Ariana (00:00:07) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast. Uncovering the world of business operations, one episode at a time. I'm your host, Ariana Cofone, and today's guest is Mickey Pearson, Operations Manager at Plenty Search. Welcome, Mickey. I'm so glad to have you here.

Mickey (00:00:22) - Thank you. I'm so thrilled to be here. It's so fun to be on this side of the podcast.

Ariana (00:00:27) - I know we've got a seasoned expert here, so I'm gonna try and do my best to make you proud. But I'm super excited because we get to talk about all things operations, including your journey into operations and how that's manifested into a career, doing operations for recruiting, which is a lot of lovely layers to dig into. But let's start out with your journey into it, because everyone's journey looks different, including my own. So how did you get into operations? What was that path like for you?

Mickey (00:00:59) - I had a very strange path, and I think maybe a lot of us who are in operations have found ourselves in this interesting role because of just random terms of fate. Mine is really unique. I started my career in education, so my first passion was working with young kids. I was a preschool teacher for many years, and, really got a lot of energy outta working with four year olds, especially. They were smart enough to know a lot about the world, but not so curious that I couldn't answer any of their questions. So if you wanted a question about the planets, I could answer to the level of your understanding, and then they could run off and play with some Play-Doh. And it was such a fun, energetic environment. I really got a lot out of it. And as I was, um, getting my teaching license to move into elementary school education, my wife got pregnant and we decided, okay, well, I can either be an at-home parent and focus all this time with my kids, or I could get a job at a preschool and pay for your tuition with my, salary as a preschool teacher, we opted for the former, and I spent 10 years as an at-home parent, and, three kids later and a decade later, I made my way into the recruiting world, through sort of a chance encounter with some, local people who run a recruiting firm.

Ariana (00:02:11) - It always starts with a chance encounter, doesn't it? It always begins there.

Mickey (00:02:15) - Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is, you know, that perfect setup too because, this recruiting firm, Soma based here in Minnesota, and what they were really looking for is someone who could, be curious, be interested in talking to random people about a lot, and learning a lot about a wide variety of different things. And by start in with Samla was doing research, so finding candidates and also doing a lot of operations, even though we weren't calling it operations, so they needed some software help. I'm the guy who has always been a fan of computers, and so I poured some in, you know, some of my abilities into that bucket and said, okay, well we are currently using Microsoft, we can move to Google. We are currently using this applicant tracking system. Why don't we try this one? And trying to bring some creative solutions around the tech platform, never as part of my job description, but always as sort of that next level skill that I brought to the table that grew and grew and grew.

Mickey (00:03:08) - So as I continued my career in recruiting with Samla, I found myself doing a lot of different operations things. So auditing new systems, making sure that all of our internal processes are right, writing process docs and writing, employee manuals and designing the website and answering InMails, all these different things that happen that no one else in the company really knew how to do well and really didn't want to do. So I was that person who took that on, in 2021 I fully became an operations person. This is, I had been doing a lot of it during covid and we had a departure on the team and at that point we're, we were big enough to say, we need someone who can do this all the time, bring some, you know, focus on this particular task. And quite honestly, as much as I was doing recruiting and as much as that was interesting, there's a part of me that just felt like, there's a piece of me who's not very good at this, and I'm much better at the operations aspect. So spending a year doing, any number of tasks like I just outlined, I got a lot of energy and I got a lot of excitement out of that. And that's when plenty came into my world and I got recruited by a recruiting firm and I moved into Plenty.

Ariana (00:04:15) - Oh, the irony

Mickey (00:04:15) - Yes, I know, exactly. And so now I've been with Plenty for just under a year and doing a lot of operations for them as well, solely operations. And while my job tasks from day-to-day are still just as varied, I do have other operations team members, that I get to work with, which is fantastic, and it brings me so much joy to be able to talk shop with other people in-house and have them care about the same things I care about.

Ariana (00:04:39) - Yeah, your energy is infectious. When we get to talk about operations, which I love, I feel like there is so much to unpack in how you got to where you are with operations because a through line, through everything that you did from parenting to teaching to recruiting those types of roles where a lot of hats and spent a lot of plates at once. Can I ask how you think one informed the other, inform the other? Like how did teaching then inform, I think you're like the most prepared parent having, taught preschool, like how did that inform parenthood for 10 years, three kids, and then how did that inform recruiting and talking to people? How did all that domino effect happen?

Mickey (00:05:23) - Absolutely. Well, I mean, part of it is just like inbound, skills and character traits. So I'm, I'm perpetually curious and I think that one of the things that makes me good at operations or teaching or parenting is just being open to new things. Your kids are always going to bring you new things. Your students are always gonna bring you new things, whether they are four year olds or whether they're, you know, middle schoolers. They're going to tell you something new that you weren't expecting that particular day. So whether you have a finally crafted lesson plan or an awesome set of, emails to send out to all 200 candidates for this particular role that you're working on on in operations for recruiting, having that flexibility and having that curiosity to be able to solve a unique problem the minute it hits your plate is a key trait that I bring to the table. When I think about education and especially in that preschool realm, there was so much happening at, at any given time and anything that you had, you know, finally planned out could get derailed so quickly, for any number of reasons, both fun and it could be derailed in a fun way where you're like, oh, I see your curiosities bringing you this way.

