Confessions of a Recruiter
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Confessions of a Recruiter
Mastering BD: Sales & Marketing | COAR S1-EP3
How do high-performing recruiters build desks that last in a market driven by noise, speed, and short-term wins? Mike Dickson from [axr] Recruitment & Search, a recruitment veteran with over 30 years of experience across Scotland, New Zealand, and Australia, shares the real playbook behind long-term success in sales and marketing recruitment.
Mike didn’t just fall into a high-performing desk. He built one through strategic niche focus, consistent value creation, and an obsession with doing the basics better than anyone else. While others chase volume, Mike focuses on depth—spending more time in front of clients and candidates, leading meetings with the right questions, and positioning himself as a trusted market expert.
His approach to objection handling is simple but powerful: keep asking why until you uncover the real concern. His approach to retained recruitment? Make the value so clear that the client doesn’t hesitate. And his philosophy on KPIs? It’s not about the number of calls—it’s about how many real conversations you're having and the impact they drive.
Mike also reveals how content assets like podcasts, salary guides, and tailored reports build brand equity over time and keep you top-of-mind with the clients you want. His practical frameworks for structuring meetings, managing objections, and building lasting relationships offer a refreshing take on what real recruitment success looks like.
If you're building your desk or preparing to launch your own agency, this episode is packed with lessons that will help you shift from being reactive to becoming a consistent, high-value operator.
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Welcome back to Confessions of a Recruiter. This episode with Mike from AXR was incredible. It's all about high performance. It's all about objection handling, building a desk, building a network and being super, super clear on your niche. If you're a recruiter and you wanna make an impact in your career, then you will not wanna miss this. Please enjoy this episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Confessions of a Recruiter. We've got mike dixon with us today. Might just jump straight into it. Mike, you've been in recruitment for longer than me, actually, so I'd love just to hear five minutes from you just for our listeners. Um, a bit about your journey, how you've got here and any highlights, fun stories involving that well, if I, if 30 years and five minutes, this could be uh, this could be something.
Speaker 3:So Scottish, as you could probably tell by my accent, I was actually originally a marketer, so I was a brand manager within the FMCG world, left to go traveling because I wasn't getting paid enough as a marketer. I had a review of my manager who said what's the pathway here? And he said oh well, a couple of years more, you'll learn this. I was like that's the pathway here? And he said oh well, you know, a couple of years more you'll learn this. I was like that's rubbish, so I threw it in, went travelling around the world, came back and knocked on the door of Michael Page looking for a marketing job, and within three weeks I was working at Michael Page, which was the way, as you will know it, and my thinking was well, at least I'll get to know all the great marketing jobs and place myself. But their thinking was well, you like marketing, mike? I said I do, but you want to know everything about one brand or do you want to find out about lots of different businesses? I was like, actually, I'm quite curious. I like what you're saying and you're making a lot more money in recruitment than you are in marketing Sold so and you're making a lot more money in recruitment than you were in marketing Sold. So I was sold and yeah, 30 years later, here I am still.
Speaker 3:I think I'm a marketer kind of a little bit, but I'm very much a recruiter. So my journey is very quickly. I was there for five years in the Birmingham office in England managing a team there quite quickly, and then I got an offer to go back to Scotland to work for a company called Melville Craig which is Scotland's biggest independent recruitment company, had about 200 recruiters to run their sales and marketing recruitment division. They got bought then by TMP, which became Hudson. So I was part of that journey, ended up being part of the leadership group for that business in Scotland. So bigger and bigger roles, running teams of 50, 60, 70, 80 people, which was good fun, but becoming very corporate and I was ready to go and they said I want to move to a smaller business. This is just so inward focused.
Speaker 3:But they said, hey, you've been to New Zealand recently, do you like New Zealand? I went, yeah, this is a very leading question. How about running new zealand for us? I'm like do you know what I would do that um and I aim to go there for a year or two just to have some fun with it and um. I was only there 18 months but I had to reshape the business. It was messy, um and um. I kind of enjoyed the exercise of reshaping a business and restructuring a business. I love New Zealand. So my family's the kids were young but you know very sporty love rugby. I was living in Wellington. It's a really social city. Probably the worst weather in the world apart from Scotland.
Speaker 2:I was going to say, coming from a Scotsman, that's a big call. Why would?
Speaker 3:you go from Scotland to Wellington for worse weather, but, um, anyway, I did. I did enjoy it, but, um, I then went on holiday with the family to Sydney and met up with a couple of old Michael Page guys, um, who I'd known and kept in touch with, who were running a company called Six Degrees in Melbourne, and um, they said, oh, you're in, um, you're in New Zealand, you're almost in Australia. I said, okay, guys, what are you really saying here? They said, well, we can't get Sydney going. It's a really messy office. You know three people, four people, just we haven't got a local leader. One of us from Melbourne keeps going up and we can get it going. Let me go back to Melbourne. It falls apart. So how about you run it for us? I was like, well, actually I do want out of corporate. So that was a big tick in the box. I want something new, entrepreneurial, something where I kind of more accountable for the outcome, more outward facing again. And so I I jumped over and the kids were like dad, wherever you go to holiday, are we going to live? Is that what it? What it is? I'm like, no, this is the last, last, last step, and it has been. That was in 2013.
Speaker 3:So January 2013, we moved to Sydney, ran the Six Degrees Sydney office, grew it to a decent size, to the point actually, the whole business was becoming big and corporate again. I was like this is like the journey I've been on and don't want to go on anymore. So I decided, very amicably, to say, guys, this is not my journey anymore. Big HR functions, marketing, it, finance, analytics, operations I get why you need them I don't think you need all these functions, by the way, but I don't want to be involved in that and running all these, you know, inward-looking functions. Again, I want to be in the market.
Speaker 3:So I was increasingly becoming inward looking, with big teams, so very familiar territory, and so I stepped out to set up my own business. Let a colleague not a colleague, but the business AXR was an accounting and finance business at the time. Six Degrees didn't do accounting and finance. So I said to the I used to refer them to the accounting and finance business I had. So I was just saying to the Greggs who ran Greg O'Shea, greg Mann who ran that business guys, I'm leaving Six Degrees, I'm going to do my own thing, happy to refer new business to your way. In my new business, they went business your way. In my new business, they went why don't you come work with us? So no, I don't work for anybody else, I want to work for myself. They said, no, come in as a partner. We've got a great business, really easy infrastructure, we've got brand technology, we've got mark, we've got everything you need just to kind of get going fast, which I did so I stepped in, but my first week was two days in. We had to shut the office because of COVID in 2020. So that was just rubbish. So the bad news was I had no income pretty much for a year because I had my gardening leave.
Speaker 3:Leaving AXR sorry, leaving Six Degrees joined AXR, bought in as a partner, so it was a big lump of cash to get into this business. That could have just gone south and imploded very quickly. However, it didn't and and um, I spent that first kind of six, nine months just thinking about how is my business going to be different and better than anything in the market? Different and better that's my kind of absolute thing. What's my position going to be in a very mature market? There's lots and lots of sales and marketing recruiters out there. I wanted to do sales and marketing again. It's my core passion, not running all these other functions I'd run in the past. So I spent all this energy thinking about brand and bringing the brand to life. So when the market turned again at the end of 2020, I was flying and the money came flying in and we had a business at last. And so, five years later, here we are, business is great and things are going well. So that's my journey.
