How To Become An Elite Agency Recruiter with Dandan Zhu

Benjamin Mena [00:00:01]:
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. Few quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, book of the month for June is going to be gap selling. Make sure to pick that up. Secondly, the recruit and growth Summit registration is going to kick off in about one week, so stay tuned. And third, make sure to pick up agency recruiter 101 by Donanzu. Link in the show notes to pick the book up.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:40]:
Let's dive in. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a returning guess. This guess became financially independent at the age of 28 because of recruiting and some of the things that she's doing outside of recruiting. She became a millionaire at the age of 30. She now has dropped the latest book that I'm actually reading right now that I wish I had at the start of my recruiting career almost two decades ago, dot on Zoo just dropped agency recruitment 101, and I am excited to welcome her back to the podcast to one, talk about all the things that she's done, talk about the things that she's doing, and also talk about what's happening in the wonderful world of recruiting. So welcome back to the podcast.

Dandan Zhu [00:01:24]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:25]:
Benjamin, so real quick, I know we typically do a deep dive into your background, how you ended up in the world of a world of recruiting. But if you really want to go through that, that deep dive that we did, make sure to go back to episode 18 and we spent a ton of time talking about her background, how she landed in recruiting, and also how she was. I don't know if you were a millionaire yet or not, but you were setting yourself up financially.

Dandan Zhu [00:01:51]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:52]:
And you have reaped the rewards of all the work that you've done. So congratulations on that.

Dandan Zhu [00:01:57]:
Thank you so much. Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:59]:
But I excited about this book because I think this can absolutely change the lives of so many brand new recruiters out there. So. All right, why did you, let me ask, successful recruiter, your millionaire, technically, financially independent, you're able to live the life that you want to live. Why do you keep on giving?

Dandan Zhu [00:02:19]:
I think for me, it's like, I don't want to stop at $1 million, like it's good money to have, but it's like if you want to live a very nice life, a million is not enough. Let's be real, right? You need more money to live very abundantly. So I found myself at the age of 28, very lost. I was sitting on all this money, and I was like, all right. I could just go, van life, you know, I could do what a lot of the people in the fire movement did and just, let's, like, live with whatever you got and stop working. But really, for me, it was like, I have all this knowledge, I have all this passion. I have all this energy as it relates to working and creating something. So that's why I was like, I just don't like being retired, right? Like, I didn't enjoy it.

Dandan Zhu [00:03:03]:
I really did not.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:05]:
So, okay, how much time were you retired, man?

Dandan Zhu [00:03:09]:
I was, like, officially retired from for probably, I would say a year and a half. Like, just kind of figuring out what do I do, right? Like, not really working for money, but just, like, thinking. It was like an existential crisis. It was like, what do I do now? I'm like, 28, 29. I've got really nothing else other than my money bags. Like, what do I do for the rest of my, like, let's say, 60 years? What do I do? Do I just sit in a van? Right? So it's like you really start thinking, and then naturally one thing leads to another. I just can't help but create, and I love to write, so I got into content writing, like, sharing the knowledge that I got from my recruitment days, talking all these candidates and clients and kind of, like, understanding recruiting. Like, I really wanted to share recruiting with the world.

Dandan Zhu [00:03:51]:
So I started just, like, posting on Quora, posting on LinkedIn, started just creating things just because I wanted to share stuff that I learned at that point. Didn't really know what I was going to do, but I just started sharing. But, yeah, a year and a half, I was just kind of bored, really, skiing a lot, and was just bored. Like, when you're alone skiing on the mountain, it just isn't the same vibe, you know, like, you're just kind of alone. You feel very lonely, right? Cause you got nothing to do. All your other friends have jobs and they have missions and they have goals, and you're just sitting there like, I don't know, I'm trying to figure out what to eat next. Like, you know, it's, like, kind of silly.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:25]:
Well, let's take a few steps forward and a few steps back at the same time. You own a recruiting firm with her partner. Can you talk about that real quick?

Dandan Zhu [00:04:33]:
Yeah. So that was very organic come 2017 end. My friend, actually, from my old job, she was like, dawn, don, you know, there's, like, this whole business out there called rectorec. Like, there are all these recruiting firms that are servicing recruiting firms. And I was like, I have never heard of this because I personally have never been reached out to one, uh, by one. So I was like, this is genius, actually. Because if you look at the market dynamics, it makes total sense. Recruitment firms are very siloed.

Dandan Zhu [00:04:59]:
They don't talk to each other. You compete against each other. There's this inherent rivalry between pretty much you and the whole world, right? So there's no interaction. I felt at the time I was working at my agency, I literally would, like, never talk to my competitors. And so I was like, wow, if there was a headhunter to bridge that gap, there's definitely a career need there, right? Like, if a rector act came to me in year four, year five of my career, my life would be completely different than it is today, but completely different. But because I didn't exist back then for me, it didn't happen for me. And now I'm blessed that I can do that for other people. Grace and I do that for other people.

Dandan Zhu [00:05:36]:
And it's kind of magical just being able to do that for our own people in our own industry, being their headhunter, doing the business, right.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:46]:
And, like, don't laugh at this. That's one of the reasons why I was super excited about bringing you on to talk about the book, is when I was in my first agency, that was the only world that I knew. I didnt know any other recruiters outside of it. Thats all I knew. And now, due to this podcast and the way technology has changed and people share now theres a whole big world out there. But if I struggle with my first year, maybe if I had this book that Im reading right now, the struggle would have been easier.

Dandan Zhu [00:06:17]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:20]:
But before we start doing a deep dive on that, one of the things that really caught my attention, I remember back when we initially had that conversation, you had this structure that you did that set yourself up for success and you blew past your competitors. Can you talk about that again?

