… Why most of us aren’t getting treated with the respect we deserve!

Last month I was the keynote speaker at a recruiting conference sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Association of Recruiters.  We spent a GREAT day together developing strategies to build recruiting clients who gave you five or more placements per year.  Screen Shot 2016-07-18 at 11.18.16 AM

To attract this type of recruitment client usually requires that you help them re-engineer the broken way most companies tend to hire.

I know, you want to serve clients at a high level and they won’t let you!  I hear this all the time… “My clients just aren’t getting back to me!” or “I can’t seem to get an exclusive or retainer”

Many believe this is the culture of their niche, the recruiting industry or the economy in general.

The problem is us.

The problem is the recruiting industry.

The Recruiting industry has over decades manufactured recruiters that sound like cloned parrots.  We all say the same things the same way.

We all overcome objections with the same rebuttals.  Not BAD rebuttals, just the same ones.  When I did my presentation on how to change this in Denver recently I asked how many remember the Apple commercial during the Super Bowl in 1984.  It featured an endless line of people in blue suits walking off a cliff (it was a huge “jab” at IBM).

That’s what I see recruiters doing.  Instead of asking ourselves, what is it in OUR performance that creates that transactional, low value added PERCEPTION of our industry, we blame the clients.

I did that too for about 8 years.  Then I tired of it and asked myself the question, “What is it in ME that is causing this reaction in THEM?”

The answers came over months and even years.  Net, net, if they perceive we are all the “same” we will all be treated the same.  The good lumped in with the average, the mediocre and the “drive by” recruiter.

So, I changed my approach and in less than 2.5 years I went from billing about $300k per year to over $1mm and then $2mm… on my desk, not in my office, my DESK.