But he always wanted to punch Bucky when he smirked at him knowingly.

Steve didn’t think it was professional for him to make a move. It was an HR nightmare waiting to happen. And working in PR, she had to know what a mess he would be to date. So Steve just watched her from a distance, secretly fawning over her.  

Y/N was close enough to Steve on the sidewalk now to notice him as well. She had earbuds in and quickly took them out.

Steve swore he caught a melancholy aura around her before she caught sight of him. But maybe he’d been imagining it.

“Captain Rogers,” she beamed brightly.

God, she was beautiful.

It was then that Steve noticed she wasn’t wearing her usual business attire. Instead her makeup was a little brighter and she was wearing a summery and loose dress. She looked even more beautiful than usual and he didn’t know that was even possible.

“Y/N,” he greeted with a grin. “And please, it’s just Steve. We’re not at the office.”

She nodded. “What are you doing in the city?”

Steve shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and looked around awkwardly. “Uhh…just needed to get out of the compound. And before I knew it, I was riding into Manhattan.”

She eyed him, seeming to sense that there was more to it than that. But she still nodded in understanding.

“You look…” Steve wanted to say ‘beautiful,’ but it felt too inappropriate and forward.

“You look lovely,” he finally said.

Y/N let out a nervous sigh and blushed. “Thank you,” she said shyly, like it was unusual for a man to say that to her.  

“Am I stopping you from getting somewhere?” Steve asked hurriedly. She must have better things to do that to talk to him.

“No. No, not at all. I was just…I was just having drinks with my friends.” She gestured behind her with her thumb. “They wanted to make a whole night of it. But I wasn’t feeling it.”

Steve nodded.

He couldn’t get over how the soft breeze was making her hair flutter around her face. Her skin seemed to be glowing from the humidity of summer. There was a part of him that just wanted to grab her and kiss her. But that wasn’t him. That would never be him.

He remembered his words of warning to Bruce. ‘As maybe the world's leading authority on waiting too long, don’t.’ Maybe he should stop being a coward and take his own advice. They weren’t at the office. And he knew he would never make it weird if she rejected him. In fact, he thought she’d better. Clearly she was too good for him.

“Hey, would you – would you want to grab a drink?” He finally asked.

Her eyes widened a bit. “Now?” She blurted out softly.

Steve chuckled, “Yes, now. Unless you really wanted to call it a night and head home.” She bit her lip. “A drink sounds great, actually.”

Steve was stunned that she agreed. “OK. I’m not really familiar with the area these days…Do you know a place nearby?”

“Yeah, I do.” Then she pointed in a general direction. “There’s a spot I like a few blocks north of here.”

Steve smiled and nodded. “Lead the way.”

Y/N took them to a hole-in-the-wall dive bar. She looked out of place in her pretty dress and even prettier face. Steve was almost glad he was there with her because the patrons appeared to be mostly men that wouldn’t behave themselves around a girl like her.

They sat at the end of the bar, basically a dark corner of the bar. The stools squeaked when they sat on them.

“What can I get for you, darling?” A woman came over with a cut off t-shirt and a sleeve of tattoos on both arms. She winked at Y/N, making Steve think she was just as interested in Y/N as he was.

Y/N looked at Steve for a second. “Wanna play a game with me?”

“Sure,” he said almost too quickly and casually. He’d do just about anything she asked if he was being honest with himself.

Y/N smiled at his quick response and turned back to the bartender. "Can we get six shots of tequila and two Stellas please?”

The bartender was taken aback, but clearly impressed. Before Steve had time to comprehend what was happening, Y/N had pulled out her credit card and handed it to the bartender with a, “Keep it open.”

“You know, I was the one that asked you to get drinks…” Steve pointed out.

Y/N smirked at him. “Is this where you try to prove that chivalry isn’t dead?”

“Back in my day, we didn’t call it chivalry. It was called being polite and it was also just expected.”

“Right. Gentleman weren’t a dead breed,” Y/N rolled her eyes.

Steve’s eyes softened at her obvious hurt with the statement. “So, what’s this game you’re dragging me into?”

Y/N perked up at his subject change. “We’re going to ask each other whatever we want. Each shot is a question. But if we don’t want to answer the question, we have to take the shot.”

Steve nodded slowly, “What’s the beer for?”

“Oh, that’s our chaser.”

The bartender came back with their beers and 6 shot glasses in her hand. She poured them the tequila and left them a salt shaker as well as a glass full of lime slices. She left them alone with a, “Have fun, kids.”

Steve looked at the shots. “I guess now is a bad time to tell you that I can’t really get drunk.”

Y/N’s face scrunched. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Side effects of the serum. Guess my metabolism burns it off before I can get the buzz.”

“Well then, you’ve got quite the edge to this game. I might not remember your dirty secrets in the morning. But you’ll remember all of mine.”

Steve chuckled. “In that case, ladies first. Ask away.”