Dandan Zhu [00:06:37]:
You mean like when I first started my recruiting career, how did I become the top 1212? Oh, yeah, yeah. So I did the seven seven seven rule. And so this really hearkens back to my days as a waitress. So I grew up as a takeout kid. Like, my earliest memory in America, when we came here with my parents, was watching them work at the restaurant, right? So I come from a, like, literal family of 364 day workers. Like, we work 364 days out of 365 days. The only day my parents get off, and therefore, me that I get off is Thanksgiving. That's the only day of which we don't work in a chinese restaurant.

Dandan Zhu [00:07:16]:
So that was my whole life growing up. When I got into recruiting, that was right off of working nonstop for my family's restaurant for about nine months, seven days a week. So when I got into recruiting, I said, this is a vacation. You get two days of nothing. That's a Friday. Friday night starts Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, just a vacation. Like, this is a vacation. And I was like, why would I treat it like a vacation when I'm in hustle mode, right? So my first few months at work, I really work seven days a week.

Dandan Zhu [00:07:46]:
And the way we had it back then was, you got the office around, like, eight. You cannot be late every single day, five days a week. And I would just want to be that shining star so badly. I would stay till eight. Stay till eight or nine, because at that point, I had nothing going on. I had nothing in my life other than work. So it was like, eight to eight or nine I was at work. I would literally.

Dandan Zhu [00:08:09]:
So we worked at Rockefeller center, and after 05:00 all the food starts going on discount because there's a bunch of restaurants downstairs. All the sushi goes half off. This italian place. Every food is half off. So I would just wait until the day was over, grab my dinner, like, go upstairs and keep working. And then Saturday, Sunday, I would come in, continue sourcing, continue making phone calls, because I was like, I'm a new recruiter. I don't know if candidates are picking up the phone on weekends until I try it, right? So, like, on weekends, I'm like, let me see if these candidates gonna respond. Eventually, I would start booking meetings on weekends to drive out to Jersey to meet my candidates.

Dandan Zhu [00:08:45]:
So I worked seven to seven, which is, like, you know, twelve hour days. Seven to seven is the metaphor of seven times at least a year, seven days a week at least. So every single year, work at least seven days a week just to keep up that momentum so that you're, like, really, like, building up that pipeline. And so that's kind of where I came up with the seven seven seven rule that set me up. I started doing deals, like, pretty much my first month, I think I booked a deal. And then my second month, I did two more deals. And I just really started rolling very fast with, like, steady deal flow because I kept up that level of, like, commitment and just, like, grind, right. Just totally focused on just getting the KPI's hit, exceeding the KPI's like I.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:27]:
Was thinking 12 hours a day. So that's where I was coming from. I was like, I know it is. So, and like, we're in a business of momentum.

Dandan Zhu [00:09:36]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:37]:
Where you have to many times go create the momentum for yourself. And sometimes it requires that extra work. But now, jumping into agency recruitment 101, let's talk about, let's start off by talking about the different business models that a new recruiter can run into.

Dandan Zhu [00:09:53]:
So I think there are a couple different types of recruitment firms that you could start at. You could start at a large company that's very corporate. I would say that is the type of firm that I started working at large, rapidly growing, scaling many layers of staff. This is what I refer to as the college grind shop. This is the model where they put a bunch of people's tomatoes against the wall, see what sticks. So that's kind of the environment I came out of. Then you have like, the boutiques. The boutiques are just kind of like a wild west.

Dandan Zhu [00:10:22]:
It's like some charismatic founder, or maybe not even that charismatic, just like a founder decided to do recruiting hired people, trained people up. They could be very, very small, less than five to ten staff. It could be mid sized, like 30 to 100 staff. So there's the boutiques, and then there's like your mid sized firms that aren't really that chop shop model yet, but might be somewhere in the middle. They might be pivoting into that model. May not be. Then you also have the element of like full time versus temp offerings. Some firms do both.

Dandan Zhu [00:10:53]:
Some firms just do one or the other. A lot of boutiques tend to just do perm. They tend to not offer temp. They might want to get into temp. So there is just such a variety, like what you said at the beginning of this episode, which is there just is a whole world out there. It's like, choose your adventure, right? And then you got the onesie twosies that are just like totally unrelated to staffing. Somehow they broke into it. And I call this the mom and pop.

Dandan Zhu [00:11:18]:
Like, they're just like, oh, I used to sell pots and pans. Today I'm selling recruiting. These are just your randos that have no training. They're completely untested and they just fell into the industry. So this is a wild west industry with very few legitimate entities, in my view.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:36]:
Well, and that's one of the things. If like, you're just getting started, like, many times you end up in that, that meat grinder of, and that's all, you know, is just the meat grinding. But once you either grow there or find a recruiter or find another agency, your career can really just start taking off. Yeah, I know you've probably seen because you direct to recon of comp plans.

Dandan Zhu [00:12:00]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:00]:
I remember my first agency job. My base salary was 27,000.

Dandan Zhu [00:12:06]:
You beat me. You beat me on the low end. I thought I had it bad. That's pretty low.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:12]:
And then, well, it got up to 32 once my three months of training was done. And I think, like, at the end of the day, I think it was my gross margin for one of the years. Like it was either 550 or 650 and I only took home like 65,000. Oh, I thought that's all I knew. So do you want to kind of like talk about some of the different kind of commission plans that are out there?

Dandan Zhu [00:12:35]:
Yeah, I think the days that you mentioned, you started your career in staffing two decades ago. I started my career in staffing in 2011, which is, wow, time flies, right? Almost 15 years. So I think every generation the comp plans are getting better and better. And it's not because recruitment agencies are more generous, it's because of how technology and access to information and freedom of choice has impacted the industry. Right. Before, you could get away with living under a rock and thinking that 27,000 is decent, thinking that $35,000 in New York is normal. Right. But then, now with this sort of information free flow, it's like no longer acceptable.

