I ask agencies this quite often.How often do your clients turn around and ask you, what's happening in the market?How do we compare to our competitors?And every single person goes, yes.They're asking us that.Every client asks us that.
Focus on relationships. I saw someone post earlier this week on LinkedIn actually, build friendships or try and turn your candidates and clients into your friends.Now that wasn't something that I purposely
Welcome to the Staffing Ring, the podcast where the gloves come off and we go deep into the recruitment industry's best practices and tactics.We aim to bring you actionable insights for how staffing and recruiting agencies are winning today.
This production is brought to you by Ringover, the leading staffing communication platform connected to your ATS and CRM, empowering conversations for your recruiters.
Welcome to another episode of the Staffing Ren podcast.I'm your host, Jason Lawson, and I'm super excited to be joined today by Justin Hillier, CEO and founder of Recruiter Insider, which founded in 2016.
And previous to that, Justin was in a myriad of roles right across recruitment, through Steek, Total Jobs, PageUp, Astute Payroll, and several other roles. Wealth of experience and hopefully some strong points of view.Justin, welcome.
One or two, Jason, one or two.Yeah, started off as a recruiter, wow, back in 2000, 2001.So yeah, it was a long time ago.It was back in the day when, and for all the Gen Zs and Xs and whatever, well, I don't know, what do we call them now?
The young kids, I guess.We used to use what was called the Yellow Pages. to find companies, and fax machines.I reckon if I actually asked a 22 year old, do you know what a fax machine is, they wouldn't have any idea.
So yeah, a little while, the grey hair, I mean I've gone grey having gone bald from being in recruitment, so I'll take that as a no.
Indeed, indeed, and probably a fair bit of door knocking back in the day as well.
Oh god yes, don't remind me.
Well, I think what we'll get into today is some of the things that really have stood the test of time.And I love your kind of strapline of relationship intelligence.
And I think that is, whether it's fax machines or WhatsApp today, those things still make a big difference in the success for agencies. So let's dive in.Everything on the Staffing Ring was about jumping in the ring and getting the fists up.
The first round is really, okay, who is the opposition to the Staffing Agency leaders and managers and recruits themselves?
what's really the kind of challenges and the movements and market forces that need to be really addressed and managed by a staffing agency today.
Yeah, look, I'm not going to sit here and profess to know everything that's going on in everyone's market.We deal with agencies globally, so we look at it more so from a macro perspective rather than looking at it micro.
And there are very often huge similarities between the UK market, the Australian market.The US is a little bit different because every state is something different, almost over there as well.
But certainly if I was to compare the UK and Australia, there's not a huge difference in terms of the challenges that they're facing.
Competitive market, companies, so their clients are really unsure of what's going to be happening next in the economy.So they're kind of sitting on their hands, which means agencies don't have a lot going on.
But at the end of the day, what I universally see across both markets, it's the agencies that are actually adding value to the company, to the client, to the candidate. and focusing, as you mentioned there at the start, Jason, on the relationships.
Recruitment's always been about relationships.I think if I was to say that what's an agency's biggest barrier or biggest challenge or biggest opposition in the market, a lot of the time it's actually themselves.
because they're focused on what I would call those old school metrics of where you and I both started 20 odd years ago of calls, CV, scent, all these.
Some of these are important metrics to be measuring because you need to understand what people are doing.So that's the quantitative aspect, but the qualitative, the quality of that work. Doesn't matter if you make 50 calls if they're all crap.
Doesn't matter if you speak to 10 hiring managers if you don't know what you're doing, you're not engaging and connecting and building that rapport and relationship.
So recruitment's always, always been about relationships and it always will be because we're dealing with people.So I think the biggest challenge every agency still has today is that they're not measuring this.
They're not understanding what their customers, their candidates and clients think of them and what they bring to the table in terms of value add.
If you think about, and this number just astonishes me, there's 30,000 plus recruitment agencies in the UK.Now I ask every agency I talk to, what's your point of difference?Guess how many variations of that answer I get?
and everyone sounds the same.So if you're going to market and sounding like, and of course not all 30,000 compete with each other, but if you all sound the same, it's just noise in the end.There's no value add.
So the question I ask them, what's your point of difference?I actually think the answer is in that question itself with a little bit of play on words.You are your, what is your point of difference?
