The Breakdown of The Strategy a Successful Recruiting Leader Is Using to Hire Someone
In this solo‑podcast style video, Richard Milligan of Forsee Recruiting shares a concrete, three‑prong framework that enables recruiting leaders—typically area, regional, branch, or sales managers—to hire roughly one new employee each week. He begins by acknowledging his own long‑standing struggle with recruiting and positions the content as free, actionable advice for “1‑percenters” who will activate the ideas. The three pillars are: (1) a strong social leadership brand—daily, value‑driven posting that positions the leader as attractive and trustworthy; (2) a dedicated dialer who conducts research‑driven outreach, using a scripted request for a brief 5‑10‑minute, no‑recruiting conversation that highlights value alignment; and (3) a clear, momentum‑building next‑step process (the “Recruiting Made Simple” model) that moves candidates from the initial call to a face‑to‑face office visit and then to a rapid close, typically within 2.5 weeks. Milligan illustrates how small, high‑impact tactics—perfecting the phone script, a three‑step text‑message follow‑up cadence, and focusing on right‑brain, feeling‑based recruitment—can boost appointment show‑rates from ~45‑50 % to ~90 % and dramatically increase conversion rates. He emphasizes that recruiting success hinges on mastering these “little things,” iterating, and consistently applying the system. The video ends with a call to action for viewers to implement one or two of the nuggets immediately and offers ongoing support through his online channels.
Chapters
Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan again with Forsee Recruiting, and you probably know who I am by now if you're seeing this video because you probably found it on my YouTube channel or on my LinkedIn or Close Facebook page or something like that. So I am spontaneously jumping into this Video/podcast that you're tuning into. And the reason why is because we have some recruiting leaders that are winning at scale, and I'm all about delivering the ideas and the content as much as I can for free. Yes, we coach and we consult, but a lot of what we do is at a, is at a higher level for organizations in larger projects. Like books and specifically recruiting audits and, you know, things of that nature. And so where I can actually help the individual recruiting leader by giving some of this away, I'm all about that. The reason why is because I spent, gosh, most of my career struggling to recruit. I say most of my career, you know, I spent 10, 11 years really struggling and then began to pick up some of these principles over the last 3.5 to 4 years. And, and so, but even as I was picking them up, I was still learning and learning and learning and learning to get to a place where, where I would say I was a good recruiter. And so I have a lot of empathy for the struggle. And yes, I realize it is a struggle. So I have a lot of empathy for you, the recruiting leader. So in these moments, I love to just pause Take note of what's going on and pass that on to you so that you have the context. And if you're an Activator, go freaking apply it. That's all you have to do. It's because I'm going to give you the best content that I have. Just go apply it. Okay? I was looking at the sides. My hair messed up? No, my hair's not messed up. Go apply it. If you'll do that, you'll win because other people are using the same content and they're winning. Okay? So I'm going to jump into a podcast now. This is fresh content. We're going to be going live here in just a second. Three, two, one. Here we go. Hey everybody! Welcome back to Recruiting Conversations. It's your host, the only Ricardo Malagano. No, that was that's weak, right? Like there's nothing in me. I'm just like I'm like German American. You know, I'm like Irish American. Like, I'm—I just don't even have like this ability to to sound cool when I say Ricardo Meligano. I just make—it just makes me look like it's a bad dad joke or something, right? But I'm here, and I'm here to give you some phenomenal content today. I'm excited about it. I'm excited about it because I'm coming out of. A meeting where we have taught someone a specific system and they're following it and they're winning at scale right now. I just thought, let's just share this for the 1 percenters, right? Because we all know, like, there's enough information available today that if you want to go win, you can buy a course or you can follow someone on YouTube or their podcast or whatever, and you get enough content that if you'll apply that, you will win. So this is— if you're not part of the 1 percenters, this is your clue to click off this podcast and to move on. This one's for the 1 percenters who will activate because this is coming fresh from a recruiting leader who's winning at scale. When I say winning at scale and recruiting leader, let me just explain those 2 pieces. Okay? Here's what the recruiting leader is: someone who manages a team but then is also responsible for recruiting to the team. Okay, a lot of times these titles look like area managers or regional managers or branch managers or sales managers. Okay, those are the people that this podcast is designed for. The other part of that is, what does winning at scale mean? Well, for this individual, winning at scale means that he's hiring approximately 1 person every week right now. Huh. Like, I laugh because if I could have hired 1 person per week For the first 10, 11 years I was in the business, I would have absolutely have destroyed it. It's how the system that I'm teaching is the same system that I built 18 teams from the last 3 and a half years. So it doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise us here at 4C Recruiting that it's working. But when it comes through this, comes through a moment like this, I just feel inspired to share it with you. And so I just took a moment here beyond this meeting to say, what are the 3 things that this guy's doing? Now, I'm just— a secret in this, I'm giving it to you as 3 things because I know you're most likely to remember it. Okay, there's this thing that's called