Nikhyl Singhal

1. No control. Anyone can dial your 10 digits, including your ex-girlfriend, a political campaign worker, or a solicitor.  Unlisted numbers, Caller ID and do-not-call lists all tried to solve this problem, but these solutions still don’t prevent unwanted calls.
2. Phone numbers are tied to a device, not to you. Everyone has multiple numbers, yet your home line is shared, leaving callers guessing the best way to reach you.
3. User experience is very limited. The phone was designed as a utility—dial a number, have a conversation. It’s remained this way since its inception.  It’s not optimized for other experiences, which is why voicemail and conference calls are tedious, and why checking flight status is worse than a root canal.

Everyone has been talking ad nauseam lately about “the cloud”, and the concept behind cloud computing is to allow access from virtually anywhere to one’s online tools, social networks, data, and files. In Pew Research Center’s most recent Future of the Internet survey, 71% of respondents agreed with this statement:

“By 2020, most people won’t do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC. Instead, they will work in Internet-based applications such as Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones. Aspiring application developers will develop for smartphone vendors and companies that provide Internet-based applications, because most innovative work will be done in that domain, instead of designing applications that run on a PC operating system.”

By the way, this has been a topic of discussion for quite some time now. And it’s been going on all over the world, too. And there are already a ton of communication tools that facilitate this change. Just consider all of the current smartphone apps that allow you to make and receive calls and messages without using mobile minutes – Skype, Foo Call, Video Call, Vonage Mobile, and many other VoIP apps that work on numerous smartphones and also have desktop services.

As recruiting professionals, what is this going to possibly do to our telephone activities? Already, we’ve seen our ability to determine someone’s current location by area code decrease significantly. Case in point: me! I know I’ve confused many of you already with the fact that I have a work phone number with a NYC area code, a mobile phone number with a Cincinnati area code, and yet I now live in Washington state. Heck, it confuses ME at times!

As point #1 above states, we currently have access to pretty much anyone via a phone number. So, what happens if/when communication methods move to the cloud, and we have to get permission from a potential lead just to “call” them? This opens up a whole different discussion around sharing relevant content, appropriate and timely messaging, and relationship development.

Look – I know it is unwise to make sweeping statements. And I also know that technology advances like this certainly won’t have a 100% adoption rate. But there is no denying that these changes WILL affect the ease with which we can reach people. Ignoring that fact will put you in the same category as the guy who said, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” That guy was Ken Olson, CEO and co-founder Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a leading vendor in the minicomputer market throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He said this in 1977.

I am not a recruiter, so I realize that I am not speaking on this topic as a practitioner. But I am quite interested in how others feel about this. So I’d really like to hear from those of you who use the telephone on a daily basis. Just consider the “what if?” aspect of this situation and tell us what you think, because a lot of us here agree that this is a very real possibility, and we need to start thinking about how this can, and will, affect our telephone activities.

In the meantime, an appropriate tune from New Edition for you – enjoy!

“Steve has been an asset to Heidrick & Struggles and will be missed by people across the organization,” said L. Kevin Kelly, chief executive officer. “He has made a positive impact on the way our company functions and we thank him for his service to the Company and wish him all the best as his time with us ends.”

Previously, Mr. Blake, who joined Heidrick & Struggles in 2005, was general counsel of Aquion Partners, LP from 2001 to 2005 and from 1998 to 2001, he was associate general counsel for General Electric Capital Corporation. Upon Mr. Blake’s departure, Stephen W. Beard, Deputy General Counsel, will assume the role of interim General Counsel and Corporate Secretary until the Company has named a permanent replacement.

Scott Ginsberg is one of my favorite writers. In fact, he recently sent me an autographed copy of his book, Stick Yourself Out There, pretty much because I ‘fan-girled’ all over him. I’m in the process of reading it now and will happily share my book review with anyone who is interested once I’ve completed it.

