Navigating the Evolving Recruitment Landscape with Tricia Tamkin Part 2

Benjamin [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin MENA, 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. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a very special guest, Trica Camp in who's here to talk about all the evolutions and the changes and sales, marketing. And real quick, before we get started, I personally have taken one of Trisha's programs. She is an excellent, amazing recruiting coach and has actually helped me grow my business and actually is one of the people that actually helped me launch at the start of my own firm. So I'm excited to have you back. Tricia, welcome to the podcast.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:00:53]:

Thanks for having me again.

Benjamin [00:00:55]:

So one of the things that I typically like to do at the very beginning of a podcast is do a deep dive on how you got started in the recruiting space. But for everybody listening, go back and check out episode eleven of the Elite Recruiter podcast. Tricia does a great job talking about how she got started in the industry. She answered a newspaper ad and then pretty much said, screw this, I'm starting my own firm. It took some time, but it's definitely a great start and a great launch. All right, jumping into the meat of everything, recruiting is evolving. 2023 is a completely different time period in recruiting than even two years ago. Let's just start talking about that.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:01:38]:

Yeah, I've been a recruiter for 30 years. That makes me old, right? But when I started recruiting, I didn't have a computer on my desk. We were incredibly advanced with a fax machine.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:01:52]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:01:52]:

So I started out like jason jokes a lot about how he graduated from college before there was Google, I started as a recruiter before there was the Internet. So I have definitely seen the progression. And where we're sitting right now, I think is one of the most exciting times to be a recruiter. We are, in my humble opinion, based on everything that's happening with artificial intelligence right now. I think that we are on the cusp of probably the most extended area of era of prosperity that humanity has ever seen. And I am just so delighted to be in the early stages of it, I can't even tell you.

Benjamin [00:02:40]:

So take a pause there. So being in the circle with podcast guests and with the people that I roll with, there's a lot of success going on. But in the recruiting space, there's also not a lot of success. I know you're excited about prosperity and growth, but it seems to be a wide gap that's already happening.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:03:00]:

Well, yeah, I mean, I think when we look at recruiting in general, there's an incredibly low barrier of entry, right? Like, what do you need to be a recruiter? You don't need a high school diploma. You basically need a phone and a computer and you need to declare yourself a recruiter, and now you're a recruiter. So, because we have this very low barrier of entry to get into our industry, there are a tremendous number of people that do our jobs very poorly. They don't know what they're doing. They're going out with 10% fees, they're slinging resumes. They don't understand the requirements. Those people, regardless of the economy, regardless of the industry, regardless of progression in recruiting, they're not going to be successful. This is a hard job.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:03:54]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:03:54]:

We have to be masters at the mundane and simultaneously incredibly skilled negotiators and psychologists or therapists. So getting that combination of mastering the mundane with all of the advanced skills that we need in order to facilitate and close deals, it's a pretty unique combination of a skill set. But with the low barrier of entry, it means that our industry is flooded with incompetence.

Benjamin [00:04:25]:

So before we start jumping into other stuff, the people that are, I feel like, are being impacted by the downturns of recruiting. How do they make that shift to go into becoming a successful recruiter or riding that wave to prosperity?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:04:41]:

Well, I mean, I can give you the totally biased answer, which is that's been really good training and coaching.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:04:48]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:04:49]:

If you look at the number of recruiters in our industry that have never been formally trained, it's kind of obnoxious. Right. Again, low barrier of entry.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:04:59]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:05:00]:

So I think the most important thing for recruiters right now is inexperienced recruiters, too, not just rookies. I think it's important to really evaluate where you are in the market right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:05:13]:

Now.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:05:16]:

What they appreciate you doing for them, outside of just providing them the exact candidates that they need. And I think what we need to do is make sure that you're refining your skills continually.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:05:29]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:05:30]:

I'm always surprised at the number of recruiters that don't prep their clients for an interview. The number of recruiters that don't prep their candidates for resignation. I mean, what a waste. You've gone this far in the process. Why are we not taking the steps where we do have influence? I think that's a real gap in our industry right now.

Benjamin [00:05:55]:

Many of the big billers that we have on this podcast, one of the things they constantly talk about, whether it's on the podcast or it's after we're done recording, is the impact that coaches have on their skill sets. Even when they're hitting seven figures, they're still hiring coaches.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:06:11]:

I have two private coaching clients right now that do an excess of a million dollars in billing as solo practitioners. Yes. I mean, think of a sports, an athlete, a professional athlete. They're going to go to a coach. They're going to have a number of coaches in very specific disciplines. And let's not forget, I mean, I've been a recruiter for 30 years, but that isn't a prerequisite for being a really good coach. I hired my first coach in 1998. It was a year after I started my business and I didn't have a boss, I didn't have a mentor, I didn't have anybody I could go to that could help me. And so I started interviewing business coaches and being a headhunter, I did the interviews.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:07:00]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:07:01]:

And I think I interviewed 1516 different ones. And I selected a gentleman by the name of Tim Ersteini, and I will give him a massive call out. I hired him in 1998. I took about six years off, but I had my last session with him last week. I mean, he is still my coach from 1998 and he has never been a recruiter. What he knows about recruiting, he knows from coaching me for 25 years. But that's one coach. But I have another coach, Christina, who has coached me for six years. She also knows nothing about recruiting. So I think it's beneficial to get direction, both industry specific and general business. I don't think your coach has to be skilled in the recruiting industry in order to have tremendous benefit on your life and your business. At least in my experience.

Benjamin [00:07:59]:

I've hired some coaches inside the industry. I've actually hired some coaches outside the industry. And good coaches help you level up no matter what.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:08:07]:

Wait a minute, benjamin, you've hired a coach in the recruiting industry and it wasn't me. What's going on here? And you explain to me how you decided to hire a coach in this industry and didn't come to me. Don't laugh.

Benjamin [00:08:24]:

I think it was like early on when I felt like I couldn't afford you.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:08:27]:

Chris.

Benjamin [00:08:29]:

Good coaching service does cost money. That's the number one thing that I've seen. And sometimes it's making that financial jump.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:08:36]:

It is a big jump.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:08:38]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:08:38]:

Like one of the things that we found when we started our coaching practice, I've always been really frustrated by the people who say, here's my coaching program. I know I've never coached you before, but could you please commit to twelve months of coaching with me up front? Doesn't make any sense to me. Like, I need to be able to get a sense if we're going to have the right chemistry and what impact this coach is going to make on me. I don't want to spend all sorts of money, make a year long commitment and be two sessions in and be like, oh yeah, this is not working. So we structured ours a little bit differently. One of the things that we do, we do mandate a five month commitment out of the gate because we give them so much, we audit their whole business. We look for all of the areas that we can enhance it. And it's pretty top heavy. Right. So five months is the first commitment, just paid monthly. And then from that point, there is absolutely zero ongoing commitment. So what that means is that Jason and I have to stay all the way on top of our game and make sure that no matter what, we are delivering them more value than what they're paying for every single month. So I can tell you, like, half of my practice has been with us for more than three years. So they don't need to stick around. They need to make sure that they're getting that value every single month. And I'm terribly delighted to say that they are, so that's a good thing. I just want everybody to be cautious. When someone is looking for some type of a commitment from you before you've actually experienced what it is, it's challenging.

