Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Retrained Search, the podcast, where we lift the lid on what it's really like to work retained, discuss the stories we've gathered along the way and give you all a peek behind the scenes of our amazing community and how they're getting ahead. Hi everyone, welcome to what we think is episode 14 of Retrained Search, the podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:32

That's the one. Do you know what happened to me yesterday? For the first time, I was on a call with somebody and there's a few people of reference to podcast but, like they normally say, I've been to your webinars and I've watched your YouTube videos. I've listened to one of your podcasts and I said to this guy where did you hear about us? How have we come about talking? And he said I listened to your podcast. That was all he said.

Speaker 3: 0:54

That's cool.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Yeah, he said I'm a gym goer and he said every morning when he goes to the gym, I download a podcast to listen to. And I came across yours a month or so back and I've now listened to every episode.

Speaker 3: 1:07

That's awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we must have like motivating voices, I think, like the like pumping weights and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 1:21

So we're like where are you going to get into gym?

Speaker 2: 1:23

I've been going to the gym, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean I'm on camera for this podcast as well, but not for long, because giving me another three months and I'll just be slipping through the holes in the chair.

Speaker 3: 1:36

That's an image.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:44

I've got a five year old and a two year old. So you went around after that, honestly, we paid Mitch and I paid for gym membership, being all like, yeah, we're going to go to the gym. Four months ago that I've been once. I've taken my kids swimming a lot, but it's just more running around after them. That kind of keeps me fit and having a stand up desk kind of helps as well, because I get to bobble around all day.

Speaker 3: 2:04

I was joking earlier that the distance they travel. Do you know how you can get those apps on your phone that track how far you run? Yeah, yeah, you can just have me like circling a loop in my office.

Speaker 2: 2:14

Yeah, I get it. Do you know what someone said to me? You need to try and do 10,000 steps a day and I was like, yeah, no problem, it's really boardy desk. Like 10,000 steps is a lot.

Speaker 3: 2:25

Come to my house, come stand next to me, jordan, and we'll just do like this together all day. Yeah, we'll just do loops.

Speaker 1: 2:32

I don't think I'll be able to cope with both of you in the same room for more than like half an hour. You're both like quite ADHD, aren't you?

Speaker 2: 2:41

I definitely am. I sent Lou a picture yesterday Gabby my wife had sent it to me and it was like this Ferrari driving through somewhere and the registration on it was ADHD, AF. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:55

Love that. That is so cool. Do you know what's funny though it's like I know people laugh a lot because I talk very quickly I'm very animated and I always have been, and I did a training session yesterday and someone I had to call with them today to kind of follow up and do all that fun, sexy stuff. And she was like do you know what, Gabs? I hate training programs, Like I go in knowing I need to learn something, but they're so slow and mundane and stuff. She was like I've got three pages of notes from your 45 minute session and I was engaged the entire time. So I actually think I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but you can definitely see some of the temperaments of how I do things and I'm engaged and you're like are you a bit bored of line Gabs? But she loved it because she was like I just want the go, I want to go, I want the energy, I want to just get to the point. No, I'm trying to. She loves the energy.

Speaker 1: 3:44

And you did well. You did a session for us, which is what one of the things. You've done several sessions for us now which is which are the reasons that you're here today Because they're so good and you're so good at what you do and so passionate about what you do, and you know it your subject matter, so well that it makes it exciting to listen to, it makes it really engaging, and the speed at which you can comprehend things and move with things just means that your it's obvious that you're filtering out the stuff that doesn't need to be listened to, Doesn't need to be talked about, Doesn't need to be dealt with so quickly and then just and then sharing the pieces that do need to be talked about and do you need to be learned, need to be adopted. Like to give you some context, everyone, Jordan said in Gabby's session, just after the session that Gabby did with us, I used to think that I was pretty good at boolean searching and then I sat on the session Turns out.

Speaker 2: 4:47

I'm shit.

Speaker 3: 4:50

Shit. You just need a sprinkle of Gabby in your life, that's it.

Speaker 1: 4:55

Because it's so true Like I just sit and listen and like my eyes like pop out my head, you know, seeing what can be done and how you do it now and the stuff that you show. It's absolutely phenomenal. And I mean anybody being asked to carry out work, search work for clients, needs to be able to carry work out, as well as you teach them to, and some of the things that make the difference, like spelling mistakes in job titles, like some of those things just absolutely blow my mind. Then you did like a demo of a search where accountant was felt wrong and that just like totally blew my mind.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Where they might have jumped the hat a little bit. Maybe this is a nice segue into Gabby. Why don't you kind of tell everyone in your words what you do?

Speaker 3: 5:49

Who the hell I am? Yeah, Everyone's like. Who is this random person on the phone?

Speaker 2: 5:53

Yeah, they're thinking why have they brought a random ADHD person on the call?

