Recruitment Principles: How a Contingent Agency Fills 84.6% of Jobs with Greg Benadiba

0:00 So Greg, first of all, I've never heard of a contingent agency filling 60% of jobs, much less 80 plus percent of jobs. That's really unusual. The big news, right, is that you've just published a book called Recruitment Principles. Yes. I've been coaching recruiters for 25 years and I've not heard that idea before, which is...

0:17 How confident are you that the other agencies actually understand what they're looking for? And they say, well, now that you say that, I don't think they are at all. I've even gone as far as coaching certain employers to terminate agreements with other agencies to then secure the mandatory exclusivity.

0:32 Would you mind opening up your calendar? Let me know three to four interview slots in the coming two weeks. Oh, Greg, I'd like to see resumes first before I grant you interview slots. That's a concern. Our search assignment fill ratio is something that I look at quite carefully. We were hovering around 80% in 2021.

0:50 Wow. If someone's filling up 40% on a contingent desk, I'd say that's good going. So how are you doubling that? So the big news, right, is that you've just published a book called Recruitment Principles, which we're going to get into. Super excited about that. And so we're going to spend most of the time talking about Recruitment Principles, right?

1:10 But before we kind of delve into the book, let's catch up. Like you were podcast guest number 14, I think, right? March 2020. We're now up over 300 episodes. So I'm sure a lot has changed at Bilingual Source. Can you bring me up to speed? What have been the big... accomplishments, the big hurdles. Yeah, I remember that podcast.

1:32 Well, remember in the pregame, you were like, Greg, I mean, should we change the podcast? Because we were going to talk about leadership. We were going to talk about how to get to the certain ranks within recruitment. And you're like, Greg, COVID just happened, right? Yeah. So do you want to pivot and do this on, obviously, management crisis, right?

1:51 What a time. I mean, look at what we've been through, right, in the last six years. So much has happened. It's been wild. So at Bilingual Source itself, you know, we saw a huge surge. I think the entire industry did based on what I've heard. You know, our search assignment fill ratio is something that I look at quite carefully.

2:11 We were hovering around 80% in 2021. By 2022, we had dropped to 66%. Is that on a lower conversion on a higher volume? The jobs were just flooding in. We couldn't cope. We didn't have enough recruiters. And what I've learned from that is I should have been recruiting recruiters when things were slow.

2:35 Again, to be greedy when others are fearful, that would have been a good moment to do that. But we kind of stayed the course because we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know that this tsunami of jobs was going to happen. And so my account executives were busy taking orders all day long.

2:51 They couldn't focus on delivery. It was a problem. It was a real problem. So we filled about 66% of the jobs that we took. And I then wanted to fix that in 2023. So we basically fixed that. And we got back to 100%, well, close to 100%. We were at 84.6% of delivery, which is where I like to hover. Let's just break this down a little bit first.

3:13 So – Can you remind me your model? Because are you contingent? Are you retained? So we're a contingent agency. So Greg, first of all, I've never heard of a contingent agency filling 60% of jobs, much less 80 plus percentage of jobs. That's really unusual. Yeah. I think let's just pause there for a second because normally in a retained model, you would fill say 90%.

3:41 You still don't fill 100% in retained because things will go wrong that you have no control over. The client moves the goalposts or whatever. But then in contingent, you would normally see 20% fill rate. For someone doing really well, you'd probably fill a third, maybe 40%. If someone's filling up 40% on a contingent desk, I'd say that's good going.

4:02 So how are you doubling that? First things first, selection. Okay. It's all in the selection of the clients you work with. I basically trademarked something called the deep dive, which is our method of picking up job orders. So when we pick up search assignments, We take great care in that. There's a lot of detail to be had.

4:24 There are a lot of questions to ask, such as, who have you worked with on this job? Have you seen any candidates? Are you working with other agencies? And essentially what I do personally and what I've taught my team to do is to take such great detail in those search assignments. To really understand the job at a deep level, if we can, go on a client visitation.

4:48 I even go as far as asking them if I can shadow a representative or the person doing the job. Oh, that's cool. I have heard of… Some firms doing that, it's very rare. I'd like to say one in a thousand. I think it boils down to caring. Yeah. You know, as recruiters, we're in a noble profession. I love the recruitment business.

5:07 That's why I wrote this book. That's why I'm here talking. I mean, I want to educate people. The industry on what it is that we do and how important it is. I selected this position. I wanted to become a recruiter at the ripe old age of 25 years old. I decided upon this function. I wanted to do this. So anyway, back to search assignments.

5:29 I mean, we go in great detail. You know, a lot of recruiters think they know what they're recruiting for, but, and same with human resources associates, the HR side, a lot of them, they just write up JDs and quite frankly, they don't really know what they're recruiting on. Some are excellent though. Some are phenomenal HR folks that'll go and do the job shadow.

5:50 They'll go and sit down with a rep. They'll, they'll understand the function. What I'm really after is I want to hear what the customer is saying on the other side of the equation, whomever that customer is. Once I understand that job at that level, I then ask key questions. Okay, Mark, so you've gone ahead and you've given this potential assignment to two other recruitment firms.