Benjamin [00:10:35]:

I appreciate you saying that because also I feel like with the way the online education space has changed, I feel like there's also a new coach popping up on a daily basis.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:10:47]:

There'S. Don't get me wrong, I welcome the competition. I do. I welcome the competition. By all means, start your mastermind. Start your program. Go train as many people as you'd like. I don't have any problem with that. My only concern with it is when we start seeing people training on concepts that, Benjamin, you and I both know are the antithesis of best practices in our industry, it's hard for me to wrap my head around people training on. Go tell them that you're the value provider and you'll do the placement for 8%. Like, oh, that makes my skin crawl. How about let's send out 1200 emails and get one meeting? What are we doing? We're not spamming for discovery meetings for business development. It's a terrible approach. So I think that my only concern with all of the new trainers popping up is the fact that I don't necessarily agree with a lot of their methodology.

Benjamin [00:12:09]:

The only caveat I will say to that is what I have seen with some of the people that have started with other training programs, it was enough to get them a little bit of success in the industry and it was enough to start their career. And I've seen some of them look for better coaches that will take them to the next level to be like a 500,000 to a million dollar bill or building those big firms. This is my analogy with wine. I, at the moment, hate grocery store wine. I hate it with a passion. I can't drink any of it, just ignore it.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:12:41]:

Not into the really great bottles. They sell it in a grocery store, you're out.

Benjamin [00:12:46]:

I'd say about 95% of the stuff in the grocery store. I hate it. But those grocery store bottles of wine is what got me started on the discovery of great wine.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:12:59]:

I see that.

Benjamin [00:13:00]:

Of course, the discovery of great wine has turned into multiple trips of France. But it's that entry level that welcome to the industry. Now it's time to grow in the industry.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:13:13]:

Yeah, I'm not going to name any names here, but man, we do pick up a lot of clients from competitive. So I think it's wonderful. I think that anybody out there like Benjamin, you could be a trainer in the recruiting industry for that, something that you explore.

Benjamin [00:13:35]:

I've had actually ask me, because of the podcast and because of what I've done in the recruiting space, I haven't made that jump. Some of the things I'm thinking about with the Recruiter podcast is creating a bit of a community and that kind of stuff. So that's kind of like community building. Sharing stories is actually one of my passions. So that's the fun part of this.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:13:56]:

It is. But I'll tell you, there are very few things that are more satisfying in the world than being able to massively impact someone's life. Like as recruiters, we get a taste of it, right, with our candidates. Our candidates spend more time at work than anything else. So many of them, even their identity is wrapped up in their profession, right? So when they make a job change, it's stressful and it's a big deal and it moves them forward in their careers. And when it's a good move, they love us for it and they give us a lot of credit for it. And that is lovely. It feels good. I know all of your listeners, anybody who's made a placement knows how good it feels when you are helping somebody progress in their career. It's different when you're coaching someone, though, because they lift up the covers a little bit more so you get a much better sense of who they are as a person, what they're trying to accomplish. And you get so much more granular into their specific deals to be able to help them with positioning and finding opportunity that didn't exist or that they didn't see previously. And that changing jobs can certainly change someone's life. But I mean, we have clients that have been $150,000 a year billers, and after a year with us, they're doing 600. That quadrupling your income when you're already starting at 150. That is truly life changing. That's life changing for them for generations. And I love it. I love being able to have that influence. I love being able to have that impact. And candidly, I'm all about words of affirmation. So I love when they come to me and they're like, I couldn't have done this without you. What would I do if you weren't my coach? Man, I eat that stuff up.

Benjamin [00:16:11]:

I absolutely love it. So, taking a break from the coaching talk, let's talk about the recruiting industry and 2023. I know getting clients and getting candidates has gotten tougher. Do you have any secrets to getting new clients and then also, once you're done with that, secrets of getting new candidates.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:16:35]:

So let's start on the business development side, right? So it is hard to get new clients right now. What's hard isn't to get the client. What's hard is to get the prospective client's attention, right? Everything is so noisy out there. We delete hundreds of emails every single day. So there's a couple of things that I think are really important. One, consistent business development. The only way that you get off the roller coaster of ebb and flow in our business is to be doing consistent business development. We had in a group coaching session just last week, we had a celebration where one of our group coaching clients, Lisa, she, was like, I got a new discovery meeting after a billion points of contact. We were like, okay, come on. What's really a billion points of contact? So, Benjamin, what do you think a billion points of contact is? How many do you think it took her to get to the discovery meeting?

Benjamin [00:17:40]:

So I think in most people's minds, a billion would be nine, but I'm thinking like 76.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:17:47]:

You were closer with nine. It took her tatin. Okay. And I think what's important there the idea of it being described as a billion.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:17:58]:

Okay.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:17:59]:

1 billion points of contact. Ten points of contact. So one of the things that I think a lot of recruiters drop the ball on in general, is having the knowledge and understanding of exactly how noisy and intrusive you need to be in order to get somebody's attention. We typically see the most amount of success after the 8th point of contact. So a point of contact is going to be a voicemail, an email, an email, anything that you are interacting with them or they're interacting with you. So that seems a little bit weird, right, that there's a difference. But if I call you Benjamin, and I leave you a message, and I give you my phone number on that message, and you go out and you Google my phone number to see who I am, that is actually considered a second point of contact and more valuable because it was initiated by you.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:19:06]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:19:07]:

So these points of contact are important. It's important to stay in front of the prospective client. Now, another mistake that people make when they're reaching out to these prospective clients, if I'm doing business development, what I'm actually looking to achieve, I would like to find a hiring manager, reach out to them, get the requirements, sign the contract, present a candidate, have them like the candidate, extend a successful offer, have my candidate start. Now, I'd like to send you a big invoice.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:19:42]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:19:43]:

Of course, this is what all of us want in the industry. But if you go into the initial business development call trying to accomplish all of that, you are never going to be successful.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:19:56]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:19:57]:

The initial business development call, the only purpose of it is to get a meeting. That's it. I would like to get on your calendar to discuss your strategic hiring initiatives for the rest of the year. Not let me verbally vomit all over you about what my value proposition is and our proprietary process, which is the same as everybody else's, and how we only give you the very best candidate if what you do when you go into that first call where you're trying to get the meeting is attempt to interrupt their day and sell them on why they should use you when they never raised their hand and said that they wanted to. You're not going to have a lot of success. What we need to do is focus solely on getting the meeting. That's it. Get the meeting. So, Benjamin, you probably know from way back in the day, all of us were raised with this idea of dial for dollars and get the requirement, right? Just keep calling. Keep calling people until you can get someone on the phone and they give you a requirement. Now, this is one of those major changes in our industry. So let's do a hypothetical, you and I. Let's say that you are in the market for a brand new ATS system. You've already decided, you know you're going to switch. You know you're going to use a new provider. You've gone to the groups, you've asked for recommendations. You did your research. You've got a shortlist, right? And there's only companies on that shortlist. That's it. Just two. Now, let's say that while you and I are having this conversation right now, one of those ATS providers calls you, okay? And let's say it's even after you hang up, I don't expect you to take that call while you're talking to me. But let's say as soon as you hang up, they call you and they're like, oh, Benjamin, we have the best ATS. And you're like, they probably do have the best ATS. And I would like to do a demo for you of our whole system. It'll take about 45 minutes. I'm going to start now. Could you do that? Could you just take that call? And do you have 45 minutes available to do a demo on a product right now?

Benjamin [00:22:31]:

No.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:22:33]:

Okay?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:22:33]:

So even if you have the need, even if you've already decided that I'm the right provider or that ATS Software Company is the right provider for you, even though you have already taken yourself so far through the sales process, if someone calls you to demo that product that you want, you don't have time to do it on the spot. So every one of your listeners needs to stop trying to get the requirement on the first call. Stop. The only thing you're trying to do is schedule a meeting so that they do have the time to talk to you. You do have an opportunity to give them your value proposition. Ideally, you have an opportunity to determine if they're actually a company that you'd like to represent. Most recruiters are terribly discerning with their requirements. I would encourage them to be more discerning.

Benjamin [00:23:31]:

That's absolutely great. And on the perfect piece of advice, because so often it's like a wreck, wreck, give me a wreck, give me a wreck. I've heard many ways of that type of wreck hunting called, and we're not going to name some of them here, but to be a true value partner, be a consultant partner, that you need to be honestly, I can't do a 45 minutes on the chop of a hat, unfortunately.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:23:56]:

And you know what? Neither can your candidates. Your candidates can't do 45 minutes to an hour unexpectedly. And I'd even argue if they can, that would make me question the caliber of the candidate. Like, what good are you at your job if you can just stop on a dime and take a call from me as a recruiter that you let me interview you for an hour? I don't believe that that's going to be a really good candidate for us.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:24:24]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:24:24]:

We've got to be conscious of the fact that 30 years ago, people didn't do as much as they do now. They didn't have the tools, they didn't have the Internet, they did not have schedules that were just back to back, over and over meetings. And now that's what corporate America looks like, and we need to be cognizant of it.

Benjamin [00:24:50]:

Okay, before we move into candidate hunting, is there anything else you'd love to say about the sales and the business development process?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:24:57]:

It's a good question. I could probably talk for 16 hours the business development process. But here, let me give a gem to your listeners. There is a sentence or two that if you can get real comfortable saying confidently, it'll change your whole desk. When this is something that we actually do, you'll see, it can be the response to anytime you don't know what to say to a prospective client. Okay, Benjamin, I'd like an opportunity to earn your business. What do I need to do to make that happen? That's it. I'd like an opportunity to earn your business. What do I need to do to make that happen? If they can deliver that confidently and then shut up, what we like to do is ask the question, and then as they're thinking about it, we interject and try to start helping them lead them a little bit further. We just need to ask the question and then be quiet. What ends up happening? Because it's such a direct question, they answer it like, well, first we have to get you through procurement and get you onto a vendor list. Wonderful. How do we go about that? Right? All we're doing is trying to have that hiring manager lay out for us exactly what it's going to take in order to become a vendor for them.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:26:33]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:26:33]:

Sometimes what that boils down to is how many people like this have you placed? How long have you been in the industry? What's different about you? Like, you're going to have to sell it and you're going to have to answer the follow on questions. But I think that that's an extraordinary way to open the conversation.

Benjamin [00:26:52]:

I absolutely love that.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:26:55]:

Thank you. I've been using it for a long time, and it's really successful.

Benjamin [00:26:59]:

All right? Flipping over to the candidate side, because not everybody's on LinkedIn or the people that are on LinkedIn don't want to be there because LinkedIn is turning into a you're hit up all the time.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:27:13]:

Right?

Benjamin [00:27:14]:

Where are some good places to find great candidates for your open jobs?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:27:20]:

Okay, there's a couple of different ways to go about it. First, I would like to metaphorically scream this from the rooftops. If you have ever been trained that you're not a real headhunter, if you post jobs, I would like to tell you that that is categorically a false statement. Okay? I know so many recruiters that have been at this for decades, and I think we all went through this experience similar to what AI is right now. 20 years ago, when we had Career Builder and Monster and the first onset of job boards, and everybody was like, oh, they're not going to need a recruiter anymore. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose my livelihood. And I think in that moment, a lot of people made the decision that the job board was a competitor to us as recruiters. And they said, no way. No job postings. I am not posting a job. The internal recruiters can post a job. I'm a real headhunter. It just is a terrible approach in our business. And one of our coaching clients just placed a CFO for over a $60,000 fee. That was an Indeed ad response. And come on, if we go back years, okay, years ago, you would never have gotten an executive off of Indeed or Career Builder or Monster because executives 20 years ago did not grow up with job boards. They didn't. They went to ads in newspapers, and they worked with Headhunters. Now, if we look at Gen X, which is the predominant generation of hiring managers right now, every one of them, when they graduated from college or shortly after found their first job or made job changes using job boards. So we've got a whole slew now of people, everybody other than maybe some of the baby boomers, okay? But from Gen X, down they go to the Jot boards. They go what they do is they go to Google. And this is how you figure out where you want to post. They go to Google and they type in accountant, CPA, Chicago job.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:29:56]:

Okay?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:29:56]:

