Clip from recent podcast “Beyond The Loan” with Chad Anderson

Recruiters today, I'll tell you a quick story. This literally happened yesterday to me, and this is not an invitation for recruiters to start bombarding me, but we had a— had one of those good old-fashioned LinkedIn messages, right? And it's literally, Chad, are you interested in an upward movement? And I always love these just generic tactics, right? Right? Are you interested in an upward movement? And the word upward there to dangle the carrot just enough. And so I decided, you know, I'll mess around with this person for a second. Let's just see what they're— I even like answering the phone sometimes to see what people's sales skills are or recruiting skills. And I just like to learn, maybe somebody out there is good. Maybe we wanna hire them, who knows?

Right, sure.

And so they say, well, or I replied and said, well, define upward for me. And because I've told people, would you rather bat, you know, 7th for the Yankees or bat cleanup for the Nashville Sounds?

Right.

It's a pretty obvious answer.

Right.

And so it was, well, you'll get more recruiting support and compensation. And so I said, well, I've got fantastic recruiting support. I love my recruiting team. And you don't know what my W-2 says. So how do you know what my comp is? And the reply back was, Whatever it is, we'll match it. I just kind of laughed to myself like that. That's a serious recruiting effort that happened yesterday. So I use that story to segue to your final question. What are— and if you want to give 2, that's fine. If you want to give 3, whatever you want to do. But the number one mistake by recruiters out there today, what's the one thing you see and every time you just kind of shake your head like this person is going to fail miserably every single day?

I I kind of look at my first 10, 11 years of recruiting, and I'm just blown away that I never had this epiphany. This epiphany, because I would actually articulate in some different meetings or different framework around this, but never connected it to recruiting, which is that we would always say, we've been saying this for decades, people leave companies because of bad managers, right? We say that people leave companies because of bad managers. Yeah. If that's true, then don't people join organizations because of great leaders?

Yeah.

Like, like, you know, I think of that phone script that, that the individual used, this better opportunity idea. Like, that's just not how we've been designed as human beings. It's just not thoughtful courtship. Like, I want to be recruited. You want to be recruited. There's something affirming about the right recruiting process, right? If it's affirming, it's like, I'm not a girl, but I kind of get the whole thing that girls want to be courted. Right? Like, I think there's a big connection between dating and recruiting in that when you actually are dating someone, you don't show up on the scene and go, hey, you're pretty, would you marry me? It's like, no, you're the creepy guy that my mom told me about. I'm gone. Right? So, but the recruiter does that. The normal recruiter in most industries, that's what they do. They show up and say, hey, you're pretty. And I'd like to marry you till death do us part. What do you say? I'll buy you a big diamond ring. That's almost the framework for it. That's the framework of what you just described.

Yes, spot on.

So if, if If we leave bad managers and we join great leaders, wouldn't it make sense that instead of taking our company value proposition and saying, we've got great technology, we've got great compensation, we've got great support, that we would move to a narrative that makes sense to people, which is that I want to have a conversation around my core values. I want to have a conversation around the vision of where I believe that my team is going. I want to tell you why I do what I do, why I lead the way I lead. I want to have that conversation with you before we ever get to any anything else. And if you actually have a recruiting process mapped out around that, then what you're doing is you're changing everything. You're changing your phone script, you're changing how you actually handle your first face-to-face presentation meeting, you're even changing the way you pursue someone forever. Because now it's no longer, we'll give you more money, or we'll give you $10,000 more in signing bonus, or we'll give you your own branch, or we'll— you know what, it doesn't become that. And the reason why this is This is a very important aha for people to have, is that when you understand how we're motivated, or we— when we are safe, we feel secure, we feel protected, and we feel like our needs are being met, those are not the highest motivators. Okay, when those things are in place, and which is basically what he offered you, or she offered you, whichever they were— come here and we'll meet your needs. Wait a second, shouldn't every company meet the needs of their employees? Like, you're gonna match meeting my needs? Holy cow, you guys are so unique. Like, I never thought about it like that. Like, I'll come to another place that will meet my needs. It's like, it doesn't make sense. We're motivated and designed differently and uniquely to be motivated through other things. And I call it the BAM zone, which is like, we wanna belong to something bigger. Like, I wanna be a part of something bigger than the next transaction, the next paycheck, the next celebratory meeting where we beat our numbers, right? I wanna be some part of something bigger than that. Yeah. We wanna belong to a group of people that have similar values as us, that's our tribe, right? We wanna belong to that. So there's more there. The other part is that I do wanna be courted. I do wanna be affirmed. I do wanna be up— I do wanna have a team that's got a life-giving leader, right? I think that's great framework. A life-giving leader that's encouraging, that's coaching me, that's helping me accomplish what I want to accomplish in this business, that's helping me get to where I wanna get to in life, that understands my dream. Right, that understands what's motivating me, right? Like, I wanna be a part of that. Yeah. And that life-giving leader's affirming me, and that affirmation is the second highest motivator on the planet. I mean, psychologists say that when you go back to young children and you look at how they mature and grow and whether they're healthy adults or not healthy adults, the biggest determiner in a healthy versus an unhealthy adult, right, one that's got addictions, one that struggles building relationships versus the one who's like the awesome leader who's doing well in life, You go all the way back to a young age, and affirmation from the mother and the father is the connector. It's the conduit all the way to adulthood. So affirmation is needed. It's necessary. It's how we've been wired to need this. So I want to be a part of a leader that is going to affirm me, that's going to be life-giving, that's going to encourage me, it's going to help me accomplish what I want to accomplish. And then the third part of that BAM zone, you know, where you've got belonging, affirmation, and meaning. Is that, man, as a leader, I really need to have a larger meaning zone. What are we doing as a team that matters beyond the loan, right? Which is perfect framework for your podcast, right? Beyond the loan. It's like, what are we doing in our community? What are we doing as a team? What are we doing as an organization? Like, what are we doing to leave a larger impact? And because I think that if you can articulate something to people, they almost always nod their head in agreement. And it's this: I think what most people want is they want to do what they love with the people they love while making a greater difference. And it does include fair compensation, and it does mean that I have time to go outside the walls of this office and to spend time with the people that matter most, right? If you can hit those 5 things, most people go, I am in agreement with that. That's what I'm looking for, right? We want more meaning than to actually just be on a manufacturing line delivering a transaction to the finish line. And so that, to me, every recruiter needs to have that aha. What it does is it takes you out of Hey, my opportunity is just a little bit better to a place where now you become an entirely new opportunity because you don't— you can't duplicate my value system. You can't duplicate my why. You can't duplicate my vision. You can't duplicate any of those. I become a unique opportunity in my market and every recruiting leader that understands that is at another level.

Man, like the biggest mic drop we've probably had in our recordings. Amazing answer but so true.