Dandan Zhu [00:13:17]:
And obviously with inflation, things are very different now. Right. And recruitment is a more difficult sales job where the conversation has to be higher in order to have people want to bother with it. Right. Cause it's so difficult that, like, if the juice is not worth a squeeze, the industry will never attract people and or retain people. So I think even, let's just put aside kind of how the commission plans have changed over time. But I think what a lot of people coming out from grind shops don't know is that a lot of boutiques offer what's called this draw model. That certainly was new to me.

Dandan Zhu [00:13:53]:
And a draw model is where the company gives you. Not a mind blowing draw. This draw operates as a salary. It's probably like anywhere as low as 45,000, up to maybe 65, 70,000 at the tops. But a lot of, you know, 40, 50 year old recruiters are still on 50k draws, just FYI. Right? So this drop plan is really just like you're borrowing from the company, you're getting your, like, basic bills paid, whether it's like your rent hopefully a little bit of your rent. I doubt that that really covers your full rent, but, you know, a little bit of your living costs is to keep you hungry, right? Like, what you don't want to do is give a hungry producer $200,000 coming in the door, that you can even spoil a brilliant, hardworking person by doing that, right? Because if I. If I'm just going to get $200,000 base just to come in the door, I'm not going to hustle.

Dandan Zhu [00:14:40]:
I'm sitting on 200 grand. Like, I'm just not going to hustle. There's no urgency. So that's why the industry today is still keeping the draws at a level where it keeps you a little bit hungry, right. It keeps you a little bit, like, hustling. And so what you're going to do is you're going to want to bill as quickly as possible. So once you start billing, the rewards are then shared between you and the firm. So in the book, I really talk a lot about the straw model because it's what I call the sort of high risk, high reward option, right? Because you're basically taking this money from the firm and it's not a lot of money.

Dandan Zhu [00:15:13]:
So it's still high risk because if you don't bill for many, many months, you are now very behind on your draw because you owe the company money, because you haven't billed anything. So the draw model is very, very bad, I would say, for junior recruiters who have no idea what they're doing with very little mentorship. I mean, you would have to be extremely exceptional to, like, Bill a lot of money with no mentorship, no guideposts, no training, and just live on this drama where you're, like, literally sweating bullets every single day. Right? Like, you would have to be exceptional to. To do that. So I think there's a place in time for people to take on that draw. But the draw is the industry's highest paying plan, where pretty much if you bill 300 a year, you take home 150 or more, which is insane, considering I built 330 my first year on a full desk, perm desk with my own clients, built from scratch. I took home $87,000.

Dandan Zhu [00:16:05]:
Right? So we're talking a difference. A delta of 70,000 almost. You're getting shanked, shafted. Like, 50% is almost how much you're losing being not on draw. But at the same time, I was at a chop shop where they gave you a lot of training, where there were lots of people training you. So there's something to be said about that there's a time and place for every one of these models to work in your life. I think if you're a biller and you're still at a chop shop year ten in your career, you really got to start questioning yourself, what are you doing wrong?

Benjamin Mena [00:16:36]:
How long does the average recruiter stay at a chop shop?

Dandan Zhu [00:16:39]:
It's hard to say because the average recruiter quits. So, like, the average is like, you know, maybe like 3%. Because, like, your quit rate is like 80% within two years. Two years. It's like, it's like Boston Latin school, right? I went to this very prestigious high school in college, in high school in Boston. And my headmaster said, you know, look to your left, to your right. At the end of graduation, the person next to you, one of them is not going to be here. That's recruiting.

Dandan Zhu [00:17:06]:
But, like, recruiting is like three x. That kind of failure rate, it's not 50%. It's much higher than 50%. So the people who do stay, a very small amount of people will stay at that chop shop over the span of, let's say, five to ten years. Because a lot of people at that point have realized that they, and I'm talking specifically producers, right? Because the only type of people that stay at a chop shop are managers. They're the only person that would stay there, right? Because at that point, they become what I call a lifer. A lot of my colleagues ended up becoming lifers. They don't want to bill anymore.

Dandan Zhu [00:17:40]:
They're comfortable at the chop shop. The chop shop needs managers, right? So they'd rather not Bill and rather just manage. And at that point, it makes total sense to stay at a chop shop. Like, if your plan is to be a manager, you have no space in a boutique. Boutiques don't need you. Boutiques need producers, managing producers, at the very least, right? So. So I think everybody kind of finds their place to be, and there's nothing wrong with any of it. It's just completely dependent on, like, what is your goal? What do you like to do? Right? Like, if you like managing, there's a career plan for that.

Dandan Zhu [00:18:11]:
If you like to bill, there's a career plan for that, right? There's. There's different career plans for different stages of your life, depending on what you like to do in your career.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:19]:
So, like, once somebody likes, wakes up, realizes that they're kind of over the chop shop life, they've made it past the two year mark. They're still in the industry, still in the game, but they want to grow in their career. What are some of the things that they can do?

Dandan Zhu [00:18:36]:
So I think it's that debate between, do you manage or do you produce? Which direction are you headed in? So that depends on your preference. Some people are like, I love billing. I actually love talking to clients. I love talking to candidates. And every chop shop is different. Some chop shops have career paths for recruiter only side people. A lot of these are temp shops. So temp shops, a lot of them have a career space for like a solo recruiter only type person.

Dandan Zhu [00:19:05]:
This person never touches clients or cold calling or business development. And in that chop shop, there is also a career plan for sales only types. I just want to do sales. I don't want to recruit. Right. So again, it depends on, like, what you want to do. Then there are people like full deskers like me. We do both, right? So for me, it's like now my career options are very different than like, let's say a temp person who've only ever done sales or only ever done recruiting.

Dandan Zhu [00:19:32]:
As a volt Esker headhunter, I can decide, do I open up my own firm? Do I go and join a boutique? Do I take my skills to another chop shop that is expanding from overseas? Because that's another very big happening in the USA where there's a ton of international recruiting firms that want to grow in the US, leveraging the UK, you know, e two, visa, and also australian recruiting firms. They need to hire american leaders. They want to hire american recruitment leaders. Right. I come from the british world, so I see that a lot where there's a lot of british firms that want to open up shop in New York and they need someone coming out of an american recruitment firm. Sorry, an American coming out of a british recruitment firm so that that american with the british background, now the british training and the british model can lead the charge. So because I came from that world, I would have been a good candidate for that. But personally, for me, I did not want to do that.

