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
The Million Dollar Biller Webinar, with Matt Cossens | Confessions of a Recruiter #102
Unlock the secrets to becoming a top-tier recruiter with strategies that will redefine your approach to success. Ever wondered how some recruiters manage to excel without burning the midnight oil? Discover the transformative power of time blocking, talent cultivation, and intensity management to propel your career from good to great. We explore the nuances of structuring your day, the importance of honing your skills, and the art of strategically managing time to achieve exceptional results without necessarily extending your work hours.
Join us as we unravel the complexities of maintaining focus and productivity amidst the chaos of recruitment. Learn how personal trigger mottos can keep your motivation soaring, and how evaluating the urgency of tasks can safeguard your reputation and revenue. We reveal advanced techniques for building a thriving client pipeline, from mastering the art of the personalized pitch to overcoming client objections with storytelling finesse. Discover how understanding client personas and aligning your strategies with their unique challenges can set you apart in a competitive market.
Our episode offers a roadmap for mastering the recruitment process, emphasizing the critical role of detailed job briefs, clear timelines, and consistent candidate evaluations. From the intricacies of client objection handling to the dynamics of candidate counteroffers, we equip you with the tools to navigate the recruitment landscape confidently. Join us on this journey to refine your recruitment approach and secure lasting success in your profession.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
what we're going to cover tonight is we're going to work through a bunch of topics, so I want to start with outcomes that matter and really looking at how you frame up your week from there. I'm going to take everyone through the pipeline builder tool. So the pipeline builder tool I know everyone's going to get that after the session, but I'm going to walk you through it at a high level. It's a nice straightforward tool for you to use and we'll walk you through that step by step. We're going to talk about language of leaders and really how that feeds into your pitch, so how you identify the right people from a client persona perspective and then how you sell to them more effectively a client persona perspective and then how you sell to them more effectively. From there. We're then going to quickly whip through the recruitment process and the steps that I think are really, really important. We won't be able to do excellence in the recruitment process in detail tonight, but we'll touch on that, and then we're going to walk through the three Cs and I'm going to share with you guys things that I think are important and some linkages that are there that are key for you to pick up in that journey from good to great. So where do I want to start? So, in our journey to becoming a million dollar biller, where I think it's really important to start is really looking at your habits, your routines, how you time block.
Speaker 1:So, before you jump into the screen and start thinking about the outcomes that matter and the things that you can see there, what I want to talk about firstly is time blocking. So time blocking is a very common discussion point I have with high performers around how you scale your day and how you get the best out of your week. So, for everyone on this call, I want to make this really simple for you to start. So most recruiters are too reactive. So where we want to start is with just three time blocks. So, regardless of where you are today, each day, I believe you should have three time blocks and they are one, business development and prospecting. So that has to be a core time block for you. So I don't know what time you start It'll be different for everyone on the call, but my first three to four hours of the day I like to do is business development. So my very first time block let's say 8 to 11, is prospecting, and it's prospecting. Where I've come prepared. I have a client list. I'm using the pipeline builder that we're going to talk about later tonight. That's time block number one.
Speaker 1:Time block number two you need some time in your day to firefight, to do things that are reactive, to deal with things that are in your pipeline. So 11 to 2 time block for me is always either reactive things I need to do or proactive things that need to get tackled. If I have not enough pipeline, I'm using that for business development. So big caveat if you've got less than five jobs on, you should be using that to also prospect from a time blocking perspective. And then your third time block is obviously candidates. So you can't neglect candidates. That's where you're going to lead generate. All of that ties back to your process. That's how you're going to close out roles. So you need that time for client activity and every one of those calls should be powerful, they should be measured and you should be really clear on what you're doing. So you should have a clear phone screening process. If you're phone screening, clear way to lead generate and we'll get into three Cs later on. So for me, those three time blocks is where excellence actually starts.
Speaker 1:Most recruiters who I've worked with in the past. Most average performers come in and they have no plan of the day. They sit down, the very first thing they do is look at their inbox and then they do a to-do list. We want to make sure that's not what we're doing, so never come in and open your inbox or read your inbox first and then do a to-do list. Start with those time blocks Super, super, super important. So then I want to weave into what I actually think is important from a success point of view. So for me, we're going to start at the top of the screen here.
Speaker 1:Which are outcomes that matter? Now, everyone will have seen a variant of a calculator, whether that's a job to interview calculator, a CV to interview, a placement calculator. All of these are really, really important. But what I want you to think about is these metrics and how you reverse, engineer them for your desk and for your level of performance. So that will be different for everyone on this call, but I'm going to walk you through this really quickly. So the outcomes that matter are really quite straightforward.
Speaker 1:So there's only four outcomes that matter for everyone, regardless of the sector they're in. So the very first metric that matter you can see here is jobs on. So if you don't have jobs on, it's very unlikely you're going to make a placement. And unless you play in a space where you can reverse market a candidate, it's that candidate short that you can generate outcomes. So that has a place. But for me the very first outcome that matters that you should be tracking weekly is jobs on. The second one is and I should have put this before client interviews. But it's CV sends or reverse markets. So if you're not sending out CVs you've got very little chance of ever transacting. So CV sends or reverse markets. Second outcome that matters that you should be tracking religiously From there.
Speaker 1:The third one is obviously client interviews, and it goes without saying that you need a client interview to be able to transact to close a deal. Unless you're in a blue collar space where you've got a trusted client or a client that says it's Friday afternoon, let's start someone Monday. I trust you, let's go. But generally for everyone on this call you're going to need a lot of client interviews to make money and then from there you need to look at, obviously, placement. So I don't care about offers. Anyone who's heard me train people before would know offers don't mean anything.
Speaker 1:The only thing that counts is placements. So these are the outcomes that matter, and you should know these back to front, and you should know what your average fee is. The reason why you need to do that is you can then simply reverse engineer the process. So a lot of you guys will know this. You will have been taught this early in your career, but most recruiters, somewhere along the journey, forget about this or don't think about it or don't action it at all. So I want you all to think about, like, what is? Where do I want to achieve for 2025? So we're at the end of 2024. Now, where do I want to achieve for 2025? What is my average fee? Because you'll have that for 2024. What does that mean in terms of number of placements I need to achieve per month? So you can get that here pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Before I send this out, I'll change the way these are located for people, but then from there, you can work out okay, how many client interviews do I need to be successful? So, if I need to work out, okay, how many client interviews do I need to be successful? So, if I need to make four placements, how many client interviews do I need to have over that time so you can look at your CV sends, you can look at your client interviews and you can look at the jobs you need to make that happen. So, if we look at the calculator here, for most people you're going to need a one in three hit rate. So this is what I've worked here. So for you to make four placements a month, you're going to need to be at 12 jobs on per month as a minimum. For most people, they fill one in three. If your ratio is higher than that, great, you can work through that, but you can see how then this flows down. So how many interviews will I need? Well, most people, same ratio. It's one in three to be successful there. And you can play around with these numbers and work out what are the actual outcomes you need to achieve for a billing number. So if you haven't calculated that starting point number one is really understanding the outcomes that matter.
Speaker 1:From there, you've got to look at the metrics and the noise. So this is the part most people hate. I'm not a KPI driven leader at all. I've never led my teams by KPIs. But you do need to understand your noise and this will be different for every person on this call. So I know a few of the names on this call. We've got some super high performers on this call who maybe only need to make here a handful of client calls to book a handful of meetings so they might be able to do 20 candidate calls and get 15 client meetings. I know there's people on this call that would have that level of capability. For others, maybe you need to be here and you need to do 50 client calls to get five.
Speaker 1:But understanding the noise you need to generate is really, really important. So there's two things you can change there. One is the level of activity. So there's no way of getting around quantity matters. Quantity is always going to matter, but of course you want quality. So if you're a person who's 50, 50 client calls for five meetings, clearly you can improve that hit rate and you can improve the quality. So the metrics that matter, or the noise you need to generate, is really important to also be tracking. So you might not be using this, your leader might not be using this to drive you, and that's fine. But as a recruiter, as someone who's running their own desk, you should 100% understand the metrics that drive your outcomes. So if you're not tracking that already. I'd implore you all to be doing this. So be looking at your client calls to client meetings and then your client meeting conversion into jobs on Really really, really important.
Speaker 1:There's two parts to recruitment. One part is the science, the other part is the art. You want to get the science down pat and you want to understand your metrics and I'll weave into a little story. So I won't give the names, but there's two people I've coached over the years that were well, two people and a person who I didn't coach in a particular business. They actually in this business they calculated call time for people and it was really, really interesting. So they had a million dollar biller in their business and I won't say who it is who was performing really, really interesting. So they had a million-dollar biller in their business and I won't say who it is who was performing really really well and they worked out the dollar value per call and the dollar value per minute of call time to a client and that person did a million. They also had another person in their organisation again won't say the name. They got performance managed out of this particular business and they did exactly the same thing. What was the dollar value per minute and, believe it or not, the lower performer actually had almost well within 50 cents, the same value per minute on a call to a client. They simply just didn't do the activity. So for me, that really reinforces this metrics that matter part, because that number one performer and the poor performer both could be phenomenal performers if they got this part right and if they actually understood what they were doing, so that poor performer simply could have made more calls because the quality was there. They just weren't doing the work.
Speaker 1:So for me, for any recruiter coming in, when we think about new habits, new results, this is a really, really important part to start. So you've got to get to a point where you feel a little bit uncomfortable. So going through the exercise of the outcomes that matter, going through the metrics that matter, will give you that thought process to go OK, do I need to change something here? So if you're a $500K biller and you want to get to 700K, you're a 700K biller, you want to get to a million, you've got to change some of these habits, you've got to change some of these time blocks. So that's where it starts and of course, we're then going to dig into the tools, systems and processes for you as well. So, outcomes that matter super important, metrics that matter really, really important as well.
Speaker 1:But then I want to talk about a successful week. So a lot of people who I coach, a lot of the highest performers I work with, once they've worked out their outcomes, once they've got an idea of their metrics that matter, once they've got this nailed, they're really focusing on the outcomes and they're really looking at what a successful week is. So you should be coming into every Monday morning and have three to five dot points of this is what a great week looks like for me. So that could be, you know, securing a particular client meeting. It could be securing, you know, closing a particular deal. It could be, you know, meeting a certain number of stakeholders at a particular client. It's up to you. For some people here they will go KPI driven. Other people will go for high level metrics.
Speaker 1:But I want everyone on this call to think about each week writing down. A successful week is having at least three dot points, kind of max, five of things that you know move the needle Really, really important thing to do and a really important thing to review each week to go. Okay, have I actually done the things that are most important to me? And I want to talk about these two other other concepts, and anyone who's listened to me talk before will be quite aware of these, of these two, two topics. So if we think about the secret secret of success in recruitment, for me it all comes back to this talent, time and intensity, and maybe we'll do this on this call. Some of you might have already done this before. I'll get you to jump into the Q&A.
Speaker 1:But if you think about recruitment and the talent of recruiters, so we think about what makes a great recruiter. It's sales skills. Communication, negotiation makes a great recruiter. It's sales skills, communication, negotiation, influencing psychology of the deal, digital marketing there's a range of different skills that make a great recruiter. If you thought about that from a talent perspective and I'll get everyone who's comfortable to jump in the Q&A box and just share how much if we think of those skill sets, how many hours would you spend per week getting better at your craft? Awesome, so we've got Tom three to four. Anonymous two hours. Rito two hours one to two.