chunking. It's this scientific concept that our brains will remember 3 things and typically will forget anything beyond 4. And so it's a reason why our phone numbers are in 3-digit area codes, 3-digit prefix, and then has the last 4 digits, because we'll remember that. We can remember that at least for a short window of time, right? So I'm going to give you 3 pieces today that are the keys to what this individual is doing to win at scale. Number 1, we're going straight to the money. Okay, number 1, this individual has a strong social leadership brand. Okay, when I say strong leadership brand, posting daily, communicating directly to people inside their inbox, giving things of value. Okay, is representing an attractive leader on social media, right? So if you've listened to any of my podcasts around leadership branding, and if you haven't, this is your first one, go back and listen to a prior podcast on my belief system around leadership branding, the importance of it, and how you can actually apply it. Because he's doing it, and he's doing it perfectly the way that I teach it. Okay, so he definitely has A social leadership brand. That's the first part. Okay, so if there's a 3-prong approach, that's one. Here's the second one. He has a dialer that's making phone calls on his behalf and is following my Recruiting Made Simple system. Now, what is the Recruiting Made Simple system? Well, it's, it's a system. Okay, it means that there's always a predetermined next step that you're moving someone towards. So this dialer's calling And this dialer's representing the fact that this recruiting leader has asked me to do some research on you. And in our research, what I found is that there's similarities in your core values. Okay, I'm talking directly to the recruit. In your core values and, and, and the recruiting leader's core values. And because of that, this recruiting leader has asked me to reach out to you and to set up a 5 to 10 minute phone conversation. And if you're willing to have that phone conversation, this recruiting leader has said they will not recruit you and they will not talk about Our company value proposition. Got it? Okay, that's the second prong. So the dialer position's not a recruiter. Now listen, if you're a recruiter and you're really smart, you would reverse engineer some of this to where you are dialing using a similar scripting and you are partnering with a recruiting leader at a high level. Because man, this gets really easy if you can get a recruiting leader to follow the next steps that I'm gonna talk about. There's momentum in this. When I say there's momentum in this, this individual that I'm talking about is hiring someone about every week right now, working through this process that I'm telling you. That's the second-prong approach. Not a recruiter that's selling the company value proposition, but a dialer who is leading with this idea that we're doing research on you. And look, that information on your recruits is everywhere today. It's all over social media. Like you, let's just pause for a moment. Let me get really wound up here. Okay? When I started recruiting in 2002, I didn't have access to the information you have access to today. When I say access to the information, what about like Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, just a good old-fashioned Google search? Like what kind of information can you get on somebody by doing that? Now, I know a lot of you that are actually working for large organizations have recruiting CRMs and systems and tools where you're extracting this information into a portal where the only thing you have to do is click a button to get it all. Okay? So, that's me getting a little wound up because when I started, I didn't have access to be able to figure out that Richard Milligan did a radio show 7 years ago for 3 years. Okay, I don't know if that's the exact date. I think that's about right. But you could find that out if you went and you entered Richard Milligan mortgage Oklahoma, which are the main parameters where I live and my name and the industry that I was in. You would come up with some incredible data. I'd probably show up on ActiveRain, Redfin, Yelp. You would for sure find me inside Facebook and LinkedIn. Right? Because the SEO is extremely powerful around those 2 platforms. You're almost always going to find them. You'd find me on 3 or 4 other platforms. You'd find my bio. You'd find out the fact that I love my family. I'm pretty out there in representing some things around my belief system. You'd find those things out. So, you're at an advantage over where people have been ever in the history. And so, the dialer/recruiter that's actively researching, getting information, can figure out— Where there's alignment, where there's a similar core value system, you just have to have the eyes to see it. Okay, so if you're a recruiter and you're wondering how do I make this work, reverse engineer this with a recruiting leader that you know what their value system is, and I just gave you your scripting. Okay, that's the second piece of that, the second of the three prongs I'm giving you: social leadership brand number one. The second part of this is. A dialer who's representing a conversation that we're doing research, and the attractive leader, this recruiting leader, has asked me to make this phone call, and we see some similarities in your value system. Because of that, this recruiting leader would love to have a 5 to 10 minute phone conversation with you, no recruiting allowed. That's the second piece. Got it? The third part of this is this individual that I'm talking about that's hiring approximately one person per week has a process of next steps Which is designed around our Recruiting Made Simple model, but it doesn't have to be my system. Okay? The process of next steps is simply, what are your next steps? Let's just think about this. So I dialed someone with this phone script that I just gave you, right? I'm creating a next step, which is a 5 to 10 minute phone conversation with this recruiting leader where there's no recruiting allowed. What's the next step? Okay, the next step would be that that recruiting