She sat up excitedly. “What do you hate the most about this century?”

His brow raised at the forwardness of the question. “Alright, so that’s how this is gonna be then?”

She just smirked and nodded.

“I guess…” he shifted in his seat, “Technology is amazing. It’s grown faster and bigger than I could’ve ever imagined.” Then he hesitated. “But – don’t make fun of me for this – I think a lot of people are ignorant to the new problems it’s brought too.”

Y/N was clearly intrigued, leaning in closer. “Like what?”

“I don’t know – There are some many new ways to harass and bully people. Lack of privacy. A platform for lies and misinformation. Advertising your life like it’s a brand. Don’t even get me started on cyber security. Hell, we invented Ultron because of it. People’s phones? They’re like…interrupters. People miss so much because of them.”

He quickly listed them off and then took a breath. He slowed his thoughts down. “No one writes each other letters anymore.” He sighed, “The instant gratification of everything is…disappointing.”

Y/N smiled at him. “Who knew Captain America was such a romantic?” Steve blushed and chuckled, “Guess I am then.”

“I don’t disagree with your criticisms. But, you know, there are some good things that came with technology.”

“And I’m not disagreeing with that.”

“You can talk to people across the country, see their face. Yeah, social media is obnoxious. But I can keep up with my friends that don’t live near me. I feel like I’m still a part of their lives and we can remain friends easier, even if we only get to see each other once a year. The internet opened up people to the whole world.”

Steve looked at her for a moment. “What?” She asked.

“And you call me the romantic…” Steve teased.

Y/N rolled her eyes at him.

A moment of silence pass between them.

Steve cleared his throat, “My turn?”

She nodded.

“Did you always want to work in public relations?”

Y/N laughed at the question. “Did you always want to wear a uniform, throw a shield around, and save the world?” “Well…I guess not.” Steve admitted.

“Exactly. We don’t always do what we want. Sometimes we just do what we’re good at because we don’t really see another option.”

Steve watched her for a moment. His expression was sympathetic, like he just instantly understood that she had dreams she had yet to fulfill. That maybe she never would.

“Uh…I think it’s your turn,” he told her gently.

Y/N eyed him for a moment, mischievousness evident in her gaze. “Can we just agree right now that we’re not coworkers?”

Steve nodded.

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

Steve nodded again.

“When’s the last time you had sex?”

Steve’s eyebrows rose to his forehead. He knew people were more open about sex in this century. But it still caught him off guard every time. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it, no matter how long he was exposed to it.

Without hesitating, he took the shot.

“Oh, come on!” Y/N cried out with a laugh.

“Nope,” was all Steve said as he winced at the burn of the alcohol going down his throat. He might not be able to get drunk, but alcohol still didn’t going down easily.

“You really are a gentleman, huh?” It was more of a rhetorical question than anything.

Steve ignored her comment and looked at the bottom of his beer glass. “You know, back in my day, people kept that kind of stuff to themselves – stayed between you and your partner.”

Y/N smiled softly at the comment. “You have to realize that you not answering also kind of answers it.”

Steve shook his head, rolled his eyes, and decided to move on.

“Do you like working for us – I mean, like working for the Avengers?” Steve asked nervously. A part of him imagined her going home and complaining about them to her best friends, saying she needed to get a new job as soon as possible.

“Yeah, I do. Really, I do.” Y/N admitted. “Sometimes it’s just not good for my self-esteem or ego,” she added with a laugh.

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

Y/N took a sip of her beer and cleared her throat. “Are you kidding? You guys save the world. You put your lives on the line constantly. Meanwhile, I just make sure the media vultures leave you guys alone.” Then she smiled. “Oh, and I’m damage control for Stark. Which…should be a full-time job on it’s own.”

“You do understand the reason we do what we do is so people like you can have a normal life.”

His voice was serious and his eyes were even more.

They just watched each other for a moment.

Then Y/N looked down in her lap, trying to figure out if she should ask her next question. “Have you dated since you woke up?”

To her surprise, Steve didn’t toss back a shot.

Y/N knew he had a relationship with Sharon Carter at one point. But from what she’d heard, there hadn’t exactly been a courting process. It didn’t seem like Steve had to submerge himself in the dating culture of today to establish a relationship with his past girlfriend.

“Not really.”

“Why not?” She challenged.

“It wouldn’t exactly be fair.”

Y/N just looked at him with confusion.

“She – She wouldn’t just be dating me. She’d be dating Captain America. I don’t know if I’m willing to throw that onto someone.”

“But you dated Agent Carter,” Y/N blurted out. Then she winced. “Sorry. God, I’m sorry. That was so rude.”

Steve laughed at her. “It’s fine. Really. It didn’t work out. We’re still friends.”

Y/N took in a deep breath to gain some bravery. “I might be stepping out of line by saying this, but I think you need to hear it. You think you have some sort of baggage because of who you are. But if she’s the right girl, she won’t see it as baggage. Because she’ll love you.”

