Confessions of a Recruiter
The show is hosted by Blake Thompson and Declan Kluver who respectively own Vendito Consulting and Blended Employment. Both have been in Sales & Marketing Recruitment for over 5 years. The podcast is about opening the door to the recruitment world and creating a community of recruiters who can share funny stories, educate and have honest conversations about the industry and their experience. All episodes are powered by xrecruiter.
Confessions of a Recruiter
Jade Tomlinson (Avani Group) & Andy Williamson (Ava James) - What It Takes to Launch a Successful Recruitment Agency| Confessions of a Recruiter Episode #101
Get ready to uncover the real stories behind starting a recruitment agency with our insightful guests, Jade Tomlinson from Avani Group and Andy Williamson from Ava James Recruitment. These two trailblazers share their unique journeys from the confines of traditional agency work to the exhilarating, albeit challenging, world of entrepreneurship. Jade opens up about transforming from a lone operator into a networking powerhouse, while Andy reflects on how his background in multiple agencies in Perth eased his transition to business ownership. Together, we explore the 'oh, sh*t' moments of launching a business and the critical mindset shifts needed for success.
Securing that first job placement is a monumental milestone for any new recruitment agency, a topic we dissect with candor. Listen as our guests recount the stress of launching without a polished online presence and the immense relief that comes with making the first successful deal. We highlight the vital role of credibility, branding, and following structured processes in achieving candidate satisfaction and long-term triumphs. Our discussion emphasizes the unexpected reliance on external motivation and the undeniable importance of a supportive network during those early, uncertain stages.
Taking client relationships to new heights, we explore how personal branding and genuine interactions create meaningful connections. From attending cultural events with candidates to receiving heartfelt client gestures, our guests share stories that illustrate the power of authenticity. We also look into evolving recruitment strategies that prioritize business outcomes over traditional qualifications, underscoring the necessity of understanding a company's long-term goals for cultural fit and growth. Wrapping up, we celebrate the podcast's growth and its unique position in the recruitment landscape, offering a fresh perspective on the industry.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a Recruiter. This time we're over in Perth visiting Jade from Avani Group and Andy Williamson from Ava James.
Speaker 2:In this episode we spoke about a lot of topics, but one thing that you're going to want to hear about is the oh shit moments on starting a recruitment agency. It's not all rainbows and sunshine, and we hear from Jade and Andy about exactly how it happens and what the outcomes are, so make sure you tune in.
Speaker 1:All right, welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a Recruiter. Today we are over in Perth and we're joined by two very special guests, andy and Jade, and you're both partners of XRecruiter. So thanks for coming on. This is awesome. Thanks for having us. How do you feel about coming on the podcast shitting myself?
Speaker 3:are you why? Absolutely shitting myself? My hands are pissing sweat just now really yeah, I thought you had a bit of a warm-up you had a bit of a content.
Speaker 2:Uh, powwow with surge. You're a little bit warm. Yeah, oh no, it's going from one uncomfortable situation to another.
Speaker 3:But it's all about starting your own business, I guess, coming out of your comfort zone New skills. Yeah, that's it what about you, jade?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good having a chat with my two mates.
Speaker 2:That's it. That's what it feels like Three mates.
Speaker 1:Sorry Andy, sorry Andy, I thought you were going to apologise to me.
Speaker 3:I was going to say what makes you think I'm the one that got left out that's very assumptive of me.
Speaker 4:I think, if I had to choose, I'd believe in Blake oh gee, thanks for that you've still got a course.
Speaker 2:I was actually thinking before we got started. How often, when you were at your previous agencies, would you be proactively networking or meeting up or doing something like this with a recruiter outside of your bubble? Is this, is this abnormal right now, just catching up with another recruiter that owns another recruitment agency and jumping on a potty or what's? What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4:yeah, 100%, I think. Before I started a viney group definitely, you know it was if you're a recruiter, you're a competitor, and we just were taught to stay in our own lane and not really network too much. So, yeah, when I started the business, I think I'd only spoken to one or two other people that had also started their agencies in the industry.
Speaker 1:How many do you talk with now?
Speaker 4:So many, yeah, probably. Agencies, and, yeah, in the industry. How many do you talk with now? So many, yeah, probably. You know there are two or three that I will speak to on a regular basis, and then 20 to 25 people that I can reach out to what?
Speaker 2:why do you think that is? Why do you? Why is that? All of a sudden you're staying in your own lane, you start your own business and you're just like a bit of a network extraordinary yeah, I think it's well for me, especially like since I started posting on LinkedIn and like pretty much annoying everyone's feed every single day.
Speaker 4:Um, I've had a lot more people reach out to me. You know they're keen to hear my story, keen to hear about how I've started my own business, how I've gone about it. So that's definitely helped. But also just being a lot more open to knowing that there are a lot of different ways that you can recruit, and because I was only at one agency for six or seven years, I was very stuck in my own ways.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:What about you, andy? I was actually the polar opposite, really, yeah, complete opposite. I think part of that's probably down to the fact that I've worked for three agencies in Perth, so you build connections with people within those businesses, you keep in touch and everything else and I think it was a bit of a Perth tradition to pop down for Friday beers and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:You get recruiters from all over the place, you know you get ones that were a bit a bit cagey, you know they don't really know, but then, as it starts to become a bit more of a regular thing, um, it's good sometimes that you don't talk about work at all. Sometimes you just need a bit of a event more than anything.
Speaker 2:But I've always been a big, big advocate of it well, how often would you proactively reach out to or have a conversation with a recruiter? That's not a part of the business that you were at um like, if you saw Jade just posting a job ad, would you on your feed? Would you be like hey Jade how are you?
Speaker 3:historically? Probably not. Yeah, since starting up my own business, I'd say it's probably been a bit more regular both ways People reaching out to me, me reaching out to people. It's just become a bit more organic, more than anything else, which is quite eye-opening, to be perfectly honest, but there's certainly been a lot of support within the industry for what I've done.
Speaker 1:From my perspective, and you're five, six months in with Ava James. Yeah, jade's 12 months with Avani, 12 months.
Speaker 4:Yeah, happy anniversary. Yeah, happy anniversary.
Speaker 1:Jade. So is it because when you're in business, you become more of like you want to learn, you want to self-educate, you want to be around other people doing a similar thing? Is that, I reckon, why you look for more answers? Or is there? Do you feel like when you're in agency land, you just you get what you get and you think that's sort of all. You need to know what's that shift? Because, like, I experienced it too when I got into business. But when I was working in the agency I thought, oh, I'm sort of this is all I ever need to know.
Speaker 3:And then is it because when you're in business you realize there's so much you don't know, so much you don't know. But I also think that you look for different ways to do things and also you try and learn from others that are a step ahead in the journey. You know. In that sense, you know, I'm only like five, five and a half months in you, so there are people that have done it for 12 months.
Speaker 2:There are people I know that have done it for four, five, six years, 10 years plus.
