Everybody, it’s Richard Milligan and welcome to another episode of Recruiting Conversations. This podcast is dedicated to recruiting leaders. If you haven’t heard that terminology used before, a recruiting leader is someone who simply manages a team and then is also responsible for building that team or recruiting to that team. Now, I said simply at, there’s nothing simple about the role that the recruiting leader plays inside any organization. In fact, in my opinion, I would dare say that is the most difficult position in any business. That person is responsible for managing the team and that’s a full time job in itself. I’ve counted it’s 12 to 15 hats depending on who you are, and what company you’re in as to how many roles and responsibilities you have. So the truth is that there’s not enough checklist that we could create to encompass what you do on a daily basis; you do everything from being the go-to IT person inside your team or inside your facility, to being the meeting planner for the week; the one who sets the agenda for those meetings, to celebrating birthdays, to having one on ones, to managing the facility to…we could keep going here, right? There’s a lot of roles responsibilities that you have as a recruiting leader.
The reason why I created this podcast was because I, and I use that term recruiting leader, is this is that this particular skill set I would dare say rivals any skill set that you will have inside your roles and responsibilities. It just simply will. If you’re good at recruiting, you can write your name on any ticket inside your business, inside your industry because so few are good at recruiting. Now part of the reason for this in my opinion, but I’m the one that has the podcast so my opinions count here. In my opinion, it’s because there is very little training, very little resources directed to the recruiting leader. We typically focus on the leadership piece, on the management piece, on ensuring that the team, the current health of the team is right and, and things are going well there. But there’s very little time spent in training you and developing you in this area of recruiting. Yeah, it is one of the most critical pieces to you winning and failing. Because if you fail it let’s just use an example here you’ve got a team of 10 people and three people leave, you either build those back or you will continue failing right in someone’s eyes, and so you have to be able to recruit.
So this is what this podcast is dedicated to. Each week we take a simple conversation that I’ve had either with an individual or a group of leaders and we talk about that topic, and this week, I’m coming to you with a topic that is centered around a recent mastermind event that I held at 12 leaders inside a small mastermind group and what we were discussing inside this mastermind group was; what is the difference between the average recruiter, a good recruiter and a great recruiter? And it really broke those down. A lot of great conversation came from that and so I want to share, share this with you today. Now, let me just stop and say this, I want to give you a couple of reasons to hone your recruiting skills now, and I think the, you know, the current environment plays a big part in this and depending on what industry that you’re in, you know, will depend on what that environment looks like. But what I know is that in, in the current job environment is that there’s a lot of pressure on recruiting teams right now, corporate recruiting teams to find good talent. There’s a lot of noise out there in the market right now, okay? So where there’s a lot of noise, where noises increasing, it can be very difficult to cut through that noise. Now, I see some of that noise is being created from what people think they should be doing, and a lot of this pertains to social media, and that methodology I think is a bit misplaced. What I see a lot of companies doing is they’re scaling their internal recruiting departments right now and as they scale those internal recruiting apartments, they show up on platforms like LinkedIn and begin to create noise. Now, there’s a difference between what I consider good noise and bad noise, right? The, and noise is just a, an arbitrary word that I’m using to define what’s going on the platform but the difference between good noise and bad noise is that it good noise is representing who you are as an attractive leader. Bad noise is where the platform is loaded with these right hooks, and the right hooks are where they connect with you and then immediately ask for a meeting or they immediately asked if you’ll take a phone call, or they immediately ask if you’re happy or open to another opportunity. And look, no judgment here, I spent almost a dot, probably a dozen years being the guy that was doing that and I just didn’t understand that that methodology wasn’t the right method to win inside the, this line of recruiting. And so I saw it as a recruiting platform, whereas I see these social media platforms as relationship building platforms. It’s a slight shift to say, I’m going to recruit you versus I’m going to build a relationship with you. And so one of the reasons why I would hone my recruiting skills right now is because of the environment where there’s so much noise. And where there is increasing noise, it can get, become difficult to differentiate, differentiate yourself. Now we’re in an interesting window of time, and a lot of people have not adapted from the past 10 years in terms of their methods. And so some of that noise, and some of the difficulties of differentiating ourselves in a market comes, comes from this mindset that it’s a numbers game, recruiting as a numbers game. In fact, I heard a recent leader kind of admonish his team to increase your numbers. What he was referencing was the number of phone calls they’re making, the number of appointments that they were setting, and while this podcast is not going to be directed to that particular conversation, I think that’s the wrong conversation to be having.
