Teleseminar Transcript

© 2009 Bill Radin and Mark Whitby. All Rights Reserved.www.AskBillRadin.com

Teleseminar Transcript

Mark Whitby: Hello, everyone. This is Mark Whitby. Welcome to the call. The topic fortoday's teleseminar is "The Secrets of Top Producing Recruiters." And I'm really excited to beco-hosting this training session with Bill Radin. Everyone joining us today from the US willalready know who Bill is. But we've got delegates from all over the world attending this eventtoday. So, in case you aren't already familiar with Bill's background, please allow me tointroduce him.

Bill is one of the most popular and highly regarded trainers in the recruiting industry. He'strained many of the largest independent and franchised recruiting organizations, and his speakingengagements include the NAPS national conference, the annual staffing-industry summer schoolin Chicago, and dozens of state-association meetings and network conventions.

Bill is a top producing recruiter in his own right, with 25 years experience. And he's also theauthor of 12 books and CD programs, including "The Recruiter's Almanac," "Billing Power,"and "Advanced Strategies for Recruiters," to name a few. Bill has helped thousands of recruitingprofessionals and search consultants achieve peak performance in career satisfaction.

It's my privilege to introduce you to Bill Radin. How are you, Bill?

Bill Radin: I'm doing great. How are you over there in Scotland?

Mark: Fantastic. The sun is actually shining today, for a change. How about in Cincinnati?

Bill: The sun is actually shining for a change.

Mark: All right. Wow. There you go. Bill, before we get started, I just wanted to thankeveryone joining us. We had an overwhelming response. Over 600 attendees have registered, andwe received over 250 different questions. So that's the first thing. I just wanted to thankeveryone, especially if you did submit a question. We're going to get through as many as we cantoday--at least six or seven. So we'll cover as much ground as we possibly can within the hour.

The second thing I wanted to point out to you is that there is a workbook available, and actually,you can download it from www.AskBillRadin.com/callindetails.php. So, if you're on that page,you need to scroll down a little bit. It's towards the sort of bottom half of the page. And there's alittle PDF icon that says “notes sheet” with a link there. So, if you click that link and print outthat note sheet, that will just give you a place to follow along with the teleseminar and it's a placefor you to take notes. OK?

The next thing I wanted to just give you a heads up about is that because we got so manyquestions, we can't possibly answer them all today. Nearly three-quarters of the questions wereon topics that were really, really important and very relevant in the current market but notdirectly related to our topic today on big billers. So, we got questions, for example, on how to

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Ask Bill Radin – Teleseminar Transcript 2


handle the recession, how to market in a soft economy, how to source for candidates, questionsabout retained search and so on.

So, in response to that outpouring of demand, Bill and I have got our heads together and we'regoing to collaborate on a three-part tele-series that you are invited to. Now, I'll tell you moreabout the program at the end of the training session, but for right now, I just wanted to let youknow that if you're interested in the program, you should go over towww.TopProducingRecruiters.com. That has all the information about the teleseminar series.

Bill, are you ready to get started?

Bill: I am ready. Can you hear me all right?

Mark: I can hear you fine. Great. I mean, we had so many questions that it was almost hard toknow which ones to include. But we came up with a top 10 that we thought would be the mostinteresting and productive for people listening today.

Question #1: “What changes do you foresee in the recruiting industry?”

Mark: So, Bill, question number one is what changes do you foresee in the recruiting industry,what's your interpretation of what's going on at the moment, and what do you see happening inthe foreseeable future?

Bill: OK. Well, first of all, welcome, everybody. We're going to be talking about top billingrecruiters, top producing recruiters. But I think it's worthwhile just to stand back for a second andlook at the current landscape, or, as they say, look at the field from 30,000 feet. I've been arecruiter now, in April it'll be 24 years. And I've had either the privilege or the misfortune ofliving through and surviving and succeeding through this is now my third major recession. It'sinteresting. I'm not a futurist. I'm not a clairvoyant or anything like that. And I don't often quotefamous people. But I read something the other day that Mark Twain had said, that "historydoesn't repeat itself, but it sure does tend to rhyme." And what I found is that every recession isalike in some ways, but they're all unique in others.

So we're involved now in, or we're all experiencing tough times. We're experiencing a great sortof shakeout in the market--not only in the employment market, but correspondingly in therecruiting market.

Mark and I were offline yesterday. We were sort of discussing what's going on. And I'm going togive you a different analogy than I did yesterday, Mark.

Mark: [laughs] OK. Go for it.

Bill: I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about the musical instrument the accordion.And that's that funny-looking piano-type thing that has these big bevels and it sort of fans outacross your chest, and you stretch it out and then you squeeze it in, you stretch it. So it'ssomething that sort of changes in breadth. And what happens is, when times are good andcompanies are hiring, the accordion sort of goes [makes whooshing sound] and then it opens up

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to its full width. And what happens is it sucks in all this air. Well, if you consider the air beingsucked in as recruiters, what happens is this massive amount of recruiters come into ourbusiness. And as long as those bevels are open, you've got this large quantity of recruiters.

And then what happens is, inevitably, in order to make a sound, the thing starts to close off. Andwhat happens is all of the recruiters -- or not all of the recruiters -- but many of the recruiterswho were sucked in during good times or who volunteered to be in this wonderful profession,they get blown back out. Another analogy would be like a tide coming in and bringing in a lot ofrecruiters.

Well, what I've found is that the people who are best-suited to the business and have the aptitude,the attitude, the skill set, and so forth are the ones that survive, and a lot of other people are justkind of left in the dust and then they find other careers or just call a time-out and come back inthe business later. It's not necessary that we do that if you're well-trained and if you can entrenchyourself and keep it together and not lose your head while others are losing theirs.

So I think, although I'm going to talk about recruiting success in the context of top producers,this is especially true now that we have this environment. And we want to make sure and adaptour techniques, or even strengthen our core skills, so that we can survive.

I don't know what's going to happen in the next year or two years or three years or five years, butwhat I have found is this is an enduring business. And we've survived not only recessions, butwe've also survived massive changes, say in technology and in other things and otherinnovations.