Speaker 3:They are naturally going to know a lot more than I am on a lot of things to do with business. So being able to have those conversations and have those soundboards and have people actually reach out to me just boards and and have people actually reach out to me just saying, look, if there's anything I can help with, any advice I can give, or you just want to shoot the shit about anything business-wise? Like, just give me a shout or come in for a coffee, come in anytime and you know traditionally if you're with another agency you know, you can see that as like I'm not going into the air.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to the lines then with a competitor to start talking business kind of thing, whereas now I'm like, yeah, absolutely, I'll come in, let's go. Yeah, I'll take whatever knowledge and experience I can get, because it's only going to benefit me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you can't underestimate the power of having like a good community around you, because when you're at a large agency I know you've worked for a couple of big ones as well you know you'll often be in the office with 30, 40, 50 people a day, so you don't really feel the need to reach out to other people, whereas when you start your own agency, it can be quite lonely at times and you need to have, you know, people you can rely on and like people you can reach out to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what would be really interesting to get both of your experiences on is you've been in your agency five months now, jade 12 months.
Speaker 2:So in business, the difference between zero, six and 12 months is actually like worlds apart. Business goes really really fast and it's really quick learnings you take. I'm probably a little bit to blame for this, but I post about how amazing it is all the time, and the reality is it's probably not amazing all the time and there's a lot of challenges, there's a lot of hurdles, there's a lot of internal conflicts that you have to try and get yourself to the next deal, like every BD call you make, it hits so much different when it's for yourself. So I'd love to be able to learn from both of you what the really hard parts were on getting started, what were the unknown challenges that you didn't expect, and, like what the shit parts of starting a recruitment agency are, because everyone talks about how good it is, myself included, but not not many people actually shine light on the hard, hard part. So I guess and you're um, you're five months in what were your oh shit moments? When did they come, if any?
Speaker 3:um, I've had plenty of oh shit moments, not just in the first two months, even recently. You know, I don't think they ever go away. I think it's more about how you, how you handle them, how you cope with them and your kind of mindset around it. I think the early stage is just freaking out about, you know, getting jobs on. You know first of all like, and then I'd say even in the early stages I'm adding jobs into the system, like why am I doing that? Like I've not recruited?
Speaker 3:for that type of role before, like it's not in my strategy. I'm just like, yeah, I'll find you a truck driver. No problem, I can do that. I can find anything, you know, the same as any kind of confident recruiter. But the reality is, is the legwork I'd have to put in to find that? And then you know the stresses of potentially replacing truck drivers no offence to truck drivers, but you know like I kind of lost sight at points just looking to get that first deal across the line, you know, and you end up kind of putting time into things that you shouldn't be putting time into. And then when you actually start getting some things out of Waka Bow and they might just you know the usual stuff oh, we had a better candidate apply direct, or we had a better candidate apply through or come through from another agency or something like that, and you miss out and you think, shit, that was going to be my first win, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:Or for me personally, like I had an offer out, I had qualified this candidate within an inch of his life kind of thing about exactly what he wanted, not just from a job, from the type of company he wanted to be in, what he wanted from life, what he wanted from everything. So I sent like basically a bloody 10 page dissertation on this guy and he went in. They loved him, they offered him and he shot the bet. And the thing that frustrated me was that there was no justifiable reason to give me closure on that. So for me I was like there it is. I'm so confident like this is ticking all the boxes. It's like it's like a 30k bump up and what he's on just now he's not going to get that else because he just had a bump up and like tick, tick, tick, tick. Ah, nah, just gonna give it a crack here for another six months.
Speaker 2:And see how I get on. You're like yeah, so, so walk me through, like what was the first moment? How far through your launch? Like you've started the business. You're like what's next step are you? Are you going? Was there a no shit moment when I was like I guess it's time to just start hitting the phones? Like what was the actual penny drop moment where it was like, okay, I guess I've better make this work.
Speaker 3:I start, I probably kind of try to run before I could crawl in that sense. Probably not too similar to your story in that sense where I'm making these calls but didn't have a LinkedIn page, didn't have a website, had terms of business but hadn't been branded or anything like that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm like, yeah, it's got the name of my business.
Speaker 3:I've got an ABN like we're all good kind of thing. You can trust me, yeah, um. So that was certainly a lot more difficult. In that sense it provided a few hurdles and maybe lacked a bit of credibility when you're having these conversations. But once the branding was in place, once at least the LinkedIn page was in place and this kind of side of things, I just felt it was like instant credibility overnight.
Speaker 3:So the calls became easier, the conversations became a bit more tangible, there was a bit more buy-in, because they could, it seems, anything you need to be able to see it you know if it's just a conversation and it's like, yeah great, you started your own business, but you don't have a website, logo, nothing.
Speaker 2:So have you. So you're five months in. Have you ever had a moment where you thought I don't think I should have done this?
Speaker 3:Not quite.
Speaker 2:What was the closest moment? Not quite to there.
Speaker 3:But just more that initial stress freak out about the first placement, yup, just to see something come through the door to go yeah, the mortgage is going to get paid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you almost feel like you've forgotten how to recruit. Hey.
Speaker 3:Everything goes out.
Speaker 1:The window starting again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's it, like you just. Yeah, it's about like a rebuff kind of thing. When did you make your first placement July. Yeah, july Was that a week Four five, six weeks, in weeks, in 6, I think it was 5 or 6, it was that was the one that accepted the offer within 4 weeks for the first guy, and then the next one was after that if you step back and actually look at it now, it's actually pretty quick to be fair it doesn't feel quick at the time it feels like whoa it's been like a month I'm still no closer to getting money in the door.
Speaker 2:What is going on?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's it. And like even if you, even if you were to like, leave your honor and go to another agency and you made your first deal within six weeks, you'd be a hero. You'd be like unreal yep, new client deal. Like that's awesome. Yeah, what does he do for yourself? It's like I think fuck.
Speaker 2:What about you, jade? Do you do you? Do you remember those moments when you first started out? What were they?
Speaker 4:talk us through them I launched in late october. So I knew that the Christmas period was approaching and I set myself a goal. I was like, if I can have an invoice out by you know, at least before the Christmas break, then I've done well, um, and I just remember working every single process to the T. I was doing everything by the book, um, and I managed to get the invoice paid before Christmas, which was, yeah, it was pretty much. And I managed to get the invoice paid before Christmas, which was, yeah, it was pretty much everything I needed to be like, okay, we've got this.
Speaker 1:You know we can do this what did you do by the book that worked?
Speaker 4:I just really followed process. So I had been in a non billing role before I started Avani for probably about a year and a half. So it's every single question I would ask a consultant in my team when I was interrogating their process. I would sit down and ask myself and it's so easy to just forget things and take shortcuts. So I was closing at every single stage.
Speaker 1:What type of closing questions would you ask?
Speaker 4:So after every single interview, you know how are you feeling. The power of yes was really, really important. So always getting them to say yes, making sure they're happy, not letting them essentially get off the phone until they tell me something they don't like about the job, so that I knew I had an objection that I could handle on the next call. And yeah, that was probably the best process I've ever worked.
Speaker 2:Okay. So was there any moment that you thought what have I done here?