You are the experience you provide, how you make people feel.
Yeah, I think that's a wonderful kind of way to think about, you know, how to stand out.
And, you know, while we all love technology and the ability to be more productive and have better insights into a business, you know, going back, again, 20 years ago, it was all about relationships.
You know, you had your desk phone and a pen and paper, right?And so,
Everybody was different, whereas today, you know, there's a bunch of ATS, CRM, so everyone kind of has a similar foundation of their technology, and then AI, automation, all sound the same again.That's enough.
You've got tools today that I wish we had 20 years ago, because recruitment would have been even easier.
I mean, it wasn't easy back then, but all these tools and all this data and everything they've got access to, often they'll get it into the business and then ignore it, not do anything with it.It's like, what are you doing?
You're getting this for a reason, start using it.So, yeah, it is interesting, the relationship side of things.Recruitment, I mean, it's people.
We're dealing with candidates and clients, but what I find a lot of the time also on that front is that agencies are just looking at what their clients think of them and not their candidates.
Yet, the candidate is actually the one with the power of the process.
So there's a real disconnect there in terms of the influence of focus and of what we've seen in the data, at least on our platform, is that the candidate experience massively impacts hiring outcomes at every step of the process.
And the manager, the hiring manager, has the greatest impact of all. And what I have asked 99% of agents, well actually 99% of agencies that I ask have this exact same response.How many prepare candidates for interview?
Everyone puts their hands up and says yes, of course we do, because we're all trained to do that, right?Everyone's done it.Now back in our early days, maybe 20 odd years ago, we were also trained to prepare the hiring manager for interview.
There's two people in there.
You'd call them both, you know, a few hours before the interview, make sure the candidate's pumped up, make sure the hiring manager's prepared with a set of questions, and they know they've read the CV, all this kind of stuff.
No one does that anymore.Why?And that's part of the job title's recruitment consultant, right?
But that consulting piece has gone out the window, because what I hear a lot is consultants just feeding back to me saying, oh, but they're the hiring manager. Why should we do that?They're not going to accept our feedback.
Actually, have you ever tried?No.There is that gap of building that relationship, building that rapport, building that trust and consulting, which is the role.
Yes.Yeah.And again, not, not to labor the point of, you know, 20 years ago versus today, but a lot of roles hired 20 years ago, there was a HR team, a people, you know, team that would really be out of that process today.
It's often the line manager and, and they don't have the training or often the skills to, to interview.
Yeah, you're taking words right out of my mouth actually, so I'd say this to everyone as well.As part of the job brief, why don't you ask the hiring manager when did they last interview?How often have they interviewed in the last 12 months?
Because the chances are they haven't. they've never potentially done it before, or they've done it for two years ago because the team hasn't had turnover, or they've done it once in the last 12 months.So how confident are you in interviewing?
And they'll always pause.As soon as you hear that pause, you know they're not confident.But no one asks a question.
So yeah, the relationship side of things, I think is the biggest challenge agencies have is not appreciating the impact this has, because it's the old adage, people remember how you make them feel.
And that's what we're talking about here, and we're dealing with people.So that should be the absolute no-brainer for every agency.
Get an ATS so you can manage all the candidates and jobs and all that kind of stuff, but then get the feedback from your customers to understand, are we doing the right thing?
If I'm an agency leader, owner, and this resonates with me, what are those first few steps I should be taking or thinking about how to set up, better process people, technology to, as you say, to help coach and consult to the hiring manager as well as the candidates?
We've got a product that does it straight away.
Yeah, look, it's really understanding what you're trying to achieve.It comes back to the most basic sales question that we ask everyone still, what do you want to get out of the data?
But what I hear from our clients the most in terms, and we've been doing this a lot lately, of asking them how the product is helping them and how it helps them differentiate.
There's two common things, and I had another video come through from a client in Australia overnight, and it was the exact same things again.It helps us improve internally, and it helps us build relationships with our clients.
Feedback, as they say, is a gift, but it's a differentiator. So if you're looking to actually, and every agency thinks they're different than the next and the next and the next, but where's the proof?
So if you actually want to build a point of difference, you need to show that you're different.You need to show your candidates, your clients, that you have something different to offer.
