Ben Farber - Bristol Associates

Ben Farber’s biggest recruiting win wasn’t just filling a role.

It was turning one search into two hires.

And not once.

Three separate times in a single year.

In this episode of Recruiter Wins, I sat down with Ben Farber, President of Bristol Associates, to talk about what actually makes clients expand a search, create new roles and trust you with bigger hiring decisions.

What stood out most?

Ben doesn’t believe great recruiting is just about finding people with the right experience.

He believes the real signal is how candidates show up.

How they communicate.
How they handle pressure.
How they come across in emails, screening calls and interviews.

Because in his words, retention often comes down to likability and ease of working with someone more than what’s written on their résumé.

A few strong takeaways from this conversation:

• Great candidate quality can completely reshape a client’s hiring plan
• Retained search creates stronger commitment from both clients and candidates
• The best recruiters listen for more than credentials. They assess presence, communication and temperament
• AI can speed things up but human judgment still has to lead the process

This is a great listen for recruiters who want to build deeper client trust, improve candidate quality and think more carefully about what actually predicts long-term success after the placement.

If you’ve ever wondered what separates recruiters who fill jobs from recruiters who truly influence hiring decisions, this episode is worth your time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Recruiter Wins, your bite size 15-minute podcast with your host, Zach Gallinger. This is the show where every guest answers one simple question. Tell me about your biggest recruiting win. You'll hear everything from gut-wrenching candidate conversations to game-changing business development wins. Real story with lessons you can actually use in your next search.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Recruiter Wins. My name is Zach Gallery and I'm the founder of Talent Hero Media, a digital marketing agency that works exclusively with recruiters. In this podcast, we sit down with a highly successful recruiting expert to ask them a simple question. Tell me about your biggest recruiting win. Our guest today is Ben Farber, president at Bristol Associates. Ben works in the hospitality space, filling senior roles at companies that work in industries like casino gaming, food and beverage, and restaurants. And so with that, let's get down to business and I'll ask you that question. Tell me about your biggest recruiting win. Hey, Zach.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Biggest recruiting win, just to get straight to it, is uh what occurred for us last year. We had three separate clients that hired two people from us that came out of one search, if that makes sense. So they originally came to us for one search, ended up hiring two people, split the role, and that happened three times in the span of one year.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, that definitely has to be a rare occurrence. So I mean, why don't you walk me through one of these searches in a bit more detail?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah. So we had uh one client in particular in the travel industry looking for a VP of operations. And in fact, two of those three clients were operations-related roles, and they realized that in order to really fully support the department, they needed more than one person, not only in operations but product, but also from just a general management standpoint. So as we were going through the interview process and providing good people, they ended up liking more than one person and created a second role for the second person.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Got it. So would you say that the success came from the fact that you were able to give them like such a large list of high-quality candidates, or was it that you sort of convince them that this job might require more than one person, or was it a bit of both, depending on the exact company?

SPEAKER_02 2:14

I think it really does boil down to the the quality of candidates, and we never want to take full credit for that, of course. We feel honored for the candidates that we meet in our our search process and what they bring to the table and how they present as well. I mean, with that said, we'd like to think we have a keen eye for finding those people and and making the alignment, of course. But yeah, the there tends to be some hesitation on our clients' part is whenever we start a search as far as did we pick the right firm? Is this firm going to be able to present the talent we're hoping? And we like to think that that we can exceed those expectations, and and that's how these situations evolve. That our clients are pleasantly surprised with the talent we're able to bring to the table. And then that gets them thinking about how else they can essentially take advantage of the people that we've brought forth and really improve their team across the board.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So I mean, when it comes to so obviously you're good at finding high quality talent, which I mean that's kind of one of the core operations a recruiter has to do. So what would you say is like what you believe to be the secret to that? Oh, you're gonna make me give that away, huh? I mean, you know, don't need it, we don't need this special sauce, but just tell us how you approach this topic.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

No, no, I tease. I think it's important and and I hope this is actually the one key nugget that everybody can take away from our conversation today. It's really listening to what candidates are sharing beyond their experience. It's not what they're presenting to means how they're presenting it and how they come across as the people that they are. Because we're really we've started to attract tenure over time and retention over time, and it boils down to likability more so than experience. And what that means is it's somebody easy to work with. Can they remain calm under stressful situations, which is most days in a competitive workforce, right? So we're paying very closely to those cues and how they present during the process, not only in the interview process with our client, but but with us, how they correspond via email during screening calls, etc. So those are things we're paying close attention to, and we would encourage everybody else to do so, because that's going to translate to their daily habits when they actually join the team.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