6:14 Based on the level of detail that I've taken in this search assignment here and our deep dive, how happy are you with my understanding of this position? And they say they're very happy. Okay. Now, inversely, how confident are you that the other agencies actually understand what they're looking for? Great question.

6:34 And they say, well, now that you say that, I don't think they are at all. I've even gone as far as coaching certain employers to terminate agreements with other agencies to then secure the mandatory exclusivity. This is brilliant, Craig. So what I love is your nuance, the craft, right? Because I've learned something new already in our conversation, which I haven't...

6:56 I've been coaching recruiters for 25 years, and I've not heard that idea before, which is, obviously, I always teach Ask for Exclusivity, explain the benefits, explain the pitfalls of working with multiple agencies. But I've never... seen or heard a recruiter who is, first of all, doing such a deep dive and then asking the client, how happy are you with my understanding of the job?

7:22 And then conversely, I'm getting it into my head. So I remember this. Conversely, how happy are you that the other agencies you're working with really understand the job? And then they start questioning, well, compared to what we've just done, Their job order intake was nothing as detailed. So now I don't think, right?

7:44 And then coaching them to, well, why don't we? So explain that bit to me. You mentioned exclusive is mandatory. Mandatory. You're not working that job unless it's exclusive. That's right. Okay. Can you elaborate a little bit then on how you're positioning that and then how you would coach them to, if they are, because, okay, here's the cool thing.

8:05 Yeah. A lot of – most recruiters – and I probably made this – this is a limiting belief I've just realized is if they're already working with other agencies, I would have assumed, oh, well, that means it's – we can't get exclusivity because it's not available. But that's maybe not true. It's not true.

8:25 Okay. So talk to me about that. Okay. So you're working with – we'll do a bit of a role play, right? Sure, yeah. So, Mark, you're working with a couple other agencies, right? Right. When's the last time you received a submission from them? Oh, they sent me quite a few last week. Okay. So they sent you quite a few.

8:41 Are you interviewing those people? There was one that looks all right. A lot of them are not quite hitting the mark, Greg, to be honest. Got it. And you'll find that. That's quite common in our industry, Mark. And that's a direct result of those agencies maybe not being as trained as we have been on doing a deep dive.

9:03 On understanding your true need. On mapping out the DNA values of your team. Which is, again, a model that I've learned from Jeff Hyman in his book, Recruit Rockstars. By the way, this little conversion and getting the whole exclusivity, this was taught to me by Mike Walmsley. Mike's brilliant. He's one of my mentors.

9:22 So kudos to Mike. I mean, his videos and his training series, I have watched it over a hundred times. I've memorized everything he said. So you have to be obsessive about this to get it right. Anyway, so... You know, as an employer, you've gone ahead. You've got one that you think could be good. Fantastic.

9:42 Are you going to interview that person? Yeah, I think we'll go ahead and interview that person. Why don't you do that, Mark? Okay. Interview that person. Once that interview is done, let me know how it goes. Okay, I'll follow up. When's that interview going to take place? Next Wednesday? Wednesday, yeah.

9:56 Perfect, great. I'll give you a call after that. What we do differently at Bilingual Source, and this is what ensures our stick rate, okay? And I'm gonna send you a link to a LinkedIn post that I wrote where people have commented, you know, on 19 years plus, 17 years, 15 years, 10 years, 12 years, seven years, that they've been with the same company that I placed them in, okay?

10:16 So this stick rate is a direct result of this deep dive. So what I want you to do is I want you to interview that person. If they're great, fantastic. Now, remember, a maybe is a no. Say more about that? So what a maybe is, is if you're thinking to yourself, this could be a good fit, but you're not 100% sure, there's one of two things.

10:38 Ray Dalio said in his book, Principles, you can sort of aggregate more data to increase your probability of accuracy. It's a great book. To those who haven't read it, it's been foundational for me. It's actually the very reason that this book exists. Go ahead and interview that candidate a second time, aggregate the data, figure out if they're the right person for the job.

10:57 The last thing you want to do is to hire somebody and then have them not work out. Absolutely. That's going to be such a waste of money and time. That's right. As a hiring authority, I've been there. I know how hard it is to train. When you're training somebody, you give them a piece of yourself. Right.

11:12 You're giving them a piece of yourself. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of investment. It's capital. It's everything, right? So we got to get this right. That's very important. So interview that person. If that doesn't work and you don't think she's the one, call me. We're going to do our deep dive. I'd like to come and visit you.

11:27 I'd like to listen in on a couple of calls or watch your top player work on your team. I'd like to better understand. I'd be happy to sign an NDA. That's fine. I want to see what the job's really all about. What's beyond the job description? and then I'm going to send you my fear agreement. Now that is an exclusive fear agreement.

11:48 Okay. Meaning I don't work with companies that work with multiple recruiters. And there's a couple of reasons for that. You may be thinking, Mark, that it's advantageous for you to go ahead and have multiple agencies work on the job. They're all going to compete with one another. They're going to want to get me the best candidate for the role.