Ginsberg wrote an article yesterday called 10 Strategies Stop Acting Like an Expert and Start Being a Thought Leader. This is a topic that keeps coming up in recruiting circles and I felt it would be a great discussion topic here. Scott’s thoughts on experts:

“With the right tools, the right resources and the right strategy, pretty much anyone in the world could position herself an expert (on anything!) in about a month. Which brings me to my thesis: Experts are morons.“

Those of you who’ve been in this business for awhile know what I’m talking about. It’s the Holiday Inn Express mentality – just because you took a couple of training classes or read a few blog posts, that does not make you a certified expert in [insert whatever topic area you want here]. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he discusses the “10,000 hour rule” – the idea that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. Break this down and you have 417 days – about 1 1/3 years. But that’s if you’re working 24/7, which none of us can do (no matter how much we try!) – so if you look at this from a realistic time input standpoint, you’re talking eight hours a day x five days/week (regular work week), times 50 weeks/year (everyone needs a vacation!), so it’s more like five years of practice to achieve success in any given area. Even then, I’d say most people who’ve achieved this milestone, by this calculation of success, would tell you that they’ve still got a long way to go.

When considering how Scott describes experts vs. thought leaders, these days pretty much anyone can declare him/herself an expert, but it takes a thought leader to really encourage others to develop and hone their skills. Ginsberg says,

“Experts are experts because they say they are. It’s all about marketshare. And all you have to do is go to their website to see how much of an expert they claim to be. Thought leaders are thought leaders because the world says they are. It’s more about mindshare. And all you have to do is go to Google to see how much of an expert the marketplace claims them are.”

The cliche “Actions speak louder than words” comes to mind here. Today, anyone can throw up a website and claim to be the world’s leading expert on this, that, or the other. But do they have client testimonials to back it up? How about placements and billings? Thought leaders do – and it’s usually because they’ve studied the industry in which they work and know how to operate professionally within it.

Ginsberg’s article describes thought leaders as individuals who inspire others, allow for questioning and interpretive creativity of concepts, and drive dialogue to help deliver action items that can be applied to real-life situations. In other words, a thought leader is someone who makes you think for yourself in order to solve problems, rather than telling you exactly what they believe should be done. Experts, on the other hand, instruct without much flexibility (ever sat through a conference presentation where the speaker refused to answer questions?) and talk at, not with, their audience, never encouraging them to stray off the well-beaten path that they, the expert, have laid out.

So, would you consider yourself to be a thought leader in the world of recruiting? Who are some people that you’d classify as thought leaders, and why? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks, and hope to see you in Vegas for Fordyce Forum 2011!

Since I don’t like to present great candidates who get inadvertently excluded for dumb reasons, I need to prep both my hiring manager clients and my candidates to increase the likelihood the candidates are appropriately and accurately evaluated. This way I don’t have to do searches over again and rely on luck to make placements.

To be taken seriously on this point I had to write a book: Hire With Your Head. Basically it describes a process on how to get hiring managers and candidates on the same page. From the hiring manager’s perspective, it’s describing the work as a series of performance objectives required for on-the-job success. (I refer to these as performance profiles.) From the candidate’s perspective, it’s having them describe a comparable accomplishment for each performance objective. For example, let’s assume the job required the new product marketing manager to develop and launch 25 new iPad apps over the course of the next year. During the interview you’d ask the candidate to describe in detail some comparable product-marketing-related accomplishment. I suggest spending 10-15 minutes getting lots of details for each accomplishment. (Here’s my one-question interview article I wrote for ERE in 2001 on how to do this.) These performance objectives can be split among the hiring team; then, during the collective debrief, the team can rank the candidate on how well the accomplishments compare.

At least that’s the theory. In the field other things happen to mess up this plan.

Those on the interviewing team actually do a very good job as long as a performance profile has been developed, everyone on the hiring team agrees to it, and there is a formal debriefing to evaluate the candidate. The part that’s a bit out of control is the candidate, and the more senior the candidate the more difficult the control. The problem is that candidates have their own way of presenting things, and there are 4,262 books on Amazon on how to interview, most of them on “How to Ace the Behavioral Interview.” To get around this cornucopia of advice, I suggest another way: learn how to effectively answer the accomplishment-based question with insight and confidence. And if the interviewer doesn’t ask this question, make sure he or she does.

The reason the prep is needed is that candidates are not used to talking about a single accomplishment for 15-20 minutes. Instead, if you’re lucky, they’ve been trained to give a STAR answer to a behavioral question like, “give me an example of when you have to demonstrate drive or self-motivation.” Candidates then give a two-minute description of the situation (S), the task (T), the action (A) taken, and the result (R) achieved. Which isn’t bad, but it’s not deep enough to make an accurate assessment. Worse, most candidates have canned answers for all common behaviors and competencies.