Speaker 1:Mate, that is an awesome journey and I'm sure getting into business during COVID and all of that happening at the time there's a lot of uncertainty for everybody in Australia at that point. So especially when you're making the move, then I'm sure that would have been a bit of a nervy time.
Speaker 3:Honestly, we did think a few days in well, we're going to have to close the doors, we've got literally no money coming in. It could just be the three of us at the end of this and I'm thinking, hang on, I bought a business that's a bit bigger than that, but that was a risk. They took a punt on me as well and I was happy to go with them and it's been brilliant. Actually, they've been running the business for 20 years, so I was the third wheel coming in and they wanted agitation and change too, and we've kind of more than doubled the business since then overall In 20 years to get to that point, and then not just me being there, but new revenue, new ideas. We've had a great run in the last five years, so it definitely worked out in the end.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Recruiter brought to you by XRecruiter. Xrecruiter helps ambitious recruiters like you start, run and grow their own recruitment agency. Whether you're in blue collar, white collar, permanent or temporary recruitment, we help recruiters go from where they are today to where they want to be. So if you want to start your own agency, reach out and we'd love to help UTA50, talk to me about that. For those who don't know-.
Speaker 2:This is an ultra marathon, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Talk to us about what UTA50 is, why you did it. What's the go there?
Speaker 3:So I love sport. I used to play rugby, stopped playing rugby, got fat, started running to try and keep the weight down and so I've always run and I did lots of big events in Scotland. I got quite competitive in New Zealand but I hadn't done anything for years. My son is a much bigger unit than me and he's a rugby player too, and he runs and gyms and said, look, I don't want to do more running and I want to get into ultras. What do you reckon I'm like? I'm an old guy, my body won't cope with that. And um, he said, no, it will, it will. So so he persuaded me to do two this year. So we did the backyard ultra and uta, just for context for people that don't know what an ultra is.
Speaker 3:This one is like 100k or something anything over over 50, yeah, or anything over a marathon effectively.
Speaker 1:And so the UTA 50, I'm assuming by the 50 at the end of it, is a 50-kilometer ultra.
Speaker 3:So the UTA is a 50-kilometer ultra in the Blue Mountains, so it's got about two and a half kilometers of serious climb as well as the 50. So there's actually a lot of scrambling, but I loved it and we did it together. We did training together, we did the weekends away training together and did the race two races together, and so it was actually a brilliant kind of bonding experience actually. So he was an inspiration when was this a year ago.
Speaker 3:No, in April. We did the first one in April, the backyard ultra in April and then the UTA in May.
Speaker 1:Oh, a couple months ago, no wonder you're looking so fit mate.
Speaker 2:You just pumped out two ultras. How many people do it? How many people are you?
Speaker 3:competing against, so there'll be thousands. Do it Really. It's become really popular. No way I mean really popular for all age groups. I mean from my son's age to people my age and older. It's very accessible. Running is easy. You don't need much care. You know and you just need to understand the principles of. You know decent technique, decent training and good hydration and decent food. You know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's all you need and you just pump out an ultra eh.
Speaker 3:Honestly, anyone can do it. You really could, but it takes time. The training takes time, yeah, but I've learned. I mean it's interesting actually, because I used to overtrain and injure myself when I was younger. I train less now, but just more purposefully. It's more intent about what I do and I do less of it, but I do quality stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that Now I want to your brain in lead gen and prospecting in a second. But before we do, you've got your own podcast. Yeah, um, what's it called?
Speaker 3:it's called your future in sales and marketing, and how long have you?
Speaker 1:had that for um about four and a half years awesome and I think statistically I can't remember what it was, but it's. It's like 99 of podcasts don't go past four episodes or something like this. Podcasting is super popular now, five, five years ago, four and a half years ago, not as much as it is today. What inspired you to start your own podcast? Is there any kind of strategy or thought behind that?
Speaker 3:There's a bit of post-rationalization with this but, as in, I can look back now and kind of go yeah, it's very strategic. The reality was at the start it was how do I get my brand out there quickly and cheaply? So I started during post-COVID times doing Zoom webinars and people were bored. So there were people jumping on these Zoom webinars but the webinar was really simple. I said look, I'm well-connected in the senior marketplace in Sydney in particular across Australia, but senior sales and marketing people know me but I can't build a business on that. I need to understand the mid-market and the junior marketplace. So I need the junior and mid-people who don't know me to understand who I am, what my brand is, and to connect.
Speaker 3:So I spoke to a lot of senior leaders to say would you support me in this journey? And what I'd asked of them is to say come on a Zoom webinar. I'm going to interview you about how you got to be a sales director or a CEO and future leaders will be interested because they don't know how to get there. And I want them to understand how to get there because our whole brand is built on not placing people but helping them unlock and understand careers. So this is very brand aligned at the time, but it wasn't intended to be a podcast, it was just a Zoom webinar. And then, when post-COVID it got a little bit quieter, people were dropping off the calls. We started with 100, 150 people on the call. I thought it was really cool. We're getting down to like 30. I was going oh, this is that's still pretty good.
Speaker 1:It's still pretty decent it I was going oh, this is still pretty good, it's all right, it's all right.
Speaker 3:But then I kept having all these people walk up to me and say I loved the interview you did last month with so-and-so. I'm like I didn't see your name on it. And he said oh no, I'm listening on Spotify and my marketing manager at the time in our business was just chucking these onto Spotify and other pod platforms and people were listening.
Speaker 3:So I was kind of going 30 in a live session, 300 listening to the pod. Oh, let's stop these live calls and just focus on creating a podcast. Yeah, so putting marketing and effort and resource in the pod, and it's been a whirlwind since then.
Speaker 1:Is there any? Just before we get into it, is there any tangible impact that you can attribute to your podcast, Like what has it actually done for you, your career, your?
Speaker 3:branding, there'd be lots. So, for instance, nine out of the 10 guests have come on have become paying clients Awesome, so there's an automatic return straight away.
Speaker 1:That's a BD strategy in itself. Yeah, simple, simple.
Speaker 3:That's a really good BD strategy and we've got almost 4,000 listeners and that's our community, that's our talent community. So we touch that talent community 30 times a year. They're consuming everything. It's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that. So that's a perfect segue into prospecting new leads, new clients, new candidates. So I guess, just to start out, you moved to AXR. You had to build quote-unquote desk from scratch, so to speak. What would you say for someone who's out there starting a desk from scratch? What is just the one simple, most effective BD strategy that you can just start with?
Speaker 3:I think the most effective thing, first of all, is you've got to be very clear on who you're going to recruit for. So it's very easy when you're starting out that every dollar is a good dollar and to chase everything but um, every time you're not in the market you're supposed to be in, you're wasting time because that's not building any continuity of brand for the future. So you've also then got to step away from every call I make. Everything I do doesn't have to result in money. You know, because it's a long game, you know, and that sounds very cliched, but you've got to believe that if I'm creating value in the community that I want to be in, then the money will come.
Speaker 1:Love that. So get clear on the niche niche yeah, I find a lot of recruiters aren't super clear on their niche, or they're not. They're not totally locked in on their niche. I think I did a poll about this I think you might have done actually recently, a week ago, yeah and the poll was are you planning on changing your niche? And 60 said yes, yes, 40% said no, right. So that gives you a bit of an idea on how important it is to focus on your niche and get clear on who you want to go after. So let's say you've dialed in your niche, you've gotten clear. Before we move on to that, how would you get clear on your niche? Is there any kind of strategies? What would you be thinking if someone you hired, a rookie today and they had to kind of build out their desk? How would you determine what their niche should be?