They don't go straight to Indeed. They don't go straight to LinkedIn. They go straight to Google. So what we want to do is optimize where we post based on search engine optimization that already exists, right? So I put in the title, the geography and the word jobs into Google and whatever my top result is, that's where I want to post. If it's at a niche board, go to the niche board. If it's indeed go to indeed. If it's LinkedIn, go to LinkedIn. But first, we have to decide where to post. Then we have to make sure that when we're posting a job that we are not taking the job description from the client, copying it and pasting it and putting it onto a job board, thinking that somehow being able to lift 50 pounds is some type of selling point for your opportunity. And it's not. We have to turn it into an advertisement, right? So I'll give your listeners a couple of quick tips for posting effective jobs where you can get passive candidates to engage with you. That's our goal, is a passive candidate. So what we do, there are three main things that you're going to want to address in your job postings. First, under no circumstances do you use the title that your client company gave you. Don't use that title, okay? Senior Staff Software Engineer. Two. Not a great title, right? So what we want to do is we want to list out multiple different titles in the title field with a forward slash between them. So I might say. Software engineer. Software architect. Java developer. I might list out four or five different possible titles because I don't know when my candidate goes to Google and types in their title and location and the word job, I want it to pull my job up. So I need to have some variety in the title. Then we make sure that the entire job is all about what's in it for them. The very first section of a job posting is the impact the candidate is going to make in the role. The next element of it is literally why you should apply. That's the heading Why you should apply. And now before we tell them what we need, what weight we want, what qualifications they need, what degree they need, how about first we tell them why this is a good opportunity and why they should take some action on it. So we sell it all first, then we tell them a little bit about the job, and then at the very end, we tell them what the qualifications are. My first bullet in every qualification job posting is be able to do the job as described. That's the first bullet, right? Like, I am going to put the least number of qualifications I possibly can into that job posting, mostly so I can attract more women, right? Because a man needs to feel 50% qualified in order to hit that apply button. 50%, a woman needs to feel 90% qualified to hit that button. So especially for any of your listeners that are doing diversity recruiting, you got to be real conscious of how you post, because women, I'm being so generalized here, but women generally need to feel like they're a better fit before they're going to apply. So least amount of minimum criteria as possible. And now the real key to the whole thing for a job posting, at the end of the job post what. We want to say is we would be delighted to have you apply online and include your resume, but you may not have a resume up to date, and we don't need one to have a conversation. Send me an email to Tricia at more essentials.com and tell me why we should have a conversation about this role. Now, what that does, I imagine always my high caliber, totally qualified, perfect fit candidate. And here she is at work, and their boss is a jerk. Maybe not in general, but today their boss is a jerk. And there's conflict at work. And what they do know, they get upset, and they storm off to the bathroom to kind of regroup and pull themselves together. And they take their phone out, and they go to Google and they type Accountant Chicago Jobs. And they look at the job. Now, if your job is written in the format that I just shared with you, but it doesn't have that ending piece that gives them a way to contact you without a resume, what will happen is your perfect candidate will sit there. They will look at your job and be like, alohi, this is perfect for me. I'm going to save this and update my resume and send it in this evening. And then they go back to work, and at the end of the day, their boss apologizes, says, I'm sorry, I was having a bad day. I took it out on you. Now, your candidate who is perfect for your role and interested in your role is never going to apply, and we need to avoid that. So I would make the argument, and you might find this kind of unusual, as I am an expert in Boolean Logic, and I have been teaching Boolean Logic to recruiters for decades. And what I'm going to tell you is probably the biggest single biggest impact right now for recruiter sourcing candidates is to learn how to write good job ad. Learn how to write it, and then as soon as you get the requirement, there are two things that you're going to do. The first is make the decision, is this job postable?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:36:38]:

Okay?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:36:39]:

There are jobs that are not postable. One of our clients, hi, Stacey, she works in the elevator industry. That's all she does is place people in the elevator industry, okay? And she had a requirement this is probably a year ago, but she had a requirement where she needed a person in accounts Payable, like an accounting, a level up from an accounting clerk in Colorado, and they had to mandatorily come out of the elevator industry. Now, if I post a job for an accounts payable person, I'll get a ton of responses. None of them will be in the elevator industry, right? So that would be a job that I would never consider postable. So first we have to decide if it's postable. If it's postable, we post before we go to our ATS we post before we reach out to the people that we already know we post, before we do any cold sourcing. Now, once that job gets posted, the next thing we do, let's say we're at Indeed or LinkedIn, we're going to immediately set up an alert as if we were the candidate. So I go to my accountant, Chicago. I post the job. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start over again inside Indeed, and I'm going to search for an accountant in Chicago. I'm going to run that search. I'm going to modify my criteria, and I'm going to set it up as an alert so that for the entire duration that I'm working on this search, I'm going to have emails coming to me with every other company that's looking for the same type of person that I'm already recruiting for. And now I have a constant stream of new business development that I might have some element of candidate reusability. So I think one of the biggest gaps is the reluctance that seasoned recruiters have to posting jobs rethink that if you were taught you shouldn't, I will tell you confidently and empirically, you're wrong.

Benjamin [00:38:55]:

Take a pause. I love what you also said about, first of all, I'm not afraid to post a job. I just consider it another line, another fishing rod in the ocean trying to catch candidates.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:39:07]:

Yeah.

Benjamin [00:39:08]:

But I do love what you talked about, about setting up the alerts, figuring out who else is hiring as another opportunity to cross sell the candidates that you have. I think that is a golden tip. That not cross sell.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:39:25]:

Not cross sell. So this is something that's kind of challenging, Benjamin, because NPC marketing is such a big thing, right? So in most cases, what someone would tell you to do in that situation, you get the alert. It's an accountant in Chicago, and you've got a whole bunch of accountants in Chicago. And so the old school of thought would be call up the company and be like, hi, Mr. Hiring Manager. You won't believe I just finished a search for an accountant in Chicago with the exact skills that you're looking for, and I have all of these candidates. I'd be able to help you immediately.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:40:05]:

Okay?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:40:05]:

So let's pause on that for a minute, and let me say it to you a little differently. Okay, Benjamin? I went to this picnic yesterday, and I bought all of these sandwiches, and I have some leftover. Could I sell you for premium price one of my leftover sandwiches from yesterday? Is that something that you might be interested in?

Benjamin [00:40:30]:

No.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:40:32]:

So we want to get the information for the other companies that are looking for the same people. And it's wonderful to have those people in your back pocket, but you don't tell the new prospective client that you have their competitors leftovers and somehow think that they're going to want those sloppy seconds. They're not going to want them, I promise.

Benjamin [00:41:01]:

Yeah, good approach. Good fix on that.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:41:03]:

Great.

Benjamin [00:41:06]:

So talking about finding candidates, so if you have never met Trisha, trisha is a wizard or mage or something of that fantasy world where she can spin up these searches using Boolean and all these other things and pull ballistic candidates that I feel like almost every other recruiting firm would have missed.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:41:30]:

Yeah.