Speaker 1:The common answer for people when I'm in a coaching environment, regardless of the agency, is usually zero to one. So there's a few of you who are doing a little bit more. That's great. You've probably got slightly better habits, which is excellent. But talent is the first pillar of a successful recruiter, and talent you're in control of. So you will have a baseline of talent. Everyone will have a foundational starting point, but if you think about those sales skills, all of them can be improved over time. So, and the difference between those who are good and those who are great usually comes back to that investment in talent. So if you think about the mass of it, most people would do zero to one hour Right. So if you're at one hour a week, 50 hours a week, there's someone who's four hours a week 200 hours. If we just go on a 50 50 week month, that's a five X difference. You push that forward through multiple years. They're not days ahead in terms of development, they're months and years ahead in development. So I could spend half an hour just talking on talent alone and how you get better.
Speaker 1:But the very first pillar, if we're looking at what makes a successful bill or what makes a successful performer, is always improving your craft. So I want to challenge everyone here from a habit perspective to go? How do I go from where I am now to that next leap? So if you're at zero, or if you're at one hour, how do I go from one hour to two hours? How do I go from zero to a starting point? That starting point might be 15 minutes a day, it might be 20 pages a night, it might be. I'm going to do a podcast on my commute in instead of doom scrolling on Instagram. So you want to start a habit from a talent perspective where you start to get better at your craft. So you want to digest books, you want to digest content and then look at how you apply that to what you do, because that's going to help take you good to great. The second part is time. So time I want to ask the same question We'll get a few people in the Q&A box as well to share here In terms of hours per week.
Speaker 1:How many hours per week are you putting into recruitment? So about 45 to 50 from Mitchell, 55 from Tom. We've got some hard workers in the room, fantastic. So we've got a spread between about 45 and 60, which again, is higher than usual and probably says something about the people who are jumping on to do a session with me at 6 pm. But I think again, a normal agency. Most people are 40. They're 40 if we're lucky, if we take out their lunch break and all the things they do where they're not on, we're probably at 40. So if you can be at 50 or 60, fantastic. Again, if you think about the mass equation there, it's an absolute game changer.
Speaker 1:So I'll share a story. I had a particular biller who's worked for me for many years across a couple of different businesses. It was a million dollar biller, year in, year out. He would track to anywhere between that 55 and 60 hours per week. We had another person who came into the business who aspired to be like this particular individual and they said Matt, I believe I can actually deliver the same outcome as this person, but I'm going to do it in 40 hours a week. I was like okay, that's really, really interesting.
Speaker 1:So I said to this person who came in I was like okay, let's assume you have the same level of talent, right? The person you aspire to be like, I believe, is actually more talented for a range of different reasons. But let's assume that you have the same level of talent If you're at 40 hours a week and he's at 60 hours a week. He's doing 20 hours per week more, right? So if we look at that, that's two and a half days more per week, right? If we extrapolate that out over, you know, 50 weeks and people can challenge me on the mass here because I'm not going to get it perfect but that's about 100 days more when you get to hours. If we're 20 hours a week, two and a half days, 50 weeks, it's about 100 days more, which is almost four and a half five months more of time is putting in to delivering results. Versus you. I said you think you can achieve the same level of result with 100 days less, four and a half five days less. It's simply not possible. So I'm not saying to everyone here do 60-hour weeks, do 70-hour weeks, do 80-hour weeks, but there is a huge link between time and results.
Speaker 1:But the third pillar is the important one from a time perspective that ties it together and that's intensity. So the biggest thing that's important. There's no point in doing 60 hours a week for those who are on the call doing 50 or 60 hours a week, unless your intensity is through the roof. So I will take someone doing eight hours a day at 90 to 100% intensity over someone doing 12 hours a day or 10 hours a day at 50% intensity. So one of the other keys to success is how you maintain that intensity. So the success formula is those three together it's talent, time and intensity. So to look at intensity and everyone's intensity, it's going to ebb and flow through the day. Maybe you have a fight with your partner, maybe you have a challenging call that derails you and you have to have a walk around the block to shake it off. Maybe something happens in your personal life. But maintaining that high level of intensity is really, really, really important.
Speaker 1:So one of the ways I do that and again, some of the people on the call will have heard me talk about this is I implement doorframe triggers and we're going to talk about two different triggers tonight. We're going to talk about trigger events and we're going to talk about doorframe triggers. So doorframe triggers is really simple. It's something I implement where I walk through a certain door and there's something I say in my head or I say out loud to lock me in from a mindset point of view. So for me, I walk into the ex-recruiter office here, whether it's here, whether it's in Melbourne, and I think this is where I'm successful, and it plants that seed as I walk through the door around what's really important.
Speaker 1:If I was to turn off my PC now and open it, I have a trigger on my PC which is a photo of Michael Jordan which says greatness is a choice. For me, jordan is the epitome of competition, excellence, drive, will to win. So every time my PC is unlocked and it reopens, I have that staring me in the face. It's a trigger to lock me back in, to remind me I need to choose to be great. No different. On my mobile phone I have a trigger on my mobile phone. So one of those little hacks to get you into a mindset or get you thinking like that from a performance point of view is starting to implement a trigger.
Speaker 1:So one of those tools you could do from tonight would be to start to look at where can I implement triggers into my environment to help lock me back in. So the big ones for me is the doorframe, the phone, the laptop, but you can literally do that anywhere. So for some of the high performers I coach, you know we talk about doing that at home. So my doorframe trigger at home is they deserve my best. So I'll sit in my car knowing I've got to walk through that door and you know that phrase is in my mind. So sometimes I will sit in the car longer because I'm not ready for it. But the doorframe trigger is a game changer and it might sound like a mystical, weird thing and a lot of people have said to me Matt, that is BS. But I'm telling you, if you give me 90 days, that is an absolute game changer. Does it mean you're going to be perfect? Definitely not. I would still have the odd night there where I walk into the house and I'm just not on and my family doesn't get my best, but it's very rare. The more you can lock that in, the more you can start to think about time, talent, intensity and you can build that intensity. So it's just a little bit of a mindset hack. I'm not going to spend too much time on mindset tonight because I'm conscious of the time, but I want you guys to think about that.
Speaker 1:So before we move into the pipeline builder, are there any questions people wanted to ask me about the topics we've just covered? Tom, great question. So Tom's question is is any suggestion on how to create a trigger motto. So for me, you want to find something that's personal for you. So you know, the Jordan example is mine. I'm a big sports fan. I was a semi-elite basketball player when I was a younger person, you know. So for me that was an absolute no-brainer. But it's just got to be personal to you. So it doesn't have to be something that everyone goes oh my gosh, wow, that's unbelievable. It just needs to be personal and real for you.
Speaker 1:You can steal someone else's doorframe trigger if it works for you. I have a few people who I work with who've stolen mine, and that's totally okay. But you just want to find something that works for you and that locks you in. So for me, even if you wanted a kind of cheat code there, you could just jump into a chat GPT, give me 100 motivational quotes, or give me 100 quotes or 50 quotes on this particular topic, or you could Google motivational quote around success. But find something that resonates with you, find something that kind of jumps out for you. Or have a picture. You could have a vision board, but I find it really important to just have something there that's important and so literally setting them.
Speaker 1:So to move on to Dallas's question in terms of the process of setting them. It's literally about choosing, like, what is the door I'm walking into and how do I want to show up for people? So identity we could spend two hours on identity alone and how that drives behavior, how that drives how you see the world. But for me it's just about choosing at least two doors that you walk through, and I like family and I like work as the minimum too, and I have others. But for most people it's just about starting the habit. So I'd say, choose one at work, choose one at home, and just have that phrase that locks you in. It really is that simple. And then it's about doing it for 90 days. So I would say it out loud as I'm starting out Like I've done it for years now, you know over a decade or more than a decade. So for me, I can say it in my head now and it works, but I would literally say it out loud like under my breath as I walk through the door Super, super important.
Speaker 1:So and then, sam, to come on to your question, how to not get back into firefighting. I love this question when you have a time block, you've just got to be disciplined. So for me, any time there's a fire, I only look at the fire and go is this going to cause reputational damage if I don't handle it now? Yes or no? If it's going to cause reputational damage and I need to handle it, I'll handle it, but ideally I'll try and push it off to someone else. If it's going to cause reputational damage, of course, handle it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes there are fires that you need to handle, but most people jump into fires. They don't need to jump on straight away. So that's probably part one. Or is it going to impact revenue generation? So is that the difference between winning a deal, losing a deal, something not moving forward? But often the story in our head around the challenge or around the fire is it needs to be solved now, and nine times out of 10, it doesn't. So you've just got to be really diligent and really disciplined, and the best of the best that I work with will often not even open their email.
Speaker 1:So a good way can be first, two hours of the day, maybe you don't open your email, so you get halfway through your time block, you know, and then maybe you take a break a little bit and maybe you're going to get. You might look at it and get sucked in. But for me it's just about knowing these are my high-performance activities. You know the outcomes that matter are here. These are the things I need to drive each and every day, so I'm not going to get pulled into a fire that I don't need to be pulled into. But that is the challenge, because your brain is going to want to help you to do easy things, and BD for most people, or prospecting for most people, is really hard. And then I'll jump on to Mitchell's and then we'll move on. So, mitchell, his question is how do you reset when coming back from lunch and get back into the same level of intensity? So again, really, really good question, and it will be different for every person. I think the doorframe triggers makes a huge difference. So having that is a really, really good starting point.
Speaker 1:But I also like to kind of think about and if anyone's read Atomic Habits by James Clear, there's a bunch of different things you can do there. I also think about, like you know, how can I habit stack or how can I give myself a reward as I come back to lunch? So I might be okay, I've come back from lunch, it's one o'clock. I'm not feeling that same level of intensity. Yeah, and it depends whether you have a coffee or what you do kind of mid-afternoon.
Speaker 1:But let's say I'm a person who habitually is going to go and get a coffee at three o'clock. I, I'm a person who habitually is going to go and get a coffee at three o'clock. I'll set like a little game and be like, okay, before I go for my coffee I need to achieve these three outcomes, or I need to achieve this many numbers of calls so you can have a little game with yourself or give yourself a bit of a reward to come back to lunch to take a little break. So for me, having those short bursts so even though you might have a time block that's three or four hours that doesn't mean it can't be an hour short burst five minute walk around the block or five minute reset, come back. You've got to play around with your habits, see what works for you and build those things in. And again, habits. I'm going to come back and do a session early next year specifically around habits, how you apply James Clear's work, because there's a bunch of things you can do to kind of lock in that intensity. But for me, one of the ones I like is giving myself a reward to aim towards as I come back from lunch. So I've got this 90-minute time block and then I'm going to go and do X, whether that's grab a coffee, have a protein bar, whatever it might be do what works for you.
