Richard Milligan argues recruiting leaders should view themselves as the product and create deliberate touchpoints like sending books or custom domains to showcase their style. Top producers change jobs every three years, and organizations lose talent when they shift from growth-focused to process-heavy stages.
So the big question is this: how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan, and welcome to Recruiting Conversations. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan, your host for Recruiting Conversations. We're back again with you today. The sun is shining as far as I know. I think I'm cutting this while the sun is still shining. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm in a podcast studio where there are no windows, so hopefully the sun is shining where you are while you're listening to this. I want to come to you with an idea that I think will bring you some value. It recently brought a coaching client of mine value. And the idea is this, is that when we're recruiting, As we build our personal recruiting system, I do think that everyone that listens to this should have their own unique personal recruiting system because you're recruiting to you, the leader. You are the product. That's an entire podcast in itself, that you, the leader, are the product that you're actually selling when you're recruiting someone. Now, in that, in your personal recruiting model, You should have what I would call an experiential recruiting model. Now, what does that mean? What does experiential recruiting model mean? It means that you're ultimately creating an experience for someone for what it's like to be on your team. Okay, if you're the leader and you're the product and you're trying to create an experiential recruiting model, I'm going to look at my leadership. And that may be hard. There's been seasons where that's hard for me to look at my leadership and say, What am I creating as an experience? And I've had to change my style of leadership and the amount of value that I brought to my team just so that I could say I was an attractive leader worth recruiting to. That's a hard conversation to have, but if you are that leader already, what's that experience look like? I can tell you this, on my team, pretty regularly that you would get a book from me. I'm into personal growth, personal development. Imagine that. Okay. That's true. If you talk to my team, they regularly get a book from me. So if I was going to create an experiential— an experience of what it's like to be in my leadership, I would send you a book. If you were a top recruit in my market, I would send you a book. Okay, great book to send someone around this time of the year, around the end of the year, is a book by John Gordon, One Word. It's a 55-minute read. Most people read it, they will get something out of that. They'll have their one word when they get through reading the book. There's an experience there. So that for me was a great way to recruit people. I'm into finding inspiration, motivation, gleaning knowledge. So I'd go to YouTube and I would find something that's industry related that is of significant value, and I would send it to people. And I would say, hey, thought of you when I came across this. Hope this brings you some value. Check out the 13-minute mark, there's something there for you to use. Okay, that's, that's an experiential recruiting model. Leaders who come from a place of value when they're recruiting must give value. We're not trying to hack being a salesperson in LinkedIn messaging. We're not trying to hack scripting necessarily over the phone, except to get into building a relationship with people. Right? So if you— so you got to think, what is my leadership experience like? And how do I deliver that experience to someone that I'm actually recruiting? Because if you can connect the dots on this, that experience that you deliver while you're recruiting people will get people to you. So take this framework, experiential recruiting model, and see what you can do just in self-reflection to hack this? Tons of ideas in some of the prior podcasts that I've done that will help you in some of this. One of the things that I would do is buy websites. Like Richard, I came from the mortgage industry, spent 15 years there, and so I could go buy richardloveslending.com. If you're in real estate, richardlovesrealestate.com. And I'm all about giving value to people. That website would cost me, that URL would cost me $3 or $4, and I could give that to you and say, hey, I thought of you when I saw this. I just had to get this for you. I'm not sure if you'll be able to use it or want to use it or not, but wanted to get it for you anyways. That's an experience. I'm giving people an experience. Okay? I'm a leader that likes to focus on why. This idea that there's this purpose, cause, or belief that inspires someone to become more. So I ask my team that question. What is it? What's your biggest motivator? What are some of your biggest drivers? Like, I try to get to this place where I understand what those things are. Same thing happens in recruiting because that's who I am. It's an experience that is relative to my leadership. And so I ask that question when I'm recruiting people. What is your— what's your largest motivator? What's your why? What is that purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to become more? Okay, so think experiential recruiting model. If you do this, you have a better experience for the recruit. The recruit will want to be on your team. Okay, it's, it's in the data if you look at it. The normal top producer in any industry has worked for between 4 and 6 employers. Okay, at the place of maturity around that 12 to 15 window mark in their career, they worked for 4 to 6 employers. When you start to break that down, that means that most of them are transitioning about every 3 years. I think there's reasons for that. I think we're recruiting people wrong. I don't think that we're leading well enough to retain our people. I think as organizations, we're moving out of stage 4, which is the Stage where we really have made it, we move into stage 5, which is where we become the institution. It becomes more process and policy, and that turns people off. So I think there's a lot of reasons why that happens. But as a leader, what you have to understand is that these even top producers are in play if you can give them an experience when you recruit them of what it's like to be led by you. Okay, there's some very practical things here that you can take away and apply to your recruiting methodology as you go into '21. So There you go. There's the podcast for today. Take something, apply it. That's the only way these things are worth my time doing. I hope you have a great week, everybody. I hope there's something here of value for you, and we'll talk to you soon here on another Recruiting Conversations. Want more Recruiting Conversations? You can register for my weekly email at 4crecruiting.com. If you need help creating your own unique recruiting system, you can book a time with me at bookrichardnow.com.