So let’s just walk through what makes up the DNA of a great recruiter. But before we get there, let’s talk about what the average recruiter looks like.
So the average recruiter typically leads with the company value proposition first. So if you’ve ever gotten a phone call from this recruiter, what you know is that the company that they’re, that they are representing, mainly selling, they typically hype up whatever is going on inside the organization and, and so they’re leading with the company value proposition. That’s not the way to becoming a great recruiter because company value proposition actually can depend on who’s presenting it and even how it’s received can depend on the moment that you present it. There’s a lot of variables that come into just simply leading with company value proposition but here’s why I think that that is wrong because that is to me it’s left brain recruiting and left brain recruiting is that my company’s a little bit better, right? Now this, this idea that there’s two opportunities in the world; one is what I would call the opportunity improvement offer. And what the opportunity improvement offer is, is my company’s got better tools, better support, better marketing, better compensation. It’s just we’re a little bit better than your company. And there’s a lot of opportunity improvements out there in the world but when you look at business, and you look to see what companies have actually won, like on the big stage of success, won, those have always been what I would quantify as new opportunities.
Let’s just look at the current business environment today. Take Amazon for example. Amazon’s extremely dominant right now, right? Amazon was not an improvement on an idea, they were the idea. Now take a look at Facebook, right? Facebook lead the way with social media. Facebook was not an improvement on an idea, Facebook was the idea. This places across everything, Google. Look at coffee shopping. Take a look at Starbucks as an example, Starbucks was not an opportunity improvement. They were the original opportunity of this scalable coffee shop model that could serve good coffee. Now, of course, that’s relative to whether you are a coffee connoisseur. I’m not a coffee connoisseur. So I consider a good coffee but that’s debatable depending on who you are. Right? But that, the idea, the concept of Starbucks was a new opportunity. When you look at business, opportunity improvement offers typically are limited and how successful they can be because they’re trying to improve on something that’s already been built. The new opportunity is the one that’s always big. Company, when you leave with your company value proposition, what you’re doing is you’re saying I’m a little bit better and you always fall into that category. Now, I know some of you right now are challenging this and saying, ‘Well, our value proposition is so big at the company level and so unique that it is actually a new opportunity’, stay with me in this podcast because I think I’ll be able to prove that concept wrong. Okay.
Now, so leading with company value proposition, average mortgage recruiters do that. Okay. The other thing that average, an average recruiter does is this is that they dig for problems they can solve. So they’re typically not building relationship with your asking questions for the intent of building relationship with you, or trying to understand where you’re coming from, who you are, what motivates you. They’re typically digging, they’re asking questions predicated on this kind of idea that if they can lead you to a place where they figure out what problems you have, or they lead you to this place where they figure out maybe you’ve got a, there’s a weakness and leadership or you know, the company’s not clear in the direction they’re going, you know, whatever that is, they dig for problems that they can solve and then what they want to do is they want to bring the company value proposition in as a solution of the problem. That’s what average, average recruiters do.
Here’s another thing that average recruiters do, they present around numbers. Now if you start listening to my podcast what you’re going to know is that I am a huge proponent of right brain recruiting, okay? When you present numbers to me, let’s just use an example here a purchasing a car, when you present numbers to me around buying a vehicle I can fully vet those numbers out. I can go to InNDA, Kelley Blue Book, I can look at other dealership websites, right? I can vet that out, okay. If you are recruiting with a left brain recruiting tactics and most times numbers are that, right? We’re not talking about in most situations the difference of you know a couple dollars per hour meaning the difference in whether you can feed your family or not. For the most part, this audience here is in the United States and because it’s in the United States we are we all live way above any lifestyle in other countries. And so it’s typically not about making ends meet. Numbers are things that of course, are important and compensations, you know, that’s a big goal thing for, it’s been in my career; a goal for me to get to these particular levels, whatever they were for myself and whatever they are for you. When you lead with this, what you do though is you put yourself in a position to always lose with the numbers. Somebody else can beat you in terms of your sign on bonus or your monthly compensation numbers or your annual bonus number. Somebody else can beat that that’s left brain what I’m going to, what I want to talk about and what great recruiters do is they right brain recruit, okay?