Benjamin [00:41:31]:

How do you do that?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:41:33]:

Well, the first time that I started using Boolean search to find candidates was in 1998. That's when I started. So I've spent virtually my entire career sourcing that way. So I think it's incredibly powerful, right? If you know how to speak to Google in Google's Language, and you can isolate the exact type of candidates that you need, it makes your job so much faster.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:42:05]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:42:06]:

Deals don't happen on a keyboard. They don't. Sourcing is a necessary evil. It is something that we have to do in order to get to the people to have the conversations so that we can make the placements. But people get lost in sourcing. They think either I'm going to write a search string and I'm going to find a candidate that meets exactly the criteria that my client is looking for. They've said all of it publicly on their profile. They are in the exact right location, and you know what? They're primed to make a job change. Like, if I could figure out a Boolean search string for that, I wouldn't be working anymore. I mean, that would be a gold mine. But it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist sourcing. We want you to get to the biggest volume of people that you possibly can as fast as you can, because we know that a lot of it is luck and timing for whether or not they're going to engage with you. So everything that we do around sourcing, you can give me virtually any requirement. Barring light industrial or skilled trades, it does not work in that realm. But if it is scientific, professional, technical, executive, you can give me any requirement, and I can give you 100 to 500 candidates in five minutes. Five minutes. I have to say five minutes. Otherwise maybe your listeners won't believe me, but it's actually less than that. It's fast. So from a sourcing perspective, what you want to do is refine your skills to the point that you do the least amount of sourcing possible, the least amount. We want to go in, figure out which people we need, and then outsource the administrative function of it. Okay, so I made the mistake. This was such a big mistake. I would write a search string. Really good at writing search strings. I'd write a search string, I'd look at the first 2030 results on it and be like, good job. You're good at this. And then I would send the search string to my admin and say, build me a list. Take all of the people on this search and put them in a spreadsheet. And I want their email address, their phone number, where they work, their title, their geography. Now load it to my ATS. But I would take that a step further, and my VA would web into my inbox. And then using a template that I provided, he would go in and individually, one at a time, send emails, introductory emails from me. I didn't write them or do them. I mean, I wrote the template, but he's sending them individually. So I was going from I write the search string to responding to candidates that had engaged.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:45:13]:

Okay.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:45:13]:

And I didn't have to do anything in the middle. Like, I see the look on your face. That sounds like a beautiful process, right? Except it's not, because I wasn't looking at each of the candidates. So what ended up happening was I found myself repeatedly on the phone with candidates that, had I taken a second to look at their background, never would have been on the phone with them. So in my effort to become more efficient, I actually wasted a lot of time. So I am of the firm belief that you never outsource your sourcing. You only outsource the administrative piece of your Sourcing, which is gathering the information, finding the email address and the phone number, loading it to your system. Those things can be outsourced. You still need to look at every single candidate, though, and it's one of.

Benjamin [00:46:10]:

Those things, as you're a seasoned recruiter, you can see one profile and see the profile next to it that you know exactly how this profile would be a better fit than that one. So absolutely love that. So for those that want to learn your wizard skills of searching, what do they need to do?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:46:29]:

Well, they can take eSourcing essentials live. The next time we teach that is October. Or they can take eSourcing Essentials on Demand, which is recorded sessions. And then twice a year, live Sourcing, we call them open Sourcing sessions, which is basically you can come in and ask questions from training. But what really happens in those sessions? Benjamin this is why I know I can get this many candidates in five minutes. Our students show up and they bring us their hardest requirement, and they're like, okay, so I need someone that does this, this, and this. Oh, and they need to be in Dubuque, Iowa, and speak German like some crazy requirement. But they come to our Sourcing sessions and they bring their requirements. Jason and I source live and give them the results right in the middle of the session. So the last Sourcing session that I did, we ended it early. We did seven different searches in 42 minutes. Dang that's great. Right?

Benjamin [00:47:40]:

And I will have Trisha's information in the show notes if you want to connect with her to learn about her Wizard Sourcing secrets.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:47:49]:

Can I tell you, Benjamin, in Sourcing, one of the things that we do that makes sourcing so easy for our students is we have this concept that we call base search strings. So all of our searches have a base and a face, okay? So the base is how you basically tell Google, only give me results from LinkedIn, and only have them be profiles of people. That's the base of the search. The face is the Chicago accountant, right? Like describing your actual candidate. So our base search strings are really the efficiency part. We give all of our students a tool that loads I don't know, I'd have to count it 30, 40 different base search strings right into their browser so they can just write Chicago Accountant and then copy and paste that over into different tabs, and all the base search strings are written for them.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:48:49]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:48:49]:

So we make it really efficient, because, again, you're not closing deals on a computer. I want you on the phone with people. We just got to get you to the phone with people. Now, what's super interesting about that and why I tell you is because we've done the same thing for artificial intelligence, okay? So if you think about that concept of a base and a face, we don't call it that in AI. We call it fast formula. So Jason and I, and we hired a full time prompt engineer in February. Jeff, jason and I yeah, go ahead.

Benjamin [00:49:30]:

For the people that don't know what a prompt engineer is, what is a prompt engineer?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:49:34]:

A prompt engineer, Jeff, spends 100% of his day writing and refining prompts for Chat GPT, Bard, and Bing, so that's all he does is communicate with the AI and refine that communication so that we can get exactly the outputs that we want. So, for example, on the job posting that I was just talking to you about, right, it used to take Jason and I about 30 minutes to take someone's job description and put it into a job posting format. Now we have a job posting formula, and it's about three quarters of a page of text. The formula is and I copy that formula, I put it into Chat GPT, I take my job description, and I paste it to the formula, and I hit search, and it writes my entire job posting for me.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:50:42]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:50:43]:

That's one of those. Efficiencies. So the formula are kind of like our base search strings. Like, it gets you started and gets you into the output that you want, and then you customize it for whatever it is specifically that you're looking for.

Benjamin [00:51:01]:

And I love that you guys hired a prompt engineer. I love that you guys are refining the prompts, because really, like Chat GPT, I had another guest that talked about this. Chat GPT is like a grand piano sitting in your house. Most people don't know how to play a grand piano, so when you hit a few keys, you ding, ding, ding had a little lamb. But then you put like, somebody that understands how to use the piano and it makes magical music, right?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:51:30]:

The AI is the exact same thing. We're doing some really cool stuff with it. I will tell you. When it first came out, I spent a weekend, I mean, like a whole weekend, and basically made it teach me how to talk to it, right? So at that point, they hadn't locked down any of the internal parameters inside of Chat GPT, so I was able to very quickly determine what those internal parameter settings were. So, like, right now, if you put a prompt into Chat GPT, it's going to spit out for you a result. That result is there's a thing that's like a creativity dial inside of the internal workings of AI. And if you know how to talk to it, you can twist that dial up. So I can take content by adjusting the internal parameters and I can have Chat GPT write me content that I literally copy out, paste into a Chat GPT detector and it comes back 100% human love. That amazing, right? I am so immersed in AI right now that it's hard for me to talk about anything else. I imagine that's the case with a lot of your guests right now.

Benjamin [00:53:11]:

And I know we were talking about this before we jumped on to hit record. I feel like I'm in a bubble where everybody's playing using AI, but the reality of the situation, very few people are actually using AI.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:53:24]:

Pew Research came out with a report last month or early this month, and it said that 19% of Americans have touched it and 55% of Americans have never heard of Chat GPT. I can't even wrap my head around that. I feel like everywhere I look, it's in every newsletter, it's on every news broadcast, it's on every social media, it's everywhere. I don't know how we could possibly have the majority of Americans unaware of it at this point.

