Optimizing Your Desk For Success with Chris Wessell

Intro [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.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:18]:

I'm excited about this episode of the elite recruiter podcast. I have my special guest, Chris Wessel from PeopleWise, to talk about how to optimize your guests for success. And here's the biggest thing. You know, there's so many different things that you could be doing emails, this, that, But you need to set up your foundation, and you need to set up the plan so that way you can be successful. And Chris has Year over year has been successful in the recruiting game, so we're excited to have him on the podcast to share how to set up and optimize your desk for success. So welcome to the podcast, Chris. Thanks, Ben. Good to be here. I've watched a bunch of your episodes, so now I, I get to be one of them. So That's awesome. As we as you know, how we get started, how did you even end up in the wonderful world of recruiting? Because I thought it sounded easy.

Chris Wessell  [00:01:06]:

So we all know how that turned out. I was in college and I was, kinda contemplating directions I could go. Right? And, I was doing some networking as a student, and I I met a handful of people that are recruiting business. And, one of them had asked you or thought about being a recruiting. And so what I could think of primarily was the campus recruiting that companies do, and they come to your school, right, and You know, they set up a table, the campus center, and and they talk to everybody. And then, you know, you usually see them out a happy hour later, and then they go on to the next town, and And I was like, well, if it's anything like that, sign me up, which it was not. It's not even close, but but I, you know, I I gave it a shot because it was, you know, it was working for a small local firm, and I had always worked on, basically, on commission since I was eleven years old. I had a paper out which you can't even do anymore as a kid from, like, my 11th birthday on. I sold suits. I sold cell phones. I had a I had a lot of those jobs where commission was a big part of your pay. It was either work in the mall and make, you know, $8 an hour or work in the mall and make, like, that plus commission. So seemed like a no brainer, especially because I've moved out when I was 18 and needed the money. So they said it was x amount for the base, and there was commission potential. And I said, alright. I'll give it a shot. I'm comfortable with that. And I, like, more than doubled my base on my 1st year. So I was, like,

Benjamin Mena [00:02:30]:

Okay. I guess I'll keep doing this. And 19 years later, here we are. Well, that was a very short answer. I also love that you got a paper out because I actually had a paper out in 5th grade. So they would drop off they drop off the papers at, like, 1 o'clock in the morning. Yep. And I had to have my route done before I started school. Yeah. In 5th grade. Yeah. We wanna talk about optimizing. This is what I did as a as a

Chris Wessell  [00:02:53]:

and it might have been foreshadowing, I guess. I had 2 streets mine in the adjacent street, about a hundred papers. And like you, this is when they dropped them off the end of the block and remember on Sunday, you had to put them together. Right? So that took even more time. So, I was making, let's say, for our humans, take a hundred bucks a week doing that. and I'm like 11 or 12. So my sister is 2 years younger than me. And I had I I basically outsourced half of my route to her for about 30% of the money. So I was keeping, let's say, 70, given her 30. I cut it the work at half. And then on Sundays, to to shorten how many trips I had to do back to the house and spend time stuffing papers together, I enlisted the help of five year old brother who my mom would absolutely not let leave the house, but she had no problem with him sitting in the living room, stuffing papers. in order. so I basically wish I gave, like, I shaved, oh god, probably an hour or 2 off my my the time it took on Sunday morning. the goal on Sundays, you probably remember is get them out and before everybody wakes up, because if you get to the end of your route and they're, like, waiting on their porch for you, like, that's not good for tips.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:01]:

That's awesome. So anyway. As we jump into recruiting, first of all, what does optimizing your desk actually mean?