Here’s another thing average recruiters they show up what I would call post-trigger events. So that means there’s an event that’s taking place, it could be a company gets bought by another company or it could be that numbers got, just got released and the numbers that just got released show this company’s really taking it, is in a really bad spot financially and at risk for failure. And so people show up, after that event has taken place, a leader moves, a president…the company gets fired, a key operations person, a person leaves, any of those things are trigger events that actually have people looking to make a change, but the average recruiter shows up after the event has taken place. Now understand this, if you show up after that event to recruit, which you shouldn’t be doing, but let’s just say recruit because you should be building relationships but if you show up after that trigger events taking place, you show up in all the noise. Average, average recruiters do that.
Here’s another thing that average recruiters do. They recruit to a platform, okay? So in recruiting to a platform, it might be that, you know, I’m recruiting to a specific technology, I’m recruiting to a specific marketing you know, idea or concept, okay. That could be a platform that you’re recruiting to. When you hang your hat on a single item like that, you will lose on that single item, okay. So as I’ve had time to work with different levels of recruiters and coach them myself, there’s not multiple of me, there’s just one of me. I have found that all of those things represent that person, that’s really in that lower level of abilities for recruiters. Now, here’s what good recruiters do, now we’re working our way towards great, so follow me on this. Here’s what good recruiters do. They start with building relationship. Okay, start there.
Ultimately, recruiting is what I would consider, what I would call speed dating. Now, maybe this is a bad analogy, but my wife has given me permission to use it, so we’re okay. Speed dating is this, when I go back 20 years ago, when it would actually, we’ve been married for 20 years, this year. When I go back 22 years ago, when Lee and I first met, when I saw her I really knew I wanted to speed date, meaning that I wanted to build relationship and get to a place to see if we aligned and what we wanted for a family, if we aligned in terms of our core values, if there was synergy in the relationship, right? She was, she was a beautiful girl, that was obviously immediately but then beyond that, wanting to get to a place to see is this forever-and-ever-till-death-do-us-part relationship. I wanted to speed date and in in speed dating, I had to start with building relationship and building trust. That’s where you start, right? That makes a lot of sense, that I would start by trying to build trust. How do we build? How do we do that? We do that through, you know, being authentic, being transparent, being real. All those are things that are involved when we’re building relationship, okay?
Key thing here, you’re not recruiting, you’re going to start by thinking, how do I build a relationship? Good recruiters do that. Here’s another thing that good recruiters do. They don’t fall for that problem solving trap, okay? Because it is a trap. Think about it, for the most part when we look at Service Cross industries, but I’ll give you give you one that I’m very familiar with, the mortgage industry. 94.6% of people today say that they are content where they are, only 5.4% of people say they’re unhappy. So if I’m going to try and problem-solve, and 95% of that of that market is happy, then I am going to really put myself in a position to only be able to recruit the 5%. That becomes very difficult to scale that, that model. For a number of reasons today. Look, the phone, the actual phone conversation is something that people are moving away from that heavily right now; text messaging, direct messaging, DMing on social media- those are, those are places that you can win, having a strong leadership brand so that you’re actually in a peripheral there of recruiting so that when people see you they see you as what I would call the attractive leader. I mean, those are critical pieces, if because the phone right now in my research, one of 11 people answer the phone when you call. If you are trying to find the 5%, you have to really work hard to be successful in that model. And that’s assuming that the 5% are all going to be good fits for your organization, good fits for you as a leader. So because of the difficulty of that, what I’m saying is, why would we not move towards the 95%? And the only way you can get to the 95% is by, by, stopping yourself in this area of trying to figure out what’s going wrong. Because if I don’t figure out, if I don’t find out something that is gone wrong with you, then it’s a dead-end street that I’m falling, right. But if I, if I focus on building relationships, okay, and I focus on something called my core values and your core values and creating alignment with those, okay? then I’m in a better category of a recruiter. So this good recruiter doesn’t fall for the problem-solving trap.