Speaker 1:And, hayley, I'll answer your question as well and then we'll move on to the next section. So how would you deal with colleagues who distract you during the day and take away from your focus? It's an office of eight. This can be really, really, really hard, and often people get sucked into conversations they don't have. I have good noise cancelling headphones so that helps and again I'd bring everything back to those blocks. So a little bit like I'm going to go hard for 90 minutes and then walk around the block or get myself a coffee or whatever it might be. The million-dollar bill is that you know and I've been one of those and I've worked alongside people who are like that the way they kind of deal with not being distracted and I've seen most of the people I coach do this they'll go really hard for 60 minutes, then they might get in the banter for five minutes, but it's just about not getting sucked into that rabbit hole and just not getting caught up on things. So, a good set of noise cancelling headphones and coming back to those high performance activities, that doesn't mean you can't have fun, but try and limit that to five or 10 minutes and the best of the best I can see, they kind of pop their head up and they'll have that little conversation and then they'll be like, okay, great, now I'm back in, or it'll be like I'm taking that five minutes now and then I'm back in. But a lot of it comes back to having a plan, having some focus, having your BD list ready to go so that you're not getting distracted, because usually people get distracted when they don't have a clear plan on kind of what they're doing for the day.
Speaker 1:I'm going to jump into the Pipeline Builder and talk you guys through how the Pipeline Builder works. It's a simple but I think really really powerful tool. You should be using your CRM. So my starting point is you know, use your CRM, squeeze value out of that, for sure. But I like the Pipeline Builder because it's going to give you a really clear visual on who you're targeting, where you're at in the process, what touch points you've used, and it makes it really easy for you to follow up. So you can choose the amount of detail here. So this will get shared with everyone.
Speaker 1:Post the webinar. You can always pair this back so you can see here company contact name, position, title, number details, linkedin profiles, if they've got advertised roles. You might only want name, client phone number or name client email. I would say doing company name, contact name, phone number is a bare minimum and then we've got a bunch of different touch points here. So the very first caveat on this and you can look at the order, these are just the different touch points available to you. The number one touch point every time, all time, every day, is the phone call. So you should be trying to touch every customer, everyone. You're prospecting over the phone multiple times.
Speaker 1:But the pipeline builder is about you being aware that you've got multiple things you can do. So many, many, many moons ago I talked to our team about combo prospecting and Tony Hughes is a Sydney sales coach who did very well in enterprise sales outside of. He wasn't a recruiter, he was a tech sales guy. He wrote a book on combo prospecting and combo is phone email text. So I say to everyone when you are prospecting, that's what you want to look at is I've made the phone call. If I haven't connected with them, I'm on email, I'm on text. I take Tony's teaching a little bit further and say do a LinkedIn message as well, because an executive may have an EA screening their email. They probably don't have an EA screening their LinkedIn. And, of course, if you can text them, if you can get 30 or 40 of those out a day, you're probably in a really good spot. But the pipeline builder is about understanding the tools that are available. So of course you can LinkedIn connect, of course you can share an article and we'll get onto articles you can share in language of leaders. Reverse market is a good tool.
Speaker 1:Endorse on LinkedIn. It's a funny one. A lot of people, when I take them through the pipeline builder, go why would I do that? It literally just puts your name up in their inbox. So Matt endorsed you for business development, matt endorsed you for project management. It can be a reason for you to pop up in their feed your name. It's just another touch point for your name. Obviously, liking a post is fairly similar. If you don't have marketing campaigns, either through LinkedIn or through your CRM, you should have marketing campaigns. I'm not a huge believer in there. They're a game changer in some sectors. They're good, but you should have marketing campaigns just as a given. On the side it does have a place, but for me, social is secondary from a campaign point of view than a phone call.
Speaker 1:Handwritten letters I talk to people about this all the time. We're coming into Christmas, you should be looking at your current customers, and certainly your key customers, and looking at should I send them a handwritten Christmas card? Should I give them a gift with a handwritten Christmas card? This is a forgotten skill that has won me more accounts than I can count. So if I can't get in front of someone, I always will send a little handwritten note to just grab their attention. A little handwritten note with a thank you. It's a really, really powerful way. Very few people are getting their letters screened, particularly in this day and age. So, yes, it's going to cost you $1 for a stamp or $1.50 for a stamp, whatever we charge for a stamp these days. But you know, or you can just drop a letter off at reception game changer touch point Obviously there's event invitations, voice notes and send a gift. So this is really just a visual tool so you can come in here as you can see, and we can just choose the dates where you've gone through each part of the step. So I just like this as a visual. So I think the CRM has a place. If you're really good at doing follow-up in your CRM, you know fantastic, but you know I like this just as a visual tool that you can use day in and day out. So how do we take that a step further?
Speaker 1:And I wanted to talk you guys through the BD quick wins. So when you're building out your pipeline from day one or your pipeline builder from day one, so let's say we were like, yes, we're going to implement this from tomorrow the very first thing I would do is build out an ad chase. So ad chase 100% has a place. You know they're people who are going to buy because they're actively looking for talent. Yes, you know you're going to get an objection handle or you're going to need to objection handle and we'll get into that later today. But for me, an ad chase is really about starting to get your brand out there, trying to book a client meeting, ideally picking up a job long-term, or building a relationship. But so many people just focus on just closing a deal. You want to think about the relationship long-term. But an ad chase has a place. So if I was building out my pipeline builder from tomorrow, the very first thing I'd do would be getting at least 50 contacts. So I'd build out an ad chase off Seek, off LinkedIn, and I'd have at least 50 contacts from day one and I'd be replicating that with any new person who comes in.
Speaker 1:And I know million-dollar billers. This is literally their only tool. So there's a guy who works for me in tech. The only thing he does is ad chase and he ad chases with the exact same pitch time and time again, knowing they're going to say we've got an ad on seek, we're waiting to go through the talent. He objection, handles that piece of data and then he calls them back a week later, two weeks later, a month later, and he does that for every job any customer has on in his vertical until he converts the customer and that's literally his number one and only operational strategy and it works. In his million dollar biller Now he does significant volume. He's not scared of the phone, he's locked in, but he would be the best I've seen in this space.
Speaker 1:So when you're building out your pipeline build up. Starting point number one is 100% ad chase For those who reverse market. I'd add reverse markets in based on your market. Again, you can feed it in here. You've got the reverse market tab, as you can see. Have that in as a touch point In my space in tech, I haven't been very successful over the years with reverse marketing.
Speaker 1:I just haven't found that a good tool to convert a placement, but it has been a good tool to get a meeting. So in other markets it's a very, very good tool to place a public practice accounting legal. You know there are areas where a reverse market can be. You know a placement almost straight away. Sales is another good one, but you want to use your pipeline builder for that. And then if I was building it out for tomorrow or building it out for 2025, I'd 100% be looking at referrals.
Speaker 1:So this time of the year is a great place to reflect and go through all of your old placements for the year. So I'd have all of my old clients in here. Any old candidate I've placed, any candidate I've placed either this year or previous that I remember. But I'd take it a step further than just having the placement person there or the client there that you placed with. I'd go into their LinkedIn record and I'd take three to five contacts that you want to talk to, and this is the thing people miss all the time. I'd take three to five contacts that you want to talk to, and this is the thing people miss all the time.
Speaker 1:If you've had someone you've placed with that had a good experience, they're not thinking that you're looking for more business and most recruiters, when they get told you know chase referrals, will literally ring a customer and be like great, it's Matt here. You know, we did work in the past. Do you have any people you can refer me to? And customers are on the back foot and they're always going to be like oh, I'm not sure, let me think about it. What you should be doing is going into their contacts, grabbing three to five and I always like a list of three to five. You'll work that out and I'll be like Jeff, I can see you're connected here to A, b, c, d, e. How well do you know them? Can you refer me? And you're either going to get a yes, I know A and B, I don't know C, d, e, of course I can refer you or no, I don't know any of them, but I can refer you to X, y and Z.
Speaker 1:But by asking for names or asking by name, it makes it way more specific and from a psychology point of view, most people are more likely to give you a name of someone who's looking or someone who you should be talking to. So from a referral point of view, I'd 100% be doing that here and looking at all of my old placements, whether that's clients or on the candidate side, because candidates, again, are connected to good people. I'd go through their list. Who are they connected to? Who can I get a referral to? The best way to do business development, in my opinion, is through a referral, because it gets you credibility straight away. It will normally get you a callback and you're already starting ahead of the curve. So for me a referral is one of the best tools. Then, from here, other BD quick wins that you can look at live candidates.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people miss this one. I'm really surprised, but I coach people all the time and this is one people miss If you are working with a live candidate. So whether they've come through Seek Talent Search and they're active on the market, they've come through your advert and they're actively working right, so they're not. You know, if they're off the market it's a little bit different and I'll touch on that in a second. But if they're working for someone at the moment and they're live on the market and they're actively interviewing, they're going to resign from that job. They've made the decision, they're going to make a move. So you should be looking at any live candidate and going where are they working now? Have I identified their manager? Have I put them in my pipeline builder? So many people miss that and what that means is you're just missing a huge trigger event and a huge opportunity. So often if I'm tracking live candidates, I'm looking at what touch points can I use to their manager already to be feeding into that. So more often than not, oh, matt, you've called at a great time, we've just had someone resign and it's like well, of course I have, because I've been monitoring that person as a live candidate. I know exactly where they're at. So live candidates is a big one that you should be tracking, and particularly when candidates say I'm at first interview, second interview, I've just accepted another role. That's a huge trigger event for you to monitor is live candidates.
Speaker 1:The second part. There is CV stripping. So if someone's moved out of their role, they're active on the market, they're not working, or maybe they're in their role and they're not going to give you too much detail around that. You want to look at their previous role and you want to be stripping their CV for data. So how big was the team? Who do you report to you? Clearly understand the skill set they have. So again, you can start building out your pipeline builder and looking at how do I position to that customer, how do I reverse market, et cetera. Every single call should feed back into pipeline. So there shouldn't be a time as a recruiter where you have a call that isn't, in some way, shape or form, either giving you market intelligence or competitive intelligence or insight into something that can feed into prospecting, and so many people miss that. So live candidates. And CV stripping is a big one.
Speaker 1:And then informal references is a really, really powerful tool. So, and again, I haven't seen a lot of people do this. Well, some of the higher performers that I coach do this as just part of what they do. And what an informal reference is and it might be a candidate that I'm going to present and it's always a candidate I'm going to present to a customer. I would have a chat to that candidate and say well, we're going to present you to customer A, b and C as part of my process.
Speaker 1:What I like to do is we're not going to do a formal reference yet, but I'd love to do an informal reference, have a chat to your referee from your previous role so not the one they're in now previous role and understand what you did really, really well, because that will help us position you to the new companies we're putting you forward to. So what that does is it gives you the chance to then have a chat with a decision maker. Now, it's not necessarily a chat to a decision maker that's going to give you a business development opportunity straight away, but it's that first touch point in your pipeline builder. So they've taken a call from you to talk about that. They'll be surprised because most recruiters don't do an informal reference before they put someone forward. So it gives a chance to be memorable a little bit different. But it also gives you the opportunity to start your relationship and start your pipeline building and if we're looking across here, you know most people in terms of touch points and there's different data on this. It suggests anywhere between 7 and 12 touch points is what you need to either get to a meeting or to get to a transaction. So you know if you can use that informal reference as that first touch point, it can be a way to open the door, it can be a way to get into their phone, to get it saved, and then, depending on how well you are from a talent point of view or how good your craft is, you can then build out from there. So for me, that's how you use the pipeline builder and that's where I would start in terms of quick wins. Of course, if you've got a BD strategy for your sector, you've got a BD strategy for your, your particular vertical.