Speaker 4:There was. Probably the only thing I've struggled with is I've always been a really self-motivated person. Well, I thought I was very self-motivated and had a lot of intrinsic motivation, and then I quickly learned that I relied on my managers, my peers, my you know the business around me to do well, and I was actually showing up for other people and I was putting in 100% for other people. So that was the one thing for me where I had to learn how to put in 100% for myself and how to, like, lift, you know, essentially raise the targets for myself, because making 30k a month when you're on your own seems great. So how do you push yourself to 50k a month, yeah, and actually want to do it for yourself?
Speaker 2:when? How did you? How did you come to that like penny drop moment? Because that's really interesting that you think that. You say, declan, and I talk to recruiters every day and one of the common like comment comments that get thrown out is oh, I don't know how I'd go working by myself, like I need some people around me. I don't think starting my own thing is probably suitable because I get my energy from others and I don't want to just be like alone. So so you didn't realize that that was the case for you until it happened. And then you like, when? When did you realize? Oh shit, I actually get my energy from other people.
Speaker 4:I need to like step up yeah, well, I think it was probably when I had.
Speaker 4:I had a few big months in the beginning and then I thought to myself, oh, this is easy so it was slowly finishing work a little bit earlier, not putting in the same level of of effort, not hitting the KPIs I set for myself and just really losing the discipline. And then there was one day I had a bit of a meltdown to Declan. I don't know if you remember, but I called Declan and just said like I've completely lost all structure and it's really bad news. And, yeah, it was nice to you know, have his support and obviously, like, have the community within Xrecruiter as well, because it just reminds you that, like you're not alone. Everyone's feeling this way. And that's probably one of the main reasons that I joined up with you guys in the first place was because I knew that it was going to be lonely, I knew it was going to be hard and at least I'd have a community around me where I could call and have a few mentors that's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's really insightful means a lot yeah, 100% like. I think I think what you've said just there is, like more often than not happens for new business owners. Yeah, because when you're a recruiter working for someone else's business, you've got a PD, you're told what to do, you've got the idea of like what you need to focus on, and then you just go get that done. But when you just like wake up and you're the master of your own destiny and you're like, hmm, how do I feel today? Do I feel like doing this?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I don't. What am I going to do in the meantime until I feel like doing this, and then, all of a sudden, you never feel like doing that and you neglect the activity and the output that made you successful in the first place, and then you just wig out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was confused about when to go to lunch, where to go to lunch when I first started, because I thrived in an office as well. Everyone was doing well. We were young, we were similar mentality.
Speaker 2:And as well, like everyone was doing. Well, we were young, we were similar mentality. And then you get to your own little office and you're like oh, is this, is this it? Yeah, what's my start and end time? Yeah, it gets to five o'clock and you're like I guess I should stop working now, like there's literally no rules, these little, these little tiny things that you don't think about around. Okay, when should I do bd? Okay, should I focus on this client? Should I keep doing BD? Do I go? When do I go to lunch? When do I leave work? Is it enough?
Speaker 1:it sounds really like an amateur, but it's actually yeah, something that happens a lot.
Speaker 4:I thought I was the most organized person. I used to have a full calendar and and and. As soon as I was on my own I was like so what will today be like? What am I going to achieve today? And I've always been someone like my managers have always complained, saying we just don't know what really makes you tick like. Are you motivated by money? Because you're in recruitment? So you should be, to a certain degree, you should be motivated by money. And for me, I think it's always been about, you know, building a really good team, having a good culture and just enjoying showing up to work every day. So that's been a difficult adjustment for me because obviously up until recently I haven't had anyone. Um.
Speaker 4:So having Claudia and Paul on board now huge shout out to them, exciting me saying, um yeah, that's just been huge what's been the biggest difference like one the morale, the accountability yeah, yeah, morale and, I guess, just having eyes on you, know, knowing that you have to show up for two other people and knowing that you know they need you to be at your desk at 8.30. Because if you're not then you're going to miss the team meeting in the morning. So, yeah, just having a little bit more structure back in place and yeah, the, the like, the buzz of chasing a client with other people, I think is really what I was missing, because I was chasing a client and then I'd get the client on or I'd have a win and what? Give myself a like pat on the back yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good point. I I find that, um, having someone in your business helps keeping you accountable and keeping you busy as well, because if you hire someone and you're dropping the ball and not leading by example, like how could you ever possibly expect someone else to be the best version of themselves?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think it's true even for like a VA or like a candidate manager. You know, they don't necessarily need to be on the same level as you to hold you accountable.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you just need to show up for someone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting, yeah, and you've got a fantastic team. Now, looking back, would you have tried to hire sooner? I think so, because we worked out pretty early on, you could have.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so I out pretty early on. You could have, yeah, I think so. I mean, there was definitely, yeah, like you mentioned a few times, where I was approached by people and I was thinking is it the right time, you know, to bring someone on? They're super keen on the brand, like you know. They want to work with me. They're really backing the story. Um, but I always had my eyes set on Claudia really, we've always joked about it.
Speaker 4:That was always the plan yeah, yeah, the only thing that was holding us back was her being in melbourne um, but we've obviously managed to overcome that. So yeah, with our recent expansion interstate expansion which I'm cringing at national no, that's so good.
Speaker 2:So there's three of you now.
Speaker 4:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so what's the biggest shift from going from just yourself to three of you? Is it fulfilment accountability, like? Is that what I'm picking up?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I think so and just really, you know, creating a platform for people where they can earn a really decent amount, they can create, you know, the life that they want. You know, especially for myself and claudia, like where our own bosses, now we can make decisions freely when we're like rocking up to a client pitch. It's a completely different pitch as to what it was and I think it's a lot more authentic.
Speaker 1:it's us what's different from your pitches now because, like, we talk about this a lot in um getting that buy-in to that small business owner journey and you as personals, like what's changed from when you go in? Like what do you think seeing the biggest win as pitching as directors of your own businesses as opposed to going in and pitching for a large national agency or an international brand? And what's the reception like from from clients?
Speaker 3:I think it's been really positive for the most part. To be honest, like don't be wrong, you'll still get ones that just hang up on you, tell you the fuck off like that's.
Speaker 3:That's never going to change in recruitment, but when you get the chance to, to explain what you've done and what you're looking to achieve and why you're doing it, and a bit of the story behind yourself and the business it's, I think, particularly in path. I think people really love the you know, give it a go mentality and try and help each other out. And I think not just even in recruitment we look across construction and you know there's loads of businesses that have you know been two, three years in operation.
Speaker 3:They're starting to scale up and they're starting to do really well and they've built up off the back of that as well. So it just seems like as a as a bit of a community overall. You know, a lot of businesses are keen to kind of give back to the smaller guys, and not necessarily in the pockets of like multinationals in that sense, you know, not just in recruitment in any form of business and young people getting in business.
Speaker 1:I feel like your clients like my average client would be like 50 to 60 it's like they want to pass the torch on.
