I'm 24 years old and I'm billing $600K a Year. Here's how...

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit, where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Hazen Nman. Hazen has a pretty unique story, guys. After getting into Oxford University and having one of the most intense periods of his life, at 22 years old, he decided to get into recruitment. In year 1, he billed £30k. And in year 2 he billed a whopping $600K. In today's episode, we're going to be going deeper into Hazen's story. We're going to be talking about the most fundamental BD tactics that Hazen stuck to in order to hit $600K in his second year of recruitment. And we're going to be understanding more about Hazen's mindset, his persistence, and how he frames certain situations in order to get through those tough times. Hazen is an incredible young man who's accomplished a lot in such a short space of time, and he oozes passion and determination. As usual, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this. Let's get into it, shall we? Hello Hazen, how are you, my friend?

I'm well, thanks. How are you?

Very good.

Now, we had an absolutely haphazard week. Uh, we had a podcast, podcast guest pull out I sent a message out on LinkedIn saying, please someone come on the pod, we need someone. And you— that we had quite a few people reaching out actually, but your story instantly grabbed my attention. Um, so we're going to go into that today. But firstly, thank you so much for coming on at such short notice. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. No, thank you for having me on.

Awesome. And to our guests who are listening, me and Ben, uh, have tried to prepare questions, but this is going to be a bit more free-flowing, this one. So please bear with us. I'm sure there's going to be value shared though, because Hazen has done some pretty crazy things. So the first question that we always ask people, Hazen, before we get into the juicy stuff is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

What would you say to that?

Yeah, I think that I'm inclined to go with a mindset because I think that, you know, tech is— I mean, I'm not the most technologically inclined person anyway. I think I just use the kind of run-of-the-mill tech stack. that most recruiters would. Um, but for me, I think it's resilience. I think that the job is incredibly challenging at times mentally, you know, just with those losses. You know, I feel like no matter the numbers you hit, I, I almost feel like you deal with a lot more losses on an everyday basis, whether it's candidates pulling out of interviews or trying to, or whether it's, you know, um, clients not making offers, clients making offers and rescinding offers, candidates declining offers. There's a lot to wrestle with on a daily basis in this, in this role. So while it keeps you on your toes, I think that you have to be someone who can handle that disappointment. And also, I think rebounding from that disappointment is really important. I think that a lot of people, and I think natural human instinct when you're disappointed or, you know, you just had some bad news, is to perhaps withdraw. But I think that's the opposite of what you need to do. I think what you need to do is to dig deeper. So like hit those phones, you know, go, go back to that pipeline. You know, you can, you can be so close to filling a role and then when it falls through, it can just be devastating. But I think that rebounding is very important, especially in a very— I mean, we work in a lot of the time a sort of contingent business, right? So the faster you're able to get, get back to it, the better chance of your outcome. So yeah, I'd say resilience.

Yes.

I love the concept of rebounding as well. Like when you've because no one's actually framed it like that. I think that's brilliant. So like when something goes wrong, actually push harder, keep going. Where did you develop that, Hazen? Did you like— what do you say to yourself? Do you have a strategy? Is it just from like— is it just by pure chance that you're like this, or have you like done this intentionally? Maybe you could talk us through it.

Yeah, I mean, I think one instance that stands out to me is, and I know we'll get into this, I work for my mom, so it's my mom's agency, and she was the person who trained me. But I remember I had really bad news and I was only, I think, 4 or 5 months into the job. I had a bunch of candidates decline offers. I think it was like 4 in the span of like 2 days. And I just said like, I need— Yeah. And I mean, it happens all the time now, but I'm kind of numb to it at this point. But I remember I just said, I need to take the afternoon off. Like, I need to step away from my desk. And she said, no. She said, you're not leaving your desk. You're going and you're going to go fill those positions. Because if you don't, someone else will. And I think that that mindset— so I think it's obviously kind of having that. Sometimes you just need a nudge from someone. But in terms of being accountable myself, I think it's also just if you have a set rhythm and if you have a sort of structure that really works for you, that kind of overrides any emotions that can come into play because you just, you know what you're supposed to be doing at all times. And so regardless of whether there's a win or a loss, I'm still doing my cold calling block. I'm still doing my pipeline building block. I'm still doing, you know, um, my debriefs as I should be with candidates. Um, so I think that that also is helpful. But, but yeah, maybe it's a— I think it's also obviously, you know, who you are too and just life experiences that impact that. But that's just one anecdote that stands out to me for sure.

