Ever wondered what it takes to leap from a steady career into the thrilling world of entrepreneurship within Australia's cutthroat blue-collar recruitment industry? Sam Hope, co-founder of HPeople, joins us to unravel the tapestry of challenges and victories that come with building a recruitment agency from the ground up. Alongside his business partner, Jory, Sam pulls back the curtain on their innovative strategies, from maximizing permanent placements to utilizing virtual assistants in ways that are revolutionizing the field.
Strap in for a rollercoaster ride of insights as we get into the nitty-gritty of daily business operations. Sam's candid storytelling takes us through the early trials of bootstrapping and the pivotal role of family support. Learn how a hands-on approach to relationship-building, leveraging tools like Google Maps, and a keen focus on personal branding can give you an edge in client acquisition. If you're seeking the secret sauce to spinning multiple plates without letting any crash, this episode serves it up, along with a side of how to spot and foster raw talent.
We wrap up with a forward-looking conversation about HPeople's rapid growth, the integration of new recruits, and the strategic scaling within the manufacturing and logistics industry. Discover the unexpected benefits of embracing virtual assistants as core team members and how this inclusivity is not just ethical but also profitable. Sam's journey isn't just about celebrating his agency's success; it's about laying out a blueprint for anyone ambitious enough to pursue their growth goals with grit, grace, and a bit of guts.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Ever wondered what it takes to leap from a steady career into the thrilling world of entrepreneurship within Australia's cutthroat blue-collar recruitment industry? Sam Hope, co-founder of HPeople, joins us to unravel the tapestry of challenges and victories that come with building a recruitment agency from the ground up. Alongside his business partner, Jory, Sam pulls back the curtain on their innovative strategies, from maximizing permanent placements to utilizing virtual assistants in ways that are revolutionizing the field.
Strap in for a rollercoaster ride of insights as we get into the nitty-gritty of daily business operations. Sam's candid storytelling takes us through the early trials of bootstrapping and the pivotal role of family support. Learn how a hands-on approach to relationship-building, leveraging tools like Google Maps, and a keen focus on personal branding can give you an edge in client acquisition. If you're seeking the secret sauce to spinning multiple plates without letting any crash, this episode serves it up, along with a side of how to spot and foster raw talent.
We wrap up with a forward-looking conversation about HPeople's rapid growth, the integration of new recruits, and the strategic scaling within the manufacturing and logistics industry. Discover the unexpected benefits of embracing virtual assistants as core team members and how this inclusivity is not just ethical but also profitable. Sam's journey isn't just about celebrating his agency's success; it's about laying out a blueprint for anyone ambitious enough to pursue their growth goals with grit, grace, and a bit of guts.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Wow, what an episode that was with Sam Hope from HPeople Made he is crushing it, him and Jory the team they're building, and we got to break down every part of their last six months, even the six months prior to what it was like to start their business. There is no other company in Australia that's been bootstrapped in the last eight months in recruitment blue collar that is growing as fast as them.
Speaker 1:So if you're looking to get into the weeds, the detail of how someone went from being a recruitment leader at their previous agency to justifying why to start their own, the journey of starting their own, and how they've been able to scale up, then this episode is for you. We hope you enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a Recruiter. We are here with the famous Sam Hope from HPeople. Thank you for coming on, Sam.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me back, boys.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Now for those of the listeners that don't know who you are. So you are the first recruitment agency labor hire recruitment agency that joined Xrecruiter many, many months ago. You're a massive success story. You're our poster child that we like to use for the outcomes that you can have when you do take the leap to start your own agency. So we're really keen to dive into the journey from pre-starting your agency why you decided to do it, why you chose Xrecruiter. Did you have any doubts at the end of the process or in the first couple of months of starting, and where you're at today and how all that works. So I think we've got a lot to dive into today and I'm pretty excited.
Speaker 1:It's going to be good. It's going to be good. So, let's start. Sorry, mate, do you want to go?
Speaker 3:We always cut a shell off. That's all right.
Speaker 1:So let's start with. You're at Synergy placements Correct Labor hire company. You had a team. Can you describe your position prior to starting your agency? What were you doing? What were your responsibilities?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I was working for Synergy placements. I was the division manager for the logistics division, so essentially I was in charge of any role in Brisbane that was to do with moving things from one place to another. So both blue and white collar roles Started off on my own originally and then built a team beneath me and, yeah, worked out to be. You know, it was very, very good, very nice place to work and I very much enjoyed my time there. Yeah, nice.
Speaker 1:So when you say, built a team underneath you, so you built the desk up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, built the desk up from cold and then, once I got to a position where I wasn't enjoying myself and I was too busy, we would take on a hire Generally rookie recruiters as well.
Speaker 3:I do generally prefer to train up rookie recruiters that have some understanding and expertise in the industry of which they recruit, and essentially what I would do is I would introduce or teach them to recruit first, you know, interview candidates, get them compliant, basically all of the process that goes behind recruitment. I'd then introduce them to my clients in a certain area, whether it be usually a geographical patch that's bound by a river or a road or something, so they know where to aim their attention. I'd hand over accounts first, but still be very, very heavily involved with the operations and every recruit. I'd be CC'd in all the emails to make sure that the consultant was basically doing exactly what I would do, following up what I would do, you know, given that higher level of communication. And then eventually, when they're in a position where they're looking after their own accounts, we'd start doing business development to further grow their desk, and then that would free up my time to hunt into a new area or however I wanted to, wherever I wanted to sort of point and shoot.
Speaker 1:So how many team members did you have underneath you at the point where you decided all right. Why am I doing this for myself?
Speaker 3:Well, we split the divisions up into two, so manufacturing and logistics. I had at one point four people under me and then the manufacturing team had about three or four people in total as well, and that's in Australia. And one thing that we like to do, which is very beneficial, is obviously support every consultant with a VA. So every single time we do a hire in Australia, we'd also do a hire for a VA to get them trained up to assist that consultant when they needed help.