Mickey (00:06:28) - Let's, chase that and let's, you know, read this book and let's bring the whole class along on this journey. And that flexibility is awesome. And, I still do it today in operations. When someone comes to me and says, have we thought about doing it this way? The answer's always, well, I don't know if we have, but let's figure it out together. And maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, but it will always inform the way that we're gonna move our processes forward, and not closing ourselves off to the way that we've always done things. That makes you a better operations person, I think.

Ariana (00:06:58) - Definitely. And it's interesting, I have a lot of friends who are educators for children as well as adults, and I think operations is almost like a given part of the job. You have to be able to teach and be engaging and work with kids of all different personalities or students of all different personalities, and then you just have to do all the administrative side of it too. So it must have been interesting going from that world into recruiting, which I feel like is much more Wild Wild West. Like, I feel like that is, like I've done a tiny, tiny bit and that just, it seems like a never ending search that, I guess a question I have is, do you ever feel like satisfied in that process? Because it feels like once one role is found, then you have to find another one and another one. It's almost like whack-a-mole a little.

Mickey (00:07:44) - Bit. I mean, it really can be. And I will tell you that the thing I didn't know much about recruiting before I got into it, and it was again, that curiosity and that enthusiasm for trying new things that may help me say yes to this particular opportunity when it came up. But, you know, thinking about that whack-a-mole aspect of things, yes, it, that is, that is a big part of it. And I think a recruiter is more like a salesperson than I had initially an anticipated back when I joined that, world. And, because you have to deal with no all day long. No, no, no, no, no. It's no from the candidates who won't even like answer your email or answer your call, it's no, from the clients who don't want to build a new relationship, it's no from the person who you got all the way to the finish line and that offers in their hand and you're counting on that and they say no.

Mickey (00:08:30) - And having that personality that can be really resilient is a huge part of recruiting. Because yes, it's always changing and it's always variety. I think with operations, one of the things that drew me closer to that realm out of recruiting was the sense of, at least there are controllable factors that I can help the people who are totally fine with that rejection. I can give them the tools to be better at it. I know a lot about the way they're doing their job, so I can use that to inform the tools that I'm gonna give them. But I'm also, I'm one step removed from that rejection, and so I can be a little bit more versatile. I can be a lot more optimistic because I know that the things I'm gonna do are gonna help my colleagues get their job done.

Ariana (00:09:10) - Hmm. What do you think that point was in recruiting that you essentially were you’re like I'm an operations nerd, please bring me back in. Like, let's do this. Because I also had that moment too where I was a creative technologist and I was doing a very cool job that I think people would've loved to have, and I just missed it. And I knew that that was sort of part of who I was. What was that moment for you? What did that, what did that feel like?

Mickey (00:09:36) - I mean, it's rejection. It was the rejection . I had a very hard time with it because I mean, I won't name the candidate's name and I won't name the client's name, but there was a very specific phone call I had. I was in New York City on a client meeting and I had to step out to take a candidate call and he rejected the offer that we had brought him to the finish line. And I knew there was a part of me that in the way that a good recruiter can like help coach that person to yes. Even though they're telling you no, that something internally inside me was sort of like, I'm not that person that's going to tell you that you're making a bad decision in this moment because you're an adult.

Mickey (00:10:13) - You are making this decision. And I've had similar experiences with clients kind of telling me no when I know internally, like, okay, I think that you're making a bad decision, but who am I to tell you that you're wrong? That rejection cycle really got to me, but in operations that never got to me. And I knew that those tasks were always going to be sitting undone or half done. And if I could focus my energies towards that, I could get a lot more career satisfaction and job satisfaction and still continue to work with the people that I loved and, and wanted to, you know, rise the tides for everyone. But I didn't have to deal with the one-on-one rejection and it gets to you mentally, I think if you're not suited for recruiting.

Ariana (00:10:54) - I think it's a very good point cuz if I think back to that change and shift, for me, I had just so much more tolerance for when there were problems operationally than there was in the previous role I was doing. If there was something that came up or a twist or a turn, I would get totally bent outta sorts, but in operations things could be literally on fire and I would be figuring it out because I am passionate and I love doing it. It's interesting. That's a good, a good sign for listeners to think about is, you know, what are the things that you tolerate cuz you love it, even when it sucks. And then maybe that's the thing to point your energy towards

Mickey (00:11:31) - And it is not to say that operations doesn't come with the rejection. Like I have rolled out software systems that I thought this is going to be the solution to all our problems and if no one does it, well then, like all that work was for basically nothing. But it did teach me a lot about how to do my operations job better in a different way where it's like, okay, well meet my audience where they're at as opposed to saying, well this works for me, it's only 17 clicks and all you have to do is just, you know…I'm fine with that. But that is a particular operations nerd person to say like, oh yeah, it's super simple, but is it truly simple or not? And that rejection, I'm okay with internalizing and learning about catering to my audience in a little bit better way.