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot in that. It depends. I've got the benefit of having done this lots of times in different markets and different countries and and uh, in different areas and but you follow the same principles. You've got to be um. You're going to look at a market and think and I'll just go through what I did for my, the business I'm running for axr now um, firstly, for me it was what I enjoy. So so you know, I I think it's tough to recruit a space that you have no real interest in and you have no real passion for. So to me you start with where do I think they feel like my people, they feel like I know them. I could be part of that.
Speaker 3:I'm interested in what's going on in that world, because if you're interested, then you'll dig deep and you'll be connected and you'll be part of it and you'll understand the trends and the insights. Without that first step it's hard. But you might be interested in lots of things. So you've got to think well, what do I pick? And it's just about sustainability. So where is there a market that is big enough that there's enough talent communities for me to connect with, but it's not too big that it's serviced really well by large talent acquisition teams. So if you're just going to get into really functional line-and-length roles, then it's very hard to create value in that. I think you've got to be specialist enough that it's difficult hard to create value in that. I think you've got to be specialist enough that it's difficult to recruit him. But if you can dig in and become the expert in that difficult to recruit space, then you've got something. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:How has your lead gen, or prospecting, changed from 10 years ago to now? Has it changed, yeah?
Speaker 3:I would say it has, I think, the biggest shift I've seen in me, but maybe the market as well. But I was quite impatient in an earlier career around just wanting to get the result, wanting to get the outcome.
Speaker 3:Like transactional almost yeah, and I would lose interest in a relationship quickly, wanting to get the result, wanting to get the outcome, like transactional almost yeah. And I would lose interest in a relationship quickly if I didn't think it was going to give me a return. So, whereas now I'm much more long-term orientated, kind of going well if I believe in this organization, I like them, I like the people, the journey seems interesting to me. Then I've just got to spend time getting with that journey, as opposed to having a couple of cracks. They say no, you know, they've got their own way of doing it, whatever. And I just steer away Because you'll find the value if you keep going. So I think patience, clarity of of I'm more interested in businesses and that's the sort of business first of all as opposed to the job. So I I really get interested in the organizational journey and just show patience, uh, with that, yeah, okay, so so what would you do?
Speaker 1:so let's say, for example, what, what's, uh, coca-cola? Yep, um, you're, you're trying to pitch into coca-cola, usually at the, you know, the start of your career. It would be a bit transactional Is this going to go anywhere? You feel like it's getting a bit icy. You just kind of drop it and move on.
Speaker 1:Now, instead, what specifically are you doing? I know you mentioned you being a bit more patient, being a bit more like long-term vision, but is there any like strategies or tactics or frameworks that you're following to just slowly chip away at this?
Speaker 3:relationship, absolutely, it's not random. So you start with who are the key decision makers within the organization? From a line point of view, and to take a step back, I would probably first of all look is that a company I want to get into? Right, let's assume it is. It actually isn't, because they've got big talent, functions, yeah, and they move very, very slowly. But let's assume it is right. I would look at okay, well, who are all the key leaders there within the functions I'm interested in?
Speaker 3:For me, there's three or four functions there's sales, there's marketing, there's revenue management, category management and we also have a strong finance business. But if I'm looking at my world, the sales and marketing world sales, marketing, category, revenue management right, who leads those functions? How is it structured? Do I know them? Do they know me? Who do I know? Know them? Do they know me? Who do I know? Who? Can I um, uh, get in front of uh, and so I start to map them and and reach out and contact them and create pieces of value for them over time. So I've got to bring them into my community. Um, so I've got to capture them, bring them into my community, then create value over time continually and that that that value will be weekly, monthly, yearly, and at some point I'll get a crack.
Speaker 3:I'll give you an example. So one of the businesses I did target was Arnott's, so you'll know Arnott's Tim Tams. Everyone knows Arnott's right. Tim Tams, love Tim Tams. We get a lot of Tim Tams in our office because we work for Arnott's.
Speaker 1:It's great.
Speaker 3:We pick our companies very carefully.
Speaker 1:We do a lot of chocolate. Coca-cola no, Tim Tams. Yes, we do a lot of liquor and a lot of chocolate.
Speaker 3:So we do exactly that with Arnott's and we know all the leaders there. We knew all the leaders' teams. We met a lot of them. We'd given them a lot of career advice. We've coached a lot of them through their internal kind of interviews they'd had. We'd placed them.
Speaker 1:When do you sorry to cut you off? Yeah, go for it. When do you offer advice on how to coach a hiring manager to become a better interviewer?
Speaker 3:So when we approach a hiring manager, it's our pitch is all about, um, our role is to help you understand your career. We treat everybody as candidates, okay, so the hiring manager does as a candidate. It's about them, their career. How do they become a better leader? Um, so their, so their career within arnott's. Or if it's external external to arnott's, so so the values around their stop, you know. So everyone's the same to us. At some point there'll be a candidate, at some point there'll be a client. So we don't differentiate If that means helping them understand how to be a better interviewer, because we've interviewed them anyway, you know they're learning for us because we coach them as a candidate and they'll ask our advice on I'm now interviewing. Can you help me with interviewing? Absolutely we can. But with Arnott's those points of value were clear. Most of them listen to our podcast. They all use our salary guides. They all get a monthly report on who's where in the marketplace. It's got a 70% open rate. We put all these brand assets out.
Speaker 3:When Arnott's decided they needed to go external for a piece of recruitment, the um the now manager director, then sale director sat with her team in a room and said right, I want to write down a piece of paper who we should use, and all wrote down our name. So it was just a really powerful way and she said it's okay if you, if you're connected recruiters, I don't mind, um, and they're all our name. She said why have you all done that name? Because, well, because they create value. We trust them. They're interested in me and my career. You know. You said, you know michelle, who's the md. You know, one might go to her and say I was going to leave last year, michelle, but they told me to stay because I had more things to do here. You've got to trust these guys. So you've just got to not stop chasing the dollar and create the value for the individual, for us in career terms, and it will come back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, See, I have this conversation with recruiters a lot. Right, and I totally agree with what you're saying. You've got to create value, You've got to be long-term, you've got to actually look out for people in their career to build that trust. When I have this conversation with other recruiters sometimes they draw blanks around. Well, how do I give value? What is my value? And there's kind of this disconnect between maybe an early on recruiter and a seasoned recruiter like yourself, like the pennies obviously dropped. You know what you're doing, you know where the value is, how to push that value. How do you bridge the gap between an early on recruiter who probably feels like they don't really have much value to give, and to kind of get them to where they need to be so they can keep that BD muscle going and keep reaching out every 40 days, 60 days, 90 days and drop these bits of value in? Have you seen anything work specifically with your team that helps drive that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's interesting. Systemizing it is the way to do it. So you have to have a process and the system that they can tap into so makes it easy, you know, and that doesn't mean having as long as people you call every 46 days, because you just don't have that time of day to call everybody. So you'll be quiet, you could be. You're gonna have a lot more touch points other than the phone calls and your system has to deliver the touch points. So you, you plug in this junior recruiter, which we do, into our world and very quickly, they just understand that. Okay, our EDMs go out, the podcasts go out. They all have become podcast hosts as well. Awesome. They write reports and blogs. Their visibility in LinkedIn is super high. They have a system for growing the network and activating the network every day. So it's all these brand-building things that they do that mean that they, even though they're junior, they're known, that they become part of the community. And when they do that, they have a calling ratio as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when they make the calls contextual, just, they have something to talk about. You know, it's never. Hey, you don't know me, I don't know you. Have you got a job that I can work on. Yeah, it just doesn't happen like that. You know very rarely, it's never. Hey, you don't know me, I don't know you. Have you got a job that I can work on? Yeah, it just doesn't happen like that. You know very rarely. It's that soul-destroying stuff.