Speaker 3: 5:56

I know, right, and who's got two kids and run around in circles in office to get to a 10K? That should be my tagline on LinkedIn, shouldn't it? So? For those of you who haven't met me, my name's Gabby Preston Pfeiffer, and I'm actually the co-founder and CEO of a technology company called ToolRecunes, and our specialization is actually about helping recruiters, agnostic of size, specialization, location, to find candidates faster and really hunkering to huge data set and find those hidden gems. So do you know those moments where you're sitting on a desk and you're like I've got loads of vacancies, I've got this nailed, and then your client keeps ringing. You go, thanks for your candidate, but we're going with your competitors candidate, and you're sitting there going, oh, just missed out. How do you minimize that? And that's by becoming exceptional at hunting and finding the best talent for us, and that's what our technology enables people to do, with a little bit of geeky training obviously sprinkled in, because why would I not?

Speaker 2: 6:51

Yeah, derek, you've asked me the need for that. Probably four or five years ago, when I was in the midst of my recruitment journey, I probably would have been honest. I said, well, I think most recruiters are pretty good at Boolean searching. But I'd had pretty good training and, like when I first started in recruitment, the agency I worked for they had their own CRN that they built themselves. It was really good. We had great training on Boolean searching and I just kind of assumed that every recruiter was like that. And then when I started you know when I changed into my kind of coaching capacity you start speaking to other recruiters and you're saying things that you think are really basic and they're going whoa, sorry, what do you mean?

Speaker 2: 7:36

It's like how do you not know?

Speaker 3: 7:38

And it's been interesting because I think there's kind of these two bags of people people who are like I get Boolean, I'm awesome, leave me over here. And then you've got these other people who are like Boolean. They literally like deer in headlights. They're like this is so hard, so complicated. I couldn't possibly dream in being one of these people that could understand Boolean. But I joked the other day on podcast. I actually think it's a sack of a offense not being able to do Boolean.

Speaker 3: 8:02

If you're hunting for candidates and I truly stand by that, not because I don't think they're good, but I think for too long we've been like oh, I put a filter in and I assume it gives me the best You're being paid 25% plus retained. All this kind of great stuff, whichever model you've approached, obviously should be retained if you're listening to this podcast. But you're being paid to be exceptional. You're being paid to deliver a service to your clients and if you are not delivering that service and someone else can do it better from you, they're going to take your business. Your client does not have that loyalty with you and I was talking to someone this morning who has a retained model in place and she was like we're talking about how she puts her proposition forward and all this kind of stuff and I was like, well, how do you do your candidate discovery? She was that filter.

Speaker 3: 8:51

I remember that not good enough. I said if you came to me and said that to me, I wouldn't do business with you because I want you to do something I can't do. I want you to deliver something that's kind of the candidate I've always dreamt of and you find them in a heartbeat. But recruiters need to realize that actually, with the right technology in place, you can be very good at Boolean very, very easily without having to be a geek. That's where a lot of my training process is a very different, because I'm not like, oh, here's all the handles, not 60 million quotation marks and whatever. This is the reality of having a data-centric search, which is what it is and this is how you can quickly create it but leverage the data you've been given. If you've been given a full LinkedIn recruiter license, it's not wicked. If you've been given a CRM with loads of data and wicked, now how do you hunt through it so that you spend half an hour sourcing and not two, three, four days, because that's just. Nobody enjoys sourcing that much.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Let's just say I'm interested in what you say then about people since fall into two camps people that can do Boolean and they've got it well, like Jordan, but then it turns out that actually he didn't Almost almost. But I knew where you were working before and they were very good at it and the training was excellent on Boolean, and still Jordan came off that session with you going, yeah, I didn't know half that. And then you get people that are even far from further behind that and just don't do Boolean talk, and I put myself in that category, like that's where I was. What is it like? 50-50 or what sort of split do you see of those two types of people?

Speaker 3: 10:34

To be fair, I would sadly say there's more people on the. I don't use Boolean at all camp.

Speaker 2: 10:41

Wow.

Speaker 3: 10:42

Because the problem is it's not really a problem, it's more of a situation. Right, you have recruitment businesses that exist, and they exist and they're owned by individuals who have run successful recruitment businesses. Back in the day, when you had a roll of debts and you picked up the phone and went for a coffee and everyone was your best mate and that's absolutely fine, that model of recruitment and sourcing worked. It did work and posting a job worked. But we're now in 2024 and we have so much data in our possession, right? I always joke about this with people. I'm like when you first probably created your LinkedIn profile, when you selected your job, it was a drop down. You picked the drop down and it was a drop down and you kind of wiggled into the space. That was just about comfy.

Speaker 3: 11:23

I did a session yesterday and I opened up my own private file to create a new job vacancy that just joined. I could write whatever the hell I wanted. I don't fit and candidates no longer fit within the filter world. But the problem is the people running these companies don't understand that, so they're like just pop a filter in, you'll be fine. All my CRMs got some good people in that, by the way, 20 years ago were relevant and now they're not relevant anymore because there's more people coming through.