And that's based on the previous experience people have had with you.Because we know people trust those who have said you're great in the past. But it can't just be as simple as, oh, here's a testimonial.
Because I think I've seen over the last six and a half years now, 70, 80,000 on testimonials across our products.And I can promise you, they all sound the same.Yeah.
And that's actually, you think about 30,000 recruitment agencies all sounding the same.And I've seen 80,000 almost testimonials that pretty much all sound the same. You get bored after a while, really.
So if you're looking to collect feedback, you really need to do it in a very specific way that adds value to the candidate, value to the client, value to the consultant, value to the business.
It builds relationships and improves those relationships across the board.It can't be, and this is why I started Recruiter Insider eight odd years ago now,
is what I saw agencies were doing is just asking people that they placed for feedback and asking them typically what was the NPS, Net Promoter Score question, which is simply, would you recommend our product, our services to a friend or colleague?
Now, asking people that you place, it's kind of like asking your husband or wife on your wedding night whether they love you or not.I reckon you know the answer. I reckon it's pretty positive.So you're not actually helping yourself.
You're not adding value to your own business by doing that.So the feedback you're collecting should add value to your own business, to the candidate and the client as well.So that should be the mindset.How do we improve the relationships?
By understanding the relationships at a deep level.
Awesome. Well, it feels like we've already moved into round two, but let's do it.You know, round two we're thinking about how, what are the strategies?What are the tactics?You know, we're recording this middle of 2024.
In general, the environment remains challenging.
Do you see, just from relationship quality and ways of thinking about that, some perhaps unconventional ways to build those relationships and monitor, and how should agencies be thinking about the next three, six, 12 months?
I think if they're not thinking, actually, let me take a step back.
I think if they think it's going to be as easy as what it was in 2022, and as the market starts to pick up again, and this is UK, Australia, no matter where we are in the world, we're all seeing little green shoots come through everywhere.
If you're thinking it's going to get back to 2022, late into 2021, 2022 where everything was going gangbusters, you're so colossally wrong.You're miles off.
Now the market may actually pick up and boom, but that's not going to be the case for agencies.Job orders aren't going to come flooding in the door, we need your help, blah blah blah, because what employers have realized
is that that value piece needs to be there.It can't just be filling a job.That's not going to work.So hold on, my headphones have just said battery's low, so we're going to have a problem in a minute, I'm guessing.
No, it's fine.If something goes, the production team can edit these things out.
If you're not focused on showing that point of difference you're going to really struggle at value adding.And by value adding, I mean, it could be different products or services that you add, not just filling a role.It could be market mapping.
It could be everyone's got salary surveys.I think they're kind of majorly hit and miss.But you need to have other additional services or products that you can provide to differentiate.
So you can generate, could be training, hiring manager training on how to interview. A lot of our clients do that on the back of the data from our platform.So I think you need that point of difference.
I also think you need to be showing them something that they haven't seen before.So one of the key things is not to pitch or promote our product too much, but showing them how they benchmark versus their competitors.
is something that really resonates.And I ask agencies this quite often.How often do your clients turn around and ask you, what's happening in the market?How do we compare to our competitors?And every single person goes, yes.They're asking us that.
Every client asks us that.So you need that level of insight to show that that's the value add they're looking for.So I think an agency needs to, moving forward, have the mindset of not being a partner, This is going to sound a little bit weird.
Everyone's got this mindset, we're partners with our clients, we want to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.That's actually, I think, yesterday's mindset and approach.
I think you need to move forward with, we need to be a part of their business and they need to see us as part of their business and integral to their business.That's where the real relationship bonds going to exist moving forward.
I think that resonates so highly because every time we have these economic shifts and a downturn, a lot of businesses will try and do the hiring internally and also at the same time they've often shrunk their own internal HR teams because they just don't have the job.
there's certainly a gap and a need and opportunity for agencies to get in there and, as you say, become a part of the business, really an extension of their employee win rate in terms of bringing on the best talent they can and retain that talent as well.
I think that's something which agencies need to really be aware of.
Yeah, I mean, I'd even suggest to a client, let us sit in, give us a desk or two, one or two days a week, so we can sit in your office and work alongside you.
And that then gives you the feel of their culture and what it's like in the office when they're there, because obviously not everyone's in the office every day anymore as well.But that gives you that level of insight.