Ariana (00:12:10) - Well, let's fast forward to today, Operations Manager, learning and building operations for recruiting, which is fantastic. So you've done the thing and now you can help others do the thing better. What does a day in the life look like as an operations manager?

Mickey (00:12:25) - Sure. So, you know, Plenty is very unique, in the sense that we're the extremely data driven. And that has helped me as an Operations Manager. I'm making sure that, you know, like any good operations person, all our tools are firing in all cylinders. But what that means from a practical standpoint is we have a team of researchers who is constantly filling the pipeline full of candidates for our recruiters to go out and talk to and then eventually deliver to our clients. So where Plenty differs from other recruiting firms is we have much smaller load of roles that we're working on at any given time where a normal recruiter might be working on 15 roles. Our recruiters are really only working on four to five. But what that means is our operations team has to fire on all cylinders constantly to make sure that those five roles are being delivered at 100% all the time.

Mickey (00:13:10) - So I am sending emails, to 230 different candidates at any given time, just, I'm managing the sequences, making sure that the email content is all, you know, not only copy, edited and proofread, but also sending on behalf of the right person. I'm looking at metrics. So as I said, we're very data-driven, looking at what is our response rate? How can we tweak this particular response rate to make sure that we can get one or 2% more people to respond to this email if we can't, what are other ways that we can engage with them? So looking at tools outside of LinkedIn to say, you know, this is what a good candidate looks like. How can we make sure that our researchers are finding them? How can we make sure our recruiters are talking to them? And how can we make sure that once our recruiters are actually delivering candidates to our clients, are our clients feeling happy? Are they feeling like that this is a great process for them and do they feel engaged and feel taken care of? So bringing that white glove approach to any of the client interaction it's critical for the operations team to get that dialed in so our partners and principals can hop into a meeting and know everything is the table is set for the, for their success.

Ariana (00:14:20) - You're trying to always balance the people side, the process side, the technology side, the data side, so that it all evenly balances out into the right kinds of deliverables. I'm gonna pause because you say data driven and if anybody knows me, my family, my friends, my clients, they always make fun of me. Cause I'm like, let's be more data driven. And it's important, I think for the audience who maybe don't really know what that means to get an understanding of what we're saying when we say data driven. So I guess to backtrack…everything, our devices, our software are connecting, collecting data and it's up to us to figure out how to use that data and hone that data to get insights. Now within the recruiting realm, what kind of data are you gathering and how do you use that data to inform decisions?

Mickey (00:15:10) - Sure. So the metrics that are really important to us as recruiting, and I think you'll find this in a lot of recruiting firms, the big metric that a lot of us measure for success. Or what we call success is time to fill. So, or days to fill. How long did it take us from the time we started this engagement with the client to actually fill that role? And I would say the industry average tends to be around 120 days for our particular executive search world. Plenty, we're awesome, we're around 75 days to fill, which is fantastic. That’s one of our calling cards is because we can be a white glove and because we can focus a lot of energy, we can get that time-to-fill down a lot. So that's, that's like the biggest metric.

Mickey (00:15:50) - So what are the different things that influence time to fill for us? Well, if we're starting from the beginning of the engagement, we're looking at how many in those first 10 days of a an engagement, what are the different ways that we can set our researchers up for success? So how long did it take you re researcher to find the person that eventually filled this role? It’s a new metric that we started to look at because we're very curious, like what are the ways that we can bring that time-to-fill down even lower? So from the research side, if you can find that person on the day the search starts, that's awesome. And our currently, our record for finding is a person is zero on the day the search launched, our researchers have found the right person on from there.

Mickey (00:16:30) - We're looking for things like the days to actually screen that candidate. Did they engage with our messaging? If they did, awesome, how long did it take the recruiter to present them to our client? How long did it take the client? All of those little date stamps tell us what pieces can we work on so we can break down and look at, all right, recruiters, most of your candidates are sitting in this limbo with our clients. What are the ways that you as a person can coach our clients to get their interview process once you've introduced them, and get their interview process going faster. And so we do a lot of work with that and making sure that our, clients know this is our expectation and we want to help you be successful in recruiting that person. That's one piece of data is just all those timestamps.

