Ashlie Collins
Hello and welcome to Hire We Go, where we’re chatting all things talent acquisition transformation. Whether you’re an HR vet or someone who’s simply fascinated by how to find, attract, and engage talent, you are most certainly in the right place. I’m your host and director of solutions here at Jovio Ashley Collins. And joining us today is Kirsten Greggs from Trap Recruiter. Thank you so much for joining us. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself and Trap Recruiter?
Keirsten Greggs
Thank you for having me, Ashley. I am so excited to be here on Hire We Go. As you mentioned, I am Kirsten Greggs, better known to some as Trap Recruiter. I’ve been in TA since, wow, the year 2000. I started off as a third party recruiter doing technical recruiting. And then one of our clients hired us to be in-house recruiters.
I never went back to the agency side, but I did start my own company after many years in defense contracting in 2017. So it’s been eight years of track recruiter. And our mission is just to bring trust, relationship building, accountability, and a proactive approach back into the recruiting life cycle.
Ashlie Collins
That’s amazing.
Ashlie Collins
No, I love that. I didn’t piece all of that together, but fantastic naming. Fantastic. And I’d be curious to get your take on how can organizations rebuild trust in their hiring process, especially when candidates and recruiters alike are experiencing fatigue from layoffs, ghost jobs, diversity rollbacks, and extended job searches.
Keirsten Greggs
Thank you.
Keirsten Greggs
That’s a hard question to answer because as we all know, is something that is hard to build but easy to lose. like your question mentioned, we do have a bunch of ghost jobs. We have a bunch of hiring leaders and recruiters and job seekers who are all fatigued with their job search. You have many more.
Ashlie Collins
Yes, yep.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs
folks who are on the hunt at the same time. We’re inundated with tools that are supposed to help us to be better at recruiting and better at job searching. And sometimes it gets overwhelming because there are so many and we don’t know which ones to pick. And it’s just a matter of what we clicked on sometimes, you know, 10 minutes before or a week before what is being fed to us and what we’re seeing. So.
Ashlie Collins
Mm-hmm.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs
you know, trust is going to be hard to rebuild, but it’s going to start with one interaction at a time. know, like trust is built one thing at a time. Ju st like it only takes one person, you could be doing a great job and someone could say, this company ghosted me and I hate them. They put up, you know, they were rude to me. They showed up late to the interview or they, extended me an offer and it wasn’t what we originally talked about. You know, there’s all kinds of things that happen that
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs
break down that trust, the same way that you break down trust, one interaction at a time, you can build that trust one interaction at a time. And it’s transparency. How many of us have had to have those tough conversations? Like, listen, we were, you sometimes the recruiter and the hiring leader are disconnected at some point, especially when you’re working on a third party side. You know, you’re given information sometimes last or close to last.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs
So, you know, it’s the hiring leaders talking to the in-house recruiter who may be, and then sometimes they don’t know who’s supposed to give the third party recruiter the information. So a lot of things go into that. And then sometimes the, you know, if there’s a great relationship and there’s a great deal of trust that exists between the third party and the, you know, the main company, then sometimes, you know, they allow the company to reach out to the…
Ashlie Collins
Information.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs
to the job seeker and we have to be clear as much as people like to rag on recruiters and rag on third party recruiters and rag on organizations, job seekers don’t always tell the truth either. Sometimes they break trust too and sometimes they play those roles against one another. So communication has to be transparent. It has to be often. It has to be, you know, authentic and not feel like, you know, I’m just talking to talk.
Ashlie Collins
Right?
Ashlie Collins
100%, yeah.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs
And if a job goes on hold, tell us. Like, tell us that. It happens, you know? If you really… Yeah.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s just mutual respect, isn’t it, for all of the parties involved in the equation.
Keirsten Greggs
Absolutely. So like I said, at the end of the day, trust is going to have to be rebuilt one interaction at a time.
Ashlie Collins
I love that. it’s so true because I think it can get so easy when you’re caught up in the process of it all to forget about the humans who sit behind each one of these functions and each one of the chairs, you know, along the way. And how do we just stay connected to each other, respect what we each bring to the table and navigate it? Like you said, almost over communication is key in all areas.
Thank you so much for that feedback. And if you had a magic wand and you could change anything, what would you change about talent sourcing? And I have to say now as we head into 2026, because 2025 is almost over.
Keirsten Greggs
So yeah, well, first and foremost, I do have a magic wand because I am, I do. It’s on my bookcase back there. I would get it, but I should have been better prepared with my prop, but yes, I actually do have a magic wand because in some lives I think I’m Hermione Granger, but that’s a different conversation. But if my wand worked and I could change something,
Ashlie Collins
What?
Ashlie Collins
That’s quite them.
Ashlie Collins
Love it.
Keirsten Greggs
People aren’t gonna like me saying this, but we’ve become overly transactional and we’ve become overly reliant on tools. Now this is no disrespect, obviously, because I’m on Jovio’s podcast. I’m on Higher We Go, talking about tools, but I’m saying our over-reliance in the sense that we are replacing the tool with the human interaction. We are asking the tool to do the work.
Ashlie Collins
Mm-hmm.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah, that’s fine.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Keirsten Greggs
We are asking the tool to think for us. We’re not using it to increase our efficiency. We’re not using it to enhance our messaging. We’re not using it for the thing that it is, an actual tool, something to make us better. Because like I said, every tool, like everything you’re building, if I have a hammer but I actually need to paint, like.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Ashlie Collins
Yeah, not going to get much done.
Keirsten Greggs
Yes. So I think the over reliance, like I said, it just, we’re, making things very transactional because we’re caught up on speed. We’re caught up on quantity over quality. And some of that is the recruiter’s fault. Some of that is the industry’s fault. You know, we, we rushed to be so high tech that we forgot to continue to be high touch. Um, I, I have equal criticism for both in-house and third party recruiters because I’ve been both and I can say it from both perspectives.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Ashlie Collins
Mm-hmm.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Keirsten Greggs
but you know, that, that over, that, that they’re over reliance on, whatever’s new, whatever’s trending, not prove it. Like we, we don’t take enough time to actually prove that something works for us. And just because something works for us in this instance or for this type of situation, doesn’t mean that that’s going to be a broad, but a broad brush across.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Keirsten Greggs
all hiring scenarios and we don’t spend enough time realizing how difficult recruiting is. It is not easy. This idea that recruiting is anybody can be a recruiter that is just filling roles. It’s so much more than that. It’s and I’m not a scientific person, but it really is a science. It really is methodical. Like there’s a scientific method. There’s a recruiting method that goes along with that. So if we would just
Again, use our tools for what they are. Stop trying to be so transactional. You don’t always have to be first because first doesn’t always win the race. You might trip and fall. I always call TA like chutes and ladders. The whole hiring process like chutes and ladders. Like you might be winning the game and you roll the dice one time and you’re back down to the bottom. just take your time.
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Ashlie Collins
Yeah
Ashlie Collins
Yeah, it’s so true. And we talk a lot about this in the tool space, if you will, that it should be about augmentation so that you don’t have to be transactional anymore, that the really remarkable humans can get back to doing what they do best, which is connecting. So thank you so much for bringing that message home. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and experience with us today. And thank you all so much for joining us. Until next time.
Keirsten Greggs
Yeah
Keirsten Greggs
Yeah
Keirsten Greggs
Thank you for having me.