12:07 But what you're actually doing is you're reducing them all to getting submissions in for representation. Hmm. So if there was, and again, I promise you, I'm only going to send you the top three to five candidates that are good for this role. If there's a person who's the sixth, that is maybe a B plus there are, maybe I'm forced to send them to you for representation because my competitor could, and that's not the way that I like to work.

12:33 I don't want to flood your inbox with people that you shouldn't be seeing and then flood your calendar with meetings you shouldn't be having. The reason why you're hiring me is to save you the time and the pain of having to do this job yourself. That's the way that I work. If that's not conducive to the way that you guys want to do this, then I wish you guys all the best.

12:53 And to be able to come – and again, back to the recruiter desk – to be able to come from a position of power like that. Right. What you have to have is volume. Right. You can't be desperate. Absolutely, yes. You're playing a game of arbitrage. You know, it's a funny thing. So if you've got enough volume where you're not desperate because you're doing your business development every day, because you're keeping all those rhythms consistent.

13:17 Yeah. you're in a position of leverage where you can say, sorry, Mark, I don't work against other agencies. So that's the number one way to secure the exclusive. And then, of course, you focus on delivery, right? Yes. So before we go on to that, you've made this link, which is interesting because a lot of people don't get it, is people join our program, and one of the things often they want to achieve is to move from contingent to retained, right?

13:41 But when I dig in, I find out they don't have enough job order flow to have true walkaway power. So when they're saying we only work if we get a deposit and the client says no... Then they're having to backtrack because they need that order, right? Which is – that's not what you want. So actually, the client commitment – so you guys don't get a retainer, but you're working exclusive, mandatory exclusive fee agreement.

14:09 It's a similar thing. What we're seeking is client commitment, right? observed and I have data to show that the number one factor, success factor in the job order conversion is client commitment. 100%. It's the number one thing that you're looking to qualify a class A search assignment. Yeah. And I think it was Steve Finkel.

14:38 Shout out to Steve as well. I mean, he devised the class A, class B, and class Q search assignments. In fact, it's in the book. I thought it was our method. It was taught to me by Tony, my mentor. Yeah. I later on found out that Steve read my book and he told me that, Greg, it would have been nice for you to mention that it was actually my method.

14:59 I didn't know because my predecessor had been taught by Steve Finkel and we adopted it. We just didn't know. It was just, you know, this is the way we were taught. A class A search assignment, you know, is composed of many different things. But the very first quality is client cooperation. Yeah. That's number one.

15:17 Yeah. Trust, right? Second to that is their pain. Mm-hmm. It's a new position. Well, if it's a new position and this company's operated for as long as they have, without that position being filled, how urgent is it? What are the consequences if this position doesn't get filled in X amount of time? Right.

15:39 You gotta dig. Find the business pain, find out the consequences. This is like spin selling, right? Like what's the impact? Where's the pain? What's the consequence? What effect does it have if you don't get this person in this amount of time? Or if you hire an average person instead of an exceptional person?

15:57 That's it. And again, if you do a deep dive in this manner, what this does for you is a bunch of different things. First of all, you're going to get more accurate in your submissions. Your send out to fill ratio is going to increase. Your submission to fill ratio is going to increase. Definitely. You're going to be a sniper.

16:14 rather than this, you know, throwing spaghetti up at the wall to see what's going to stick, right? Like, you're not doing anybody a service. The thing is, though, Greg, I think a lot of recruiters want that level of relationship with the client, right? They don't want to be spraying and praying. I think most – I mean, there's obviously some who don't care.

16:31 Yeah. But I think the real professionals – would love to operate that way. And they feel like the client, the level of client relationship they have doesn't allow for it. So you've given us a bit of a recipe into how to select your clients so that you're partnering with the ones who are willing to cooperate like that.

16:55 Listen, it depends on where you are in your journey. Yeah. Okay. When I was a new account executive, I didn't think this way. Sure. You know, when I was one year, two years in... You know, I took what I could get. Yeah. But it came to a point, like, I mean, business development was really my specialty.

17:10 I did, I excelled at this, right, Mark? Like, I mean, that's where I really took off. I mean, recruiting, I was okay at it at first. I got better over time. But business development, like, I mean, that was really my specialty. I mean, it got to a point where I was writing up 25, you know, permanent search assignments on a contingent basis a month.

17:28 It was nuts. And that was like my threshold. That's all my desk could handle. After that, the delivery went down, right? Yeah. So when you start doing your BD, right, and you've got enough of an inflow, you're no longer desperate. Right. And you're in a position of power. And you're able to select clients wisely, listen carefully.

17:49 And I mean, here's a couple of tests. I mean, I'll just share with you a couple of tests that I make clients kind of jump through hoops. Okay. Yeah. Let's hear. So Mark, this is an urgent position for you. Great. Would you mind opening up your calendar? Let me know three to four interview slots in the coming two weeks.

18:07 Oh, Greg, I'd like to see resumes first before I grant you interview slots. That's a concern. If you've done your job properly and you've done an intake the way I'm doing an intake, the way I'm teaching you to do the intake, it should be automatic. If they're saying, no, I'd like to see resumes first.

18:28 It should get to the point where they understand that you're doing your job so well that you should be able to call and book them into their calendar for them, even without a resume. Absolutely. Even without a CV, because they know. And at the end they'll be, oh, by the way, I don't have this resume.