While the question format I suggest interviewers use is similar, it requires a more substantive answer. Using the above product marketing example, the question form would be “tell me about your most significant comparable accomplishment related to launching 24 iPad apps over the next 12 months.” This is not easy to answer unless the candidate has thought about it ahead of time. This is even more challenging, since as part of the fact-finding I suggest interviewers ask STAR-like questions for all of the standard behaviors and competencies. This way the interviewer can obtain a more complete understanding of how the person’s behaviors, competencies, and skills relate to specific performance objectives.

To get candidates ready for this type of performance-based interview, I tell them to write down their biggest accomplishments for each job they’ve held. They can then mention these when going through their work history. I then have them prepare a two-paragraph write-up of their most significant team and individual accomplishment. As part of this I make sure they include dates, the people involved, results achieved, the role played, the challenges faced, and the impact made. If I want to really prep them I’ll have them prepare this type of write-up for each accomplishment listed on the performance profile. This is also a great way for me to determine if they’re worth presenting to my client, since I often have difficulty ferreting out all this info in my initial interview. This way I can determine if they’re qualified during the process of getting them to think about what they’ve accomplished at a much deeper level.

If the hiring manager has prepared a performance profile, this type of prep is very effective. However, many hiring managers don’t prepare performance profiles, and even those who have often get caught up in the moment and go off-script. This is where part two of the prep is so important — getting the candidate to have the hiring manager ask performance-based questions. In this case, I instruct candidates to be ready to ask this type of question early in the interview. It goes something like this:

The recruiter didn’t give me a great deal of insight into the performance requirements of the job, and this wasn’t clear from the posted job description, either. Would you mind giving me a quick overview of the open position and some of the performance expectations? This way I can give you examples of related accomplishments and projects I’ve handled.

This will get the manager’s attention, and a few critical performance objectives will be described. Candidates can then ask for some clarification, and smoothly provide overviews of their most comparable accomplishments.

The key to all of this is get the hiring manager to clarify the performance expectations upfront and in parallel have the candidate smoothly provide real examples and details about related accomplishments. Unfortunately most hiring managers “don’t have the time” to understand what the job really entails, and most candidates tend to talk in generalities, hoping their personality and enthusiasm carries the day. While taming hiring managers and prepping candidates takes some effort, the process suggested ensures the best person is hired for exactly the right job. (We’ve prepared a video for recruiters to send to candidates to get them ready for this type of interview. This preview has some good tips. Email me if you want to see the whole thing.

re-posted with permission from ERE.net

You whip out your iPhone. There IS an app for that.

Earlier this month, Cardone Training Technologies Inc. released its CloseTheSale app on iTunes. CloseTheSale is a complete list of closing lines from Grant Cardone, international sales expert, sales trainer, sales motivational speaker and NY Times best selling Author. According to the app description, “Every situation from, “I need to think about it”, to “price”, “affordability”, “budget”, “third parties”, “terms”, “payments”, “down payment”, “difference”, “the economy”, “never make rash decisions”, and every conceivable stall you will ever hear is covered here.” Check out these screenshots from the app:

In this day and age where nearly everything we need or want is available at the swipe of a finger, I have to think that while convenience is great, is it dumbing us down regarding basic skills? What do you think?

Instead, it appears that companies are busy making up for the fixed assets they had to scrimp on last year and investing in things like new furniture, equipment, and so forth.

ABC News ran a similar story at the beginning of August. The Jobs Report that came out in July also showed a slow-down in hiring: in the private sector, employers produced just 71,000 new jobs in a country where 14.6 million people are looking for work. What’s going on? According to Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Hilsenrath, what’s happening here can be boiled down to one word: uncertainty.

I believe that what is going on can be explained by simply taking a look at how the human body handles stressful situations.  

Those of you who know me know that I’ve been on a health kick this year. I’ve been working out diligently and watching what I eat. At 31 years old, it’s harder for me to get back into shape than it was ten years ago, but I’m working hard. Our bodies function in a very predictible manner: calories (energy) go in, energy is spent for basic functionality and any additional activity in which we participate, and then the body looks at the balance sheet at the end of the day. Excess calories are stored away, and that’s how we gain weight. To lose weight, we need to have a negative balance – more energy used than what is taken in. It’s pretty simple.