Mickey (00:17:13) - And yeah, it's a lot and we're always finding new things that we can start to focus on. So, that's one of the things that it's great to have an operations team because we can say, oh, here's a particularly interesting metric, will this actually make sense for us to focus on? And so we dig into it a little bit. We talk to each other, we talk to some of the recruiters, does this make sense? Would this be helpful to you? And if yes, then we keep going down that road.

Ariana (00:17:38) - This actually springboards into the trifecta, so maybe we just go there now. So, trifecta, the simplest way I could say operations, people, process, technology, side of data. Let's, talk technology within the recruiting world and how you're getting this data. So what platforms and what tools are you using to get the information that you need to start to run those analytics, make those decisions?

Mickey (00:18:04) - Absolutely. So I mean, table stakes is LinkedIn. Everybody uses LinkedIn. Don't let anyone tell you that LinkedIn isn't like the 800 pound gorilla in the room, but one, but once we find those people on LinkedIn, we are not really doing a lot to interact with them on that platform. We're pulling them into a system, called GEM. And GEM is used a lot by internal recruiters, not as much by third party recruiters like us, but we've definitely kind of shoehorned a lot of functionality into it to make it work for us, which is, I think a hallmark of any good operations team. Like, okay, I see that these, there are these things that we can kind of twist and turn to make it work for our ends. What GEM is, is basically we dump all of our candidates into there.

Mickey (00:18:47) - Our research team is able to submit them to our recruiters and say, does this look good? Does this person look good? GEM is able to track all of those people all the way through the entire process of hiring for us, sort of like an applicant tracking system, like a Lever or a Greenhouse, but a little bit different because it's doing all the outreach at the front end.  And that's where a lot of the data that we're looking for comes from too. So looking at response rates, looking at which person clicked on which email, which link did they click on, how does this influence outreach going forward? So we pull those pieces out and we look at it after the engagement is completely done and we say, okay, what could we have done better in this? What email sequence was particularly successful?

Mickey (00:19:29) - But GEM is really the heart and soul of our outreach. Once it's out of GEM, we're a big Google Workspace user. We are huge into Google Sheets and all of our client collaboration platform is currently done via Google Sheets. I have an idea that, we could transcend that and we're getting there, but we're, we're also, when it comes to tech solutions, I will say that we are not quick to jump into something unless it really feels like it's something that's going to truly move the needle. So we will audit ATSs all the time and we'll audit things like Coda and monday.com and ClickUp and look at them and think really long and hard before we say, yes, this is something we want the entire company to say yes to. But there are a lot of other tools too. You know, we are big on Crunchbase for doing research. We're big on, graphic design programs and Canva in operations. So there, there's a lot of that type of stuff. Well, but I would say, you know, GEM and Google Workspace are the two key things for us.

Ariana (00:20:29) - It seems like for most businesses you have those anchor platforms that are the foundation of how you run as a business. And so when you're talking about finding other tools, it's so important that if you find something to replace it, you've done all the due diligence to find the right platform with the right data access and permissions and da da da da and pricing of course. But I've worked with a lot of clients, it's a very similar thing. And Google Workspace, man, Google Sheets. I feel like the world is run on Google Sheets because everybody, dips into that or Excel the original. But I would love to dip into the people side now because you said something interesting earlier when we were talking about the process around, you know, making data-driven decisions and you said that the data side of things allows you to see how the people behavior needs to shift within your clients. And that's a very interesting concept, I think maybe for some folks, which is, I've done recruiting and there is a certain pacing that you wanna hit when you are reaching out to candidates to show interest and vice versa for you to see that candidates have interest in you. Can you go into that a little bit more on the client side of recruiting? How do you use data to coach your clients to I guess, like be better applicants for companies to, to get get the right kinds of talent in?

Mickey (00:21:54) - Sure. Well, you know, I can say that, early stage startups that we work with, these leaders, these founders that are choosing to work with us, they have a ton on their plates. I mean, you know, as an operator, like there are so many different things that you have to consider at any given time. And because your company is so small, it's very easy to have a very insular culture that you want to make sure that what you have built so far isn't lost. And because Plenty, like all of our partners are former operators as well, I think they have a particularly attuned sense of what all of all our clients are going through at any given moment. So knowing that these key executive hires are going to really move the needle, there's a lot of buy-in and a lot of empathy and sympathy that kind of transverses that client relationship.

Mickey (00:22:38) - So that to start with is fantastic for plenty. But when we talk about what data influences those, we have a thing at Plenty where, at our fourth meeting we do what we call like a partnership review, and we take a look at all the different people that have come through. We present stats like this is how many companies we've, we've looked at to find this one, you know, these three people that we've presented to you so far, or these seven people. So we've looked at 800 companies. Of those 800 companies, we've found 700 candidates. And of those 700 candidates- you know, we show them that whole funnel and we open those books because for them, it's important to see like, we are working our tails off and we want to make this work for you, and this is what this work means.