Chris Wessell  [00:04:07]:

So if someone said that to me, which I I think of it in terms of, like, kind of scaling yourself, if you will. so I had, for about 10 years, I had a pretty decent sized recruiting firm with, 3, 4 recruiters and a an admin and a partner and kinda your typical direct hire, temp to hire, run of the mill, local staffing firm. And, You know, you ran that the way you run those SSO ed, but then when I moved to to be on my own, which is partially driven by my son being on the way and just to kind of scale back and be able to have a little more flexibility and also right before COVID. So great timing. Like, not even I couldn't have been luckier that I had already moved in that direction. You know, you find you only can do so much in a day, right, as as an individual. Alright. And a lot of solo recruiters out there, that struggled with, like, how do I get more done in a day? and I did too. And and I kinda went through some exploration there. And so for me, really, it's all about Getting the most out of the day, not just dollars wise, but also like other goals. Part of the way I'm structured, the way I am is so I can spend, you know, maximum amount of time with my son, be able to do family things. My wife has a very demanding job, so I like to be able to pick up and drop off from daycare. I like to be able to you know, be kind of able to pivot if sick, and she's got a morning full of meetings. I gotta move some stuff around and but everything still gets done. so, like, a big part of my goals is it just extracting the maximum amount of dollars out of the day, but also, you know, keeping things moving along while taking care of everything I gotta take care of.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:51]:

Well, it sounds like you're not only, like, you're not extracting the maximum

Chris Wessell  [00:05:57]:

amount of life out of the day too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I if if I'm gonna do something, whether I'm in a meeting with a client or whether I'm doing a training for a client, client because I also am a predictive index partner, so I do some some of that stuff as well. Or if I, Go to, like, a golf charity golf tournament, and I'm kind of offline for a few hours. It's nice to not have the business come to a screeching halt. It's nice. Even while we're on this call, I have a virtual assistant who's still getting keeping the ball moving, right? Because I have a whole, and we'll get into the details of how that's managed. But, My business didn't come to a halt so that we could have this conversation. Like, obviously, I'm not talking to clients or candidates right now, but things are still being done. And and that gives me

Benjamin Mena [00:06:43]:

a great deal of comfort. So I think that's one of the things I get a lot of solo recruiters and even, like, a lot of big billers should do is maybe have some sort of help, like a VA.

Chris Wessell  [00:06:54]:

What's your thoughts on that? Yeah. So the VA path has worked for me. I had there's a lot of learning involved in really making the most of it and and and getting the most value. Oh, I think that and I had the same thought process. I think that Our first gut instinct when we wanna grow is to add another producer, whether it be a recruiter to work on jobs we bring in or a salesperson to bring in stuff for us to work on or full desk person to add. But what I realized is like you add a there's you, you're a full desk yourself. If you just add another producer of any kind, in recruiting, there's a lot of like, waste in the day. And, like, not every minute that we spend go gets billed, right? Like, we always try to I think we always try to minimize that. Right? If you just add another salesperson, another recruiter, there's still a lot of administrative aspects and a lot of, like, critical, but time consuming tasks that are going on. And now instead of you, you've got you doing your client calls, doing your recruiting calls, and then also all that other stuff that needs to get done. You add a person Now that just added all their stuff too. You know what I mean? So it's like, yeah, I can't if I hired another person, I'm building X amount, I'm not gonna get X times 2 out of that other I'm gonna get an incrementally lower number because there's still there's actually more administrative stuff to deal with. Right? So I was like, okay. I and and it said, I also step back from having employees for a while because I just didn't wanna have that. I just don't wanna carry that on my back along with, you know, taken care of my kid and all that stuff. I kinda wanna be an individual contributor for a while and just, you know, recruit, have fun. I'll get the itch again. I'll I'll I'll I'll wanna grow a team, but not right now. And so I'm like, how do I do this without hiring anybody? because I can't go hire a recruiter. Look, like, the conventional would have been to go out and, you know, add someone to my team. Some people try to do it commission only. We all know how that goes. It's it's not gonna work. I look for somebody if hungry, whatever. So that was like, how can I get more out of me? And I remember that when I had my other firm, I was using a VA, on a very basic level, they really just try to make sure that my recruiters were on the phone as much as possible with candidates and less time spent doing research, sips into resumes, just a lot of a lot of the administrative, again, it's not it's not as administrative BS. It has to get done. It's it's it's important work. It's just not like the highest, highest value, right, that time. So Basically, I started kind of figuring out, like, well, what else can I squeeze out of this virtual assistant? Like, what else could they do? Right? and I had to start taking creatively. And I also had to let go of a little bit of control and and and I don't know about you and anyone's owned a firm, especially been solo. Like, we're kind of kind of control freaks. Right? and that's always been a challenge for me to like delegate, authority, but a very comfortable delegating details. And so over time, I got to a point where I was just able to carve out so much work to a virtual assistant that I really just spend my time, my work time. Now don't get me wrong. I do other stuff too, but that's like lifestyle. I'm either talking to candidates or talking to clients, and that's it. Oh, I mean, I'm reviewing their work. I might spend a little bit of time setting up what the tasks are, but also in recruiting, the thing is most of the stuff that we're doing is basically the same categories of tasks, just the details change. Right? So if you've got them doing some research tasks, some sourcing tasks, some database cleanup, like database cleanup's a big one. Like, Wouldn't we all love to have all sorts of detail? Like, like, we say we have a company in our database, whatever CRM ATS we're using, And we've got all the information on them and all their links and all this other stuff and and all the files that we are contract in there and the benefits info and and and all the names of all the key people at all. You you know what really happens is you get a you're the new client. You get a job. You work on it. You fill it. You don't even put half of that if anything in your database and you move on because you just you just wanna bill. Right? If I got somebody cleaning up after me, following behind me, making sure I'll let stuff goes in, because, you know, like, a lot of occurs on the personality type that I -- respect and understand the need for all that information, and I would love to have it, but I'm not gonna do it. You just gotta be honest with yourself. And so then I go back. And what's nice is that when I, like, the next time I work with that client, I'm like, or or when I'm on the phone with a candidate and