In the past, I’ve tried all kinds of weird diets – cabbage soup, grapefruit, meal replacement shakes – you name it, I’ve tried it! Without having a better understanding of calories and fuel, I thought to lose weight I simply had to restrict my caloric intake. I tried to limit my intake of calories so severely that my body often believed it was being starved. As a result, when I finally did feed it, it treated that fuel as a precious treasure and stored almost all of it as fat, because it was not sure when it would receive an adequate amount of energy again. There was uncertainty in its ability to maintain basic functionality.

For those who need a refresher course on human physiology, fat is the body’s preferred method of storage for excess fuel because it doesn’t require much to maintain. In most people, the body will break down muscle first (the best source of energy) in order to keep vital organs, like the brain, heart, and lungs, functioning. When it feels it is being starved, it will store whatever energy is being taken in as fat first, because muscle requires much more work to maintain. This is why, when you see someone who is severely restricting their caloric intake, they are often lethargic and unable to maintain a moderate level of activity for long. Their body is conserving its energy because it is unsure when it will be fueled again.

Think of the muscles as the workforce. It’s a great analogy, actually – muscles keep our bodies active and moving. They are an expensive investment, however, because they require work to build up and maintain and atrophy relatively quickly when not used. They burn more energy than fat but are vital to our mobility. Not feeding the body properly will result in the body breaking down muscle in order to provide necessary energy to the vital organs in order to survive.

Now, think about the last 24 months. The economy has been starving businesses. Recently, we’ve seen a little burst of energy from the economy – but it’s not feeding businesses with any consistency yet. When it comes to hiring, businesses are being cautious because they’re not sure if we’re really out of the woods yet. They have felt starved for so long and, while pleased to be fed, they are unsure when the next meal is coming. So rather than investing heavily in hiring, i.e. feeding the muscles, they are conserving the energy being reintroduced into the system and storing it, i.e. investing in fixed assets and other safer investments to keep the business’s vital “organs” functioning. Until businesses no longer feel starved, they will continue to store and be extremely cautious about investing in the “muscle” again.

I wish there were a good prediction for when things will turn around completely, but at least now it’s easier to understand why hiring is still slow to pick up even with things looking brighter this year than they did last year.

It’s basic nature!

There were responses coming from all kinds of perspectives for this inquiry:

• “Remember that salary requirements should never be spoken about in first interviews (provided you know that there will be a 2nd or 3rd round of interviews). Unless the employer brings it up in the first interview, don’t bring it up.”
• “Start by being honest with yourself, why are you taking a step back? Are you going to bolt when something better comes along. You need to research the position you are applying for and tell them that you are aware of the difference in salary. You need to look at the role and state honestly why you want it and what you could do for them.”
• “Generally candidates try to deflect discussions about salary and benefits until they have been offered the job and persuaded the interviewers that they are ideal candidate for the job. Smart candidates will do everything to avoid answering direct questions about salary and benefits. Try to bring him back to the parameters which he is looking for and put emphasis on your your suitability for this job.”

This is a tricky topic these days with lots of job-seekers putting themselves up for positions that are a level or two below them simply because they need to make ends meet. There is always the possibility that these candidates will cut and run once things improve, but this is also a very real situation that doesn’t seem to have any one agreed-upon answer.

There are really two issues here: interviewing for positions that are a notch or two below one’s current level, and discussing salary during the interview process. Would you send a candidate to interview for a position that was below his or her current level? How do you advise your candidates on when to discuss salary? Weigh in with your thoughts below.

The resumé was great, the cover letter perfect. The interview went well. After the candidate was placed in front of the client, both sides raved to you about how well it went.

Really, the other candidates just seemed like they were going through the motions.

And so the offer is made. And rejected!

“But…but…but…” is your considered reply. “You love them. They love you. What’s wrong?”

At this point you slip into objection mode to be ready for the answer.

You’re getting an unexpected promotion? “Well, congratulations… if that’s really what you want.”

You’ve been made a counter-offer? “Well, let me give you some highly discredited statistics that have been floating around recruitment for years.”