Steve’s heart melted at the words. God, why did she have to go and say something like that to him? As if he wasn’t already smitten.

He shifted in his seat at the tension her statement caused.

“OK. Since I see where are boundaries are now…” He smiled devilishly. It was strange to see such a thing on Captain America’s lips. “Do you believe in love?”

Y/N blinked at him, trying to process what he said and convince her brain she hadn’t imagined it. Then she reached for the tequila shot and threw it back. “Hey! What! No!” Steve cried out with amusement.

“Nope. Not happening,” Y/N answered as she bit into the lime.

The night went on that way. The questions held less weight and they allowed themselves to get sidetracked in different conversations. Steve couldn’t remember any other time when he learned so much about someone so quickly. Their conversation had more meaning than the average one between two people. Even with the things Y/N wouldn’t say or talk about, Steve learned something from them.  

It was getting late. All their shots has been drunk and they went through more glasses of beer. The bar was a little less crowded than when they’d arrived. At this point, Y/N was quite drunk. She was still herself, just more open and giggly. Steve was only irritated by how much more adorable it made her.

“Wanna know a secret?” Y/N giggled before taking a sip of her beer. He’d politely asked the bartender to stop giving her shots.

Steve didn’t really answer her yes or no, just waited to see if she wanted to tell him or not.

“I lied to you earlier,” Y/N gave him a sad smile and looked down at the bar guiltily.

Steve tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“When I ran into you, I hadn’t just gotten done getting drinks with my friends.” She wasn’t looking at him as she spoke.

He waited for her to continue.

“I was on a date. Well…I was waiting for a date.” Y/N took in a shaky breath. “He stood me up.”

“What?” Steve blurted out without meeting to.

“It was a blind date that my friend set up. I had his number. Jesus – I waited for 30 minutes before I finally realized he wasn’t coming. He didn’t answer any of my texts. I just sat there, thinking he was running late.”

Steve watched her for a moment, realizing that she was trying to play it off. But it clearly had really upset her. It made sense now, why she wanted to go right into the hard liquor and to mentally push him. She was upset. She was looking for some kind of release.

“He’s an idiot,” Steve finally declared.

She finally looked at him. Her breath caught.

Her eyes cast downward. “My friend showed him a picture. He had my full name – could’ve easily looked me up.” She shrugged. “Maybe he just didn’t like what he found.”

But Steve was already shaking his head aggressively.

“What? That’s probably what happened!” Y/N argued with slurred words.

Steve sat up straighter in his stool – as if that were possible – and leaned a little closer to her.

“Now it’s my turn to cross the line,” he warned with a voice that was low and serious. “Any man that treats you like that is a fool. Silver lining is that he spared you from the obvious reality of being unworthy of you.”

Despite being drunk, his declaration still struck a chord in Y/N’s heart.

“Steve – I…” she couldn’t form a coherent thought. She closed her eyes to try harder, but it threw off her equilibrium and she stumbled off her stool.

Steve instantly caught her by her shoulders. “Woah, there.”

“Sorry,” she slurred, gripping his forearms.

“I think it’s time we get you home,” Steve muttered as he tried to get the attention of the bartender to close the tab. Y/N was too drunk to catch that Steve put the bill on his card instead and safely put hers back into her purse.

It took him a few tries to get Y/N to correctly give him her address, but he eventually got it. Luckily it was in the neighborhood.

Steve kept his arm around her waist, scared if he let her get too far away from him, she’d drunkenly stumble into the street or fall to the ground. She didn’t seem to mind his touch.

“It’s not fair that you can’t get drunk. I’m making a fool of myself and your just satan’s witness…” Y/N slurred as Steve unlocked her door for her after she failed to do so at least 10 times.

“Yeah, but you’re the one having all the fun, doll.” He chuckled.

“Whatever,” she slurred before tripping over a pair of discarded shoes.

Steve caught her again. “OK. Let’s get you to bed, huh?”

“Oh, yes! Bed!” She dragged him to her bedroom and only let go of his hand to toss herself on top of her bed like a starfish. She let out a sigh of content, causing him to chuckle.

Steve took off her shoes, but stopped at that.

“Hey,” she sounded surprisingly sober with just that word. “You’re not going back to the compound, right?”

Steve scratched the back of his head. “Uhh…Yeah. That was my plan.”

“It’s late, Steve. Just stay here.”

He watched her for a moment. Like he realized earlier in the night, he’d do just about anything she’d ask of him.

“Yeah. OK. I’ll sleep on the couch in the living room. Thanks.”

She tried to hide her slight disappointment, like she had expected America’s golden boy, Steve Rogers, maybe the last living gentleman, to sleep in her bed beside her.

Steve started backing out of her room. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Hey, Steve?” She called out into the darkness, just as he was about to shut her door.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for tonight.”

——————

Y/N woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and a mouth so dry that it felt like no amount of water could ever cure it.