It's just those little things that you could be doing that not only that client will see you as, oh, they're really going the extra mile here, but you're getting greater understanding of their business at the same time.
And the best part about it is you're networking within that business at the same time.That gives you the greatest opportunity to get deeper into that client.
So yeah, if you're not focused on relationships and prioritizing those and getting deeper into those clients and adding value, like real value, to be seen as a true extension, a true part of their business and not just a partner, because partners come and go.
Think about, We often say recruitment or interviewing is like dating, right?Partners come and go.But you need to be seen as like the kid.You don't get rid of your kid.They need to see you as kind of that potential line.Yeah, it's a weird analogy.
I haven't thought of that before. Or your parents, right?That's the relationship you need to be looking at.Not a partner, because partners come and go.They need to see you as family.There you go.
There's the analogy.They need to see you as family.Indeed.Indeed.
If you think about all the buzzwords around AI and automation, that's really taking a step back and actually thinking, yes, a lot of the AI and automation can help you hopefully effectively free up time, become more productive, hopefully take care of a lot of the administrative work.
But it's really then, OK, how do you make the best use of the time that you do have now?
I think for a lot of agency owners where they know AI and automation is something that they should be investing in and understanding how to make the most of, yet at the same time, as we've said before in this episode, that can actually create some more generic and vanilla
I think you can't go too far with automation.Absolutely.
And what we're hearing from our clients and what I'm hearing across the industry as well is that agencies are really relying on suppliers like ourselves, for example, or Bullhorn or whatever other tech they've got in their business to actually provide the AI side of things because they don't know where to start themselves.
It's not their area of expertise and nor should it be. So they're really looking to their suppliers.
It almost feels like they're flogging it to death, which is kind of, it's really frustrating from where I sit because automation isn't the silver bullet to your business.
Yes, it can improve some efficiencies and give you back some time, but if you focus too much on it, you're not focusing on what you should be focusing on, which is relationships.
So yes, it can help improve parts of that, but as I've spoken to a lot of our clients who have automation tools in their business, it's a never-ending story.So you continuously build automation little tracks and efficiencies, it just never ends.
So I think at some point you have to kind of go, enough for now, let's just let it sit for six months and see if there is really anything major.
AI, as I mentioned before, I think every agency is really looking at the suppliers, the bullhorns, recruiter insider. any other bit of tech that's out there to add that AI element into their business.
And we should be, and I know from ourselves, we're doing that certainly over the next six months.I think, though, from an overall tech stack perspective, and I said this recently, and it kind of half got shot down and half didn't.
A few people on the fence and a few people who agreed and a few people who absolutely disagreed with me as well.I think any tech you're putting into your business, though, needs to bring to the table for you
an element of deep data, a breadth of data.Now, I said recently, and this is where this got a bit, you know, almost argumentative.Good debate, I reckon, that went on on LinkedIn.
I actually think to a large degree, data is a business's greatest asset now, not the employee.Because the more of it you have, the more insights you have, the better business decisions you can make.That's not the case when you've got more employees.
Employees come and go.Data doesn't.It's always there.It tells you the truth.I've got this saying that I often preach it.Our clients have actually stolen this line from me now.They say it more than what I do.The data doesn't lie.Your employees will.
So the data is what it is.You can't get around it.You can't argue with it.It is black and white.
And the more of it you have and the breadth of data that you can have across your business to give you insights into every single moving part of what is an incredibly dynamic process, even just a job hiring process, recruitment as a whole, the better you will be.
So I think you need to look at efficiencies, absolutely.You need some AI to speed up a lot of these insights.
But the one thing, and this is the biggest gap I think a lot of agencies are missing out on if they want to do something with AI, is you need an ocean of data to facilitate it.It needs so much data to actually get its real value.
And that's the one thing agencies haven't got, is a whole stack of data. That should be the primary focus because then you get better efficiency, better AI out of the back of that.
Yeah.Well, I think that's, that's one of the biggest punches we've had on the Staffing Ring podcast.Justin, um, data is the biggest asset, um, more important than employees.Um, yeah, I think it's, uh, it might be 51, 59.Sorry?
love to dive down into that more in terms of, you know, what does that mean in terms of how to, you know, still work with both, right?We're not suggesting here that the machine can do it all yet.