Dandan Zhu [00:20:30]:
I'm more of a biller. I'm more of a. I like to bill. I don't like to manage. Like, do not task me with managing and hiring recruiters and, ugh, like, there could be no worse job. Right? But that's a matter of personal preference.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:43]:
Okay, here's a question for you. Is the training for new recruiters better from the UK or from the american companies?

Dandan Zhu [00:20:52]:
I cannot speak to that because I've never, ever worked at an american firm ever in my life. I've only ever worked at a british firm. However, I will say, having talked to so many recruiters from both american firms and british firms, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Brits are pretty freaking good. They're pretty freaking phenomenal. Like, the numbers that I was billing when I talk to american recruiters, they're like, that's insane. Like, I did 740 in my third year as a 25 to 26 year old. You do not hear of those perm numbers at american firms at a three year mark. But that's not because of american training systems.

Dandan Zhu [00:21:35]:
I wouldn't put it on that. I would put it on the fact that american firms already exist in America. So the business model is extremely different in terms of client ownership. Right. When I worked at a british firm, when they come to America, there are no firms, there are no clients, because it's brand new. Coming to New York, not a single client. So, for me, it's blue ocean. Like, every single firm I land, every single client I land, that's my monster account, right? So, for me, I broke into all the key pharmas, and I got to really enjoy the power and control over that book of business.

Dandan Zhu [00:22:14]:
Whereas if you join an established american firm, there are people already there earmarked with those client accounts. So I would say it's a mixture of both, though, because you have to look at how tough recruiting is in the. You know, I hate to be offensive, and I'm not trying to be offensive on the Isle of UK. The UK is like a, you know, kind of like an island. It's a very small location, and you have this red sea situation there where every single recruiter is fighting over London, right? Fighting over this tiny, tiny piece, and there's, like, hundreds of hundreds of thousands of recruiters there. And it's. It's, like, so commoditized that they have had to learn every single trick in the book to survive in England. And when the english recruiters come to the USA, it's child's play, right? It's like, think about marathon runners who run in the high andes.

Dandan Zhu [00:23:11]:
They're running in this oxygen scarce, like land. When they come to the Great Plains, where there's tons of oxygen, they smoke them, right? So I think it's just a mixture of both. And it's just the fact that England is such a difficult place to succeed that all the top billers out of there come to the US. I mean, imagine these are your first gen immigrants. They're so hungry to succeed in America, to make a name for themselves. They move their whole families and or themselves, they need to succeed in America. So that level of hunger, that level of dedication, they have no social ties to America, so they don't have any friends and families on weekends. So they're working, you know, seven days a week, whereas Americans, we have family, we have obligations.

Dandan Zhu [00:23:54]:
Like we're not going to work seven days a week. But these Brits, they don't have that same issue. So they come here and they're all in. They're all in and then some. So it's more about the level of commitment slightly about how good they are and how many tricks they know, because they know lots of tricks and it's fascinating to learn from them all the tricks of the trade. So I'd say it's a mixture of all of that.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:17]:
Cause I've, you know, because of this podcast, I've had the chance to speak with more and more brits and I'm like, you guys are like hungry as hell over there, like running circles around these us people.

Dandan Zhu [00:24:29]:
Yeah, yeah. Because the money is so much better here too, right? Like a deal in England, you'll get like six grand. Like that's like laughable, right? Like in a deal, a decent deal in England is like a manager in England makes 120,000. That same profile in America, if you were to bill, that would be 250K placement, right? And now we're looking at the exchange rates being so crappy. Any decent, like decent Biller is going to put the two and two together. If you're british, you're going to put the two to two together. I'm not going to mess around with the UK, I'm going to mess around with America. That's where the money is.

Dandan Zhu [00:25:03]:
And there's also no regulations stopping them from selling their services across the pond as well as relocating here because of the treaty.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:14]:
That's good to know. Well, let me ask another question, kind of like we talked about, you know, the training cycles. But if a recruiter wants to make some career moves, like maybe go to another agency or, you know, figure out their next steps in the recruiting career, what are some of the steps that they can take to prep themselves for the next career move?

Dandan Zhu [00:25:33]:
I think when you make a career move plan, you have to do it when you're in a decent spot. Like the worst time to move is if you're having monster months back to back. That's a very difficult situation to leave behind just financially and psychologically. It's likely that if you're having monster months back to back psychologically, even if you're unhappy, you'll end up getting cold feet. Whatever job you end up getting, you're not going to leave because the salary offer that you're going to get is still going to be low base. Low base. And the rest is all about production, right? So if you're having a 300k year, I, whenever I talk to a candidate and they're like, I'm making 250, I'm making 300, I'm like, stay. Goodbye.

Dandan Zhu [00:26:16]:
Stay. Like, don't, don't. Because don't tell me, don't tell me that you're going to leave 300,000. Don't even like, you would have to be in such a unique situation. I mean, your boss would have had to, like, stolen your wife for you to leave a 300k year. You see what I mean? I'm like, don't. Like, don't. Because you're going to get ko fi.

Dandan Zhu [00:26:35]:
Whatever I'm going to get you. Even if it is 120k base, even if it is 150k base, no smart person is going to leave $30,000 guaranteed. Especially if they're a 10th biller. And that's like existing spread. Like, don't, don't try. Like, I'm not stupid. You're not stupid. We all have bills pay, right? So I'm like, don't leave.