Then last nights events came flooding back to her memory. Well, there was obviously bits and pieces missing, and a lot of it was blurry.

Had her and Steve been flirting? The whole night?

It was impossible. He was…Steve Rogers, Captain America. In what world would he ever have any interest in her?

Y/N groaned and rubbed her face. Work was going to be so embarrassing on Monday. She’d have to apologize and then she’d never be able to talk to him again.

She got up and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water, fully expecting to find her living room empty.

And she was right. There was a blanket politely and neatly folded on the edge of her couch. The only proof that Steve had spent the night.

But then there was the sound of the bathroom door opening and Y/N jumped as she turned around, half expecting it to be an intruder.

Steve paused at her surprised look. “Morning,” he greeted.

“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” she admitted.

“Oh, sorry. I should go.”

“No! I’m glad you’re still here. I should apologize for how I behaved last night–”

“Please don’t be embarrassed or apologize,” Steve interrupted. “I – I liked seeing you like that.”

“Like what?”

“Open. Honest. Yourself.” He hesitated. “Not my colleague.”

So her drunken mind hadn’t been imagining the flirtations.

Y/N’s heart beat faster at the way he was looking at her. “Would – Would you like to get breakfast together?” Steve asked her softly.

“Really?”

Steve smiled. “The universe owes you a date. And I think I could be the man for the job. I would make more of a show of it, ask you out to dinner on a Friday night, take you to a fancy restaurant. But I don’t…I don’t think I can wait that long.”

“No. No, breakfast is great.” Y/N blushed and smile shyly. “I’ve always wanted to go on a breakfast date.”

-------------------------------------------------

Wanna know something funny? I went out to dinner when I was in the middle of writing this and my friend and I sat next to a guy that had clearly gotten stood up and it was so heartbreaking. I felt so bad for him. 

Anyways, I love feedback and hearing people’s reactions. It makes me happy. 

[jettcrooksus]

How Elevano Puts the Tech in Technical Recruiting

“Most people don’t like to be convinced of anything. That actually goes counterculture to getting people to agree with you. That’s why we’re now fully vested and centered on social proof.”

Find out more about Elevano, it’s recruiting process, and the man who started it all.

Taken from the ‘Share Your Story‘ Podcast with Michael de Groot.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself.

A: I was actually born on the East Coast of the States in around the Washington D.C area. My parents were immigrants, the classic $100 to America story. I went to school on the East Coast. Graduated with technology degrees, Master’s in technology. My family was actually moving out West for my brother who also is my business partner, but he was gonna play tennis at a university out in California in Orange County, and my options were to take a shiny new job with Verizon, at a very nice entry level starting salary or turn that down for nothing.

Q: Why did you start your recruiting agency?

A:  Came out here, got here and realized, “Well, now I got no job, living with my family, that’s nice. But I’ve got to find a job.” I found a job, dug into the engineering side.

Slowly, I realized that while I could do software development and the sort, it really wasn’t what was driving me. I realized I enjoyed talking to people and the meetings and the prep work a lot more.

I started to pivot into more of an analyst role, got into business intelligence, where I could get towards the business side of technology a little bit more, and then gravitated towards at one point running a BI practice, where I got a good taste for the sales process. That’s where I started thinking I could do this for myself.

I made that decision to go out on my own. Again, my brother is my business partner. So it’s a nice comforting factor to have him as a backing. Somewhere along the line early on we got into recruitment and it became my thing. That’s where we are at.

Q: What does BI stand for?

A: BI is business intelligence. Back in the day it was a little bit different than it is now, but obviously providing that basis to get reporting and analytics to business, KPIs, metrics, that sort of thing.

Q: How did you get into that? Is it just looking for a job or you were interested in doing that?

A: When I got my master’s degree, there was a concentration in the data space. Building data warehouses, which were fundamental towards this type of reporting. I had a lot of I guess educational training when I got out, I didn’t have the experience to do that so I became a software engineer.

I did see a little bit of an opportunity to start helping in those areas of the company I was working for. My manager was really fantastic, a South African guy. And he gave me a crack at touching that side. It just resonated more and I just gravitated towards it.

Q: What inspired you to go into the kind of people side of the work?

A: Initially Elevano started as a business intelligence consulting firm. That was my expertise, and that’s what we set off to do. Along the way we had a customer who basically said, “Well, all right. The project is done. We just need someone to help us with this.” We knew very little about recruitment honestly. I mean, I was recruited extensively all throughout my career. I knew it from that perspective. I’d never actually done it.

We were a small business at that point, and we said, “Sure, why not? We could help you. We’ll figure it out obviously.” We kind of said yes, and that committed us towards wanting to succeed. If we said yes we knew we were gonna be all in to ensure as much quality and we’d figure out what we had to to deliver essentially.

Q: How did you approach recruiting people?