Speaker 2:So you're essentially a team of 24. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 3:It's quite a big team, like obviously you have a few people drop off, don't make the mustard in that. But yeah, pretty much, yeah, it was a good team, it was a big team and yeah it was good you did that in two years.
Speaker 2:Two and a half years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy growth, and so a lot of people might not remember the podcast that we did with you and Jory on at the same time, but you were our first LinkedIn inquiry, yeah.
Speaker 3:I remember.
Speaker 1:And like we didn't realise the day yeah, the same day that we kind of launched.
Speaker 3:We dragged it out a bit, though, didn't we?
Speaker 1:Oh, it took a while but you know, big decisions take a while to make.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1:So what was going through your head, like what was like the light bulb moment of maybe we should do this for ourselves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, my biggest thing was I wanted to own a part of the business that I'm growing, that I'm and I'm going to be working with for the rest of my career. So you know, we just sort of started looking down avenues of how we could make that happen. Jory obviously saw your post and sent me a message and said you know, maybe we should talk to talk to these guys, because the biggest issue and problem with starting a temp recruitment agency is you even need millions of dollars in the bank to fund payroll or you need to be able to convince the banks that they should lend you millions of dollars. And you know you've even got assets that you know you can put on the line which you know most young, younger people probably don't have. So it sort of bounds your your hands a little bit in terms of what you can do.
Speaker 3:You know we were looking down potential routes of investors, but you know they want obviously a cut of the mustard at the end of it. And then obviously we started talking to you guys and you know they really got to understand the business model and how you know you guys essentially invest in your partners and trust in your partners to grow their own business and we actually get to keep 100% of the business. So you know, definitely respect you boys to, you know, helping us out and the other partners, because otherwise you know it wouldn't, wouldn't be possible the way we're doing it essentially.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, no, I appreciate that. So it took you six months to make the decision.
Speaker 1:It was a long time yeah obviously you had a few moving parts. You know you needed to make sure that your you know your personal life was in order, correct. I find that a lot of recruiters are in two major milestones in their life. Typically and it wasn't exactly you, but this was kind of jory is either they're having kids or they're saving for a house, and there's it's always something, there's something doing where it's like how do we fit in? Starting?
Speaker 3:a business. Yeah, it's never the right time. Yeah, yeah, yeah Is it.
Speaker 1:So how did you come to terms with essentially being really successful at synergy placements, growing a team, spending a couple of years there to going? I'm about to rip it all up and start from zero, Like, was there any kind of psychological, you know, justifications or hurdles you're trying to go through, or what were you focused on? We were like, oh, the big picture, the big picture. Or were you just not thinking about the absolute grind that you're about to go through? What happened there?
Speaker 3:I knew full well going to start a cold desk it was going to be a serious grind but I backed myself and I knew that I could do it because I'd done it before. And I guess, like when you're starting new desks and you know you're hiring new people to look after those desks and you know I even went on and started last year to build a desk into Wumba which was, you know, 100%, completely cold desk again and I think within the first 30 days I had about 15 temps out actually working with new businesses. So I knew myself that I could do it. I just I didn't know the time frame in which it was going to happen. You know, sometimes you get lucky and you land a really good, massive client early on. So I didn't know whether it was going to be sort of a slow start or a quick start. But I think you know when you've got, when you've gone all in, you've pushed all your chips in, you know you've got no income, it really lights a fire under you to work a little bit harder. And I think the work that we put in in the early days you know, trying to make those 30 to 50 cold BD calls a day just to get client meetings, just to get terms of business signed, just to get jobs on. I think that's what really accelerated our growth in the early days to sort of get us to where we are now.
Speaker 3:I mean, I know that you boys said you know when you start up you've got to have a bit of funds behind you or you know you need to be able to sustain your lifestyle for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 3:But I think from when we stopped working and had no more income, I think we were comfortably paying ourselves within four to six weeks. You know, once invoices started getting paid and this and that. So it wasn't. It wasn't a massive, you know worry where it's going to be like. Is it going to be six months where we're not going to have a wage? You know, and we didn't take anything. You know crazy. It was literally we can afford to live and pay our mortgage. And you know, our biggest goal for the business was we really need to bank some cash down hard because we want to scale, we want to grow. We've got a business plan and a growth plan pretty much setting out the next five years, and to do that we need some funds in the bank to pay for salaries in the early days, while we're training these people up and, you know, getting them rolling and those sorts of things.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting that you brought up how much money you have in the bank, or how long is it going to be until you can start paying yourself.
Speaker 3:That's the biggest worry, I would say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Like I don't know about you, Declan, but like every recruiter I speak to is there's everyone has very different expectations or ideas around what life will look like when they do start out on their own. It's you know, do I need six months savings? Do I need a hundred grand in the bank? Am I going to be on fruit toast for the next, you know, nine months? What were your expectations Going into starting your own business, versus reality?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So my, my expectation was, I thought, twelve weeks of zero dollars. So I basically thought I need to be able to sustain my lifestyle for twelve weeks Before we're going to start seeing some sort of income Coming coming through the business so that we can sort of pay ourselves. So that's sort of what I budgeted for and plan for.
Speaker 3:And, like I mentioned, you know, we we actually went pretty hard on perms early on because obviously you know that's instant revenue with the temps, obviously there's payment terms and it's sort of a bit of a longer game to build up your temp, your temp book. So we sort of went after a few perms early on, which was very, very beneficial. I mean, jory did some amazing work breaking into the maintenance and the trade space, which was very, very helpful for us in the early days. And I was actually looking looking at our numbers yesterday and it's actually over 50% of our revenue over the last six months has been perm, believe it or not, and we really, other than chasing a little bit of in the early days and getting a few good clients on, you know, we've just been mainly focusing on temp, but half of our revenues come from Perth, that's really good diversity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what about on? You know your wife's side and same with Jory's partner. What was their view over the six months? And you guys are like, are you just crazy, sam and Jory, you know up to ideas again. Given you coming home, I don't know if you were telling about investors and all this shit that's happening in the back.