Speaker 3:So you've got to create it, make it interesting for them, a system they can plug into and something they believe in, and you've got to give them confidence too. And this is where the niche comes back. So if you're in a, very quickly you understand what's going on in that world and you know the trends, you know the insights, you know the things that are important to talk to and you can replay those trends, insights and things that are important to talk to back to the people that you're business developing. You're calling Because you've got value for them in market information as well as all the other stuff they're providing. So the calls are actually not just hey, did you get our salary guide? I mean that's an easy call to make, but actually, did you see that this company, you're about to buy this company, what do you reckon about that? That's an interesting conversation to have. So we don't often talk about hiring and recruitment. That comes because of the conversations we're having around the business.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to wrap this up in a nice little bow, yeah, so essentially, what you're saying is either create market insights or find them. Maybe subscribe to a blog, industry news, something where you're actually feeding yourself with industry insights, that you can create more in-depth conversations with more meat on it, rather than just trying to pitch a job Podcast. Find a podcast that's relevant to that industry, that company, something along that person, something along those lines, and perhaps maybe I'm just going to make this up right now there's a six-step sequence. It's you know, you do a phone call, a couple of emails will go out, invite them to. You know a news blog, did you see this? And it's all these different touch points and different ways to follow up. So it's not just the same conversation over and over again. Is that am?
Speaker 3:I picking up what you're putting down, yeah, kind of. So I've tried in the past having this relationship ladder where you have all these points to you know and you get a score from zero to a hundred, which is you know, zero, we don't. They don't know why it's a hundred, you know, they give us all the business and all these touch points along the way, but it was overcomplicating it. I think you just got to you know, to me it's. It's really simple. You build, you build a, a, a, an asset bank which is has, has value for the network in which you're, the, which has value for the network in which you're, the community in which you're serving, and you create a mechanism for them to get hold of those assets continually. So it could be a monthly blog that you write about the market. It could be.
Speaker 3:We do a report on who's moved where in the market. It seems so simple, but no one does it and it's brilliantly well-received. We do a podcast which is a bit of a step for a lot of people to think about. It's brilliantly well received. We do a podcast which is a bit of a step for a lot of people to think about, but it's not that hard to do.
Speaker 3:We do recruitment guides. We've just recorded a whole bunch of how-to guides, which are mini three-minute videos on how to do simple stuff how to interview, how to run a recruitment process, how to take a reference, just all these things that are going to help our clients and candidates be better at their job. So if you've got all these assets, then you've got this library your community taps into continually and you just call them to prod them along and you're throwing additional insights so you'll learn because you're interviewing and talking to people all the time, so you're just gathering information, throwing it out there, as well as having the formal assets as well. So I've made that. I said simple, I made it sound complicated, but to me it sounds simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you've put it perfectly, and so that's probably the gap or the blank face that sometimes I see in recruiters, when you go, oh, just keep giving them value until they're ready to recruit with you and they go. What's value? What am I?
Speaker 3:doing. What does that even mean? They don't know what value is, and I know and that's the hard thing, isn't? It Is because you often think of value to you, but it has to be value to them. Yes, it's not value for them, it's not value.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally so. That's a really good, probably reflection for the recruiters that are listening around. How do you give value? What does that look like? I mean, there needs to be a level of investigation, but if you can find three, four, five different ways you can provide value whether it's insights, blogs, podcasts, news, et cetera then that gives you a good starting point and a good talking topic. To quote unquote add the value what about KPIs? When you're prospecting do? Is there a magic kpi, magic number, conversion rate, um, that you should be tracking and measuring yourself against to know if you're doing a good job or not I think it's hard.
Speaker 3:I think um. The only two kpis we use are our number of clients meeting a week, a number of candidates meeting a week, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 3:That's it. That's all we use. Really simple. I like that. That's good. So if you're in the traffic you'll know what's going on. If you know what's going on, you're in the traffic, so we just make sure. If you're not meeting people, then you don't know what's happening. So we don't. We have. So that's non-negotiable. So it's not even a KPI, because it just happens and so that's the only KPI. So when it comes to prospecting, we don't measure a number of calls, call-to-meeting ratio, all the stuff that we would have done back at Page in the day. Those things we don't do why, not.
Speaker 3:I look, activity is important, um and if, but, but the quality of what you're doing is more important, um, and I, and I think, um, you're honestly, I, I, if you're, if you're meeting enough clients and candidates, you're making the calls. So I don't need to measure the calls if my guys are meeting enough people.
Speaker 1:What do you think the right number is to meet clients and meet candidates Like? When I first got into recruitment it was 10 candidates a week, five client meetings a week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so that's the number a lot of people talk to. Meetings a week. Yeah, yeah, so that's the number a lot of people talk to. I realistically I don't think that is continually achievable. So we set slightly lower numbers than that but we hit them. So you know, we just go eight and three, okay, but the guys will probably struggle to get the candidate meetings up to eight, or they generally get seven or eight, but they'll probably do more than three client meetings a week because we create more client interactions through recruitment.
Speaker 3:So I'll give an example. So a client meeting for us isn't just winning a piece of business, taking a brief, you know, or pitching. We'll meet a client on an assignment every single week, as we call it an assignment whip. So from taking a brief, building out the candidate pack, whatever, at the end of week one we'll say to the client you know, week one's meeting, we'll show you the map of talent and that's a meeting. And we'll meet them on teams and we'll say these are the 30 people we're going to contact. Are those the right 30 people? And they'll be like yes, or you've missed a few here. I don't like that person. I know that one. They're really good, but we'll have alignment. Are?
Speaker 2:these retained roles.
Speaker 3:All retained.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask about the 100% fill rate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, nothing can be competitive. I'm like, all right, now, this makes sense, it's not all senior.
Speaker 3:It's just that my kind of belief is that that's the best way to work. So that's all we do and we have very little pushback. If you set it up properly, you don't watch pushback on it. We are a parent business. We do a little bit of contract work, but not a huge amount. But we create these moments of direction through an assignment. So from filling out from starting role to filling it say it's three to four weeks you'll have three or four client meetings. So if you're running four or five assignments, um you you've got um four or five meetings there as well as your discovery meetings.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so so actually they tend to smash the client meetings.
Speaker 1:It's just the interviews, uh, are actually harder again so if they're, I don't want to segue too hard off prospecting, but if they're not making the candidate visits or the candidate meetings or the client meetings, what's plan B? What do you track them? Plan B Is it like all right? Well, if you're not doing that now, we actually do need to see how many calls you're making, or yeah, we know, and we do have calls on there as well.