Mickey (00:23:17) - And sometimes that means creative solutions. So if we're saying we are not seeing great response rates, we can also say that's because most engineering roles have a very low response rate comparatively. Or we can say this is an abnormally low response rate. Are there ways that, are there assets that you client can provide us to help boost these numbers? But having that data firsthand in those relationships can say, we wanna work the together to solve this talent problem that you have. And here are the numbers to back it up.  How can we work together to figure to solve this problem right now?

Ariana (00:23:49) - Oh, I love that. All the solution levers that you can have, which is all right, we're looking at what the data's showing us. Is the solution, providing a visual, is it providing more details? Is it salary? Is it renaming the title because it actually doesn't align with the job description. There are all these, I mean, that's just like a tiny scratch of the surface, but there's all those different things, which is why you wanna work with people that have an expertise in it cuz it sort of skips over the really hard learning phase if you don't know kind of that worlds and cause you're not in it all day long, which gets to process for me because you can over-process things and I would think that in recruiting it's a fine balance cuz you have to have a process cuz you have to make sure that you're doing things in a similar fashion for all candidates, all clients. But you also need to allow there to be variations. So what are some process tips that you have from the recruiting operations lens?

Mickey (00:24:44) - You know, I think for us what has been really critical is being able to have a partner in that process to take a look at it. And you know, when I was at Samla, I was an ops team of one. And I will say that having a robust ops team on our side at, at Plenty, it really helps to just say like, here's how I'm thinking about it. Is this how you see it as well? And not have to have it be, I'm taking off my recruiter hat or I'm taking off my business leader hat, you know, it's operations person to operations person. We can figure this process out together so what things did I, did I miss, did I completely blank on this particular stat means nothing once we've got it, you know, at 300 candidates versus three.

Mickey (00:25:27) - Big process things for us though too are just like, we have very clear, consistent SLAs and we haVe as an ops team, we rely, I guess this is a platform that I didn't bring up earlier, but we rely really heavily on Asana because it helps keep us, as the three of us very, very organized. We know here are all the 20 different touchpoints that we need to have between the time the contract is signed with a new client, all the way to the day of the first meeting. And that's a lot of stuff. And if we don't have a very clear, easy way to replicate that every single time, we're gonna get lost somewhere. And if we don't have those responsibilities clearly laid out for somebody, it gets lost. And we can't bring that high level, that high touch experience to our clients if we don't have that in the backend. Just very, very, very consistent.

Ariana (00:26:14) - So to touch on Asana, so for those who have never used Asana, it's a way to track your tasks. It's called a task management platform, system, whatever you may call it. A question for you is, I have worked with a lot of clients that they think the solution is the task management platform and then they get it and they're like, oh, it's not the, it's not that, it's actually the people and how they use it. So how have you honed your use of Asana over time to hit the right touch points, but not over organize what the team is doing?

Mickey (00:26:48) - I mean, that is a fantastic point and we had that exact experience. We started Asana thinking everyone in our company is going to need to have Asana. And people got overwhelmed with notifications. They hated it, they would not check off tasks. And it became very clear to us about a month in, okay, while the ops team loves this and the ops team can keep this organized, our recruiters have a million different notifications coming at them across the spectrum. They're getting pinged by the clients on their phones, on WhatsApp, on LinkedIn. They're getting all the candidates talking to them as well. We need to find a way to limit the amount of communication down to the absolute bare minimum that they need. Ops, we can take all the notifications, give them all to us, please, we'll take them on every platform, but we really needed to dial back our expectations of Asana to understand that not everyone on the team needs this. Not everyone on the team wants it. So how do we continue to leverage this tool just so that we can stay productive? And that's really what we've done. So it's, while our research team and our recruiters technically are in Asana from time to time, it's far more useful for us as an ops team to just have it be a lot more focused on the tasks and for us, we can ping the, the people who have a task due, but let's keep that on us to let them know that what's due.

Ariana (00:28:03) - That makes sense. I have a pro tip, which I found when you roll out any platform, especially when it's task oriented, the rollout phase is, is a beta test, it's a prototype, it's never a final solution because ultimately whatever you roll out with is not gonna stick. I just have learned that over time, right? Like it varies. It's very rare that the first version of any process actually stays, it usually gets cut down and it should, right? That means that the team is actually adapting it to what it needs to be.

Mickey (00:28:35) - Absolutely. And that's something we've adopted big time in operations, at Plenty. We do after-action reviews for kind of everything. So, you know, we do 'em regularly for all of our client engagements, in the last few months, we've done after action reviews for…here's this new process that we rolled out in November, is it still working? And we try to get someone who is not involved with a development of that process to audit it and say, here are all the things that I looked at. Do they still make sense? I were to jump in and try to do this task today, would the assets that we have on hand explain it well enough? And every Asana task has been reiterated and iterated and edited to make sure that it's always efficient, not just it was efficient in November. Is it still efficient today? We don't rely on things being, you know, kind of evergreen.