Speaker 3:This is all.
Speaker 2:First time I've ever heard this stuff? Yeah, so what was their view and what were the conversations you were having with the family? Yeah, I want to do this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we communicated a lot. You know, myself and Shana and Jory and Bell, and I think the wives believed in us essentially, so they knew we could do it. So they weren't too concerned probably less concerned than we were about where the you know where the Cheddar's going to come from and this and that, and thankfully it's gone the way we'd envisioned and planned. Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2:So they, they backed you from the whole time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:And then so week like week, one, month one. It's just banging out calls like I think a lot of the partners in here are like maybe like mate, what the hell is. Sam doing like he's just a savage.
Speaker 3:Just punching through like I had no emotion.
Speaker 3:I work off spreadsheets quite heavily with my business development. So I had like a you know hundreds of businesses because you know you got to be prepared for the week, for the day, you got to know who you're going to call. So I, you know, I have my spreadsheet with 500 or 1000 businesses on there that I wanted to call and then I had an A4 notebook and you know I'd only stop to eat and drink. That was it pretty much for 10 to 12 hours a day. I was just smashing, smashing the phones and building the database and, like I mentioned my methodology with making a call, like obviously I want to get through to the hiring manager on the first call and you know, sell myself, sell the business book, a meeting, but it doesn't happen all the time.
Speaker 2:Ok, ok so let's take sort of a few steps back, because I know planning your day is something that every recruiter struggles with because you've got so, unlike any job Mate like I envision like building a house. You lay the foundations, you do the concrete, you do one step at a time. Yeah, recruitments. Like I'm putting windows in, I've got the floor guys in, I've got the lights in, like everything spin and plates at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're forever, like everyone's at different stages, 100%, so you can notoriously get good at not finishing anything, yeah. So what do you do to firstly get the data? Yeah, and then can you take us from there, step by step, on how you plan your day, and then you know, yeah, action for sure.
Speaker 3:So is that like? So BD like my plan for BD initially? How did you?
Speaker 1:build your list Like did you just Google? Like manufacturing. Brisbane, yeah, and then just like put that 0, 7, so 3 numbers down because we had, like, the database is completely yet, you know, empty.
Speaker 3:so what I did for the first few days was literally just went on Google Maps and curb crawled industrial estates door to door and wrote down business names.
Speaker 1:Oh, like Google Google.
Speaker 3:Maps on your like, looking as a bird's eye view, and it doesn't even show all of the businesses either. Only, for some reason only comes up, you know, maybe.
Speaker 2:I've got a good SEO.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, if there's like one in four.
Speaker 3:So I'd build my list in an industrial state and, like I'd, you know, have Eagle Farm, brenda, or I'd have all of these different industrial states that I'd gone on Google Maps and written down.
Speaker 3:And this is a very generic business development plan, like there's not really other than targeting an area. I'm really not being too picky or fussy about specific industries or companies. You know that early one was just volume, get some, you know, get some data, get some companies in the database, and then, after you know we've done that for a little while and exhausted that, that's where I go more into a lot in Asia sort of business development where I'll sort of pick an industry that I want to target, whether it be, you know, the sheet metal industry or heavy steel industry or 3PL companies, and then I'll actually build lists of 3PL businesses that I want to work with and then I might have a week where I just reach out to 3PL businesses and tell them about all the other 3PLs that I work with and the types of roles we fill, and you know, I just want to get myself in front of them, I just want to meeting.
Speaker 1:Okay, so so you're on Google Maps. You just punching out as many businesses as you can possibly find on the map. Yeah, you're doing company name, location yeah, landline. Yeah, that's it, yeah, okay so how long does it take you to To build a list of 500 to 1000 contacts?
Speaker 3:Takes quite a while. It does take quite a while, like I'll probably do, maybe 300 at a time or so Might take me couple of the day or a couple of days or something, just to smash through the business names.
Speaker 1:When did you do this? Because if you're building a business trying to get started, are you doing this on weekends late at night, like can you we?
Speaker 3:actually so, because everything happened quite abruptly when, you know, I finished up my synergy and came here. You know that the first two weeks was pretty much just building data, no phone calls at all. So we just you know, weekends as well we just wanted to get as much data so that we could absolutely, you know, hit it from from day one essentially of our, of our plan start date.
Speaker 1:Okay, so business name, location, landline, and then you would just call every single landline. Leave a message if you don't get pretty much like you can.
Speaker 3:You know, sometimes I used to find myself spending too much time doing research On a business and who's who in the zoo and obviously it's really really good to find out all of this information. But I don't think you need to find out all that information for every single business that you call, like, obviously, if you're working on a huge client, you want to know, you know sort of the structure of who's in charge and those sorts of things. But when I was just calling through, I'd call the main line, speak to the receptionist. You know, give him, give him me little pitch about who we are and what we do, ask him who the right person is to talk to and you know. Probably eight out of ten times you'll get. You know. Artists. Mr Joe blogs. He's in a meeting at the moment. I'll let him know.
Speaker 3:You've called and then you're at your main name. There is. Obviously you just want to get information and data. So they basically cut you off and said you're not speaking to the person. So you just want to say, right, well, can I have his mobile number then and they might give you his mobile number, or can I have his email address then and they might give you his email address more. You know, I'd say ten times out of ten you get an email address just so that they'll get you off of the phone, but then you've got the bloke's name which you can obviously put in as a contact into the database. I always send a personalized email straight after that as well, which is quite detailed about. I've just rang the office and spoken to the actual receptionist names so that they know that it's not just a generic. You know, floating email, not too long, but basically just introducing myself in the business and asking them if they've got time for a chat. And you know, eight times out of ten they will not reply but that's where.