You’ve decided you don’t like the extra ten minutes travel / puke-coloured company shirt / half hour lunch break / compulsory annual conference in Tahiti? “But we discussed this…”

Where did you go wrong?

Sometimes, it’s not your fault. It really can be something out of the blue.

A colleague of mine once had a candidate who, having verbally accepted a job offer on a Friday, won several million dollars in a lottery on Saturday. The candidate rescinded his acceptance on the following Monday. You could hear the champagne corks still popping in the background. (Of course, there was no second suitable candidate!)

I once made an offer on the day that the papers ran an article suggesting the company was closing down. The candidate decided a bird in the hand was preferable.

Of course, sometimes you have to deal with the client going off script. “They offered me $200K in the meeting and the offer says $192K, just like you told me, but now I want the $200K”.

Short of applying a quick, sharp jolt of electricity to your client via a taser in an effort to help them understand your point of view, you can never stop them from making unusual, contrary, illegal, unethical, or just plain wrong statements.

Often a line manager interviewing has virtually no idea about company policies (“I’m sure that the ‘no smoking’ policy in the building could be waived for you’) and so when the offer comes from you, it bears no relation to the offer that the line manager and the candidate have agreed on.

When this happens, it can easily lead to mistrust.

And sometimes, it’s your fault. Yes, yours!

So what can you do to make the chances of this happening to you as small as possible?

The obvious thing is to not oversell in the ad.. Sometimes, we can get carried away with our ability to market a role and to hit a candidate’s ‘hot buttons’ without considering if the role is actually as good as we are claiming. This is bound to lead to disappointment at some stage. In fact, I find I get better results by just telling the truth. (“Can you handle a role as Personal Assistant to two senior executives who barely know how to turn a laptop on?” is one of my more memorable efforts)

Secondly, if you are an external consultant, try to always get out on the ground where the position will be located for a spot of reconnaissance. Without sounding like an aging hippy, you need to pick up the vibe, man.

That way, you can test the candidate you are talking to against the vibe. Not what they say; not what the client says, but whether you can picture that person in that space.

If you can’t get a clear picture, tackle it early and directly. “John, after three jobs with multi-nationals, how in the world would you cope with being ten percent of the workforce in a tiny business?”

Why is this necessary? Because after the fact, people lie! Candidates don’t want to say, “I don’t want to join an organisation where the manager seems to be quite mad and the wallpaper is covered with risqué anime characters” so they say “my current employer offered me a raise, so I’m staying”.

Candidates are never comfortable suggesting that they just don’t like the people and/or the organisation and/or the view and/or the wallpaper, so they fall back on the old romantic standard – “it’s not you, it’s me”.

If you haven’t figured out by now that there’s virtually no difference between recruiting and romance…time to change careers.

In the same way as my sister-in-law refused to marry a man with a vaguely embarrassing surname until he changed it by deed poll; a job ad headed “Business Development Executive” that leads to a contract headed “Salesperson” might then lead to some mumbled excuse because the candidate doesn’t want to say “I want a better title on my business card”.

When I meet with candidates, I often tell them a little about the person they will meet. A bit of their background, or their personality. Of course, it’s hard to do that if you haven’t met them, as part of my “on the ground” remarks earlier.

So basically, my argument can be distilled to the following: know your client; know your candidate. Make sure that the candidate is your client’s “sort of people”. And vice versa.

Pay attention to the vibe, man.

So how will you emerge when the market rebounds?

The Tradition

From the client’s perspective, the senior level executive recruiting model hasn’t changed much over the past four decades. Fees remain about the same, roughly one-third of the hire’s first-year total cash compensation. Average time-to-completion remains around 120 days. And perhaps most telling is that the average successful completion rate remains just under 70% at most big-brand firms.

Even as technology developments have opened access and streamlined the ability to identify and track targets, the internal execution model at most firms remains exactly the same as it was decades ago: Rainmaker recruiters generate business and serve in the lead role on many search projects while a support staff consisting of junior recruiters, researchers, and assistants serve in key execution roles.

During peak conditions in the market, rainmakers may manage as many as ten active search projects, and the firms create a bulging support team to serve them. In these good times individual search profit margins can easily reach 65%, and for small firms it sometimes gets as high as 85%.