18:42 Oh yeah, here it is, right? And then they look and they say, okay. And they might look at the resume and say, Greg, this doesn't make any sense. This person's not good for the job. Trust me. They are. They are. And here's why. Meet them. If after meeting them, you think that they're still not a fit and I've wasted your time, I will personally take you and your wife out for dinner.

19:07 Yeah. Okay. I like it. Yeah. And you got to be able to back that up. Absolutely. How do you back that up? It's because you've interviewed correctly, because you've done your due diligence on the essay, you've got the match, you understand the probability of hire, and that's what makes your send out to fill ratio.

19:24 Like, I mean, mine is probably sitting around 60% right now. What's the point of sending a candidate out to an employer if they're not going to get the job? Yeah. What's the point? So it's wasting everyone's time. Time. That's what we sell. You know, we can only sell one of three things in business, right?

19:40 It's either time, revenue, or cost savings. It's one of the three. And I mean, no matter what business you're in, it's one of those three equations, right? We sell time. The savings of time, the unnecessary time of having to interview 10 to 12 people, the unnecessary time of going through like now people are getting three to 400 resumes on LinkedIn for one job post as a result of AI and automatic apply tools such as like lazy apply dot AI.

20:07 It's like, hello, it's they're being flooded. They're being inundated. That's the time savings. What's interesting is. Some employers may interpret that to mean, oh, we don't need the agency because there's plenty of candidates. But actually, I'd say it's the opposite. That increases the need for the agency to filter out all of the noise and only show you the ones that are worth your time.

20:30 If an employer wants to do it themselves, I'm very happy to teach them. how to interview appropriately and how to be able to qualify. And I wish them all the best. And I'd love to hear from them once they've done the job of recruiting, along with running their own desk, managing whatever department. Right, of course.

20:47 Good luck. I sincerely wish you all the best. I really do. It's a beautiful thing. And when you're stuck, call me. I'll advise you. I'd be happy to help. But at the end of the day, here's what happens. We all know the reality. They realize, oh, my Lord, this is a lot of work. And at the end of the day, I may have a hire – And they don't work out or worse off, they're a person that's sitting in my do not contact records because something's wrong.

21:14 And now with AI, you can get really clever on fraud and lying and omitting. And I mean, it's every job has been or every resume has been adapted to the job. People aren't even reading their resumes. And you're looking at it and you're thinking, hmm. do you really have this experience? Yeah. And the way to do that is to have a deep understanding of your, your particular niche, right?

21:37 Yeah. When you understand your niche, you can ask questions like no other to really uncover if this person knows what they're doing or not. I mean, the employer should be able to do that as well, but unfortunately fraud is on the rise. Yeah. So there's a lot of things going on out there. If you want to do it yourself, great.

21:53 It's like painting your house, right? Mark, like, could we paint our own house? Sure. We could, right. Are we going to do that great of a job? Are the baseboards going to be clean? We're recruiters, right? Like our job is to recruit. Yeah. Give the painting to somebody else, right? A hundred percent.

22:06 Zooming back out to this 60 to 80% fill rate, which again is insane. Doing the deep dive, mandatory exclusivity. Are there any other success factors that enable you? I mean, obviously there's a delivery component as well here, right? Because we've talked about the client side of the equation. But then we need the Kennett side of the equation to be top-notch as well.

22:33 Yeah. So the way we've got it structured at Bilingual Sources is that it's really an open market. There are no divisions. There are no territories, right? So all of our recruiters have access to all of the jobs. Okay. And they can go ahead and make a submission to each one of the jobs. That's a good thing.

22:54 And the reason why is – I could recruit on a job, but I might not have the best candidate. You might as my colleague. Yeah. So you can submit a person to me and, and I will then review that submission, you know, with co-recruit. It's great. Cause you know, with co-recruit, we actually can go into the interview and view it.

23:13 Yes. So back old, old school, I used to call up your candidate to say, Hey, Joanne. Mark sent you over to my job. I'd like to sit down with you to really understand if you're the right fit. So it's a quality control. The way that I put it to my team is kind of like Chef Ramsay at the pass in Hell's Kitchen.

23:31 Okay. Right? He's got all these chefs working. Yeah. And they bring him raw fish. I think we know what happens there, right? You don't want to put Gordon Ramsay raw fish. You don't want to do that. Right. So he's the quality control at the pass before it goes to the floor. And that's our position as an account executive.

23:49 So as an AE, you understand the job. You understand what's going on with your client. You now receive submissions from your team. Right. Of course, you want to try to fill it yourself to solo it. So wait, the account executive also is recruiting? Mm-hmm. Okay. Let me – this is a bit of a curveball, Greg, but I'm sure you've got a great answer for it.

24:09 So one of our clients came to me recently with an issue, which was top biller in the firm, account executive, and was – receiving candidates from colleagues and then also their own, had a candidate out to, also candidates out to multiple jobs. Now, there was a conflict where, Candid gets an offer, but that offer would be split with the... Now, I don't know how your commission works, but in this firm, obviously, if they solo it, they make more.