Speaker 2:They want to help yeah, yeah, do you feel like, um, when you're prospecting now, clients are more open and receptive to listening to what you have to say, um, than they were 12 months ago when you were pitching as a recruiter for a big brand like, like, what's the dynamic shift of being open and receptive to being treated almost as a business equal instead of just, oh, some recruiter's calling me.
Speaker 3:Because you are the brand, the conversation, I feel, just flows a lot more easily in that sense, because you're talking about like.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, I am Ava James, so I'm talking about myself.
Speaker 3:I'm talking about, like, at the end of the day, I am Ava James, so I'm talking about myself I'm talking about my kids, I'm talking about my family, I'm talking about you know why I'm doing this and everything else. There's no kind of like blanket, kind of you know business vision. I suppose in that sense it's very passable. It's very real in that sense people engage, people tend to open up a bit more. I think it's the same with any business development. You start trying to build these relationships. You have to give a bit. Then you get a bit, and then you start building that up and you start releasing a bit more, and then you get to know each other a bit more, and then it becomes a bit more I suppose less informal, and that's where you start to really kind of develop.
Speaker 1:You know, oh, I was in relationships yeah, how deep of a relationship you could have with a client, like I've had clients with their kids in the car, that know their names or their wives, and you're all chatting together.
Speaker 2:Mate, tell us about that time, here we go.
Speaker 3:What time? I think, it was you.
Speaker 2:Tell us about that time where you went and had dinner at someone's house and you were like eating in the bedroom.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was a candidate I placed. Oh, okay, yeah, that was a candidate.
Speaker 4:Sounds a bit weird.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting story actually.
Speaker 1:He immigrated from, I think, iran or Pakistan. This would have been back in like 2019, 2018. And he was hitting me up for weeks or months on LinkedIn trying to get a job. And I actually got him his first job in Australia and he was so appreciative and internal sales job for a valve company called AVK and he was doing warehousing and internal sales and then, yeah, he invited me over and we had like a full cultural experience dinner eating on the floor, but in his culture the men eat separately than the women and kids. So that was a little bit different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he brought Dee over and Dee's his partner and Sage.
Speaker 3:And Sage.
Speaker 2:So he brought his kids and his partner and they went and ate in one room and then he went into the other room to eat with the guy that he placed. Pretty wild story I don't think I've ever had. Maybe I haven't been open-minded enough to put myself into those types of situations, but that's a really interesting story that if you're a recruiter working at a recruitment agency I don't know if any other recruiters are going out and eating in the bedroom of their candidates oh, I highly doubt it in the bedroom of their candidates?
Speaker 4:Oh, I highly doubt it. No, I think the biggest present I've ever had was a $500 Maya gift card.
Speaker 1:Wow, what did you do?
Speaker 4:Because she turned down the offer and she felt bad.
Speaker 1:Whoa, she gave you a $500 Maya gift card.
Speaker 4:She sent me a $500.
Speaker 1:Maya gift card, that is awesome.
Speaker 4:I'm so sorry You've done such amazing work yeah well she got a 50 30 grand
Speaker 2:counter off us, so she's all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah right.
Speaker 3:At least she could do I remember I had a candidate years ago. He was a contract for me.
Speaker 3:It was on my books for 18 months I think, and he was like a water treatment engineer but doing all offshore platforms and all that kind of stuff and he was from Iran as well and used to catch up with him every time he was back, because he'd be away for long stints and everything else and we'd catch up. And he went to Iran once and came back and brought me like a bag of nuts and all these kind of different things as well, like we just had a good relationship. And he's like oh, what are you up to this weekend? So at that point I was still playing football and I was like I've got a game on Saturday, blah, blah, blah. He's like oh, where are you playing? And I just kind of told him the name of where we were playing and he's like oh, okay, I'll come down and I was like yeah, yeah, cool.
Speaker 3:Well, he's never thinking in. We got beat pretty badly. Not badly, but it wasn't a fun game to be a part of, so I was there not in the best of moods. At the end of it You're trudging off the pitch and then all of a sudden you look across and you go Andy, andy, and I was like, oh shit, he's here, oh wow. You just have to compose yourself and put on your business. Oh hi, how are you?
Speaker 3:and I'm like just lost yeah, just lost fuming like not happy in the slightest but just had to kind of go right game face good on him for coming down and watching you ah he fair played because it was nowhere near him. It was nowhere near him at all, so like he made a fair effort to come down, but just like caught me off guard as well to be fair.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe that's stage two of the relationship man I finished his contract.
Speaker 3:After I went back to, went to qatar, so holiday on the cards. Well, he invited me out for the world cup. Fully enough. He's like you can come in love with me and you've got a car and all that so you might be having food in his bedroom soon no, qatar world cup's gone you know okay maybe next time it's there okay fair enough, okay.
Speaker 2: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 outsource people or top, reach out to them, inquire on how they can implement a VA in your agency and to support you. And 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 outsource people, say confession sent you, get your discount and see what is possible.
Speaker 2:So walk us through what you do at Ava James, because a lot of people that think about starting their own agency they have like conflicting thoughts. They go should I recruit in the industry that I know? Should I recruit in a new industry? I've got like a non-compete. I've got existing relationships. Do I lean into them? Do I start from scratch new? So walk us through. Firstly, ava James' niche if you have a niche.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure you've got a niche, because that will tie in quite well with how you first started and you were originally going to just try and just get a job on and fill a role, but now you're being more specific. Can you talk to us about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's one of those ones where, if I'm being perfectly honest, it's evolved. I mean the clients that I've worked with when I've been at previous agencies I've not actually worked with them since Really. So every business that I've been at previous agencies I've not actually worked with them even since, really so every business that I've worked with and all the placements I've made today have all been from completely new, fresh relationships.
Speaker 1:Well done.
Speaker 3:You're crushing it. It's really surprising, but to be honest, it was maybe needed as well.
Speaker 2:Do you have a fresh start?
Speaker 3:Yeah, freshen it up, new relationships, new drive, new identity kind of thing in that sense from a business perspective. So it's been really good. But I mean, like I've recruited across a number of different industries a number of different disciplines over the years. Some quite adaptable in that regard, um, but it has definitely evolved, I'd say. In recent times I've been getting a lot more roles and a lot more traction and, I suppose, collaboration around senior management operations, that kind of side of things where you're feeling a lot more senior roles, hey yeah, I think where I've been getting the real engagement and the real partnership and transparency kind of aspect of it is around what you can traditionally call revenue
Speaker 3:generators, I suppose in that sense, because when it comes to using an agency like for these kind of roles like if you get the right person, they'll pay for themselves and your fee very quickly, you know. So you want to make sure you are getting the first, but I had the right person first time around and the approach I'm taking with it is like all right, I've hired people in sales roles for years. I've made mistakes, I've had to develop process. I've got things right, got things wrong. I feel like I kind of have a better understanding of what kind of levers to put in place through a process. So, being able to pass on my experience and try and have a more tangible discussion around process structure and different things you know to make candidates do or make the clients do, to get them to open up and make it more sustainable or more likely to come off with the right person, it seems to be a lot better received in that regard as well, and you know demonstrating the language of leaders and understanding businesses.