Speaker 3:I've got their information and I know that they're the one in charge now and you know, since working with you boys and being exposed to all of the tech stack and you know the IT extra of things I wasn't using before, you know, we now then build them out into outreach. Is so that bloke, that poor bloke that I've just sent an email to isn't safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so okay, so you call them, you just get their number and then like how quickly do you follow them up? Like a week later you give them another call.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah for sure. So essentially I'll put them in an email outreach which will pretty much send them an email, maybe every couple of weeks for a certain amount of time, but when I'm doing business development I think I mentioned that I work off of spreadsheets. So I'll actually have pretty much a date and a list of people I spoke to on that date and then I use that list to go back through to actually call the people to follow up and just all about the follow up essentially.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned before that you have a little bit of a pitch and who you are like. How, how did you go about pitching H people with zero runs on the board? Were you a bit nervous? How did you kind of come up with a? Hey, we're H people, this is what we're planning to do.
Speaker 3:I just changed the name, like just put H people in there and continued you know, essentially I'm selling myself and what we can do, essentially. So the pitch and the offering didn't really change too much.
Speaker 1:Because a lot of people establish their credibility with the brand or the agency that they work with and I think a lot of recruiters don't realize that it's it's not really the company that they work for, it's really them as a recruiter. So just to expand on what you've just said, so let's say your pitch is like hey, I'm Sam, I do a lot of work in, you know, manufacturing and logistics, recruitment. You say the exact same thing, except you just say for H people.
Speaker 3:Essentially yeah, because I mean, even when I, you know, started off at Hayes, you still want to separate yourself to the rest of the generic recruiters out there. So I was on the logistics desk, so I really made a point of telling them I'm a specialist logistics recruiter. Depending on if I got through to the actual hiring manager or someone in a you know a level of authority, I'd actually sort of, you know, explain a bit about my background and you know why I'm the best recruiter to do the job for them, if they do use a recruiter, and if they don't, why they should use me.
Speaker 2:Yeah so it all led, led in with you first and you have one accounts now that you've been knocking on the door for three years prior, that you never want, hey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, exactly right, and how did it?
Speaker 1:work how did it work? How did you get them now as H people, new business as opposed to you know, synergy that you've been knocking on for ages and never been able to win them, is it? They looked at you and thought you're giving it a crack by yourself. I'm speaking now to a director of a recruitment agency. Got more authority that they want to deal with you, or like what. What do you put that down to?
Speaker 3:a lot of it's right time, right place in all honesty, like there was. There was one business at the port of Brisbane that I've been working on for a very, very, very long time but was never actually able to land them previously, and I've been working on that client since haze, you know, like you know, constantly calling up and what happened in that business is that she had a change in state manager and I'd actually had a run in, if you like, with that state manager previously when I placed temps out another business and the invoices didn't get paid. So I actually had quite a bad experience with this guy who then came into power at this business that we're now working with. But I just gave him a call when I saw that he started in the job and because I obviously had his phone number from dealing with him before, and we basically just put it all on that on the table, said look me, you know you knew into the role. You know I've been doing this quite some time now. I'm quite experienced around port logistics and what you guys are looking for.
Speaker 3:You know, I know we had a bit of a bad experience At the previous company. I know that was nothing to do with yourself, focus. It was more of a accounts issue and he was trying to really push them to get paid and you know, we just sort of built a little bit of a relationship there and had a bit of a laugh and he invited me in for a chat and, you know, next minute he gave me an opportunity and you know, I think we've you know, I probably got 15 20 people in that business at the moment. Awesome, yeah, recently placed a state manager into there as well, which is quite exciting.
Speaker 1:How good, so you lean into adversity and the difficult clients and they end up being the ones that give you all the business.
Speaker 3:I think he respected it as well because, you know, I was quite professional when I was dealing with him in quite an unfortunate circumstance and, yeah, then when we had the opportunity to work together again, he was obviously new to the business and just gave me a crack and we've built a pretty good relationship and, yeah, I'm servicing all areas of the business now and even Scope to be recruiting because they're a national business. They're considering to use us for permanent recruitment in other states as well, which you know will fund the growth as well. Mate congrats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. And how do you position yourself? So you did you work that out pretty early on to not just be a cliche recruiter calling up and saying you have candidates and you know to put yourself first and you know sort of create that personal brand over the phone and and lead in with relationships. How did that story or Situation come about?
Speaker 3:we like, hey, this is the ticket yeah, well, I did, I did a little bit of training, obviously in the in the early days and you sort of you sort of learn what works and what doesn't work. And you know, I sort of change my pitch a little bit to start involving competitors, names of who I'm ringing. So if I'm ringing a business, oh, figure out who their competitors are and you know, sometimes, or more more often than not, I've actually worked with one of them before at some stage. So I'll actually do you know business name drop and I think it's you know A story. Yeah, when I, when I started out and in, you know business name drops or name drops, you know you get a bit more credibility in the industry.
Speaker 3:Because if you know him or if you, if you can see that they're, you know mutual Connections, or if they're you know in the same industry and I've just find that that was the special ticket to get in buying from hiring managers because you know, if you just ring up, like you said in your cliche, hey, do you need anybody at the moment?