Another thing that this person represents is they find out the why of who they’re recruiting. And this isn’t, this isn’t complicated. This means I’m simply asking. I ask, like what is your Why? What is it that motivates you most? Now I know I, you know, I spent from the age of 19 to the age of 43 inside, you know, large companies where I had leaders and in those environments I never had anybody, over the course of that window of time, now I think I’m gonna have to do some math there, what is that 24 years? I think it’s 24 years, right, that I was never asked by anybody ‘Richard what is it that motivates you most?’ Never had anybody asked me for what was my why. This is an important piece and here’s why it’s important because this is my belief model. The one thing inside recruiting is this, okay, so you’re ready this is one thing inside recruiting. Get your pen and paper out, this is important. If you can get your recruit to believe that you above all other leaders in your market will help them accomplish their why, will help them accomplish what motivates them most, then it’s not just a matter of if they will join you, it simply becomes a matter of when they will join you assuming that you’re an attractive leader, okay? And we’ll talk about in just a second, assuming that you’re an attractive leader. And then also assuming that you have next steps built out to stay in front of that person forever.
Okay, now, we talked about speed dating and getting to the till death do us part, this is a forever model, forever system. One of the big mistakes that I made inside my career as a recruiting leader was not having a system for staying in front of people, and especially the cold person, the cold recruit, the cold candidate, the one who said, like when you call them or when you engage with them say, ‘No, I’m good. I am happy. I’m in the 95%’and what do you do with that person? Most people think that that’s a dead, that’s a dead end road, right? They said, I’m happy, I can’t do anything to continue building relationship. I shouldn’t have a process or a system or structure centered around pursuing that person because they’re not hot, they’re not next. The truth is that when you have a system around figuring out their why, you’re representing attractive leadership and you’re staying in front of them consistently, when I say consistently month in, month out, you’re staying in front of them. Not asking for meetings, not asking for, you know, asking recruiting questions, how are things going?, I saw your company was in the news, you let your president go, how are things going, right? Not asking those questions. Simply engaging with them, bringing things of value contributing to them. Okay, when you understand the why as part of that, in a part of that system that you’ve built then it is Game Over. Now, let me pause here for just a moment and say this. This requires high integrity, right? If I figure out what motivates you most, and I’m a salesman and I simply want to, and nothing wrong, I don’t say salesman as in that’s a bad thing. I say salesman as in I’m just going to sell you on the idea that I would help you accomplish that to get you here if that’s what I’m about and I can’t with this you know, pure motives say, I will help you accomplish your why. Like if you’re not the leader who believes that you win you help other people win, then I always tell you, move away from this. Because people deserve to be recruited right, people deserve to go to a company that they, that represented the thing that they actually are, okay? So when we figure out the why of somebody, let’s just, let’s just make sure an attractive leader who’s going to convince them that they will help them accomplish that at all costs and then goes and does that that’s the most fulfilling role you’ll have in any role, in any organization, at any level of leadership, okay? Good recruiters, good recruiters figure out the why because that is the one thing.
Now good recruiters show up before trigger events happen. They show up before trigger events happen. What does that mean? Well, one, it means that they’re building a lot of relationships. Two, it means that they are in tune with the market. Because there’s, you can see things coming before they actually get there, if you understand the market. Now, what most recruiting leaders do is they are just muddying waters, they’re not strategically pursuing people. They’re not strategizing, they’ve got a handful of tactics, they got a phone script they use, they’ve got a corporate presentation that they typically lead with, right, they bring some good energy and they’re hoping to motivate you to some sort of next step. But good recruiters understand what’s going on in the market, identifying opportunities before they actually exist and moving towards people, pre-trigger events, okay? Those all represent what a good recruiter.
Now, let’s talk about a great recruiter. A great recruiter actually builds what I would call relationship capital. Okay, if there is a, if there’s a pool and in that pool you are building up relationship, right? You you, that’s how you recruit best. Because if I engage with you and 95% of the markets content, happy where they’re at, and the only thing I’m trying to do is figure out if you’re hot or you’re not if you’re happy or unhappy and then I move on, I never get to a place where I start thinking about relationship capital. We want to build this up and it takes time to build this up. Now you condense this and I’ve been able to prove that you can condense this through this idea of speed dating when you have a system and you understand certain things around human psychology and what motivates people and why we should be recruiting through right brain recruiting versus left brain recruiting.