That's really interesting. I feel like, um, if it was my mom, she would have made me a cup of tea. She would have been like, yeah, sure, go off, you know, take a week off. Yeah, it's interesting that your mom was like, no.

So she—

I'm guessing she had a part to play in some of your— she sounds like quite a strong, determined woman, Hazen. Am I right in saying that? And sounds like her personality is definitely like that. Yeah, yeah.

I think too, you know, it's her business, so it's a different relationship, right? Like, I'm an employee, and I think that we do a good job of divorcing the two. Clearly she's human and she understands that disappointments are disappointing, and that's a natural response too. But it's just about not sulking. And I think that if you think of yourself as a victim, I think honestly this kind of victimhood mentality is running a bit rampant right now, especially in kind of the recruitment world. But I think, and you know, maybe for some people that works for me though, I've just found that looking at it as like I was wronged is the wrong way to look at it. I think looking at it as this is gonna, this is bound to happen at some point regularly in this job. So if I don't dwell on this, then I'll be more productive. I think that's just like the way you frame it. I think the way you look at things is so important.

Yeah, framing is so important, Hazen. I totally agree. And it's the difference between like a daily victim mentality and like a daily empowering mentality where you can actually say, you know, take full ownership for everything. It's much more empowering to do that than play the victim. I would love to get into some of the juicy stuff. Hazen, when you sent me that message and said you started recruitment when you were 22 years old, you're 24 now, and in 2 years you managed to bill— sorry, in your second year you managed to bill $600K, which is just insane to me. We've interviewed quite a few billers at your age, um, and just to be in recruitment for such a short period of time to bill that amount is pretty insane. But firstly, before we get into like the nitty-gritty of the strategy, I'd love to understand a bit more about your story because we just had a call, um, we were speaking off camera and I know you started at Oxford, which is again a really interesting point to start. Can you tell us a bit more about your journey at Oxford and how you got into recruitment?

I would love to know that.

Yeah, I mean, I can even briefly mention before, before university, I went to, you know, private school. And, you know, I come from a very middle class family. Like, we're certainly not, you know, the types that typically kind of send their kids to private school. But my parents just instilled like, this is, this is what's going to get you the best future is like, if we pay for you to go there. And so, you know, I went to kind of, I would say, a high pressure high school where it was certainly not like a fun time. It was, it was a lot of work. And then that led into admission into Oxford, where I spent my university years. I think the challenge of not only the academic program, but also just like moving overseas. I'm from Toronto, Canada, so I knew nobody over there. I have no family over there. I'm like, I guess, ethnically British, but there's no real tie to the UK. So yeah, at 18 or 19, I think it was 18, moved over to the UK and just had to kind of, I guess, fend for myself. Like, just like living and like managing your life at that age can be challenging when you're, you know, that young. But then also dealing with things, just a hefty, hefty workload and a lot of expectations that I was putting on myself. But I also just felt from being like, I mean, I was the first person in my immediate family to even go to university. And then I was at Oxford. So like, you know, my, my mom, my dad didn't go to university, so I was, I was the only one. And I think too, I guess just over the years, I think we were, we were chatting about this. It was, went in with completely different ambitions than becoming a recruiter was certainly not on my radar. I had, you know, when I was in high school, my mom's office was very close to my school, so I would go there after school sometimes and get a ride home with her or, or, or whatnot. So I was witness to the environment of recruitment. Like I saw kind of, I was in the bullpen with her and her staff. I would hear about, you know, the deals and that was kind of exciting for me as a young guy. But once again, never, I guess, saw myself getting into recruitment. You know, certainly had brought up to my mom over the years and she just kind of shot it down like, you know, you're going to Oxford, you're not going to become a recruiter. Um, which, uh, it's funny how it's worked out. Um, but yeah, um, I guess didn't have a job after graduating and, um, she gave me a shot and it's worked out wonderfully. Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, crazy. Uh, Ben, we're gonna ask something.

Sorry, no, go ahead. Cool.

So we understand a bit about your background now. I would love to get into maybe your first like couple weeks of starting recruitment because you can't— you go from Oxford, which is a completely different environment to recruitment.

Yeah.

What are the first— what are the first things going through your head when you start this completely different world? I'm just, I'm just curious.