Speaker 3:You know they're they're gonna be pretty sharpish to get you off the phone. But if you can talk about something that's relatable to their business and like. For instance, at the moment I'm going quite hard on extrusion and like plastic manufacturing essentially. So we work with a number of businesses that you know manufacture plastic hoses and plastic tanks and these sorts of things. So when I'm doing my BD list for the week I'll actually research other plastic manufacturing companies in the area. I did a BD call last week to a company in Crestmead, did two name drops, both of which he is aware of the companies, and he invited me to come in and I'm going into meet him tomorrow to discuss, you know, that, their recruitment process that they're currently working with and what opportunity there would be for me to make their lives easier.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if there are any recruiters out there that are interested to find out what it's like to have a VA, support them in their role whether that be to bill more, reduce tasks that they don't enjoy doing or be a more effective recruiter in their niche then we definitely recommend reaching out to the outsourced people or top, reach out to them, inquire on how they can implement a VA in your agency and to support you. Like, if you mention ex-recruiter or confessions of a recruiter, they will give you a 13% discount off your bill per month on this VA. That will allow you to scale your business, scale your desk and to bill more and make more money. So go, reach out to the outsourced people, say confession sent you, get your discount and see what is possible. So you're not pitching candidates, you're just saying hey, do you want to catch up? I do a lot of work with company A, company B. Let's have a chat about recruitment see how we can fit in.
Speaker 1:So it's more of a partnership rather than just hey, do you need some candidates, so I can send you someone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but what I do do is, like I mentioned, while I'm doing my business development, every single contact I speak to I put them in a contact list.
Speaker 3:So that contact list might be Northside Production Client and that would be a hiring manager or a production manager that I've got the contact details for or spoken to at some stage, or he's responded to an outreach or you know, somehow I've got his details and I know that he uses those staff. And then what I do is if I recruit or if I've interviewed and registered a very, very good candidate that is a production worker on the Northside, I then do a bulk email out to the that list. So if I've got a good candidate that's how I do my reverse marketing, because I'll actually reverse market that candidate in an email to 200 hiring managers that look for that candidate and the response rate's unbelievable. What would be the response rate? Probably 20%, would say you know, would I think that's not 20 to 30%. They'd either say they see value in it, you know, because they're like thanks so much for thinking of us and reaching out. We're okay for now, you know, and then I'll got their mobile number.
Speaker 1:Give them a call. You know what that's so funny? Because I find that like you send out a bulk email let's say there's like 300 hiring managers and you get like 50 out of office replies with their mobile. You're like beauty, this is good to go.
Speaker 3:I actually put all of them. So if somebody responds to an outreach for me, I've got another list that is called responded to outreach, which is another BD list of mine, because then I'll just scroll through that some mornings, like if I have been unprepared on a Monday morning, I've got my BD list there because all I've got to do is click on you know, one of the contacts in there, have a look at the history and say, oh yeah, you know, reverse marketed a candidate there. They've said that they're not interested. Just give them a call.
Speaker 3:Just give them a call and touch you know, just say you know how's everything going this year. You know, from what I've seen so far, everything's picked up seriously quick, seriously quick. Like we're already back at the numbers or the hours that we were last week of December, in the second week in January.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm speaking to a lot of recruiters as heaps of activity and energy in the market at the moment IT labor, hire, contracting- I think, everyone's starting to really pick up sales. Yeah, so what about when you have enough jobs, right, because it sounds like you guys are flying? How many contractors did you get out in your first three months, like? What were your actual results from your hard start to your first three months in your business?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when we initially did our business plan, I sort of based it off what I thought was achievable, being conservative. So I thought that we'd be able to add eight new temps per month, pretty much consistently, month on month, and I was being conservative and thought, you know, this is realistic, this is what we're going to do. Let's plan our finances and budgets off of this growth and you know, we more than doubled that. So I mean, at the moment we're getting into, you know, we're into the triple digits now and it's pretty much just been a, you know, gradual incline in temp numbers and build hours from, you know, month one to where we are now. I guess that the good problem that we're facing at the moment, which I knew we would face, is we've got a lot of jobs on at the moment, which obviously then funds our plans for the growth over the next 12 months, which is already well underway. But we have to. We've got too many jobs on at the moment, which I know is a good problem to have Definitely.
Speaker 1:So in your first 90 days, how many contractors did you have out?
Speaker 3:In our first 90,. Well, we doubled it. We pretty much did about six. I think it was 16 additional a month, pretty, pretty consistently in the early days. So you know we would have been into the 50, 50 by month three, 100 by month, six, you know, and just, we're at a point now where you know we're we're resourcing candidates for our open jobs. We really need to onboard the new staff that we've got, starting on Monday next week and the following Monday, which is very exciting.
Speaker 3:This is when it all gets real, yeah 66 months in and we go from two to four. Mate, that's awesome yeah.
Speaker 1:I can't I don't know of any blue collar labor hire businesses that are able to have as many contractors out in their first six months, let alone adding staff by month six and seven and growing the way that you guys are and it's not, it's not like shooting from the hip. Well, that I did when I started Vendito. I mean, I put on like 10, 12 people in my first 12 months and it cost me a shitload of money. I went backwards, back down to five or six consultants really quickly cause it was like shooting from the hip. Growth it wasn't. There was no strategy behind it, but you guys have got really solid foundations in your business to then start growing out. So I feel like you're seven months in business but it's almost like five years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's good, it's awesome. Yeah, it is awesome.
Speaker 1:What do you put that down to? Is it just BD? Are you just a BD machine, or is there? Do you have any special skills or experience that you've learned that somehow is better than any other recruiter out there.
Speaker 3:Don't think so. I think it's just being consistent in what you're doing, especially on that business development in the early days. Like, obviously you're going to get to a point where you feel like you're too job heavy, but it's never an excuse to stop doing BD, like you know, maybe you might want to go from doing 10 BD calls a day. You know, if you've got 40 open jobs on, maybe wind it back to a couple, but you can never, ever completely stop.
Speaker 1:How did you learn that? Was that just an instinctive decision to just never stop BD? Did someone tell you that? Was that the Hayes training? What was it?
