A Recruiter’s Path to Executive Leadership with Greg Benadiba

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the.

Greg Benadiba [00:00:02]:
Elite Recruiter podcast, I actually became everybody's recycling bin. So basically, I told everybody, if there's ever a candidate that you don't want to work with, bring them to me. I became the person that I am today when I truly graduated from serving myself to actually serving others. And that's been my methodology ever since. When I serve my clients, I want to make sure that I'm the absolute best. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:42]:
I am so excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. The reason is, how do you climb to the top? How do you start as an agency recruiter and climb to the executive level? I know back in the day when I first started the agency recruiting, like, I didn't see that as an option. I didn't see that as a future. But it is a feature that you can have if you're sitting in a seat, whether you're an account executive, whether you're agency recruiter your first year. I am so excited about my guests who's going to share his journey and the things that you could do to climb to the top. So, Greg Benediba, welcome to the podcast.

Greg Benadiba [00:01:16]:
Thank you so much for having me, Benjamin. I really appreciate it.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:20]:
And real quick, before we kind of go into what you're doing right now, I typically do an intake call, so we get a chance to chat, get to know each other a little bit before doing these, because it's just such a better podcast. Just the intake call, I walked away with so many things to think about that helped me that week. So I am super excited about this interview. So, Greg, real quick, before we do a deep dive into your background, where are you at right now? What does your firm do?

Greg Benadiba [00:01:43]:
Okay, well, my name is Greg Benediba. I've been in the recruitment business here in Toronto, Canada for the last 19 years. I just passed my 19th anniversary. Before that, I was in customer service. So right out of high school here in Toronto, Canada, I went to work for Bell, which is a telecom provider as well as the Dell computer corporation, and made my shift into recruitment. My firm, bilingual source, specializes in the french language. So we service employers in direct permanent search in french specific roles, which is a very specific niche here in Canada, and it's one that we specialize in, where I often say we're one inch wide but a mile deep.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:24]:
Oh, wow. So do you guys also, like, is it only Canada or do you guys like France? Other places that also speak French?

Greg Benadiba [00:02:31]:
Only Canada for now. Now I do speak Spanish, so you never know. Maybe I'll be heading down your way at some point, but for now, we're in Canada.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:40]:
Okay. So I'm so excited about this deep dive in your background. How did you end up in this wonderful world that we call recruiting?

Greg Benadiba [00:02:47]:
Yeah, you know, I'm a bit of an anomaly. I know most people are, you know, kind of propositioned. The recruitment, they speak to somebody who tells them about it. I actually sought this profession out, so it was very deliberate. I was 24 years old. I was working at Dell, so having a good time. I was a dj on the weekends at some of the nightclubs. I was playing house music, trance music.

Greg Benadiba [00:03:07]:
So I had an interesting life. But, you know, at the age of 24, I really did a lot of reflecting. I knew full well that I wanted to have a family and I wanted to do meaningful work in my life. So one of the books that I picked up was Kiyosaki. Rich dad, poor dad. Now, ill caution people whove read that book. Theres a lot of bad advice in that book. Using leverage, using debt is one of them.

Greg Benadiba [00:03:29]:
But one good piece of advice that I got from that book was to really figure out what it is that youre good at and try to figure out where you want to be and then reverse engineer it. So for me, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That I knew for sure. I had the language skills. French is my mother tongue. I knew how to deal with problems, issues, customer problems. I was very adept at doing that. But, you know, to be an entrepreneur, I thought about it.

Greg Benadiba [00:03:52]:
I was like, what do I lack? So, you know, one of the things was accounting. I picked up a book on accounting, and I realized very quickly, I do not want to be an accountant. Oh, my God. Thank you to my accountants. Shout out to you guys, I love you because I can't do it. And then I thought about, you know, how do companies attract talent, you know, and I did a big dive on that. I was like, okay, so they post jobs online and, you know, but what happens if they can't get the right person? And I realized that there were recruitment firms out there. And I remember there was one recruitment firm that reached out to me back in the day when I was at Dell, and I was like, you know what? That might be a place to explore.

Greg Benadiba [00:04:26]:
And then I stumbled upon bilingual source, and I honed in on this company. Man, I said, you know, I speak French. I want to recruit for this company because they're the only ones that are going to give a 25 year old kid a shot in hell because of, again, the French. Because french people are hard to find here in Toronto. So I interviewed here, and I remember the manager at the time, he tried to place me. He's like, greg, you know what? Thank you so much. You're a bit junior for this job. He tried to place me and I told him, you know what, steph? I really, really appreciate your time.

Greg Benadiba [00:04:56]:
I'll be back in a month. I'd like to be a recruiter. And I did just that. And a month later, I called him up, 830 in the morning, said, stephan Duquette, this is Greg Ben Adiba. I hope you're doing well. Hope you remember me. I'm still very much interested in becoming a recruiter. And it just so happened that something had changed.

Greg Benadiba [00:05:12]:
The person had resigned. And that was my foot in the door after 8 hours of interviewing. After that, they let me in.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:19]:
Okay, so a few things. First, at 24, you had a pivot and you were just like, I need to do something in my life. Like, what got you to this point that you self analyzed to a redirection?

Greg Benadiba [00:05:31]:
So I had spoken to a lot of Big DJ's, and I realized that a lot of them were divorced, a lot of them were not married. It's hard to have that travel gig, right, where you travel from country to country and you play and you live in a hotel room. And I really thought about that for a second. I was like, you know what? I don't know if I want to do this with my life. I mean, I love the music. I love the crowd, but I might be wrong for saying this, but it's a young man's game. There are a lot of these DJ's out there that are now approaching 60 and beyond and they're hanging out with 20 year olds, right? So I don't know. I thought there was more to this life and that I could serve a greater purpose, and I believe I'm doing that.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:09]:
That's awesome. So I wanna get into this. Like, you actually called them up. Even a month later. I was like, hey, I wanna become a recruiter. You started as a recruiter. How did that start? Did you, like, hit a wall of reality? Was it exactly what you thought it was gonna be? What were some of your lessons learned that you've learned that first year that have also impacted what you're doing for the company now?

Greg Benadiba [00:06:28]:
So back then, it was an old school recruitment office. It was sink or swim. It was a bullpen, okay? It was fraught with issues. People didn't trust each other in the office. There was arguing, there was, it was, I mean, good old school recruitment firm, you know, policies, procedures, all that stuff was like, it didn't really exist all that much. And it's not the downplay, I mean it's just how the industry was back then. So I remember I started as a recruiter, I got in, we didn't have a CRM or a database or anything like that. Everybody else had, you know, the big job boards covered.

Greg Benadiba [00:07:00]:
So I actually did something interesting. I actually became everybody's recycling bin. So basically I told everybody, if there's ever a candidate that you don't want to work with, bring them to me. And so what ended up happening is I got this pile of resumes on my desk from frustrated recruiters and account executives that didn't want to work with these people. So they'd say, okay, give it to Greg. Right? And what I did was I worked the data, I looked at the resume, and I said to myself, okay, so obviously this is a problematic candidate. This is a person that nobody wants to deal with. However, not every person in that company is problematic.

Greg Benadiba [00:07:33]:
So let me sort out a way that I can add value to this particular persons life, maybe helping them improve their life. And at the same time mine referrals and eventually leads when I got into the business development side, but at first it was referrals. So id call up the candidate, id kind of ascertain whats going on. Id try to give them some tips like, hey, maybe you should do this, or have you thought of this course or this designation? You know, I really wanted to help improve that persons life even if we couldnt represent them. And I do believe in that reciprocity. I mean it's important to not just take take, you got to give. And in return I would ask, who are the people that are maybe still at that company that spoke French really well? And I got a list and that was my recruitment list. And then I'd call into the company, I press two for French and Bonjour.

Greg Benadiba [00:08:21]:
And that was that. Get their names. I'd say, you know, Benjamin, I understand I'm calling you at work. I would like to speak to you a little bit later. I'm a recruiter. I have something for you. What is your cell phone number? Oh, I can chat now. I'm at work.