Speaker 3: 11:53

Their data is changing every second. So the people who've been run by companies like that the mentality is broken. They don't see how broken it is because the people leading them can't understand how broken it is because the old way used to work. And until you have these sessions and I go, look, they go, oh, but my team are making money. And I'm like, yeah, your team are making money, but what if you could make it 75% faster? And then they were starting to have these conversations. So it's a lot about turning the tide to open their minds up to actually the challenge they're facing and the fact that their old techniques aren't good enough. Anyone, they have to step up.

Speaker 1: 12:32

So tell us, explain to those people that don't use Boolean Searching which is, by the sounds of it, a majority what difference does it make? Why does it make such a difference not using Boolean instead of using filters?

Speaker 3: 12:51

So the example I just explained, kind of where that job title change came in. So, for example, if I changed my job title today to I don't know MD, md of toolrecoons, if you go to a filter in a platform, they don't tend to have MD, they'll have managing director. So you'll hit the filter that says managing director. You'll hit that and you'll capture anyone who has managing director. What you won't see is the other people who have got MD or just got director because it's not allowing you to do it.

Speaker 3: 13:28

It's not, but like what director New one I'm loving seeing and I was hoping, a client who's funding us in Canada, in Asia, in Asia within the investment banking space. People, instead of writing director or writing DIR. Dir is not a filter option. It is not available if you use Boolean.

Speaker 3: 13:45

So I mean even if you're about accountant spelling mistakes, missing a C bookkeeper double K, miss a double K and you're out. And I know recruiters can't see it. But those little nuances mean that when you go into platforms it's used LinkedIn as a great example, because there's a billion people on there right now and what is it? A new user every three seconds. It's unreal. But what happens in those platforms is if the filters can't keep up with you because I've changed my job title and I've called it something else, those filters can't keep up. So what ends up happening is you end up with a huge talent pool of people that aren't categorized. So how do you find them? And actually I've heard a statistic or someone this morning saying 60% of the people who are on LinkedIn aren't categorized correctly. That's mental. But if you use Boolean, you can accommodate for the variations and you stop going. Okay, don't worry about your filters, I'm coming to play, let's go hunting, and that's the difference.

Speaker 2: 14:45

I think it's interesting as well. Gabby, you mentioned earlier how do you make sure you get your candidate picked over the competition right, or you mentioned increasing speed, and those two things are really important in contingent recruitment, especially In retained. The biggest thing for me with Boolean is my job is to put my client in a position where, when they make a hire, they are 100% confident that they're making that hire from all of the talent that's available to them in the market. I can't do that if I'm missing big chunks of the talent pool 100%.

Speaker 3: 15:18

You can't sit there with your shoulders back because you know, oh, we've all had it right when you've had a client who sent your job description and you sit there going, okay, cool, I've got it. And you do a hunt and you're like I don't think the people you're looking for out there based on your demands you know they're being demanding. You can't prove it because you don't have that conviction. When you actually apply techniques like this, you can sit there and go. I have hunted through this platform. I know you're being demanded. So actually if you did this, this is the talent pool you would see. But the way you have the confidence to articulate that is very different, because a lot of recruits are like just kind of couldn't find anyone and then when the manager pushes, they wobble and they go okay, I'll go and look again because they don't have that conviction in their statement. Actually, I know my market. I've done my hunt. If you want to see the Boolean's during upgraded, fill your boots. This is what I ran for you. You need to stop it.

Speaker 3: 16:10

You need to realign, but it is a conviction of this is the best of the best of the best, based on what you asked me, and if I move this parameter slightly, you get this next pool of talent. It's a different conversation.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Wow.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Okay, I mean I don't know how many have you ever worked with any of the kind of legacy the bigger you know, big search firms, the big retained houses. No, I mean I would be very interested to know how much or little that these kind of techniques are used, because I know that in those that I have had experience with I haven't seen it.

Speaker 3: 16:53

And that's part of the journey we're on now is having those conversations Like we've always been in business, that's agnostic of size of users, like we're not, like you have to have 50,000 users. It's always when you're at the point where you're ready to head about the parapet and become better, you know where to come. And I don't force anyone on that journey, because I've definitely seen technology companies in the parking lot. You need to buy and it's like no, if you're not mentally in the right place, then don't come on this journey, because you have to be willing, as a business, to go. This is how we hunt. This is the process we are having in place.

Speaker 3: 17:26

But I'm with you. I would love to see insights on those bigger businesses. What is happening? What mediocrity is being allowed to slip through because of the size you are. And that's where you start to see some of these bigger corporates, some of the very few conversations I've had where it's like well, we might money, and it is literally that shrug of we make money, we don't need to be any better than we are now.