Speaker 1:You know I'd be feeding your customers in here as well and looking at who are the client personas I'm going after. Who are, who are the people? So, is it talent acquisition? Is it HR? Who's the line manager? Who's the executive? Who's in procurement? Who's in the project space? It'll be different for people in each sector, but I wouldn't just have one point of contact for each customer. I'd be looking at who are the client personas I'm targeting for each of them, both on the project side if I'm dual desk project side and the perm side and then focus that in for your area. So the pipeline builder I think this is a a really simple but beautiful tool to use to build pipeline week in, week out.
Speaker 1:So I'll pause here for a minute too to answer questions. And I know we've got a question here around ad chase strategies, which is what if they block you or send a stinker email to not contact them or their stakeholders? Should you still chase them or respect their request to save your own personal brand? There's no right or wrong answer here. So for me, if I didn't call some of the best customers I've won have literally told me to F off on the first phone call. So I've shared one example of that previously, which was a particular energy customer. I called their head of TA their very first call. They told me to F off. I then had a second call a month later, because if they have a bad phone call often they don't remember you. It might be a bit different if they've sent you a stinker email, but bear with me, for this example Got told to F off. Second time I got them I left a voicemail. So I'm team leave a voicemail, make a choice to not call you back. The person then called me back. We had a great conversation. I booked a meeting with them. They became a PSA customer of mine and we did really, really, really well.
Speaker 1:But you've got to read the room. If you've made two or three phone calls and they've said never call me again, f off, they've sent an email to your boss or sent an email to you saying take me off your list, don't call me again. You've got to be kind of sensible about it. But I would rather push someone a little bit or just change my cadence. So if I've gone really hard at them early and I've got them on a weekly or a fortnightly, maybe I put that person in for three months or six months.
Speaker 1:Or who else is in their organization that I can target? Because often there's more than one decision maker. So if I've chased the sales manager and I've got nowhere there and they've been really abrasive, who else is in their team or how else can I get to that decision maker? So if I've had someone be that turned off, it's like, okay, well, who else can I talk to in their team? Maybe I can talk to a sales engineer and get some insight and then lead with that insight. Maybe I can talk to a team leader and get some insight and get referred back into that person.
Speaker 1:So it's about not taking the first no or even the second or third no as gospel and looking at how do you work around that and how do you get to different decision makers. Because if I look at my career, every customer I've won. There's been a person that customer said don't call me, I'm not interested, we've got a panel or various other objections that they have. So it's about kind of working through that objections that they have. So it's about kind of working through that. Our second question there is typical ad chase response is we'll let our ad run and then, if we need help, we'll get back to you. What would you say to that objection? So and I might weave into objection handling now, cause I think I think that's a really good place to go, cause that is very common that you'll get you know we're going to let our ad run and come back to you.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to move into objection handling and answer this question. So, anytime I objection handle and you can see this on this screen there's two templates I like to use, and this one I took from Blake Thompson, who obviously I work really closely with. I like to tell a story. So if I'm thinking of any objection, it'll be. You know. This reminds me of this particular contact at this company who had a similar objection. You know, and I walk them through the kind of steps here. Mine is a little bit more direct, which would be this reminds me of this direct customer. I go straight into a story and then I take them through a language of leaders and I'm jumping ahead and we're going to jump back just to answer your question for you.
Speaker 1:So whenever I get a question around ads and people say we're going to run our own ads, you can really powerfully talk about two things. So one is the seek example and the other is taking people through the bell curve of talent. So there's two data points here for your ad chase. So one point and you need to find this out for your sector, but for most sectors, if we look at passive candidates versus active candidates, generally 85% of the market is passive. 15%, at any time, is active. So if a customer says to me we're running through our own ad chase, I'll be like that's fantastic If you can fill an ad. You know, fill a roll through an ad. You know more power to you. But can I share with you some data points around adverts and their passive and active market? You know, would that be sensible? Nine times out of 10, you'll get a yes.
Speaker 1:I then share with them the passive and active talent. So if we're saying it's 85% passive, 15% active, and you can find that data for your space through Seek, you can find it through LinkedIn Talent Insights, I then weave them into the bell curve of talent. So I'll be like are you aware of the bell curve of talent? And this is really powerful to walk them through and I'd be saying well, the 15% of the market that's active will generally be sitting at the bottom end of this bell curve. So they're either going to be at best meets expectation, but they're usually people who are on the market because they're not achieving, they're unhappy, they're on a performance management plan, maybe they've been made redundant, and those people who are active, they're the ones who are going to give you 10x problems. The reason why you would engage me alongside your ad is I'm going to tap into that passive talent pool and the person I'm going to be looking for for you is going to be in. This exceeds expectation and outstanding part that is going to drive this particular impact. So I'm jumping ahead a little bit and I want us to come back to objection handling in a minute.
Speaker 1:But you want to have something, a story like that, for your space and you want to know the difference between a good candidate or a bad candidate, a good candidate and a great candidate. So if someone talks to you about they're running their ad, well, you know, we know, that the best talent isn't applying to ads in this space and you know an average person in this space is going to deliver this kind of result. A great person is going to achieve this kind of result and make it real for them. Give them data, give them examples. And I like to talk to people about SEEK. So and this is common knowledge, I don't think I'm speaking outside of school here SEEK has a talent acquisition team.
Speaker 1:They have a huge and they have a talent acquisition team on the contract side. They have a talent acquisition team on the permanent side and they still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year with recruiters. So when someone says to me I've got an ad out, I'll be like great. That reminds me of Seek Seek own the job board. Every ad they do is promoted, every ad is top of the food chain, everyone sees it and they still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on recruiters. Why thousands of dollars a year on recruiters? Why? Because they need the best talent and they know the best talent aren't the people actively applying on their adverts. That's why they have a talent acquisition team. That's why they have a team of recruitment partners that assist them in niche areas.
Speaker 1:So there are a couple of tools for an objection handle. We'll come back to objection handling if we have time later. But you want to have a couple of really kind of powerful stories there and you certainly want to have a couple of really kind of powerful stories there, and you certainly want to have a framework that you talk people through. So for me, any objection you want to walk them through a framework of this reminds me of this particular customer take them on a story or take them on a journey. Most people, when they objection handle, just go to a oh well, okay, that's great, let me know I'll call you back in a week and see how you're going with your ad. That would be like objection handling level one. We want to have objection handling level 10. So that's my thoughts on that one Great.
Speaker 1:So a couple of other questions. So follow-up question we work with a panel of specialist suppliers for select roles and are not looking or expanding our PSA at this time. Thanks for reaching out and certainly keep you in mind should your position change. Again, that's a really, really common objection, which would be we've got other agencies or we can't go outside of our panel. I would also then take them through a framework. So a good place to start with. That's fantastic. Clearly you take recruitment really seriously. So I'd start kind of along those lines. But and you've got to work out what works for your style and we don't have time to do client personas tonight and a driver versus an analytical person versus an expressive or an amiable but where I would go with that generally would be you know what is the difference between engaging myself and engaging someone on your panel other than where the invoice comes from?
Speaker 1:And then I'd take them on a journey again around what's the difference between a good candidate and a great candidate, and if I had access to a great candidate, you know what would hold you back from proceeding. And there's a bunch of different things we could talk about there and we could go deep on objection handling again at a follow-up session kind of in in the future. Um, and mitchell, to your question, yes, we'll be sharing parts of the, the document, certainly the pipeline builder, as we as we go along. So, um, the pipeline builder will be released afterwards, great. So where I want to take you from here and I know we've jumped a little bit ahead for objection handling, just for the for, but hopefully that was useful and I know we're kind of scratching the surface on that one, but I'm conscious of everyone's time. If I take you back to language of leaders, this will start to make things a little bit more real for you. And I'm a little bit annoyed about the tech tonight because I really wanted to walk everyone through this and have a lot of engagement here around how we build this out together. But what I might do is get you guys to give me the answers here, because you can't see all of them, which is good.
Speaker 1:But for any area you're pitching and for any customer persona you're pitching, you need to consider the language of leaders. This is the difference between selling and getting cut through and selling and not getting cut through. So the way you would position to a CEO or a GM is going to be very different to how you pitch to talent acquisition, which for a lot of people believe it or not is also very different to HR. And then you might have particular line managers here. So I've got sales manager or IT. It could be. Whatever the line manager is in your space, you really need to understand what's important to them, because that is what you're selling. So an average recruiter will sell. I can put a bum on a seat. So whatever the technical skill is I've found that technical skill before. I've done it for a direct competitor that will get you a level of cut through at a very base level, but it's not getting you in front of the right people, so you're going to get delegated down to who you sound like. So if you sound like you just put a bum on a seat, you're going to get pushed to talent acquisition. At best, if you're really lucky, you might get pushed to a line manager, but you'll get delegated to where you sound like. So what I want you to think about from a language of leaders point of view is how do I get more commercial, how do I show that commercial acumen and how do I show the real value of my placements to grab someone's attention and not be commoditized as a recruiter? So how do you do that?
Speaker 1:Well, the very first part you start, you should think about what's important to your buyer persona. So if I was a CEO or a GM, the very first place to start is looking at what are their challenges and problems. Gm, the very first place to start is looking at what are their challenges and problems. So I'll show you here up on the screen, and these are just a few examples. You would spend more time and you work through this, but it could be the fact that they're not achieving budget. It could be a shareholder or a stakeholder result. It could be a share price. It could be a compliance or risk reduction. That's a huge one at the moment, whether that's cyber risk reduction or just business risk reduction in general. It could be delivering projects on time and in budget. It could be a government overlay, a regulatory overlay if you play in a regulated industry, they're the things that are keeping an actual CEO up at night.
Speaker 1:Then from there, you want to think about, well, what are their goals and objectives and what are their success metrics and there's a very big crossover here between the two, but the two you want to think about. So when I think of goals and objectives, that's almost for me like what is their position description? Right? So what's in their position description? What do they actually need to achieve? Whereas when I look at success metrics, it's what are they bonused on? Right and you know. Again, if we're going back and forth, you know on video here we'd work through this. These are just some from a previous session I've ran.
Speaker 1:But you know their goals and objectives will be hitting budgets and forecasts, stuff around kind of project timelines, risk reduction. There might be succession planning. Sometimes there's things around employee engagement. Certainly productivity or efficiency or return on investment are really big ones for a C-suite or a GM executive. All of those are going to come up in their goals and objectives. That's what they're there to actually drive.
Speaker 1:From there, if you're looking at success metrics, it could be delivery of projects, lost time to injury in some sectors is a big one, profit result is a big one, share price is a big one, and the reason you need to know that is these are the things that you want to be able to sell back to over time. These are the things that are going to get you in the room with an executive over getting you in the room further down the food chain. So from there, when you're building out your client persona, you then want to think about well, where else do I have information to sell off and where else are there or what are the key trigger events that would cause this person to buy? So if we look at trends and challenges at the moment, I've kept this quite broad for you guys in terms of conversation and again, you'd spend time here and you'd think it through in your own time. But if I look at trends and challenges I'm seeing in this space, cyber risk is a huge one. The government put out a bunch of new legislation for enterprise customers around cyber risk, with some really significant penalties if they didn't give themselves or build their cyber resilience Massive one.
Speaker 1:Obviously, at the moment everyone's talking about market factors the economy are we in a downturn? The wars overseas, et cetera. Productivity is still being talked about. Data management, work from home is a big one at the moment. A lot of people are bringing people back in, as we know. Global uncertainty these are all the things that CEOs are talking about, maybe not with recruiters, but certainly with their peers and certainly with their executive team. So being aware of these trends and challenges gives you a position to talk about them and go and find market intelligence and competitive intelligence in this space to get in front of these people.