But I digress. Relationship capital is critical because at some point, you’re going to lean on that. And great, great recruiters actually build that. Now in, I was a top producer inside an industry for 15 years almost. In that window of time, I got recruited a lot. In fact, it was normal to get three to five phone calls per week inside that industry from recruiters. When I analyze that season of 15 years inside that industry, I had one person that built a relationship with me and stayed in front of me over those, over that window of time. That wasn’t for the full 15 years but this was for a five to seven-year window of time that this person built relationship with me. If this person hears this podcast, they’ll know exactly who they are. Because there was a relationship there; when they called and left a message I would return the phone call because there was a relationship there. The relationship pool had capital in it. Okay, great recruiters work on that, see the value in that. This is not trying to shift somebody in a phone conversation to get them to do something you want them to do and then using high intensity, you know, tactic centered by, you know, centered around leading with money to actually get people. That is not a long-term prognosis for success inside recruiting and it’s definitely not for the recruiting leader, because the recruiting leader fishes in a small pond. That recruiting leader fishes in a single market a lot of times, a city, sometimes a state. At best-case scenario, the recruiting leader is in a multiple state area, but most industries are pretty small. Your talent polls are pretty small. And so because of that we have to fish differently and the relationship piece is such a critical piece.
Here’s another thing that great recruiters do, they push beyond a recruit’s shallow why? Now here is, this is, this is a problem you have to solve moving forward. If you ask somebody, what motivates you most or what is your Why, a lot of the time you’re going to get a generic answer. I consider a generic answer, which might be ‘I want to make $250,000’ or ‘we’re building a house and I love to put 50% down’ or ‘I’ve got three kids, I want to put them through college. I need the money, the financing for that’. Or you’re building a house, buying a house, buying a car, buying a boat, all of these things are extremely shallow. And I don’t mean shallow from a negative perspective because money can be a motivator. Money, when it’s tied to other things can definitively be a huge motivator but there needs to be a separate motivator than just a standalone piece called money. Because if you settle for that, then you give, then that’s the one thing that you have to go on, you will lose on that. That is all the way over in the left-brain recruiting. And so if you settle for the shallow Why, then you don’t have what you need to pursue them through the lens of that one thing.
Let me give you some, let me give you a good idea around how I was able to get people past the shallow why. How I would do this is I would share a story of failure. Now, so you’re pushing away right now and going, ‘whoa, wait a second. There’s no way I’m going to talk about a failure that I had inside business or inside life and share that with someone because then I’m not going to be seen as a good leader or an attractive leader’. And the truth is that if you do share that story, you move yourself much closer to being an attractive leader and someone that people want to work for and here’s why. There’s a huge yearning in the business world today for leaders who are transparent, for leaders who are authentic, for leaders that are willing to be real, there’s just a yearning for it. Look at, if you look at some of the people that are, over the last couple of years, that have moved from being known to being household names. Like as an example we can take, we can take Simon Sinnick as someone that would be a good example of that. When you look at his message around leadership, and how popular his following is, there is a huge yearning for transparency, for authenticity, for leaders to be real, okay? And so I would encourage you in this place to Yes, follow me with this, by the end of this…look one of the things that I’ve said from time to time is that Superman is only interesting because he has kryptonite, right? Our flaws actually make us interesting. So I would share a story around a failure and let me give you a story of how I would do this. So I can go back in my own life to 2007. Now at this time, if you if you haven’t followed me on LinkedIn or seen me in another social media platform, you know my background. I came from the mortgage industry. In 2007, I’ve been in the business for four and a half, five years. And even if you’re not in that industry right now, you’re kind of going ‘oh, wow, I know where the story is going’ because two thousand and seven, eight and nine, those were brutal years, not just for the mortgage industry, but they were, the mortgage industry was definitely on the leading edge of that. So in 2007, I realized that my business model was broken. I was doing 90% sub-prime, I was doing 95% refinances, I was in a direct mail model which was, I was spending an enormous amount of money by getting an enormous amount of return on that money. And, and I just didn’t know what I didn’t know until it was too late; but that model…if you’re in the mortgage industry and you go 90% sub-prime, 