Speaker 3: 17:50

We just need to survive and that, again, it frustrates me from a personal level. Not like, ignore the company I own. It annoys me from a personal level because I think too often recruiters and recruitment businesses forget how important they are. Like you are a critical point in our entire economy. Like there are businesses trying to grow who need exceptional talent. Putting not the right people in is going to break that company and wall it. As a recruiter, you've also got responsibility to candidates. You want to find the best candidates, give them the best opportunities to go into a role they've dreamt of, and when businesses start talking about this, it's okay to just be meh. I'm so disappointed in them as a business because actually you have a duty of care to both of these people. That has significant ripple effects and I think we forget this way too often and that's where I get a bit like yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:45

I try and avoid. I try and avoid like reaching for a retain thing, because obviously that's the kind of the corner that we fight for all the time. But I just think it's a general problem that comes with the contingent model as well. It drives the wrong behaviors right. And it's the same way that I say to people. I feel like we have an obligation. Every time a customer comes to us with a need to stop, take a minute, consult with them, understand the situation, understand the challenge, the pain, and then recommend the right solutions to solve their problem right. And sometimes not very often, but sometimes that will be contingent.

Speaker 2: 19:19

Most of the time, actually, I believe the best way to solve the problem is on a retain basis. I think it's the same when recruiters hunt. I've seen it right. I've seen people back in my contingent days that were sitting next to me at the desk. They'd take a brief from a client and 20 minutes later they're calling candidates and I'm like there isn't that period of stopping and saying, ok, what am I looking for and how do I set this search up in the right way, like, what are the parameters? What do I need to do to set myself up for success? And that's because they've got to be so fast, because they know 10 other agencies will probably call 20 minutes before them.

Speaker 3: 19:55

But that's the thing, is that rushing element and this is like this comes out, the geeking me like from my JP Morgan days and being that hardcore ops geek is. What I find interesting is exactly that you see people go job spec learn quick, get the qualification call quick, get our hunting, and it's just like actually you're making that more inefficient than it needed to be. So the process that we always run through is people's job description comes in. I want you to build a baseline Boolean string before you've even got to the discovery call with your intake, whatever you want to call it Right. Then, when you've got your intake, I want you to share your Boolean string with your hiring manager. I want you to go by the way you gave me ABC and D.

Speaker 3: 20:30

These are the variations. I call back anything else you want to add in, get them thinking differently. Then when you get off the phone, you've got an educated Boolean string. That means you have something to go and run after rather than start your search and then go. Oh, I wish I'd asked the hiring manager Fill in the gap.

Speaker 3: 20:48

It's just it's, it's that rush to execute where actually you just spend two minutes here. The whole thing just happens so much quicker.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Yeah, I mean it's a bit. It's a bit different. When you're working, you know, on a retain search mandate you wouldn't necessarily show a Boolean string but you would agree the parameters of the search and explain how you're going to go about it and certainly would have done some initial research to be able to take some target profiles with you to the briefing session. But Jordan's right, If it's not a retained position and it's a contingent job and you're working with no financial commitment to your client, it's too risky, it's waste time doing that. You've got to get the phone calls out to the candidates and ring fence the candidates because if you don't, somebody else is going to make sense to to to put barriers between you and a potential fee when you've got no financial commitment from the client.

Speaker 3: 21:50

So I think it is sorry, tindra. Even with the financial commitment, though. What's interesting is, if I look right now, so there's 15 million jobs posted on LinkedIn right now 15 million Okay, that's not taking into account any other job board out there. So I agree with the retained piece Definitely gives you that breathing room. I've got this, I can breathe, I don't have to kind of chase my tail, and that is an absolute winner for retained. But I always say to people is yeah, you got your business, sit there, breathe, then move. But also remember that just because you've got that job, that hot candidate, there are other companies out there who are also looking for that candidate for a particular different role, for a different client, for whatever it may be, but you want the best candidates. So definitely breathe more on the retained model, but do still remember that that accuracy and that hunt still needs to be there to make sure you're getting the best of the best, not just kind of like, oh, that slipped over there. That makes sense.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yeah, I mean, and sometimes in a contingent requirement, they don't need the best of the best, just need someone to do the job quickly. So actually, the first person you call might be their solution. Yeah, you know, often when you're instructed on a retained basis, it's because it has to be. They have to know, without a doubt, that they are choosing between the best people that are available to them. So, yes, I completely agree that everybody that's hunting for candidates in any capacity needs to be able to use Boolean Searching, because you just don't find people if you don't. But you definitely need to be doing it when you're working on a retained basis or your search is not exhaustive, and it should be and it needs to be. Yeah, so, on that, I wanted to just share, like, what we've been up to and what we've been helping people with, and then come to you to find out more about in-depth stuff that you have been helping people with, if that's okay, gabby, gabby. So I just wanted to share some nice good news, if that's okay.

Speaker 2: 24:01

There's loads of it at the moment, isn't there?

Speaker 1: 24:03

Oh my God, there really is. So I wanted to just share a portion of my screen, because I've noticed that they've actually got the names of the people in the top. That's how sorry, Boak's. That's how.

Speaker 2: 24:19

Oh well, very well, Nice thinking on your feet.