Benjamin Mena [00:11:38]:

you know, they ask a question about a particular detail. I don't remember about that client. I can look at, like, oh, it's in there. That ain't -- I think you hit the nail when it comes to database, like, we all want the perfect database. And, like, there was a a podcast going live, I think, next week or the week after, and he has his database so set up Then he, like, 2 clicks of the button, he has his entire list built out because he's, like, one so niched and 2, like, he spends, like, his weekends perfecting his database. Yeah. But it's also may may hit like a, you know, easy 7 figure biller. Yeah. But, yeah,

Chris Wessell  [00:12:09]:

at And imagine if you had to spend even less time doing that. Right? Like, it's you could spend the time on, like, the design and the structure of what you want, and then it outsourced the execution to somebody else. You know, like, even I'll go on I'll go on LinkedIn and I'll add profiles. Almost every ATS has, like, a chrome Right? Like, oh, I like that person. Boom. Let me add them while you put over that job pipeline. You know, one of the challenges it with that is LinkedIn doesn't have zip code information in their in their profiles. Right? So I end up with a bunch of people on my database that have no zip codes. And you know how fun that is to try to find somebody later when you need that person for, like, a future search. So one of the his weekly tasks is and it doesn't take him long, because he does it every week. Everyone has got a blank ZIP code, goes in, looks up you know, a zip code more or less in that town as it moves on. other stuff like job orders that are already published are not leads. They're not the best leads. They're kind of old news, right? So like if you're working that, it's It's not unfruitful. Like, sometimes people get leads that way. but one of the ways I use that information is I have primarily, I hire for leadership positions at this point in in across a variety of verticals. So they tend to be, you know, heads of HR, heads of marketing, heads of you know, accounting, CEO, CFO, that kind of thing. So I have him searching with a particular radius, those types of job titles as well as anything that pops up from companies I've ever worked with and collects them all throw some all on the Google sheet from your review because, you know, you don't wanna put it right in your database because garbage in, garbage, you know, I wanna review it and then, hey, add all this information. So on a weekly basis, I can just skim this list and just kinda see what's going on. Right? Because, you know, they may or may not be leads. none of them may be leads, but let's say I get a controller search for a company in my region And I've been looking at these, curated lists my VA has been doing for years at this point. when they're talking when we'll have a conversation with that client about what else is going on in the market and what kind of competition we're up against and, like, who else is hiring for this role that we have to be hedging ourselves against. Like, I have that info because it's fresh in my head because they've been gathering this. You know what I mean? So it's it serves a purpose for me to to a lot of this little task I'm doing. And those are all like the nice to have nice to have things that you would never have the time to just go do yourself. And you know, if you did, wouldn't do them every single week. You know, you wouldn't. I wouldn't. Well, let me ask this. What are the top 3 things that you outsource to a VA. Kind of the first round of sourcing is a big one. So, like, let's say I started a search for, like, a director of engineering for a company in the semiconductor industry. Right? And I'm gonna have, you know, we we got our agreement placed, etcetera, have the intake call with them, got all my notes. I'm gonna go in, run searches in, like, kind of the usual places linkedin recruiter, indeed, because I mean, you you never know. It's not a it's not a primary source, but, you know, every now and then, there's one that just, you know, falls out of the sky, but pretty heavily LinkedIn as as most of us do. And I'm gonna have that. I'm gonna run search strings that in my opinion, yield about the right amount of people, and and the profiles look like we're pretty much barking up the right tree. And then I'm gonna have that VA go in and pull all those profiles, add them to my CRM. If they're already in there, check for duplicates, that's a big thing. If he's not sure, he puts the ones on a, like, on a duplicate review list that I take a look at, because if he can't tell, like, if he can match them up, like, they're both of the same job great. If he's not sure, I'm like, if you're not sure, don't wedge him together. Let me look at it first. So he'll