Speaker 3:I think it's probably the Hayes training, to be honest, like, yeah, they're so strict with their KPIs that at the end of every single day they batch email the entire office with everyone's call numbers to. You know, see who didn't do their BD today. Or you know who slacked off a little bit, and I think it just, you know, inbred. I always wanted to win. I'm quite competitive and you know so I always had sort of the highest BD call volumes and those sorts of things and just stuck to it, I think. And that's you know what.
Speaker 3:When I train rookies, you know, I try and ingrain them that same sort of mentality with. You know, hit the phones, you know, if there's a reason to pick up the phone, make the call, don't just send an email. You know we're here to build relationships. People, you know, buy from people that they like. And you know, if you're just, if you're just conversing with clients via email, you know you're leaving it wide open to lose the account to someone that's actually going to. You know, build a proper relationship face to face, one-on-one with that client, and they won't feel bad about dropping you either because they don't, you know, have any communication with you yeah, you have to send an email every other day, 100%.
Speaker 2:And so what's your plan with these two new staff? Because I know our plan when we sat down with the three of us and really mapped out what your next two, three, four, five year goals. Like you know, we're talking about 900,000 temps out in the next two to three years. So what's going to be your first like, how are you going to structure it for these new recruits? Both of them, you know, have business to business sales experience, mature, but it's their first time doing recruitment. So what's their first 90 days look like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so essentially, both myself and Jory will take on mentor one person each and we will swap over, you know, during the training period as well, just because you know, we both do things very, very slightly differently and each person might pick up certain you know traits or skills that works better for them. But essentially, you know, day number one, week number one. Number two is just going to be understanding the recruitment process. So you know, understanding where to find candidates, understanding how to interview candidates, you know, because these are things that these guys have never, ever done before and quite easy to be taught.
Speaker 3:Really, like I'm quite, the way that I like to teach people is have a script. So you know. So I've actually got you know. We have scripts for you know what to say when you, when you found someone on seek premium and you call them for the first time, you know, just so that you can read that paragraph. You know exactly what to say reason for the call this is the opportunity. So, yeah, first few weeks is just going to be recruitment training essentially all candidate focus, candidate focus, learning.
Speaker 3:You know what it means to get a candidate compliant, get them taken reference checks, get them working in the database so that they know completely how to seamlessly orientate the database, nice and quickly. You know, I'd say after probably week two, once they've started, you know, filling a few roles themselves, which will just be us mentoring them through the process from start to finish so they can understand exactly. You know right, you know we've done it from the beginning. We found the candidate, we've placed the candidate, we've done the placement in loxo. So once they've understand that, we're going to start introducing them to some of our clients.
Speaker 3:Very, very beneficial for the consultants to obviously see the workplace in which they're recruiting, for I think it's one of the most vital things. So we try and get that out the way, definitely within this first sort of couple of weeks, definitely within the first month, just so they can actually see firsthand what these guys are going to be doing, because it's much easier to explain to a candidate what they're going to be doing at work when you've actually seen firsthand where they're going to be working as well. So we'll do a bit of a soft instruction to clients start ceasing them on emails, like I mentioned, still being heavily involved in that process. And then, you know, eventually they'll take the reins with those accounts. And then we're going to start doing some when they're comfortable, some business development training, which is, you know, we'll do it every morning from 9 to 11. We'll probably sit in one of the interview rooms, whether we do it as a four or I take jury takes one, I take one, and essentially we'll just start doing cold BD calls with them listening.
Speaker 1:So would you see yourself more as a mentor and leader and trainer, or a high performing recruiter like what? What do you think your skillset lies in your business?
Speaker 3:Definitely, I think, in mentoring and leading new recruiters to become successful. I think you know I know what to do now. You know could quite happily build however much per year, but there's a time where you have to go from being an individual contributor to, you know, being a being a leader, being a mentor and actually bringing up the next consultants within the business. So once the business gets to a certain size, I definitely will think I'll see myself in much more of a sort of, you know, training capacity, bringing on new staff and, yeah, getting them up to scratch so that they can be high performing billers themselves.
Speaker 1:What do you look for? So, if you're interviewing staff for H people, which you've just done, you're going to put on a few more people, but what are you looking for from a personality standpoint, if they've never done recruitment before, what do they need to have? To go, I can turn you into a million dollar bill.
Speaker 3:Yeah, essentially it's attitude. It's definitely attitude and it's just something I think that you get a feel for, like the person has to be very likable. You know, if they're not very likable, then how? How are they going to win business? How are they going to? You know you're introducing them to your clients. You want your clients to like that person so that they continue to, you know, maintain those accounts.
Speaker 3:So very much first impressions. You know we obviously interview the everyone that has come through as an applicant for probably an hour to an hour and a half and really delve deep into you know what drives them. You know what they're looking for from their careers a big one as well. Whenever someone says they're driven by money. That's a very good trait to have because you know recruitment is one of them. Industries and businesses where you can write your own paycheck. So if someone's hungry for money and then they're going to work for it, you know you put in the extra hours, you get the extra money. So it's a very good job in that respect if you want to write your own paycheck and, you know, earn hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:And what do you avoid, like if you're interviewing someone and you just know they're not right? What have they done? Have they said something? Are they jumping around from job to job?
Speaker 3:Well, Jory's got a pretty much black and white. He depends on how they come dressed to the interview.
Speaker 3:Oh really, yeah, we've had people come in because we like we like training up people that have been warehouse managers before, like myself, and no sales experience, no recruitment experience and it all. You know. If they walk through that door wearing a pair of shorts and a hat, you know we might as well just shake their hand and say good luck. You know we want people that you know want to be the best, you know taking it very seriously, like even if they are a warehouse manager that usually wears, you know, high vis shirt and shorts and steel toe cap, boots to work. You know if they come in here wearing a suit, you know that they mean business.