Dandan Zhu [00:26:54]:
When you're having a monster year, that's like, number one. A lot of candidates I talked to are in this situation. They're like, don dawn, this is not, I've even frickin talk to people making 500,000 in this situation, and they're making 600,000 and they're in this situation. One guy talked to an 800,000. They're like, I'm making 800,000. I don't know, should I leave? I'm like, bro, uh, no. Uh, no. Like, where else you could start your own recruiting firm and make 300 in your first year? Like, I wouldn't even start my own recruiting firm if you're already banking a at someone else's shop, right? Like we got to look at the brass taxes here.

Dandan Zhu [00:27:28]:
Like, we got to look at money, right? So number one is like, if you're having a phenomenal year and you're in a really good situation, my rule of thumb, rule of them is anything over 250 is what I'm kind of like, think twice. Think twice. Because there is a risk. There is a risk that whichever firm you go to, you will not like them. There is an actual risk. There's also the risk that not only will you not like them, you may be fired. You may just have a really weak two quarters, and you actually may be fired. Right.

Dandan Zhu [00:27:59]:
There's actual risk to making a move as an agency recruiter. I don't think the same way there is a risk for a lawyer or there is a risk for an accountant. Like, there just isn't as much of a risk, I don't think. Right. So I think for agency recruiters, it's a totally different world when you consider career coaching, which is why a lot of people actually hire me for career coaching, because they're like, I kind of need to make some plans, but I also don't know what my plans are. And again, that topic of should I start my own recruiting firm? Should I buddy up with, like, three of my besties and start a recruiting firm? Right. These are thoughts that come to people's heads, and there's no real way to talk about it with your boss, obviously. So that's kind of where people come to me for.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:43]:
Let me ask you the question. Like, when you people come to you, what advice do you give them between jumping to another firm or actually going off on their own?

Dandan Zhu [00:28:52]:
I think it depends on, like, where you're at. Like, if you're about to have a child and you have a work at home spouse, this is going to really impact your family stability. You have to be really honest with yourself about how much risk can you as an individual or you as a family can take. Who's going to carry the health insurance? Let's just talk about that for a second. Who's going to carry health insurance? So this health insurance in America ain't cheap, right? So just that alone, I say, is more of an obstacle than non competes. Like, I don't even care about non competes. Let's just talk about health insurance. If you're over the age of 26 and you can't be on mom and daddy's plan no more, you happy paying $600 for yourself a month just on health insurance alone? Like, you know, that's the cost of, like, the lowest plan in New York City.

Dandan Zhu [00:29:47]:
So, like, you kind of have to know the costs of setting up a shop. And God forbid you have an expensive mortgage. God forbid you have. You're living in Wall street, in a fancy loft or in Williamsburg, and your rent is $3,000. Like, you got to look at how much stress because, oh, I got $60,000 saved up. Oh, you're going to blow through that real quick. Is going to last you one or two years. That's not a lot of money.

Dandan Zhu [00:30:14]:
$60,000 it's not a lot of money if you plan to eat and live well and have a nice pad, right? So if you have health insurance problems, you have health problems, you have family to carry, you know, there's a lot of complications that come with that topic. Then it's like, are you ready? Are you ready to build your own accounts? Are you ready to face the music? If a client somehow doesn't pay you, how are you going to survive if, God forbid, a client just takes advantage of you? Those are all fears that you have to face.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:46]:
Love that. Well, I want to jump over to one more thing before we jump over the quick fire questions. You've been successful in an agency. You've been successful with your own firm. You talk with so many agency recruiters. So I'm sure you've figured out what the secret to success as an agency recruiter is. How do you become successful in that space?

Dandan Zhu [00:31:08]:
I think it's a combination of two main things, focus and energy. Right? You need both to succeed. Cause focus is where I put, like, perseverance, you know, all that, like, focus. Dedication to the craft, dedication to your market, dedication to being great at what you do, dedication to, like, improving the way you speak on the phone, dedication to, like, how well you take these job specs, how well you build these client relationships. Like, that's. That's focus. Right? Where I'm not also, like, distracted and half of my day is spent doing something else where, like, recruiting's kind of last with my list. Like, focus.

Dandan Zhu [00:31:47]:
I've never seen a top biller bill, like five to $700,000 when recruiting is their side hustle. Like, if you want to bill five to seven on a perm desk, as a full desk headhunter, it has to be your focus. But you can't just be also, like, chilling and doing some of the. You can't work two jobs at once. You see what I mean? You can't be a real estate agent and make 500,000 in recruiting. Like, it's a matter of focus because there's some momentum going back to that momentum. Right. There's a certain amount of momentum that you need to get your business running.

Dandan Zhu [00:32:16]:
And so the second part is energy. You need energy. You need energy to attract people to work with you. Like, you need to be special. You need to be. You have stamina to, like, take the call at 08:00 take the call on a weekend. Like, you need to be on call. You can't just be like, oh, my day stops at six.

Dandan Zhu [00:32:36]:
What about if your candidate stay also stops at six. Then, like, who's calling the candidate after six? Your boss. Like, you see what I mean? It's just like, get on it. Like, the energy, like, you want the money? Get it, get after it. None of this, like, oh, I want to work 30 hours a week. That is not happening in recruiting, my friend. Like, I talk, I hear about these recruiting agencies being like, we offer a 30 hours workweek. I'm like, b's? Yeah.

Dandan Zhu [00:33:00]:
If that person doesn't bill, you fire them. I know that and I know they do. A particular firm that offers 30 hours work weeks fires people. So, yeah, if you're billing $500,000 and you're working 30 hours, nobody cares. But if you're, like, not billing, you get fired. So it's, it's still that kind of business that has not changed.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:21]:
But I absolutely perfect and love that. Oh, man. The, the draw of a 30 hours workweek. I can see how that easily pulls people in.

Dandan Zhu [00:33:28]:
Yeah. But it's just kind of like in agency recruiting, it's a sales job. Like, how could you promise 30 hours, you know? Like, it's not like a clock in, clock out. It's not like we're going to the factory and we're making a Toyota. Right? It's not the same thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:42]:
Oh, man, perfect. Well, before we jump over to the next part of the podcast, is there anything else that you want to share about your book about agency recruiting momentum, sales commission success?

