So the big question is this, how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan and welcome to Recruiting Conversations.
Hi everybody welcome back to another recruiting conversations it is your hosts richard milligan and we are going to talk about why we recruit today why would we talk about this in the podcast i was recently at an event speaking and we did some open q a in the event it was a room of about 40 recruiting leaders and one of the things that as we were doing q a was listening to people ask questions and provide feedback about their role as a recruiting leader one of the things that became very apparent to me is that there is this massive negative connotation associated with recruiting so let’s just set the stage for this audience if you’re listening this you’re most likely not all but most likely a recruiting leader what’s a recruiting leader a recruiting leader is a leader who has a team but is also responsible for recruiting to that team what i know about the recruiting leader is that that those leaders are incredibly relational they love building relationships they typically have a heart to serve people they find a lot of joy and fulfillment in that particular space they really get why they do what they do insert the narrative recruiting and there’s this massive negative connotation associated with with recruiting in fact i in in some of this i just asked the room to go ahead and identify the words that were associated with recruiting and we went around though we went around the room so i just want you to choose the first three words that are associated with recruiting and the everything that came out i’m laughing like i mean everything that came out of the first three things that came to mind were highly and i mean highly negative so we’re here in the podcast today to talk about this because if you see recruiting as being inauthentic if you see recruiting as simply trying to trigger uncertainty and fear if you see recruiting as trying to be a distraction to people providing misinformation about accompanying people trying to find out why people aren’t happy where they’re at all of those are negative things that we associate with recruiters and a lot of that comes to the experience of how we’ve been recruited i can’t tell you how many times i re i have received misinformation about a company from someone trying to recruit me about the company that i was at from someone trying to recruit me i can’t see how many times i had someone provide some sort of tricky phone script where they said hey i got your name and number from someone that knows you really well and asked me to reach out to you and i would ask the question who was it that gave you my name and number and they said well that person has asked me to keep that information in confidence that doesn’t make sense to me somebody that knows me that would give away my name and number that says like i’m amazing and you should be talking to richard would allow you to say their name or i’ve had these escalating voice messages richard is patrick call me back buddy and i’m like oh do i know patrick and then about two hours later hey richard it’s patrick you really need to call me buddy it’s urgent like man i i don’t know patrick and then three hours later richard it’s patrick look man this is the third message i’ve left you i really need to talk to you and i need to talk to you today call me back and i’m like man this must be like some sort of family emergency so i called patrick back patrick’s a recruiter so we’ve all had these different experiences and we bring all that negative connotation to recruiting and that we have so we have these agreements is what i would call them with recruiting and we have to break that narrative but we can’t bring all this baggage with us because what is recruiting really and i could tell you story after story after story of how i recruited someone and brought them to my team and left them better for the time that they spent with me and i could get incredibly passionate about that as recruiting leaders we have a major impact the data says that between 80 and 90 of all recruits come to your team through you they don’t come through a recruiting department and if you’re a recruiter listing this don’t be discouraged you should be thinking how do i partner at a high level with my recruiting leaders because they’re the product that you’re selling not the company how do you partner with them at a high level how do you get them involved really early on and start to see yourself as an early cycle recruiter not a full cycle recruiter because i need my recruiting leader in the market who is the product involved in this and if you don’t have recruiting support don’t let that discourage you i i had a leader last year that recruited 87 people she recruited 87 people to her team with zero recruiting support okay you can do this without without a recruiter if you have a system in a process you understand the right framework which is why you’re listening to this podcast so we come back to this and just to say like you have a major impact as a recruiting leader and one of the things i want to challenge you if you list this podcast as a takeaway from this is to actually build a list of why i recruit why do you recruit and and the antithesis of this is put in the list of what you believe a recruiter actually is right now all these things that are negative that bring negative energy to this for you and what we’re going to what we want to do is we want to we want to break agreement with all the negative because you are not a recruiter you are a relationship builder in fact i’m actually wearing a t-shirt if you’re seeing the video the t-shirt t-shirt’s up a batman and robin meme and on one side robin’s asking batman so you’re a recruiter and batman slaps him across the face and he says i’m a relationship builder and if you want a t-shirt i’m happy to send you one if you’re a podcast listener just drop us an email and uh and we will be happy to send send you this t-shirt um because that’s what you are you’re a relationship builder okay so what we come to this moment and why i’m like incredibly passionate about this is that as recruiting leaders we have this capacity to have a butterfly effect what’s a butterfly effect the butterfly