Benjamin [00:54:03]:

So before we move on from talking about AI, I know you also just trained the Pinnacle Society, which are some of the best recruiters in the country, on using artificial intelligence. Is there anything else that you would love to share about using AI before you move on?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:54:18]:

Pinnacle Society is so much fun. If you're interested in hanging out with Pinnacle Society people, I think I have more than two thirds of them in my AI four program. Right? Like Pinnacle Society people, they know how to optimize time, they know how important their time is, and they know that they need to get on this. Yeah. I mean, we've taught technical Society, international Requiemed Search Association. Your Big billers are using this, okay? And so if you're not a Big biller, the best way to become a Big Biller is to model the things that Big billers do. And what they're doing right now is going all in on AI. I would encourage every one of your listeners to do that.

Benjamin [00:55:08]:

I love it.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:55:10]:

That's another one I could talk about for 20 hours. I don't know if I could pull something specific. Let's do a tangible tip, one just tangible action item. Whenever you are writing a prompt, at some point in your prompt, instruct GPT to in this exact way, think step by step. Very simple instruction. Think step by step. And when you add that one little thing to your prompt, it makes the AI output much clearer, easier to understand and applicable. So think step by step.

Benjamin [00:55:59]:

I love that. There's so much fun with this program.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:56:03]:

I'm having a blast with it. I'm actually having a blast with it, with things completely outside of recruiting.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:56:10]:

Okay.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:56:11]:

I was having drinks with my son's old travel baseball coach, right? I love him, great friend. And he was the person that wrote the schedule for the memorial day baseball travel tournament. And this was like, the bane of his existence. I went in right on the phone, sitting, having a drink, and I was like, okay, watch this. I'm hosting a tournament with 33 teams. It's a single elimination. I've got four fields over three days write my schedule. And he wrote the entire tournament schedule. Then I said, Oops, I'm wrong. There's 37 teams. Redo it 30 seconds. It rewrote the whole thing. I mean, I'm sitting with mike having a drink, showing him this, and his chin could not come off of the table. Like, he was so blown away by it that there are so many different tasks and projects that we as human beings are responsible personally and professionally. And I just want all of your listeners to be having chat GPT open all day long, and every single thing you need to do, ask yourself first, how can my AI assistant either help me get started, give me ideas, or refine what I've already done?

Benjamin [00:57:38]:

I love that. And a side note, I am part of an HOA board, and I'm actually using chad GPT to write official emails based off our bylaws. And everybody thinks I'm a genius. My writing sucks. If it wasn't for microsoft word grammarly and now artificial intelligence. But they're just like, that sounds so official.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:58:03]:

Good job.

Benjamin [00:58:03]:

We're using all your stuff. And I'm like, I just plugged in what you wanted to say.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:58:07]:

Hit go.

Benjamin [00:58:08]:

Fix some props. I need this voice. I need this thought process, and just let it do the work.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:58:15]:

Yeah, it's interesting because a coaching client of ours just last week asked me a technical question, like, how do I do this? And it wasn't a far technical question, but it was one that I would have had to it was like, basically an uninstall reinstall of a program. But she's on a different operating system than me, so the question came in via email. I literally copied the question out of her email, pasted into chat GPT, hit search, copied the answer, pasted the answer back in the email and replied to her, okay, now the funny part about this Benjamin, from her send to my response was 1 minute.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:58:57]:

Okay, 1 minute.

Tricia Tamkin  [00:58:58]:

So she comes back and she's, oh, why am I not as smart as you and how can you do this so fast? And I just screenshot my prompt and sent it back to her. I'm like minimal. This is not that I am so smart. This is that I am so resourceful and I know where to go to get the answer and how to do it rapidly. So I would just love to encourage all of your readers to your listeners to make sure that you are really thinking about how you can integrate this into your life.

Benjamin [00:59:34]:

Love it. All right, before we move on to quickfire questions, is there anything else you want to share?

Tricia Tamkin  [00:59:41]:

Yes, I do want to just say where we've absolutely trained Pinnacle Society. We went out to their event and did it and did the same thing for International Retained Search. We have a program, a live program that we teach that we do those same kind of open prompts every other week where they can bring their stuff to class and we force the AI to give them the output that they want. So I'll give you a link for that to put in your show notes. It is arguably the most comprehensive training program on AI, period. And there are, I think we're up to 30 different formulas that are specific. Use cases in recruiting, how to sanitize someone's background before you market them, how to write a candidate presentation, how to get interview questions, how to determine the personality of your candidate and your client and then predict the best way for your candidate to answer interview questions. Like, we're doing custom interview preps using it, and the results are remarkable. So, yeah, I'll give you that link.

Benjamin [01:01:00]:

I'll have that in the show notes. So moving on to the quickfire questions, chris, what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's just starting off in the industry this year to have a successful career?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:01:14]:

Recognize that you are going to make a ton of mistakes, a ton. You're dealing with people, and there's a lot of nuance to how people behave and how they make decisions. Our job is kind of like being a realtor. If the house got to decide if they wanted the buyer, clearly the house doesn't get to decide. But I think understanding that it's a journey, most recruiters don't make it past six months, they don't master the mundane. They can't make all of the cold calls. They can't deal with the rejection. And I would say if you can get really comfortable with the fact that the only way that you're going to learn is to do it and make mistakes, if you can welcome those mistakes and endure and push through them, the other side of those mistakes is, I think, the greatest profession in the entire world. If you can get there. So many recruiters have so many people have this internal dialogue, this internal critic that is constantly telling them they're not good enough, they're a failure, they're going to mess it up. We got to shut off that internal critic. And you have literally just got to muscle through the first six months knowing that all of these mistakes that you're going to make are going to make you such a better recruiter. As long as you can endure, make.

Benjamin [01:02:59]:

It pounce in six months, and your life will change.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:03:01]:

That will.