Speaker 2:Yeah nice, you know they mean business.
Speaker 3:They're good to go.
Speaker 2:And then made another fuel to the fire that you're very good at, which I've been mastered myself, but onboarding, training and getting your VAs to perform, I think, better than some consultants here in Australia 100% better, Much better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't want to sound egotistical, but yeah they're absolute guns.
Speaker 2:So what's the process there? Same Same. You just treat them the exact same. That's probably the biggest difference.
Speaker 3:We've currently got three VAs that you know to me. They're staff of HP people. Like you know, I wouldn't change it for the world but in the early days when we're taking them on, when we're onboarding them, you know we'd be on teams with them for four hours, five hours out of the eight hour day easily, and that's like depending on where they're coming from. Like you know, we previously we've gone out to remote staff or you know other businesses that supply and there's one that Top, top, yeah, top, yeah.
Speaker 3:Completely is like top, yeah, who essentially find the VAs. They do all of the background check. They'll give you a bit of an up, you know a bit of an overview on. You know what their skills are, what they're good at, what they're not good at. Pretty much the biggest thing that I personally look for in a VA is how they speak. If you like, can they hold a good conversation with me in the interview, and you know a lot of them have done call centre work before and this and that and the other. So you know that they can, you know, get their way around.
Speaker 2:Oh, so you get them with no recruitment experience as well. We have done before yeah.
Speaker 3:So, like previously, we've taken them on. We used to have a bit of a succession planning at Synergy. So we'd get them on and they'd start their career as a CV formatter. So they would just sit, format CVs and then, once they've you know, because we were, you know, the business was scaling so quickly sometimes they'd only be formatting CVs for you know, a month or two and then we'd say, right, you know, now you're jumping in, you know manufacturing teams, so, and then you know, as you've, as you build your VA team, we actually use the VAs to train the other VAs, so it doesn't actually take out so much of our time from, you know, revenue generating work like business development and those sorts of things.
Speaker 3:So the first couple, the first two or three are probably the most time consuming to get up to scratch, but definitely treat them like one of the team. You know We've always had morning meetings at 8.30 where all VAs are in on it, all consultants are in on it. We pretty much pair a VA up with a consultant. They work like a team. Talk about priorities, you know.
Speaker 3:If someone's really in a bit of a hole or, you know, sinking pretty badly, we can, you know, divert some VA's resources to helping another consultant. But, yeah, definitely, you know, for anyone that's looking or thinking about getting a VA, make sure they can speak well and then, yeah, just spend a bit of time with them, run them through your process. Like, I think I see too often that people think they're going to get a VA and they just work autonomously and all of a sudden all of this work gets done that you didn't have done before and you know you might send them a couple of emails a day but they get disengaged. Like I've had some of my you know some VA's before that have been our top performers that you know they can get disengaged if they don't feel like they're being valued, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 3:So yeah, they're absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:Because your VA's jump on the phone and talk to Kim. They mad as old clients.
Speaker 3:Yeah, clients. So get this. This is such a good news story. I actually, when we were a little bit light on the white collar rolls because I've got of Christina, one of my VA's that just looks after white collar perm rolls I trained her up into doing a bit of soft BD, so she's not cold calling receptions or anything like that because she I don't think she'd feel comfortable doing that at the moment. But I just said do some ad chases. So basically follow the same process that you know I would usually do and you know it doesn't matter where it is in Australia for recruiting perm.
Speaker 3:So you know we I'd say, right, go to Sydney, seek and have a look at all businesses that are recruiting transport allocators. You know, find out who's who in the zoo through LinkedIn, scrape their email address, put them in an outreach that basically just says hi, simon, I've noticed that you're looking for an allocator. At the moment we run a specialist recruitment company that you know focuses on logistics and, you know, regularly placing allocators out to other businesses in the area. Would you be open to a chat? I've got a client meeting tomorrow with a brand new client from her business development Awesome. And we've also brought on a national freight forwarding company in December that we've made two permanent placements this month and we're working on a couple more from that same. You know from the VA's doing soft business development for us, mate that's unreal.
Speaker 1:It's unreal. It makes such a big difference, like just having a VA that you give more responsibility and accountability to, for them to be able to just add more value and make more of an impact. You get one or two extra jobs for the month. You're making an extra 10, 20, 30K literally for doing almost nothing. They're doing all the legwork.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like for the roles that we filled this month, you know she's found the candidates, she's done the reference check, she submitted them to the client. She's dealing with the clients directly, sending all of the you know I'm just CC'd in on it all.
Speaker 3:I'll jump in Like I still build a relationship with the HR team and the hiring managers. On my note, and I just voiced that, you know Christine is helping me with the position. You know, and she's very, very active in all of the emails and everything and that goes for all of them. You know Christine is doing a great job sell. She's our manager, our VA manager, so essentially she's in charge. Shout out to sell, josh and Christina Shout out yeah.
Speaker 1:So she they're active on LinkedIn posting and everything too, it's awesome.
Speaker 2:They go into the Philippines, mate. They get gift packs as well. H people starter kits, really, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:We sent out sent them out, uniforms and mugs and all the merch and that sort of stuff and we a goal of mine and Jory's whether hopefully it's this year, maybe next year is we actually want to go over to the Philippines and, you know, get us all together on a five star island for a week, and you know just.
Speaker 1:That's this year for sure. That's, mate, you've got to do that, that is. I reckon that I haven't been Fiji as well?
Speaker 3:I don't think so. I think I just spent a bit of time in the country, mate, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that'll create such a bond.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh 100%, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 1:That's it Treat them as like robots robots, yeah, and and they just don't give them the time of day, they're not patient, they don't train them, it's it's almost like they waste their own time, whereas if, if you really treat them like a part of the team, like my guys, like my, my VAs I think we've got maybe four or five in our business Right we give them Christmas gifts yeah, I think Lexi bought bought one of them tickets to the local theme park for their birthday to go have a day off and go to the local theme park, just random stuff like that gets so much more buy in, that's so much more value out of them.