effect is this idea that that when we impact people little we all impact other people a little that impact other people a little that impact other people a little it’s a ripple right in a water and that ripple grows over when this time i’ll share with you a story i recently got a phone call from someone that was on a team that i built about let me think about this about eight years ago and the phone call went a little bit like this hey richard it’s rob the reason why i’m reaching out to you is i wanted to one i wanted to catch up two i wanted to tell you where i’m at what i’m doing three i want to ask your permission to use your name in an article that’s being written in our company magazine so we get in this conversation and what i find out is that this young man who was on my team about eight years eight years prior is now the number one producer for his company and he is going to be standing on stage at his sales rally and he’s writing an article for the company newspaper to talk about his journey to becoming that and he said i want to share the story the story of day one with you i was like man i’m i’m honored i’m blown away what happened on day one i didn’t remember it he said on day one you don’t remember this like on day one you left uh there when i came in there was an envelope on my computer it it said to rob on it and i opened it up and it was a little note from you and it was just a letter of encouragement that asked me to also go out and get um add to my wardrobe because if i was going to be successful i was going to have to dress better than how i represented myself in the interview interview process and he said you had written a thousand dollar check and given it to me i went out and bought a couple of suits with it and i was like oh i did remember because he would wear these two suits over and over and over again i mean i think it rotated them like two days you know one one after the other after the other after the other and he always looked impressive wearing them um but he only had two suits for a window of time and that time that rob spent with him which was a couple years actually left rob better for the encounter that him and i have to the place where fast forward maybe eight years later and rob gives me credit that ripple effect that butterfly effect he gives me credit for creating the framework that got him to where he is today and recruiting leaders this is the kind of impact that you have i’ve tried to create a framework for myself around some of this the framework for myself is this is that people come into my team and leave my team right and if you’re a recruiting leader some that’s some of the challenge some of the attention you juggle in this is that people come to you for a window of time and then they leave to go to another organization for a season they’re with you and they’re gone the framework that i’ve grabbed onto mentally that has been incredibly beneficial to me is that i am a planter of trees if you when i was a kid and that’s why this framework works for me is that when i was a kid we owned this property this property was about 20 acres and when we moved to this property this property was just raw it was just raw land you could see from the front of the property all the way to the back of the property and as a young man i helped my dad plant these little trees i mean they were little they were they were bought from like the national forest national forestry whatever the department of national forestry and they came in these bundles and they were tiny they were literally like just little little um they almost look like um like like a branch broken off a tree uh and i don’t know what the right name is from a horticultural perspective to give to you what they would call those but they were these little tiny plants and we planted them all over the property when i was a kid now i’m 48 so if i go back i was helping plant these probably at like the age of 11 or 12. now the age of 48 i drive by this property 35 years later whatever how many years later i drive by this property and these trees are 40 50 60 feet tall i mean there there’s aspens there’s these um beautiful evergreen trees there’s these rose bushes i mean the property you can’t even see the property from the front anymore because when you pull up on the property there are these massive trees these massive evergreen trees that behind them that have pine trees that behind them then have these beautiful birch trees that behind it’s just like it’s an amazing piece of property and as a leader contextually that is what you do you plant trees that you will never fully see grow a lot of times now sometimes you will sometimes you’ll be a part of that story for a longer window of time but a lot of time you will not and you have to embrace that that one day you will have your own rob story that one day someone will reconnect to you and say you left me better for the time that we spent together and i give you credit for and you fill in the blanks so my friend here’s what i challenge you to do create a document at the top of the document you title why i recruit and you begin begin building that framework and as you build that framework you review it when you when you get to your place where you’re allocating your time to recruit and you’re transitioning from the crazy sauce of like being the leader of the team to this time where you’re going to actually be the recruiting leader take a moment and review why do i do this and every single time you get to a place where you’re just like man i’m really challenged right now to to recruit in this particular season you go back to that document of why i do this and that document will inspire you to do the harder things so that’s the podcast for today you want a t-shirt send an email to support 4c recruiting.com and someone from my team will respond back to you if you don’t already include a physical address loan from my team will respond back to you asking for a physical address we’re excited to be a part of your story if you’re listening to this podcast you’re part of our tribe of people we want to embrace you in every way that we can and so until i talk to you again on the next recruiting conversations have a great week everybody.
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