Speaker 1: 24:21

I know, yeah, you know that's me. You know what I'm like, george, You've pointed it out before. So this was one of the most recent teams that we've been coaching. They have just signed terms on a multi-hired project in private equity, so that's nice to see the private equity market moving to, he says, asking for the story behind we don't retain, calling out contingent search for its lack of focus and lack of commitment to execution, and communicating my readiness to walk away is what made the difference for him. He said it's an existing client with partners with on an exclusive but contingent basis and when I pushed for a committed relationship I got we don't retain, never will.

Speaker 1: 25:00

That's so common, isn't it? It would be counterproductive to seek sign off at the top level. He asked if there was a Horace to Horror story, so Doug into that and then actually got into a legal fight over a Duke the Cafe, which again, is not uncommon and we come across it a lot. Based on our past success and our pitch of push for approvals communicated I was prepared to walk away in prioritise other projects. He's put in brackets and it worked. A compromise on a few points on terms, but we retained protected and are kicking off to search process is as hiring partners and looking forward to it.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Such. I would like to give a shout out there to Sean as well, the owner of that firm, because, well to come, a little sneak peek for you all listening we may or may not be about to release a new module in the coming months for implements. There is a huge role at the leader place in getting a team when in return, and encouraging the adoption of a new model and he's textbook in the way he's done it, you know, giving your team the confidence to threaten to walk away and prioritise other projects. That's just one of the things that you can do to make this work.

Speaker 1: 26:13

I won't actually read this one fully, I'll be honest. Have you Jordan? It's a massive email that we received that says it's a summary of subjects. It works.

Speaker 2: 26:28

It's a long one.

Speaker 1: 26:29

It says it's written with complete transparency, no fluff at all. And then there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven paragraphs.

Speaker 2: 26:35

It's a bit of fluff.

Speaker 1: 26:36

Yeah, there must be a bit of fluff. I won't read it all out, but he says partway through in my mind I hear Jordan and Louise say dig for pain, find the problem, learn the challenges. He says. By the time I did and asked, I found where the openings were.

Speaker 2: 26:54

He said I think he doubted us at first basically didn't he. But come the end of it, yeah, he said he's sorry for being a doubting Thomas. Thanks for challenging me. This program, yes, it really works. If you don't think so, give him a call.

Speaker 1: 27:12

Yeah, there you go. Can we say who it is?

Speaker 2: 27:16

Yeah, our friend Dale Erickson, top guy, great guy.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So thank you very much, dale, for helping other people to see the light too. Oh dear, here we go. Here's another one. This is a shout out to you, jordan. Thank you, jordan. The session today was really great. Just a quick note to you all this course, without question, was the best decision I made in 2023. I'm just months into this new business. I executed my first retained search contract in January. The project plan is on track. We'll confirm our candidate short this first week of February, looking forward to have a contracted candidate by March the first. My goal is to walk the process all the way through before I push it hard to new clients. Everyone's a bit different with that, aren't they, george?

Speaker 1: 27:53

Some people want to win on follow it all the way through, make sure they've got it all nailed and then they'll go out and win loads. Some people just like win one and go. I'm just going to go and win them all and they just kind of put their foot on the floor.

Speaker 2: 28:05

Well, they're like me and they're absolute psychopaths, and they just go after one such and tell every client that they have to retain the Moon for.

Speaker 1: 28:12

The next one methodology and mindset. Hey guys, this is all happened in what 10 days is so much? Yeah, it's a retained work out there at the moment. Just a shout out say big thank you to the team for forcing me to change the narrative to a more method based chat with my clients. Is this Gemma?

Speaker 1: 28:31

It is my first video on a call and client agreed that retain was the best method for this hire. For me, this is a 100% mindset shift and you simply cannot do this alone. I may not have mastered how to share my Zoom, chris Green, yet, but I've learned some amazing new ways of framing my discussions.

Speaker 2: 28:47

It's interesting to talk to Gemma because Gemma was quite experienced. Like Gemma is done retained. She's based in Singapore and had done quite a bit of it retained already but was kind of winging it. I see that mindset shift to someone with her experiences.

Speaker 1: 29:03

Another one in Singapore. Hello, okay, I've just saw my first retainer of the year. Would have normally gone down the contingent route, and that's my usual habit. Barely through the first module, another shift in language. I don't know how many more there are, but that's just a message to all of you out there. There is lots and lots and lots of work out there.

Speaker 1: 29:23

One minute that there isn't and you can win it on a retained basis. This course was my top 23 decision in September. I was looking at a blank slate and then I met with Jordan. You're such a god Fast forward five months. On January 4th I extended my first retained search contract. The project plan is on track. We'll confirm our shortlist. Yesterday I confirmed bookings for the ND and division director to fly into Boston. So it's your North American win this. Four face to face interviews on the shortlist. Thank you, retraining team. Oh God, more Went from a marketing document. Now this is nice. So we have been helping. Specifically, sarah Chester has been helping our members with her new digital retrained search course and training. I don't know who is this Kelly?

Speaker 2: 30:13

This is Kelly.