No, no, no, no, no, no.No, that's certainly not the premise.So you need to, your employees are functioning, they're doing the activity and they're building the relationships with clients.You're measuring that you're looking at your KPIs.
You've got historical data that's showing trends, forecasting.You can forecast, you know, whether you're going to fill a job based on an experience the candidate has with a hiring manager or the consultant, all these kinds of things.
So you definitely need your employees to facilitate the collection of that data. They're the driving force.They're the ones also who are building your brand at the same time.But like we said before, partners come and go, so do employees.
Every agency has turnover and they're going to come and go.So if we're honest about it, employees, if they're our greatest asset, why do agencies have such high turnover? That's quite an interesting thought.
I see agencies with 35, 30, 40, 50% turnover in 12 months.Now that's not showing to me that the employee is the greatest asset.So those employees are coming through and we should absolutely treat them like they are our greatest asset.
I don't deny that.They are people.We need to treat them like that.We need to treat them like adults.None of that is, I'm arguing, whatsoever.
But long-term, data is going to be more valuable to your asset because if you're looking to sell your business, an investor, someone who's looking to acquire a business as a whole, isn't necessarily looking at each individual person in your business.
They're looking at your business from a numbers perspective.They're looking at it from a data perspective.And the more data you've got to show them, the more confident they're going to be that this is the right investment or purchase for them.
And you know, one of the most exciting things for me about AI and data within the staffing and recruiting agency business is be able to take that unstructured data, you know, be it conversations that happen like with Ringover, capturing calls, messages, WhatsApp, and also like with Recruiter Insider, you're taking unstructured data, the qualitative, and you're turning that into
structured data, AI, LLM models can really surface our insights and actions.
A hundred percent.Yeah.So I think the more, the more data you have and you'll be, oh, sorry, data.We're talking to mostly data.I can't get that, can't get that out of my mouth. Data.The more you have, the more valuable your business is.
And that's not the case if you think about it, the more employees you have, the more valuable your business is.It doesn't work that way.Because when your business is being assessed from a value perspective, all anyone is looking at is numbers.
All they're looking at is data. So the more of it you have, the more valuable your business is going to be.So if you can show it, it's not just financials.
If you can show the relationships you have with candidates and clients and how much they trust you, how much that turns into repeat business, then that solidifies that.
So you need a breadth, depth, you need to show all of these different aspects, not just a bottom line number, because that's not going to get it done anymore. 100%.
Brilliant, well let's crack on, round four, speedball.We've got some quickfire Q&A for you, Justin.Okay, this one is, we're walking into the staffing ring, what's your walk-on music theme song?It's gotta be Eye of the Tiger.
Awesome, awesome, classic, classic theme tune.And that's probably gonna help answer the second question.Best movie, Fight Club, or Rocky? Well, I'm actually gonna go Fight Club.Ooh.Yeah, I really like Fight Club.
So, you're taking, you're taking the Cyclocke and taking it.But we don't talk about Fight Club.Of course.Alright.Moving along.Red or blue corner?Blue.Can't pick, you can't pick yellow and gold.Definitely blue. Any reasons for that?
Um, I just prefer the color blue.Red to me says stop.No, I don't stop.
Beach or snow, Justin?Snow.Cool. It's easier to warm up than what it is to cool down.Yeah, and this just sounds weird from an Australian saying I prefer the snow over the beach.Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the heat, so yeah, definitely snow.
Well, hey, being in the UK in summertime, you're pretty safe.I can't wait.
Yeah, coffee or tea?Tea.I actually have never had coffee in my life.The world does not need to see me on caffeine.
yep yeah yeah again um you you fit in very well in the uk with the with the tea yes and focus salsa or guacamole yeah you gotta combine the two don't you yeah box can do can do yeah just stick them all in one bowl best of both worlds all right
Are you texting or calling?
Or it depends on who it is.Some of my friends will only communicate via text.Some won't answer their phone.They won't answer a text, but they'll answer the phone.Yeah, it depends on who it is.
But as one of my dear friends continues to tell me, there is no such thing as a five-minute phone call with me. you need 45 minutes.Like a five minute phone call with me is 45 minutes.So a quick call with me is like 45 minutes.