Speaker 3:And all these businesses are relatively young as well, you know, so they've made a lot of mistakes and you know they continue to develop and look for new ways that new or better ways of doing things and at the end of the day, they're not recruitment that's not what they do yeah, so being able to lean on someone like myself that can have open and transparent conversations is they see the value in that.
Speaker 1:So that's where I've been getting a lot of recent success, which is yeah, because one thing I picked up on, you know, chatting with both of you both being involved, I think, reasonably heavily throughout the startup of both your businesses was the depth of knowledge and what the conversations are that you both have with clients is like and it's a, it's a cut above the rest, like not many people are talking about the commercial outcomes of these businesses or the ROI, or like the in-depth of the technology that these people be working on, or or how all that works. So at what point did you think, like did you learn or did it, did the penny drop? Or that you evolved into, you know, into becoming more of a businessman and woman, as opposed to just like, hey, I've got someone who's got a great personality, I think they can fit your team.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think for me, the biggest change was, like when I was looking at the P&L for the team that I was managing and when I was understanding, I guess, how much attrition rates can affect the bottom line and how important it is to have the right people in your team for business outcomes, was when, yeah, my line of questioning just just completely changed. Instead of it being you know, how many years of experience are you looking for? What sort of you know, what sort of what sort of backgrounds, what sort of you know degrees do you want them to have? It was more along the lines of what are you know? The advantages to your business if you get this person? What are the disadvantages if you don't get this person?
Speaker 1:um, and I think that really changed a lot of my conversations and once you ask them, once it's like, you're like oh, I wish I just asked this years ago yeah but no one teaches it no, and I think you know it's doing a bit more of a deep dive.
Speaker 3:I think more often than not, if you're less experienced or if you're looking for someone, you have a bit of a I suppose somewhat of a template in your head of what to get information wise. Whereas you don't have that template, you end up becoming a lot more open with your questions or very, I'd say actually, a bit more targeted with your questions.
Speaker 3:You know, for me it's like right, what's your strategy? What do you mean? Well, where have you been, where are you now and where do you want to be in the next six months, 12 months, 18 months, three years, five years, like what's, what's the ultimate goal? You know, and if you understand that it not just feeds into obviously what they need in the now, but what they're going to need in future, what they can need culturally, if you understand that it not just feeds into obviously what they need in the now, but what?
Speaker 2:they're going to need in the future, what they're going to need culturally.
Speaker 3:If you understand the issues that they've had in the past, obviously in terms of candidates and solutions, then you can help avoid replicating, I suppose, past issues in that sense as well, like even with one client when we first started speaking, he was like I need a business development manager.
Speaker 3:I need a business development manager, I need a business development manager. I was like, right, tell me your strategy, tell me your story, tell me where you want to be. And he told me everything right, completely open and honest. And I went you don't need a BBM, you need an office manager he's like it's got business development capability in there, but can alleviate some of that workload from yourself.
Speaker 3:You need to start getting the structure in place to be able to elevate your business and free up your time to be able to do more on that side of things.
Speaker 1:So he was better at BD than what the other potential guy could be.
Speaker 3:He just wasn't free enough to do BD so he thought, if I can get rid of the BD, then I'll free him up to do the other stuff, but really he needed someone to be helping with BD, but also you know, alleviating some of the stress of the day-to-day it was getting too bogged down in the day-to-day.
Speaker 2:So if he had that structure in place of kind of two IC within the business to you know, help him with that.
Speaker 3:He's getting another level out of himself. He's getting another level at the business. He's getting a different perspective on certain things in the business, things he might have potentially missed out on you in the past, because you only know what you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's surprisingly common how often like a job brief or a job description would change after you've had that first conversation.
Speaker 1:That's probably when you know you've done a good job.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because a lot of these businesses don't have HR teams, they don't have anyone internal that they can speak to about what they need and why they need it. So as soon as they start sort of opening up and actually talking about what they're looking for, they can often speak themselves into something else you know, and then suddenly we're looking for something completely different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find that half the time when you ask the right questions, most of them don't know what they're looking for. And when I moved from, you know, when you first start recruitment, like you're looking for a checklist of attributes that you can source when you're trying to identify a candidate. So you know when you first learn, it's like how many years experience have they worked at a competitor? Have they sold this product? Have they dealt with this product? Like, what are the on paper requirements? And that's kind of like where you start as a recruiter.
Speaker 2:Then when you kind of move beyond that to like level two, level three and beyond, it's like it's actually not about that. It's like what are the outcomes? What are the outcomes that you're actually looking to achieve by hiring someone? Putting aside the title, the, you know the attributes, etc. And so I found um, what are the outcomes? Well, it's either make more money, reduce stress in other departments, um, hit budgets, um, reduce costs, whatever, whatever that might be. And so sometimes like when, when you're talking to a client and you're getting a brief and they're giving you all these attributes and you're, but like's like how's the role measured on success? Like, what are the outcomes that you're looking to achieve by hiring this person Half the time. They're like, oh, I haven't really thought about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like I think we should think about that. And then all of a sudden just as you pointed out, andy, it's like it's a whole new role, that they're like oh I don't actually need this person, this is the type of person I need. And then you become like a trusted advisor and the whole process gets really, really easy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think as well. When you're in like the land of agency, you're often kind of selling companies the same Like. You're pitching them as offering really competitive salary packages. They've got really good work-life balance, you know the culture's great, the career progression's there. When you have a little bit more experience on your belt you start saying what's your value proposition? Why does X you know candidate want to work for your business as opposed to the other 15 businesses that are doing the same thing as you? And then opening up like the conversation around value prop has been huge for me because I can actually like create a campaign that is for that client and not just a generic.
Speaker 4:you should join for an extra 20 K or you know, because you might be able to step up in the future.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 2:You know what I've found has always been a slam dunk for me in engagement when taking a brief over the phone whether it's a cold call and I'm getting the brief within three minutes of a pitch is asking who in their team that you would like to carbon copy and get in this role. Tell me who is that person and I'll be like, oh, barry, like great. Do you mind if I have a chat to Barry? I just want to get to know him a little bit more so I know exactly who you're looking for. And half the time when you say that they go oh, that's awesome, yeah, I'll give you Barry's number and you just find me a Barry. That's perfect.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden, your engagement goes from taking a brief to them, giving you the details of other people in the team for you to get to know each other, making an intro to other people in the team, and it's almost a slam dunk when you go. Tell me who in your team right now is perfect for this job, how do I want to get to know them and I want to send you someone that is exactly like that person 99 times out of a hundred. It's like your job is super, super engaged and you just start recruiting it straight away.