24:50 Right. Right? So now there's a conflict where if my candidate gets the offer... I'm going to earn more commission. Yep. If Greg's candidate gets it, I'm going to make slightly less, right? Now, the right thing to do is what's best for the candidate. Oh, 100%. And what's best for the firm. The firm. And what's best for me should be like not really – obviously, we all are wanting to do well as well, right?

25:14 But I should be prioritizing – Like ultimately, what's best for my customers, right? The customer, the client and the candidate. What's best for them? But in this case, now maybe this is just simply a values alignment issue. Right. But with the structure describing, there is a potential for those kinds of conflicts.

25:36 100%. So there's a term for that. Okay. It's called sandbagging. Okay, right. So a sandbagger is somebody, you know, sandbagging. If there's a flood coming to your house, you put sandbags to protect your house against the incoming water. There is no sandbagging in our firm. Okay, and I'm going to tell you why.

25:54 It's a culture problem. So the culture that I've designed, and, you know, I live and breathe it, we practice what we preach. We are each other's number one customers. Okay. So let's just say in a case like that, you know, you, Mark, have sent me a candidate, but I've got a candidate too. I'm not going to send your candidate because I want my candidate to get the job.

26:18 I'm greedy. I don't care about anybody else. I just want – and my candidate's a good candidate. I think they're better than yours. Okay. Meanwhile, I haven't even talked to your candidate, right? Right. So I don't know who your candidate is. Is that the right thing to do? No, it's not. Because here's the thing.

26:33 People are myopic sometimes. They don't think long term. You and I are going to be working together for the next 20 years. I'm not myopic. I know that you are my most important client. As my colleague, we trade with one another continuously. Yeah. Fact of the matter is, today I've got the job. Tomorrow you could.

26:55 Right. Right. As well, you're going to know that I'm sandbagging. I did not make the submission. I didn't go get you the send out. So we've literally flipped all that on its head. I mean, sandbagging was a real thing back in the day. When I first joined the firm, I saw it. I experienced it. It was frustrating.

27:11 There were even cases where certain people would even send the candidate to that client, regardless of what the account executive said. That created internal. It was crazy stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. Policies and procedures. Yeah. I wrote internal principles. These are the external principles that I'm showing the world.

27:27 But internally, we have submission principles. We have account executive principles, recruitment principles internally on how to behave, The last thing I'd want to do is alienate you, my number one customer. Absolutely. If you've got somebody who you're telling me is great for the job, I'm getting on the phone with that person.

27:45 And I might turn around to you and say, Mark, good job, man. She's amazing. And I send it to the client because at the end of the day, I'm thinking of my customer. Of course. I want what's in their best interest. Yep. I want them to get the absolute best talent for the role. As well, I want to make sure that whenever I got a lot of orders, because I'm doing a lot of BD, my team wants to help me because they get send outs.

28:10 Exactly. Absolutely. A hundred percent. They're getting send outs, right? So why would you do that? To get an extra, whatever, a few thousand dollars. Exactly. In the short term. Yeah. And then alienate a partner. Yeah. Don't do that. Trust is your only sustainable competitive advantage in the recruitment business.

28:27 And that's true externally as much as it is internally. Okay. Great. I love it. Talk to me about policies, procedures. And you have written policies for all these different areas for every job and every part of the job, it sounds like. Yeah. How did you develop all that? Because what I see is, especially with smaller recruiting firms, like we're not Randstad, we're not Adeco, we're not Robert Half, right?

28:54 Often the owner is billing. They're running a desk. They're also, like we discussed earlier, they're hiring, they're training people, they're leading, they're doing marketing. What you're describing is building the systems, processes, procedures, which I feel like a lot of the natural inclination... A lot of recruiting owners are ultimately...

29:18 They came up through sales, right? And so their instinct and what they like doing the most is... chasing deals, closing deals, that type of thing. And what you're describing goes to the bottom of the list. So how did you make time to put all those pieces in place? Yeah, it's a good question. It's a good question, Mark.

29:41 And it didn't come without sacrifice. Again, there's working in your business and there's working on your business. You have to devote time to work on your business cyclically. What's the – and there's probably changes in different seasons and different stages. Depending on what's going on, right? What's the percentage – like what should owners who are listening be aiming for as a starting point of time that they're allocating to working on the business versus doing the – Let's shoot for 10%.

30:11 Okay. Yeah. Tithe to yourself. Okay. We've all heard of tithing, right? Everybody donates to charities or to church or whatever. One of the greatest things I ever learned was from actually Darren Hardy, one of my success coaches. He said, you should be tithing 10% to your education. And that's why now, like over time, I mean, at first I think I had – 300 bucks when I started as a teenager, like it was, but I did that cyclically through time.

30:39 And I tithed 10% to myself over time. And now the budget is huge, which is why I can come to a conference like the one you've put on because education is paramount. Think of that model and now adopt it into your firm and working on your business. When you work on your business 10% of the time, I do it on Sundays.

31:01 It's a day of clarity. The phones are not ringing. Interruptions are not there. It's great. If you don't have that luxury and you can't do it, do it early in the morning. Great time. 5 a.m. Get up, work on your business. Fix one thing at a time. Keep that consistent through time, like you do your business development, like you do fitness, like you do anything that you want to get great at, right?