Speaker 3:So we do look at them. They're on our CRM. We've got a weekly report which has everything on there which is calls as well. So you look at that you definitely would and figure out why is that not happening. But we're a smaller business, we're all aware you can hear them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much, you can hear them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very much, very much. You can hear what's happening, so you can see it pretty quickly. But we don't tend to go too far away from those KPIs and make it overly complicated. You know the way we work. You know because of the control we exert through the process, through the way we run an assignment. We have a 100% shortlist to interview ratio. It just never deviates because of the control. But the prospecting is interesting. We will pitch for business. We don't win everything, but we'll win a lot. We'll win a very high percentage because the way the business has been set up and the way the brand is seen in the market, because our competitors do some of the stuff that we do but none of them do all the stuff we do. Because recruiters are brilliant at having ideas, absolutely shit at following through. You know and I've just done it for so long and I've been in that boat you know too many ideas. You know, and it runs for three weeks and you get bored and something else happens.
Speaker 1:Specifically around prospecting getting new clients on what's the number one thing that recruiters too often overlook when they're prospecting.
Speaker 3:So I don't think they. They don't map the market effectively enough. So you have to map the market of clients you want to work with and be clear within your niche. Who are the companies that interest me and why? You've got to have a reason why it's not just names and lists. Why does Coca-Cola interest you? Or why does Arnott's interest you? Is it because Arnott's have been a private equity owned? There's an exit coming up. They're on a journey. They've got to get there quickly. That means they've got to run fast and that's an exciting journey to me. So I want to be part of that journey. So they're on my list. So if you haven't got an idea as to why they're on your list and you're calling them without context, then you're not going to have much success.
Speaker 2:That's good, I used to have them on my list and I didn't know why I was calling them I just kept calling them.
Speaker 1:Didn't get anywhere.
Speaker 2:So I'd like to just kind of progress the sales process a little bit, moving to discovery calls or discovery meetings or that phase of the journey. What is something or a mistake that you see recruiters typically making at that stage?
Speaker 3:So I think on discovery, recruiters don't ask enough questions and they sell too often. And the other piece is, whilst they sell they don't close. So it's kind of weird. And if you get discovery right you're asking a lot of questions in the right order. So when you sell you can close. But if you get that balance wrong you're just setting yourself up for failure. Many times I've been on a client meeting over my recruitment career and even if the discovery phase of a call or meeting the recruiters kind of got the questions right, they forget to close at the end.
Speaker 3:So I've got to step in and close it. It's crazy, but it's not that hard if you get the discovery piece right and asking the questions.
Speaker 2:How do you coach to that? Do you role play with them beforehand? Are you just there in the meetings? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So lots of role playing. Give recruiters parts of the meeting to run and then slowly increase their role and you step back. It's super easy as a senior person in a meeting just to take over.
Speaker 1:But what is the learning?
Speaker 3:You've got to give somebody enough responsibility in a meeting to or or to to to do that, um, so, so, yeah, so, it's a lot of it is. It is said, you know, training, role play, coaching, uh, and, and live coaching in the moment as well, yeah, so, whether that's a, you know, call teams meeting or or face to face yeah, I know, I've seen, I've seen that a lot myself and I'm always curious as to how much to let them fall over.
Speaker 2:You know you let your child fall over to, yeah, teach themselves a lesson, whatever it is. But how do you do that with your team, or do you take over if it's not going to work?
Speaker 3:do you ever have that kind of oh, it's a really good question, because you, you're, you're programmed not to, or I'm so, so competitive, I'm programmed to kind of get a result, get a win, and you're like, oh you know, okay, you're stuffing up now.
Speaker 3:There is a fine balance. I think it's just experience is knowing when I've got to step in. Yeah, if you know. And what I say to the guys is there's nothing you can't that I can't fix for you in the meeting. So don't worry, you know there's nothing you can do. That is, we can't undo and get ourselves back on track. But we're very structured in, I'm very structured in my, in my businesses, as to how we run those meetings. Um, so, if you, if you, if you understand the, the flow, uh, of discovery, then you'll set yourself up not to fail. So you can't go wrong with the right structure. And this goes right back to my training from Michael Page.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good, isn't it Back in the 90s? Do you have a process or structure you follow now, if you're willing to share a bit of the secret sauce, it's exactly the same.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I run client meetings the same way now as I did. I have done forever and they go well, because it's really easy. The first step is you've got to make only three decisions in the entire meeting. The first one is when do I move this from getting to know you having a nice chit chat and rapport building into let's run the meeting now? The client might start that and if the client is just loving your chat, then you've got to start it because you'll be there forever. Right? So you take your slot from them and they'll be like, anyway about this role.
Speaker 3:Or let's go on to business, and you're like okay, that's my cue to go. And the cue to go is whether you've instigated it or them is to set the agenda for the meeting, that's it. You say great. And the client might ask before we go any further, just remind me what your fees are. And you're like absolutely, but let's put fees in context. First, I need to understand more about your business. So let's understand the journey you're on, where you are now, what the future looks like, when does this role connect? Once we understand where this role connects, we can talk about the way I'm going to recruit this person for you, and then we'll talk about fees. Does that make sense? And not one client's ever said that makes no sense to me because it's so logical.
Speaker 3:It's just the most logical way to run a meeting. So, no matter where it starts, you set that agenda, then you have control of the meeting and you know it's easy for anyone to do that. And they, you know junior recruiter too. That's the way they're taught to run the meeting. And then you jump in with company and within that is just you know the journey of the company, the structure where the role fits in, the candidate recruitment, the fees, the clothes, move on, walk out of the meeting.
Speaker 2:I say that control piece is huge, isn't it? Because a lot of the times clients will just think what's the thing I can ask about recruitment? And it's the fees because no one's taken control at that point. Because no one's taken control at that point. So keeping it there is really important. How do you avoid turning the discovery call into like a one-sided pitch, talking about how great you are? Is it just what you said there, giving the floor to talk about their business, or is there techniques that you have?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what I probably didn't talk to there is you've got to do an introduction as well. But you've got to be super clear in what your introduction is, because if you're just talking about the Lions game last night in rugby given we're in the middle of that tour just now then that's exciting and you just go in to tell them about your business, then they're probably thinking so who are you? Again, I maybe know a bit about you, maybe I had a call before, but if it's something you don't know, you've got to introduce and um, so you to avoid being salesy or pitching, it's just being very, very concise about.
Speaker 3:This is who I am, this is what my business is, this is what we do, and today I'll show you how we bring that to life. It's kind of how I do it and and and. Then I'm into. We'll do that once I understand about your organization, your structure, where this role fits in candidate, then we'll talk about recruitment and that's where I'll bring it to life for you. If you keep that structure, then you've kind of got intro beginning, pitch at the end and it keeps you on point, stops you kind of getting into this sales pitch mode, which you should never do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you talked a bit about the framework there and naturally I'm sure it's relatively easy to build the rapport through. But for somebody who's fairly new into recruitment sales recruitment how do you keep them on track between the structure and the framework and ensuring there's engagement and a good, healthy conversation along the journey?
Speaker 3:How do you coach Maybe how you'd coach a rookie consultant to that it's funny because sometimes I remember, funnily enough, back in my early recruitment days, a now very experienced recruitment leader who was working for me. At the time I was coaching him on running a meeting and making sure you know client, we didn't know, but your chance to kind of get it right, mate, let's do this. Remember the structure. And he just walked in and slammed his folder on the desk and said right, I want to find out about your company, then I want to find out about the role. Then it's the candidate looked at me and said then it's recruitment, and then that's it and I said we'll get on to that.