Ariana (00:29:21) - What is an after-action review? Is that similar to like a retrospective or is that specific for process? I haven't heard that before.

Mickey (00:29:31) - Yeah, so it's something we started rolling 'em out just for after we've placed a candidate successfully. We get together with the entire project team. So the recruiter, the, the main researcher who worked on it, the partner and operations, and we talk about here are the key data pieces, like this was the interest rate, these were the number of candidates, here's the person that we actually placed and we look at all the different components that went into making that search successful or not, and what are the things that we could take away from that? We document that, we log it there have been a ton of things that we've taken right out of those meetings and implemented as a process to say we need to start doing this right away so that we are better at our next search or better at the searches that are going on. We then started thinking, well why limit it to just our placements? Why don't we think about it? Especially because we're all ops nerds. Why don't we start looking at our own processes. So when we rolled out Donut for example, I mean it seems really silly and simple, but Donut has been an awesome tool for our distributed team to socialize. It's basically a Slack plug-in.

Ariana (00:30:31) - I've never used Donut,

Mickey (00:30:32) - It's great. It's a Slack plugin that randomly pairs you with a number and another member of your team for a 15 minute meeting that is solely there for socialization. So because we're fully distributed, it's very hard for us to just say like, we're gonna carve out that water cooler time and make time for each other as human beings. Donut is an awesome tool for that. And one of the things we wanted to figure out is like, okay, we've been doing it for a couple of months, does it still make sense? We do this after action review and we look at okay, what did the team say about doing these donuts? Do they like 'em, do they not like 'em? Are they just kind of tolerating them? We get the feedback, we write up a little report that says here's our donut after action-review. Great, let's keep going. And we'll do those periodically, maybe quarterly, maybe even like once a year just to say like, does this still make sense? And that goes from everything from very serious processes down to, again, kind of like more nice to haves like Donut.

Ariana (00:31:26) - Taking space to look back is sometimes very hard for teams cuz everybody's moving very quickly. Even just the technology environment, the work space industries require you to move very fast. I found that to be incredibly impactful though. If you can take a pause and get thoughts and write them down, it’s some of the best use of time. Just taking that pause to really talk about the impact of something and if you should keep doing it and spending money on it and asking people to engage in it. It seems like such a simple thing, but it can be hard for people to do that. And to also sunset things, like you said, sometimes it's not gonna work and it's okay and it can hurt and you know, you might go and get a donut to have a catharsis after or something's not working. But that's an important piece too, for sure. It's a really good point. Now I wanna get into the inside scoop, which is essentially telling folks what are the truths about operations and what they need to know. So first one is, what do you think people get wrong across the board? What have you seen over and over again that people just get wrong about operations?

Mickey (00:32:39) - Personally, I think not every operations person is type A. I am not a type A person. I am married to a type A person. My manager is a very type A person. But I think what I bring to the operations field is a sense of being a little more…I joke that I'm the yin to the yang of my partner Amira, she's amazing at the operations and she brings that type A very organized, very focused and it has definitely pushed me to level up my game, but not all of us are that way. But I think that my enthusiasm, my curiosity is another as important engine to operations, generally speaking. So we're not all just cracking the whip to make sure that you're checking every box on the particular spreadsheet. We can be a little bit more flexible than that sometimes.

Ariana (00:33:27) - I love that. What did you think is the hardest part of operations? I think, you know, there's a lot of joys, but what is that part that's like, oh man, I hate to do this thing, but I gotta do it?

Mickey (00:33:38) - Well, the fact that there are many mundane tasks that if you haven't built that mental capacity to say, like, I know that this mundane task has to get done. So for example, sometimes there are a bunch of emails that you need to audit on individual LinkedIn profiles, and you need to be okay with the world in which I'm going to spend 30 minutes on this task. And I will say at Plenty, we really work hard to say, okay, well you've done that 30 minute task once, but are there ways to then change it so no one has to do it? Or if you're doing it, maybe you can pass it off to someone else. So like, figuring out a way to be creative about that solution. But sometimes the most white love thing that you can provide those clients is something that seems so mundane and so dumb. So you put on a good podcast or your favorite record and you just do the mundane task and you have to be okay with it and swallow that. But then other times you get to work on extremely high-level creative thinking things and being able to balance that and find that energy,I think is critical.