31:29 Like you do your education, I hope, right? I mean, if you're listening to the podcast, I mean, you're a person who wants to get better, right? So you're obviously there. This is an investment in your time, which is a good thing. Now, if you do that- I mean, your business will be unrecognizable to where it is now in a year from now.

31:48 Because it compounds. right? Those improvements multiply and they're not linear. It's not like I've improved two things. So, you know, one plus one equals two. Those start multiplying rather than adding, right? It is exponential. And I'll tell you why that is because when you work on your business, so let's just say, let's take something simple.

32:06 You fix a process. So Sarah yesterday approached me at the conference. She wanted to fix certain things and I showed her how to create a beautiful notion page. Right? Through Claude, I might add. She took her existing candidate prep document that she sends candidates and we put it into Claude and we tethered it to Notion.

32:27 And now it's a forward-facing website that she can share publicly. That's so cool that you were like attending my conference and you were coaching fellow attendees. That's brilliant. I love this business. Yeah. this business is the best, we're in the best job in the world, guys. Like, I hope you understand that.

32:42 We're lucky. So yeah, why wouldn't I impart that and help others? I want to see people to succeed. Like, so do you. I mean, that's why we do what we do, right? So anyway, small process improvements like that, what happens is when you go back to working in your business, You now have the processes, the tools, the clarity with which you do the things that you do.

33:04 And that's the compound effect right there. That's it. It's not an incremental improvement. It really is a hyperbolic improvement because you've now kept that static through time, the 10% that you invest in working on your business, in fixing your systems, in doing what you think you should. Let me give you an analogy.

33:27 There are certain restaurants that you go to, Mark, that make you and your wife feel like royalty. The food is to die for. The service is amazing. That's the place you want to bring your guests. Sure, absolutely. There are other restaurants you go to. Yeah, they're good. But they're not that restaurant, you know?

33:48 At the end of the day, I'm a customer service rep. I want to give great service. I want to create systems that enable my teams to create great service for the people that they serve. What you have to do in order to do this well is you have to literally go through your own theme park as an attendee. What that means is run through your process as if you were a candidate.

34:16 That is brilliant. I have very few people do that, right? You're sort of mystery shopping your own company. And it's hard though to think from a fresh perspective because when you're in it, you don't see the... the flaws of the things that are causing friction or probably there's nothing huge. Like you wouldn't be, have a successful firm if there was major, like huge, terrible flaws in the service, but there might be niggles that like bother your customers.

34:47 Yep. And they're not enough, maybe they don't even say, right? Because overall they're happy. Yeah. But then when it comes, if those add up, then it can be a tipping point where like whether it's the fee negotiation or the exclusivity or they get approached by another supplier and they're not unhappy with their service, but they're not like, wow, either.

35:15 They're open because remember, your competitors are targeting your existing clients all the time. That's right. There are many restaurants out there that are competing for you to come and eat there. Are you that restaurant that is going to deliver a service that makes them feel like royalty? That's what you've got to do.

35:36 So Greg, I just wanted to circle back for a second to working on the business. It's so interesting you said 10% as a kind of like, starting point. Have you gone more than that now? Or are you still like, is 10% kind of the consistent? During COVID, I did. There was not much going on. Yeah. So I went all in on that, right?

35:57 I mean, during COVID I did. Because I was going crazy, like we all were, right? I mean, what do I do, right? I doubled down on training, doubled down on process, doubled down on building everything out, just sharpening the swords, getting ready, because I knew battle was coming. I didn't know to what extent.

36:13 Obviously, I couldn't predict that. But so yeah, I mean, it ebbs and flows depending on what's going on. I mean, right now it's high. Okay. It's very high right now. Because we have the capability to engineer our own software. Right. Which is something that was never possible before, right? We're going to talk about AI next because you're like really advanced in how you're leveraging the tools and technology.

36:41 So when recruitment business owners approach us and want to join our coaching program, Greg, I'm going to say, one of the ways I qualify them, because at this point, I only want to work with people who, A, I'm confident I can help, and B, who I think are going to be successful in our program, and are going to be ultimately like a success story for us, right?

37:03 And what I don't want is someone comes along, pays me the money, and doesn't do anything. That doesn't help them, and it doesn't help me, because longer term, they're not going to, rave about what we do. That's right. So, you know, I ask them for five hours a week or like minimum four hours a week, half a day a week.

37:24 That could be two chunks of two hours. It could be an hour a day, Monday through Friday or whatever. But if you're working 50 hours in a week, which a lot of entrepreneurs are, right, that works out to... 10% coincidentally, but that still gives you plenty of time to do everything else, right? But it's like Stephen Covey's big rocks analogy where like the really important stuff you have to lock into your calendar and then build everything else around it.

37:53 And so if you're working on your business is one of those big rocks, then commit to allocating that CEO time where you're going to walk on the business, and then you'll still get everything else done. That's truly important, right? But if you can't commit to... Now, there's some weeks where things are going to go crazy and you won't be able to do it, right?