Ten years ago, for example, everybody thought that the recruiting business was done: "Stick afork in it. It's done. It's over." Because of the advent of Monster and CareerBuilder and HotJobsand Dice and on and on. And what we found was that this massive influx of information thatcame into the marketplace, it didn't blow out the recruiters. In fact, it made them stronger. Itmade them even more profitable.

So we've survived lots of different sea changes. And I think this business will be enduring. It willbe forever. We'll always be needed, as long as we add value.

So I want to encourage everybody to stick with it. There's a young guy that I am coaching. Hegot in the business December. He made his first placement, sent me an invoice for $60,000,which is not bad.

It took me, gosh, I think at least a month or more to make that when I first came into thebusiness. He did it, really, in a matter of a few weeks. And it was one fee. It was one singleplacement. It took me several fees. Actually, I didn't do it in one month; it was over two or threemonths. But the point is that there is business out there. If we keep our wits about ourselves andwe soldier on, we can do really well.

So, what's the next question, Mark?



Mark: All right, Bill. Since you're talking about a sort of overview of the current market, whenwe were speaking before, you said something to the effect that now is a great time to be arecruiter. Could you just say a little bit about that, before we move on?

Bill: The big picture is it's an enduring and wonderful profession to be in. Recessions actuallycreate opportunities, because what happens is the people that are ill-suited or unlucky, the peoplethat were taking advantage of the low-hanging fruit or the good times when almost anybodycould make a lot of money, a lot of those people are gone now. And what it does is it opens upopportunities for you to take the business that they left on the table because they were ill-suitedor didn't have the skill sets or didn't have the stamina to stay in it. So it's a great time to be arecruiter in a recession. You can maximize your market share, capture market share. If you're anowner, you can maybe acquire some new recruiters or people that have the talent but not theinfrastructure.

So it's really a wonderful time to be in the business. If you can just hang on there, I can guaranteeyou things will turn.

Mark: Absolutely. And I always think that if you can get through the tough times and emergeout the other side, you're actually going to be a much more skilled, a much stronger, a muchmore effective recruiter as a result. So, the key is, if you can do well in this type of economy,then when things pick up again, then you're just going to explode in production. That's kind ofmy view.

Bill: OK. Well, next question, please.

Question #2: “What are the key qualities of top-producing recruiters?”

Mark: OK, Bill. The next question is what would you say are the key qualities of top producingrecruiters?

Bill: OK. Let me answer this as quickly as I can and get through this. It's a good question and Iwant to answer it, but I want to do it quickly because I want to get some real content andtechniques that you can put to work right away. Here are sort of my top five. And, of course,there's probably 100 different qualities. Everyone has their own qualities. But if I were tosummarize them, I'd say the first one is attitude. Great recruiters have a sense of entitlement.

I know that sounds politically incorrect, but the people that do well in this business have a senseof entitlement, that they belong, that they operate as a consultant on a peer level. They're notintimidated by managers. They're not intimidated by human-resource professionals. They're notintimidated my candidates. They feel that they have a sense that they belong, that they add value,that they should be in the game, and nothing burns them up more than the thought that maybepeople aren't taking advantage of everything that they have to offer.

Another attitudinal quality is the sense of urgency: "Let's get it done. Let's get it done. Let's get itdone." And it's kind of interesting. A question that we don't have time to really get into in anydepth but a question that I also noticed was a couple of people said, "What qualities do you look



for in a great recruiter?" And I'll tell you, I've never met a great recruiter who wasn't one partsuspicious and the other part irritable.

Mark: [laughs]

Bill: And so I tell recruiters, if you're a little bit neurotic, it probably helps. Because if you canjust turn it off at night, or not think about it or not take it personally, it means that, oftentimes, it'san indicator that you don't care enough to really want to fight back or fight for what you think isright. The second quality of a top producing recruiter is knowing where the money is. And ifthere's one key thing that I want you to learn today, or that I want to share with you, is greatrecruiters know where the money is. They have a nose for where the money is. And I can tell youwhere the money is nine out of 10 times, and the money is on the employer side of the business,not on the candidate side of the business.

That's the key reason why most recruiters blow out or wash up or can't make it in a recession isbecause, in great times, you can sit there and be a candidate dealer, or deal with candidates andsend resumes and interview candidates and all of that. The candidate side of the business is easy,as far as I'm concerned. The skill lies on the employer side of the business.

Most recruiters, in a great economy, don't have to work hard to get job orders or qualified joborders. They can just play a numbers game. The great recruiters, in good markets and badmarkets, know that the money is on the employer side. Getting one great employer who can giveyou key accounts or that you can work with is worth all the candidates in the world, practically.

Obviously, it takes candidates. But I use a real-estate analogy. The people in real estate whomake the money are the people that write the listings on the properties. The people who don'tmake the money are the people who drive prospective buyers around in their Cadillacs and showproperty.

The money is on the employer side. Those are the people that pay our bills, those are the peoplethat need us, those are the people that trust us, and those are the people to whom we have aresponsibility to fill their needs. The candidate side of the business is important. Don't get mewrong. But the money is on the employer side of the business. And I've never met a great topproducing recruiter who didn't cultivate the employer side of the business and recognize thevalue of the employer side of the business.

So, if you're just working with candidates and you only have that experience, you've got a lot oflearning curve ahead of you in terms of toughening up on the employer side and getting greatbusiness.

A part of this--and this is sort of 2A--is the ability to qualify. Part and parcel with working theemployer side of the business is the ability to qualify so that you know that you're working on astrong job order, a strong search assignment, a strong requirement, and that you have control ofthat assignment and, more importantly, that you have control of the flow of candidates. And ifyou're not, if you're in a situation where it's you and eight other recruiters, those are lousy odds.



I've always tried to be in a position--and again, great recruiters find a way to be in a position todominate the job order, to control the flow of candidates, and therefore maximize or leveragetheir ability to make placements.

So, if you've got a job order you're working and you're one of 10 candidates and you send inthree people, you can bet that the other nine recruiters are also sending in three people, andyou've got a 10 percent chance of filling that job.

No matter how great you think you are--and I've been burned on this many times early in mycareer; I thought I was just God's gift to recruiting and I could find the needle in the haystack andI could find better candidates than anyone else--give the other people, give the competition somecredit. They know what they're doing, too. Your candidate isn't always the best just becauseyou've sent that person in. Your candidate is the best when he's one of the five that they'reinterviewing that are also from you and you control the job order.