Ariana (00:34:37) - That is, I just wanna say plus one because, data cleaning is literally the most mind numbing thing that I do in my job, and it is one of the most important things that I do in my job. Same with migrating to a shared drive from separate drives and renaming files. It is so mundane and boring, but in doing that, you're fixing a problem once, so it's not a problem again. And it's worth the time, even if it hurts, even if it's painful. I feel you on that. And I think that people from the outside really think like, are you crazy? Like, why are you doing this? It's like, because I know on the other side of this, it's gonna make things a lot better for everybody, but right now it's just gonna suck for me. And that's why I've gotta, you know, murder mystery podcast lined up for three seasons and I'm ready to roll

Mickey (00:35:23) - Yeah, leave it better than you found it. I'm very into camping and you wanna leave your campsite better than you found it. So, you didn't leave that trash there, but you should pick it up and you should take it just so that it looks better for the next user. That's a big part of operations is leaving it better than you found it. I

Ariana (00:35:37) - Oh, that's a really good point. I gotta, I gotta put that on a pillow and remind myself. That's why I do these things. Okay, so what do you think is the thing that brings you the most joy? The, the little kid Happy energy with operations.

Mickey (00:35:51) - I will say, my time at Plenty it's having those see that, that operations team being able to talk to Amira and Kayla in my, on my team and say, do you see this? Are you also geeking out about, you know, yesterday when, I'm gonna timestamp this a little bit, Coda dropped their, Coda AI preview video and I quickly jumped on Slack and I said, oh my God, have you seen this is amazing. And I know that that's not for everyone. I know not everyone on my team will care about that, but for me in that moment, having someone to share that enthusiasm and that excitement was, really fun. And I get so much joy out of that to say like we can get creative in our way about operations. And I have these conversations with Amira all the time where it's the two of us right now, we are having the biggest geekiest, fun with data. Okay, did you use, you know, a v-lookup or you know, what sheets formula are you using to do this? And we get a lot out of that. We know not everyone else will, but that brings me a lot of energy. That's a little kid joy that I get and it seems really geeky, but I'm okay with that.

Ariana (00:36:55) - I'm living vicariously just through you telling the story and I'm like, can I join? Can I please help on with you guys too? I joke, but I feel like operations people are magnets to each other because it's hard to find people that like the things that we like sometimes, but I think the point of this podcast is actually it's not that hard. There's like a ton of us that actually love it and we just need to find each other a little bit easier. Okay, last question in the inside scoop, which is, if someone wanted to get into transitions and having really had a journey, defining that for yourself, what would you recommend to, to help people get started?

Mickey (00:37:30) - You know, for me, especially in retrospect for me finding my way to recruiting and then especially operations, it was a lot of like understanding what my skills actually were versus what a resume might have told you. Being open to the idea that you have secondary and tertiary skills that no one else has, but you've never thought of them in a career context. So maybe you are a volunteer at a nonprofit and for that nonprofit you got really good at recruiting other board members. Well that's recruiting. Like, you have that skill and no one told you that that was what you were doing professionally, but you were, I think that was a big definitional thing for the way that my career has has transpired. It's just this sense of, okay, you do have these skills, you can translate them into a job and that job will materialize around you as long as you are able to clearly communicate what you can do and be open and willing to bring your full self to the table. If I had limited myself to only being a teacher or only being a recruiter, I would've shut off a lot of pathways towards career satisfaction.

Ariana (00:38:35) - Yeah, I feel like there's a wrong narrative that's told to us when we're kids that the path is gonna be linear and straight and actually everybody's path is so wonky and weird and awesome. And the more variety and things you can try the better you enjoy your job, if you follow that path. Like, I mean I've worked every job another son, I've been a nanny, I've worked in daycare, I've been a dog walker. I mean, you name it, I've done it. And all of those things have helped inform what I'm doing today and the joy that I get out of my days today. So I really hear you on that. And I hope others who are listening, if they feel like their path is a little all over the place, I think for a good decade I was like, what am I doing? And my husband would say, it’s all part of a bigger picture. You can't see it right now, but it is. And I think I luckily trusted him and it did pan out, but trust yourself too, at some point it will pan out even if it seems all over the place.

Mickey (00:39:33) - I agree. And I think the job market now is so vastly different than what previous generation is at ever experienced. You know, my wife has been in the same role for, you know, 17 years and that is extremely uncommon. Where for our parents' generation it was, yeah, of course you just, you get a job and you stay in it for 25 years and you get the gold watch or whatever. That is not the case. So you, you can't close yourself off in that same way. It's not uncommon to see 2, 3, 4 year stints at a lot of different things and a lot of different jobs and that's fine, that's normal. So embrace that normality and say, you know, I can be who I want to be professionally.

Ariana (00:40:11) - That’s how it goes. This has been so much fun. I wish we had more time, but it's onto the rapid fire questions. I'm really excited about these cuz I’m throwing some new ones your way here. So, so let's just jump in. What is your favorite part of the day?

Mickey (00:40:25) - I think my favorite part of the day is around lunchtime so because I'm an operations nerd, I'm trying to get better at my job. I've started doing a lot of task tracking. So my favorite time of the day, from a professional standpoint is at least to be able to see like time tracking, oh, look at all this stuff that I've gotten done. And if I weren't focusing on that, it would be very easy to just say like, I don't know, I just, I kind of worked today, but it brings me a weird amount of joy that again, I'm not a type A person, but I get a weird amount of joy from seeing that. Another piece that gives me a lot of joy just personally is working out. So I'm a big exercise fan and I really love my Peloton or my runs outside and that sort of thing and, and keeping that part of my day going. So it's an early morning workout.

