In this LinkedIn Live session, Brian Walch, former head of recruiting for a consulting firm that grew from 25 to over 200 employees, argues that every manager must adopt a recruiter mindset. He explains that hiring is not just a reactive process handled by HR, but a strategic, ongoing activity that directly influences team performance. Walch critiques the common “must‑have” checklist (degrees, years of experience, certifications) and encourages managers to focus on cultural fit, aptitude, and career motivations, drawing on internal success stories to illustrate how entry‑level hires can become top performers when given the right opportunities. He outlines how to analyze existing employee trajectories to define ideal candidate profiles, how to spot transferable skills in non‑traditional candidates, and how to balance required qualifications with developmental timelines. Throughout, he stresses that recruiting is about building relationships, not one‑off transactions, and provides concrete steps for managers to continuously nurture a talent pool, ultimately leading to better hires, stronger teams, and sustained organizational success. He invites viewers to ask questions on LinkedIn and offers a free management strategy call at shiftfocus.com/strategycall.
Chapters
If you're a manager, you need to be a recruiter. Now, you're going to be hiring at some point, either through growth, hopefully, or through attrition. And most managers are only thinking about recruiting when the need arises. But great managers are always thinking about it. Welcome to LinkedIn Live. I'm Brian Walsh. I led recruiting for a consulting firm for 20 years. We grew from 25 to over 200 employees. So I've done thousands of interviews, hired hundreds of people. I ran successful campus recruiting and referral programs and work with managers to become better at hiring. And I'm doing a series of LinkedIn lives this month about recruiting for managers. The quality of your hires is directly related to the quality of your candidates. So regardless of the hiring process, you, as a manager, can have a direct impact on the quality of your candidates. When I say regardless of the hiring process, no matter if HR is responsible for it or somebody else is responsible for it, you as the manager, can have a direct impact on the quality of candidates. So that's why managers must be recruiters. They must think like recruiters. And that's what I'm going to focus on this month. Now, it's not every manager's favorite thing to do. And so it's tempting to say, well, HR does that, or we have a group or a department for that. But it's kind of like if. Imagine if you were trying to build a dream home. It's your ideal place where you're going to raise your family or build memories. And that dream home would reflect how you want to live, what style you want, and you'd enlist others to help you design and build it, decorate it. But you'd never outsource that vision of what you want it to be. And that's how it is with people. You, as a manager, want to have a vision of what your team can accomplish and how they can accomplish that, and that needs to come from you, and you are going to be influenced in the process. And so hiring decisions are a critical part of that. Now, when managers are starting the hiring process, they typically start from a list of attributes. Here are the things I want. I want them to have a bachelor's degree and five years of this type of experience. I want them to be able to work with these types of clients or these types of projects. Maybe they have some certifications they want, like a PMP or a pe. Whatever it is, they're looking at a situation and they're saying, who can come in and help me today? Here's what I want. And My lesson for you today is that it's not what you want, it's what you got. See, thinking like a recruiter means it's not what you want, it's what you got. Let me explain. A recruiter is someone who's always on the lookout for people who would be a good fit in their organization. They are actively building a talent pool. People used to say to me, well, Brian, I want somebody like so and so. And they'd list a top performer in the company, some superstar. And I'd say, yeah, me too. When we hired her, she was entry level. We weren't even sure what she was going to do when we brought her on. But we took a risk, we took a chance. And the reason we can't hire another superstar like that is the same reason she's not leaving our company. We pay her well, we treat her well, we give her lots of opportunities. She does not want to leave. She likes working here. And so people like her at other companies are in the same position. We need to hire an entry level candidate, a riskier candidate, somebody that is going to take, we're going to have to take a chance on if we want more people like her. Recruiters are thinking about things like cultural fit aptitude, career desires of the person that the people that they're talking to, they're meeting people and they're asking, would they be fulfilled working at this organization? I was in consulting and consulting is just a different kind of career. Engagements are very diverse and varied. The engagement deals with the clients and partners and there's just a lot of different facets to consulting that is not about the actual technical work, it's the work style. And some people love it and others don't. So I knew that some people would be really well suited for the consulting career and others wouldn't regardless of their technical skills. I also knew how we as an organization nurtured people and how we didn't nurture people and who would do well and who probably wouldn't. And so when a manager is thinking like a recruiter, they're always having an eye out for people that would be a good fit. And to do that you need to know and understand who has been successful at your company already. It's not what you want, it's what you got. So look through your. The people that are work there, who has longevity at your company and what was their career path like, who are the top stars and where did they start at? What was the hiring process for them? Like why did they get hired when they Got hired and then how did they progress? What was their initial position, what did they do when they got hired? And then where are they at now? And how did they get there? And what were the attributes and things that made them successful in your organization? Now it's true that things change. Hiring is essential to bring in new ideas, new competencies, even new talent. But the goal of this exercise is not to constrain or lock in your hiring process, but rather to expand your perspective. See, it's totally normal and