10% conventional, never done an FHA loan, VA loan or USDA loan at that time and then 95% refinances and direct mail, you’re going yes that is a, that’s a broken model. That’s a recipe for disaster in 2007. And so I get into 2007 and look miserably failed. I was just taking on additional retail space and in 2007, retail space in my lifetime, in my markets as, it was at the top, the peak of what it’s ever been in my lifetime; sign multiple year leases, did build outs on facilities and so I come to a place third quarter, fourth quarter 2007 and there was this huge shadow looming over me called ‘Failure’ and that shadow failure actually connected me with my larger story which I grew up a poor, grew up, you know, wondering at times where meals are going to come from being evicted from homes, duct taping tennis shoes. I mean, my story, I get to 19 and I just said, I will never live like that, my family will never live like that. And so in that 2007 environment, those, that was a complete trigger for me of like, ‘you’re failing, Richard, you’re failing’. And in those moments, I got a lot of clarity on a number of things. Okay. One of the things I got clarity on is like Gavin, who’s now 11 was a new-born at the time and my oldest who’s now 16 was five. Lee and I have been married I think for nine years at that time. There was a lot of clarity in those moments that I was getting out of bed every single morning for them, not for me. I was putting one foot in front of the other every single day for them, not for me. And so there was clarity in that season on what motivated me most and if someone, if you would have asked me in that season was it, you know more money or getting to that next level of leadership or any of those things, those were not motivators because I was very clear on why I was doing what I was doing. Okay. So I would share that story with a recruit who gave me a shallow why that said, ‘I want to make $250,000’. And my response to that would be, ‘I love the fact that you’re that motivated. I love the fact that you want to get to that level of income. Let me share a story with you and a season of where, that I’ve walked through’. And then I would tell that story and at the end of that story, I would say ‘now, now knowing that story, I’d love to just ask if you found yourself in that same situation, what would it be that would motivate you most?’ Okay, great recruiters push beyond the shallow why. And when I get that whatever it is, when I get that then now I pursue you through the lens of that, that’s the one thing, okay? Great recruiters do that.
Here’s another thing that great recruiters do. They cast a big vision and they motivate through it. Okay, this is a critical piece to building something big. Now you may say ‘Milligan. I’m not going, I’m not looking to build something big, I’m looking to build something, my vision’s much smaller or I have an idea of having a small boutique office’, that’s okay. But here if you’re wanting to build something really big, okay? A great recruiter would cast a big vision and then would motivate through that big vision. Look I have actually been hired by companies to actually go after, to help them go after single individuals in order to, in order to motivate them. Do you know what I do when I, when that happens. I actually go to what vision what, I want to understand what vision, if we’ve already been in front of them, what vision of what cast at this point and then I go, what is the size of the vision that we could create that would realistically, realistically be an accomplishable vision for them and then let’s figure how we motivate through that. And the reason why is that look, there is, there is a there is a desire in all of us to be a part of something bigger than that we’re, we’re currently a part of, it doesn’t mean that, doesn’t mean that we’re in an organization or a job opportunity that we want to leave, but if we’re in a place that we love, and we enjoy, we want to be part of this journey to accomplishing something bigger. It’s how we’ve been intrinsically designed, to be on a journey, on this journey to growing up right, this journey to becoming something better, this journey, if you’re, if you’re a Christ follower, this journey to sanctification is something that we would say okay? So when we cast a big vision, what you do as a great recruiting leader is you plant this seed, okay, now our hearts, desire plays a big factor in this, okay, our hearts our desire factories for better or for worse. Like in the worst times in my life, my heart has been conjuring up desires that were poor bad desires. In the best seasons of my life, I’ve been pursuing good desires, okay and so our hearts our desire factories, you know, understand this part about what I’m telling you when I say our hearts are desire factories. If I’m in an environment and you’re recruiting me and my environment is an environment where I’m just settling, things are good, right? I’m in a routine but at the end of the day, I’m not being challenged to grow, I’m not being encouraged and being brought up into something larger. When you show up and cast a big vision, you can motivate me through that because when you plant that seed of your vision, what you’re doing is you’re uncovering desire, okay, and if my desire factory, my heart moves towards that, it’s not going to be money that motivates me to move towards that, okay? Money’s got to be part of that, right? Like we all have, we