What'cha Drinkin'? an interview with Bob Ferro, Trusted Talent

By Quirk's Staff | May 10, 2023

Reading time: 5 minutes

Whatcha Drinkin With Quirks — What'cha Drinkin'? an interview with Bob Ferro, Trusted Talent.

Abstract

While sipping on a glass of water – the most appropriate beverage for a sweltering day in the desert – Bob Ferro, managing director, Trusted Talent and Quirk’s Talent, joins Dan Quirk for an episode of What'cha Drinkin'?. During the interview, the two discuss the state of recruiting in the marketing research and insights industry. While the coming months will bring about unprecedented challenges, Ferro reminds us all to look toward the future – the industry will get through this. “Overall, we spend most of our time trying to encourage people,” Ferro says. “Keep spirits up.”

Research Topics:: Employment Recruiting | Research Employment | Research Industry – COVID-19 | Respondent Database/Recruiting System
Industry/Market Focus:: Employees | Research Industry
Content Type: Video

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What'cha Drinkin'? with Bob Ferro

Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.

Dan Quirk:

Hello, I'm Dan Quirk. Welcome to another edition of What’cha Drinkin’? Today I'm interviewing Bob Ferro, the managing director of Trusted Talent and Quirk's Talent. I dressed up for the occasion because when you're talking to somebody about a job, you got to look at the part. Well, hey Bob, how are you doing today?

Bob Ferro:

I'm great, Dan. How are you?

Dan Quirk:

I'm doing wonderfully. So I got to start out by asking you, what's you drinking?

Bob Ferro:

What am I drinking? Well, I'm drinking water. It's all right. It's a good thing to do here while you're working from home all day long. And just on a personal note, we've discovered that there's some alcoholism in our family and alcoholism is a family disease. So, one of the ways that I can help out my family is I've switched to water.

Dan Quirk:

I think that's complete, completely appropriate. You're also in the desert, so you know, got to have your water.

Bob Ferro:

Yeah, it's 106 out there today and when you play golf in that, it's pretty warm.

Dan Quirk:

Wow. Well, I'm drinking tea today in a mug that my niece gave me that says, live like Rose, love like Blanche, think like Dorothy and speak like Sophia. So from The Golden Girls and the tea that I'm drinking, which I'll show you if I hold it up here, it's just a wonderful chamomile citrus tea. And I have to tell you what happened with that is I got it from the conference that's put on by Quirk;s and TMRE at the Radisson Blue in Chicago. And I took a bunch of them cause I love the tea so much. So very good.

Well anyway, well thanks for joining. I did want to ask, you are an executive recruiter and I wanted to know, obviously the economy within just six weeks has radically changed. We have about 20% of the American workforce out of work. What does a recruiter do at this time? What do you tell people at this time?

Bob Ferro:

Yeah, it's a difficult time for a lot of people and what I've realized is that for the last five years the market has been really, really good. I mean, it's been a candidate's markets, there've been more positions open than there were candidates to fill them. But overnight the tables turned. And fortunately there's a lot of really good companies that are still talking to candidates. But overall, we spend most of our time just basically trying to encourage people because if we focus on the future, we know that we're going to get to a recovery period. We're going to come out of this. It's kind of ugly and messy right now, but it's not going to be forever. So my goal is to encourage other people. There's lots of things that a candidate can do and we can talk about that, but it's basically keep, keep our spirits up, keep each other. We have a sense of community because we only work in the market research industry and so all of our friends are the same kind of people that we've always met at the great Quirk’s events we've been to over the years.

Dan Quirk:

Now, obviously you're seeing a lot more candidates come through your service. Are you seeing still jobs? Are people still hiring or are you hearing that they're going to be hiring or right now, is it still just kind of a holding pattern?

Bob Ferro:

Well, there's two things. Some of the companies are on hold and others are interviewing. And one of, I did a post on LinkedIn the other day. One of the things that I'm encouraging companies to think about is if you're thinking about the recovery in the future, I think companies ought to develop a pipeline of talent that they, they're interested in. Because when we come out of this, the process of identifying and onboarding new talent, it takes a while and you'll lose time if you, you've completely shut down your whole process. So I encourage companies to consider building a pipeline, especially true with salespeople. You think about, we're going to all have to make our numbers in Q3 and Q4, right? Well, if you don't have any sales people because you, whatever you did in Q1 and Q2, I would encourage to think ahead and build a pipeline of people that will be ready to go when you are.

Dan Quirk:

Yeah, it's very similar to marketing. We see some people cutting their marketing and I think, man, you're going to fall behind then that this is not the time to go silent. Well, I want to move on to the next part of our interview to keep it moving here. We have a box of questions and I'm going to randomly pull one out. They're kind of fun questions so, what are you binge watching these days since we have a lot of time at home?

Bob Ferro:

Well, that's kind of a bad thing because you're stuck at home for six weeks now. It's been watching a whole lot of TV and flipping between Netflix and Amazon Prime. But I discovered my TV has a YouTube channel and I really had a good time surfing, finding the YouTube programs I like, and I really was impressed with the quality. So YouTube for me has become more than something I watch on the phone. It's really been a fun channel for a lot of stuff. So we've had a good time.

Dan Quirk:

All right. Well, that's a good tip. Well that wraps up our interview. I want to thank you so much for sharing your insight. We're hoping everybody is healthy and safe and that their family members are safe. And this is just our fun way of trying to be social at a time when we're supposed to be social distancing. So thanks so much for joining us, Bob.

Bob Ferro:

Dan, thanks for having me, and I'm glad you and your team there are doing well. I wish you success as you figure out what you're going to do for the coming out of this recovery. So thank you.

Dan Quirk:

Thank you all.