understandable that managers are focused on their current problems and they get suckered into short term thinking. And so as a manager, you want to get out of that mindset and open yourself up to new ideas as you build a talent pool. So start nurturing a profile of what your ideal candidate is. One that isn't tied to their education or their work history or other things typically associated with a what I want list. This can open you up to maybe some non traditional paths or educations. So how do people demonstrate appropriate skills and unrelated industries or fields? My boss was superb at this. He, he was able to identify people's analytical ability in totally unrelated fields. And often they were being underutilized in those fields and, and he would recruit them into our company and they would, they would blossom and have a much more, you know, good career, better career with our company because they were, their skills were being used to full potential. So how do you find those people that are maybe in a different industry or a different field, maybe they're going through a career change, like a second career, or they're changing life stage. Our consulting in our organization was very flexible and we could accommodate people that wanted more flexibility. And so if somebody was entering a stage of young kids and they were looking for a little bit more flexibility, we were a great option. And that was the time when it was good for them to make a career change. And sometimes you, you get to know somebody and you realize they would be awesome in our organization. And I can create a new role and give them an opportunity to try to do something completely new that might even further our company's mission. You also as a manager need to get clear on what are must haves and what are not needed. Now clearly some roles need certifications or licenses, but when you're talking about a talent pool, do you need to automatically exclude those people if they don't have a PE or a PMP or whatever certification is appropriate in your industry? I used to work a lot of times with hiring managers and they'd list things like they Got to have a master's or they got to have three years experience in this technology. And I'd inquire about that, I'd push back a little bit and say, well, why? What are they going to do with those things? And a lot of times those weren't really requirements. Sometimes they underpinned or highlighted a desire for the hiring manager wanted to see a constant pursuit of excellence or a continual focus on development of themselves, good things. But there's lots of different ways that a candidate could demonstrate that. So we as just as managers and even people in hiring, we're conditioned to think about these qualifications and list them off. But a lot of times they aren't real. A lot of times they aren't what predicts somebody's performance and success. And so you want to make sure as you're talking about building a candidate pool and thinking about being a recruiter that you're open to people that maybe don't have things that aren't true must haves. Now, last thing on this is sometimes a must have is there's a timeline to it. So could somebody get the must haves over a certain period of time? Like maybe you could hire somebody and over the next two years they go get their pmp. People also go through a lot of different thoughts about their life. And you want to understand desires and motivations. I used to always say that you can't trust what people say, but you can trust what they do. And as you get to know people, you'll see patterns. For example, if you think someone has leadership potential and leadership desire, it's likely going to show up in other areas of their life. You're going to see it in their involvement and extracurricular activities, maybe in the school. If they value work life balance, that's going to show up. If they like to. If they like to work more, those things all show up. And so as you're cultivating a talent pool, you're spending time with people. We say it's about relationships, not transactions. Hiring is a transaction, but recruiting is about relationships. And as you cultivate a talent pool, you're going to come up with your own ideas, but you'll start seeing them. Like I remember one time I spent almost a year getting to know a guy and we actually became friends. But he would tell me a lot about his truck and he'd give me all these technical details and it was clear through our conversations he was highly analytical, he was very detail oriented and he was in a career that very well fit those strengths. It was These attributes were great for the career path he was on. And so there was a lot of intrinsic motivation for that. And so I knew when we had a position open that fit that, that he'd be a great candidate because he'd be really driven, the challenges would be tough. He'd really. He'd really thrive on them. So I knew he'd be a great. A great fit. Another time, I had a person that was telling me about a project, a home project they were doing, and it just. It never seemed to end. And sure enough, when we hired him, he had a hard time finishing things, but we knew that. We knew that was likely, and so we could support him through that phase of the project. When he was on those projects, there were plenty of people I knew who our firm was going to be a great career option for. And if we could. If we could hire them, they would have a long, rewarding career. And that's what happened. When they hired on, they did well. They stayed. I also knew plenty of those people that the manager, when they met them, they were too focused on what they wanted, and we didn't hire them. And I think to the detriment of our firm, it's not what you want, it's what you got. So look at your existing employees. Look how they developed and expand your idea of an ideal candidate. Then cultivate relationships and get to know people who would excel on your team. So that's how you think like a recruiter and build your own talent pool. Better candidates is going to equal better hires, and better hires equal better teams. It's not what you want, it's what you got. So I'll be talking all about recruiting through January. If there's a question you have, let me know. Send me a message on LinkedIn and I'll work it into the. The LinkedIn lives that I'm doing. If you do want to talk more about building management teams and management strategy, I offer a free management strategy call. So you just go to shiftfocus.com strategycall and you can pick a time that's convenient for you to have a short talk. That's shiftfocus.com strategycall all right, that's it for today, and I'll see you next week. Take care.