38:17 But on average, if most weeks you're... working five hours on the business and then the rest of the time in the business, you're going to make over the course of 12 months, you won't believe how much progress you can make. You'll be unrecognizable to yourself 12 months from then. And again, if you then keep that habit static through time, and it's not just for a year sprint and it's perpetual, think about that.

38:46 And I mean, the implications are huge. You have to care about your business. If you don't care about your business more than anybody else does, then like, I mean, what do you got? I mean, you have to care. I care deeply about how our clients and candidates view us. Absolutely. I care deeply about how the industry sometimes gets mud on its shirt about not calling people back.

39:12 That irritates me, Mark. Greg... Let's talk about your book because I mean, I feel we have been talking about your book all along, right? It's all embedded, right? These are recruitment principles that you're sharing, but it's interesting that you titled your book recruitment principles. Cause when we sat down last, you were raving about Ray Dalio's book, right?

39:32 Which is called principles. And so that obviously there's a, a, a resonance there, but tell me about the book. What, why did you write it? And what is it all about? I think this has been kind of ruminating for the last decade. Okay. Okay. I went to go see Darren Hardy. Again, my education budget has always been there.

39:55 I've participated in many courses and et cetera. And, you know, I'm big on that. He wrote a book called The Compound Effect. Okay. Oh, yeah. I've read that. I've read it a hundred times. That book was instrumental. I mean, it's close to Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's right in that range. But simple book, very, very thin.

40:15 It's simple, but hard to implement. Are you really doing it? And, you know, that's how I got tethered into his system. Went to go see him in La Jolla, California twice for his kind of high performance forum, which is great. And in that forum at one point during one of his talks, he said, you guys should all write a book.

40:37 There's a book in everyone. And that kind of stuck. I didn't do anything for years. I mean, I've always been journaling. Whenever a problem would come up, I write about it. This person didn't take this job. This client ghosted us. Whatever happened, I wrote down and I journaled about it. I have these stacks of journals that are, and again, a practice that he taught me as a success coach.

40:59 I think journaling is very important. Then I read Principles by Ray Dalio, and I was like, wow. I mean, that book, he's a genius. And within that book, he says that if you look at life as a game, In which you work on something, then you stumble, you fall. You learn from that experience. But the way to get above it and the real sort of joy is if you then take the time to crystallize something.

41:37 that particular learning lesson into a principle. It's kind of like a game, you know, like Zelda almost in a way, right? Where you're walking around kind of grabbing all these jewels, right? And that kind of changed everything for me in that moment. I was like, wow, I've been sitting here stressed. And now I'm looking at it thinking, this is another principle to collect.

42:00 It's a great reframe, like, to be able to turn mistakes, quote-unquote failures, into principles that reduce the chance of that particular – issue reoccurring. Yeah. Right. And then we keep doing that. Then over time, you're just getting better and better and better. Yeah. So that's what I did. I aggregated all the principles.

42:22 And then I looked at the industry. I mean, I've read most of the recruitment books out there, right? And there was no such book. Mm-hmm. And so I love this business. I really love the industry. This took a lot of work. I mean, this is a lot of work. I mean, I didn't do it for any money. Like, it wasn't for that reason.

42:40 It was for a couple different reasons that I did it. I did it because I truly, truly love what we do. And I also want to make sure that I impart my philosophy and the way that I look at recruitment to other recruiters. Great. Great. You know, being impeccable with your word. It's the very first principle in the book.

42:57 And I talk about a story where, you know, I called a candidate. And unfortunately, you know, I was talking to her about a spec job. So one of the associates in my company had told us about a potential opportunity that was coming down the pipeline. He had sent the fee agreement out. Nothing was concrete.

43:15 And he pinged me to say, hey, your candidate was really good for this job. I called her up. I got her excited about the job. And the job never materialized. And I didn't call her back. I made all kinds of excuses in my own mind. She'll know, you know. I told her that it wasn't really a job yet, that we're still, but that's not good.

43:38 And that led to a bad review, which then in turn led to another person seeing that review who was about to refer business to me. And he said, Greg, is this who you really are? Because you're saying you're one thing and then you're doing another. Which leads to the second principle, which is trust is your only sustainable competitive advantage in this business.

43:59 That's all we've got. A recruitment firm is really what? It's people, trust, and data. That's what a recruitment firm is at the end of the day, right? And I mean, if you don't take those little things seriously, who will? And so it really hurts me when I hear, you know, a recruiter didn't call me back.

44:20 All the recruiters are the same out there. It's like when I say to you, you know, what's a used car salesman to you? Everybody's got that. But there are probably great used car salesmen out there that are very ethical. Yeah. And it probably bothers them. Like if there's a used car salesman out there, you know, they should write a book on principles of used car salesmanship, right?

44:37 To say, hey, guys, this is not the way to behave. We are hurting ourselves as an aggregate. Right. And that, that's, you know, you want to get under my skin, do that, right? Like don't call somebody back when you should have. And now with the technology we have, we can, we can make this actual, an actual reality.