Dandan Zhu [00:33:54]:
I don't want to sound too, like salesy, but I do believe that people in recruiting tend to be very cheap like they did. They tend to be very cheap. I'm cheap, you're cheap. I'm sure everyone, I mean, we're in business. We're cheap. We're very cost conscious. I wish that when I was younger, I invested in paying experts to help me with stuff. I always did that with my real estate, with my CPA.

Dandan Zhu [00:34:24]:
My CPA don't mess around. I pay them. Just not a place to go cheap. I wish that when I was younger that I hired someone very senior in recruiting outside of my firm to advise. And a lot of people pay me for this. My hourly rate is not cheap. It's $500 an hour. But for the people who understand the value of that, they're like, this is very cheap.

Dandan Zhu [00:34:48]:
Because essentially I get all of this knowledge and I can ask this lady literally any question about the industry, about the careers like this lady has talked to. Literally, I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of people at this point, right, potentially millions. I have not counted how many people I've spoken to in my career. But I do think at some certain point, investing in your skills, investing in, I wouldn't even call it coaching, but, like career guidance that. That you cannot go wrong. Like, at least with me, I don't know about other coaches. I know there's a lot of bullshit coaches out there, but at least with me, like, you know that I know my shit. I'm not like some wonky scam artist.

Dandan Zhu [00:35:25]:
There's a lot of them in our industry. A lot. And you can notice with their background, they've never been a top biller. They've never worked at any sizable, recognizable, decent firm, right? So. And for a sizable amount of time, right? So I think I've earned that space in my industry to be that person that people recognize as a legitimate source of knowledge. And my time does not come cheap. And I wish people treated me with a little bit more respect because I think a lot of people, that is one of my pet peeves. They're like, don, dot, I just want to pick your brain.

Dandan Zhu [00:35:54]:
Oh my God, you charge. That pisses me off to no end because I'm like, goddamn. Like, I thought I had proven myself so much, but I guess I still haven't. And that's what keeps me going, right, is that I want to be the goat. I want to keep proving to people that, like, no, you can't just treat at least me like dirt, right? Like, I've earned my seat in this business. I've done so much for this industry. And that's what keeps me going at the end of the day is that I'm going to keep going until I achieve that for myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:23]:
So you brought up an interesting point. I'm sure you're not like going to real estate conferences, but I see real estate agents constantly investing in themselves, investing in coaching, investing, getting better, but I don't see it that often or as often in the recruiting space.

Dandan Zhu [00:36:38]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:39]:
And come because of this podcast. I cannot tell you how many big billers that I know that have invested in coaches, but at the same time, I put on a recruiting growth summit and I can't tell you how many times I got emailed asking for. At the point in time it was charging dollar 59 for a copy of the replays and they're like, can you send me like everything for free? And I'm like, it's $59 to invest in yourself.

Dandan Zhu [00:37:05]:
That's not a bad price. I'd understand if it was like $5,000 cause I do believe there are certain price points where, like, let's say you're 24 years old. Yeah, $5,000 is a lot to shell out, but, like, $59, you know, like, it's. There's different tiers, and see, every trainer has different tiers, right? There's, like, the cheap stuff. There's the high hourly bespoke stuff. Then there's the in person high ticket coaching. So I think people need to do what's right for them in their budget. But to say, I want everything for free, I can get things for free.

Dandan Zhu [00:37:35]:
Go for it. Like, you can do that. You can diy all of recruiting if you really want to, YouTube University.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:41]:
But, you know, this is a space that I have seen so many coaches make a difference in somebody's career. And when I say make a difference, I'm talking of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year difference, which in turns makes is millions and millions over the course of your career.

Dandan Zhu [00:37:58]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:58]:
So, yeah, anyway, we'll jump off that tirade.

Dandan Zhu [00:38:03]:
But, yeah, I think that's a missed opportunity for a lot of recruiters, is that they just. They're so cheap that they don't know what. Like, they'll go out to the bar and they'll buy a whole round of drinks and get drunk off their ass, but they won't buy a training course. It's very weird. Or a book, or a books or really anything. Like. It's very odd.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:26]:
Well, one more question on that. Do you think it's because many of us just kind of fell into it rather than choosing to become recruiters?

Dandan Zhu [00:38:35]:
I think it's just that there's a different mentality around people around, like, what greatness means to them. Right. There's some people that just do the bare minimum, and there's some people that want to be the best and want to do and want to know all there is to know about their business and how. How did other people do it? How can I be like them? There's just, like, a different level, right? So the person that's like, I want those training coaches for free. That person is not trying to be like. That person is, like, getting in their own way. Right? Versus the other person is just like, shoot, I spent that much on a meal last night. This.

Dandan Zhu [00:39:09]:
Like, it doesn't. Why am I being cheap on this? Like. And I see the same with real estate. Like, I'm in real estate. I own properties. I never cheap out on things that matter. Like, never. Like, I pay my architect literally, I think, $40,000 to help me get plans approved.

Dandan Zhu [00:39:25]:
But if I failed and I hired a cheapo or I tried to diy it, the plan would have not been approved, and I would have lost the whole entire project, right? So it's like, you pay what you need to pay to get the job done, right? Or else he could just be prepared that you're going to mess up. Like, there's going to be a tangible financial loss at some point.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:47]:
Well, jumping over to the quick fire questions, what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's just getting started in our industry in 2024?

Dandan Zhu [00:39:55]:
Do not watch Netflix. Do not watch Instagram reels. Do not watch Facebook store. I don't know what. Whatever reels, Facebook reels. Because when I started in the industry, none of those things existed. And because none of those things existed, I was fully focused on recruiting. I was not spending hours of my time looking at my phone.