So always qualify. Look for ways to identify whether or not it's a hot job order or not, andwhether they really mean business, they have a sense of urgency, and so forth, and that wayyou'll avoid bad situations.

I saw a book the other day in the bookstore in the airport called "Predictable Surprises." Whathappens is, if you write a job order and you don't qualify it, as sure as I'm sitting here todayspeaking to you on my handset, you're going to end up in a situation where there's a predictablesurprise, and something's going to come at you that you didn't expect because you didn'tsufficiently qualify.

Number three of the top five qualities. Number three is the ability to delegate. In my trainingseminars, I think that some of you who have been to my seminars, and there's some of youlistening who are going to attend my seminars, I'll give away a question that I ask everybody atthe beginning of my seminars.

I always ask the question: "How many people work for you?" And I'll go around the room, andsomebody will say, "Well, I've got two people working for me," or "None. I work for myself."Whatever.

And what they don't realize is I'm asking a trick question. The answer to the question "Howmany people work for you?" is thousands; they just don't know it. OK? Thousands of peoplework for me; they just don't know it. What's their job? To help make me succeed. And they dotheir job by referring other people, becoming referral sources, giving me job-order leads,working with me effectively, not wasting my time, and so forth.

So, if you think of your universe or your constituency out there, there are thousands of peopleready, willing, and able to work for you if you let them work for you and if you have the attitudethat those people are working for you to help you succeed. OK? Obviously, they're not on thepayroll, so it's a trick question in a sense. But everybody out there has the capacity to work foryou and get stuff done for you, and that's how you leverage your efforts over yourcandidate/client universe.



OK, number four on the list is the ability to work hard on a consistent basis. It is hard to billwhatever - 200,000 or 400,000 or 500,000, a million, whatever. What's really hard is doing it ona consistent basis. Putting in the hours the hours that you need to every day, just minding yourown business, keeping your nose to the grindstone, just grinding it out and doing it.

Having one great week does not a career make. Having one great placement or one send-outdoesn't make it over the long term. You only last 10, 20, 30 years in this business if you do workon a consistent basis, and you always watch your numbers and look at your metrics and makesure you're getting send-outs. Which, by the way, send-outs are first level interviews, are whatthis whole game are about.

You cannot make placements without send-outs, and if you're not making send-outs, somethingis wrong. So when you look at your activity, phone calls are great, conversion rates are great,admission to interview ratios are great. The one statistic that's most important is are you sendingpeople out on a consistent basis?

The fifth thing is the ability to become indispensable to your constituents. The people that counton you, if you can become indispensable - and that's what top producers do, they're the go-toperson for either candidates that are looking for opportunities or employers, particularly in thismarket, employers that you can work with. Where you can fill jobs, get the job done, do it in ashortened time cycle and become utterly, totally indispensable, reliable, competent in everythingwhen you're working with your market.

Somebody the other day in Atlanta mentioned rapport – should you work with people in atouchy/feely way or should gain rapport by showing empathy and all this. Here's a littleRadinism for you: in my mind, rapport when you're doing a B2B sale - essentially this is a B2Bsale. It's true; when you work on the candidate side you're dealing with people's life issues andtheir spouses and relocation and children, lifestyle and all that stuff. But it's basically a B2B sale.

If you want to build rapport or establish rapport with people, in my mind the best way to do thatis to be competent. If you're not competent, I don't care if you went to the same high schooltogether or your kid's in the same playgroup or whatever. If you can show immediately thatyou're competent and then you can deliver on what you promise, then you build rapport in mymind.

And then I've got sort of a bonus. I know we're trying to limit it to five key qualities, but thebonus quality is the ability to work a system or find a system or work a system that may alreadybe in place so that it works for you.

Many of you who work for a company, maybe you realize it and maybe you don't, that thecompany generally has systems in place that are designed to help you succeed. If you work thesystem, typically you can do well and you can be a top recruiter.

Most top recruiters that I know work not solo, but in larger organization or in search firms oragencies or whatever. If you look at the top recruiter in every agency, it's not somebody whobroke the rules who's the top dog; the top person is always the person that just simply worked thesystem that was already there.



That was true when I worked as a branch manager, that was true in California when I worked forthe largest search firm in California. The people that were the megastars were the people thatworked the system. And typically a system that works is one in which there are ground rules inplace or a system in place that guides the process along in a way that works in your favor.

So those are the five key qualities plus a bonus quality. Mark, do you have another question?

Question #3: “How do you convince a prospective client to see the value inwhat you offer when the market is saturated with candidates?”

Mark: Great. Question number three, bill, is how do you convince a prospective client to reallysee the value in what you have to offer and to give you an opportunity when the market issaturated with candidates?

Bill: So the question is, how do you convince a prospective client to see the value of what youhave to offer in a market that's saturated with talent? And of course you're going to have amarket saturated in talent when you have a recession.

Here's my quick answer for that, or I'll answer that as quickly as I can. Most recruiters - first letme just preface it by saying that some people have an inherent value proposition. For example, ifyou have a PhD in engineering and you're working in engineering in your field, there's aninherent value in that you understand the field, that you can do the job, that you have an insight,and so forth.

However, that doesn't necessarily create value as a recruiter, because I've known recruiters whowere CPAs and were working in accounting and finance, or they continued to be engineers andthey worked in engineering. Or whatever it is. That doesn't necessarily build value.

Here's what builds value. When you think about it, the recruiting piece, or the candidate deliverypiece of the business, is what everyone thinks that the recruiter does. And if you go to a cocktailparty or whatever and you say that you're a recruiter, immediately in the minds of most people itconjures up somebody who's talking to candidates, setting up interviews, reviewing resumes,submitting resumes, working the candidate side of the business.

Which is important. It's your job to make matches, prep candidates, debrief candidates, qualifycandidates, make matches, do keyword searches, set up interviews. All that stuff is important.But at the end of the day, all that does is that produces information for people. It doesn'tnecessarily have value.