Speaker 1:Then, from there, you want to think about where are these people going for their data? Where are they getting insights? Who are they listening to? Who are the thought leaders? For someone in the C-suite or someone who's a GM or an executive? So the very first one is obviously other CEOs and leaders. That's an absolute given. Could be political figures, could be the AFR, could be Gartner if they're in IT Gartner is a big one and McKinsey and Bain. So if you guys don't know who McKinsey and Bain are, a little tip or trick here is McKinsey and Bain are high-level strategic consultants, arguably the best consulting firms from a strategy point of view on the planet. So they typically pay at the level above the big four, in my opinion. So you'll have the big four who play a consulting role, but McKinsey and Bain would be the level above that.
Speaker 1:Whatever sector you play in, you could Google trends in FMCG McKinsey, trends in FMCG Bain 2024, and you would have something come up. You would have data points, you'd have white papers. They have teams of researchers who will give thought leadership pieces and will give insights into your sector. So if we go back to the pipeline builder, if you look at share an article, share some information a really good thing to do there could be read a great article from McKinsey. Send it through to an executive. Hey, saw this thing on McKinsey. Here's, you know, here's either my opinion from what I'm seeing in the market or here's something that might be really useful for you. So understanding that and understanding where people are getting their intel from is powerful because you can weave into that world and start to show that you're a person of value. And I mean I know some people in this space who all they do is language of leaders. And so the flow on from here before we get into trigger events and your value prop, when you're also thinking about how you position on social, how you position on LinkedIn. You should be thinking about how are you talking to the language of leaders? So, if I'm posting every week, yes, you might want to do a post to your audience from a candidate perspective that has a place. Maybe you want to post ads again. That's like base level level, one kind of social. But in an ideal world you're going to grab your two or three client personas, or one specific senior client persona, and you're going to talk to that space over and over again. 're going to add value in that space. You're going to think about their challenges and problems, their goals, their success metrics, what's keeping them up at night. And that's how you're going to position your socials and that's where you can start getting people who engage with your content. And it's not about likes or comments, but they're picking up the phone and being like I should have a chat to matt, because you know what. All he does is talk about things that keep me up at night, whether I'm in IT, whether I'm in sales, whatever sector you're in. It's a really powerful way to start positioning yourself as an expert, not as a recruiter. So I just want you guys to capture that as we go through for the language of leaders. And then I want you to think about trigger events, and this is where it starts to get powerful from a pitch point of view and we'll talk about how this all pulls together. So what is a trigger event for a CEO? So it could be the economy improving, reduction of interest rates, because then they've got more capital to spend, could be key people leaving, could be some of their competitors folding. Maybe they win a new contract, they win a new project. Whatever the factors are, you want to map out the trigger events and then start to think about what is my pitch in that space for that trigger event. So the way you build that out is you start getting into your value proposition. So there's two things here. So the very first part is the results I've achieved. So you need to have your level one answer what bums have you put on a seat? So if I'm pitching a CEO and I know he's looking for a CIO or a CFO, have I filled a direct report of a C-suite executive? That makes sense? Or have I placed a project professional that's delivered an outstanding result, that was engaged with the C-suite? I want to have a baseline here of who I've placed. So this will just be like a list of titles, so it could be a head of X, head of Y, head of Z. But where you want to go to get really good at pitching and really good at getting in front of people is understanding the result your placement achieved. So it's not about I've placed head of this, head of that. It's. You know I placed this person and they delivered a $200 million project that was multi-year, with a team of 100, on time in budget. Or I placed this person and they delivered this result, which reduced this work health and safety risk, which meant that you know we delivered this particular outcome. Or I placed this person and they helped us win this particular submission and gave this return on investment. So you want to build out the story, which is what your placement achieved, because that is what you actually did. So what that means, if you're looking at excellence in the recruitment process is where do I find that story to then sell? So every time I'm placing a candidate, my post-placement review is never month one, month, three, month, six, getting them through their short-term journey and leaving it there. I'm looping back to that person six months, in 12 months, in ongoing basis. What are you achieving at the moment. Oh, actually, we've just achieved A, b, c, d. I spearheaded us delivering this project. I spearheaded doing this. I delivered this particular outcome. I'm doing exactly the same on the client side. So your job, with anyone you place at any level, is understanding what is the result your placement achieved. So it reads really powerful at this level because we're talking about an executive. But it would be no different here if I was with a sales manager, and it was. You know, I placed a sales engineer who delivered 120% of budget in their first six months and was promoted to team leader. You know, it doesn't matter what the story is. Your job is to go and find the story that your placement achieved, either from the client themselves or from the placement, because that's what you're going to sell. And if we're looking at the flip side of excellence in the recruitment process tonight which we're not and we weren't just talking about pitch it's no different. When you're interviewing a candidate, you want to go looking for the story of what's the success they achieve, so what's important to the client. I've taken a job, a job qualification form. I've worked out what success looks like in the role. I'm then going to find the person who's delivered that success to sell it back to the customer. So you just want this to be a normal part of your process and a normal part of how you build out your value prop. So understanding the results your placement achieved is really important, and then you weave it into a story. So how do you make that a story? So it's taking the bums on the seats, the actual outcome, and then building it into a real story. So who was the customer? Who was the client? Can they be a reference site for you? So the challenge a lot of people have is a lot of people get into this box here, they get into column I, some people get into column J, very few get into column K. So I don't want to share that story. I don't want to share the customer. For me it's what's the story? How do I make it real? So I want to give my customers a real life example. Here's the actual client, here's the actual. You know the line manager or the CEO that I delivered it for and they're willing to be a reference. If you can get to that level of power, you'll find yourself in more doors. So that's the C-suite. I'm conscious of time, so I will work through another one. But then I want to show you the difference and I've whipped through this quickly, but I want to show you a very quick difference between talent acquisition. So most people, when they're selling to talent acquisition again, are selling a bum on a seat which often doesn't get the cut through. So if we look at what are the challenges and problems of TAs and I don't know whether we've got some TAs on the call, but very first one that I think is important for them is their number one challenge is usually reducing agency spend. Let's be honest, if they could reduce or eliminate agency spend, they'd be really, really happy. Yes, there's a part around talent attraction, but reducing spend is a big one. They have KPIs to hit, so they will have a minimum fill percentage or a fill rate that they'll need to hit. Time to hire is a big one for them. For some people and this is different in different sectors, but for a lot of TA people they often have too many roles on and not enough time See a typo there their challenges and problems are very different to what we're seeing up here for a CEO, or very different to what you would see for the line manager that you would traditionally pitch. So if we look at their goals and objectives again, they kind of flow on from here. But it's reduced agency spend time to hire, minimum fill rates. And again, we could build this out further. If we were going back and forth tonight and there'd be other people who would take this further, there'd be different success metrics. So some of the success metrics that a lot of us would be seeing in here in addition to this would be, you know, d&i. You know there'd be a lot of D&I success metrics. You know most enterprise customers are playing in that space at the moment and there'd be a bunch of others if we sat here and worked through it. But I'm conscious of time. If we look at trends and challenges, one of the biggest trends I've seen in 2024, and you may have seen the same thing is people fear losing their job, particularly if they're a TA. So they are holding back from using agencies even more than ever because there is a bit of a fear there. They get lost in too many applications. There's a lot of non-visa applications or people without work rights applying Recruiters breaking processes, going direct to line. That's always going to be a trend and challenge. I wouldn't shy away from that you know that has a place, you know, or they have too many roles and they're only using SEEK. So there's a lot of people when they have too many roles they just revert to SEEK and you know that's good for you guys because it's a good way to position and find a much stronger candidate. If we look at thought leaders, other recruiters, other talent acquisition people, certainly there's an active community there. There's a bunch of different communities for TAs and a lot of them are involved in that. I say line managers if they like them, and I genuinely mean that. I think line managers can be thought leaders for them if there's a good relationship there. There's podcasts, there's talent pods, there's a circle back initiative. There is some thought leadership there, but I think there's not a lot and only the best talent acquisition people are really investing in their talent and don't get me wrong, there's some very, very good talent acquisition people out there, but this is kind of a catch-all from a general perspective. So again, if we look at trigger events could be resignations. They've got too many roles on. There's an expansion to a new site, there's a new project. They're continually having market growth can be short market. Maybe they need to increase sales. There's a bunch of different trigger events and you want to be able to pitch to those different trigger events so again, you can have results you achieve. There's a bunch of different trigger events and you want to be able to pitch to those different trigger events so again, you can have results you achieve. So there'll be a list of placements. You know it might be a niche, hard to fill roles. You know that's totally fine. This part should move into the next box. So if we look at, you know what you actually achieve. Though you want to be talking their language. So if we come over here, see it quickly. I don't think it's going to copy and paste for me, um, but it could be. You know I help you if we think of the, the result that's important to them you want to talk back to. You know these kpis, you know. So I actually help this talent acquisition team reduce agency spend by only helping him in this niche area. I helped deliver a D&I initiative for this particular customer where I had a 50% shortlist of female and male representation both at presentation and at interview stage. Or I helped this particular customer increase their candidates with neurodiversity from X percentage to Y percentage. So you want to go looking for the stories that weave back to their success metrics and weave back to how they get paid. I help them the role was open for this amount of time and I help them, from a time to fill perspective, go from point A to point B. So it's all about how you weave this back into the challenges, the problems, the success metrics and then specific to their trigger event. So that's where you want to go. From a language of leaders' point of view, this is the thing that's going to help you build out your pitch. So if we had multiple hours tonight, we'd get into your pitch, your scripts for success, your client personas and the different styles. We're limited to two hours so I'm going to not spend too much more time here. But this is really, really important and the best recruiters that I work with would know this back to front. They would understand their language of leaders. It would be in their pitch deck. It would be in their one-page presentation to the client. It would be on their website. It would be in their one-page presentation to the client. It would be on their website. It would be in their collateral. They'd openly talk about it on LinkedIn. They'd share those data points, they'd know the stories without even blinking and there'd be people on this call who could do that. Then it's about looking at your trigger events. So if we think about, like, what trigger events are you tracking, you should be tracking trigger events and then building out your pitch for it in each space. So what's a trigger event? This is very different to a doorframe trigger. So a trigger event is something that would compel someone to buy. So we've seen some of them here. It could be staff have left, they've won a new contract, they're building a new facility, there's a market factor. It could be. Another one that I see all the time is a new leader. So a really simple trigger event is a new leader. So if you're working with a particular customer and they bring in a new line manager, they bring in a new GM, a new executive, that is probably the most important trigger event for you to be aware of. So for me, any customer I'm pitching, whether it's a cold customer or it's an existing customer, if there's a new leader, I'm thinking how do I get to that person in the first 30 days Ideally the first 14, but worst case, the first 30 days with a pitch that talks to the language of leaders and talks to what I know is important to their persona, but also talks to the fact that they're a new leader. So it's not just about this piece here, it's about how you weave it into the trigger event. So an example off the cuff would be you know, so it's Matt from company X. You know, congratulations on your new role. What I'm really good at is helping new leaders, you know, transform their business in their first 90 days. I've done that with you know, company A, where we did. How are you placed next tuesday to catch up right now? Of course, that's not always going to get it like yes, just come and meet me, you're going to have to objection handle, but you want to have a trigger event for that new leader and you want to have a story for that new leader. Um, if you think about your other trigger events, so it could be a new project again. What's the's the pitch where you've got into a new project and you've