Dandan Zhu [00:40:19]:
There was no such thing as screen time at the time. I was using androids. I didn't even have iPhone, right? So I was using, like, Metro PCs. That's how broke I was when I started my career. Like, I didn't even have t mobile. Like, you know, I had Metropcs, I had a wonky, old, weird phone. I don't even know, like, just trashy phone, right? And I was just focused on dialing, smiling and dialing, calling, meeting people. I think the biggest danger to young people today is social media.

Dandan Zhu [00:40:46]:
Distraction in any field, powerful.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:49]:
Same question. But for somebody that's been around the block, you know, agency recruiter, that's 510 years, maybe 20 years into their career.

Dandan Zhu [00:40:56]:
It'S time to make a name for yourself beyond just the smiling and dialing. So now that you are at a certain level where you already have a potential book, right, you have people that are your fans. Now it's time to take yourself up to that next level of fame, right? Like, we have social media, we have content, we have all these other things, because when you're a junior, you don't know what you're doing. So every call, you're using 80% of your brain just to, like, figure it out. You don't know if the deals are going to close. You don't know red flags. Red flags to watch out for a five to ten year who's dedicated and successful, that's like auto drive. I know exactly what needs to be asked.

Dandan Zhu [00:41:34]:
I know exactly what needs to happen. I know exactly all the red flags. That's no longer my problem. My problem now is, like, what got me here isn't going to get me there right now. I want to be famous now. I want to be a go to touching point. I want to be an industry influencer. That's the question that the five to ten year person now needs to develop into, because you don't have to spend hours on the phone trying to learn, and you don't have to do that.

Dandan Zhu [00:41:59]:
You already know it now it's like, oh, what are the social media tools that I need to use to promote myself and potentially my business and my branch and my division and me as a go to entity in this particular space?

Benjamin Mena [00:42:14]:
Love that. Do you have a favorite rec tech tool at the moment?

Dandan Zhu [00:42:18]:
Um, not really. I'm very, like, low key when it comes to technology. I do think that canva is one of my favorites because Canva is just really helpful. Like, canva, you can create, like, all sorts of stuff for all of your different, you know, social media accounts. I love canva. Definitely say that. Um, obviously, for, if you have a podcast, you need, you know, your tools for that. But, like, a rec tech, I wouldn't say I don't, like, I'm cheap.

Dandan Zhu [00:42:44]:
I don't invest in, like, LinkedIn recruiter even, because our industry, because we're connected to so many people. I'm already first degree connections with all the people I need to be connected with. So, like, I don't need, like, some sort of AI bot to, like, go and muck up my existing, like, conversation points, right? Like, that's the problem with AI, I think. AI doesn't really know exactly where they're coming in on the relationship depth and can cause more problems than it can solve. I'm genuinely very scared about that because God forbid you forgot to update one of your CRM contacts and the AI bot thinks that your guys are strangers. It's like, hello, I've never spoken to you, but, like, you have, like, there's so many mistakes that could go wrong. So I'm very cautious when it comes to outsourcing to a live human, which I also have had bad experiences with, as well as outsourcing to a bot. Very conscious of all of that.

Dandan Zhu [00:43:37]:
I think LinkedIn is still your most powerful tool as a recruiter.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:41]:
So, anyways, my favorites are always when I. I'm okay with it. Cause I understand it, but I'm sitting there having a conversation with somebody, and then I get, like, the automated bd message, and I'm like, I know it's.

Dandan Zhu [00:43:54]:
The bot, but it's just. Anyways, it's just like, how much are you winning with that versus how much are you losing? You know, like, can we really quantitatively measure if this thing is helping you or is it actually hurting you? Like, and I'd say most of the times it might be like a wash, which is not ideal. I don't want to pay lots of money for a tool to, like, give me a wash. It has to really be valued at a very high amount of RoI for it to be a good tool. So I don't know. I'm still very skeptical. I love LinkedIn. I think if you're savvy, you know how to use the systems, you know how to promote yourself, you don't have to invest in all of this.

Dandan Zhu [00:44:30]:
Basically, I think B's, I don't think you have to hire a social media manager. You don't have to do any of that. I think a lot of those people are just like, rackets.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:39]:
Is there a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal career?

Dandan Zhu [00:44:42]:
The biggest book that I will always say made the most amount of difference is how to win friends and influence people. I just think as a junior recruiter, I still wasn't very good about understanding how important small talk is and being really savvy. You know how when you talk to, like, really senior salespeople, they're just, like, so silver tongued. Like, they just know how to get you going. They know exactly what to say, and they're just students of that art of, like, the art of conversation. And I think that's what. How to win flings and influence people from Dale Carnegie, and I've talked to a lot of recruiters. That's like a life changing book for them as well.

Dandan Zhu [00:45:19]:
I cried a little bit reading it. There's, like, a very touching scene and here and there, like, I'll still read it yet. It's an oldie but a goodie. And, yeah, I think it still very much applies to today.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:29]:
Love that. So you. I mean, we've had this conversation over the years. You're extremely driven, had massive success, but you didn't also just have massive success. You were smart about your money and more smart than most people. But when it comes down to it, like, what has been a big internal driver that's helped you reach these levels.

Dandan Zhu [00:45:52]:
Of success, I think it's just fear. Everything comes from childhood, as a lot of psychologists say. And for me, it was just instability when I was younger. It comes down from a very deep seated fear of not having enough money to survive as a woman. Being a woman, especially of knowing the risks of having to rely on other people and be a dependent, it's a little bit about your upbringing. Like my mom always told me, you need to have your own money, you need to be successful. And being from a family of entrepreneurs, seeing them hustle, a lot of that is just kind of like a given. When I work hard, it's not because somebody like, because inherently I want to work hard.