leader gets on the phone and engages in a relational conversation and then asks for a face-to-face, a no recruiting allowed face-to-face. Let's assume that person says yes. My data says that 30 to 40% of all people that we just tee up in this model I just gave to you will say yes. They say yes to the face-to-face. What's next? What's the system? What's the next step system? Okay. For me, the next step that I was rooting for, that I would ask for, was, would you be willing to do a local office visit? I call it site visit, but a local office visit where you come back to my office. If you're 1% intrigued by who I am as a recruiting leader, I would love to host you at my office for a cup of coffee because I believe that if you walk in the front doors, at some level, you either feel that there is synergy and alignment Or you'll feel that there's not. And so understanding that the way I believe, I want to recruit in the right brain, which is where people feel things, versus the left brain where people are vetting things. People move faster when they feel things, when their gut tells them to do something, than when they vet things out. Okay. Now, if you're watching my video as I'm doing this podcast, you're seeing that I'm swinging my hands to the right, my hands to the left, because I'm all about right-brain recruiting, which is this: when somebody feels like you are the right leader for them, when someone feels like this is the right opportunity for them, they make a much faster decision than when they vet it out. The vetting process diminishes the results that you're going to get. It means I'm going to make a pros and a cons list, I'm going to work through my pros and my cons list to see, are you a better fit for me than my current opportunity, or are you a better fit for me than another opportunity that I'm looking at right now? Okay, I want to swing the pendulum over to the right where someone would say, this feels like the right opportunity for me. My gut is telling me that this is the right decision to make. Those are right-brain type statements that say I'm recruiting correctly. Okay, so my process to get them to this right brain was simply to invite them to my local office to grab a cup of coffee. Now, you're a regional manager right now or area manager right now, and you're like, I can't do that. Well, you've got to solve that problem. You've got to solve the problem. There's other next steps that you can create, but you've got to create next steps and then have a process that you follow. This individual I'm talking about is very clear on what his next steps are, and he's moving people through this next step system, which is simply creating momentum and moving them to a very quick finish line. Did you hear me snap my fingers just now? Yes, I snapped my fingers. I'm saying a very quick finish line. The timeline of calling somebody over the phone, getting them into a face-to-face, and then closing them very quickly in a local office visit is about 2.5 weeks. That is an extremely fast timeline to be closing people if you're a recruiting leader. Okay. And I snapped my fingers because you can do that if you have a system Around your recruiting efforts. It is possible. Is it going to happen all the time? No. Is it going to happen a lot of the time? No. But I'm seeing it happen with people that are implementing a strong next step system because extreme structure and extreme systems equals extreme success. Recruiting is not about the big things. Recruiting is about the little things. Well, what do you mean when you say that, Richard? Well, the big things are most of you, if you're listening to this podcast, you're identifying talent, you're making contact, you're even following up. Those are the big pieces. Recruiting is in the little pieces, the ones that most people whiff on. What do you mean when you say little pieces? Well, I mean having a clear, defined, powerful next step. May sound very little, right? But listen to this. For 11 years almost, my next step beyond a face-to-face meeting, which by the way, let me just back up. My phone scripting sucked. Okay? I just said that. I just bagged on myself. I just punched myself in the face. My phone scripting was, if you're open to a new opportunity, I would love to meet with you. Suckage of the phone scripting. Okay, that's what that is. If that's your phone script, your phone script sucks like mine did. I got about 1 out of 20 people to say yes to that phone script. Are you open to talking about a new opportunity? 1 out of 20 was approximately the number. That was an awful phone script. So when I'm talking about little things like having a strong phone script, that may be little, but that's really big because I went from getting 1 out of 20 to getting 3 or 4 out of 10. I haven't done the math prior to now, but let's do— if you did the math on that, what percentage of increase is getting 5 out of 100 versus getting 30 to 40 out of 100? We're talking about 600 times more results off of a defined, memorized, perfected phone script. Did you hear me there? Okay, I defined it, I perfected it, and I memorized it. Most people in this recruiting leader role, they wing it. This is a very little thing, and it's one of hundreds of pieces around the recruiting thing that most people just don't nail down. So it's a little thing, but ultimately it's a big thing. Here's a little thing. I'll give you another little thing. This dialer that we're talking about, we're talking about a 3-prong approach. Right? Having a strong social leadership brand, having a dialer who's calling on someone's behalf representing this attractive leader framework, and then having a next step process. Those are the 3 prongs that we're talking about here. In the second part of that, this dialer that sets this appointment for you, just assuming that that dialer exists, that dialer sets an appointment. Did you know that the average number of people that show up to that phone call? 2. If there's only an appointment set, about 45 to 50% will show up to that phone call. Okay? And if you've done this before, you're nodding your head going, yep, that's about right. About half the people I