Let me give you two other ideas, or two distinct phases in addition to the recruiting phase thatadd value. And almost no recruiters do this, and it's why they're not top producers. Every singletop producer adds value in this way.

If you think of recruiting or the placement process as being a three-part process, the first phase isthe recruiting phase. We covered what that is. Once you've made a match, once a person is



interviewed and there's interest on both sides, you go and do a completely different phase. I callit the offer phase. That's where you work with both parties to put together an acceptable offer.

What I counsel people to do who are recruiters, and what I do in my own practice, is that if I feelan offer is not going to be accepted or is going to be leveraged for a counter-offer, or where thecandidate is going to be indecisive or is going to throw it in the mix with other things - whatever.Then I will often say to the employer, "I don't believe this candidate is in a position right now sothat if we made the right offer, this person would accept. Let me work on the person and makesure that I've got all the I's dotted and the T's crossed, and at a point at which that candidate isready within a reasonable period of time, let's go ahead and pull the trigger."

What I hate is - nothing makes me more nervous than the situation where you lay out an offer tosomebody, or extend and offer, or have personnel send an offer, or email an offer, and have thecandidate go, "Uh, I don't know I want to accept that. I have think about it. I have to check withmy astrologer. Gee, I have my performance review in a week; I'll see how that turns out."

I don't want that. That drives me crazy. And if you're in a situation like that, to me that's anindicator that the recruiter has lost control and doesn't have a grip of what the basic mechanics ofthe business are and can't add value.

When you say to the employer, "I'm going to control the offer, but by the way, before you sendan offer letter I want to see a draft of it to make sure it contains all the components that wenegotiated, I want to make sure you spelled the candidates name correctly, I want to make sure."

And I don't even deal with offer letters anymore. 20 years ago I stopped even allowingemployers to send offer letters. What I have them do is send acceptance letters. If you thinkabout it, you should be in a position, or you manage it as such that the candidate has pre-acceptedthe offer before it's ever made.

Then when the formal letter goes out and the candidate has already accepted then it is silly forthe letter to read, "We are pleased to offer you the position of blah, blah, blah." What you do isyou orchestrate it in such a way that the candidate pre-accepts, then an acceptance letter isgenerated and the first lines says, "This letter confirms your acceptance of our offer of whateverit is." And then at the very end of the letter you have the signature line and have the person signit and either create a PDF file and send it back, or fax it back to the employer. So the offer phase,being in control of that, is the second component.

The third component, or phase, of a recruiter's job in the placement process is the transitionphase. And the transition phase begins once the candidate accepts the offer, then we go to thetransition phase. That is where you make sure that the candidate makes a smooth transition out ofhis or her company. Resigns, doesn't get counter offers, or counter offer is diffused, or whatever.And then is safely and happily installed at the new company.

That is the transition period. And what you want to do is oversee the relocation and make surethat that goes well. Make sure that the spouse, the family is on board. And remember, every job,in one way or another, to a certain extent, is a relocation. Because somebody is commutingsomewhere differently, they are going to a new culture or a new environment. Just a physical



move isn't all that is involved in a relocation. There is the mental, attitudinal and the emotionalmove as well.

If you can manage that transition to make sure that person wears well, stay in touch with themanager who hired the candidate to make sure that everything is honky dory then that is howyou stay on top of things. I have saved many deals that would have blown up in my face orbecome falloffs by staying in touching with people and making sure that everything was goingsmoothly. Because if you can spot or sniff out problems that may arise in the first couple ofweeks, and it is nobody's fault, but you can smooth things out then you can really addtremendous value.

The value proposition for every recruiter lies in the fact that you provide a comprehensiveservice that goes way, way beyond just being a dealer in resumes. OK, Mark, how about numberfour?

Mark: OK, fantastic. We are about at the halfway point Bill, and I just want to let you know wehave already had a few people sign up for the series. I wanted to remind people that if theywanted to be able to get their discount to check out www.TopProducingRecruiters.com.

Question #4: “How can I work smarter by focusing on the jobs that have thehighest probability of paying off?”

Mark: Question number four is about maximizing your effectiveness and maximizing thechances of making a placement. In other words, how can we avoid wasting time on searches, thatyou get a lot of time and effort on something and then it doesn't pay off in the end?

Bill: OK, that is a great question. I mentioned before qualifying. Let me give you a couple ofways to qualify a job order. If everybody's little template, or data field, or data sheet, or job orderform, or requirement, whatever, had something where there is a little blank there and it said"sense of urgency." What is a sense of urgency? Recruiters often fall into the habit, which is sortof industry wide, of qualifying a sense of urgency by saying, "How long has the position beenopen?" And the person says "Well, it has been open for six months." And you go "Wow, it mustbe really urgent." Or, "When will you hire somebody if I have the right person interested?" "Wewould hire somebody yesterday." You think to yourself "Do I look like HG Wells, and do I havea time machine?" It is an anachronism but I'll let that pass, but you think, "If I could hiresomebody yesterday it is really, really urgent."

But those are not true indicators of urgency. A true indication of urgency is asking the question:“What would be the consequence of not filling this position?" Because if the position is open forsix months that means it could be open for another six months. If they could hire yesterday, thatis just a hypothetical, that is just an abstraction. You don't actually know that they would do it.

But if the manager says "I've got a big problem here, we have a customer that is screaming at usand they are going to pull the contract." Or, "We have a machine that is broken and if we don'thave somebody that can fix it." Or, "We've got a strategic alliance that is going to turn to dustunless we do this, that and the other." Or, "God, my personal life is a mess and my spouse is




leaving me because I'm staying in the office until 10:00 and sleeping on a cot." You want to findout what their pain is, or what the consequence would be for not filling the position. That is howyou determine the sense of urgency.

Another way that you can maximize your effort is to work in multiples. Let me give you a littletip, this is as old as the hills and nobody does it. I go around the country and I talk to recruitersand I cannot believe that they don't do it. It is the easiest trick in the book. It is not a trick really,it just makes sense. What you always want to do is you always want to dominate the candidateflow.

Think about it. If an employer is going to hire five people you want them all from you. Youcould say, "Gee, they said they have other recruiters, how do I get an exclusive?" You don'tnecessarily have to get a written exclusive. It doesn't have to be a formal exclusive; it can be a defacto exclusive. It can be an exclusive without anybody knowing it, or without there being anylanguage in a contract about an exclusive.