Dandan Zhu [00:46:33]:
It's because that was taught to me at a young age that that's the only thing to do, like chores I was taught to do at a very young age. All these things kind of shaped me into that person so that when recruitment came calling, recruitment came into my lap. It was the perfect job, perfect industry, perfect business for me in my unique circumstances, to leverage the fear of failure into power to be really good, power to achieve, because this business will let you do that. And that's why you'll see a lot of top billers. They come out of decently, messed up family situations. A lot of the most successful top people in business in any single industry, they're usually not coming from a wonderful, safe household because they were given a set of challenges and they were seeing the sad and the dark part of life, that they're able to use recruiting as the light, as their salvation. And that's really what recruiting was for me. And I use it in biblical terms, because to me, money is like a religion.

Dandan Zhu [00:47:45]:
To me, it's the closest thing I have to religion as an atheist is money. The goodness of money, the power of money. And if you find a business like recruiting that lets you really indulge in earning money, but in a very moral way, you're really helping people. At the end of the day, you're still helping clients, you're still helping candidates. There's still an element of moral goodness here that we're talking about. It's not just money. I mean, money is the byproduct, money is the reward, money is the goal. But in order to earn money and be sustainably good at it, you have to create a positive impact on people or else you are dead in the water.

Dandan Zhu [00:48:20]:
Like nobody's going to call you if they know you're a jackass. Like no candidate or client will trust you if you're full of it. Like, you have to really not only have the sales chops, but deliver. And that's what's the difference between truly successful, sustainable top billers and the people that come and go in this line of work, right? There's a forever business and there are people that look at it as an ATM card until the money runs out.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:48]:
Absolutely love that. And jumping on kind of like the same theme of the question, everything that you know. Now, if you had the chance to sit down with yourself, the very beginning of your career, your first month in recruiting, what advice would you give yourself?

Dandan Zhu [00:49:04]:
I would say, don't let loyalty blind you. That is the biggest mistake I made as a junior was I was so blinded by loyalty to the firm, to the people, that I gave too much to the business instead of thinking about myself selfishly. And as the last two years of my career kind of proved to me and how the relationships changed over time. People come and go, and people who are nice to you. Year one, year two, year three of your career may not be nice to you. Year four, year five of your career. And that's not personal. It's just kind of the way they were wired.

Dandan Zhu [00:49:41]:
Maybe they just didn't really care about you the way you thought they cared about you. And I think every single recruiter who's worked at a certain firm for a certain amount of time is going to experience that in one way or the other, because movement is inevitable. And if you let your loyalty blind you to a degree that you cannot see clearly, you are the one that is going to pay for that. Nobody else will pay for that. You are going to have to bear the consequences of your, frankly, naivete. As a 20 something year old, that's naivete that older people, if you're in your forties, you know that this is not. This is not it, right? But when you're in your twenties, you're so blinded by relationships and internal that those happy hours, those hangouts, those like trips to the ski slopes, those trips to the this and that, that you get blinded that you're still working in a business, and you have to look at it that way.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:36]:
Well, for the listeners, if they want to follow you, how can they do that?

Dandan Zhu [00:50:40]:
They can find me on my website. It's the easiest way. Don danzu.com that has all my links to my TikTok, my Instagram, my Facebook. Not that it's much exciting there, but I'd love for you to follow me because for some reason, TikTok, I have a lot of followers on there. A lot of what I talk about is more about real estate on TikTok, but on Instagram, on Facebook, you can always follow me and send me messages. You can also message me on email. I do read every single email. So my email address is dzonzazoo.com or dondongrecruit.com.

Dandan Zhu [00:51:11]:
either way, everything's on the website. Donazoo.com is the easiest place that you can find me. I do monthly trainings for free, and that's really just to share with people my business development strategies, my sales experience. There's a lot of questions that people ask me. So I think the monthly webinars are the easiest way that I can interact with people and answer questions so that my next webinar is starting may 31. So go to the website to sign up for that. I do have to approve people to join the webinar. You can take my courses.

Dandan Zhu [00:51:39]:
They're all on my website. Again, the website is the best place for everything.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:43]:
Okay. And make sure to follow her on LinkedIn, too.

Dandan Zhu [00:51:45]:
Yeah, LinkedIn.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:46]:
Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Dandan Zhu [00:51:51]:
I think the last thing I want to share with the listeners is that, like, believe. Like, you really need to believe. Like, you have to believe that this is possible. Right? Like, recruiting really can make you well off. Like, I'm not just one person. There's, like, literally millions of recruiters over the years that have become millionaires from this business. Multimillionaires. Like, I remember my CEO at the time.

Dandan Zhu [00:52:16]:
I knew that he had 40 million, and I was like, wow, he had $40 million from just recruiting. Just like building a recruiting firm, right? Like, it's possible. I mean, these guys are people that started 15, 2030, now this, 30 years ago in a basement, right? Like, believe that it is possible. All you have to do is, like, work and learn. Once you learn the business, you understand the business. It really isn't rocket science. That's why everyone says that. Like, once you understand it, it really isn't that hard.

Dandan Zhu [00:52:44]:
It's just hard when you don't know what you're doing, which is why you have to believe in what you're doing in order to. It's like chicken and the egg. So if there's anything I could tell you, if you're listening, you're struggling. It's getting hard. Just believe. Trust the process. Do the KPI's. Like, it's really just a science.

Dandan Zhu [00:53:01]:
The inputs automatically lead to the outputs. If you're not seeing the outputs over a significant period of time, then you're doing something wrong, which means you need training, you need coaching. But outside of that, I mean, it just isn't brain surgery. It's very straightforward. The people who know, know. All you have to do is figure out what they know and do. What they do. Perfect.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:22]:
Well, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. For the listeners, make sure to pick up the book. It is a book that I'm reading right now that I wish I had at the very start of my career. And I think it's a book that if somebody that's new or even like experience, but definitely somebody that's new, could help the retention rate and help people succeed in our space, because so many people fall into the wonderful world of recruiting and they get pushed out. So for the listeners, guys, I want you to keep crushing it. Make 2024 your best year yet.

Dandan Zhu [00:53:55]:
We're cheering you on.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:56]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.