Speaker 3:But hey, how are you? So you've got to spend time creating some sort of social capital between you and the individual you're talking to. But you've got to be clear that you've got a goal in that call or that meeting. And if you haven't got a goal and a plan going in, then you're at risk of running a scattergun meeting and that's when it becomes hard.
Speaker 3:I think structure stops you having that when I talk to people who are perhaps experienced recruiters coming to work for me and they say how do you run a meeting, how do you run a call, how do you go through discovery and they say, oh, I just kind of pick up as I go, I'm like, oh, what excites this will be messy as, and they might be quite good at it. But I say, look, let me just put a little bit of structure in this for you and make it easier, and you'll be able to transition from your cool personality to a meeting under your control and an outcome you want, as opposed to the hit or miss variety which could struggle to get from the rapport cool stuff to actually getting an outcome that's going to work for you and for the client how much value do you try and bring into that conversation as well?
Speaker 2:do you bring insights into those meetings or is it more a fact finding from from them?
Speaker 3:yeah. So I think the insights you bring are from the questions you ask. So then, the questions you ask have context, you know. So how you frame a question is everything. So if, if you are simply asking, you know so, what does your business manufacture and where do you sell it?
Speaker 3:You know that's a valid question, but you know you should give that a lot of context, which is look, I noticed that you've developed a brand new manufacturing facility in Queensland. That's really interesting. Developed a brand new manufacturing facility in Queensland. That's really interesting. And I also saw that you've just hired a new head of export. That's fantastic. So is that factory to drive a new export business you're planning? How does that fit with the current model of manufacturing and channel to market? And know, and you're just kind of through. The way you phrased the question and I've obviously just made that up, but you've phrased the phrase to question you're showing that I know your world, I'm in your world, I understand your business, I understand the market you're in and my question will give you confidence that I get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that like a proactive thought, like how do you learn that? I'm just trying to put my mind into like a rookie recruiter and being able to frame a question like that is sophisticated, especially when it's on the fly.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is that just time, like just putting the reps?
Speaker 3:I think it is a bit. Yeah, I mean it is a bit, but what we said at the start of the pod was if you know your niche and if you're focused on your niche and you're living in that niche, you do know what's happening because you're meeting people in that world every day. And, as I say, if you treat everybody as a candidate everybody's on a journey with a career then you're meeting, you know really good people and and you're and you're learning about their organization through the, those candidate interviews. You understand and you're soaking up so much um, because that's the world you're existing in and and therefore it gives you the, the ammunition to kind of set context to questions. Now, framing of the question how to to do it does take reps, but if you as a recruiter front, if you haven't got your niche and you're not living in it, then it's really hard to be anything other than just transactional and asking a transactional question for a transactional answer.
Speaker 2:And I'd always focus on whether I was doing it myself or coaching, asking two, maybe three questions before giving some insight back. So the reason I'm asking this is I've seen XX or whatever it is, so it's not just an interview of a client trying to get something off them. You're actually giving them a lot back.
Speaker 3:I think that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah, because it's too show-offy, otherwise you've got to be giving that information contextually, but not just hey, look how amazing I am, I know your world and name-dropping and all that. You can do that really well, but it has to be very carefully done through a meeting, I think.
Speaker 2:I can kind of guess what you're going to say, but is there one? If a recruiter's listening now, is there one piece of advice? You'd give them around what they should be doing to prepare for this. Whether it's structure or it's focusing on insights, what would you say?
Speaker 3:the one main takeaway should be actually um back to what we just said a moment ago is there's no harm in prepping questions to begin with. You know, there's no harm in actually um having a list of questions that are next level questions and learning them and having them in your backpack ready to go. So if you've got your structure, but to avoid the transactional, I'm just interviewing a client on the back of that structure, having a list of questions that you've worked through with your boss, your colleagues, you've role played, them you feel comfortable and confident with, then you can start to drop these little snippets of context in as well. So trust that you're going to learn the stuff in your market, trust the process and the formula you're going to run the meeting by. But maybe just practice the questions and have them good to go.
Speaker 1:So we've started with prospecting, adding value, putting them in a system like having some sort of BD system type thing. We then moved into discovery. I liked how you framed that around asking them questions and if you're selling, you're not closing Perfect. You've tied in a couple of interesting points there around the pitch and the pitch really comes at the end of the discovery. Is is how I've kind of interpreted that. Um, considering you do only retained work and you've got. You've said you do a lot of things some of your competitors do. Competitors do some of the things that you do, but not all of it. I'd be really interested to learn what your pitch is Like. What do you say specifically when you've done your discovery? You found out about them. You've built all this rapport and they go. Okay, let's talk about is it in recruitment fees? And then a little bit about you guys Like what does that look like? Why would I use you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you guys like what does that?
Speaker 3:look like why would I use you? Yeah, yeah. So the pitch again. I think people overcomplicate this and make it bigger than it is. But if you are clear on what your niche proposition is in the market, so ours is enabling great career decisions. So that's our kind of you know statement, and everything we do in the market is against that right. So when we introduce ourselves at the start of the meeting, it's like you know, I'm Mike, I run AXR.
Speaker 3:The business exists a little bit differently to a lot of recruitment companies. We live within our talent communities to help them get the most out of their careers. Everything we do is enable them to make great career decisions. So when they join your business, it's for the journey you're on, not just for the job. So so we set it up as part of the intro and then we get to the end of the meeting. We've done this, hopefully. It's really nice meeting and and we've then said, okay, so this is, this is how we're going to do it for you, and we take them through how we're going to do it. That's the pitch. So so you know, and the way in which we do it is quite experiential for the candidate and the client. So we bring that to life. We generally have, you know, laptops there. They've got screens. Whatever we're showing them, what our process, what they're going to experience in, real marketing coming through right here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, yeah it is.
Speaker 3:So you know we're like okay. So you know, from today we're going to, we're going to build up a candidate pack for you. The candidate pack will show you the journey that you're going on as a business and the way that we understand it. We've got to get this right. This is how we're going to be taking you to market um. We're going to then take that um. Within that pack will be the, the role, but in the way it connects to the journey. So it's super clear for the candidate how they're going to make a contribution. Then we'll talk about the candidate in terms of the experience they're going to have, the skills they've developed and the competencies we're going to be assessing against um and within that we're going to also have the timeline. So every step of the step of the way and that's the candidate pack now you're going to we're going to put that in a proposal first of all. So ended in that proposal is going to be our fees as well. So so let me step you through what the experience is going to be and where the fees fit in. So and but I'm also showing them a candidate pack I'm saying this is what the candidate pack looks like. We use very cool branding we you, we're very good at Canva they look amazing. So the client is like, well, this beats a PD, a job description any day. This is an amazing piece of work and it looks amazing. It's not that hard to do. So we're then just stepping through to say, right, so week one, you're going to get your. We'll have our first assignment whip. You'll see the market map. This is what a market map looks like. We show them a dummy market map with 30 names in it.
Speaker 3:Week two, you'll see the long list, which is the 12 people we're going to interview. We'll have spoken to probably 25 of them. We can't get hold of everybody in a week, but we'll probably speak to 25. So you'll see who we're going to interview. Then, in week three, the shortlist will pretty much will be there, and so you'll be with us every step of the way. You'll know who the shortlist is going to be. There's no shortlist presentation because you're part of the journey with us and so you, we're in this together and, um, then we'll obviously run the process from shortlist through to completion, helping you with the, with this, with the selection piece, so you get your interviewing right and making sure you're putting your best foot forward.