helped them deliver? A place this program director in a new project and they delivered ABCD result. Or you haven't placed the program director but they're a new program director. I help program directors deliver projects on time and on budget by helping them workforce plan in their first 30 days. An example of this is ABCD. So where you want to build out your pitch or your story is for every trigger event you've built out a story or you've worked with your team to build out a story to go. This is how I'm going to sell to that particular trigger event and that particular value proposition. But I might hand it over to people in the chat box before we get onto questions and just say and we'll get you to answer the question what other trigger events are you guys tracking at the moment? If any, and if you're not tracking them, maybe what trigger events do you think you should be tracking? Dave, love that. So mergers and acquisitions great, that's a great trigger event, yep. So what's happening in competitors can be a good one, but you want to be able to take that to it. So if I think about what's happening in competitors, that can be a trigger event if it's something that's a market factor or a downturn that everyone's seeing. Dallas, we've got your company performance growth or need for upskilling to perform better. So, yep, definitely upskilling. Anytime you go through like a performance management part, that can be a big one. Where people are going. They've gone through a performance management process. We want to upgrade, you know, employee engagement. We want to upgrade skills. For sure, ipo is good, new product launch is good, new revenue streams, anyone in sales they're really good ones around new products and so forth, yeah, so these are all really really good examples. So every one of those trigger events you want to be really really close to, because they're the things that are going to drive change and they're the time where you can actually lose a current customer as well. So if you're not across a trigger event, that's an opportunity for your competitors to get in. So a lot of the customers I've won over the years, particularly on the project side in IT, would be a new program director comes in and that's a way for me to get in the door. So I might have no way into the door from a permanent perspective or it might be PSA driven. It's really hard. The leadership team has been there established for a long time and then I hear they're doing a new ERP. They bring in a new program director. Often program directors, firstly, are willing to break the rules it's just in their nature, their driver type personalities and secondly, they don't really know the rules or don't know how to follow the rules, so they can do a one-off consulting engagement. It's a huge trigger event, whether it's in IT or whether it's in business projects, to get in because often the program director has control of the budget and has control of the spend and particularly if it's a capital project and I won't bore people with the difference between capital projects and operational projects but if it's a CapEx project, they can often break their rules and bring in new suppliers. So knowing these trigger events and knowing the way to engage, knowing the way to get in the door, is really really, really powerful and knowing who these people are. So for me, if I was looking through just to give you guys where you would go, so I would always be tagging the C-suite ahead of a GM in your particular space. So both the CEO, if you're in finance, your CFO you want to get as high up the food chain as you can. Talent acquisition has a place and I can see we've spelled that wrong, but we'll solve that another day. Hr has a place. Your line managers definitely. So your top down, bottom up super important. I would always be talking to someone in procurement, because procurement often own the contract in a larger enterprise, procurement has a place. You can get an insight into who is on that supplier panel when they're going market, what's the way in, and you can openly talk to procurement around. What do I need to do to be to be seen in the right light there? Most people don't realize if you don't have agency spend, it's very hard to win a psa. So if it's a large enterprise customer, what often happens is they'll go to market and they'll they'll put people in that we've spent money with these customers, let's read their tender, or we haven't spent money with them, let's not even bother. So procurement can be handy because you can find out when that PSA is up and then you can start to strategize how am I going to get spend? So procurement is another really good way in and from a project perspective, your program director, your program director, your head of PMO whether that's the business side, whether that's the tech side, depending what space you play in but anyone who's around that project management office, the EPMO they are really good ways to get into a customer and they're certainly personas that you need to have mapped and understand what's really really important to them and know the difference between good to great. So I could give you kind of multiple examples in this space, and certainly in this space where people will break the rules. They will overspend. They'll bring in new suppliers if you can speak their language.
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Speaker 1:So Luke's got a question and I'll share this for the group and for the audio. So the question is if you can't get them on the phone, would you use the same format on an email? The short answer for me is yes. The longer answer is it's still a yes, but it depends on the persona of the customer. So if I think about the scripts I use and I think there's a real art form in building out email scripts that pack a punch, or a LinkedIn message that packs a punch I always think of two personality types. So in my space most people are either analytical, so they're in the detail, so they're either engineers or they're IT, or they're driver, at least short, blunt, direct. They're executive, they want to see the three to five dot points. If I look at the other two personas, you have expressive, so people who are super friendly, engaging, bubbly, less in the detail. Or you'd have amiable, who are kind of quiet, lovely, nice. Most of my customers would sit in either analytical or driver. So when I'm thinking of an email script or I'm approaching them, I build out my story exactly the same way. So I think of who am I pitching here? What do I know? Their success metrics are what's the trigger event and then what's the story I'm building out here. But usually write it to an analytical and the reason I do that is an analytical wants more detail. A driver wants short, short blood, direct. But for a driver the way I'll write it is I'll have enough detail in there for an analytical, but then I'll usually have five or six dot points to pack a punch, whether that's around. You know what I've delivered in the sector, what the outcome of that delivery was of particular note. The projects I've delivered are you sector, what the outcome of that delivery was Of particular note. The projects I've delivered are direct competitor project outcome. Direct competitor project outcome. And I'll have three to five dot points because I look at it and go. An analytical is going to read the whole thing. If they're engaged, a driver is probably going to run their eyes over the dot points and if those three to five dot points are key things in the industry, I'm going to grab their attention. They're probably going to read the email or they're just going to pick up the phone. So yes, to answer your question using that same format on email is really powerful and you want to play around with that, you want to experiment with that. But I think having a template is really, really important that pushes people through this, because it will grab their attention and you definitely get better cut through, and I take that even a step further. So, even if I think about how I'm positioning to candidates, if I'm positioning a candidate on LinkedIn and I say headhunt, but headhunting is picking up the phone, it's not sending them a LinkedIn in-mail. But if I'm sending someone a LinkedIn in-mail to grab their attention, I'm using a, a version of this value prop or a version of this language of leaders to capture their attention, and that's probably a story for another day.
Speaker 1:So so, dallas, to your question, so where you've got just to confirm what's our story is the results achieved together. Um, I and j? Um, yes, and then I'd tie it into. I'd tie it into the trigger event, so, um, so to pull together your story, I'd then bring it, bring in your trigger event, because it might be different what you've delivered or the, the way you position. That might be slightly different based on the trigger event.
Speaker 1:And, scott, we've got, regarding your point on language of leaders on your website and collateral, can you provide some examples of this? It's logical. I'm intrigued on how you've previously implemented this. A really old school example for those who want to go to my LinkedIn if you're not connected with me, feel free to connect with me after this call, but if you went into and this is really old, so you're looking at me like this looks nasty. I think it's from like 2007, so it's clearly not current 2007, 2008, or probably somewhere between that and 2014. If you go to the Aurek part of my LinkedIn profile, there's literally a one-pager there which is an infographic which will talk about like different results they've achieved. So I've been using language leaders now and it's got better over time over that decade. But I think that document was somewhere kind of mid-2010s. Might have been 2014, 2015. I can't remember, but it was somewhere over that journey Certainly talked to data points in 2007, 2008.
Speaker 1:And we would have had things that we thought were important to the IT sector and metrics that mattered there to the IT sector and metrics that mattered there. So it might have been. You know, 87% of our candidates, you know, stay on more than three years. Or you know 75% of our placements come from headhunting or direct referrals, or, you know, if I'm thinking about time to hire, I might have a metric there on my webpage. If I'm thinking about TAs around time to hire, I certainly had D&I stats. So you know that stat back in AUREC. I can't remember the number, it might have been 7%, you know females placed in leadership roles. And the second data point might have been 20% or 30%. I can't remember them off the top of my head now, but we had data points there that we knew were important to our customers so that we could talk to them and that they could grab people's grab people's attention.
Speaker 1:So having a really crisp one pager that that talks to what's important to your customers is is really, really important. Um and but the thing I would say is no website, no one pager, is going to be the reason why someone buys. So your website, someone will go to that and this is just my opinion. It's good to have it there, but it's just a credibility piece. Having a good one-pager that you can send to a customer when you've spoken to them, or send them as a touchpoint, is probably more powerful. But the biggest thing is understanding that story and being able to pitch that story over the phone and really bring it to life over the phone. But having a powerful one-pager, I think, is always really, really good. So hopefully that answers your question. And then, tom, I missed yours.
Speaker 1:So how early on would you be telling the story into the BD cycle? I want to be talking the language of leaders on that very first phone call. So the reason for my call is and then I'm weaving them through the value proposition, the trigger event. So the reason for my call is whatever the trigger event is, and then I'm weaving them through the value proposition, the trigger event. So the reason for my call is whatever the trigger event is, and then I'm rolling into that story. So I want to get that in the BD cycle as early as possible. I want my collateral to back that up and I want to be pushing that story time and time again and playing around with that as I objection handle through the different objections that may come up through the process. I'm going to whip into the recruitment process in the 3C.
Speaker 1:So I would have liked to have spent a little bit more time on objection handling, but I'm more than happy for the team and I to come back and do objection handling early in the new year. I really want to do objection handling where we can go back and forth and have a bit more engagement. I think it's hard, over the text box, to give tonality to understand your questions in detail. So I'm going to park objection handling for now and come back to that, because we could easily spend two hours on that around. What are scripts for success? How do we take that language of leaders? Further, what do we do for common objections? I feel like that's almost a standalone. So I know I've given you a bit of a teaser there, but we'll go into detail on that at a future session for those who wish to come back.
Speaker 1:But what I wanted to do now is walk you guys through a couple of different things. So the first one is the recruitment process. The second one is walking you through the three Cs. So in terms of the recruitment process. So this is just a little and I don't love the way this looks, but you'll get the idea. What I think is really important and the difference between good to great is understanding the steps of the process and having these mapped out end to end. So anyone who works closely with me will look at each part of the recruitment process and we'll map it out end to end. So if we look at here. This is my view on the recruitment process and it's really simple checklist for you just to go as you go through. Have I done this well or is it green or essentially red? You've either done it or you haven't done it.
Speaker 1:So if we look at following the process, so the very first thing, the most critical thing, is taking a job brief, and what I mean by that is not taking two or three dot points, it's not. You know, I had a five-minute conversation with the customer. It's taking a detailed job qualification form. So you should have in that, of course, all of the basics around salary rate, you know key skills, you know must-haves, desirable et cetera. But it's about digging in and challenging every part of the brief. So it's about looking at those details and going where can I push the customer? How do I open up the brief? And having a documented job brief process. Because excellence in the recruitment process is about understanding how you win. So if you haven't documented this and you're winging any part of the process, that's holding you back and I'm telling you it's costing you money. So for me, complete job brief super important.
Speaker 1:There's some really key questions in there that you'd want to ask. One of my favorites what does success look like in one month's time, six months time and a point in the future? Get them to give you a time. And then my favorite questions tell me more and what else? Can you give me an example? So you really want to dig in around the job brief to understand what success looks like. Because, again, you're going to use the language of leaders everywhere, so so that little, a little framework here might look like a little thing, but anytime I'm talking to a customer, I'm always coming back to you. Know, what do you actually want to achieve? What does success look like? What does success look like? Quantify that. Give me an example so that when I'm going to a candidate and and this is why running a really good interview process is important I'm then asking those questions my customers identified. You know success looks like this in one month, six months, 12 months. How would you achieve that? And so you're starting to ask much better questions to get much better results.