Speaker 1:And just because they're in a different country doesn't mean you can't treat them like your family and you know rise them up, and you know, make them feel special.
Speaker 3:They're just as important that they're part of the team, Like they're just as valuable as an employee in Australia. You know not more. Some of them. Yeah, Mate.
Speaker 1:I reckon some of them are more valuable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So mate, you, you and Jory and our directors I would you know be pretty confident in saying this as one of the fastest growing recruitment agencies in the blue collar space across Australia. That's large. That started within the last eight months. Grassroots, Grassroots, bootstrapped yeah, I couldn't find another competitor.
Speaker 2:And that's, you know, the RCS. They say shit like that, when not shit, but they tell us that type of stuff. People in other industries are like, mate, these guys have built I've like I know businesses have been around for 10, 15 years that struggle to get 80 contractors out. These guys are doing triple digit numbers in their first six months. You've got this complete business head now on both of your shoulders. You understand the opportunity cost. You're, you know you're the limiting factor in the gateway now to all these people like the growth in the journey that you've gone on like gizmy goose bumps, just sort of repeating this story. So, mate, what's the next 12 months? Look like the next two years. Do you want to share some insights?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, for sure, where's it?
Speaker 2:going Because I think this is incredibly exciting. I think there's a lot of recruiters listening to this and we've experienced with past guests but they it doesn't matter the brand you work for, it matters the person and the leader that dictates your excitement and your capacity, culture and your real meaning, whether you have a good career in recruitment or not, 100%. So, like I see, you know you as being the next generation in jewelry and you know other partners within X recruiter that are learning these new ways of doing things and really having an impact. So, mate, what's that look like for you and yeah.
Speaker 3:well, our vision for the business is we want to be the go to recruitment company within the manufacturing and logistics industry. So we want every business to know who we are. If they're not using us, that's fine. Yet you know, I just want them to know who we are. And to do that, we need to obviously scale, because there's only so much you know myself, jewelry and the VAs can do.
Speaker 3:So you know, the next 12 months, two years, three years, four years is going to all be about growth and it all comes down to the people that join us on this journey in the business. So, you know, we've got two people starting in February, which is very, very exciting. Based off of what we've done, what we know we can do, we pretty much just expect to carbon repeat that every six months. So we want to give them, you know, six months worth of very, very valuable training and mentoring so that they get themselves to a point where they can essentially work autonomous but, you know, still be very, very heavily involved in the team, like, you know, that culture and that collaborative team environment that we're trying to breed within H people. And we want to do it again in July and then we want to do it again in January, then we want to do it again in July. Just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat build the team. We're already looking at office space, which is exciting.
Speaker 3:It's going to be sad to leave you boys, but the bird's got to leave the nest.
Speaker 1:Where are you looking at? Are you going to take over the Vendito office space?
Speaker 3:Oh, there's a lot of talks like we've been going out to you know, office inspections, if you want to call it that, and we've been looking around the same area around here Tenere Valley, bowen Hills, sort of a little bit undecided at the moment, where there was a conversation where we're considering of looking at going out to sort of morrowry. We want to stay very central because our office needs to allow people or consultants that you know live on the south side, the north side. We all need to be able to get to work in a timely manner easily, which is why we're sort of thinking we want to keep it central, potentially around here. The only problem with that is parkin, which is why we're going to maybe look at morrowry around that sort of metro Plex sort of area and see, because you know there's heaps of parking around there and you know if you work out how many times you do laps around Tenere looking for a car park probably opportunity cost.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 3:That's been a thousand bucks a buddy every six months, look for a car park.
Speaker 2:Mate, that's awesome. So would it be worthwhile recruiters to reach out to you and just 100% yes.
Speaker 3:So we have had more people interested in joining us on the journey and essentially what we've said to those people is you know, we'll reach out in June, you know, when we're doing the next round of onboarding. So yeah, if there's any recruiters in Brisbane you know, even keen to get into the industry, wanted to have a chat, you know, definitely, please reach out to myself or Jory and we can have a bit of a talk and see if it might be something that we could tee up in the future.
Speaker 1:And just lastly, before we wrap up as well, what advice would you give other recruiters out there that are like on the fence, not sure what to do? They get inspired by listening to the story of H. People Like what do you think they should do?
Speaker 3:I think if you're thinking about it, then you know that you can do it. Or you think you can do it and you just got to pull the trigger and get it done. Like if you've been a recruitment consultant for two years and your boss isn't tapping you on the shoulder saying where's your billings, why aren't you doing more? If you're doing a good job, that means that you are profitable for the business, which means that you could essentially grow your own business. It just depends on the level of drive of that person.
Speaker 3:You know some people are happy to, you know, be a one man recruitment band and that's what they want to do. They just want to take home a wedge every year and live a you know, a luxurious lifestyle. And you know some people have ambition to actually grow a business, potentially become a national brand, or, you know, the world's your oyster. Essentially and I think that's the exciting thing about owning your own company is you can go down with the business goal and you know what you want to achieve, but you know you can take it as far as you want you know, love, that Love it Perfect brother.
Speaker 1:Well, mate, thank you for coming on and sharing your experience again.
Speaker 3:No worries, it's been a pleasure Take two. Eh, take two.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for joining Confessions of a Recruiter and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Thanks, sammy Legends. Thanks for tuning in to another Confessions of a Recruiter podcast with Blake and Declan. We hope you enjoyed and got a lot of value and insights out of this episode. If you do have any questions or you would like to recommend someone to come on the Confessions podcast, we would love any introductions and remember the rule of the podcast, like share and recommend it to a friend. Until next time.