A: Basically I approached it as I was an internal hiring manager. How I had to gravitate towards recruitment was, “Okay. I’m going to hire this person for me. For my team, for the BI consulting, What would I be looking for? How would I actually go about finding this person to expand my own team?” If I’m comfortable enough that he or she is a good fit for my team, then I feel comfortable sending that candidate to the client to interview.

We just took ownership based on if it’s a good hire for us, especially knowing the data space. That’s kind of how we operated initially. That’s actually transcended the business. Part of our fabric is, we really take ownership of the roles in terms of trying to put ourselves in a hiring manager’s position a lot of times.

Q: What exactly is Elevano?

A: We are a recruitment agency. We don’t operate much like most agencies I suppose. There are some commonalities, there are some differences. I’m an engineer who comes from the perspective of, I know what I liked from being recruited and I know what I didn’t like.

We just set about going, how would we want recruiting done? We approached it from the standpoint of that. And then obviously coming from a consulting background, we really liked to dig in and understand. In essence that’s part of who we are, and that’s kind of into the training that we provide people when we bring them onboard, is to help them understand those gaps, and the mindset that we expect here to resonate with, being true to our own history.

Q: Your route for getting people onboard, getting candidates, and then getting those candidates in front of recruiters. What is the process in terms of how much technology is involved with that?

A:  I like leveraging technology. We are not a platform. We had thought about, we actually had thought about many times, converting the service to platform. We might still do that down the road. Part of that is being an engineer, being somebody who is good at dissecting problems and try to reverse engineer solutions. I do see the gap pretty soundly. I have used my engineering background to go find tools and technologies, and process tweaks that leverage that.

My goal is to get my hands on any tool that’s out there before another recruiting company can think about it, see it, because obviously I’m digging into a lot of startups and technologies that are emerging, that are still risky but I can evaluate because of my background. That does give us an advantage. I do believe that’s a distinct advantage.

Q: How did you work on getting “social proof” for your business?

A: We’ve made a big push to ask our candidates, “If we’ve done a good job, write reviews.” In four months I think we amassed close to a hundred reviews written for us. Not all of those reviews are placements. Some of those are people that were so happy in the way that we approached them and our unique philosophies of recruitment, that they were willing to write a couple of nice words about us.

We focused on Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, but I’d say the majority is around Google. The reason we centered on Google is you have to have a user profile, it ties back to a person. For me, the social proof and transparency is of imminent importance to establish that good practices can be done. Again, what I really like about our candidates is, we sometimes have one meaningful conversation, and that person is willing to write us a review.

Q: How would you convince someone that they should be coming with you rather than go to some platform, LinkedIn, Indeed or somewhere else?

A: That’s where our strategy has shifted. We’ve spent a lot of time in the past trying to convince people. I’ve done a lot of reading in this area and I realized one thing, most people don’t like to be convinced of anything. That actually goes counterculture to actually getting people to agree with you. That’s why we’ve now fully are vested and centered on social proof, so the word of mouth and others.

Our view is, instead of trying to go out and try to convince people on an individual basis, we wanna have the social proof speak for our quality of work. A place with five out of five with 1,000 reviews, you are like, “Okay, why wouldn’t I go to that place? As long as it’s authentic and trusted reviews. Why wouldn’t you do that?”

Q: How do you see the future for recruitment, and how do you see the future for you as an organization?

A: I maintain that recruiting is just a marketing activity as it would be in any sales organization. You need lead generation, candidate generation. I think marketing and branding will ultimately define people who can help generate passive inward burn applications versus you constantly going out and doing the solicitation. I actually think at some point that most HR, internal HR teams, will actually be made up of mostly content and marketing people. There’ll be fewer resources needed just to handle the inbound and outreach and nurturing of candidate pools. I think a lot of that will shift because the content, and the platforms will kill off the transactional need for some of the basic recruitment activities.

I view whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve figured out as pretty valuable, because I don’t hear many other agencies replicating what we’ve done. I actually think we will probably spin off a second company that’s an actual marketing company that helps recruitment companies, whether internal or external, do what we’ve done.

I think my recruitment company will continue, it will be a strong brand, and I think we are gonna take our knowhow and help actual brands get to the numbers we’ve gotten. I think there are so many different techniques that aren’t even remotely being used. I think there is gonna be a big convergence, and I think the platforms, AI will come for a lot of the recruitment industry and eliminate some of that transactional.

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[amandawoodruffus]

How Elevano Puts the ‘Tech’​ in Technical Recruiting

“Most people don’t like to be convinced of anything. That actually goes counterculture to getting people to agree with you. That’s why we’re now fully vested and centered on social proof.”

Find out more about Elevano, it’s recruiting process, and the man who started it all.

Taken from the ‘Share Your Story‘ Podcast with Michael de Groot.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself.

