In this video, Richard Milligan shares a framework answering the question, “If you could boil recruiting efforts down to five things, what would they be?” He identifies four evergreen strategies that consistently drive recruiting success—attractive leadership, storytelling, having a systematic recruiting process, and time management—and one non‑evergreen strategy that constantly evolves: the way recruiters communicate with candidates. Milligan explains each evergreen element, emphasizing that attractive leaders have clear vision and values, strong storytellers can persuade and engage talent, a repeatable system ensures consistency, and effective time management balances recruiting with broader leadership duties. He then argues that recruiters must become lifelong marketers, continuously adapting to shifting communication channels—from 1990s email to phone calls, text messaging, video messages, LinkedIn, Facebook Messenger, and niche tools like Marco Polo—because marketers inevitably “ruin” the current best channel. He urges recruiters to seek low‑noise platforms, stay current on emerging tools, and commit to ongoing learning. The video concludes with calls to his website (4crecruiting.com) and podcast (Recruiting Conversations) for further resources.
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Hey everybody, Richard Milligan here with Forsee Recruiting. I wanted to share a conversation I had with a recruiting leader just the other day, and a really good question was asked of me that created some new framework that I don't think I've shared on video before, so I want to give it to you. Here's what the question was. The question was, if you could boil recruiting efforts down to 5 things, what would those 5 things be? And as I thought about that question and articulated my answer to that individual, what I realized is that a lot of the things that are going to make you a successful recruiter are what I would call evergreen strategies. Now, what that means is that they will always work. They're always going to be something that once you learn them and once you incorporate that into your recruiting activities, that they will always play a significant role in your wins and your successes. But there's one thing that is not evergreen and it's always changing. So let me tell you what the 5 things are. 4 are evergreen. Your attractive leadership matters. Now, if you've seen any of my videos, you know I talk about the attractive leader is someone that has a vision, has clear defined beliefs, can articulate those, and then lives and acts in accordance with those. That's always gonna matter. Your leadership brand's always gonna matter. The other part is this: storytelling. Storytelling is forever going to play a key component in you winning or you losing inside recruiting. If you're a great storyteller, you will naturally be a great recruiter. If you're not a great storyteller, you will struggle to recruit. If that's you, you have to work on that skill set and become a better storyteller. The other part is this, a system is always going to matter inside recruiting. You have to have a system. That's an evergreen strategy. And the last one is this, time management is always going to be relevant. As a recruiting leader, you're someone that actually manages a team and has a lot of responsibilities. And so the struggle's always going to be, where do I allocate my time resources and where do I fit recruiting into all of that? And so time management is an evergreen strategy that when you're good at that, you will win when you recruit. Now here's the one non-evergreen strategy that's always going to change forever. One of the things that we know is that marketers ruin everything. Okay, so from a communication standpoint, because marketers are always going to ruin whatever the latest method is to communicate people, you have to, to some degree, become a marketer. Let me give you some examples. We could go back to the '90s when email was a great delivery for a message, when most people opened up email and responded to email. We can actually even go back a short period of time ago when the phone, when you could dial somebody directly, whether it be at their home number or their cell number, and people would respond, people would answer. That was just 2 or 3 years ago. We're in a time right now where with the phone you can leave people a message and there is zero tension for them to actually return your phone call. And because people have now moved past that communication tool onto something else. At the time of this video, text messaging works extremely well, but marketers are in the process of ruining text message. So what's next? I'll give you a couple of what's next strategies right now, but what I want you to understand is you are going to have to make a lifelong commitment to becoming a marketer if you're going to win at this thing we call recruiting. Right now, video text message works extremely well. And one of the reasons why video text over simply typing out characters in texting, why that works is because few people are doing it. But that will change, and when that changes, what's next? Right now, LinkedIn works extremely well, but you have to know how to use the platform, meaning that you can't be using it as an advertisement tool and out there just offering opportunities to people and talking about how awesome your company is. It's a relationship-building tool, and if you understand that, it works extremely well. What else? You keep moving. Facebook Messenger. What else? You keep going. There are tools out there today that you can use to communicate to people that make you extremely relevant in any conversation simply because there's no noise there. So I want to know where there's a lack of noise and I will communicate inside that tool. Some of the things I would encourage you to look at, Marco Polo is one thing that is a great place where you can communicate directly to people a message and there's very little noise there as well. So remember the 5 things. 4 of them are are going to always matter inside your recruiting. Get good at those. The one that's always going to be changing, that's going to require you to educate yourself forever, is going to be where do we communicate, where do we engage, where do we interact with our recruits. Until we meet again, you can see more videos like this on my website at 4crecruiting.com. Check out my podcast. I've got a new podcast on iTunes. It's simply Recruiting Conversations. You can enter my name, Richard Milligan, to find that. Awesome. Or you can also find it on recruitingconversations.com. Until we see you again, all the best to you as you recruit. Thank you.