44:51 So, you know, co-recruit Quill, for instance, that's the system we use for, for, for note taking. Yes. Those guys are great. And they were at the conference as well. They were. Josh was there. Great guy. His family was there. I got to meet them. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I spoke to Gaurav, who's their tech back in the day.

45:08 It was like a long time ago. And I said, hey, would it be possible for us to have emails generated with follow-ups? Anything, any action item that's within a call, any promise that I made to you, Mark? I'm going to send you that link or I'm going to do this, right? I'm going to do that. Can we have those?

45:22 Or inversely, whatever you say you're going to do, I'll send you the job description, right? All those things, could they be listed within the email? And he said, we're already working on that. I'm like, perfect. And so now I've got perplexity going into my inbox, checking for all those emails, and then cross-referencing the database to ensure that I've actually notated and done the things that I said what I was going to do.

45:42 And at the end of the week, I get a report telling me, here are the things that you still have to reconcile, Greg. So we have the technology. We have the way to do it now to be impeccable with our work. Love that. So, by the way, we should tell people the website is gregbenadiba.com, right? That's right.

45:58 So where they can learn more about the book. And you also have a really cool GPT. Can you talk about that? Yeah, so what I did was I, you know, again, I want to give this to the recruitment world. I built a GPT and I'm constantly modifying it and refining it. I built a GPT. So if you want that, go to gregbenadipa.com.

46:18 You can sign up to my newsletter. It's a monthly newsletter, so it's not too invasive. gregbenadipa.com forward slash GPT. Okay. And then in there, you'll find a link to the GPT. You just go into chat GPT and it's basically got the knowledge base. The book itself, a couple other documents, specific instruction on what to do for you.

46:39 So this tool is a fantastic tool. Like there are very few tools that you can actually say have created an ROI. So Greg, I just want to pause here for a second because that is such a brilliant idea. Like so many times I've had a book that I loved and... And I was like, I wish I could chat with that book using Claude or ChatGPT.

47:02 And of course you can't because the author needs royalties and they need to get paid for the work, which is fair. And so the workaround is – Ask chat GPT, but if it's a well-known book, you can get a summary, like say chat GPT, write me a book summary of, you know, principles by Ray Dalio and it will give you a book summary.

47:21 And then you can chat with a summary, but it's not, it's not the same. Like you've. Or you could go to try to download the PDF in an illegal way. Exactly. I don't want to do that. So that's what I'm saying. But you're making it possible now for me to chat with recruitment principles. That's, I love that.

47:38 Because I want you to win. That's the whole thing. I care about our industry, Mark. That's why I'm here. I care deeply about what we do. I selected this profession. There are very few recruiters out there that really wanted to be a recruiter. They fell into it. They were proposed. But I chose this job.

47:53 I want to be a recruiter. And I want to make an impact in this industry. And that's why I'm here. I mean, otherwise there's really no benefit to me here. I really want people to succeed. And I want to hear their success stories. I think that ultimately that That's what drives me. So back to the GPT, I'll give you some case studies just to kind of give you some ideas of what it can do for you as a recruiter.

48:15 Um, We had a client. Give us your number one case study, Greg, because I wish we had another hour. Do you know that? I think, like, let's not leave another five years before we sit down again. Yeah, before we sit down. So I'll give you one quick case study, and then we'll wrap it up. We had a client who had ghosted us for six weeks.

48:34 Junior account executive. He was stuck, right? We had six people in play. We've been keeping them warm because that's another thing. We keep people warm along the way. We communicate. And we hadn't heard back at all. So he wrote an email, which usually can be a heated email, right? You know that. And he sent it to me.

48:53 He's like, you know, what do I say here, Greg? Is this the right approach? And I looked at the email and I was like, you know, it's okay. It's good. However, you are assuming a bunch of things here. You don't know what's going on on the other side of the equation. What if this is happening? What if that is happening?

49:10 Now, the way that you've written this, it's going to be perceived in the wrong way. You're going to lose trust or you're going to lose the employer completely. You're going to lose the client. So run it through GPT. And what it did was it came back with a response based on the principles. And it said, you know, Mr.

49:28 Employer, Mr. Employer, you know, we've got six people that we've been keeping warm. We can no longer do so. Right. It's not right to do this. We're dragging it on. In order to preserve your brand reputation, we'd like to be able to communicate with these candidates on whether the job's been taken down or if we can grant them interviews.

49:50 Right. Boom, response. Immediate. Because what you're doing in that message is you're showing them why it's in their best interest to do the thing that you need them to do. What's in it for me? Right. And when you convert the message that way and they, oh, yeah, we got 6B, our brand, yeah, you're going to get a response.

50:10 And so send outs came. Great. I love it. I can't wait to dive into that GPT myself. That's so cool. Greg, it's been so fun hanging out with you in person for the first time here in Dallas. And let's keep in touch. That was brilliant. I appreciate it. Thank you so much and good luck, everybody. All right.

50:30 Take care. Take care. What stood out the most for you in this one? Let me know your biggest takeaway on LinkedIn or in the YouTube comments. And more importantly, what are the one or two things that you're going to put in practice this week? If you're getting value from these conversations, do me a favor and hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.

50:50 I really appreciate you listening. Make it a great day and I'll see you next time.