Greg Benadiba [00:08:38]:
No, we have to respect your employer's time. Plus you'll be more free to speak to me after five. When are you done? 05:00 perfect. What's your cell phone? And I'd give him a call and I was generating profiles that nobody could because I was working that recycling bin angle. The data was being brought to me and then I turned it into both.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:59]:
Okay, and we're going to talk about this gold next. You became a bd machine. Bear your top biller, breaking records. I know the intake call that you were talking about. 30 to 40 perm orders per month that you're generating and really just almost like passing it out. Like how did you go from not knowing about recruiting to figuring out this goldmine of the recycle bin to being one of the top builders there?

Greg Benadiba [00:09:27]:
Yeah. And there was a lot of issues with that journey. When you're on your way to the top, you're going to make a lot of friends and you're going to make a lot of enemies internally. So there's a lot of things that you can do to help remediate that. But I'll get into more of the journey of how it was done back then. So first things first, I was monitoring the leads so the job boards. Okay. I basically made it so that, you know, I mean I was watching you, my competitor, and if you were coming in at 830, I was in here at 730 and I was getting the leads before you could even touch them.

Greg Benadiba [00:10:02]:
If you were leaving for lunch at twelve, that's exactly when I was checking for the leads because I knew you were coming back at 01:00 and I, and I was already on top of it and I was checking at 04:00 because I knew maybe you'd check at five. So basically what I did was I hogged it all. I took over every single lead because first come, first serve, right? But when it came to business development, I really looked at it as an opportunity to develop relationships. Okay. Back in the day, email was in its infancy. I mean it was there, but it wasn't what it is now. Back then, believe it or not, we used to send little info packages in the mail. So we'd put a stamp on it and we'd have a brochure with a letter.

Greg Benadiba [00:10:39]:
But I only ever sent packages or emails when I actually connected with the person speaking to people live to air. And by the way, nothing's changed. The tools have changed, everything evolves. But the relationship aspect is everything. If you're not communicating to Bei. And I know people are hard to get a hold of, I get it. But if you're not communicating with people. You're missing the mark.

Greg Benadiba [00:11:05]:
Okay, best time to do marketing. Bright and early in the morning, 08:00 a.m. 830. That's when I call a VP a manager, because guess what they're sipping on their coffee. Their day hasn't really begun. The cluster, you know what of the day hasn't really started, has it? So you're getting in when they're fresh. You're getting in before these priorities and problems happen and you're able to plant a seed. And so that was my core marketing time.

Greg Benadiba [00:11:32]:
Eight to ten, I was getting a hold of people planting seeds, and then those seeds stuck, and they came back time and time again.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:40]:
Okay, so for the recruiters that have probably been in the business for, like, a year or two now, when you say, like, sending, like, an information packet, like, what were you sending in there? And do you still send them?

Greg Benadiba [00:11:51]:
Yeah. So now it's obviously evolved. Now we have obviously, AI helping us with custom messaging in terms of really directed messaging. But I'm really old school, man. You got to think, if you want to message somebody, what problem of theirs are you looking to solve? If you can identify that and really hone in on that, then you've got something. So, with an employer, if, say, you see a position for position type, try to do a bit of research. Go look at who's maybe left the company on LinkedIn. Look within your database, see if you've got the right contender.

Greg Benadiba [00:12:25]:
They may be in your files right now. Now you're calling the employer with a candidate in mind. Benjamin, my name is Greg. I'm calling you from bilingual source. I understand that you're busy. However, I wanted to give you a call. I noticed your position for a marketing manager. I just happen to have a marketing manager that's coming out of your direct competitor.

Greg Benadiba [00:12:48]:
Now, I don't know if you use recruiters or nothing, we might be able to partner up on this one search. I've been in the business for a very long time. My firm has been in business for 40 years. Have you ever heard of bilingual soars? I would love to partner up with you on this search. I think we can fill it. And I've already got the right person for you. She is fantastic. She worked for the competition.

Greg Benadiba [00:13:08]:
Here's what she did very well. And I speak to the candidate. So you're coming in with a solution to a pre existing problem. They're going to give you the time of day. If you're calling in and saying, hi, Benjamin, I'm a recruiter. Do you have any requisitions? You're a dime a dozen at that point. I mean, you're watering the wine. I mean, you're, you're, you're a commodity.

Greg Benadiba [00:13:30]:
So how do you step outside of that commoditization is by having a grand slam offer. I'm sure you guys have read Alex Vermozzi's $100 million offers. It's one of my favorite books. I love it. He teaches that how to not become a commodity and how to position a grand slam offer. And if you're not thinking of that, you're going about it the wrong way, in my opinion.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:53]:
I love that you walked through some of your calls on this conversation already. Was there some other things that you did to become a top biller at your firm? Before we started talking about the move into, like, leadership?

Greg Benadiba [00:14:03]:
My day was airtight, not 1 second wasted. And I mean that. I was going from call to call to call to call to call, a machine in every sense of the word. If I had an offer, I was calling to make that offer. And there was a priority of sequence, so offers always took precedence. Booking a send out or an interview, prepping the candidate, speaking to an employer. You always have to be able to prioritize your calls throughout the day. Anything that was not a high value task did not get done, let's put it that way.

Greg Benadiba [00:14:32]:
You know, it went into what I call the devil's vortex. Things that you'd like to do, but you're just not going to do. Focusing in on nothing but high value activities. And I mean it. My day was airtight and I was working from like 730 in the morning till sometimes six or seven or eight, sometimes 09:00 at night to be able to do that. I finally got it to a good solid 830 to five. But I mean, planting all those seeds and then of course, working the referrals. Like whenever you're speaking to an employer.

Greg Benadiba [00:15:00]:
How many times have you spoken to an employer and failed to ask for a client referral? You know, it's like a question that I tattooed to my brain. Benjamin, I hope you've been satisfied with my service thus far. You know, as they say, birds of a feather flock together. Do you know any other employers either within or outside of your entity or corporation that may have a need for my service? You don't have to come up with an answer straight away. This may come to you at a later date. So that's something I did religiously. And all of a sudden the phone would be red hot. And I'd get referrals, obviously, based on providing great service.

Greg Benadiba [00:15:35]:
I mean, you have to provide great service. You have to walk the walk.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:38]:
So when you said that your day was airtight and you were going call to call to call, that means you probably figured out who you were going to be calling. You weren't just figuring it out as you go. Like, how did you structure that planning part so you're able to have that airtight day?

Greg Benadiba [00:15:54]:
That is a fantastic question. Proper prior planning prevents poor performance. The six p's. So back in the day, our manager, Tony, who is a phenomenal man, and I love him very much, he would actually have us plan our day in advance. And I know it's a little old school, but you couldn't leave until he signed off on your plan for the next day. So that's the environment that I grew up in, and it was great. As much as I hated it back then because they wanted to leave, you wanted to go to dinner, maybe you had a date with a girl, you couldn't leave, so you'd have to call your girl and say, listen, I'm sorry, I got another hour in here. And that's what it was.

Greg Benadiba [00:16:28]:
So on the one side, you had 100 slots for candidates that you're going to call the next day, and you had to literally write out their name and their phone number. And then on the next side, you had 50 slots for accounts that you were going to call the next day. So at first, you kind of had to do this as a punitive measure at the end of your day, if you hadn't done it before. But what I quickly discovered is that you could fill out your plan throughout the day as you're mining data. For example, how many resumes do you think you've seen, Benjamin, in your life?

Benjamin Mena [00:17:02]:
Probably millions. Hundreds. Hundreds of thousands easily.