I can tell you exclusivity contractually is difficult, if not impossible to enforce. If somebodycomes along from somebody else they are going to hire the person. Why, because it is their bestinterest. And then they will either not pay you or they will give you a different assignment, orwhatever, you have lost out. So, how do you dominate the candidate flow?

The way that you do that, number one is you make sure there is a sense of urgency. But anotherway to do it is to actually set up either a progress report or a meeting with multiple candidates atone time. A progress report is sort of the light version of it, and I'll show you how that goes.

What you do is you say, "Today is Wednesday, Mr. or Ms. Employer. Are you going to be inyour office Monday?" "Yes, I'll be in my office." "OK, write down in your calendar, do you haveyour calendar ready? Write down 2:30 Bill will call." "OK, I've got that. What is going on?" "I'mgoing to give you a progress report at 2:30. I am going to tell you how many people I have talkedto and what I've done and what I've found, what the push back is and all that stuff. Probably,because I'm going to dedicate my resources, there is a good chance that I will have three or fourpeople that I want to present to you. And what I'll do is I'll give you a little presentation. We'llmake sure that everybody is qualified, everybody is on board, the whole thing."

"And by the way, while I've got you and we set this thing up for next week, what if, sayWednesday of next week we'll fly Tory in for an interview? Why don't we just go ahead andpencil in a couple of blocks of time, or windows where you can interview people, on theassumption that I'll have somebody? If I don't for some reason, no big deal, we can cancel it. Butlet's just go ahead and get that set up now."

See what you are doing? You are setting the table for deliverables. It drives me crazy whenrecruiters say "Thank you for sending an hour with me Mr. Employer, I'll call you when I findsome people." Or, "I'll have some resumes to submit to you next Thursday." That is so vague, itis so lame compared to saying, "OK, here is how we are going to work. I'll give you a progressreport; I'll probably have two or three people. Let's go ahead, I'll present the people, we can goahead, let's schedule now when their interviewing times will be."



"Well, how do I know they are qualified?" "What do you mean, how do I know they arequalified? What would be my motivation for presenting unqualified people? It makes me lookbad and it is a waste of your time. So let's just go ahead and get this taken care of now."

Do you see how you do that? You control the process. You write the ground rules. You script theway that you want it to work. Even more, remember I said sort of this exclusivity light. The waythat you get true exclusivity is you go ahead and set up a block of time for the employer to meetwith candidates in your office or in his office.

And the way the script goes is "OK, today is Wednesday, I tell you what, are you going to be intown next week? Good. OK, Tuesday afternoon I want you to come to my office. You are inPasadena, what a coincidence, I'm in Pasadena too, or Edinburgh, or London, or New York, orwhatever."

This works for local placements, but I can also show you how you can do this non-local, or ifyou are doing relocations, or whatever. What you do is you say, "Amazing, you are in Pasadena,I'm in Pasadena. Here is what I want you to do. Next Wednesday I would like you to come overto my office at, say 4:00. Is that good for you? OK, good. I'm going to reserve a conferenceroom, I'm going to have three, four, maybe five pre-screened, pre-qualified candidates for you totalk to in half-hour blocks of time.

"I want you to interview them. At the end when I take you out to dinner or for cocktails orwhatever, we'll talk about who the best candidates are and then we'll go ahead and set up secondinterviews where they'll come into your office, and then you can go ahead and make offers andwe'll get this things put to bed."

OK, it completely blows away everything that your competition is doing, because what are theydoing? They're sitting there doing serial interview which, believe me, suck. Serial interviewssuck. Go ahead and write that on post-it note and put it on your computer.

Serial interviews suck. Why? Because today is the 25th, so I write the job order and I send insome money next week. Now it's March, the first week of March. The employer says, "Boy, thatperson was really good. Do you have any more?" "Well, no." "Well, I want somebody tocompare."

So then you start searching and you do your database. You surface a candidate and then you setup the interview for the next week. Now it's the second week of March. The person comes in andthe employer says, "No, that person wasn't so good. Do you have any other people? Because Iwant to make sure that the first...."

And then the employer goes out of town and now it's April. You know how this goes. Everybodytells me they have this problem. The serial interviewing and how it sucks. You don't want to getinto serial interviewing. You want to do everything at once so that employers can makeapple-to-apple comparisons.

I won't go much more on this topic because we've got so many more to get to, but the way thatyou become a recruiter that maximizes your efforts is you control the flow of candidates. Thebest way to do that is to set up group interviews.



The way that you do it in a non-local environment is you go ahead and you teleconference it.OK? Or you Skype it. You do it in such a way that you're in control. It's the same thing, onlyyou're doing it electronically instead of in person. And I've got more information about this ifyou want to write me or if you want to check out some of the materials I have. We're going to becovering this next time.

But basically the principle of being a top producer is you don't waste your assets. You don't setup send-outs where there's a low probability of there being a placement made. You can't have aone-to-one send-out placement ratio. Even if your placement ratio is three to one, two-thirds ofthe people you send aren't going to be hired. But that's OK as long as all three of people are fromyour. Or that all three of the people that the employer interviews are from you.

So what you want to do is get away from situations where every send-out is a low probabilityand turn the table so that every send-out is a high probability? Mark, question number five.

Question #5: “What is the mindset of a top biller?”

Mark: OK. I've got a post-it note now, I've written it out: “serial interviews suck.” I've put it onmy monitor. That's a good one. All right, question number five is: what is the mindset of a topbiller? What do they think differently and therefore do differently than your average biller?

Bill: OK, again, I'm going to go back to attitude. Attitude is really important. If you canvisualize your clients as peers. We were talking the other day, I was with a group of recruitersand half of the people in the room make more than the employers that they work with, and yetthey're intimidated. The employers think that we can waste our time, when in fact our time isactually more valuable than theirs is. It's not that you should just come out and say, "I make moremoney than you do on an hourly basis, why do you want to waste my time?" It's disrespectful.

So you want to have an attitude that you're working as a high-priced consultant, your time isvaluable, and you don't have the time or the patience to work with people who are going to wasteyour time.