Ariana (00:41:06) - What are you currently obsessed with?

Mickey (00:41:10) - What I'm currently obsessed with is, it's Oscar season. I'm a big movie nerd and I'm really trying hard to see as many Oscar movies as possible, you know, and best picture nominees. But I'm a big fan of Letterbox, that's a social media app that tracks your movie diaries. So, making sure that I can see as many so I can make an informed opinion when it comes time to have our little Oscar poll and say like, who who do you think the actual best picture will be? Yeah, so I'm obsessed with that Banshees of Inishurin, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Those are excellent movies. Tar is fantastic too, so it's a three way race for me right now.

Ariana (00:41:42) - Oh my gosh. I can't wait now to watch the Oscars. I'm really excited. . Um, what book are you currently reading?

Mickey (00:41:51) - This is another thing that I'm obsessed with, Stephen Markley wrote this book called The Deluge. It's a new fiction piece that sort of takes…I'm a big horror fan, generally speaking, and I really love horror fiction, but this is sort of like a horror story, but the monster is climate change. It's very realistic fiction, it is set, it starts in around 2014 and right now about two thirds of the way through the book, it's in 2040. So it looks at the effects of climate change on our political system follows a variety of different characters. And what are the political implications of these senators getting elected or this particular president enacting or not enacting a particular policy and everything that goes around it. It is a phenomenal book. It's scary, it's exciting, it's interesting. I highly recommend it. The the Deluge by Steven Markley.

Ariana (00:42:37) - All right. I'm putting it on my list. What is your favorite quote?

Mickey (00:42:42) - My favorite quote is from the late great Senator Paul Wellstone here in Minnesota. It's, we all do better when we all do better. I will say it's inspirational to me because, you know, I would say it politically aligns with my belief that we owe things to the world, we owe things to our communities, but I think from an operations standpoint, it makes a difference too. Like, we all do better when our systems are dialed in and when our recruiters are firing in all cylinders and our researchers are, everyone succeeds. And that's what I try to bring to the, to my work life. It's what I try to bring to my personal life. Let's make sure that everyone has the tools they need to succeed.

Ariana (00:43:15) - All right, what is the best purchase under $50 that you've made?

Mickey (00:43:21) - Best purchase under $50? I have a standing mat. I love my standing desk and I have a mat that keeps my, it keeps my back less sore if I stand all day. And I love my, I love my mat .

Ariana (00:43:35) - I wasn't expecting that

Ariana (00:43:36) - That was so good. It’s like, I love Lamp, I love my Lamp!

Mickey (00:43:39) - I love Lamp. I love Matt.

Ariana (00:43:40) - Alright, more serious one. What do you think is the most important lesson you've learned so far in your life?

Mickey (00:43:48) - It's okay to be wrong. Just embracing mistakes. And it's, something that you have to relearn and relearn and relearn and be okay with it. And sometimes I'm great at knowing that it's okay to make mistakes professionally, but I'm maybe not so good personally and vice versa. Other times I'm great at it personally and not professionally. So, but relearning that all the time is really really crucial and it comes up a lot. And I try to teach my kids it's okay to be wrong. Just, you know, be okay with getting better.

Ariana (00:44:19) - Hmm. I needed to hear that. Lastly, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Mickey (00:44:26) - If I could r write one good album…I’m a music nerd and there's a dream in my brain that has existed for a long while of like, I could just make one good album or even maybe just one good song, you know, but now it's a retirement goal, as opposed to an ever-present goal. Or maybe when the kids are out of the house, then I can focus a little bit more time on that. But that would be amazing, right? To write a song or an album that moved people. I would love that.

Ariana (00:44:51) - Now I gotta hold you to it. That now, now you said it to the whole Secret Ops audience. Exactly. We're holding you to it. Mickey, you are truly a ray of sunshine. I'm so appreciative for you reaching out and connecting. Where can other people find you? If they are listening and they're so jazzed by what you're saying, where can they find you?

Mickey (00:45:08) - Well, the best places LinkedIn, I'm on there constantly. I know it's the most boring social media network, but it's also where I am every single day. You can always reach out to me. I am a happy connection, request acceptor. And I will chat you up, very heavily in that messaging app. And there are other places too, but they're not as, not nearly as findable. So yeah, LinkedIn!

Ariana (00:45:31) - We'll make sure to link that in the description. Again, thank you so much for your time and your knowledge. We all appreciate it. And thank you to the wonderful Secret Ops audience. I adore you. Please follow us wherever you find your podcasts and check us out at secret-ops.com. We'll see you next time.