A: I was actually born on the East Coast of the States in around the Washington D.C area. My parents were immigrants, the classic $100 to America story. I went to school on the East Coast. Graduated with technology degrees, Master’s in technology. My family was actually moving out West for my brother who also is my business partner, but he was gonna play tennis at a university out in California in Orange County, and my options were to take a shiny new job with Verizon, at a very nice entry level starting salary or turn that down for nothing.

Q: Why did you start your recruiting agency?

A:  Came out here, got here and realized, “Well, now I got no job, living with my family, that’s nice. But I’ve got to find a job.” I found a job, dug into the engineering side.

Slowly, I realized that while I could do software development and the sort, it really wasn’t what was driving me. I realized I enjoyed talking to people and the meetings and the prep work a lot more.

I started to pivot into more of an analyst role, got into business intelligence, where I could get towards the business side of technology a little bit more, and then gravitated towards at one point running a BI practice, where I got a good taste for the sales process. That’s where I started thinking I could do this for myself.

I made that decision to go out on my own. Again, my brother is my business partner. So it’s a nice comforting factor to have him as a backing. Somewhere along the line early on we got into recruitment and it became my thing. That’s where we are at.

Q: What does BI stand for?

A: BI is business intelligence. Back in the day it was a little bit different than it is now, but obviously providing that basis to get reporting and analytics to business, KPIs, metrics, that sort of thing.

Q: How did you get into that? Is it just looking for a job or you were interested in doing that?

A: When I got my master’s degree, there was a concentration in the data space. Building data warehouses, which were fundamental towards this type of reporting. I had a lot of I guess educational training when I got out, I didn’t have the experience to do that so I became a software engineer.

I did see a little bit of an opportunity to start helping in those areas of the company I was working for. My manager was really fantastic, a South African guy. And he gave me a crack at touching that side. It just resonated more and I just gravitated towards it.

Q: What inspired you to go into the kind of people side of the work?

A: Initially Elevano started as a business intelligence consulting firm. That was my expertise, and that’s what we set off to do. Along the way we had a customer who basically said, “Well, all right. The project is done. We just need someone to help us with this.” We knew very little about recruitment honestly. I mean, I was recruited extensively all throughout my career. I knew it from that perspective. I’d never actually done it.

We were a small business at that point, and we said, “Sure, why not? We could help you. We’ll figure it out obviously.” We kind of said yes, and that committed us towards wanting to succeed. If we said yes we knew we were gonna be all in to ensure as much quality and we’d figure out what we had to to deliver essentially.

Q: How did you approach recruiting people?

A: Basically I approached it as I was an internal hiring manager. How I had to gravitate towards recruitment was, “Okay. I’m going to hire this person for me. For my team, for the BI consulting, What would I be looking for? How would I actually go about finding this person to expand my own team?” If I’m comfortable enough that he or she is a good fit for my team, then I feel comfortable sending that candidate to the client to interview.

We just took ownership based on if it’s a good hire for us, especially knowing the data space. That’s kind of how we operated initially. That’s actually transcended the business. Part of our fabric is, we really take ownership of the roles in terms of trying to put ourselves in a hiring manager’s position a lot of times.

Q: What exactly is Elevano?

A: We are a recruitment agency. We don’t operate much like most agencies I suppose. There are some commonalities, there are some differences. I’m an engineer who comes from the perspective of, I know what I liked from being recruited and I know what I didn’t like.

We just set about going, how would we want recruiting done? We approached it from the standpoint of that. And then obviously coming from a consulting background, we really liked to dig in and understand. In essence that’s part of who we are, and that’s kind of into the training that we provide people when we bring them onboard, is to help them understand those gaps, and the mindset that we expect here to resonate with, being true to our own history.

Q: Your route for getting people onboard, getting candidates, and then getting those candidates in front of recruiters. What is the process in terms of how much technology is involved with that?

A:  I like leveraging technology. We are not a platform. We had thought about, we actually had thought about many times, converting the service to platform. We might still do that down the road. Part of that is being an engineer, being somebody who is good at dissecting problems and try to reverse engineer solutions. I do see the gap pretty soundly. I have used my engineering background to go find tools and technologies, and process tweaks that leverage that.

My goal is to get my hands on any tool that’s out there before another recruiting company can think about it, see it, because obviously I’m digging into a lot of startups and technologies that are emerging, that are still risky but I can evaluate because of my background. That does give us an advantage. I do believe that’s a distinct advantage.

Q: How did you work on getting “social proof” for your business?

A: We’ve made a big push to ask our candidates, “If we’ve done a good job, write reviews.” In four months I think we amassed close to a hundred reviews written for us. Not all of those reviews are placements. Some of those are people that were so happy in the way that we approached them and our unique philosophies of recruitment, that they were willing to write a couple of nice words about us.

We focused on Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, but I’d say the majority is around Google. The reason we centered on Google is you have to have a user profile, it ties back to a person. For me, the social proof and transparency is of imminent importance to establish that good practices can be done. Again, what I really like about our candidates is, we sometimes have one meaningful conversation, and that person is willing to write us a review.