Greg Benadiba [00:17:05]:
And that's the thing. We're all looking at resumes all day long, right? Why aren't we taking note of the companies doing a search to see who the correct hiring authorities are and then putting them on a plan for the next day? So, as you're recruiting, as you're trying to fill your assignments, as you're doing what it is that you're doing, you're looking for that data, aggregating it as your plan for the next day. It's a beautiful thing. So now you're looking at leads, job boards, things that are coming new, but you're also looking at the data, because if the candidate that you're representing is coming out of that company, then guess what? They're going to probably need your service as they need similar talent. And so what I ended up doing is filling out my plan throughout the day. While I was recruiting, when I was speaking to a person for a referral, I'd get their name, their phone number, and I'd populate my plan at the same time. Now I do it digitally, so I enter this system and this info in our CRM and. But that habit stuck is what I'm trying to say is, you know, if you look at things through that angle, you will never run out of tasks, and your day will be very, very, very focused.

Greg Benadiba [00:18:12]:
Rather than flying by the seat of your pants, which I would assume most people are doing, that was a structure.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:17]:
That you were taught. Like, what kind of structure have you taken that to now in the digital world, now that you're leading a team?

Greg Benadiba [00:18:23]:
This has evolved so much. And as a team, you know, the way that I kind of speak to my team about it is we're all coming to a potluck every single day. You know, you invite me to your house, going to bring something, right? Somebody else is going to bring something else, and we all bring something so that we can have a great meal. It's the same thing in a team. You know, we're constantly looking for leads for each other. And, like, for instance, I'll give you an example. Reference checks, right? Recruiters are doing reference checks. But if that reference check happens to be for one of my clients, and that's a hiring manager, let me do the reference, please.

Greg Benadiba [00:18:56]:
So I will then conduct the reference. I'll make a thorough reference, check happendehen, and then I'll flip the call at the end. By the way, Benjamin, I want to thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it for the reference you've given me on. You know, Joanne, before I let you go, I just wanted to let you know that I'm a professional recruiter. If you ever have a need for a person such as Joanne, and obviously she did great work, we actually source talent like this all day long, and I'd love to send you my information to be able to recruit on your behalf whenever you're struggling to come up with talent. I mean, that method right there landed me one of my biggest clients, so that's not to be understated.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:34]:
Love that. Now I want to kind of get into the climb. So you started off as a recruiter, then you became an account executive. Most people stop there. What was your inspiration? To even look at going farther yeah, good question.

Greg Benadiba [00:19:54]:
And I'm going to be brutally honest with you. Okay. I was a kid, so I was 28, 29 years old. Probably a bigger ego than necessary at that time. I wanted to be a manager. I wanted to be a manager, probably at first for the wrong reasons. You know, I wanted to be a manager for the title, the prestige, to be able to say, I'm a manager. But I really did enjoy teaching.

Greg Benadiba [00:20:17]:
I mean, that's something that I always loved. So it kind of combined. Later on, I discovered through my leadership journey that managing has nothing to do about you. You have to be a servant leader, and that's what makes the best leaders, leaders that are truly there to serve their team. My team is my number one customer. They know it, and they can feel it in every single interaction. But the climb was actually pretty straightforward. So, I mean, if, you know, if I were an account executive today, somebody who's running a 360 desk trying to figure out whether or not I want to be a manager, right? First question I'd ask myself is, why do I want to lead? Why? Because, I'll be frank with you, you could probably bill a heck of a lot more without having to lead a team.

Greg Benadiba [00:20:59]:
Leading a team takes time, takes energy, takes away from your day. Let's be real. You could be making more placements. So why do you want to lead? And if you can't answer that question, don't do it. Don't do it. The only reason you should want to lead is because you truly take a great deal of pleasure from leading others to success. And if that's not you, that's okay, man. It's okay.

Greg Benadiba [00:21:24]:
Not everybody was born to lead, and that's fine. But some people were. So if that's you and you really think that you want to see other people succeed, then you might have the right makeup to become a leader. How do you do it? How do you go from working 360 to become a manager? Right. Fake it till you make it. So, here's what I mean by that. You have to be the leader in your behavior from the get go so that the powers that be can see you as that person. So you have to model that behavior.

Greg Benadiba [00:22:05]:
What does that mean? It means helping other people around you. Those who are struggling help them succeed. Walking up to their desk, showing them a new way to search. If somebody's struggling on something, being that vibe, you know, that energy in the company, that sort of energy that brings everybody up. And the moment you do that, you will be regarded as a leader. You have to be patient. It ain't going to happen overnight. But you will inevitably become the leader.

Greg Benadiba [00:22:35]:
Changing processes, policies. I mean, that's one big thing that I did when I was junior. I mean, like I said, this office was truly one of a rudimentary old school recruitment firm. I came in and I established rules, protocols. At first, not officially, but I banded the team together to say, okay, guys, instead of us fighting internally, why don't we just set up rules around candidates? So, Benjamin, if you've talked to this person in the last three months, I don't touch him. I let you know he's on the market, pass them to you. We don't need to fight. We can do a whole lot better working together than trying to stab each other in the back.

Greg Benadiba [00:23:11]:
This was back then. Now organizations have these principles, protocols, processes in place. But that's one example of a leader in the making, somebody who leads without a title until they get the title.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:23]:
Did you start that? Or let me ask you this. Did you go have a conversation with the CEO or the president? This is where I want to become. Or did you start doing this, like, all these actions, and then later on you started having these discussions?

Greg Benadiba [00:23:40]:
It is always best not to ask. In my opinion, behave as the leader and you will become the leader. Okay. Whether it be inside or outside of your organization. Okay. So what are the books that you've read on leadership? What are the books that you've grown with on leadership principles and becoming a great manager? Right? Get that done first. You know, the only thing that I can tell you is the way that it happened for me is we went into the recession of 0809, right? The financial meltdown. That created an opportunity because a couple of managers left.

Greg Benadiba [00:24:19]:
They went on to do their own things. One of them had another search firm. The other one went on to HR management, and I was the next one. So I was the next guy on the bench with the skills to do the job. So it was offered to me and I took it with a great deal of joy.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:38]:
Okay, recession. I mean, recession is a scary thing, and it could be hard. How did you get help as kind of like an early level manager or frontline account executive? How did you help that firm get through that first recession that you were part of there with?

Greg Benadiba [00:24:59]:
I led by example, and I still do till to this day. Okay. In a recessionary timeframe, you have to work twice as hard for half. It's hard. And you have to be mentally there. Can't get down on yourself. You have to be even keel. You know, when the times are good.

Greg Benadiba [00:25:15]:
You can't get too high on yourself thinking you're a great recruiter when the times are bad. You can't get too down on yourself. You need to be like this level line throughout all the waves of life. So all I did during that time is I came in and I was a good vibe, and I said, listen, guys, not going to be making as many placements, but we should be making the same amount, if not more phone calls. And that's what I did. And I led in that way. I said, here, pick up the phone. Let's go.

Greg Benadiba [00:25:44]:
And believe it or not, we made placements. I mean, planet Earth was on a hiring freeze. I mean, in the news was like, is bank of America going to be around? You know, Morgan Stanley is done. Lehman Brothers is already toast. Like, do you remember? Like, this was crazy, right? It was like end of the world stuff. I said to myself, okay, so it's either we're all going to go down, but I ain't going to go down without trying. And try we did. We called and called and called and called, and we spoke to employers and we figured out what was going on.

Greg Benadiba [00:26:15]:
And most companies were on a global hiring freeze, but we still managed to find opportunities. So, Benjamin, I understand your company and parent is on a global hiring freeze. You have this one opening. I happen to have an absolute superstar. So maybe you could do this in a roundabout way where it's not under the traditional preferred vendor agreement. Why don't you just put this on the side as a different kind of expenditure? I don't know how you guys can work it, but we've got the right person for you. And she'd be a shoe, and she lives five minutes from your office. We were hyper focused on matchmaking.

Greg Benadiba [00:26:51]:
Correct, matchmaking. And, I mean, I'm not going to say we thrived during that time. It was brutal, but we still made placements. I remember my worst month was March of 2009, and I build. I built, like, 15k. Was horrible. Terrible. But what a learning lesson, you know? I mean, if you can make it through that time, mentally, you're stronger.