Again, it goes back to how many people work for you. If people say, "I don't know. You'll haveto talk to Mildred down in personnel." Or whatever it is. You can't waste your time with peoplewho are not going to work for you. You always want to work with people who are on the samepage.

And here's another Radinism for you: you want to work with people who want "it" - whateveryour services are - want "it" more than you do. If you work with people and you want it morethan they do, you're in bad shape. Your odds go way down. That's true in life, too. If you wantsomething more than the other person, then they're in control. Because they're calling the shots.

If they want it more than you do and you can find it and keep marketing it and find people wantit desperately and need it, that recognize your ability to help them, I doesn't matter that you'vegot 20 years of experience, it doesn't matter that you've got a great speaking voice, it doesn't



matter that you don't have direct experience in actuarial science or whatever. If you can findsituations where people want it more than you do, that's gold.

Where you get in trouble is you work with people who don't want it as bad as you do, and thenyou're sitting there pleading with them. "Oh, please, it's been three weeks since I submitted thoseten resumes. Can't you please call me back?" And then you get into threat mode. "I'm giving you24 hours to turn around and interview my people, otherwise they're all going to go somewhereelse."

[laughter]

Bill: Get real! That's silly. They've got to want it more than you do. So just remember that.That's very, very important. OK, next question.

Question #6: “What’s the best way to handle the Human Resourcesdepartment?”

Mark: OK, Bill. Question number six is to do with HR. So let's say you have a fantasticcandidate. And you want to present them to hiring manager, the decision-making person, but youhave a client or a company that's insisting you deal with HR. How do you deal with thatsituation?

Bill: First let me just say something about HR for a second, human resources. Human resources,in and of themselves, somebody working as an internal recruiter, somebody working as an HRgeneral, somebody working as a human resources director, their title does not make them goodor bad. Early on in my career I noticed that. It doesn't take very long to notice that sometimesrecruiters and HR, to put it mildly, are like oil and water. We're working at cross-purposes, orwhatever. That's not always true.

We build up an attitude as third-party recruiters about HR, but HR can be your biggest ally.Don't just automatically put them in a category and stereotype them, because they're doing thesame to us and maybe it's not fair.

So HR in and of itself is not good or bad, it just depends on who you work with. And some of thegreatest relationships I ever had in the business were with human resource people or internalrecruiters. The key, like I said before, is that they want it as much as you do.

And I remember, talking about Pasadena, I don't know why I'm channeling Pasadena. But Iworked with an HR manager there. She was really great and we had a good working relationship.She would come into my office, she would interview five people. Right while she was in theoffice we would schedule the second interviews. I'd call the candidate, obviously, and make sureit was good for the person schedule-wise.

But it worked like a charm. And every job order I wrote with that company I was able to fill theposition. We also had a great deal in terms of fee. I gave up a portion of my fee - I worked at adiscounted fee, at 25 percent instead of my standard 33.3 percent -- with the understanding that



on the first day of the candidate's employment with the company I would go over to thecompany, take the HR manager to work, and she would hand me a check for the full amount.

So HR can be your biggest ally. Don't just assume that they're refuseniks or they hate you or theywant to run you up a tree with their dog or whatever. They can be a huge ally.

But getting back to your question. Let's suppose you're marketing a candidate and your managersays, "Wow, that person's great. We really need someone like that." And you say, "Oh, really,why is that?" "Well, gosh, with that person's track record we can save ourselves $11 million aminute," or something. Like, "Wow, this person solves our problem. This person's great. Wewant to do it."

And you say, "OK, great." But then they change, like they put on their -- Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr.Hyde or vice-versa. And they go, "Unfortunately, you're going to have to call Mildred down inhuman resources" And then you get the fear of god. "Oh, I know how that goes. She doesn'tknow me, she doesn't like me, she's predisposed to work against me. She's going to try to beat upmy fee. She's going to try to make me sign a agency agreement as thick as the Denverphonebook," and all this stuff.

[laughter]

Bill: What you do is you set up ground rules that are completely different. You say, "You saidthis is really important to you and you're willing to fight to get it. I'll tell you what, let me goahead and teleconference a call. Let me go ahead and put you on hold. What's Mildred'sextension?" Or Joe, whatever, "What's Joe's extension? I'm going to put you on hold for asecond, dial up the extension and we'll get a conference call going. You can explain to Joe whythis is important, why you want to see this candidate, why you want to work with me at my fullfee." So you let them do the dirty work.

So don't get into this whole thing where all the sudden you have all your power stripped awayfrom you because you've converted from somebody who wants it more than you do to nowyou're suddenly working for somebody where you want it more than they do, and they don't havethe motivation.

So make the person with the motivation - not make - but set up your ground rules in such a waythat you finesse it in such a way that the person who wants it badly is the person who's doing thefighting for you, and you don't have to get into that fight with HR. You see how that works?

Mark: Yeah, Bill. That's genius. I hope everyone here is looking for two or three real nuggetsthat they can take away and apply immediately. That's certainly one of the ones for me, so thanksfor that.

Bill: You're welcome. How much am I paying you?

Mark: [laughs]

Bill: Anyway, doing that also sets up a scenario in which you're qualifying. The employer says,"We really need somebody. God, that person walks on water and I could hire them yesterday,because this job has been open for six months," or whatever. They sound desperate and you go,



"OK, cool." But they say, "You're going to have to talk to Mildred." And you say, "Why don't Iget a conference call?" "Oh, no, I don't want to do that. Oh, gosh, she's going to beat me over thehead. She's going to give me a bad performance review. Oh, no, we couldn't do that. We've gotour system in place. We've got out rules. I couldn't possibly. That's a sacred cow. I couldn't dothat."

Then what are you doing? You're qualifying. You say, "Hmm, I'm getting mixed signals here,aren't I?" So it's a way of qualifying. So if you're doing candidate marketing or doing anymarketing, you can always set up a series of qualifiers or controls that allow you to see withgreat clarity what the sense of urgency actually is.

If that sense of urgency survives the various tests, then you've got yourself a winner. If it doesn't,then you've got a problem. You want it more than they do. And by the way, in a tough economy,is every company you're going to call is going to say, "Oh, gosh, we need somebody"? Chancesare they'll say, "We're laying off," or whatever.