I mean, I was excited. I think that it felt more real. I think it felt real talking to normal people. I think that I enjoyed the break from like the very kind of academic way of thinking. It's very different to what you get in recruitment. And I just think everyday society. And yeah, I mean, I started and my mom was like, I'm not paying you a base salary.

That's so crazy.

And she's like, you're also not getting, like, I don't have the workflow because previously kind of her and her team just focused exclusively on what we call like A&D staffing. So architecture and design staffing. So architects, interior designers, kind of that industry. But she said, you know, I don't have the workflow there and I don't feel like I really want you developing that any further. Like that's my, my kind of territory. So you should start engineering. I've worked at agencies. She had worked at agencies in the past before going out on her own and she had always seen, I guess, the engineering divisions be busy or prospering. And so she sat me down and she said, okay, here's your training. You're going to Google engineering firms in Ontario. I think she said start off with Ontario. And so I started off with Ontario, just Googled engineering firms, amassed a list, put it into Bullhorn. And then she said, call each one of them, cold call each one of them and say, can I please speak to the person in charge of hiring? And then pitch, pitch yourself. And that pitch, I think like 300 calls later, over the span of like 3 or 4 days, got me one job order. And that was exciting. I put every fiber of my being into recruiting for that role and ultimately filled it. And I think it just sort of spiraled from there and it just gained momentum.

Hmm, cool.

So off, off camera, you did say that you started cold calling and then you told us that you felt like it wasn't necessarily getting you the returns that you wanted. Can you just tell us a bit about that transition and what was the next strategy that you decided to use?

Yeah, that's true. So I, despite, you know, getting a role and filling it off of cold calling, I did feel like I just made 300 or 400 cold calls, how do I only have one job order? And I think it's also, you know, cold calling is just difficult. Um, and I think too, it's a very personality-based thing. I think that some people really thrive in a cold call. I think I identified myself as being like, I've always been a studious person. I've always been very kind of introspective. I'm very good at, I work very hard, but I don't, I didn't find that I was getting the return on my investment. So I was putting in all these hours and maybe, you know, my technique wasn't great, but I just felt like, you know, it wasn't going anywhere, um, despite making that one placement. So what I did is I took the bridesmaids candidates off that first placement and these weren't amazing candidates, It was like an intermediate structural designer job. Like, it wasn't— these weren't like, you know, the like A-player candidates, but I just marketed those candidates out to like all the firms that I knew were hiring for them. And obviously I had no technical expertise at that time. Like, engineering is a big industry, let alone looking at all the different disciplines and all that too. And clearly I marketed those individuals out to places they should not have been sent. But what it did get me was it got me some traction. And I quickly identified that when I was cold calling, I was selling myself hypothetically as being competent. I was saying, I'm an engineering recruitment specialist, but I'm just telling you that I'm not proving that to you in any way. And what I found was when I took the product that I was trying to sell, which is my recruitment services, which is a candidate, when I was taking a resume and I was marketing it out, I was essentially saying, here, I don't have to tell you. I'm showing you that I have this candidate. And I think that that has just been such an effective tool for me. And we can go into kind of how I refine my MPCing, or we call it skill marketing strategy, um, over like the 2 years I've been with the company and been doing recruitment. Um, but that's kind of how it, how it all started. And I just identified that as a really strong tactic.

Oh, so interesting. Do you think if you, on your cold calling journey, do you think if instead of selling yourself, you just called them and said, hey, I've got this candidate, can I talk talk you through who this is, do you think you would have got more success, Hazen?

Yeah, I think the problem at first was I didn't have the candidates. So for that first job to get, to get anything, I mean, I could have gotten the candidates and that's something that we do now, which is, you know, sometimes just engaging talent regardless of whether you have an order or not. But I didn't know at that time, I guess. And, you know, now I totally get what you're saying. You know, NPC calls are a huge tactic. I incorporate them occasionally, but I would say still today, 95% of my BD has been email.

Wow.

I'd say, I'd say maybe 4% LinkedIn and then 1% calling. I'm not on the phone often. And well, I shouldn't say that. I'm not, I don't make cold calls often. I make warm calls often, or if I need to get something done, I'm on the phone. If I know the person and they, they— there's something that I need to know from them. I'm happy to be on the phone, but I just feel like— and I think it's to putting myself in the shoes of the client. Like if I was a client and clearly I'm from a different generation, you know, I'm 24, as you mentioned, I'm sure someone who's 54 has a different answer to this and a different sentiment, but I wouldn't want to be cold called. I don't like being cold called when it does happen to me. I would much rather someone email me and maybe I'm just kind of internalizing that and thinking that's how I would want to be approached. But regardless, I just found that it's worked really well. And if it's not broke, broken, don't like— why fix it, right? Isn't that the old adage? So yeah, yeah.