That would make a lot of sense. I mean, I know from having hiring people in the past, you know, how people show up is generally how they're going to work. And, you know, I've made mistakes where I sort of just overlook some obvious red flags to look like they have the right background and it never really works out. So yeah, moving on sort of past this story. I have a couple of questions I wanted to ask just about your business overall. So I know that you do a lot of retained search. So, how do you think about sort of selling that to clients when obviously some clients are going to be tempted to go down the contingent route?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Yeah, and it really boils down to what we were talking about earlier about real easing their hesitation about hiring a search firm at all. One, why they need us and how we're gonna be able to perform for them. And so once once we can expand upon that and and talk about our accomplishments, we're talking about our biggest one today, but we have many, many examples of successful placements over the years. We get into the details of that and then essentially convert that to how the retained processes help in those successful outcomes. And for us, it really boils down to how the candidates perceive the client and the process. That's really going to increase our success in providing quality talent because candidates that are we call passive and employed or are just as sensitive in nature to being the right fit and the right opportunity as our clients are when they're evaluating the candidates. And I sometimes I think even more so because they have to often take PTO and go through other logistic hurdles to respectfully go through the process without taking time away from their current employer or their families or what have you. And so once they learn that company is willing to retain well a well-known firm like ours, that it increases their interest right off the bat, their curiosity. And from there, their interest builds. And the clients tend to take the the process more seriously as well because they've invested the time and money into it and to not only the process, but the candidates that we're going to submit. And that just that just generates positive moments and that we take from start to finish.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Okay. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And when it comes to talking to a candidate, do you ever, I don't know, slip in that this is a retained search so that they understand that your client is serious? Because, you know, I speak with a lot of recruiters, and obviously one complaint is that, you know, companies hire them usually on a contingent basis, and then turns out there's no one, you know, they're not actually hiring for the role or, you know, they're pushing it down the road in six months. And that probably frustrates both the agency and the candidates who's had their time wasted. So is that like a selling point for candidates when they know that you've been retained? And I mean, I know candidates may not necessarily know the difference between a contingent and retained search. They're not in recruiting, but you know, are you able to slip that in somehow?

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Very much so. It's a part of our written correspondence, it's a part of our conversations and screening calls and advertising if it's not confidential searches. And the reason that is, is because many candidates are aware of the difference. And it's one of the common questions that we receive in the process. And that's what got me to thinking about it, wasn't it about how can we sell more retainers, it was about how can we improve our process. If businesses are improving, the screening process for us is improving and they want to know our accomplishments and how we do what we do. Well, in turn, we need to track the data and talk about why we're successful and how and really what's going to lead to results. And so I truly believe that retained searches are going to lead to the results that our clients want. And that's why we encourage them to do so. And again, we see it based on not only uh the likelihood of placement, but how long those people last within their roles as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And it makes a lot of sense. I mean, obviously, contingent recruiting is an aim, it may be an easier sell for some for some agencies, but obviously it has a lot of bad incentives in terms of incentivizing bad client behavior. So, okay, last question for you. It's going to be a bit of a different type of question. So, you know, AI tools, very big talking point in recruiting over the past couple of years. And this is obviously a big question. And so, you know, I don't need like the nitty-gritty, but if at all, has AI changed the way you or your team approaches things like sourcing, outreach, candidate evaluation?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

It's sped up our process a little bit, as it has, I think, for most businesses. I think the buzz and the feedback we get is that it's not to diminish AI because there's a lot of value to it. We're curious to see what happens next, but essentially a glorified spell check in a way, that it's very helpful to speed up a lot of the daily tasks you already do, but we're very stuck on making sure that humans are still involved in our process, that we, the experienced recruiters, are still the ones screening the right people. We're actually the ones having the conversations with both the clients and the candidates when we write up our, as we say, write up our candidates and present them. It helps with the presentation process as well, speeds that up. But we're the ones ultimately making sure that it's our voice. It's we're the ones that are presenting the candidates how we want to in our Bristol Associates fashion. And we're the ones clicking send. Uh, we've heard lots of horror stories already about people relying too heavily on AI, just expecting it to do the work for them, not checking it out before it goes out, and has caused some pretty big problems in fines, especially from a compliance standpoint. So that's what we've seen so far, and that's where we stand on AI.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, no, I think there's there's a wide range of opinions on this topic, ranging from people who still don't want anything to do with it to people who have integrated into their daily, you know, workflow on a on a very uh serious basis. And I sort of, as you sort of hinted at, like it's that's where things are at today, but you know, things will likely change very quickly, and I'm sure we'll revisit this topic in later episodes. But that's yeah, that's all the questions I had for you today. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me and have a great rest of your day. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Zach. Thanks for listening to Recruiter Wins. This episode has been brought to you by Talent Hero Media, the digital marketing agency that works exclusively with recruiters to help them win more business and scale faster.