all have a monthly number that we need to meet and some of that is built into our mindset, some that’s built into the bottom line of maybe what’s your budget is, okay? So the numbers are part of this but when you show up and you cast a larger vision as to where you’re going, okay, you can motivate me through that, when I’m in a place or where I’m just settling. This was an epiphany I had in 2014. had a conversation with my wife, Lee and I, and the conversation went a little like this: I can’t figure out why so many people are going to next steps with me because there’s nothing wrong in their current environment. They’re happy. We were into second, third or fourth conversations, and I was motivating people to actually join my team and there wasn’t legitimately anything that ever got brought up that was wrong where they were. What I was doing was I was casting a larger vision and I was motivating them through this, okay, this is part of being an attractive leader. Attractive leaders represent three things very clearly and I’ll do an entire podcast in the future on this but here’s what an attractive leader represents. They have a vision. Okay. They understand their belief model, they have, they understand their top core values, they can articulate that vision and that and those core values that belief model very clearly, that eliminates…I can stop, there’s one more piece to that, that eliminates most recruiting leaders from this conversation right now because they don’t have a vision, they don’t have clear, they’re not, they’re not able to articulate clearly, instantaneously what their core values are, what their belief model is, we have it to some degree in our head, but we don’t really have it at a heart perspective. The heart perspective means I could wake you up at 3am in the morning because your alarm, your alarm went off and ask that and I could say: what is your vision, what are your beliefs, what are your core values and you could instantaneously regurgitate those to me. Now, part of that would be you would story tell those if you’re going to do it correctly. Because storytelling is recruiting. Great storytellers are great recruiters and again, we’re new into this podcast. I’ll do a future podcast on storytelling, but the vision is a critical piece to this.
Here’s the third part of an attractive leader. They live and act in accordance with the vision, in accordance with the beliefs and the core values. A lot of people have the vision, can articulate the vision and then they fail., they don’t win. They can’t, they can’t build something really big because at some point, they get exposed and they don’t act in alignment with the core value system. They don’t have in alignment with their belief system. They make a decision predicated on something else and they will lose okay, but the attractive leader motivates through the vision, okay, understand that then we move on for the sake of time.
Great recruiters paint very clear pictures. Okay. There is a bit of word crafting that goes on inside the vision that paints a very clear picture of like, where you’re going okay, vision I can actually see it, right? Vision means I can see that so it should be tangible, right, like paint a very clear picture like where you’re going.
The next thing, right, recruiter, great recruiter represents is they built it what I would call epiphany bridges through the reframing of ideas. There’s just something about a visionaire. So when I say great recruiter, I think of the visionaire. Like the vision here creates these ‘a-ha’ moments. I say an epiphany bridge. Here’s why that’s a critical term is because most people you’re going to recruit, that you want to recruit are going to be called. They’re not motivated to move in this moment, you have to create an ‘a-ha’ moment, do the reframing of an idea to get them to a place where they’re warm. If you get them to a place where they’re warm, now you can motivate them, right? But the person that says ‘Nah, I’m good, everything’s going great, I’m content where I’m at’, right? which, which the word ‘contentment’ immediately gets me energized because if your content I can cast a pretty clear vision and I can plant that seed that I can actually grow to motivate you to a place where you’ll see that let’s not be content, okay? But you have to create this epiphany bridge and you do that through giving clarity around ideas. Let me give you an example of a few ways that I’ve been able to do this. So one of the things that I said was true about my belief system is that I’m growth-minded. Now, one of the things that I said about growth minded is that, was this quote, it is that: growth is the natural progression of great leadership, like people grow because of great leaders, because of good leaders, right? Like, and so and also, the reframing of that idea says that as a leader, I take ownership in your growth. Whereas a lot of leaders, especially micro-managers, they place the blame to you when you don’t grow. But what I’m saying is like, I’ve got an ownership I have this ownership mindset that says that your growth is predicated on how well I lead. Now understanding as leaders, like people can choose to follow, people can…the world is predicated on the fact that we have freewill, we get to choose, right? But part of the reframing of that idea says that I’m a leader, it takes my role and responsibility in leading you well, serious, okay? That’s the reframing of an idea.