Speaker 3:So it's immersive for the client. They feel involved. We take them through the candidate experience as well. The candidates get a great interview. They get amazing feedback because we say to the client look, every candidate we put in this process, you want to be an advocate of your business. At the end they want to feel, even if they didn't get the job because almost all of them won't get a job, only one person's going to get a job that they'll walk away going, love that business, love it, you know. And you've got 30 advocates out there. So so it'll be a really good process for them.
Speaker 3:Now, how the fees work is it's, it's, you know, we, we run two or three stage process. It's let's say it's, it's a two or a grand roll. We'd be normally about 20 for that, you know. So that's a 40k fee. We'd be like it's 15k to engage us and 25k in completion, or we can split up even more of us better for you, which is um, you know, 15, 15, 15 or whatever. That number has to be um, and that's the process we're going to go through Now. Does that make sense? Is that process comfortable? Is that something you're going to get a lot out of, and mostly they say yes, I mean that's a Perfect search process.
Speaker 2:I feel like I want to recruit someone.
Speaker 1:There's always the hey, you sent me that retainer man. We've got a few roles at XCruiter. Well, there's always the.
Speaker 2:That's what search and you know search and exec recruitment looks like and contingency is different, but it's really the same, isn't it? You do get a long list in contingency. You do narrow it down. You should still be presenting it, or presenting it, or do you have a different view when you're doing contingent work?
Speaker 3:look, we want to do more contingent work because, uh, it's actually faster you know, so we are starting to do a bit more now.
Speaker 3:So if, if we, if we think we can get there fast, we don't need, we don't need all the bells and whistles, we just dial it back. You know, but the but, the one thing we do for every assignment is if we, even if we don't do the cool candidate pack, um, the actual the, the, the work process, even if it's over two weeks, you know, just to sit down with the client and get alignment is fantastic. So there's no shocks or surprises. You're kind of going right, you might not show a map of 30, you might just say, look, these are the 10 people we reckon can do it. You know what? Do you know this person put them in as well. I was like, yeah, we'll put them in too. So, um, then you know, week two okay, this is what is this. You're going to meet. You know it's comfortable. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, they're from the town. So you just, you still can exert control. We just take out some of the stuff these 10 people um that you're presenting?
Speaker 1:are these just profiles or are they screened candidates that are interested?
Speaker 3:So to begin with they're just profiles, okay. And then we actually have this. You know, just a cool document, that kind of color codes where somebody's in. You know when they've been approached, if they're considering it, if they've been approached and they're committed, if we've approached them and said no, if we've approached them and they said no. So they see where everyone is really easily in the marketplace. But one of our USPs is, again, because we're in our niche, we know everybody. So most companies will say, well, how are you going to find me candidates? Well, we know all the candidates. So it's not about finding them, it's about approaching them because they trust us with their career. A conversation with us is not unusual. A conversation with us is contextual to an ongoing relationship they have with us about career. So when we call them, they will call us back, whereas if they don't know us it's a random LinkedIn message from your talent acquisition team they're not going to respond to you. They might do, probably won't but they will respond to us because they know us and trust us.
Speaker 1:It just feels so deliberate, which is what I love. Yeah, everything that you do is extremely deliberate and Purposeful. Purposeful yeah, whereas when I first got into recruitment it was super transactional, it was sales recruitment, so I'm a sales recruiter myself. Yep, um. However, we routinely changed industries every three months because we felt like we burnt the industry out, wow that's how no one left, just ripped through it, yeah, you'd, every month he'd build a new hitty in a new industry and, just like, rip through that new industry.
Speaker 1:And so when you, when you say this kind of stuff, it just makes so much sense and would probably avoid a lot of that burnout for recruiters who are constantly pivoting in a new industry, just pitching a shallow pitch which ultimately is you know, if I was going up against you, let's just rewind a couple years, and it was me and you pitching for that one company and you're talking through hey, this is what we're going to do, we're going to step you through this, this is how we're going to do it.
Speaker 1:It's a 15k retainer. I think you know, being a hiring manager, that all makes a lot of sense. Why you would pitch a retainer? Because there's so much investment from your end, whereas as a recruiter that is not used to pitching retainers, they would be scared to pitch a retainer because ultimately they're just kind of taking a job brief and going all right, I'll just send you some people. They're just hoping, yeah. And so there's a really big gap there between, it seems like, your process from prospecting, discovery and then the justification on why they pay the retainer. Um, in comparison to maybe someone who's just transactional and you know, spinning.
Speaker 3:It's a big difference and the investment is is intentional, because everybody who goes through that process it's not just they become an advocate for that client. They, they know us and they trust us. But every experience you have has to be really good so they don't get the job. They want to know why, because recruiters are rubbish at feedback, right. So so we, they want to know why. So we give them really good feedback because we interview them very well.
Speaker 3:Against a whole, you know, structured session, we'll say look, you're not in the shorts because you, you know you're short here. You just didn't bring this to life. You've got to, you're gonna get more experience, or you've got to get better landing that insight in an interview. So they become close to us and because they're all our clients too. So or they will become, you know, even if it's a more junior role, that that's our future. So they've got to have a brewing experience with us. So every, as I say to the guys, every touchpoint with our market, you know, every conversation, every pod they listen to, every email or EDM they open, just is another brick in the foundation of this house of brand we're building and they're in the house and they'll hopefully get value from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to challenge you on something. If you don't have the network of candidates because you've presented that beautifully we don't have to find the candidates. We know the candidates, we're going to speak to them and we're going to influence them to want to love to join your business. Speak to them and we're going to influence them to want to love to join your business. If you are a recruiter that doesn't have a name, a brand, a pool of candidates, how would you deliver your pitch and differentiate yourself with someone at that point?
Speaker 3:yeah. So we do a bit of work outside of our space. Okay, you know so we. So our space is broadly consumer, fmcg, retail kind of world. That's about 75% of what we do, but 25% is null and it's growing. So we're kind of interested in other.
Speaker 3:We've worked in, you know, packaging, we're doing some work in some tech just now, in some you know big turf management company, weird businesses right, and so we don't know the people there and it is a little different. It's more like a search firm. So a search firm typically doesn't know the people either. They're just relying on the process to get the outcome and that's what we sell. So we don't sell the network, we sell the process. So we say, look, we don't know the people in that marketplace, but we can find them and the way in which we'll approach them and the experience they will have will get an outcome. So it's not as good as and we won't say that, but it's not as good as if we know them, but the process is still pretty rock solid and generally does get an outcome, because that's all the search firms work. Now, we're not a search firm. I wish we were. We charge more fees. It does my head in that we can charge the fees that they do, but we apply a lot of the principles.
Speaker 1:And just lastly, on the pitch how do you make sure your team isn't pitching in a shallow sense, like you had it beautifully there and you know the candidates? This is the process. How do you avoid pitching and being shallow in how you're kind of delivering your value?
Speaker 3:I think the setup is everything. So if you're pitching that context, it's sales, you know, and nobody likes to be sold. I hate it, you know, you know I. Just you can smell a mile off. It's desperate, it's horrible. So so the, the avoidance is context and the context is the, the right structure, the setup, and I'm getting it right up front, which is the smart questions that you've prepped, hopefully, and with insights you've got. So it comes back to the same stuff. Sorry to repeat it, but if you get that right, you'll avoid the shallowness at the end. So the worst thing you can do, and a lot of people more inexperienced are going to do, is they pitch too early, they just want to get it done, they just want to sell. You don't know me, I don't know you, but I'm going to sell who I am at you and you know. Until you know who they are, don't sell.