Speaker 1:I found another good one as well is getting understanding what makes that hiring manager or leader in the business so special, and being able to sell a general manager or a head of department or a CEO, because that's who they deal with. Like, at the end of the day, the company is just a logo on the door. If they don't have buy-in to that senior leadership team, then they're not going to enjoy working there. And then that's another like open up another Pandora's box. You're like what, what makes you? Or like asking colleagues of that person how we can sell this leader in the business.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a huge win when your hiring manager can sell the business better than you can in the first interview, because you know it's a deal done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's actually I thread that in to give them a bit of it because you want to give the hiring manager the person you're getting the brief off a little bit of a pump up as well. And so, like, everyone likes doing business with people they like, and so the more interest you show in the hiring manager and you give them a little bit of a pump up, they're like, yeah, I really want to use this guy. So half the time, you know, when I'm taking this brief, it's, um, like who in the who in the team? Uh, would be perfect for this role. What do they look like?
Speaker 2:I want to. I want to quickly linked in them, get a bit of a, get familiar with where they used to work, etc. Um, I'd love to talk to them, not only to get to know them, but what would be a really good um angle here is there's obviously reasons why they like working for you that you probably don't even realize. I'd love to talk to them about what makes you an amazing manager, because that's going to be a big draw card for someone like this person. So I'd love to talk to him about what makes you special as well to work for. And I swear to God they go. I fucking love this recruiter.
Speaker 3:Let's fucking get him in.
Speaker 2:Because if you can really make it less about the role and more about them, then all of us like more about them the outcomes that they're going to achieve, how much it's going to save.
Speaker 1:Make their job better. That's why they're hiring 100%. They're not hiring for more headaches.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you turn it around and make it all about them, not about the role, and they're like this person gets me. I need this person.
Speaker 3:I need this recruiter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it comes back, like before you said, to the detail. The detail is not just certainly around like the day-to-day right you can get a JD for that right and like the job's the job. There might be little different nuances and stuff within each business.
Speaker 3:So what you're doing et cetera, but at the end of the day, understanding the personalities, understanding the people, understanding the team, the culture within that team and everything else and whether you're going to click with them, because everyone's different personalities. There's no kind of cookie cutter in each industry. So it's going having that transparency with the candidate around what the hiring manager's like or what the direct report's going to be like, but also the other way around, when you send the candidate across and it's going. They've been here for 10 years and he's done five years then like, yeah, that's great, I can.
Speaker 3:I can read that on the CV.
Speaker 2:It's like now.
Speaker 3:This is their personality. This is a driver. This is what they did in the past all the time. This is why they get up in the morning, go like this is why they're going to add value from a personality perspective. You know, it's, it's. I find this often missed yeah you like you just kind of regurgitate and watch on the CV. I don't need that.
Speaker 2:How often do you prep clients before an interview?
Speaker 4:If my process is streamlined every single time. Okay, yeah, if I can't get them on the phone, then I would definitely send an email prepping them around what the candidate wants and kind of reiterating what they need to pitch to this particular candidate because it's different every time how, how often would you do that out of like, five candidates to go for an interview in five different hiring managers?
Speaker 2:would you do it like upon gut feel, um, like, oh, how can I tighten this up a little bit? I'm going to prep the client. How often out of those five would you prep the client?
Speaker 4:Oh, depending on the relationship I had with the client and if I had faith in them during the interview. Yeah, but probably yeah four times out of five.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, that's awesome, yeah, andy.
Speaker 3:I think it's a case-by-case basis. It depends how experienced they are with hiring and also how transparent they've been through the front end of the process, like I had one client where we had hashed out a full recruitment process in terms of each stage, timescales, everything else before I'd even started sourcing, so like from that perspective I'm like right this guy's on it, he knows what he's doing. He shared the strategy, he shared what he's going to speak about. He was all very open about that.
Speaker 3:So it felt like there was minimal prep. You know I'd be saying something for the sake of saying it, so, naturally, until that first candidate comes out of the back end of that process and you can get that feedback from them, you don't know for definite, but that one was yeah you're prepped.
Speaker 3:But there's other ones where you know they have maybe, you know, given it a go. They've been on the tools or something like that and just gave it a crack and started their own business and starting to do well, they're starting to grow and they maybe haven't developed that skill set as much, you know, and sometimes you want to kind of give them, like you give them some pointers, some suggestions around structure, not just, obviously, around conversation, but the actual recruitment framework in that sense. But sometimes you also just kind of want to let them to be themselves as well. Do you know what I mean? Be genuine, because ultimately that's what I'm telling the candidates about. I'm telling them about it. I'm not selling it. All you're doing is communicating the information they've given you. They either like it and it ticks the box for them, or it doesn't. You know you shouldn't really be selling anything at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:You know that's really interesting because I get conflicting thoughts on this. I lost a really big client of mine once from prepping candidates too much and telling the candidates exactly what the client's looking for. And then the candidates gone in and said exactly that Clients turned around and rejected them. Candidate has thought oh, I've said exactly what Blake told me to say.
Speaker 2:I wasn't my authentic self. That's why I didn't get this job. And then threw me under the bus and said Blake told me to go in and say X, y, z. And is that why you didn't give me the job and they've gone. What Blake told you to say X, y and Z. What are you doing, blake, telling candidates to say this kind of stuff?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you need to be really careful what.
Speaker 1:What was your comeback? Or did you just lose it and that's?
Speaker 2:I didn't realise I lost it until, for some reason, they just weren't giving me.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you who it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Coloplast? I don't know if anyone's heard of a company called Coloplast, but they do like wound care, continence, ostomy products for hospitals. So I was recruiting like BDMs that sell like wound care products into public-private hospitals and you know big packages, you know 150 salaries plus card, blah, blah, blah. So like they were pretty good high level sales people, um, but then all of a sudden they got a few roles on and I'm calling the regional managers and I'm calling the sales directors and I'm, and then it wasn't until, like I think I followed up three or four times, he was like mate, we're not going to be using you.
Speaker 2:You tell the candidates everything that we're looking for in a candidate and you Pre-fabricate yeah, you're like cheating the system almost. And I was like a little bit taken back because it's really hard to find that fine line between hey, this is what they're looking for from a genuine like, hey, they're looking for someone who's going to be dedicated, you know that wants to show up every day, that's not going to just like look at the clock and then you know, clock off at five o'clock and go home like they're going to finish when the job's done. Like these are the, this is the this is the person they're looking for. And then he's gone in and said that, and then they've interpreted like I'm giving him like cheat codes to how to get the principle of it more so than anything else.
Speaker 4:But I had this happen to me recently as well, but on the flip side with a client, so I had someone going through for an interview. First interview was with was with my client who's the line manager, and I listened in on it on teams, because if it's ever a team's interview I'll always try and listen. Um, it went well. And then he goes right went really really well. I love this guy. The next step, just like the final interview, is getting the CEO on. As soon as the CEO joined the team's meeting, my candidate was, for lack of a better word harassed by the CEO. The tone of the meeting completely changed. You know he was getting interrogated by the CEO who obviously has a completely different you know personality.