Greg Benadiba [00:27:14]:
It's like lifting weights, right? You get stronger the more pain you go through. I mean, that pain was a great teacher. It made me become very humble very quickly and get back to basics. And those basics were connecting with people, building relationships, and then fast forward from.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:34]:
You being the manager of recruiting and business development to that vice president level. Was it conversations? Was it the size of the organization? How did you make that manager to executive jump?

Greg Benadiba [00:27:48]:
It was the president at the time. Again, very methodical, very well planned 40 year recruiter. I mean, he's very gifted at what he does. Patient, observant, and, you know, you've got to know when you're going to promote somebody to that level. Take your time, really get to know them. And you can only know somebody through their actions. You know, words. Words are only as good as the actions that are behind them.

Greg Benadiba [00:28:14]:
But I delivered time and time again. I led the team. I wasn't expecting it, to be honest. It was a surprise. I was shocked when it happened. But that's when I became the VP. I was given that position, which at the time was a new position. It hadn't existed.

Greg Benadiba [00:28:29]:
And I think this kind of went down with the sort of idea that I had. As a leader in a recruitment firm, you always have to be developing other leaders. Always. And that's all I've ever done. I like to develop other leaders around me because it takes the weight off one person. You know, when one person has to manage 1520 people, they're stretched, then their patience levels are not there, especially if they're working a desk and they become ineffective. Right. And I saw that live to air.

Greg Benadiba [00:28:55]:
I mean, I witnessed that firsthand. So, you know, my whole premise was, why don't we develop other leaders, make other people lead. And that was foundational for our company. That's what really helped us propel into growth, is having other leaders to kind of level out the weight and the responsibility of leadership, but also being able to serve our employees in a better manner. Training, answering questions, methodologies. When you're not spread too thin, you can offer them the great service that they would come to expect from a world class search firm.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:34]:
So I want to take this direction. A lot of times, a recruiter literally looks up and they don't see an opportunity to climb.

Greg Benadiba [00:29:42]:
Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:29:43]:
Or maybe it's just like they don't see an opportunity to climb soon. Or it's been told that there is no opportunity. So often they go start their own firm. Did you ever have that in the back of your head? Like, maybe I should go start my own firm? And why did you chase the mission of bilingual source in those times?

Greg Benadiba [00:30:03]:
You know, I'm an extremely risk averse person, but at the same time, I'm not afraid to take bold action. But when I do take bold action, it's all premeditated. I love playing chess, by the way. Do you do play chess?

Benjamin Mena [00:30:16]:
It's fun.

Greg Benadiba [00:30:16]:
It's fun. I love playing chess. It's one of my favorite games. So I thought about it. I mean, who doesn't, right? What is it going to take to open your own search for? What are the steps? What are the things you need to do? That's a lot of work, opening your own search firm. I mean, you're now chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, CEO, chief recruiter, chief business development rep, chief integration officer, receptionist. You're everything, right? Again, for me, that's not what I wanted. Okay.

Greg Benadiba [00:30:50]:
I'm also a very loyal person. And, you know, I just thought to myself, I'm going to put it all in here. I had the opportunity. Now, if somebody's in a search for right now and they're not seeing that opportunity for growth, my question is, how long have they been waiting? A lot of people become impatient, as you know, Benjamin, and patience is something you need for big, bold moves like this. So if you're thinking in the last six months, I've been looking to get promoted and it hasn't happened yet, I'd say to you, give it more time. Right? If it's been years and you're still not seeing any movement, it might be time to explore. Okay. But you also have to look at the macros.

Greg Benadiba [00:31:27]:
I mean, how old are the leaders that are within your firm? Are they approaching retirement? Don't be stupid. I mean, maybe they are. Maybe there's going to be change again. Change is the only constant that I know for a fact. Right. So you just have to be at the right place, right time. And is the risk of making a change in moving to another organization or even going into another, like creating your own corporation, is that going to propel you to where you want to be? I don't know. It's a tough decision, but all I can tell you is do it with a great deal of conscience.

Greg Benadiba [00:32:01]:
Forgive me, that's what I would do. I would do it with a great deal of conscience. And make sure that you've mapped out everything appropriately. There's nothing wrong with going and interviewing with people. There's nothing wrong with going and speaking to other companies. In fact, I'd recommend it. I'd recommend it because then you're opening yourself up. You see what else is possible, and then you have contrast by which to make your decision.

Greg Benadiba [00:32:24]:
Am I going to stay put? Is this the right place for me? Or are there options out there that severely outweigh this one?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:34]:
And then looking at that next last step, you've now made it to the president of this firm that you've been at for 19 years. Blood, sweat equity, tears. How did you make that jump from executive level to now running the search firm?

Greg Benadiba [00:32:51]:
I think, again, it all has to do with timing. The president and GM had reached a point where he had served his time. 40 year veteran. That move was not one that was premeditated in any way. I patiently waited, and it came my way. The universe has a funny way of giving us what it is that we seek, so long as we're patient enough to receive it. That's an important principle, and I believe it wholeheartedly. I've seen it time and time again.

Greg Benadiba [00:33:20]:
Right. I mean, there's too much proof in that pudding.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:23]:
How long did you seek that president level?

Greg Benadiba [00:33:26]:
To be honest, I didn't even know that I wanted it. Yeah, I think anybody that really wants that top chair, are they sure? You know, like, I mean, I thought about these guys in the states running for presidency, even here for prime minister in Canada. I'm like, are you serious? You want that job? Like, I don't know if any sane person really wants that job. The responsibility and the weight of the presidency was something that was given to me with a great deal of authority, again, because I demonstrated the responsibility, the behaviors, the attributes of a good leader. I also think that going into this technological age, it was prudent for my predecessor to give me this role because I'm very technologically adept. And that's proven to be a very wise move because we have evolved quite a bit since the beginning.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:24]:
So you're now the president. You're helping build this organization, the future of the organization, an organization that's already been around for 40 years now. But to really help keep the organization going, you have to find great recruiters. What does a great recruiter look like? What does a great salesperson look like, and how do you find them?

Greg Benadiba [00:34:45]:
That's a great question. It's such a multifaceted topic. First things first. I typically don't look for people with recruitment experience. I think you've heard that before time and time again. It's as true today as it'll ever be. Some of the best recruiters I've been able to develop, and again, I like developing them, because a lot of times when you hire a recruiter, you're having to erase a whole bunch of bad habits and reframe them into new ones, especially the way we do things here. And I've hired recruiters out of recruitment firms that say, holy smokes, I thought I was a recruiter.

Greg Benadiba [00:35:16]:
But when I come here, I understand what recruitment truly is. I mean, it's night and day. And I'm thinking to myself, like, how are these guys in business if this is what their recruiters are doing? I just don't get it. You know, the attributes are pretty straightforward. You know, great recruiters are persistent. They're curious. They love asking questions because they want to know. They're resilient as hell, man.

Greg Benadiba [00:35:37]:
Punch me. They say, thank you. And now I know how to block resilient. You can take me down, but you can't take me out. I mean, that's the mentality. That's what you need in order to be a successful recruiter. And a lot of people think they're resilient. So you have to really probe on that to understand what kind of resilience they've been through in their life.

Greg Benadiba [00:35:58]:
You know, what kind of adversity they've gone through. You know, it's a key interview question for a recruiter. You know, Benjamin, Ben, you can't do this, as the first question has to be in the meat and potatoes of the call or the interview when it's warmed up. What are some of the greatest challenges you've faced, either professionally or personally, in your life? What are some of the biggest things that you've suffered through? And feel free to share. I hope you can be open. And then I listen. What kind of crap has this person been through? If their hardest thing was their last exam for their university degree, that's not going to cut it. I want to know what kind of pain this person's been through, because then that'll tell you how resilient they truly are.