Speaker 2:You know, make sure you've done discovery before you sell Love that We've weaved this kind of segment in through the whole conversation. So, talking about relationship management and clients and candidates clearly the same thing which we've just touched on how do you stay top of mind with your clients when they're not hiring? What's your approach or strategy to doing that?
Speaker 3:It's everything to us because our clients don't hire all the time. We're not in volume markets so they hire sporadically. So we've got to be. You know, this whole drip feed of value to the community is how we do it. So the podcast is brilliant. You know there's an episode going out every two weeks, or 25 to 30 a year. The salary guides are industry best. They're really good. The blogs go out regularly. We're super active on LinkedIn. I mean incredibly active on LinkedIn. So it's very hard not to kind of see what we're putting out. So a client, whilst they might not get a call from us that often, they will feel very connected to us. We walk into an industry conference and we will have feedback continually from the client world saying love your content, love what you put out last week, love that pod. They feel as if we're talking to them all the time. We're not. We've just got great automation of assets and we activate LinkedIn really strongly.
Speaker 2:What is the most common objection that you or your teams face at the moment when you're pitching to clients, talking to candidates, is there some theme coming through?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a couple. I'll go to the most common one, which is we do it ourselves. We've got a talent team. We're all good things. We fill our roles.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How do you overcome it? Do you have any defaults?
Speaker 3:Yeah, look, we're not your talent team, so I don't want to take away. Your talent team is a great job, no doubt about it, you know. You know there's two things one, what happens if they, if they, can't deliver? You know they're, they're under resourced. Or you need a deeper search and you need to go further than the immediate network that they will uncover. What's your plan b? You know, because we will be your plan b and this is how your plan b will come to life. This is what we do it. It's different to them. So the talent team will do this and we'll do this. So we take them through what I explained before in terms of our process, and it's markedly different from the talent team and they've got a choice to make.
Speaker 2:So you're almost coexisting with them, versus saying take them out and replace them with us. Most of our clients have got talent teams, absolutely they.
Speaker 3:They do their job, we do ours. But as long as the line manager understands they're making a different choice. And it's not just our talent team has said no, they're too busy. That's part of that. But generally if the line manager thinks I need a different outcome and they understand our process, then they've got a choice to make.
Speaker 2:Have you got any examples without obviously naming the client where you've turned a pretty hard no into a successful ongoing relationship with a client?
Speaker 3:Look, I can name another. I can name an example of a no, I'll mention another chocolate company actually. So Daryl Lee is a company. Said no to us. Who's the hiring manager there?
Speaker 1:Who's the hiring?
Speaker 3:manager there. So Daryl is another private equity business flying along Aussie icon, going really well. But he used another recruitment company very transactional, good at the job but very transactional. So we knew what they were and we got no lots of times. And then we got a yes about four months ago because they needed a new sale director. So they thought, well, let's just make sure we're doing the right thing here. So we got an opportunity because the CEO asked his leadership team, who should I use? And they said, well, these guys create the most value in the marketplace AXR. So that's where I go. So that's a no through brand In a meeting itself. If someone says no, sometimes you've got to respect them and just say that's fine. If it's no, now that's great, as long as you know that what we offer is different to the path you're going down. When you need a different solution, let's talk, yeah, and we'll just keep in touch.
Speaker 2:Let's keep going, just not not lose patience and I, when I was um a bit more on the tools, I would follow a very rigid structure to handling objections. It was almost robotic, but do you have any advice in terms of how you think objections should be handled? Yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:So the other key objection is I mentioned before, we were mostly retained, so we'll get objections about that. You know well we don't pay retainers and the question is just always why? So take me through why you feel you can't do that? And it's either out of their hands. We're talking to the wrong person, or they've had a bad experience, or they don't understand it and you've just got to keep asking why in a way that gets to the real objection. And once you understand the real objection, then you can give them reassurance and comfort about they can make a good decision and this is a decision that's okay for them to make or you've got to go and talk to the right person.
Speaker 2:We had that on the last podcast. One of the guys was saying just keep asking why get to the real objection? Because nine times out of ten the first thing they say is not the reason Correct.
Speaker 1:What's the one thing that a recruiter should take away? One key lesson from this pod Be very, very clear on your niche. I don't think many people say that enough, to be honest, like we've had. Just for context, we've seen a lot of recruiters even start their recruitment agency and change niches three times in six months, and why that is I'm not sure, but there seems to be a struggle or a disconnect for many recruiters changing niche, thinking oh, this isn't me, maybe I'll try this. This industry seems like everyone makes money and really easy. Maybe I'm going to go try there, and it's all really interesting on how people approach the niche. So I really appreciate you putting the spotlight on that. Okay, so just a bit of a refresher.
Speaker 1:The game Are you Smarter Than Ed? We're going to see if Mike is smarter than Ed. It's a trivia, a bunch of questions. We're going to have a best of 10. The way the buzzer is going to work is you say your name? Yep, okay, can we put some like Theme music? Who wants to be a millionaire music in the background? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Which recruitment firm coined the phrase shaping the world of work? A Randstad, b. Hayes, c. Michael Page, d Robert Half.
Speaker 3:A.
Speaker 2:Randstad Correct we got a lot on the board. Whiskey's winking at us.
Speaker 1:What is the average global fee charged for permanent placement by recruitment agencies? A, 5%, B, 10%, C, 20% to 30%, D, 50%. Okay, Ed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, c.
Speaker 1:That was so obvious what that answer was, mate, was it? Well, there was like 5%, 10%, 20% to 30% or 50%.
Speaker 2:I did catch the 50%.
Speaker 1:This is going to be hard for both of you. Which famous Australian band sang Down Under A In Excess? B Men At Work, b Men At Work, I need the buzzer. I need the buzzer, ed. B Men At Work, ed.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Ed's got that one. Sorry, mate, sorry. Which Australian state typically has the highest volume of recruitment activity? Ed, a New South Wales, correct, ed. Wow, that's three to Ed. That's it.
Speaker 3:That's best of five. That's best of five.
Speaker 1:All right, You've got to have half a wine glass. No.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that, it's not uni days.
Speaker 1:Here we go, mike, let's get rid of your cold.
Speaker 2:Good on you. There we go. Oh, mike, didn't even flinch, good work.
Speaker 1:That's the Scottish blood in him. Wowee, Huge thanks for coming. Appreciate it Before you go. We're doing Diary of a Recruiter, so we've got a question from H-People. The question is what?
Speaker 3:was one of your biggest failures and what did I learn from it? We were talking off air about how I think I should have got out of corporate recruitment sooner than I did. Not that I didn't enjoy my last few years there for my colleagues that are listening but I enjoy more being a smaller business. I got offered a chance to join a startup in Scotland which went on to be an absolute flying success as one of the, and I offered um equity from day one as one of the founders and I just I was promoted the same week within um hudson to um the board and I, and so I said no, and so it's. It's not a failure, but but it's a regret, and my learning was I should have backed myself then, as I did subsequently.
Speaker 2:I love that. Listeners out there. If anyone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do it?
Speaker 3:Oh, linkedin, just reach out. Okay, send me a contact request.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Recruiter.