No, I think, um, from interviewing so many people now, it's like any strategy can work. It just depends on what fits best for you. And it sounds like email is working really well for you, Hazen. And, and, uh, one of our biggest billers is like $2.4 million biller. Email is his main Email is his main source of income. Really good copywriting and really timely, well, well, well-written emails. So what I'd love to know is you started on your NPC journey, you realized that this was a more effective strategy. You've been using it for, I don't know, a year now, Hazen, would you say? Like, altogether?

Yeah. I mean, I mean, I've been, I've been doing— I'm coming up on my second anniversary of starting recruitment. So I'd say since, since pretty well the start I've been doing it. Yeah.

What is—

what have been your biggest— because I'm guessing you've made little tweaks over the period. You might not have, but if you have, what have been the biggest tweaks that you've made to make it as effective as possible?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So, and I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of disagreement with this point. Um, I certainly have in talking to other recruiters about this, but one thing I do, I guess the structure of my NPC or my skill market, um, which is the main email tactic I'm talking about, um, What I do differently, I think, is first off, the prospecting. I think I'm a very strong prospector, so I think I'm able to identify multiple people. I don't just send it to one person at a firm. I send it to multiple people who I think would be relevant decision makers. So whether that's HR, whether that's talent acquisition, whether that's the direct line manager, oftentimes there can be a few different hiring managers. I think it's just knowing my industry, you know, a lot of, I mean, maybe generalist recruiters, if they were trying to prospect at an engineering firm, who would be in charge of hiring, they wouldn't know that a principal sometimes does the hiring or at a smaller firm it could be the president or the division manager or, you know, I think that's something that just takes knowing the industry. So I think I'm smart when it comes to prospecting and I send it to multiple people, which I think, I think the point there is I start with HR and talent acquisition because I want to befriend them and I want to work alongside them and I don't wanna go over their head from the start. But if I'm not getting anywhere with them after, you know, 8 or 10 tries, then I just go to that line manager because they're feeling the pain points of the vacancy or they're the ones that are actually interested in this potential, you know, hire that I'm marketing out to them, whether it's something that they desperately need or whether it's just a strategic hiring opportunity for them. So I think once again, putting yourself in the shoes of the client, what would I want if a recruiter sent me a really good CV? I would be open to taking a look at it if it's someone that could, you know, elevate my team. So I think that's kind of the mentality. I think to the structure of my MPC, I don't just include— I know that a lot of recruiters or agencies, or they teach their staff to just compose essentially some bullet points about the profile. I actually send the CV. I send— all I do is I take out the name. So we just put like confidential candidate, slap our logo on there. I actually leave the names of all the employers on the resume. And now let me tell you how I circumvent this, because yes, there are, you know, firms that try to go behind your back and contact your candidate. And that does happen. But what I found is that when you leave the employers' names, employer, like knowing where that candidate is coming from is hugely important. It's massively important to the hiring manager. Yeah, they're more interested in candidates coming from certain competitors than others. Right. Yeah. So if we're already like approaching them with this this, you know, NPC out of nowhere, you know, are they really going to be inclined to respond and say, where does he currently work or where do they currently work? I think oftentimes they're too busy to even engage with this like random recruiter who's, you know, infiltrating their inbox. So I'm comfortable leaving that information on. But what I do, which I think is maybe, I guess what helps us protect the candidate as well is we say to them like, let us know if anybody reaches out to you directly. And we kind of just— and I don't know if this is a great tactic to be sharing, but we kind of make it seem as though it's normal for this to happen. Sometimes the client will reach out to you directly. And if I then flag that firm or that specific individual as going behind my back, well, then I just remove them from my distribution. But my mentality is I don't want to work anyway with someone who's going to be pulling those shady tactics. Because even if we have an agreement in place, there's always the risk of someone going behind your back. Um, especially when you're then presenting names of, of exact, of candidates. Like my whole, my whole mantra is I just don't wanna work with, I don't wanna work with any, any firm or company that doesn't respect the value add that I provide. Right. And if that means that they're trying to cheat me out of a fee, well, even if I have an agreement, I don't wanna have to be constantly checking to see if that candidate's started working there, you know, months after, after presentation. So that's how I would say, The whole NPC works quite effectively for us.