gather all that info And then what I'll do is that puts in a format that's really easy for me to just skim through, and I read really fast. So I'll just review that list get rid of, you know, it he'll pull together 50 or 60. I'll stitch, like, the 10 or 20. Right? And then I'll have him go in and send messaging to them that I've already written, but then the way it's set up, the responses are gonna come to me. So one of the things you don't wanna do with the virtual assistant is you wanna like, they work very well if the tasks are, clearly defined. so if it's send this type of message to, like, this person, etcetera, if you wanna have them start engaging in conversation with candidates or or or prospects that's where I personally draw the line because then it starts to get a little hairy. they can say something in the to initiate a conversation in my voice in my tone like it with my messaging, but then I gotta pick up the ball from there. I think a lot of these things could get done with automation tools. I think there's some degree of that, but what I like is with an individual working for you, I can have that individual do all kinds of things. So the tools can do different things. Not all the tools play together nicely. I think we all know that. So when you have a human being is the kind of interface that's like, somewhere between automation and a full time employee, the opportunity to, I think, control a bit more of it and customize what you're getting, I think, is there. And it's also anyway, so that's the first one. I went on a tangent. The other one is, you know, prospect list are no different, really, than candidate lists. Because at the end of the day, you have whether you have an individual in your office doing sourcing who's a recruiter or a sourcer or what have you. And you're saying, hey. I wanna identify this type of person in this type of company, in this type of geography, etcetera. We're doing that on both sides. We're just sending different messages. Right? That's why sales navigator works just as well as, like, the recruiter or vice versa or someone's gonna probably hate me for saying that, They're the same functions with different window dressing. Right? So, like, the top 2 things I use that are the most time consuming that I use a VA for, are kind of the same thing, but just different angles. the database cleanup, I would say, is big. and also just like speculative projects. Okay. So I primarily work on either, a retained basis or kind of an engaged basis, right, which is not full blown traditional retained search, but, you know, there's a there's a payment up front and then the rest you know, so it's kind of a hybrid. Some people in recruiting say container, but that's freaking stupid because you know what that means, but the client has no idea what the hell you're talking about. like, oh, you're smart. Oh, contingency. You'd retainer it. I put them together. It says container, and the client's like, they're 3 degrees away from knowing what the hell you're talking about. So I just say engaged, but pet peeve. Anyway, let's say I get a pretty well qualified contingency I don't wanna spend a lot of time on it or at least initially, but I can test the viability of it by having my VA run some searches cents of messages, see what happens. If if nothing comes of it, I've spent all of $50 on this venture for them working on it for 4 or 5 hours. First is if I went 1 Saturday, just putts and around sending some on LinkedIn and be like, oh, this is going nowhere. This is crap. I just wasted my afternoon. I have to deal with that. So, like, I'm very comfortable giving kind of tasks that may or may not turn into anything on a limited basis. I don't wanna blow this whole week on it. But does that does that kinda make sense, like, because then it's not something my time The other thing I found too is if you have people on your team, like, domestically, whatever country you're in, but, like, let's say you have you know, a recruiter who's incentive based or a lot of their pay is incentive based, and you have them go off on some wild goose chases. and it doesn't turn into anything, you're gonna run out of employees fast because they're gonna be like, this is going nowhere. I'm not making their money on this. Now if you've got a virtual assistant and you're occasionally spinning their wheels, having them try something out that may or may not paint up, they don't care. They're just doing their job. completely different. You you know what I mean? Like, that that, you know, I I learned a long time ago, to, like, have My recruiters work on speculative projects that were maybe gonna pay off, maybe not, because they would come back to me and be like, this is not worth my time.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:45]:

And I'm like, oh, shit. You're right. I I absolutely love that because for the fact that, you know, I I remember early in my recruiting career, there was an opportunity to go do something and chase something. It ended up not going anywhere, but we I put so much time, effort, and energy I lost commission and so many other things. There's Lisa White. Yeah. The opportunity cost and the reason why it didn't come through would had nothing to do with me. but I wasted, like, a good month of time. And then, of course, like, the the quarterly meeting, they're like, hey, Ben, why isn't your recruiting numbers that good? And I'm like, But you're the one that told me to go chase this. Your mother.

Chris Wessell  [00:21:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you have, like, stuff that is generally less qualified, Right? Like, from a split board or, like, from, through, like, a large, like, vendor manager type of setup or not that I do much of any of that. And I certainly don't do temp, so I'm not on a lot of those vendor major platforms. So there's people who are on thing that did things on, like, bounty jobs, scout, stuff like that. Right? Have I don't do a lot of that, but I used to kinda mess around with it. Like, have a VA go in and just start sourcing on a bunch of the openings. see what clicks and then I'm not saying have them do all the work. You know what I mean? Like, have them kind of proof of concept the search to kinda see if there's anything even worth going after. and then reach out to people, have the conversations with candidates yourself. But, you know, if you're a contingency recruiter and you're trying to not waste your time, it's a good way to, like, test the waters on some searches, whether they're direct or through a partner or through a, an exchange of some kind. before you commit a lot of your time, get frustrated. Cause here's the other thing about recruiting. Like, you could be getting kicked in the gut See, I'm watching my language all day. And then, like, one phone call, it could be the best day ever. Right? As you just, you know, offer it. I accept it. Everything was going wrong all day long, and then, like, one call can change everything. And it can go the other way too. Right? We've all been on that roller coaster. take one thing that might potentially frustrate you and have somebody else do it. And if it looks like it might turn into something, take it and run with If it doesn't, have them go work on something else. And they won't quit. You know what I mean? Because they're not, they're not on a commission. They're not they it it the search pans out or doesn't they don't care. They're they got paid either way. That that doesn't matter.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:11]:

Well, well, first, like, let me start off. Yeah. Where do you find a VA?

Chris Wessell  [00:23:15]:

So, oh, yeah. That's a big part of it. I made a lot of mistakes in that direction. I kind of we we get as recruiters, we get a lot of emails from RPOs, which by the way, I work for a real RPO and those are not RPOs. Like, that is just like a nice nice little marketing window dressing on a garbage spam email. You're not an RPO. If you're watching this, you're not an RPO. I worked for real RPOs. There's a difference. I tried using some of them, and what I found was It's one of the reasons why partnerships are tough. Nobody does it like you do. Right? You partner with another recruiter on a split for example, and I know we're talking about VA's, but follow me here. You partner with other recruit on a split, and then there's a lot of times it doesn't work because, like, their style is different. or like the way they interpret the job is different or whatever, and you're kinda like, I just wish they could do it, like, the way I'm doing it, and then it would work. Right? Similarly, you go to these companies that are saying, hey. We will do recruiting outsourcing for you. it'll by the way, they're trying to do it for like a 100 other companies, like, at the same day. Like, you're getting you're not getting their full attention. No chance. What you have to do I have found is you got you can't take the lazy route. Like, we think, oh, they're also recruiters. We'll just send them some job descriptions that they'll send us candidates like magic because It's super hard for us to do it, but some random person offshore for 50 bucks could do it faster. So Hell, yeah. And we're not even thinking about how that can't possibly work and it makes sense, right? Instead, like, I used to train I remember that I used to train recruiters and and some my sports staff completely from scratch. Like, I took people who had, like, the right type of background because, a, I was also young, had no money. So I could barely pay much in a base salary, so I had to go with somebody who was moldable because that's all I could afford. Right? But It works because you can show them the way you want it done. So if you find a virtual assistant firm, and yes, I am also affiliated with 1 now because I have vertically integrated and I've gotten involved in that business. But that aside, when you're selecting 1, what you wanna look at is a couple things. 1, not one that is designed specifically for recruiting. not one that claims to be like your recruiting partner. Find one that has basically strong, like, researchers, good, like, good people on their staff. that have done or can do support for for sales organizations, other kinds of things, other functions like you need, right, and then train them your way. Okay. So that means you're gonna have to spend some time and I've worked with this on other, like, virtual assistant clients on that side of that business. It's tough. I don't like documenting things, but guess what? You can do, like, you can do videos. You can do, like, loom videos to show to to give them process instructions and they can save them and they can watch them over and over again. Right? Here's how I want you to do it. Boom. They'll do it exactly the way you wanna do it. Don't go for what you think is like a cookie cutter premade ready to go the instant recruiter just to add water because it doesn't freaking work. I A lot of you have tried it, I'm sure, and a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Build your own, but when you do that, make sure that it's a company that has like that whatever country it's in or whatever that they are Venezuela's good. Philippines are good. India's good. they're working for a company, ideally, if there are a lot of them in the same facility because then you have some redundancy But also some companies are no more than basically a temp agency where they just contract a bunch of random people sitting in their Rome and various parts of their country to just be they just are stitching together freelancers, right? And with that comes no accountability. Okay. So, like, we want these people to work for us. We want them to work on our projects. We want them to to learn our processes, but if we go contract with a company that basically is just stitching together freelancers and billing them to you, you know, you're not gonna get it with that model. So if you have a company that that has a a a team. And and, again, there's a redundancy. So if your VA is sick, like, they have someone who can back them up that and or even his, like, they're sitting near each other, they can, you know, or even if I'm not saying that they can't be remote. but if there's a big difference between them working for working for that company versus being, like, just temp agency contracted through it. so that's another layer of of selection that I think will lead to a more committed resource and a more moldable resource. Awesome. Well, before we jump into the next part, is there anything else you would love to share about optimizing your desk for success? Just know that if you're like me, which a lot of recruiters are where you just go go go go go go and leave a mess behind you and you need somebody to clean up. Just know that, like, to get what you want, you're gonna have to train them. you're gonna have to be a little patient, and you're gonna have to sit there and document some processes, even though you hate it. And like I said, do loom videos or whatever, you're gonna have to go through some iterations where you give them a project and you give them, like, part. Don't give them a whole thing, and then it'll and, like, later in the day, you look and see how they did and they're pissed because they got it wrong. Give them a little bit of just like you would with an employee. These are human beings, right, just like you would with an employee. Give them a bit. See how they do. Take a look at their work. Make some adjustments. give them some more work, etcetera, give them instruction, document, you know, put together some resources and just know that, like, you're not gonna get like, instant recruiter. That's probably the biggest the biggest hurdle for a lot of people. And it was for me too to just realize that, like, I gotta put some work into this to reap the reward.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:51]:

And for the listeners, like, if you guys want a good laugh, like, I am in the process of actually finding and hiring a VA of myself, but my first go around was an absolute disaster. Absolute disaster. I think I blew, like, $7000 and ended up getting nothing out of it. But a 100% of that I put on my fault is on me. I didn't train properly. I didn't put structures and systems in properly. You know, all this, everything that you probably could have done wrong, except for, like, I paid the bills. I did rock. So,

Chris Wessell  [00:29:24]:

you know, a lot of us have. Yeah. It's true. It's it's just the main reason why this doesn't work. Oh, one other thing I would throw in that an excellent way to manage them is to use a project management tool. Trello, Monday, Basecamp, things like that are excellent for, like, communication back and forth and prioritizing of tasks. and you can have, like, repeating tasks and so forth. my, like, primary channel for communication is is I happen to use Trello, but, I mean, A lot of them are really good. so that would be actually one other piece I would throw in there is that one because when you mentioned structure, it occurred to me that we should probably define, like, how that structure could be executed on.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:03]:

Yeah. So definitely vote for my mistakes and, you know, take me advice and Chris on how Alright. As we move over to the quick fire questions, and what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's just starting off in the recruiting industry this year?

Chris Wessell  [00:30:16]:

I would say, and I think this year, any year, the biggest thing I learned is you can sound a lot smarter asking good questions than talking. Alright. So, like, I got into IT recruiting, especially early on, and I couldn't wait to explained to every technical person I talked to, how much I understood what we were looking for. And, like, I wanted to I'd like, oh, sound like I know what I'm talking about if I use all the buzzwords and I use them correctly and so on and so forth. And it doesn't help. It only makes you feel good at it's not doing any favors. And what I found are when you're talking to a client or a candidate, And you ask them really good questions, which the the what a good question is is gonna vary a lot depending on circumstances, but they're going to know really quick if you know what you're talking or not based on the questions you ask. So worry less about telling people what you know. And because at the end of the day, you're not important. You're just a middle man. Right? So, that that would be probably like the biggest lesson that that has been probably the biggest game changer for me in in over those years was was making that mental shift. As you can tell, it's hard for me to shut up. So you it really, really took some work

Benjamin Mena [00:31:32]:

Same question, but for experienced recruiters, what advice would you give them to get ahead?

Chris Wessell  [00:31:37]:

just because it worked last year or 5 years ago or 10 years ago, it doesn't mean it works now. grow, evolve. I used to have a team of recruiters making a 100 calls each every day. That's what worked. I talked to a recruiter. He worked for me for, like, 5 or 6 years, a few years back. And I was like, you calling anybody anymore? And he was like, not only only people I schedule calls with that I messaged on, like, LinkedIn. I'm like, yeah. Me too. Right? So, like, the formula that was so key to your success, and you see this as a recruiter when you hire for companies too. When you look at that leadership person who's been at that company since it started and you're like, listen, man, you gotta change with the times. This isn't how how did that. Okay. Well, you gotta look at yourself too. So one of the hardest pills for me to swallow as an experienced recruiter as as as a approaching elder states and level as I hit the 20 year mark is, you know, what got you here is not what's going to keep you here. Wait real quick. Elder statesman Mark, I'm like, Is that 20 years in recruiting? I mean, I think so. Probably. I still have my hair on those, so I don't know. How's that gonna But I guess I'm so close to that. Although I probably pissed off a couple of people I know with 30 or 40 years under their belt, but out of Has there been a book that has had a huge impact on your career? The millionaire next door. which actually was written in part by one of my professors. And I didn't read it when my professor, when I had his class, because, you know, when you're a class and they're like, hey, I wrote a book. You should buy it. You're like, Is it required for the class? No. Not I'm not gonna do that. But, essentially, it is an academic study from this. At this point, it's going way back because I think it was, like, late nineties it was written. on the spending habits of like genuinely wealthy people as opposed to people who just had like high income and had a high cost of living, etcetera. And it was pretty remarkable. And that combined with my experience from other business owners, I knew, who kinda mentored me, like, when I got, like, you know, few you when I read after I started my first firm and I, you know, went out and bought an Escalate. And they're like, what the hell's wrong with you? And I'm like, what? It's cool. And they're like, why are you wasting your money on this? I'm like, this is coming for somebody with, like, a $100,000,000 company. So I'm like, wait, what am I doing wrong? So, like, that book was big because, like, listen, All of us can get out there and make money in different ways. We all have our styles. We all have our how we get customers But there's basic rules of money that you gotta follow. And if, you know, if you wanna keep all that money you're making, And have a good life. A book like that kinda helps rein me in early on to not be just like like money came in and money went out. So I, I, I credit that a lot with, like, just, like, personal, personal development, you know, as a recruiter and business owner that, you know, you don't have to work quite as hard on offense if you're pretty good at defense. And I don't mean like living cheaply. I just mean not over extending yourself. Awesome. What do you think has been a big part of your personal success? I would say good support system is probably number 1. My wife is a -- huge supporter, and I wouldn't have been able to take the leap that I did from, like, bigger firm to solo without her support. I think that I'm very lucky to have quite a few clients who became friends who taught me a lot about this business in general, whether it's business ownership or or, you know, even got ideas. Like, you you can get some great ideas for people who are in different industries than you. You know, you could I could you could get great ideas from, you know, someone who wants a jewelry store chain or somebody who'd like what it doesn't matter. Like, there should be one little nugget that you're like, oh, that's That's that's a great point. So mentors and and kinda general support structure. Absolutely. Without that, everything else would Not happen. With everything that you've you know now, all the experiences you have, if you can go back and talk to yourself at the very beginning of your career, what advice would you give yourself? I guess, yeah, I should have something like that ready, but I feel like although I already used the one of my white thoughts, which is, you know, learn to ask good questions and and not talk as much, I think especially in recruiting, learn quicker when, like, you're just beating a dead horse and it's time to move on. Right? I think we could all I think every recruiter would probably tell you that they wish they had learned that sooner. But but we all have that one that we just Like, the money is real in our minds, but it's imaginary. Right? So we're like, there, it's not gonna have a $100,000 in perm orders from this one company, get out of there. And then, like, none of it materializes. And then, you know, like, we we fall in love with the pipeline. And we don't think about defining the pipeline better so that we say, oh, I have x amount of my pipeline this much as probably closeable. This much is realistic. This much is like a pipe dream. Like, maybe it could happen. But, like, I think when you're earlier on, it's all closeable. even if it's the worst qualified requirement ever that everyone in towns worked on and picked over, you're like, I could do this. And, you know, time is our most valuable asset. And they can't go back and change the past, but the advice I would give to, like, previous me would be let a couple of those go so that you can turn your attention to the deals that you can close.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:50]:

I love that. Well, Chris, before I let you go, and this has been an awesome interview. And one of the problems with always speaking with you, Chris, like, time just flies. So before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Chris Wessell  [00:37:02]:

Oh, I mean, I just I I appreciate the opportunity to be on your podcast. This is great. you and I have known each other for a while and and talked a lot, and you've talked to a lot of people. I I know and respect and and and friends with so it's it's kinda cool to be in their company. But just, you know, do yourself a favor as a solo recruiter and find a way to scale yourself, whether it's through the use of virtual assistant or whether it's through some automation or a blend of both, just because there's a better way to spend your hours that could be more satisfying. If it means billing more, great. If it means more time with your family, great. Like, whatever your goals are, just don't try to do it all by yourself. I love that. And real quick, Chris, before we let you go, how can people reach out to you and contact you if they wanna chat? I'll probably best bet. Just find me on LinkedIn. I'm on it every minute of every waking hour pretty much. So just, you know, Add me on LinkedIn. We'll talk, and there's a variety of ways on there to reach me. So, yeah, and and I'm happy to some people have questions about, you know, better utilizing virtual assistants or or whatever. Just don't send me spam email and don't put me in any sequences or or I'll be upset. I'll make me sad.

Intro [00:38:11]:

Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much and for the listeners until next time. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin MENA. If you enjoyed, hit some drive and leave a rating.