Q: How would you convince someone that they should be coming with you rather than go to some platform, LinkedIn, Indeed or somewhere else?

A: That’s where our strategy has shifted. We’ve spent a lot of time in the past trying to convince people. I’ve done a lot of reading in this area and I realized one thing, most people don’t like to be convinced of anything. That actually goes counterculture to actually getting people to agree with you. That’s why we’ve now fully are vested and centered on social proof, so the word of mouth and others.

Our view is, instead of trying to go out and try to convince people on an individual basis, we wanna have the social proof speak for our quality of work. A place with five out of five with 1,000 reviews, you are like, “Okay, why wouldn’t I go to that place? As long as it’s authentic and trusted reviews. Why wouldn’t you do that?”

Q: How do you see the future for recruitment, and how do you see the future for you as an organization?

A: I maintain that recruiting is just a marketing activity as it would be in any sales organization. You need lead generation, candidate generation. I think marketing and branding will ultimately define people who can help generate passive inward burn applications versus you constantly going out and doing the solicitation. I actually think at some point that most HR, internal HR teams, will actually be made up of mostly content and marketing people. There’ll be fewer resources needed just to handle the inbound and outreach and nurturing of candidate pools. I think a lot of that will shift because the content, and the platforms will kill off the transactional need for some of the basic recruitment activities.

I view whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve figured out as pretty valuable, because I don’t hear many other agencies replicating what we’ve done. I actually think we will probably spin off a second company that’s an actual marketing company that helps recruitment companies, whether internal or external, do what we’ve done.

I think my recruitment company will continue, it will be a strong brand, and I think we are gonna take our knowhow and help actual brands get to the numbers we’ve gotten. I think there are so many different techniques that aren’t even remotely being used. I think there is gonna be a big convergence, and I think the platforms, AI will come for a lot of the recruitment industry and eliminate some of that transactional.

The post How Elevano Puts the ‘Tech’​ in Technical Recruiting appeared first on Elevano.

source https://www.elevano.com/how-elevano-puts-the-tech%e2%80%8b-in-technical-recruiting/ source https://elevanocom.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-elevano-puts-tech-in-technical.html

[hectorboyerus]

How Elevano Puts the ‘Tech’​ in Technical Recruiting

“Most people don’t like to be convinced of anything. That actually goes counterculture to getting people to agree with you. That’s why we’re now fully vested and centered on social proof.”

Find out more about Elevano, it’s recruiting process, and the man who started it all.

Taken from the ‘Share Your Story‘ Podcast with Michael de Groot.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself.

A: I was actually born on the East Coast of the States in around the Washington D.C area. My parents were immigrants, the classic $100 to America story. I went to school on the East Coast. Graduated with technology degrees, Master’s in technology. My family was actually moving out West for my brother who also is my business partner, but he was gonna play tennis at a university out in California in Orange County, and my options were to take a shiny new job with Verizon, at a very nice entry level starting salary or turn that down for nothing.

Q: Why did you start your recruiting agency?

A:  Came out here, got here and realized, “Well, now I got no job, living with my family, that’s nice. But I’ve got to find a job.” I found a job, dug into the engineering side.

Slowly, I realized that while I could do software development and the sort, it really wasn’t what was driving me. I realized I enjoyed talking to people and the meetings and the prep work a lot more.

I started to pivot into more of an analyst role, got into business intelligence, where I could get towards the business side of technology a little bit more, and then gravitated towards at one point running a BI practice, where I got a good taste for the sales process. That’s where I started thinking I could do this for myself.

I made that decision to go out on my own. Again, my brother is my business partner. So it’s a nice comforting factor to have him as a backing. Somewhere along the line early on we got into recruitment and it became my thing. That’s where we are at.

Q: What does BI stand for?

A: BI is business intelligence. Back in the day it was a little bit different than it is now, but obviously providing that basis to get reporting and analytics to business, KPIs, metrics, that sort of thing.

Q: How did you get into that? Is it just looking for a job or you were interested in doing that?

A: When I got my master’s degree, there was a concentration in the data space. Building data warehouses, which were fundamental towards this type of reporting. I had a lot of I guess educational training when I got out, I didn’t have the experience to do that so I became a software engineer.

I did see a little bit of an opportunity to start helping in those areas of the company I was working for. My manager was really fantastic, a South African guy. And he gave me a crack at touching that side. It just resonated more and I just gravitated towards it.

Q: What inspired you to go into the kind of people side of the work?

A: Initially Elevano started as a business intelligence consulting firm. That was my expertise, and that’s what we set off to do. Along the way we had a customer who basically said, “Well, all right. The project is done. We just need someone to help us with this.” We knew very little about recruitment honestly. I mean, I was recruited extensively all throughout my career. I knew it from that perspective. I’d never actually done it.