Awesome. Can I jump in? I'm just really interested in the prospecting because I feel like that's such an important part that probably a lot of recruiters don't get right. Would you say the biggest difference with why you're good at prospecting, Hazen, is your understanding of who makes the decisions and also the number of people you send it to? Are those the two main things, or is there anything else I'm missing from that?

Maybe persistence, you know, you get met with a lot of objections. You get met with like, thanks, but stop sending us resumes. I don't stop sending resumes. If I, if I know, if I, well, there's a distinction, right? If I know that they utilize other agencies and a lot of what I do too is looking at my competitors all the time, looking at what jobs they're posting, identifying, I'm able to know all the companies and I'm sure they know the companies that we work with. I'm just confident in knowing that even if they were to approach my clients, they're not, my clients aren't entertaining them, or if they entertain them, we're still filling the job before they do. But I know that if this company that I'm prospecting to utilizes agencies, I've identified that, I know, then I'm not accepting that they're not interested. You know, what I'll do instead is I'll stop sending to the person who told me not to send to them, but I'll still send to other people who are decision makers who haven't given me that response. So the firm doesn't get stopped. The firm doesn't become immune to resumes. Maybe that person I'll let off for a bit. Even then, you know, there's been situations where I've been told by a specific prospect to stop sending resumes. And then months later, when I, after I've stopped for a few months, then resumed, I sent one resume. Thanks so much for sending. We'll review. Which shows you the inconsistency too, right? It's difficult as a recruiter to deal with that kind of bait and switch a lot of the time. But I think that just knowing that this is, they understand that this is our main marketing strategy. They get so many CVs from actually completely random, like they get so many irrelevant CVs on a daily basis that surely my accurate, strong CVs are not that offensive to them. And then if they also tell me to kick rocks, well, I guess I will then. Okay. Like it's not going to really impact me. I don't feel too emotional about it. I just look at it as I'm going after this like a dog on a bone, and then it's okay if I ruffle some feathers in the process.

Awesome. Can I just jump into that, Sam? Uh, Simon Hazen, sorry, just want to kind of go into that. It's really interesting. Um, so you said that you'll follow up between 8 and 10 times before you decide to go to leadership. So what are you sending? So let's say 8 to— let's say 8 times. Are you sending a new candidate every single time, Hazen, before, or you sending one candidate and then 2 follow-ups and then a new candidate? Like, what does that sequence look like before you decide to go to leadership?

That's a really good question. So I don't do follow— what I meant by 8 to 10 times, I actually meant touchpoints. Got it. So I didn't necessarily mean 8 to 10 CVs. But what I will say is I don't follow up on CVs I've sent. Because to me, I would just rather focus on— and maybe it's because we've just been so busy that I haven't really had to do that. I don't know. But what I will do instead is I'll do a warm call, you know, a week later or something like that. Maybe I'll make reference to that CV, but I feel like inundating them with emails about a candidate, like that's a bit annoying. Cool. And I get those marketing. Yeah. And once again, like I'm also putting into practice what I feel works towards me, like when I'm being sold to, you know?

Mm-hmm.

So when I get those like annoying emails where it's like, just following up on this, just following up on this, I don't find that it works on me because I'm not interested. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the most annoying. It's actually the most annoying thing. Just someone just following up with the same thing. So what are those, those 8 to 10 touch points there? They're email first, then it's calling. So is it a mix between just emails and calls? Is there anything else in there, Hazen, that you're doing?

Yeah, you know what, when my mom trained me, she actually gave me a specific structure and I can probably pull that, like my little notes on that structure from somewhere if I had to. I think it, I think it goes some, it goes sort of along the lines of a cold call, um, a follow-up email, like introductory email with like our brochure and, you know, all that. Um, and then I think it's sort of, anyway, I can't remember all the 10 steps. Do I follow that to a T? No. Um, as I've said, I've moved a lot away from even doing an initial cold call. Um, what I will do though, for instance, is if I get, um, interest in a resume that I've sent out and then they suddenly stopped responding, I will then call, you know, because you've gotten a bit of engagement from them. I think it's just a, it's thinking that, you know, this person's responded to me. Now they've made themselves up for follow-up. Yeah. I think that when they don't engage whatsoever, I just have to assume they're not interested. I think to a lot of recruiters, even when you look at engaged searches, right? Like we work on contingency. There's a lot of time wasted. If I submit profiles to a client and they fail to respond to me, yes, I'll follow up maybe once, you know, maybe twice, but after that it's just done. I'm moving on now to something that's income, that's revenue generating. Um, while knowing in the back of my mind, I'm no longer working with that client on engaged searches. I'll market to them, but I'm no longer wasting my time if they don't respect my time. So it's a lot about that too, is just like not getting bogged down in like expecting a response. Like you be, you're lucky to get a response is my mentality.