Speaker 1:Could have had a bad day.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he's obviously quite like a D personality very, very direct. So I sent an email afterwards and I thought this is risky, I don't know how this is going to land. But I gave them some further preparation and I gave them pointers on what they should do in the final interview and I encouraged them to have a third interview with this candidate because I thought there's no way he's accepting the job after how that went. So I sent an email email, had a conversation with the line manager and said look, I've got some feedback on how you guys need to pitch yourselves and sell the business. He has multiple options, so he needs to pick you essentially. And then I sent the email and I was thinking, oh no, what have I done? And turns out, I got the sourcer review back about two months later and it was you know, jade's the first person who's ever given us feedback on a process. We really appreciate it. She really helped us secure the candidate. So that was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
Speaker 2:I thought, great, they're going to be a repeat client yeah, people love pushback yeah, pushback and being a business equal and going look, you're not really doing this, right? Yeah, um, it's like, uh, I'm sure, like all of us in this room right now, if we were doing something that we thought to be normal and one of us pulled each other up and I said, jade, you're like, you're really not showing up very well here, you'd be like oh gee, thanks for keeping me in check, blake. You know, let's just put the game face on or something. You know, like we all appreciate a little bit of a. You know keeping each other accountable and keeping ourselves in check. So I think clients don't get that too often, because there's usually a master-slave relationship in recruitment for most recruiters and then, as soon as you flip that to a business equal and you go, I'm not really sure how this is going to go.
Speaker 2:For these three reasons, if you want this person, this is, these are the things that you need to talk about that's of interest to them and really get them over the line, because it almost gives them a fear of loss as well.
Speaker 2:Like if you prep a client good enough, usually they are like one, super appreciative, that you're like going out of your way and you're super invested, but two, when you go look if you're going to have any chance of getting this guy, these are the three things that are really really important to him. So ask him about these things, dig deep in those things and make sure you have alignment there. And then when they get off that call, they're like, oh, does Blake think that we've got a chance that we might not be able to get this guy? And then all of a sudden they get into like sales mode and go, no, no, no, we're going to get this guy, yeah. And then all of a sudden they're selling and they're going let's just smash these three points that Blake brought up. Candidate's really happy because those three points are brought up and then everyone loves each other and it's all good. I don't know if that's like being too involved.
Speaker 1:No, I think it's just value add, that's the point of a recruiter If you're paying $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. Yeah, I was going to say $25,000, $30,000, $35,000, $40,000.
Speaker 2:$50,000, $60,000, $70,000 grand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just standard Avani fees. But yeah, I usually place $5,000 to $10,000 flats.
Speaker 4:You're one of those, yeah yeah, he's one of those.
Speaker 2:He's one of those recruiters that they go.
Speaker 1:I'm speaking to an agency. They're doing $5,000, yeah, and, like you know, flying I used to fly into state for a few clients that were doing retained sitting in on the interview process. Like, the more you can be involved, the more cut through and client retention. It's a game changer the more you're able to level up as a recruiter because you don't realize how much information actually gets spoken about in the interview. Like you know, I've sat with a client and I ended up running the interview because they were, like you know, didn't know what to say yeah, what should we ask, exactly, yeah, what should we ask?
Speaker 4:what did?
Speaker 1:you think?
Speaker 4:yeah, the hard part is actually getting the candidate to interview. So you've already got the job on. You found the candidate, you've had the interview request.
Speaker 1:You should be doing everything in your power to get that over the line for everyone's sake you know, I'm sure the client doesn't want to have 15 interviews no, you don't actually realize how painful interviewing is until like you're actually sitting on clients when you're the one doing it and you're the one doing it like and and realizing it.
Speaker 1:And like also as well. Like since ex-recruiter like I never used a recruiter at Blended A rec to rec would never send me any candidates, but at X Recruiter we've used a couple and early on we used one and it was like it was. They would come in like do you know anything about us? Oh no, I just got a call off the SIG database yesterday about the job and you're like I can't believe I've prepped for this. I'm now sitting in front of a can. It's got no idea they got called. This is such a waste of my time and you can seriously see how clients get the shits and then you can see how much they value when people like you two go in and actually have these commercial conversations, outcomes and show that care element, how much of a value add, how much cut through you can have in the industry.
Speaker 3:Just thinking about what else you can, what else you can do so you don't end up in one of these master sleeve scenarioslave scenarios. You know, because, like, as a kind of example, one of my clients who made a connection, who's senior management? We were talking about four or five roles you need to have filled for January starts and catching up tomorrow actually. But like the whole thing was, are you going to be running the interview process? I said no, no, no, it's going to be one of my managers that's going to be running the interview process.
Speaker 4:He said no, no, no, it's going to be one of my managers that's going to be running that I was like all right, okay.
Speaker 3:Has he run a recruitment process before? Has he done interviews before? No, recent promotion only been in management for three months. I was like, right, are you sitting on the interviews? No, so is he just going at it himself?
Speaker 2:You know go and add it himself sink, or swim kind of thing.
Speaker 3:He's like I'll be alright, I was like, if it's alright with you, do you want me to sit in with him? I said I'll come down early so we'll do some interview prep, put some structure in place, get some questions and provide it with a bit of structure and a bit of free time to get to know each other, kind of thing as well and then I'll sit in with him and kind of bring them back on course and kind of guide them through that process awesome oh yeah how much you're gonna charge me for that.
Speaker 3:It's at the end of the day. I said I want to get them across the line. They said, so make sure we've got a proper process in place. And I said like I'm gonna charge you extra for that. You know like, there you go, mate you could have. You could have done a big fat fee, I reckon because, like even you saying that just then, I, I was like I fucking want that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you would, because you both will experience this as your journey continues to unfold. But it's really really hard recruiting for yourself.
Speaker 2:It's incredibly difficult and when you start recruiting for yourself, all of your process on how to be a recruiter completely goes out the window. It's all of a sudden, on gut feel You're not asking the right questions, you're like you're selling yourself too much, you're not following up. All of a sudden you're just doing things so differently and you fumble your own process so easy. So the fact that someone would come in and go look, I'm going to help you with this, what are your questions here? Let's get some structure here. It's a massive, massive value add that probably isn't leaned in on enough, I think, in recruitment.
Speaker 3:It's a consultative part, though the consultative part seems to have taken a backseat for a lot of people. I reckon it's because of 2021.
Speaker 1:Like coming out of COVID, like it was so easy. You didn't have to do that, you could trip over a deal. Call five clients, get six jobs on. Like it was pretty easy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's an element of that. There's an element of the, you know, the traditional COVID recruiter as well that can do recruitment without going face-to-face, with just taking a job brief and stick up an ad and they'll get someone from the ad. They screen them, they send them across interview placement. You know like you can do that. If you do high volume of that, you'll still make decent enough money right, but you'll never have the depth in your relationships that it's going to be much more than that you know, that's the one thing that I I wish I was more um, I took more seriously.
Speaker 2:I literally never met a candidate or a client. When I started bandito it was purely high volume, high activity, calling, clients, screening, building a quick relationship that's how we were taught.