We were a small business at that point, and we said, “Sure, why not? We could help you. We’ll figure it out obviously.” We kind of said yes, and that committed us towards wanting to succeed. If we said yes we knew we were gonna be all in to ensure as much quality and we’d figure out what we had to to deliver essentially.

Q: How did you approach recruiting people?

A: Basically I approached it as I was an internal hiring manager. How I had to gravitate towards recruitment was, “Okay. I’m going to hire this person for me. For my team, for the BI consulting, What would I be looking for? How would I actually go about finding this person to expand my own team?” If I’m comfortable enough that he or she is a good fit for my team, then I feel comfortable sending that candidate to the client to interview.

We just took ownership based on if it’s a good hire for us, especially knowing the data space. That’s kind of how we operated initially. That’s actually transcended the business. Part of our fabric is, we really take ownership of the roles in terms of trying to put ourselves in a hiring manager’s position a lot of times.

Q: What exactly is Elevano?

A: We are a recruitment agency. We don’t operate much like most agencies I suppose. There are some commonalities, there are some differences. I’m an engineer who comes from the perspective of, I know what I liked from being recruited and I know what I didn’t like.

We just set about going, how would we want recruiting done? We approached it from the standpoint of that. And then obviously coming from a consulting background, we really liked to dig in and understand. In essence that’s part of who we are, and that’s kind of into the training that we provide people when we bring them onboard, is to help them understand those gaps, and the mindset that we expect here to resonate with, being true to our own history.

Q: Your route for getting people onboard, getting candidates, and then getting those candidates in front of recruiters. What is the process in terms of how much technology is involved with that?

A:  I like leveraging technology. We are not a platform. We had thought about, we actually had thought about many times, converting the service to platform. We might still do that down the road. Part of that is being an engineer, being somebody who is good at dissecting problems and try to reverse engineer solutions. I do see the gap pretty soundly. I have used my engineering background to go find tools and technologies, and process tweaks that leverage that.

My goal is to get my hands on any tool that’s out there before another recruiting company can think about it, see it, because obviously I’m digging into a lot of startups and technologies that are emerging, that are still risky but I can evaluate because of my background. That does give us an advantage. I do believe that’s a distinct advantage.

Q: How did you work on getting “social proof” for your business?

A: We’ve made a big push to ask our candidates, “If we’ve done a good job, write reviews.” In four months I think we amassed close to a hundred reviews written for us. Not all of those reviews are placements. Some of those are people that were so happy in the way that we approached them and our unique philosophies of recruitment, that they were willing to write a couple of nice words about us.

We focused on Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, but I’d say the majority is around Google. The reason we centered on Google is you have to have a user profile, it ties back to a person. For me, the social proof and transparency is of imminent importance to establish that good practices can be done. Again, what I really like about our candidates is, we sometimes have one meaningful conversation, and that person is willing to write us a review.

Q: How would you convince someone that they should be coming with you rather than go to some platform, LinkedIn, Indeed or somewhere else?

A: That’s where our strategy has shifted. We’ve spent a lot of time in the past trying to convince people. I’ve done a lot of reading in this area and I realized one thing, most people don’t like to be convinced of anything. That actually goes counterculture to actually getting people to agree with you. That’s why we’ve now fully are vested and centered on social proof, so the word of mouth and others.

Our view is, instead of trying to go out and try to convince people on an individual basis, we wanna have the social proof speak for our quality of work. A place with five out of five with 1,000 reviews, you are like, “Okay, why wouldn’t I go to that place? As long as it’s authentic and trusted reviews. Why wouldn’t you do that?”

Q: How do you see the future for recruitment, and how do you see the future for you as an organization?

A: I maintain that recruiting is just a marketing activity as it would be in any sales organization. You need lead generation, candidate generation. I think marketing and branding will ultimately define people who can help generate passive inward burn applications versus you constantly going out and doing the solicitation. I actually think at some point that most HR, internal HR teams, will actually be made up of mostly content and marketing people. There’ll be fewer resources needed just to handle the inbound and outreach and nurturing of candidate pools. I think a lot of that will shift because the content, and the platforms will kill off the transactional need for some of the basic recruitment activities.

I view whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve figured out as pretty valuable, because I don’t hear many other agencies replicating what we’ve done. I actually think we will probably spin off a second company that’s an actual marketing company that helps recruitment companies, whether internal or external, do what we’ve done.

I think my recruitment company will continue, it will be a strong brand, and I think we are gonna take our knowhow and help actual brands get to the numbers we’ve gotten. I think there are so many different techniques that aren’t even remotely being used. I think there is gonna be a big convergence, and I think the platforms, AI will come for a lot of the recruitment industry and eliminate some of that transactional.

The post How Elevano Puts the ‘Tech’​ in Technical Recruiting appeared first on Elevano.

source https://www.elevano.com/how-elevano-puts-the-tech%e2%80%8b-in-technical-recruiting/ source https://elevanocom.tumblr.com/post/182918791711