Speaker 1: 30:14

It is yeah A few months back, started sending out marketing documents and case studies to target prospects. These include industry news, recent assignments and available candidates. Lovely techniques here. One client came back to one I sent asking for more information on a candidate profile which I shared, which people often think doesn't work for retained, but it does. Oh yes, they had a role but didn't want a full search. They did, however, want to meet the candidates and after three successful meetings they moved to offer last week and the candidate accepted. If you aren't sending out relevant content to your targets, it's evidence that you need to think this might be the penultimate one. It's an email to Claire. I've watched and completed all the videos and the exercises. I've taken so much from the training. It's helped me in so many ways, especially the only being 12 months into recruitment. Some people are quite new to recruitment. That join us, aren't they?

Speaker 2: 31:07

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:09

It's been extra beneficial to be working on retained business while actually going through the training. Is this a member of the one of our existing members teams? Maybe I can't remember.

Speaker 1: 31:18

Yeah, I think it is, yeah, I've won all three from the same firm, built a good relationship, 36,500 in fees. They're amazed at the caliber of candidates and I'm attracting for them and already discussing about another potential retainer, which we know always happens when you work on a retained basis. That turns into more and they will just work with us retained, moving forward. Thank you so much for everything, claire. I look forward to speaking to you soon. Shout out for Claire. Oh, my goodness me, shall I carry on. Is that enough? Maybe we'll save the others for next week.

Speaker 1: 31:51

You guys are smashing. It Just got off from a presentation from Cuddly Mad, biggest retained project. Three roles They've been advising me downstairs to see their operations take with dinner and pay for my hotel and travel costs. Buzzing is that one New client, new cert, vp of operations I literally every one of them are getting like two a day at the moment.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Yeah, but I suppose the message to all of you is it does not matter where in the world you are, what vertical you're in, whether you've got a month experience or 10 years experience. Like you guys can do it. You really really can. You really can.

Speaker 1: 32:28

You can. So let's dive into what we've been helping people with and some of the stuff that we've been helping people with recently. I mean, I've been helping, only this morning, my members in the mastermind with the structure of their teams, and we've been implementing the EOS model from the book traction, which I rave about all the time, specifically with a focus on level 10 meetings, which, for those of you that run EOS as a model, will know what I'm talking about. We've been implementing it ourselves. So we had our second ever level 10 meeting today.

Speaker 2: 33:03

It's gone from very, very, very on smooth to very, very on smooth, but we're moving in the right direction.

Speaker 3: 33:11

So hang on, Just for anyone else who's listening, including myself. What is the level?

Speaker 1: 33:15

10 meeting. So it's based on the EOS operating model, which is outlined in a book called Traction by a guy called Gino Wickman, and it's a very simple structure and method for running your business and getting to where you want to be in your business. One of the key things is an annual meeting where you set the strategy, the goals, the 10 year goal, the three year goal, the one year goal and you break it into quarterly goals. And another one is the 90 day meeting, which, in those quarterly reviews, you then break down what you did last quarter, what you still got to do this quarter, your issues, unknock those and then set the next 90 days and you work in sprints.

Speaker 1: 33:55

And then in the meantime, you have these weekly meetings which are called level 10s because you score them at the end of the meeting. So you've got to give it a score of 10 and it needs to be a 10 every time. Ours isn't quite a 10 at the moment because I'm still reading through the book, going right, ok, what are we supposed to be doing here? Shit, we're five minutes, it's got to move on now. But it's so good because it's so accountable, there's nowhere to hide and it brings the issues, which is what it's all about solving problems to the surface and we've been solving a problem today which is a really big issue, and we would have we would have pushed that under the carpet until the next 90 day meeting if it wasn't for our last meeting today.

Speaker 2: 34:28

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing is that's probably an issue that, if you look at the responsibility in the team, probably you could say it falls with me in terms of to try and solve the problem. But we solve it as a team, like it isn't one person's problem, it's the team's problem. We collaborate, we work together and other people have better ideas than me, and it's like shit. Yeah, why didn't I think of that? Right?

Speaker 3: 34:50

100 percent. Do you know what we do enough? Before I joined this podcast, there was a session I was listening to and it was very much like the importance of your network, especially when you're running kind of smaller businesses where you don't have like 100 people, and even if you do start to grow and hire, you can still sometimes feel like I'm the leader, I must know all the answers, I must solve everything and actually, like Mitch and I, very often he's a bit more of like a very, very creative person. But I will lean into my community of tech founders and be like guys, can I grab 10? Can we go and like brainstorm and problem stuff? Because you're right, like there are people around you, this concept of you don't know what you don't know till you know you didn't know it, but also you need people around you to do that.

Speaker 1: 35:31

And apparently that's what this book is about is about collective intelligence. So it's about a home.

Speaker 3: 35:36

I'm going to buy more books.

Speaker 2: 35:37

I'm going to buy more books, Honestly you could have said anything there and I guarantee you Lou would have had a book somewhere around her to bring to the table.

Speaker 1: 35:45

There are so many people that know so many really good things and you can just you can know it. If you did, you know, read the book.

Speaker 2: 35:52

That's the whole premise of our mastermind, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 35:55

Well, it is.

