Q&A with Jim Durbin, Founder of Sourcing Worklab
Tell us a bit about Sourcing Worklab.
It’s a training system for recruiters set up on a monthly subscription model. In the last 8 years, I’ve trained over 9,000 people on using digital tools. It was fun, it paid well, but there was never a way for me to measure the impact of what I did. The Worklab is built on the idea that focus and repetition is the best way to improve someone’s skills over time. My hope is to develop the next great generation of recruiters.
What gave you the idea for your business and how did it start?
I’ve run a digital marketing firm for 12 years, and in that business, you put your life into a project that may never get published. A new CMO comes in, pays you, but decides to go a different direction. It’s heart-rending. Recruiting is much the same. You essentially make an introduction of a person to a company, which can help their career, but you only played a small part in it. The Sourcing Worklab was my way of finding a project that had meaning.
As for its start, I was working on an AI chatbot for recruiters (something that is clearly seen as an existential threat to the industry). To get a functional chat bot right, you have to really understand the entire candidate journey and have an aggressively detailed list for the hiring process. The more I dug into the process, the more I saw gaps recruiters needed to be able to compete with chatbots and AI search and filtering.
There are many things human do in recruiting that can’t be automated – but almost every recruiter I’ve ever trained is focusing on things an AI can do better. So I created a model that would allow me to demonstrate what to do to have a job in 5-10 years.
What’s your favorite thing about your job?
The Worklab is live sourcing. I work on jobs sent in by members, which means there are a lot of places where I get bad results, or can’t find someone, and generally look like an idiot. I love it.
Good training has to show when you work to failure. Most training is presented as expert sourcing. It’s amazing, everyone oohs and aahs, but when the recruiter tries to replicate the search, they fail. Watching me fail, and then route around that failure shows members how to overcome their weaknesses. I know it sounds cheesy, but what I’m giving my people is hope. Watching them succeed legitimizes the effort I put into training.
What are your keys to making yourself productive?
My wife is big on lists – she’s been trying for years to get me to write everything done, but the best I can do is hundreds of digital todo lists that serve as a museum of efforts. I rely on my calendar scheduling to be productive. I book specific times for creative work, for development work, and for calls.
I do use a lot of simple hacks. Let’s see. I like listening to one song on repeat for hours (techno and classical fugues or my favorite). I do Bulletproof coffee and intermittent fasting in the morning. I start each day with writing – 500 words of more just to see if I have any good ideas – and that powers good conversations throughout the day. I deleted Twitter last year (which is ironic considering my brand is the Social Media Headhunter), and I block a lot of news sites.
Also – this will sound weird. I read in the shower. I do – I take paperbacks into the shower and skim them, and if there’s something important, I turn the water to icy cold and try to quickly summarize it. It’s a really good trick for boosting memory.
Tell us one long-term goal in your career.
I want to start an investment fund and incubator where I can share what I’ve learned in marketing, sales, and headhunting.
What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned through the course of your career?
Never get frustrated with someone who is arguing with you. They may be the only person actually listening to what you say.
What advice would you give to others aspiring to succeed in your field?
Set down your cell phone and talk to people face to face. Plan your workspace. Walk every day. When you write, write either one sentence, or a page. And whenever possible, record yourself. You can fix most of your problems just by watching yourself.
What are your favorite things to do outside of work?
I love volleyball. Would play every day all day if I could get away with it. Barely edging out volleyball is time with my family. I have young children, and I delight in just watching them, no matter what they are doing.
Name a few influential books you’ve read and/or websites you keep up with that you’d
recommend to readers.
Anything by Nassim Taleb or Duncan Watts. Persuasion and Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I also like to re-read the classics – Herodotus, Sallust, Josephus, and Epictetus. I believe strongly in the value of a classical education – primarily because you’re able to see that human behavior doesn’t really change. Some guy writing 2000 years ago can share a story that sounds like what happened in your life last Thursday. How cool is that? Once you really grok that, you can focus on building value in your life, and not sweat the small stuff.