So it's going to take more calls, it's going to take more effort to find that piece of gold out therethat you're looking for when there's so much lead scattered about and covering up the gold. Theanswer is, yeah, it's going to take more work. The opportunities are fewer and farther between, orwhatever the syntax is of that.

Your opportunities are not going to be as plentiful, but it's still your responsibility not to get intodysfunctional relationship. My wife is a huge Dr. Phil fan. She watches Dr. Phil or TiVos Dr.Phil every day. For those of you in the UK who don't get Dr. Phil, or Australia or New Zealand...

Mark: Yeah, we know Dr. Phil as well.

Bill: You know Dr. Phil, OK. Dr. Phil has got a couple that's dysfunctional, where the husbandis abusive, sitting on the couch. And the conversation invariably goes, the wife will say, "When Imet him he was abusive and he drank and he was alcoholic and he would hit me over the headwith a cigarette lighter," and whatever. "But I thought I could change him." People don't change.You qualify to make sure that the relationships you get into are good from the beginning. Andwhat you do is you avoid situations that are going to be those predictable surprises. Justremember, it's hard to get into or to find good relationship, but they're out there and that's the keyto not wasting your time and being a big biller. Finding good people that want it more than youdo and are willing to work your way and are willing to try it your way, and people where they'llgive you multiple opportunities to show what you can do. OK? Next question.

Mark: The problem is when people are feeling desperate to bill, they're more inclined to workon whatever they come across. And then they waste so much time on those recruiting projectsthat don't go anywhere that they never actually get the opportunities to have the goodrelationships where they're properly qualifying.

Bill: That's a good point, Mark. Because let's not diss every crummy job order, OK? That'sgoing to sound weird after what I just said. Bad job orders, or defective, or incomplete, or not thebest job order - those situations aren't necessarily bad or horrible or to be avoided. You just wantto work them with your eyes wide open, knowing what their limitations are. For example, if youdon't have any business at all, and you've been on the phone for two weeks and there's nothing



going on, and you've got this sort of marginal or not really hot job, where there's maybe otheragencies that are dragging their feet, there can be a value in working that job as long as you don'thave an expectation that you're going to fill it.

So you might work that job in order to leverage it to open doors for you with candidates, who bythe way, are your greatest source of job offer leads. OK? Double-click on that for a second.Candidates - what are you talking about, candidates? If you ask that person where they'veinterviewed, then that candidate has just given you two, three, five job offer leads.

So your candidate population, what's their job? Their job is to make you rich. How do they dothat? By giving you information that's useful to you. Now I don't want to get into a debate aboutwhether that's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, and there's different ways to handleit with candidates. You could always ask for permission. "Are you still working on that job? Isthat an opportunity that you're still seeking? Are you still in the process?"

So it's not necessarily that you're competing with the candidate. Remember, the candidates areyour greatest source of job orders, and good job orders, because they're actively interviewing.They can give you a lot of intelligence about the job that you couldn't get just by making a coldcall.

But the way that you leverage those candidates or utilize those candidates, is you can look at joborder in good faith that's not that great, but just recognize it for what it is and what its value is.And sometimes it can be worthwhile to do it as long as you don't work on it exclusively and suckup all your time with that particular job that in all likelihood is going to go nowhere. Nextquestion?

Mark: That makes total sense. OK, you've got about six minutes left, and we have time for oneor at most two other questions. Before we get into those, I just wanted to let people know that,clearly, you've presented some excellent, excellent content for us here today. And hopefullypeople have already gotten value from this free session. Quickly, I wanted to let people knowwe're doing a series for three weeks where Bill and I will both work intensively with you at theSurvival Secrets programs.

So if you go to www.TopProducingRecruiters.com, you'll see a full training schedule andcurriculum. Let me just give you the bare bones of it. March 11th is our first session. We'relooking at "How to Fight a Recession and Win." So looking at how to adjust your tactics in orderto help you to succeed in this type of market.

March 17th is session number two, where we're going to do marketing strategies, pick up fromwhere Bill left off with this question. Marketing strategies to build your business in a toughmarket and generate more job orders.

March 24th, session three, we're going to look at recruiting tactics in a tough economy. In otherwords, how do you source for candidates who are still in demand but may be increasinglyresistant to actually changing jobs.

In between those sessions, we're also going to have a whole separate call. So we've got thosethree teleseminars, if you like, and then we've got three coaching sessions in between on the




Fridays. So those calls are Tuesday or Wednesday. On the Friday, we're going to have a Q&Acoaching session where you call in and you ask us your questions and we grill you back a littlebit. We put you on the hot seat, you tell us about your problem, about your business, the situationyou're in, and you get instant and immediate feedback and advice in terms of the direction you'regoing and how you need to adjust in order to turn things around.

If that sounds of interest to you, if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, and you'd like to getinto this in more detail to discuss; and also personalize it a little bit to your business; then pleasego over to www.TopProducingRecruiters.com, for full details.

So, now that we've settled that, Bill, to question number seven.

Question #7: “How can we speed up the placement process?”

Mark: Companies are dragging their heels. They always do this, but in this market, companiesare taking even longer to make decisions. Now the question is, how do top producers close dealsmore quickly without antagonizing the client or the candidate?

Bill: That's a great one to end on, so that'll be our last question. I think I can fold or blendeverything that I've talked about today into the answer to that question. Beneath the surface ofthat question is five miles deep ocean that defines what a great recruiter is, or how a greatrecruiter works. The top producing recruiter, the whole mindset. The way you do that is, you setup ground rules that favor your methodology that works. So you set up the ground rules inadvance that favor your methodology. One of the ground rules that you set up is, up here I'll justgive you an example. One qualifier that I use for companies is when I write a job order, what Ido is I get a sketch before I do my whole hour-long Q&A with the employer. What I do is, let'ssay I'm on the phone with the employer. The employer says, "Yes Bill, we really do need yourhelp, we've got this desperate situation. We've got this open position and it's causing a lot oftrouble."