Speaker 2: 35:58

See what I did there. See what I did I thought you did.

Speaker 3: 36:00

I like it Smooth 10 out of 10, jordan.

Speaker 1: 36:04

It isn't just about going to someone and saying you know what have you done and what's your experience of this and how did you solve it. It's the dynamic of the discussion that happens and the way that a collection of people work on a problem that produces an outcome that you would not have been able to achieve without them, without them collectively solving the problem. That's what happened in our level 10 meeting, so it's weird how they're both totally connected. That's what I've been doing. What have you been doing, gabby? What have you been helping people with?

Speaker 3: 36:31

What have I been doing? Yesterday was a training session I delivered, which was very fun, about optimizing searches on LinkedIn Recruiter, but actually just working really closely with a lot of new joiners that we've got into the Tool Recounts technology.

Speaker 3: 36:45

I'm a bit of an oddball, if I'm completely odd. So, as much as we are a SaaS company, I meet every single one of our users, Everything one of them knows me, I contact me. So I've been working with a couple of newbies who have had a lot, let's say, some baggage some baggage in terms of bad habits, but just working with them and doing lots of one-to-one work, being like look, why didn't that process work Right? Let's walk through what you did, let's walk through how we can make that process better and giving the rationale behind the why you're doing what you're doing and then watching like I had a client who literally was like Gabs.

Speaker 3: 37:20

I had a job that I thought was dead. I found three candidates and within 24 hours they were interviewed because they are exceptional and it was all because of how they were searching. I didn't even see them and I thought I'd exhausted my search. But again, for me it's been a lot of one-to-one work and just helping, I guess a bit like your mastermind, but just in a smaller, micro setting, making people feel comfortable to try something new, to realize they might slip on the way, but no, there is this big, lovely safety neck around them, being like I'm here, raise your hand and help, and that's been a lot of my work this week.

Speaker 1: 37:53

It must be like pretty revolutionary for people, learning how to find people that haven't been able to find before, and using such methods that don't rely on filters. And it must be amazing, like do you get people saying like bloody hell, where were you, you know, five years ago or 10 years ago?

Speaker 3: 38:15

I've got feedback from people all over the place. They just suddenly messaged me being like, honestly, gabs, if I'd met you when I first started my career, my career would have been different. And I was saying to them I was like I'm very much a firm believer, I am where I'm meant to be. So 10 years ago you probably wouldn't have listened to me. 20 years ago you probably wouldn't have listened to me. I mean, I'm only 36. So 20 years ago I probably wouldn't have listened to myself either. But the hormone range of 16, I would not have listened to myself.

Speaker 3: 38:41

But it is. You see people go. I wish I'd known this. I wish I saw you three years ago. I wish I'd listened to what you said then. And they have. It's a bit like when you're asking someone to change a process you have to give them the space to fall and lean forward. But all of them, every single client we've ever adopted, has been like what? What was I doing? I saw you on the stage talking about this stuff and I thought it was only super geeky, clever people that could do it. And I'm like I need the super geeky or clever and I can do it.

Speaker 1: 39:11

So, but it's such a lovely journey when we were talking just before we started, when, before I hit record, you told me that you I said we sometimes talk about controversies when we are on the podcast and your eyes lit up and you said oh, I've got one of those. Oh, I get to find out what it is, oh my gosh, so OK.

Speaker 3: 39:34

So a lot of people don't like LinkedIn. Ok, linkedin recruiter like, etc. They find it very expensive and they don't get a lot of ROI from it, largely because they use it how boot, how LinkedIn teaches them to use it. People who use it how I teach them to use it don't have a problem and make an absolute ton of money out of it. This morning's adventure, resulting in me coming on to LinkedIn recruiter to do my usual daily checks and tests to see if anything's changed they have changed the platform. So where LinkedIn recruiter used to be like a real cool platform for being able to search through the job titles and the company's, using Boolean and I'm in big Boolean like I could have a job title string of 2000 characters and 4000 characters on a company stream. So great for BD and great for Candidate Discovery. What they've now done is they've removed some buttons. So in the job title you probably know this very well they have the current. You can hit current, current, past, past past work dead.

Speaker 3: 40:33

Same on company doesn't exist, only exists if you use their filters. But their filters don't work, so you can now no longer effectively run Boolean through it and select current, past, past past work. It is broken. And I put a bit. I literally saw it this morning. I was raging, I was like a raging maniac message my customer success person, my account manager, whatever you want to call them in LinkedIn. And I was like what on earth is this? And she's like you can use the filters. And I went have you done a fit? Have you done a session with me ever? Like we need to have a chat because I can show you where your stuff's broken and I win. And then I went to the engineers and they're like we're slowly rolling this out. So this new format will now become the norm on full recruiter recruiter light and I'm waiting for confirmation on sales navigator.