Speaker 1:We didn't know any different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was like super fast paced, high intensity, just get it done, um, and every month was like trying to find new pipeline every single month. So like, I think that's what gave us the the, the mindset that we've got at the moment, where it's we're always in grind mode, like we're never uh, we're never kind of resting on existing relationships, so to speak. It's always new, new, new, new, new. But if I could go back seven years when I started Vendito, the amount of compounding outcomes that I could have got if I just actually focused on, like some account management and just looked after existing yeah, you missed of a lot of bedroom meals made.
Speaker 4:I could just think like, like, it was the same at my previous agency. Like we once pulled up a report of how many terms of business we had signed, and it was thousands, yeah, and it was like, okay, when have we last, like, spoken to that client that we placed with three years ago? Oh, we just did one deal and then we never spoke to them again. Madness, madness, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So I I don't know if that was just our environment, um, I don't know if that's just a. You know you're always just chasing the next client so you forget about your existing. But honestly it only takes and like we've got some partners that are in this category it only takes two or three clients that are whales to change your life. Like you have two or three clients that, let's say they've got a a thousand person business and the average person changes job every three years, let's say three, three and a half years. That means that for that 1000 person business there's going to be essentially a hundred people a year going in and out of that company just to maintain headcount. So even if they're not growing, they've got a hundred hires a year to do. You have three of those clients have got 300 hires a year and you just get a fraction of that. Like you don't have to actually do bd at all, you can just sit on that, on those relationships, and keep going wider, wider, wider, deeper, deeper, deeper in that one company and you're good to go.
Speaker 3:It's finding that balance in the winter because at the end of the day, if you have all your eggs in one basket with three clients and certainly in W, you've seen some pretty big whales go under, get beached you're such a dad beached and stuff with dynamite. They're gone, they're not coming back.
Speaker 3:So if you end up in that situation where a third or two thirds of your revenue has gone overnight, that's dangerous, it's having a balance of, you know, having that continuity, that account management, that consistent one where you are as ingrained into that business as possible from a recruitment perspective, but then also still having that setting aside that time to go out and hunt new, fresh stuff and you know right who can be number four. Who can be number? Five you know, and then you kind of figure out what kind of gets to a sustainable amount. And then you know right.
Speaker 4:How more can?
Speaker 3:I. What more can I do to manage this would be add headcount or you know whatever you need to to do to make it work, kind of thing.
Speaker 4:But yeah, I mean, I'm definitely guilty of that. Like I've made, you know, placements with lots of different businesses and I probably haven't spoken to them in in the last 30 days, which which is which is not good enough. I should be calling them every couple of weeks to check in and, you know, see how their teams are going, see if they need anyone else, because that is the path of least resistance, but for some reason, us recruiters are always just hunting yeah, the next deal, the next client and making it hard for ourselves.
Speaker 3:Do you not feel that's maybe structure as well in some of these, In a lot of businesses, it's kind of like right, here's your outcome, here's your target, your budget. Realistically, how many businesses, how many management teams break down where your placements have come from or actually give a shit if you are smashing that out of the park?
Speaker 2:Okay, here's a thought. Do you think it would be useful to have maybe an end of quarter reflection on all the deals that you've done the previous quarter so we're talking maybe three to six months prior to go, okay, who are all the hiring managers you've dealt with and placed with, and then build a list out of okay, who's, who's like a colleague of theirs, that is to the left or to the right inside that business, or a business that's a direct competitor that you can just start to like make an intro with and then maybe a part of your? You know, every the start of every quarter, um, you go through all of your old placements, you call the candidate, you call the hiring managers and then you get a referral from the hiring managers and that's just an element of account management, to try and keep ringing out the same sponge, so to speak. Does anyone have something like that or something similar?
Speaker 3:Yeah, one I'm catching up with tomorrow, made two deals with this particular business with one higher margin and moving on to another one. So it's making sure obviously we've got multiple points of contact within those accounts because at the end of the day, dave could leave and go to a competitor.
Speaker 2:What do you say?
Speaker 3:that's your only point of contact, then, yeah, you know you're not fucked, but you've got an uphill battle on your hands to try and go. Oh see, that guy just left. I used to. I used to do a lot of work with him. Can I work with you as well, please? Or?
Speaker 2:who's?
Speaker 3:starting there, like it's kind of like a fresh start to a certain degree from like a relationship perspective, whereas if you've got, depending on the size of the businesses, to how many layers there are or how many different business units and everything else, but if you've developed relationships to them all, like dave leaves asked because you have all them there, but they'll also introduce you to whoever takes his seat or you find out if you can help put someone else in that seat and if you've got the levels obviously of um contacts within that as well.
Speaker 3:Then you find there's no panic station what do you say, though?
Speaker 2:because I'm just thinking about when I was two, three years into recruitment, let's say I'm I used to recruit in like medical sales, and say let's say I'm dealing with a national sales director of a billion dollar medical supply company and I want to create more relationships in in the business, over and above just my one contact. How do you frame that to, let's say, the contact that you've got? To say, give me the numbers of your colleagues, like is it something where you just call, let's say you're speaking to barry? I'll use a really easy example. Let's say you're speaking to barry, he manages queensland. Steven manages new south wales. Would you just call steven, off your bat and go hey, I do a lot of work with barry and queens Queensland, just so I'd reach out, blah, blah, blah, is that? Or would you go, hey, just want you to make an introduction for me to the guy in New South Wales, like what's the what's, what's the way that you get more contacts in the one business depends on the strength of your relationship.
Speaker 3:You've done a couple of deals kind of thing, and things are going well like yeah might be the prime opportunity to kind of ask for those introductions. You might just want to call them and say, look, can you kind of name check me with X person in your business I've kind of built out the sales team or WA but you know I'm also looking to do more interstate. You know, for example, like there's multiple different ways you can do it, but it's just, I think it's so case by case, depending where that relationship's at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it would rely heavily around the candidate's story and being like you know, if you've just imagine, you build a sales team in Queensland, you have after six months they've increased revenue by five 600K. And then you go to New South Wales and you go, oh hey, mate, like we've done such a good job here, what other states need help? Because usually not every state is performing well. Yeah, I'll be like, oh look, this guy would appreciate your call. Or you call brad and be like hey, I just did this for chris. Um, a bit of a call out of the blue, mate, but xyz just happened. Could this benefit your team?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, I think that's another really good reason why it's important to have a niche or, you know, to have your business focusing on one industry, so that you can really wrap a client and you can support them from multiple different angles instead of just one small division. Yeah, so, like with us, we focus on renewable energy and there's only three of us now, but we we are covering most teams within every single client. So if if anyone signs terms of business, then it's going to benefit the whole company 100%.
Speaker 1:Guys, this has been an awesome, awesome podcast, yeah.
Speaker 4:The best.
Speaker 1:The best Maybe.
Speaker 2:This is the number one Perth podcast in recruitment nationally.
Speaker 1:That's ever been recorded. This is probably the only recruitment podcast.
Speaker 4:I was going to say, I was thinking whose cage might have rattled with that comment.
Speaker 3:But I don't think there is anyone.
Speaker 2:It's blue skies ahead for us.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Congratulations to you both. It's been a massive year, so good job.
Speaker 4:Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
Speaker 2: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, bye.