Speaker 1:Now, again, recruitment process is a standalone, multi-hour kind of discussion, but having a complete job brief is the starting point. It is critical. The questions you ask there are the difference between you winning for your customer or losing, or losing to a competitor and less contingent roles, as we've kind of gone along. But I know that I've won countless briefs because I've taken a better brief Instead of having three to five dot points. I've understood the project, what they're trying to deliver, what success looks like, where they're willing to flex in way more detail than my competitors, and I've beaten them nine times out of 10. So the complete job brief is the starting point. Most people miss this second one, which is agreed timeline and plan. So you should never be taking a brief and not locking down a plan with a customer. So every job qualification should finish with the way I work is, and then you set down the timeline and you set down the plan. So that could be.
Speaker 1:I'll give you a couple of examples. It's going to take us two weeks to map this particular market, but we know candidates are in high demand. They move really quickly, so we're not going to wait two weeks to give you a short list. We're going to drip feed them as they come through. But in two weeks time we'll have exhausted the market. Simple example of setting a timeline so I'm going to have candidates to you from X, when can we book in interviews, or the way I work is I'm going to send you through candidates on this particular day, if you can be a bit more direct with it, or you can have a line in the sand that's quicker because you want to create urgency. When are you available to talk through these candidates? Because I want to send them through and have a conversation with you Because, again, most recruiters actually don't talk to and actually present their candidates, which we'll get onto in a minute.
Speaker 1:Don't talk to and actually present their candidates, which we'll get on to in a minute. But you want to try and pre-book your interview slots. Your role as a recruiter and your role as a sales professional is to always be multiple steps ahead of your customer and you can win customers, you can win exclusive customers, you can convert customers just by running a beautiful process, and most people miss here. They don't have a timeline or plan. It's like I'll try and get your CVs by Friday. They then miss it. They send a text oh yeah, we'll have CVs on Monday. You need to start really getting a timeline and a plan nailed From there.
Speaker 1:It's about qualifying people over the phone and so many recruiters do this badly. They phone screen and they don't interview or they phone screen and then their interview is essentially just another phone screen. So you really need to have a marked difference between qualifying a candidate over the phone and a candidate interview. So your phone screen should be getting you the basics to go. I feel like I want to put this person forward. They meet the base level criteria, I need to move them to an interview and I want to put them forward to the client. Now, that doesn't mean you can't create urgency, it doesn't mean you can't move quicker. But I would rather have a five-minute conversation here kind of max 10, and get someone into an interview straight away. So these days with Zoom Teams, video calls, you could have a five-minute phone call and be like can we transition this to a video call and turn it into an interview so you can move really quickly here. But you need to have a tight phone screen and then a detailed interview process and your interview process needs to tie back to your job brief and it needs to tie back to the questions that are going to make this person successful.
Speaker 1:But the reason why it's even more important and the reason why people fall down is they don't run an interview face-to-face. Obviously there's some obvious things there around. You know they haven't met the customer. If the customer asks, you could lose a customer just by having not met the candidate. But your interview process is not just about you validating their right and finding that story to sell via language of leaders. Equally, the important part from a candidate interview perspective is getting to the end of the process and say this is how I work.
Speaker 1:Again, you're setting the expectation, you're setting the tone. What you can expect from me is x right and you can set up your pre-close. You can set up the tough questions you're going to ask, you can set up how the process is going to run and you and ultimately set the expectations for the process moving forward. So everything you're going to ask, you can set up how the process is going to run and ultimately set the expectations for the process moving forward. So everything you're going to do on the candidate and client side is about setting expectations, setting a process and building in tests. So authority to represent Most people, I think, do this now. I say most, I'm going to say 65%, probably two out of three recruiters An authority to represent is the most important form you're ever going to do, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:So, firstly, it's a test and again, you can move quickly. So if I've got you on a phone call, I've identified, you're right, I've said yes, let's get you into an interview either now or very quickly in the future. I'd be saying to someone okay, great, we've agreed, we're going to send you to company X for this particular role, for whatever the rate is or whatever the salary is, I'm going to send you through an authority to represent. Now I need you to send that back because we have to have that from a compliance point of view, like our team requires it from a compliance point of view. Does that sound reasonable? Yes, I'm going to send you to the customer based on your verbal authority. So I'm not to send you to the customer based on your verbal authority.
Speaker 1:So I'm not holding back. I'm not waiting for them to send that, I'm going to send it on their verbal. But I'm asking them to send it back because if they don't, I automatically think am I in control? So when you think about the three Cs so control, close, create urgency I'm going to get onto them for the final part of this evening, but for me that's your first test, for are you in control? All right? So if I've asked you to send an authority to represent, you're like, yes, I'll send it through and you haven't sent it through to me within an hour, I'm already thinking am I in control? Or when can you send that through? I'm going to send it through tonight, great, if I haven't got it the next day. Maybe I'm not in control, maybe they're not as interested in the role as I thought. So your authority to represent super important.
Speaker 1:And again, the whole idea of this little flow chart here that I'm showing you is just for you to have a visual representation of. Have I done this part of the process? Yay or nay is your starting point. But where I want to get everyone to, or where I want you to get thinking about, is if I can process, if I can get everything down to a beautiful process, I can see where I can win. I can ask better questions, I can make this process better time in and time again. So every process I run, I evaluate my experience. What did I do well? What did I miss? What could I do better?
Speaker 1:Presenting candidates Another massive one. Most people's idea of presenting candidates is I've emailed the customer three CVs and said here's Abby, john and Billy. We'd love to get your feedback. That's their idea of presenting candidates. Some people have a nice cover page, maybe a story. Other people have none of that. They just send an email and sit and wait. Your job is to be a salesperson, so you need to present candidates. So you want to set up that you're having a conversation with that customer. So I'm sending the candidates through. On this date, this time or on this day, I'd love to talk you through the detail. You want a cover sheet and you want a cover sheet that talks to the language of leaders, talks to your job qualification. But you want to get them on the phone Because I can say to them there's only so many things I can put on a cover sheet to grab your attention.
Speaker 1:The value is in us discussing the candidate, why they're suitable and the experience they bring to the table, and that then feeds into your pre-interview process. So a lot of people don't do a pre-interview process with a candidate or a client. A lot do it with the candidate. Very few do a pre-interview with the client. You want to do a pre-interview with the client to say you know and and set the framework of you know if you're meeting this person, you know like. You're meeting these people for a reason. You think they're suitable for the role. We both agree on that. Um, you know, assuming they're good, what's important to candidate a? What's important to candidate b, candidate c are these things good things? Good candidates have multiple opportunities. Again, you're creating closing and controlling, creating urgency, but you want to get your client thinking that they need to sell their opportunity and walking them through what is important to each candidate. So each one of these processes is vital. So you want to have a process for each of these. Post-interview debrief also super important.
Speaker 1:Again, we don't have time tonight to walk through what I think a great process flow is, but I want you to be thinking as recruiters. Have I documented these processes or am I just winging it? And most people I know, once they get into this part of the process, they're winging it and they're hoping that their experience works for them. And for some of you on this call, you might be that good that you can get away with it, but you don't understand what makes you great If you ever want to build a team, if you're ever coaching other recruiters. You can't actually impart your knowledge if you're winging it and then you've got your other processes here. So offer close reference check. Of course you should be trial closing from part one, but they're the other processes that I see. I just like this as a visual. You might have more processes that you include, you may have less processes that you include, but I want you to have thought through them and gone. Have I actually mapped these out? If you haven't, that's something you should certainly be looking at over the break.
Speaker 1:Knowing authority to represent is not a legal requirement. I think it's very good best practice, and my view on the authority to represent is that that one particular form has saved me more deals than I could count and it has made me look good as a recruiter against my competitors. So is it a legal requirement? Is it legally binding? No, is it legally binding? No, right, but if you get in a multiple, a multiple, a situation where multiple the candidates being presented by multiple agencies, it's a really, really positive thing to have.
Speaker 1:So so if, if I, if I was working against you, for example, and I had an authority to represent and you didn't, if the customer came back to me and said, matt, I've received that cv from another agency, I'd be like, well, that's really interesting because our process is for every candidate we get them to, to send back an authority to represent, saying they haven't been presented by other agency, asking us to exclusively present them and and letting us know and and detailing they haven't had their details presented by another agency in the previous six months, you know. So I'd start with that and I would actually send it through to my customer and I would push on them and say, well, do you really want to be working with an agency that is sending people without their authority? And you can certainly position a lot of objections around that. So I've saved deals or I've said, oh well, I've had customers where they've then gone back to their agency. Do you have an authority to represent? No, well, we're working with Matt because he's got one. You know, the candidate's actually given their permission to move forward from this role.
Speaker 1:So it saves you from some of that cowboy behaviour. It positions you as someone who's professional and it just gives you a differentiator. Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. I've had times where I or send an authority to represent to everyone, but I would 100 do that with absolutely everyone. Um, and I've seen good effects. To answer your flow on question dallas. I've seen people now doing that in blue collar, so I help with partners in blue collar who do that. Um, I've seen it, you know, across the board have really, really good impact and it just positions you as an expert. It makes you look good, it makes you look like you follow a great process and it can save you losing deals to multiple candidates being represented.
Speaker 1:Okay, mitchell, so how are you handling counter offers for top candidates? Great question and a hard one to answer without kind of going back and forth with you around the different scenarios. But for me I have that you want to have that conversation as early as you can, and you're quite possibly doing that, but you want to have that conversation day one and just not take no for an answer. So whenever I'm thinking about closing a candidate and I'm closing them early on the opportunity, the dollars, what excites them, et cetera I want to have that conversation and most people just take it at face value. What happens if your current company counter offers oh well, that won't happen, or no, it doesn't matter, I wouldn't stay. I'd be like, okay, what if they offer you $20,000 more in the leadership role? Oh, they're not going to do that? Yeah, but walk me through what if they did so? You really want to dig in around those motivations and make sure they're kind of locked in and you want to be having that conversation each step of the way.
Speaker 1:So, if we're going through each part of this particular process, I'd have counter offers, particularly in niche areas, weaved in all the way through and I'd be highlighting back to them from my interview the reasons they were leaving. Because we'd be talking about, well, why are you leaving? And I'd be really digging into that. Um, because, again, most people, when they have a counter offer, usually means they haven't dug in enough around well, why are you actually leaving your current role, you know? Or they get a wishy-washy answer, um, and then that leads to a counter off down the track because the person wasn't really looking, they were just, you know, seeing what could happen. Um, so it's all about how you dig in. There's no perfect answer and I've shared this with a few people.
Speaker 1:Like recruitment is is not like chess, right. So if you think about the game of chess for those who know about chess, anyone who loses a game of chess you can almost, you know, go back and be like that's the move that lost me the game right for. For those who've studied chess and I'm not a big chess person, but I played a bit in my time there will always be a move or a series of moves that you can be like. That's the reason I lost. Recruitment is more like poker. So, for those who know Texas Hold'em, you can have the 80% winning hand or a 90% winning hand. The last card can flip over and you can lose straight away.