So let me give you another example of this. Inside the mortgage industry, one of the things that I would say is this is that loan officers are the lifeblood of our business. We will provide them with a level of support not seen elsewhere. When I said that to someone that was recruiting, a lot of times they pull out their pen, they would click it and they would say, ‘let me write that down. That was really good’. Loan officers are the lifeblood of our business, we will provide them with the level of support not seen elsewhere. Okay? That’s a reframing of an idea and through the reframing of that single statement in itself, you could conjure up 15 to 20 different ideas, okay? That, that, those are the epiphany bridges, you can simply say something like this. One of my core values or one of my beliefs is that people matter, okay? There’s an epiphany bridge to be had there, right, because when I say something like people matter, you and I could sit here and for an hour and talk about that concept, that idea. I’m reframing who I am and what I’m trying to do is connect with your core values your my core values and plans to create the epiphany bridge and move you to a place where your warm. Great recruiters do this and they do this well.
Let me give you one more thing on this podcast what great recruiters do. They dream with their recruits. This is, this is very easy to do and look, as leaders, we should be doing this with our people that are already on our teams. I again, see what something I said earlier about never having somebody ask me for that, what’s my why. I never had somebody sit down with me and say, ‘Richard, what is it that you’re dreaming about? What is it that, that’s dreaming, that’s big that you’d want to accomplish in five years?’ No one’s ever, no one ever asked me that. When we go to some of the things we talked about a great recruiter does. And these epiphany bridges, and even like casting the big vision and motivating through that vision. Again, the dreaming part is a place where you can plant a seed in someone’s heart and turn on the desire factory. Where someone’s just stagnant, where their content, right, they’re doing going through the motions and you show up and you ask a question like ‘what is it something that you, that’s dreaming you’d want to accomplish in five years?’ Like they probably haven’t even thought of that. And so when you challenge that, that the heart to start turn on, to turn itself on and be creating these desires, then it, where you get to align with them in that space, you will move motivate them and move them to change. Okay, so just a simple question, what is it that you, so what is it that is dreamy that you would consider dreamy that you’d like to accomplish in five years? That can be business related, family related, can be, it can be, you know, inside the lens of like traveling the world, it can be inside the lens of building the home, buying a home. There’s a lot of things here that will, people will conjure up when you say what are you, what would you dream of, only dream of in the next five years that you’d like to accomplish. Now I’m motivating people when I do that. Okay.
So that’s the difference between average, good and great. You know, this, this podcast is really designed to help you to see a couple of good concepts here and the variations. Most people are out, I mean, when I say most, most recruiting leaders are average, not even good. There’s a lot of principles here that you can apply in your business immediately. If there’s a handful of takeaways that I want you to have, it’s this: your vision, your core values are critical to your success. And here’s why, as you begin to define those and evaluate those and challenge yourself in those and get clarity in those and you share those with other people, where there’s alignment, people will move towards you. So that is a place you need to move towards becoming an attractive leader. Now, I’ll do a more detailed podcast in the future on that but no, you need to start moving towards that. Another thing is this, the why. You have to start asking that question. What is it that motivates you most? What is it that…what is it that is your why? And you need to get that and pursue people through that. And then the last part, the last thing that I would encourage you in is this is that you need a system. Now my original system was pretty, was pretty simplistic. I took out a blank sheet of paper, an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper and I put boxes, little boxes on it and drew arrow from one box the next to the next box and had 32 boxes when I was done, okay, I still have that piece of paper today. Like one day I’m going to frame that and put that up on my social media so that everyone can see that but that’s how it started. And then I began to understand ‘wait a second’. Like there’s certain principles inside recruiting efforts that I already understood like the power of seven. Like if I make contact with you, the law of averages say that ‘I actually have to make, I have to, I have to touch you, have to build relationship with you, I have to insert myself into a place of value with you seven different times before there’s an average conversion rate’.
Okay, think about that. So when you make a phone call with someone and you get them on the phone, that’s just stage one. That’s level one. Like what’s two, what’s, what’s three, what’s four, what’s five or six, what’s seven? Like when you connect with somebody on a platform, a social media platform, that’s just, that’s not even one right? You’re just connecting. Now, what’s the first way that you’re going to actually engage with them? You got to have seven other pieces behind that, right, so I began to understand that the system part is so critical to your success. You have to have a system, even if it’s simple right now as you’re working to having a larger understanding around this, have a system in place. Extreme structure always and forever equals extreme success.
Hope I brought some value today through this podcast. We will start doing, start transcribing these and listing these on our website here for the next couple of weeks. Until then, bear with us and until I see you again, have fun recruiting and we’ll see on the next episode.