Speaker 3: 41:24

So very early on in this conversation today, we discussed the fact that it was uncategorized talent. So those people who live outside the filters, they're dead, they're out. You'll never find them ever again on LinkedIn, which means from a candidate discovery perspective, recruiter searches are limited and, from a candidate perspective, you're even less likely to be found now than you were yesterday. So everyone who's kind of been watching and viewing this post have actually all been escalating it to LinkedIn and I've got a couple of people who've actually raised it to a specific group of LinkedIn representatives to be like, if you want to keep your money, I'd suggest you correct what you just did. So it's major. It's a major, major impact on the industry and it could be the pivotal point that sees the lots of recruiters going. I'm not paying five grand for that because I can't do what I need to do in the platform. This is the kind of geeky stuff I find on Wednesday morning, but it's huge, but it now makes them. One of the biggest appeals to recruiters about LinkedIn recruiter was their Boolean search functionality.

Speaker 1: 42:33

Can I ask a question there? How could you find them? Can you find them outside of LinkedIn? Can you search through Google?

Speaker 3: 42:41

Well, x-rays now died into LinkedIn. So 50 percent of the fields that you used to be able to use in X-ray in Google to look into LinkedIn no longer work, so LinkedIn cut that off a week and a half ago. They literally like, nope, you're out. So X-ray died looking into LinkedIn. Being still a little bit stable, it can tolerate it. But I almost feel like this is LinkedIn steps to really looking in what they want you to do on their dataset. It's scary, it's really dangerous what they've done, but they've got away with it.

Speaker 3: 43:15

We've all joked about the fact that they even consult a single recruiter when they made this move. The honest answer is absolutely not, because no same recruiter would have said this was a good idea. But what it could see is the massive transition of people being like not paying for recruiter, not paying for light. We'll see what happens with Nav. I've got a couple of clients on sales now, so we'll see what happens. But it could see people start to go. Actually, I'm going to go back to traditional job boards to search, because you've limited my ability to search through your dataset. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 43:48

Wow, I don't really know what to say because I just got.

Speaker 2: 43:53

I mean. I mean our LinkedIn controversies are normally like someone told me off for swearing on my LinkedIn.

Speaker 3: 43:59

You're like naughty no swearing, don't swear, you'll get reported.

Speaker 1: 44:02

I'll probably get reported. Do you know what I've been noisy on?

Speaker 3: 44:05

making. I'm probably going to get blocked. They'll probably be like silence her, do not let her do it.

Speaker 2: 44:10

I'd be coming with a seismic industry shifter.

Speaker 3: 44:15

Honestly the video I put out is just Jesus.

Speaker 1: 44:20

LinkedIn are not going to be happy with that. I'm going to say it is all like 15 people that are listening to this podcast. I mean this is a big audience.

Speaker 2: 44:28

Yeah, all 16 have pissed off. I mean they're going to be angry.

Speaker 3: 44:31

Right, they're going to come for LinkedIn and we're going to revolutionize that one billion.

Speaker 3: 44:35

We're going to see this little ripple. But what are we interesting like? For me, I've messed up our account manager. I went, I paid for LinkedIn recruiter to have full search functionality and I cancelled my subscription Because you have changed the product in a way that's detrimental. So it would be really interesting to kind of see what the waves come. But I mean, obviously I can keep you posted because I know how much you love this conversation about Boolean and sourcing, and after the session I'll drop you the link so at least your audience is aware, because it will impact directly what they're doing in the search.

Speaker 3: 45:06

How can people get into it with you? Gabby LinkedIn for now, until they block me, so you can find me on LinkedIn. It's Gabby Preston Piper. The spelling's a bit odd around the edges. I'm sure Lou will put something in the comments of this post, even by me or by email, so gabbytoolrecunescom. Again, I'll get Lou to add it. But yeah, I'm literally anywhere and everywhere. If you need me, come and find me. I mean, what am I doing? Two weeks time I'm going to Germany, so I'm literally all around the planet.

Speaker 1: 45:37

You can't stop me now, so for those of you that aren't watching on a screen and can't see Gabby's name. It's Gabby G A, b I at Tooled Up Recoons, and you can find Gabby on LinkedIn. For now, until they assassinate her.

Speaker 2: 45:52

I don't think you'll have to search through loads of businesses called Tooled Up Recoons to find the right one.

Speaker 3: 45:57

I'm pretty sure there's only going to be like two of us in there, all right, thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Thank you, jordan, thank you Gabby. Stay safe and keep us posted. Thanks everyone. See you next time. Bye and come and say hi, we don't bite, unless you're a Shrek firm, that is. We want to say a special thank you to our retrained members for sharing what's working for them right now and innovating new ways to grow and evolve. It's an incredible community. If you're wondering what exactly we mean when we mention our communities, well, we have two separate programs. Our search foundations program is for recruiters who want to learn how to sell and deliver retained search solutions consistently, and we have our search mastery program. That's for business leaders or owners already at 50% retained or more and looking to scale and grow and structure their search firm. We cap memberships to these programs to protect the integrity of the community. If you want access, just talk to us. Okay, thanks for listening. We'll be back very soon with another.