Recruiter, Meet Adversity

So, what happens when the market drops? Firm operators know people costs far outweigh the other expenses, so the focus is initially on staff reduction. At most firms the support ranks are the first to get thinned.  After all, these individuals cost the firm money while the rainmakers make money for the firm. After the support staff is reduced to bare bones, firms move on to remove unprofitable recruiters. With empty offices and empty desks, firms usually limp along until the market rebounds. During this period you’ll hear all kinds of rumors and stories about desperation among recruiters, including super-low fees, lower-level search work, research-for-hire, and even freebies. (In desperation, imagine what one would say or do when the quicksand is up to their neck.)

Opportunity From the Ashes

What happens to these people when they lose their job? Backs against the wall, many realize they can perform search work without a search firm. This is often how small boutique search firms begin. Tough times can produce the best new adventures, like this one:

A 15-year recruiting veteran set out to start a boutique firm. His first task was to meet with several ex-clients and ask them what they wanted from their search partners. Not only did these ex-clients appreciate his interest, he was able to use their input to build a better model. In addressing their needs, all of those ex-clients eventually became clients. Asking his clients what they wanted out of their recruiter seemed like such an innovative approach, and yet so obvious. Why hadn’t he done it before? “Well,” he admitted, “I didn’t need to.”

New Ideas

As a consultant, I’ve seen a number of new approaches to executive search, many that are warmly welcomed by clients. These include:

• Risk-Sharing: While most clients would prefer a contingency model, recruiters are compromising by sharing financial risk associated with an unsuccessful search project. These recruiters are making as much as half of their retainer dependent on a successful completion. 50% up front, 50% upon successful completion.
• Flat Fees: Flat retainer fees capped at a lower rate. Rates as low as 20% in some cases.
• Stage-Gate Payment Structure: Clients are billed when certain stage gates are met, such as number of candidates presented, process continuation (when a candidate is deemed acceptable to move further through the interview process), etc.

The ideas above represent concepts that have developed over the past decade. However, none of them are particularly inspiring. What can you do today to generate a unique and fair proposition for your clients?

Most of these ideas came from a time when clients pushed back against executive recruiters in a down market. When the market is back up, clients will have less leverage against executive recruiters. Isn’t now is the time for all parties (recruiters and clients) to be working toward new services and concepts?

For us, pipelining came out of the down market, too. It’s a model that offers ongoing services in exchange for longer-term fees. The recruiter provides an ongoing pipeline of candidates for numerous roles in support of succession gaps, vacancies, and longer-term succession plans.  It has been well received by many large companies looking for new ways to partner with recruiters.

The advantages of pipelining are numerous, but here are just a few:

• Time-based fees for teams instead of compensation-based retainer fees. Think “pay-as-you-go.”
• Clients own the data. You are charging for time and working on their behalf. They own all of the data.
• Organize and deliver the data in an online vehicle that allows them complete transparency.
• Be accountable by dropping huge, long-term contracts and perform every month for your fees.

While these ideas may sound too radical, winning this type of work almost always results in long-term relationships, multiple projects and lots of successes. Most of our clients have been engaged for over three years, and none have suspended our service. Using this model recruiters become an arms-length consultant that clients see as fair and flexible. In our cases we’ve had numerous clients re-direct all of their senior hiring needs to this model, a testament to its acceptance over transactional search.

So what was the key that helped us develop a new concept? For us, it was sort of an epiphany. We removed the compensation-based fee structure and applied our time value instead. Once we determined the fair value of every executive recruiter and support staff member, we were able to build pricing packages around those time values. By removing this barrier (comp. fee), we were able to be more creative and address many diverse needs of our clients beyond transactional search.

Are You Paralyzed By History?

I saw a senior recruiter virtually paralyzed when a client tasked him with creating an ongoing relationship fee structure that would cover multiple hires, undetermined and unending. He only knew compensation-based fee structures, and because he insisted on it be a part of the agreement the client never saw it as being completely fair. (the recruiter never won the business.)

Knowing how larger firms continue the cycle of building, tearing down and rebuilding the same exact business model, can boutiques use this time to develop new concepts and jump out in front of the competition?

We know how traditional search firms will emerge. How will you emerge? Leave your thoughts below in the comments.