So a lot of my friends, and I don't know what this says about my friends and me, they prefer text.
There you go.They've learned through the pain.How are you thinking today about virtual versus in real life? Oh, I love in real life.
I love in person.Um, I thrive on it.Give me a room of 400 people.I'm happier than, than in a room of 40.I'll, I'll thrive in a room of 40.Um, but 400, 4,000, give me a stadium.Um, doesn't bother me one little bit.I don't mind being on center stage.
Um, there's nothing that, uh, there's, there's no, well, how am I trying to say this?Um, nothing gets the adrenaline pumping more for me anyway than presenting to a room of people or an auditorium of people, whatever it might be.You get that energy.
People see that energy.It's very hard to get that energy across on a video.
Yes, yes.Yeah, agreed.Yeah, I think in the world of technology, it's great to have the flexibility.But yeah, certainly agree.In person, it's the energy, it's the vibe.
Yep, and that's where you build a relationship, the rapport, because what is it, there's a stat, I can't remember what it is at the top of my head, I think it's like 91 or 92% of communication is actually non-verbal.
So that's body language and all you can see right now is kind of my shoulders and everything.I'm fairly, you know, energetic regardless.
But there's a lot that you pick up from people's body language and, you know, mannerisms, all this kind of, they're shifting in the chair, whatever it might be that you get in person, you don't get online as much.
And some people don't even turn their cameras on, which makes it even more challenging.So yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely in person every day of the week if I could.
And some of the audience today will be listening to this on podcast apps, right?
So only getting the audio and just going back to your earlier point about, you know, talking to those strategic clients and getting a seat in the office, because again, getting that body language, that You see how people are engaging with each other.
That's something, if you're just taking a job brief and going, hey, tell me about the culture of the company versus you sat in there for four days over the last four weeks.
You get to see how people engage and how they interact and how they communicate and what happens on a weekly, monthly basis there.That gives you a level of insight that no other recruiter is going to be able to compete with.
If they're trying to pitch for that business as well and just go, Hey, tell me what jobs you've got open.We've got candidates.Do you want to have a, do you want to have a chat?Like boring.Yeah.And that's the other thing.
It tunes the client out straight away because they've heard that 70,000 times before.I want to come sit in your office one day a week.I want to understand your business and then you infiltrate the whole entire company.
Yes.Yeah. It's like nice and day of, you know, transactional versus strategic, right?It's a different way of building a business.Transactional versus being a part of their business.Yeah.
I think that's one of the great takeaways from today is just that mindset of being a part of their business.I think that's brilliant.Right.We're getting close on time.
You've had an amazing experience over in-house and software providing to the staffing recruiting agencies.
What's one piece of advice that you've kind of carried through that maybe that you were told earlier on in your career and what that means for you and how you think about staffing and recruiting today?
There's probably one thing I focus on for myself because I've had the feedback of how I present and how I come across in everything that I've always done.There's probably two things.
One is, for me personally, it's how passionate and energetic and the belief I have in what I'm doing.That resonates when I present to people and all the rest.I don't purposely focus on it.It's just who I am, what I do.I literally love what I do.
And I think that's probably the second point of what I've been told over my career as well.
You really have to love what you do because that comes across then when you are talking to someone that you're deeply invested, you care, you've got that passion, that energy, that desire to not only just help yourself, but help the client or the candidate, whoever it is you're talking to as well.
So if you don't love what you do, I mean, there's the saying that, you know, if you love what you do, you don't work the day in your life. Now, I don't necessarily think that's true because there's days where I don't want to work.
I think we all have those.But it makes it a hell of a lot easier if you do, if you love what you do.Once you start getting into it again, it's very easy to turn yourself around because you really do love what you do.
And then that comes through in your passion and your energy and your focus and your never say die attitude and the client and the candidate always knows you're going to be there for them. because you love what you do.You're always going to help them.
So yeah, probably those two things combined.
Yeah.Yeah.And yeah, running a business, be it software or staffing, you know, there are tough days, there are tough moments and the same holding a your recruitment desk, right?
There's going to be joy in the placements going through and some tough times when candidates or clients walk away at the 11th hour.So I think it is about understanding the purpose and the benefit that you're creating in the bigger picture and
making sure taking care of your own mental health too, that when things don't go right, you know, do you need to go for a walk?Do you need to go to the gym?Do you need to jump in the staffing ring?And boxer bits.