Benjamin [01:03:03]:

What advice would you give to experienced recruiters to have continued success?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:03:08]:

Well, first and foremost, if you're not using Chat GPT for efficiency, please do that. I mean, that's absolutely number one for experienced recruiters. I think one of the limitations that I see often, we don't use an ATS. Well, okay, so an ATS, Jason, calls it an anti talent system, right? Like, what we do is we enter all the people we don't have relationships with. We reached out to them, they didn't respond. Why are they in our ATS?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:03:40]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:03:41]:

So I don't love that. What I want people to do is leverage the relationships that they've developed, okay? Oftentimes you get a new search, and what you're going to do is go post your job, set up your alert. Most recruiters skip that ATS step, and they go straight to open sourcing, right? And most of them skip the posting part. So they just reinvent the wheel every single time. And I think if we can, for our more experienced recruiters, I'd encourage you to put together a methodology of how you are following up with the candidates that you presented an opportunity to that didn't want to interview or the candidates. You presented an opportunity to that interviewed and didn't get the job. Or you presented the opportunity. They got the offer, they didn't take it. But there's a couple of other types of people that we put in this category. I'm going to describe a candidate to you, Benjamin, and I know you've had this candidate. They looked good on paper. You got on the phone with them. They weren't good. There's no way that you would be able to present this candidate to your client. And they won't shut up. They are talking and talking and talking and talking, and you're like, how am I going to get off this call? Right? That person is so valuable. And my experienced recruiters don't recognize the value. So when I have that person on the phone, what I will do is schedule out 45 days. They're usually active, right? That's usually an active candidate, which means that likely in 45 to 60 days, they're landing somewhere. And that's an outstanding business development opportunity for you. I take other recruiters candidates. Let's say I talk to a candidate and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm at the tail end of the process and I'm about to accept an offer. You know what? How about if I prepped you for your resignation? Like if you want a totally unbiased person that has no vested interest in your decision, if you would like someone to bounce that off of, I'm your girl. Like, I'll help you with it. And by doing that, we basically can hijack another recruiter's deals in the future. If you have a candidate that you placed and you didn't go above and beyond with them throughout the interview process and I swoop in there and I knock their socks off with the most comprehensive resignation prep that they have ever gone through. Now when they go to the new job, who are they going to use when they need to hire people, you or me? I'd say me, Benjamin and our hypothetical, because I'm the one that delivered more perceived value even though it wasn't my deal. So I think experienced recruiters need to cultivate their network in a very structured and purposeful manner.

Benjamin [01:07:00]:

That is a great piece of advice. And if you are not following Trisha, definitely follow her, connect with her. Because every time I have a conversation with her, she's always leveling me up. And I know she does that for the entire community.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:07:13]:

We are all about random acts of kindness. You know that, right? Twice rack Friday, all of your listeners can show up for free and ask us anything they want about recruiting and we will answer it for them and we run it for 4 hours, no breaks, anything you want to know.

Benjamin [01:07:33]:

So that's fun and it's always fun, like listening to the questions.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:07:37]:

I think it gives you a really good sense of a lot of times recruiters live in a silo. They don't have a lot of exposure to other recruiters and what those best practices are and what those challenges are and what they're interested in. And I think our Rack Friday event gives a lot of perspective there.

Benjamin [01:07:57]:

Flipping over to a book that has had a huge impact on your career. What book is that?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:08:02]:

Okay, so you asked me this question in episode eleven and in that one I said, The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. That's my go to. I love it, but I don't want to give the same one. I will. I thought about this, like, what is a book that really changed how I thought about things and how I approached things. And I think my answer is going to be a little bit cliche, but it's also going to be incredibly accurate. Many, many years ago when Tim Ferriss came out with The Four Hour Work Week, I read that book and I fired twelve people. That was a big move. I had a third frown. I had nine recruiters, I had three people on support. And I hated my life. I hated my life. All I was doing was administrative management, operations management, and. Putting fires out in other people's deals. And I'm a headhunter. I love what we do. And I read that book, and I kept Jason and I kept one administrative person and let everybody else go, shut down the office, and then just started outsourcing all of my different functions. In that first year after doing that, my revenue absolutely dropped. Absolutely dropped. But now I was the primary person on a desk. And I like that rainmaker model. Like I like to be that rainmaker. I know how to close the deals and ultimately cutting all of those expenses, cutting all of those people out. The difference in income was less than 100,000. So it was an absolute perfect decision for me. And I attribute it to Tim Ferriss in that book. I don't think I ever would have gone through that process or even considered it had I not read that book.

Benjamin [01:10:06]:

That is crazy.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:10:08]:

Yeah.

Benjamin [01:10:11]:

And I know you're a huge reader, too, but that is a big life decision on completely shifting your entire firm based on one book.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:10:20]:

That's the only book in my entire life that I preordered the updated version ever in my whole life. I don't usually like if I've read it once, great, you can give me the updated version. But I always feel like that's more for people that didn't read the first version. And I bought the updated version of that and I bought like, 30 of them and passed them out as gifts that year. That was a very impactful book for me.

Benjamin [01:10:48]:

Do you have a favorite recruiting tech tool at the moment? Or tech tool outside of chat GPT.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:10:56]:

That's so hard because I don't use a lot of tools. Like, what I use is Google. I use Google. Like, when I'm looking for candidates, I am using Boolean logic and writing search strings and using my own tool that's in eSourcing essentials.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:11:15]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:11:16]:

But I don't have something that and if I had to pick something, and this is going to be a really weird answer, are you familiar with a Chrome extension called One Tab?

Benjamin [01:11:27]:

No, not that one.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:11:30]:

You can't get it in the Chrome store. You don't have to buy it. It's completely free, but you have to go to Oneonecab.com to download it. So that's a tool I absolutely could not live without. So here's what it does. Let's say I'm in that example of looking for my Chicago accountant, and I run a LinkedIn search. Every candidate that I look at, I'm going to right click and open in a new tab.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:12:00]:

Okay?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:12:00]:

Every candidate. If I don't like the candidate, I close out the tab. Once I'm done with the entire review, I click the One Tab Chrome Extension, and it takes all of my open tabs in that window, puts them all in a list with links, and allows me to share it as a web page. So that's how if I'm doing sourcing and instead of saying here's my search string, go build my list. Now what we do is, here's my one tag, go build my list. Because now I've looked at every single candidate. It's great if you're doing research on a topic and you want to save that research. It's great for sharing information back and forth. I will tell you, I am prone to having a hundred tabs open, right? You've been there. We've all been there. That moment where you sit down at your desk and Microsoft is like, we decided last night was when we were going to update your operating system, right? And now all your tabs are gone, like you're in the middle of a project sourcing, and that's just a killer to your efficiency and your morale. So I like to use one tab. If I've got a lot of tabs open and I'm midway through a project, I can click one tab. It brings them all into my one tab list. And then I shut down my browser, and when I start the next day, I open one tab and I click Restore All, and then it reopens all of my tabs right from where I was.

Benjamin [01:13:43]:

I think every recruiter has like, at least 50 tabs open on a daily basis, right?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:13:49]:

I love one tab. I've been using it for years, and it is one of the only other Chrome extension I use. More than one tab is probably grammarly. I love grammarly, and I'm a good writer, but I think sometimes I'm a good writer because I've been using grammarly for years, which teaches you.

Benjamin [01:14:10]:

The only occasional problem I have with grammarly. I'm like when it's like trying to understand the word, then I'm misspelling.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:14:19]:

I will tell you, Benjamin, sometimes I misspell inconvenience so poorly that word can't predict what I was trying to come up with. That exact thing. I know it.