And so, you ID it as being something that is really important to the employer. You've gotsomething that has some substance and really has some potential to be a good job order. So whatyou do is you say "You know what? I really want to talk to you about that, but I have a meetingI've got to go to in 10 or 15 minutes. What I want to do is, let's go ahead and schedule anappointment. What's tomorrow around 1:00 look like for you? One doesn't work? Let's do 2:00.OK, good. Can I actually book an hour? I may not need it, but can we do a teleconferencebetween 2:00 and 3:00 or whatever?"

OK, so you get that in. Then you say "Here's what I'd like to do. I'm going to compare, I'm goingto go to your website, I'm going to look at some job descriptions, I'm going to do some marketresearch. I'm going to do all of this to be better prepared." In the mean time what I'm going to dois I'm going to send you over a little questionnaire. Now, I call it the executive search navigator.Basically, what it is is just a two or three page document with quick answers or whatever to someimportant questions.




I'm going to send it over to you as a .PDF file or whatever, take it home tonight, fill it out and faxit back. Write out the answers or send it back as a .PDF attachment or whatever. What I like todo is send that to you. That's going some very important qualitative and some quantitativequestions that I like to ask. Once I get that back tomorrow, in advance of our teleconference,what I can do is I'll read myself into that. I'll have much higher quality questions to ask.

It's going to eliminate or reduce a lot of the questions I'll ask because you've already given methe information, and we can talk about really high quality stuff during our teleconference. So,what you do is you send that over, you get it back, you look at it and go, "OK, holy cow, look atthis such and such, this and that, companies being direct competitors. Where would I findcandidates? Wow, they've given me all this information. Who have you interviewed so far in thepast? Why weren't they hired? Where did they come from?"

You can load it up with all sorts of great questions that directly benefit you in terms of what arethe reporting relationships and what are the salary ranges, what are the travel requirements andwhat are the expected short-term results. All of that stuff, you send that to the employer. If youdon't get it back, or the employer says "No, I don't want to, that sounds stupid, go to our websiteand look at the job description. That's all you need. Or call Myrtle in personnel, she'll give youfive basic job descriptions with 3,000 keywords and bullet points and probably blow a serverover at Monster."

Whatever. You want to avoid that. You want to be in control, you want to qualify. If they send itto you, it means they're really serious, OK? That's not the only test, but that will be an indicatorin addition to things like multiple interviews, and whether or not you can get a de factoexclusive, whether they'll work your ground rules. They say, "No, no, we have the way that wedo it, it's how we always do it", you go "Geez, you just told me you think outside the box. Am Imissing something here? You sound like pretty in the box thinking to me."

So, the best way to close a deal quickly is to set up the ground rules so the company can't dragtheir feet, so that they're locked in, so that they have demonstrated to you that they want it morethan you do. The very first company that's inclined to find a turnout, they wanted it really badly.They didn't care that I wasn't an engineer. They didn't care that I couldn't do high level math.They didn't care that I was new. They didn't care anything, they just needed people. If I coulddeliver for them, that's all they cared about.

Sometimes at seminars people say "Well, you're Bill Radin. You're the guru. You've been aroundfor 20 years." Hey, that wasn't the case 20 years ago! I was just Joe Nobody with a completelyworthless college degree who had never worked a real job a day in his life. I had a completelydifferent career then. I didn't know what all this stuff was, but they needed it badly, and I waswilling to help and go the extra mile, and be creative and solve their problems.

That's the bottom line. If you can do that, you'll be successful. That's what top producingrecruiters do. They wait for or they capitalize on opportunities or situations where people need itand want it, and they really need their help. Mark, I've had a great time. Do you have any closingthoughts?

Mark: Bill, well, we're out of time for today, but it's been fantastic. Really, really great content,and I really appreciate your co-hosting this event with me. Before we sign off; by the way, I just



want to let you know I’ve just checked and we've got 450 people listening, 231 on the webcastand 219 on the telephone still. You've obviously grabbed people's attention, people are stillcaptivated here. That's good news, thank you for that. You are currently doing a seminar seriescalled "Winning Strategies for Recruiters". I think you have a few dates coming up. You want tojust share those with us quickly?

Bill: Sure. This isn't a platform to sell my seminars or an infomercial or anything like that,although if you would like to attend, that would be great. If you're lucky enough to live in or nearLA, I'm giving a seminar on Thursday, March 5th. It's in Irvine across from the John WayneAirport. I'm also giving one in Phoenix the following day, which is Friday the 6th. I'm alsogiving one, a full day “Winning Strategies for Recruiters” seminar in Dallas on Monday the 9th.You can go to www.BillRadin.com and see the details. Of course, Mark has done a great job intelling you about the fact that we've had so many people who were interested in this, and wroteso many questions about so many great topics that we've decided to kind of open this up and do aseparate teleseminar series and Q&A series.

Mark: Bill, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, everyone, for listening in today. You've beenlistening to Bill Radin and Mark Whitby. I hope you have a successful week, and we'll lookforward to connecting with you soon. Take care. Bye!

http://www.billradin.com/



How to “recession-proof” your recruiting business,consistently make more placements, and increase your

income in a tough market…

Discover the Survival Secrets of TopProducing Recruiters and Owners Who Have

Learned How to Succeed in an EconomicDownturn

Give us just 3 weeks, and we'll personally mentor youstep-by-step as you get your business back on track and

increase your billings FAST!

Imagine if you had not just one, but two experienced coaches and recruiting industryveterans on your team, helping you to:

Adjust your tactics to beat the recession and adopt the strategies that will helpyou to succeedWin new clients and get more job orders, even when most clients are saying,“We’re not hiring”Source and recruit the candidates who are still in demand but increasinglyresistant to changing jobs

This 3 part teleseminar series in an intensive program for recruiters and recruiting firmowners who need a “quick fix” solution and want to start making more placements –right now!

Date TopicMarch 11 Session 1: How to Fight a Recession – and Win!March 13 Q&A Group Coaching Session

March 17 Session 2: Marketing Strategies to Build Your BusinessMarch 20 Q & A Group Coaching Session

March 24 Session 3: Recruiting Tactics in a Soft EconomyMarch 27 Q&A Group Coaching Session

Don’t worry if you can’t attend all the training sessions. You’ll also get the recordingsand transcripts. For more information, visit:

www.TopProducingRecruiters.com


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