Yeah, no, you're right.One of the interesting things I've seen over the last six and a half years, I didn't think our product would ever do anything like this.It was actually quite fascinating when I heard it.
I heard it a few times in a short period before running these particular training sessions.We collect testimonials, and I've spoken about testimonials a little while back when we were talking about something else.
When a consultant is feeling a little bit down, they actually jump in and start reading their testimonials to feel good about themselves again.
So that has such a powerful impact, positive feedback, constructive feedback, understanding those relationships to know that you are doing the right thing.It's not always you.
So what was interesting, I'm fascinated by a speech Roger Federer gave at a university a little while ago where he said he actually lost, I think it was something like 52 or 54% of all the points that he ever played.
Now for a guy that won 20 grand slams and a hundred plus titles to lose more points than you won and have that kind of career is phenomenal.He just won the big points.
But he said, whenever he lost a point, he didn't worry about it because there's always one, there's the next points there.And then the one after that, and the one after that.
So there's always another opportunity to win another point or to make another placement or to find another candidate, get them into a job or it goes on and on.We go through recruitment step by step even.
So yeah, you're going to fail more often than what you succeed.Roger Federer is a great example of that.But the next opportunity is only the next second away.
Yeah, no, that's fascinating to hear in terms of, you know, a complete legend like Roger Federer that has, as I say, lost more points than he's won, but overall he's won.
And I think, you know, it really speaks to the day-to-day recruitment staffing, you know, game that's being played and for every point, for every call or candidate or client outreach, Like, you're not going to win them all.
And I think it's about how to quickly move on from one to another.Right.It's like, right.That's the result point.Yeah.The next time I can do about it now is over.Opportunity to win.Yep.Move on to the next one.Yeah.Yeah.Fascinating.
Justin, this has been, has been incredible.Um, Any question I should have asked or anything you'd like to kind of wrap up on as we close this episode?Anything I'd like to harp on?Relationships.
Focus on relationships. I saw someone post earlier this week on LinkedIn actually, build friendships or try and turn your candidates and clients into your friends.
Now that wasn't something that I purposely tried to do when I was a recruiter back in the day, but I can absolutely tell you that I still am connected on Facebook, messages on WhatsApp, whatever, with clients, candidates and everything from 20 odd years ago.
Still talk to them today. still catch up with them and have a beer or whatever.So if you build those bonds, they're there forever, but that should kind of be the focus.
We're not going to friend them and befriend them and be at their wedding straight away, but you should have that kind of focus that these relationships are the most important thing in this process. Because I'll leave you with this one, Jason.
Everyone defines themselves by the job that they do.If you're standing around a barbecue or a party or whatever, you're meeting someone new, one of the first two or three questions that comes up are, what do you do?
I'm a recruiter, or I'm a doctor, or I'm a this or that.Not what do you do with yourself in life, what do you do in terms of job?It's one of the first few questions we ask everyone we meet for the first time.
That's the impact we're having on people's lives as a recruiter.We're helping them define themselves.
And it's so personal to them that if we're not bought into that relationship and helping them from that perspective, we're not going to be seen as the recruiter of choice.And then that flows through to the client as well.
How are we helping the client solve their problems, not at just a business level, but a personal level.What's keeping that talent acquisition head, director, hiring manager up at night?How can we ease that for them?
What does filling this role mean, not from a business perspective, but for you personally?What's it going to allow you to do when this job's filled?So those relationships really do matter.
Yeah, very well said.I think that's a perfect way to wrap up.Justin, thank you so much for being a guest on the Staffing Room Podcast.It's been a real pleasure to chat, to hear your insights and points of view from your wealth of experience.
And I'm sure the audience has taken away a bunch of value and to-dos in terms of how to improve both from a recruiting, but also from a leadership point of view. So thanks again.Thank you for having me.
Welcome to the Staffing Ring, the podcast where the gloves come off and we go deep into the recruitment industry's best practices and tactics.We aim to bring you actionable insights for how staffing and recruiting agencies are winning today.
This production is brought to you by Ringover, the leading staffing communication platform connected to your ATS and CRM, empowering conversations for your recruiters.
Sign in