Benjamin [01:14:33]:

So you've had a lot of success over the years. What do you think has been a major impact on you having success?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:14:41]:

Probably it's a combination of things. Planning, planning, planning, planning, planning. If you don't have a plan, you're going to lose your day.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:14:53]:

Okay.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:14:53]:

So having that plan every night, consistently doing business development, right? Continuous learning all the time, it's interesting when you look at that. All of those deal with consistency. So let me modify my answer in order. I think, to be successful. What's made me successful is massive amounts of consistency in all of my daily activities.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:15:24]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:15:24]:

I can't go to bed without my plan done. I start my day exactly the same way every day. I close my day exactly the same way every day. I source the same way. I do my business development the same way. If you are consistent in your activity, which is the only thing you have control over let me just say this loud for everybody. You will never make a candidate accept a job that they don't want. You will never make a client extend an offer to a candidate they don't want. This is why we get paid the big bucks. We got to get them all the way to the finish line and then give up all of our control.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:16:11]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:16:12]:

We can influence, but the one thing we have control over is our activity. And so consistent activity delivers consistent results.

Benjamin [01:16:26]:

I love that. So everything you know now, all the experiences, the training, the teaching, the learning if you can go back to the very beginning of your recruiting career and give yourself advice, what would you tell yourself?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:16:41]:

No one deal matters. No one deal matters. I can't tell you the number of times in my career that I wept over a deal. Sobbed over a deal. I thought it was there. I knew I had it. There weren't going to be any issues. It was absolutely a placement, and then it fell apart.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:17:06]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:17:07]:

So recognizing that would have saved me a lot of heartache. I think if I could have understood where my influence ends and let go of the fact that as much as I might like to, I can't control people's decision making. So once I was able to internalize that, I think my whole demeanor changed. With candidates, it was more about, hey, you know what, Benjamin? If this is the right opportunity for you, awesome. If it's not, that's okay. I don't want to put you into an opportunity that isn't awesome for you. So now I'm much more aligned to the candidates needs, and they feel that.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:17:58]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:17:59]:

It also stops you from blowing up really good clients when you think somehow the best thing to do is to pressure your hiring manager to move forward with a candidate that they don't want. The only thing that that does is reflect poorly on you. You become a pushy salesperson and not a trusted advisor. As a trusted advisor, you have to accept what the client says to you as truth. Accept it as truth. But I didn't know that early in my career. It took me a while to learn.

Benjamin [01:18:34]:

That, and I love that. And that kind of goes into the follow up question. Is there something in your career that you're most proud of?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:18:44]:

That's a great question. I would say two things, so let me do the more important one first.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:18:53]:

Okay.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:18:56]:

When I go to meet with my coach, right. The way that our coaching session starts is with celebrations.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:19:05]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:19:05]:

The first thing that we do is we talk about what are we celebrating? Since the last time that we met, and it was probably about eight or nine months ago that my coach brought to my attention, trish, your celebrations are all your clients. I didn't know that was happening.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:19:27]:

Right.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:19:27]:

Like, it was an interesting thing for him to bring to my attention. I told you one person went from 150 to 600 in a year in billing, and he's maintained that that was three years ago, and he's maintained that billing wasn't a fluke. We have two of our clients that have been able to launch completely separate business units and offerings that aren't recruiting and are generating a lot of revenue that kind of sit on the outskirts of recruiting. Super proud of that. We had one client very recently that we took from corporate. He had a corporate job. He had been five years in the same industry. So let me just start off by saying he had a great reputation, an excellent network, but he was corporate. So he hired us to help him transition into a full time role, full time agency, own his own business. So he started with us about six weeks before it was time to resign. And we helped him with the resignation. We helped him get the business launched. We helped him go out and establish new clients. Now, here's what was cool about it. Given his circumstances and his reputation, we were able to take a much different structure in the way that we set up his fees in general. And I will tell you on a side note, and I'll apologize to him if he listens to this podcast, but sometimes when you have a coach and you don't know any better and you can just blindly trust what they tell you and do it, you're successful. And that's actually what happened here. So looking at the whole situation, first his company came back to make him a counteroffer, and he was like, this is ridiculous. I don't want to do this.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:21:29]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:21:30]:

And so we turned that company into his first client.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:21:36]:

Okay?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:21:36]:

We coached him through the whole resignation, made them a client. Then we set him up on a structure where he had three companies paying him $15,000 a month each on retainer. And then that 45,000 was deducted from the total fees quarterly on a 28% fee structure. And then quarterly, he gets like $100 to $200,000 bonuses from each of three clients. So he went from working full time within eight weeks of launching, he had $45,000 in monthly recurring revenue on annual contracts with quarterly bonuses on top of it. I'm super proud of that.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:22:21]:

Right?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:22:22]:

That's a structure like, we set him up. Thank you. Thank you. I'm super proud of it, right? So most of the things that I tend to be most proud of are the things that we're able to help our clients achieve. Love that.

Benjamin [01:22:38]:

From zero within a few weeks to $45,000 a month recurring revenue contracts on Tar above the placement fees.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:22:49]:

Well, now, hold on. No, because the placement fees are deductible subtracted. Right? So let's say he did we'll do easy math. Let's say that he did four placements and it was 145,000 in fees in that quarter. The 45,000 would come off, they would cut him an additional check for 100,000.

Benjamin [01:23:12]:

Okay, perfect. And I've actually done that in the cleared recruiting space just because there are so many variables to getting a full scope polycanate across the finish line. As a recruiter, you still want to make sure that you're being paid for the work that you're doing.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:23:26]:

Of course.

Benjamin [01:23:28]:

So before I let you go, Trisha, this has been an awesome conversation. Is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Tricia Tamkin  [01:23:36]:

I will share one more thing. Answer your phone. Answer your phone. Even if it says spam call, answer your phone. Even if you don't recognize the number, answer your phone. Perhaps I will damage my credibility a little bit here by saying this, but I believe that if you expect people to answer your calls, you need to answer other people's calls. Let's just put that out in the universe, right? Answer your phone. I personally still to this day, if I am not coaching, training, being interviewed on a podcast, and my phone rings, I answer it every single time. So here's what I will tell your listeners. My cell phone number is 630-240-4454. If you would like information about training or coaching or you just want to ask me a question because I do a random act of kindness every day, call me. I'll answer. You should too.

Benjamin [01:24:46]:

Well, Tricia, thank you much for jumping on the podcast again, sharing, because I know the world has changed from when I first interviewed you on episode Eleven back in May of 2021 to now mid 2023. So much has changed, but so much has it. And I'm excited that people got to listen to you talking about how to level themselves up and to help them win.

Tricia Tamkin  [01:25:12]:

Thank you so much, Benjamin. You know, anytime you want me or Jason, we just ask. We're happy to be here for you.

Benjamin [01:25:20]:

Awesome. And for the listeners, guys, until next time, thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin MENA. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.