Greg Benadiba [00:36:38]:
I typically hire people that didn't come from very well to do families, not saying there's anything wrong with those people. So those people are fantastic. It's just recruitment's a grind. I don't come from a well to do family at all. Very low, low, low middle class family. But that's what it takes. You need somebody that has that grit, somebody who's going to work hard, no entitlement. And last but not least, the growth mindset.

Greg Benadiba [00:37:05]:
I look for people that have a growth mindset. So what does that actually mean? Key question. You know, Benjamin, what are some of the last books you've read? What podcasts do you listen to? What audiobooks have you listened to? And then I ask them to describe them to me. I want to see if they've actually taken any information from them or if they're giving me surface level stuff. So I go deep, because now I know I've got somebody with a growth, mindset, communication skills. And then from there, I like them in office. I'm old school. I know a lot of people are doing this remote.

Greg Benadiba [00:37:35]:
I like them right here because then they can hear me. And I have my door open all day. It's closed right now, but usually it's open every day, all day. I want them to hear every single call. This is how I learned. You know, recruitment is a language. How are you going to learn language? Like, if, if I was going to say, okay, today you're going to learn Spanish, Benjamin. You could do it online if you were really, really good, but it would be much better if you were in Spain and had no choice.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:00]:
I mean, I'm trying to learn French and I suck at it, like doing anything Duolingo or, you know, jump speak. But every time I go to France, I'm like, oh, okay, this makes sense.

Greg Benadiba [00:38:12]:
Yeah. Recruitment is a language. You have to learn it. You have to be submersed in it. Don't get me wrong, after four years, three years, once you've got those training wheels off, you're not a rookie anymore. You understand what you're doing. Fine. Hybrid or remote, I get that.

Greg Benadiba [00:38:24]:
But even then, I think you're missing out. There's so many interactions that happen in a recruitment office, live to air, that can't happen remote. Let me give you an example. Back in the day, me and this one guy, Louie, phenomenal recruiter. He's now actually this sleepy skunk. So he does movie trailers and reviews. He moved to California. Great guy.

Greg Benadiba [00:38:43]:
But I remember me and Louie, man, there was no vibe like it. Like literally live to air. I had a client on the line. I was picking up the assignment. And the way that I would pick it up was me actually communicating with Louie because Louie was sitting right there and he was literally live to air going through his files as I was picking up. Okay, so, ma'am, you want this? Oh, you want that? Okay, so what about this? And then he'd go, what location do you need them in office? And so I was actually asking questions live to air in tandem with Louie so he could then pull out the file and give me the candidate. And so I'd say, okay, ma'am, you know what? I have some great news for you straight away, I believe I have the right person for the job. And I'd flip open the resume and I'd start pitching the candidate live to air.

Greg Benadiba [00:39:28]:
And agreements came back signed. I had a send out before the agreement was even signed. Placement. Placement. Placement. Placement. That can't be done. How are you gonna do that? Remote.

Greg Benadiba [00:39:40]:
How?

Benjamin Mena [00:39:41]:
Let me slack this message over and wait 35 minutes.

Greg Benadiba [00:39:45]:
It's impossible. So this is. It's like, I don't know. I just. I'm an old school guy. I'm a fan of the office. Even in Covid, I went nuts, man. My wife, like, she was like, you're gonna go to the office.

Greg Benadiba [00:39:56]:
You're gonna get us all sick. I'm like, I'm the only person in the building. Let me go to the office. And I did. I lasted three weeks in my basement. That's all.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:04]:
I love that. Well, for anybody else looking at a future, climb to the top like you've done, what advice would you give to them outside of the stuff that you've already shared?

Greg Benadiba [00:40:16]:
Again, whenever you want to attain a target, no matter what that target is, you have to look at the target, see where you are today, and then figure out what you're missing. And nowadays, you have all kinds of tools, like information is crazy. You can go into a perplexity AI, which is a great search AI tool, and query it. I am a 360 degree, full time permanent recruiter. My goal is to lead teams. Please give me the list of best podcasts to listen to, best YouTube channels to subscribe to, best books to read on leadership and recruitment. Query that. Then you've got to integrate it into your day.

Greg Benadiba [00:41:04]:
We're all creatures of habit and routine. My routine is very straightforward. I get up at 05:00 in the morning. I meditate for 20 minutes. It helps me clear my mind, settle the brain so that I can have the patience to have a family, an operation, all the problems that hit us. You need to build that bus. Then I go to the gym, straight up, get out of the gym, come home, read for 20 minutes. I'm all fired up.

Greg Benadiba [00:41:29]:
Read, shower, get ready, walk to work. I could drive, but I like the walk. It's a nice 20 minutes walk. I can listen to an audiobook. I love audible. I got a huge collection there. So every morning you have to integrate learning into your morning. You can't just read a book and then not read.

Greg Benadiba [00:41:46]:
And then read a little bit and then not read. That's not as effective as if you did it every single day. Like, you want to get fit for that vacation. You're going to train for a month. You think you're going to get there? I don't think so. You got to integrate it into your routine just like anything else. So learning and development, it's number one. You are what you think about most of the time, you cannot develop as a person as well with the current set of information that you possess without the correct input.

Greg Benadiba [00:42:18]:
Input determines output. The books that I've read have deeply influenced me. And when I read a book, I'll be honest with you, I don't just read it once, I read it multiple times. A lot of people say, oh, I read 50 books a year. That's great. It's all fantastic. Give me a list of the things that you've implemented as a result. Usually you get a deer in the headlights kind of look there, right.

Greg Benadiba [00:42:40]:
It doesn't matter what you read. What matters is what you're doing with it. So my policy is very simple. I reread the book until I've implemented everything. I know it's a little crazy, but that's. That's the way I've approached things.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:54]:
What's the book that you've spent the most amount of time reading told? It's been implemented.

Greg Benadiba [00:42:59]:
Oh, boy. Sometimes my wife thinks I'm possibly autistic, and I don't say that as a joke. I mean, my son's autistic, but she thinks I might partially be because I reread the same stuff over and over again until it's locked for me. I don't know what it is. It's just that's the way I am. The compound effect by Darren Hardy. I've read that book like a hundred times. And for me, the reason why I reread it is because I hadn't implemented everything that he gave in that book.

Greg Benadiba [00:43:24]:
It's a really thin book, too. It's not very long, actually. Darren Hardy is a great coach of mine. I've seen him at his personal conferences. I've gone into his leadership conferences in San Diego several times now. Great coach of mine. I love Derek. That book teaches you about setting yourself up for success, really, like how to create habits, your gyroscope.

Greg Benadiba [00:43:47]:
What happens when you get off track? How do you get back on track? What is the tool and mechanism that you're going to use to do that? So he teaches something called the weekly rhythm register. It's actually a really simple piece of paper. So simple, in fact, that most people can't do it. It's funny. It's a list of things that you need to adhere to on a weekly basis. Quadrant, Monday to Sunday. Here's what I promised myself I'd be doing. And then you basically have to go and check it off at the end of the week.

Greg Benadiba [00:44:13]:
Like a little mini audit, which you do every single Sunday. And I do it every single Sunday religiously. And it's a very simple thing. But what it really does is it forces a mirror upon you. You know, am I doing the things that I said I was going to do long after the mood I first set it in has left me. Right. We've all seen the gym Jan one. Right.

Greg Benadiba [00:44:34]:
How is it in June? Right. So that's a book that's influenced me greatly. A similar book to that is atomic habits by James clear. It's a good book. Similar, again, how to install a habit, how to make it routine. Simpler than you think. You just got to force through the initial kind of difficulties, but you can make things routine. Leadership.

Greg Benadiba [00:44:54]:
I love Dave Ramsey. Entre leadership. You guys might know Dave Ramsey. He's the guy that talks about money and not getting in debt, how to get out of debt. It's great. But his take on leadership is fantastic. Entrez leadership is a fantastic book. I've got it both on audio and in writing.