set the appointment with show up. But here's a little thing. That dialer who then follows up immediately with a text message, and I'll give you a general idea around the text message. The text message is simply this: Great talking to you today, Richard. And oh, by the way, here's my attractive leader's LinkedIn profile. Would love to have you check it out. I know that my attractive leader/recruiting leader, whatever the name is, is looking forward to talking to you on Thursday at 4 PM. Here's the number that he'll be calling from or she'll be calling from. A very simple text message like that. Okay? We send that as a follow-up immediately beyond setting that appointment and then the day of, The morning of, text message goes out. Hey, my attractive leader, my recruiting leader is looking forward to talking to you at 4 PM today. Here's the number they'll be calling from. 1 hour prior, another text message follow-up. Hey, by the way, I know my attractive leader/recruiting leader is looking forward to talking to you at 4 PM today. Here's the number. An hour from now, here's the number they'll be calling from. Those simple 3 steps, which are little things— a follow-up text message, a text message the morning of, and A text message an hour prior takes someone from 45 to 50% appointment show-up rate to about a 90% appointment show-up rate. How do I know that data? Because we teach dialers here our system, and we follow those numbers. We follow the data. That's how I know that number. That's almost doubling your efforts. Okay. If you can go from 45 to 50% to around 90%, Almost doubled that. That's a little thing around recruiting. It's the little things that make really big differences inside our efforts in recruiting. Okay. So I'm gonna calm down 'cause I can kind of get excited about this stuff. So let's go back through this. Here are the 3 things that this recruiting leader is doing that's getting them about 1 closed Candidate for their specific team in a small market almost every single week right now. Strong social leadership brand means that they're posting on a daily basis. And if you want to understand my thesis around social leadership branding, there's several podcasts that are here that you can listen to. Go back and listen to those. A dialer who's calling on their behalf, that's the second part of that, that's following a very specific system. I gave you the scripting here. That's asking simply for a 5 to 10 minute phone conversation. And the third part of this is a process of next steps. That's when we teach this, what I call the Recruiting Made Simple model, but a process of next steps, whatever your next steps are, these powerful next steps that lead to momentum. Okay? Those are the things, end of story. It's not that complicated. That's end of story. Those are the 3 major things that are being done. To get one person per week, and I know a lot of people are struggling to recruit. Okay, and and and it doesn't depend on what industry you're in. I think a lot of people are struggling to recruit. There's not a ton of talent out there right now, right? So you're gonna have to build a better model. You're gonna have to build a better system. And here are three things that are gonna matter a lot to you as you work to do that. Go activate on this. Okay, there's some even if you just picked up one or two nuggets here. Like one or two nuggets, like I'm gonna improve my phone script, I'm gonna change my phone script. Great. Now go perfect it, memorize it, make sure you can overcome your top three objections that you're gonna get. That's a little thing. If you got that, great. Go go get that. You'll you'll you'll improve what you're doing inside your recruiting efforts. Okay. Go activate on a couple of key things that you gather here today. We're all about helping you and pressing you forward in this role of a recruiting leader. We say this all the time with our organization. We empathize with the struggle because it is difficult to be in your role. So there you have it. I know we brought some value to you today. Sometimes I say, I hope. I know we brought value to you today. So go apply this, go win this week. And if we can ever do anything to help, you know where to find us. We deliver lots of resources— YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Facebook. Right? We're videoing this right now. We'll put this out as content as well. We're here to serve. We're here to help you. Have a great week, everybody, and we are rooting for you, the recruiting leader, to win. All the best. Oh, we're on fire today. I don't know. You got to bring good energy. Hey, look at that. That's my kids. That's my kids' elementary school, Frontier Elementary. That's where my kids go to school. We are all about helping you win. And so this is really— I'm rooting for someone to be in the situation that I was in back maybe 2010, 2011, 2012, where I wanted to grow, but I had no idea how to do anything other than to step establish larger goals and to put in more time and then try and work harder. I'm hoping that person is watching this video and says, that's me, and raises their hands, their hand or hands, however many you have, 1 or 2, or, or there's maybe there's lots of people that are watching this saying, that's me. Go apply some of this because it works. It just works. And, um, and so there's just this content Comes from a place of us being practitioners here. It comes from a place of us working hands-on with people that are in your role. And so, yeah, just go apply one or two of these things today and get incrementally better. It's a journey. It's a process. It's not about arriving. And I realize, like, those of us that are highly motivated that want to get somewhere quickly, like, some of this stuff drives us crazy. But be okay with the journey. Be okay with being incrementally better. I'm here to help you. I'm here to provide value where I can. And so I'm thankful for the opportunity to have you watching the video. If I can help in any way, you know how to reach me. That's pretty easy to find me on the World Wide Web. And until I see you again, all the best to you and have a great week, everybody.