Speaker 1:So your job is, and recruitment is like that. So your job is to run as beautiful a process you can and have as many 80% or 90% likelihood chances of winning and perfecting that process over time, but knowing that you can do all the right things and lose. But what generally happens is people break this part of the process and this all becomes a sea of red and then they're flipping a coin and they win and they go. Okay, I'll do that again. So your job is to handle things as best as you can and if you're having challenges with counter offers, digging into that and going well, what am I asking people? How detailed am I going? Am I pushing on that enough and building it out from there? So, sam, just coming on to your question, some contract roles I work on don't have the opportunity to take a job brief from the client. You just revive a PD through a portal, for example. Any advice in these situations? Yes, so for me and this is not having a go at you there are customers who plan that, some of their enterprise customers. They do just send you three to five job briefs and that's exactly what happens.
Speaker 1:You want to get to the line manager, you want to get to the line manager and if TA is blocking that, you want to have questions for TA that terrify them. So for me, if a TA says, well, you don't need to deal with the line, you can just deal with me, I will have two or three questions in my kit bag that I know they can't answer, that are either specific to the space I play in or specific to the role, and anytime I objection handle I want to make it sound like it's the most stupidest thing to not have that meeting, right? So if I had a TA for whatever reason, kind of block me in that space, or a line manager for that reason, like block me around a meeting I'd be like, okay, so instead of spending 15 minutes with me, you know working through the brief, so we nail this for you and you get the best candidate minutes with me. You know working through the brief, so we nail this for you and you get the best candidate on the market. You'd rather waste three hours in interviews. That might not be relevant, right? So I want to put them in a position where you know and I will objection, handle variants of that to make them feel uncomfortably like, oh, okay. Well, yeah, it makes sense to just spend the 15 minutes, not the three hours.
Speaker 1:Or if someone sends me through a job brief with three dot points and they're telling me they want to get the best candidate on the market, I'd be like again whether it's a TA or a line manager, okay, so we want to find the best candidate in the market because we know the best candidate in the market is going to achieve this particular language of leaders result yes, great. So the best candidates in the market are going to have multiple opportunities. We agree? Yes, fantastic. So how am I going to position your company to that candidate if they ask me have you met, you know, line manager X? Right, because I'm not going to lie to them, so I have to tell them that I actually haven't met them. Do you think that's going to secure the best talent on the market? No, well, that's why I need to meet them right. That's why I need to meet them Right.
Speaker 1:So you've got to find these, these, these different ways. And again, that's why objection handling we could spend a long time there. You've got to have stories from an objection handling point of view that make people feel uncomfortable, a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit like oh yeah, now it makes sense, like that's a logical reason why you should meet the customer. So I'm saying you're not going to get the best person because I can't, you know, I can't tell them how good you are because I haven't met the person. Or tell me about X and I can't answer that question. It's a really good way to get through that and over time, ideally you want to move away from customers that are just sending you contract roles, that are like that, or find a way to get on their sales floor.
Speaker 1:So I've had Gemini are a big customer of mine for a long period of time. At one stage I had close to 100 contractors on site there. They would send three dot points to five agencies and be like there you go. That's what we need. But I made sure I was on site half a day a week. I knew when their project resource meeting happened and I'd make sure I was walking the floor and I'd find a person on the project or the decision maker to have that conversation. So you've always just got to think how do I get creative to get around that? And then to our anonymous person.
Speaker 1:So when presenting candidates to the client over the phone, are you trying to provide insights that aren't obvious on the resume, ie sell the candidate. How do you find the balance of not overselling and not telling the client just what they want to hear? Great question. So that all comes back to your job qualification. So in that job qualification, I want to find out exactly what the client wants to achieve, what success looks like. That's what I want to sell.
Speaker 1:I also want to highlight anything that might be a gap, so any gaps in the CV, anything that's a little bit strange about the candidate, so whether they're accented, anything that might stand out that you think you know they need to know about. I'm team, be very candid and sell the candidate as they are. You know, if you say a candidate is accented, often I will have customers come out and be like oh Matt, I thought you were a bit harsh there, they weren't as bad as you thought, you know. I'd rather have that than not say that they're accented, for example, if communication is important to them, and then you know. And then them come out and be like Matt, you didn't tell me, like you know, they were really hard to understand. So usually when you highlight a challenge, it's less of a challenge than if you don't tell. Don't tell a customer about it. So I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to certainly sell them on on the things that are important to the job qualification, handle any gaps or anything that's strange, and then talk to them about prep part. So, assuming you meet this candidate and you want to move forward, this is what's important to them. So it's not even just about selling the candidate for the interview, it's about also, as you lock in that interview, then selling the interview prep part and what's important to the person. Again, this is not the prettiest format I've seen or done. I'd love to get it into some beautiful dials and stuff over time. It might be something I do over Christmas, but when I think about things.
Speaker 1:So we've got the three Cs closing control, create urgency on the right, which is over here, and a little checklist, and then I've got qualified candidates and qualified roles. So when I'm thinking about the recruitment process, I always think about these different lenses. So the first lens is you know, am I working with a qualified candidate? Because so many people spend time with unqualified candidates and this can change through the process. They could be qualified day one, but somewhere through that process you know you've lost control. You're not closing, you don't have urgency, or they're no longer a qualified candidate. So same thing, I'd just be green and red here, or green, red and yellow. Some of these aren't going to be deal breakers, but they're just a good visual for you to consider.
Speaker 1:So from thinking about a qualified candidate, some questions to ask. Am I working with the candidate exclusively? Obviously, if that's happening, that's a brilliant place to be. How many roles have they applied for, directly or via an agency? Again, you need to think about your space and go is that green, yellow or red? Where does my role sit amongst other opportunities?
Speaker 1:If I'm opportunity three and we've got through interview process one, I'm opportunity three. I know I've got a second stage interview. I'm nine times out of ten removing that candidate from the process because we're wasting time. Are we clear on their drivers? This is a huge one. Have they saved your number in your phone? For me that's like test number one. If I ring you and you don't know who I am, you're probably not a qualified candidate, because you should have cared enough to have saved my number in your phone Big one to track there. Do they return calls and make themselves available? So again, if we go back to that excellence in the process, in that interview stage, I'm telling them what I expect when I'm booking in their interview. You're interviewing at this place at this time. Can you call me after the interview? Or when can you call me Booking the time? If they don't return the call when they said they're going to do it, I call them out on that. So many recruiters give candidates passes along the way. It doesn't mean you need to be rude, but if someone doesn't follow through on a promise, I call them out on it politely.
Speaker 1:All of these things are a test. Do they have the skills and experience to do the role Hopefully that should be green or you shouldn't be putting them forward? Are they fit for the location? Does the work from home work for them? Have they done the required results? Where does the role sit for them out of 10? Have you discussed counter offers?
Speaker 1:All of these things are a checklist to say great, and the big one at the bottom. Should I continue working with this candidate? That's a question you should be asking yourself every way through the process. So every time I talk to a candidate, even if I've qualified them at part one of the process, what's changed since we last spoke? And then I'm walking them through, qualifying them again at each part of the process.
Speaker 1:Where does this role sit amongst other opportunities? I'm taking them through a framework From an assignment or a role point of view. Again, these are the things I'd be looking at to go. Should I be working this role? So this a bit comes back to your question, sam. How long has the role been open for? Where does it exist? Have I taken a full JQF? Have I challenged every one of the criteria? What is the client's decision-making criteria? Do I know how the person will be measured in the role? What does success look like? What will the person do day-to-day? Do I know the client's value prop? Do I know the manager's value proposition? And big question to ask yourself is the role actually fillable on the above? So a checklist that you should build out for your sector.
Speaker 1:Then, from a process point of view, because so many people miss this, is the role approved? Is it exclusively retained? How many agencies have I met the decision maker face-to-face? For me, if that's a no, I won't even work the role Like. For me it just means I'm commoditized down to nothing. I'm adding no value, I'm wasting my time.
Speaker 1:If someone won't meet with me, they're not serious about working with me. For me that would be a deal breaker. Does the client actually partner? Do they return calls, follow up quickly? Do I know the process? Or, probably better yet, have I set the process for them? Have you agreed timelines, pre-booked interviews, are you part of the interview process? And that would be a conversation for another day. Do I know the process for the letter of offer?
Speaker 1:So many people lose deals there. They get to the verbal offer. They're excited. Then the client says actually we've got to send it back to the UK, to England, to get the paperwork signed. It's going to take two weeks and we need to do a medical. They lose the deal. You should know all of these things upfront.
Speaker 1:So for me, anything that happens to you as a recruiter, any deal you lose you're responsible for. I've never had a recruiter who sat and they could sit there and be like the client's an idiot, the candidate's an idiot. Then as soon as I go through their process, I'll find holes everywhere. So it's very, very rare and then the person still might be an idiot, but it's you. That's usually not the reason you've lost the deal. You've usually lost a deal for a hole, either in your process, uh, your process flow, your timelines or your the information gaps that you're missing. So so that's qualified candidates, qualified, qualified clients.
Speaker 1:I just want to whip quickly through control, close, create urgency. Again, that's a session in itself where we could spend a lot of time around how every part of the process hangs together. But same thing, if we're looking at closing, we want to look at some of these things here. So do we have their rate expectations and salary? No range. You should never have a range with the candidate. They're always going to want the top end, clients always going to want the bottom end. And do I have it in writing? So for me again, that authority to represent is saying I'm going to present you at this salary. You're not at a range I'm going to present you to this customer for this role, for this salary. You know the test is already there. Every step of the process I'm reconfirming salary and rate expectations.
Speaker 1:Why are they looking to leave their current employer? I should know the detail there. Um, you know what are their other opportunities? Am I trial closing? You know a really simple kind of framework for are you closing? Same thing for are you in control? You know as a candidate saved your number. They remember the role. You're having open and honest conversations. That's a little bit subjective but important. They're actually excited about the opportunity. They're updating you on the other roles where your role sits. They deliver on their promises.
Speaker 1:You've interviewed them face to face. If you haven't interviewed them face to face, you actually have no control. In my opinion, you've set expectations up front. This is how I work and you've also set expectations around tough questions, so you're pre-closing them on. When you get out of that interview, the question I'm going to ask you is if I can get X dollars with a Y start. They can I accept on your behalf.
Speaker 1:You need to be ready to answer that question. You need to ask enough questions to the customer to be ready to answer that question. Is that okay? And then, from an urgency point of view, commitment to timelines you're a step ahead. Every step of the way I've coached a client around reducing the timelines. Every step of the way I've set the expectations. I'm using the words today now confirm, I'm using things that create urgency.
Speaker 1:And then I'm also just thinking about the red flags. Is the candidate delaying Anytime there's a delay? I'm just assuming I'm not in control right, something wrong is happening. It doesn't matter what that delay is. It doesn't matter what the excuse is. It's a red flag for me. Are the goalposts changing? Has the rate changed? Has the salary changed? They've not locked in for interview prep or they don't want to lock in for interview prep. They're not following any agreed step that we've agreed to along the way. Red flag they're cancelling interviews Again, not met the client face-to-face, not interviewed the candidate. So the three Cs is huge. If I could get someone doing the three Cs on every interaction, that's the game changer for being amazing at your craft. But again, we don't have time tonight, so I just wanted to whip through that and give you guys some nuggets there that you might take away. Well, I appreciate you all joining us. I hope you've got a lot out of this session. Again, thanks guys. Have a great night.
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.