Greg Benadiba [00:45:14]:
You know, I really like audiobooks that, you know, that are read by the author and not somebody else because you can hear the tone with which they make their point. And a lot is communicated in tonality that I believe is very important. One that I read recently, and I'm rereading again and again, is your next five moves by Patrick Bette. David, that guy's been through hell. I mean, he tells his story. You know, when you want to talk about success, you wouldn't imagine. I mean, he was, I think he was eight years old when his family was escaping Lebanon or Armenia. I think it was forget right now, but a bridge got blown up right when his father had driven over the bridge and he was looking behind him.

Greg Benadiba [00:45:54]:
Boom. Like, I mean, that's how they escaped the country. Like, he made it out alive by, like, the skin of his teeth. And his story is inspirational, man. One exercise that's within that book is called the personal identity audit. Man, I did that identity audit, and I'm going to tell you something. I'm not a guy that cries, but I cried. I mean, it's, it was worth 10,000 sessions with a therapist.

Greg Benadiba [00:46:17]:
I've never sat in front of a therapist, but I can tell you that this would hold its weight in gold in really determining who you are. And doing that identity audit will make you a better leader. Not only that, he talks a lot about how to manage teams and how to compensate them, too. Compensation is always an issue when it comes to people. How do you compensate them fairly? How do you make sure that it's transparent, so that the entire organization knows, and there's never any preferential treatment, anything that's important. Transparency is very important to me. And last but not least is principles by Ray Dalio. I mean, that book has really reshaped the way I think.

Greg Benadiba [00:46:51]:
I have principles stapled all over my wall. I love Ray Dalio. He doesn't know me, but if he's ever listening. Thank you, Ray, for what you've done. I can tell you that man knows a lot, and we owe a great deal to that book. It's really reshaped the way that I go about doing things.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:07]:
Awesome. Well, before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything else that you want to share on some of the things that we covered?

Greg Benadiba [00:47:13]:
No, I think we're ready to go. I mean, unless you have any other questions. No.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:17]:
Let's jump right in.

Greg Benadiba [00:47:18]:
Okay, let's do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:19]:
You have a brand new recruiter that's walking into your office, no recruiting experience at all. What would you tell them on how to be successful in our industry?

Greg Benadiba [00:47:27]:
Don't give up. First things first. Don't give up. There were many times as a junior recruiter where I had 1ft in the bed, 1ft out the bed. Even though I sought this profession out, I had 1ft in the bed, 1ft outside of the bed, thinking, am I going to go back to take punches again and again and again all day? All I can tell you is you only fail when you quit. Don't give up. Okay? The rest, you got to be consistent, persistent, and learn from the best. Go take the best recruiters out to lunch.

Greg Benadiba [00:47:55]:
Slice of pizza, $5. What's made you successful as a recruiter? What are some tips, tricks? Do that. And nowadays, like, look, we've got podcasts. We've got so much information in the world. I mean, it's. It's. How much can people learn from listening to your show? It's a beautiful thing. We've got people sharing the wealth of wisdom that they have.

Greg Benadiba [00:48:15]:
All you have to do is be patient enough to listen. And if you can do that and make it a habit, you'll be successful. Just don't give up.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:25]:
Kind of the same question, but for, let's just say you've got a recruiter that's been in part of the organization for, like, a good decade. Consistent. Great. Biller is having a down here.

Greg Benadiba [00:48:34]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:35]:
What advice would you give them?

Greg Benadiba [00:48:37]:
First, I'd like to try to find out why. You know, sometimes there are external factors I really like to get to know my senior guys as best as I can. There could be issues at home. There could be things that are throwing them off. It's not necessarily that they don't have the skill. It's just something's off. So you have to take a great deal of care and try and understand what that is and see if you can maybe help advise to help remediate that issue. If you can do that, we'll get them back on the path to success.

Greg Benadiba [00:49:06]:
If the person has no personal issues and nothing's going on, it's just they're having a down time. There could be a couple things. One, they could be getting away from the basics. So a lot of senior guys think that they can get away from the basics that got them to success in the first place. It's a natural occurrence. It happens to us all. You know, I still have checklists, man, for everything I do. When I make an offer, I've got a checklist.

Greg Benadiba [00:49:29]:
When I'm picking up a search assignment, I've got a checklist. When I'm preparing a candidate for an interview, I've got a checklist. You know why? Because I don't remember everything. How can you? Come on, we're not robots. You're not going to remember it all. So if you're not, like, if your process is not properly checklisted and you don't have beautiful checklists for you and your team to follow, then you're leaving things to chance. And I think that leaves you open to losing to either the competition or technology down the road. And that's going to change quite a bit.

Greg Benadiba [00:50:00]:
So back to basics. Now, what if the basics are being done so that senior person, they are doing the basics. Now, we might have a bout of disbelief, and we all go through this in our minds. Self doubt creeps in with that imposter syndrome. Am I really this person? Who do I think I am? I'm no good at this. These thoughts creep into our mind. And funny, I just had a chat with my business development associate yesterday. He asked me the same thing.

Greg Benadiba [00:50:27]:
He's like, how do I get through this? Because it's a tough time right now. I said, you know, fear and doubt are existing in your mind today, rent free. Why? They don't pay the rent a. What pays the rent is self belief and action. And the moment you have fear, self doubt, your amygdala is responding, your cortisol levels are high, and how are you going to go into great thinking and what I call flow state? When you get into a flow state of work there was. Sometimes you do work for 90 minutes and it feels like it was 20 and you got so much done. Sometimes you go into work and you're like, oh, my God, this is a grind. And you look and it's only been 15 minutes, you're like, whoa.

Greg Benadiba [00:51:09]:
You're in this different state of mind and so you have to release that stress. You have to get to a point. That's why I like meditation. You have to get to that point where you can get into that flow state and start to do the work necessary to get to success. And then little successes will come. Placement, placement, placement. And then your confidence is back. And sometimes you need somebody to hold your hand through that process.

Greg Benadiba [00:51:36]:
And that's what it takes to be a great leader. You have to care. I love all the placements I've made in my life, but there's nothing more important to me than seeing the people that I've helped grow buy not one, but two houses, have two cars, be able to take vacations. Like, I think at the end of the day, that gives me a greater deal of joy than anything else. Seeing others succeed, that's what you really need to be, to be a great leader, in my opinion.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:05]:
And you were just talking about placements. What's working right now when it comes to bd in sales?

Greg Benadiba [00:52:11]:
A whole variety of things. The tools have evolved. Man, these tools are incredible. I use this Apollo system. I don't know if you've ever seen it. Apollo IO, great tool. By the way, their customer service is amazing. I'd really give a shout out to Apollo.

Greg Benadiba [00:52:25]:
We integrate that with zabier into our database, into bullhorn. I. You can get the contacts very easily now. You can get their emails very easily now. So that challenge is over. But the truth is, if you're not connecting with them on a one on one basis, you're missing the mark. I had one employer say to me very recently, it's because you called and spoke to me that I'm going to give you the search. I get ten of these emails a day.

Greg Benadiba [00:52:55]:
I spend minutes archiving, blocking and putting them into my spam to make sure that they can't get to me ever again. We are all fighting this war, right? Everybody gets. I mean, how many blasts do you get? I get all kinds of stuff, right? All day long, right. Every morning I go in and unsubscribe. Like, that's what it is. You do the unsubscribe thing, right? But he said, because I called, so if everybody's going left, you got to be the black sheep. You got to go right. That's what you got to be.

Greg Benadiba [00:53:21]:
And that's where the real meat and potatoes is. How can you sell without understanding what the problem is? You can't. You can't sell a solution if you don't understand what the true issue is. So to have discovery is to communicate, and that can't be done on email. Email is a great tool. It's good for setting up organizations. But, like, think of this call. If you and I had to email back and forth, we would have cut this short a long time ago.

Greg Benadiba [00:53:49]:
It's got to be done live to air, right? So that's my number one tip. That's what's going to work. So finding a way to get people live to air. Now, if people aren't calling you back, so let's just say, you know, you're a business development rep, you're not getting calls back. Greg, I'd love to get them on the phone. They're just, they're not giving me the time of day. Why don't you go about it a different way, okay. These days you can query GPT, so create a prompt.

Greg Benadiba [00:54:14]:
So let's prompt GPT, put in the company that you're looking to target URL and prompt GPT with something like this. I'm looking to target this organization. I'm in talent acquisition. What do you suspect are some of the greatest challenges an organization such as this one, in this current market condition might be facing? What are the top three challenges? Beautiful. Now you've got the challenges. Research those challenges. GPT is not always right, so you've got to make sure you know your stuff. Now you've got an idea of what they may be suffering through.

Greg Benadiba [00:54:45]:
You've kind of preemptively, through research, tried to figure out what exactly I should be selling to. Now, you can come in with an informed opinion, so give you an example. One client, what we did was, you know, and this could be used by anybody we thought to ourselves. And, you know, I'm sure this is dawned on you as well. These hiring managers have done a lot of hiring, but they've nothing done as much hiring as we have, that's for sure. I can tell you that with a great deal of certainty. We've interviewed a heck of a lot more people than any of the people we're dealing with on the client side, for the most part. Teacher recruitment course.

Greg Benadiba [00:55:18]:
So an interviewing course. Build a course and offer it to that company. Say, Benjamin, we'd like to offer you a free 1 hour interviewing session where we can teach all of your hiring managers better interviewing practices on how to be able to solidify and identify a talent. Key characteristical questions that can help weed out people that are not walking the walk. And this will help you with your retention rate and more importantly, with upholding and maintaining the talent density of your corporation. I offer this to you free of charge. If you ever want to take me up on it, let me know. It works.

Greg Benadiba [00:55:58]:
It works. All of a sudden, you've got a 1 hour meeting with eight hiring managers who are looking at you as an authority, which you are. You've just made eight marketing calls in one. I'm sure they'll bite. That's quite the worm. I mean, this fish is going to bite.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:16]:
I absolutely love that.

Greg Benadiba [00:56:19]:
Why not? We're good at it. I mean, don't get me wrong. You're going to have to do your research. You're going to have to figure out what the top questions are, how you would answer them, but you got to make it like a really interesting presentation. We've done that for a few employers now, and now they're almost exclusive to us. Hiring managers slowly but surely are saying, you know what? I don't know if I want to deal with this other recruiter, that guy Greg. I mean, he knew what he was talking about. Who would I want interviewing my talent?

Benjamin Mena [00:56:42]:
Gold nugget tip. If you're in the middle of your run, write that one down.

Greg Benadiba [00:56:47]:
Stop before writing.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:50]:
At least during my run, I actually have, like, one. I talk into my watch and it saves it for afterwards.

Greg Benadiba [00:56:54]:
Yeah, that's good, Siri. Siri is going to evolve, which I'm looking forward to as well. I've heard good things, so we'll be able to do much more, because up until now, Siri has been missing the mark.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:06]:
You know, you've had a lot of ups and downs. Like you had a major career pivot. At the age of 24, you've grown to the top of your organization. What do you think? To your core has been one of the major reasons why you've had success.

Greg Benadiba [00:57:22]:
Being mindful of my ego barrier, it's something that I learned from Ray Dalio. It's one of the principles in his book, be mindful of your ego barrier. I became the person that I am today when I truly graduated from serving myself to actually serving others. And that's been my methodology ever since. Even coming into this call today, I was ready. I came to serve you and your audience. When I serve my clients, I want to make sure that I'm the absolute best when it comes to customer service. We are all serving each other at the end of the day.

Greg Benadiba [00:57:54]:
And the more you realize that, it's not about you, it's about them. You're now locking into the right place, the right thinking, the right methodology. People can feel it, too. Like when you're representing a candidate or a client and you truly have their best interests at heart. It's in the quality of questions you ask. It's in the mannerism. It's the way you do things. Just this morning, we had this one candidate on the line.

Greg Benadiba [00:58:20]:
He has an accounting background, but he didn't want to do accounting. I discovered that 2030 minutes into the call, he really wanted to be an investment. So we had an accounting opportunity. We were pitching him, and he said, you know, I'd still like to go for that. I said, no, I don't think that that's wise. The reason why is that's not going to be conducive to what you really want to do. He was shocked. But that person can sense that I truly care, and I so happen to have an investment opportunity that will suit him.

Greg Benadiba [00:58:47]:
So I'm going to set him up for success there. Right. There's a reason why he doesn't want accounting is because he likes dealing with people. And typically in accounting roles, it's very inward face. Right. You don't really interact. So he's too social to be an accountant, but he's got a really good accounting background, right. So he's very adept.

Greg Benadiba [00:59:03]:
So I think when you care about people and you're looking to serve their best interest and the amount of stuff that comes your way as a result of it, it's amazing.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:11]:
Just serve others first on this lesson to the top. What has been one of the hardest lessons that you have learned along the way?

Greg Benadiba [00:59:22]:
Hiring the wrong people. Oh, boy. It was brutal, Mandy. It was brutal. I've been through hell when it came to hiring the wrong people. You know, it's funny, it's ironic, because we're recruiters. We recruit for everybody else. When it comes to recruiting for ourselves, we sometimes are terrible at it.

Greg Benadiba [00:59:38]:
You've got to know what's actually going to work. Listen to your gut. There's so many times where I've walked away thinking, you know, I don't know, and then I've kind of sold myself on why they could be a good fit, bad move, very bad move with a whole deal of consequences. Trust the little voice inside of you. That gut instinct fail to do so at your own peril. Never make a hiring decision on the first day. Always sleep on it. Whatever your gut is telling you in the morning is usually right.

Greg Benadiba [01:00:15]:
And if it's a no, it's a no. I don't care if you've got an empty seat. I don't care if you need to grow. I don't care if you're being pushed. I don't care. Doesn't matter. You got to say no. You have to stick to a model of people that are going to help you grow your firm, that are going to increase the median value of your talent density.

Greg Benadiba [01:00:37]:
So what does that mean? Listen, you put a B player on an a team, all the a players are looking at you thinking you can't spot this B player. Does that mean you can even recognize that I'm an a? Your leadership comes as a question immediately. You're setting them up to fail. You're gonna hurt that person. Even if they want the job, it's best to decline them and point them in another direction. Stand firm on what you're looking for. The greatest pain I've ever been through is the long list of people that I shouldn't have hired to begin with, and I suffered a great deal as a result of it. And I'm sure this speaks to a lot of people.

Greg Benadiba [01:01:10]:
So write down what it is that you're looking for. Every time you've made a hiring mistake, you have to do the in depth work to crystallize a principle out of it. So when we stumble and we fall, we have to do the work of figuring out where we fell. Otherwise, we may run the risk of falling again. So I've made a number of mistakes, and every single time, I take the time to actually crystallize another learning lesson, and I add it to my process. So, processes are always evolving, and you have to. You have to be modular about it. Meaning, like, you have to kind of add things to it along the way.

Greg Benadiba [01:01:44]:
I'll give you an example. I had one guy that I hired who I was hiring on a remote basis back in Covid when we were doing that. Great guy. I want to speak badly. The guy, he's a good guy, but I didn't know that he was a nervous wreck. And what I mean by that is, he was a chain smoker. And the only time I knew this is when I finally met him to kind of give him his equipment right for the house. He was shaking, and I was like, whoa, is this guy just nervous or what's wrong? He was literally shaking like f.

Greg Benadiba [01:02:12]:
But I realized it's because his central nervous system was shot. Because he was a heavy, heavy, heavy smoker. Like this guy must have been smoking a lot eventually into our friendship, because I did make friends with him. I coached him on how to get away from cigarettes and pushed him in that direction. But what I learned as a principal there, don't hire anybody ever that you haven't met face to face at least once. I don't care if they're in another city and you're doing this remote, fly them into your city and do it live to air. That's the way I would do it. So again, that's one learning lesson.

Greg Benadiba [01:02:41]:
That's one little thing that I've taken from all the pain outside of that lesson.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:47]:
If you had the chance to look back on your career at bilingual source and pick a point in time and give yourself advice, what point would you pick and what advice would you say?

Greg Benadiba [01:02:57]:
Oh, it would be right. When I became a manager, I would give myself the advice to get crystal clear on what makes a great recruiter and don't deviate no matter what. I can't tell you how much suffering I've been through with respect to that topic. As an account executive, don't work with b clients. Only a clients. You know, working with you should be regarded as a privilege because you are going to work very long hours to come up with the right talent. If you're taking on a b search, and by b, I mean a search that has five other recruitment agencies, you haven't secured the exclusive. The client's not responsive.

Greg Benadiba [01:03:35]:
Seems like not a very nice person. Why are you going to go and place somebody there? You know what's going to happen? They're not going to make it. If they're going to leave and say, you place me in the dock, what are you doing to me? Right. Don't work with b clients. And on the candidate side, same thing, man. Work with people that you would want to hire yourself. At the end of the day, you're looking to command a fee for those people. Then why would you submit somebody that you wouldn't hire yourself? So again, comes back to inward thinking and making sure that you're being true to yourself and you're not doing things for ulterior motives.

Greg Benadiba [01:04:08]:
You're doing things from a service based perspective.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:11]:
Well, Greg, you've got the chance to talk with a lot of recruiters over the years. Your firm, not your firm. People that have reached out to you for advice. What's the question that you wish they would actually ask you.

Greg Benadiba [01:04:23]:
Hmm. That's a very good question. I guess it would depend on what point they're at. A lot of the questions are really day to day stuff, right? They'll get into, how do I deal with this situation? How do I deal with that situation? I think what they should be asking, and this is true of all categories, is how do I go about becoming a better person so that I can serve others again, it's the same thing. Into that I would answer meditation for those who don't do it. And I know it sounds wonky, I get it. I do it because it allows you to go to a place where you can be settled and the best ideas come up. I'm telling you, I can't tell you how many placements I've made in my mind.

Greg Benadiba [01:05:01]:
When I stilled the mind, right? That person that, you know, just came to my mind, I was able to say, oh, my God, I should be pitching her this. And then, boom, connect the dots placement. And that came when I was in that meditative state. For some people, it might happen at night, right before they go to bed. I. You know, when you kind of laying down, you start to think, and you're like, oh, yeah. And then you got to write it down right when you wake up first thing in the morning, it's because you're in that stilled state right before all the agitation of the day. Going there as often as possible is something that will make you better as a person, leader, community member, salesperson, better listener.

Greg Benadiba [01:05:36]:
So that's what they should be really asking. But I fail to hear that question a lot. I'm also surprised that how many people don't approach seasoned executives in the recruitment space to try to understand how they can achieve goals and targets. If I was looking to become a CFO of a company and say, I was an accountant, I'd be connecting with all the CFO's I can to see if I can take them out to lunch to understand how it is they got to that successful level and any tips and tricks they can give me along the way. You can accelerate your path to the top so much faster by modeling and aggregating the path that other people have already taken. You don't have to forge it into the forest every single time. You could take the road that's already been built, but you first have to get the map.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:20]:
I love that. Well, Greg, for anybody that wants to follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Greg Benadiba [01:06:26]:
Well, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Greg Benedipa, as well as Twitter. So I'll share with you. This is kind of the first sneak peek for my 20th anniversary. I am writing a book on recruitment. It's going to be geared around nugget sized ideas, principles, learning lessons. So I'll be doing a lot more posting on Twitter. So if you want to get ahead of the curve, follow me on Twitter.

Greg Benadiba [01:06:48]:
Greg Benadiba, I'll be happy to interface with you there.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:51]:
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Greg, before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Greg Benadiba [01:06:58]:
You know, we're in a time and day of great change. Artificial intelligence is upon us. I think artificial general intelligence is only three years away. It's going to be interesting. Hey, what's going to happen in the next three years? I heard this from one of the guys. I read an article from one of the guys at OpenAI and he says that 2027 is when Aagi will come online. So true intelligence. So again, change is the only constant.

Greg Benadiba [01:07:25]:
If you're in the temp business, adapt quickly because it's already changing. Adopt the technology. If you're not taking part, you run the risk of becoming obsolete. The perm business, in my opinion, has a little bit more leg room. It's going to change, too, but I don't think it's as poised to be taken out as the temp market. I think temp is relatively transactional and with applications and, you know, text messaging, people can accept offers on their phone, say, yes, I'll be there, and get ratings just like your Uber driver does. Right. And you as a customer have a rating as well.

Greg Benadiba [01:07:57]:
So that's going to happen. It's already happening. So what I would say to anybody is, let's stay ahead of that. The way that we're doing it here is we're modeling our entire process. So I'm taking the great, painstaking care of modeling our entire process from cradle to grave and figuring out where we can adopt AI in each one of those areas. This will help your team focus it on the things that they should be doing, which is speaking to other people. If you can make it so that your company, again, you take all the air out of the day, all the nonsense, all the administration, your people should not be typing notes. It's crazy if they are, they should be talking to other people.

Greg Benadiba [01:08:35]:
The more you can make that happen, the more you'll bill. The rest has to be automated. We have the capacity now. You just need to do it and get out of the way. You know, if you're a bottleneck in your company, figure out a way not to be. And that takes a lot of, again, self reflection to get out of the way. Let people do what they're doing. Hire the right people to do the job.

Greg Benadiba [01:08:58]:
If you're not specialized enough to do it, that'll give you a shot in hell at remaining solvent. So heed that warning. It's coming.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:06]:
I feel like not too many people are realizing how good it's going to be soon, but that's a whole other story.

Greg Benadiba [01:09:13]:
I'm excited. Are you kidding me? I've got a robot that can type notes for me, man. You know how many hours we used to sit down typing notes like good old school, right? I'm sure you did as well. I mean, we're very fortunate, you know, don't look at it as you know. And I think a lot of people, like, think, like, oh, it's this thing, right? If you're looking at it that way, you're looking at it that way, you're looking at it the wrong way. You have to look at this as a positive. Again, from a service level standpoint, if you're adopting this technology to make your team stronger, better, faster, they're going to love it, they're going to appreciate it. They're going to know that you're keeping abreast of everything, and guess what? That's going to help you with retention.

Greg Benadiba [01:09:52]:
You think a person is going to leave a company where the company is evolving and doing what's needed to stay abreast with change? I don't think so. As long as they're being compensated correctly, treated appropriately, they're not going to leave a company that's staying abreast of change. Now, if you stay stagnant, persons thinking, hmm, maybe this ship is on its way to an iceberg.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:11]:
So true. So true. Well, Greg, I just want to say thank you. This has been an awesome conversation. And like I said at the very beginning, like, I got a lot from our initial intake call to prepare for this conversation, but there are so many people that are sitting in an agency looking up, looking around, and wondering what that path is to the top or what that path is to an executive leadership position, or they don't want to go start their own company because trust me, it's hard. I get it. I'm there. But thank you for showing a path on how to get there and increasing the options that they have.

Greg Benadiba [01:10:43]:
Greg, you're more than welcome, and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I have one question, one last question. Have you done many interviews with Canadians before? Or is this one of your first.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:54]:
Two other interviews with Canadians?

Greg Benadiba [01:10:56]:
Of course. Well, thank you for crossing the board order. I appreciate it. And maybe we could do it again in the future. Benjamin, I really appreciate it.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:06]:
Keep me posted on when the book goes live and for the listeners. Make sure to give Greg a follow, and I hope you guys keep crushing it this year.

Greg Benadiba [01:11:12]:
Bye, Benjamin.