Yeah. Can I just clarify then? So 8 to 10 times might have been the original structure, Hazen. So what, as of today, what's working, would you say? Like, because I remember we spoke to another guy called Dante and he said that, I think he said between 5, you know, 5 and 6 touchpoints is where he gets the best, the best response rate. Do you have any idea, like, at what point do you typically get the best response rate in your kind of sequence at the moment?

Honestly, I find that it's earlier than that. I find that by the second or third CV, once again, these are specifically tailored and targeted CVs. I'm not just sending them, you know, irrelevant profiles. Yeah. These are profiles that are genuinely strong candidates. Yeah. That, that would be great additions to their team and do the type of work that they do. And I know that inside and out due to my master, like my mastery of my niche, right?

Yes.

But I would say it's around the second or third time, you know, occasionally we'll get, we'll get people trickling in, you know, in the 5 to 8 range after 10 though, I just immediately change the, the prospect. I just, Yeah, you know, I might still market, but I'm now pursuing another prospect a lot more steadfastly.

Hmm. Got it.

Interesting. Yeah.

What else have we not spoken about?

Oh, can I, can I jump in then, Sam? Because I've still got more questions. Sorry, I know I'm hammering you on this, Hazen. You've given me great answers so far. I just like to know the details. So that makes perfect sense. So let's assume, you know, 2 to 3 touchpoints or however many touchpoints to HR and/or line managers and they haven't, they haven't responded, who are you going to next and what are you saying?

Yeah, I think at that point too, it's about knowing that you're not going to win every account, at least right now. Like, I will leave those people on distribution lists. I'll market to them, but it's certainly not something that I'm prioritizing. So they get left on the list. But I'm not, you know, I'm not now after I've exhausted who I think are the genuine hiring managers. You're absolutely right. There's nothing more that can be really done. You can cold call them once in a while. You can make occasional follow-ups. But I find that that sort of the consistency of doing the, that marketing of the profiles over time is the last kind of, it's the last effort there. What I do instead is I just prioritize different markets.

So, sorry, I think I should have been clearer, Hazen. I meant because you said you went to leadership at one point for some of the accounts, I'm guessing. Is that, is that some, is that something you do commonly, or is that just a one-off, you know, going to leadership?

If, uh, no, I do that every time. Oh really? Every time if they don't respond. Yeah, I, I, I, oh, absolutely. Um, okay, I find that's more what I was talking about.

I kind of want to understand like that transition. What are you doing at that point when you go to leadership, like when you bypass, if that's okay?

Right, so, so, so, right, the exact process is I will provide HR and TA a chance to get back to me after You know, I wish it was a concrete number, but it ends up being somewhere between 5 to 10 attempts, like touchpoints essentially.

Yeah.

If they're, if they're not responding, I am now realizing that they're just, they themselves are not gonna be interested, whether that's because they, they feel like their vendors are doing an adequate job, whether that's because they are simply not wanting to onboard another vendor. I don't know what it is, but at that point they're no longer receptive to me, at least in my mind. I'll continue to market to them. I'll continue. But now I'm moving on to someone else at the firm, um, which is that direct line manager, the hiring manager, perhaps president, if that makes sense. It really just depends on obviously the size of the firm, um, and the role.

Got it.

What I would love to know, Hazen, is where, where are most of your wins? Is it HR, or is it when you go and skip HR? Out of interest, have you tracked that at all? Do you know where most of your wins—

that's interesting. Um, I would say The bigger the firm, um, line is the best. Okay, cool. So, um, I've won my biggest account, um, which is like a global engineering firm of, I don't know, 20,000 people. Um, I won them by speccing constantly to their hiring managers and getting the same email saying stop. Um, and I remember I was like, I laughed at one point and I responded. The way I got in was another, um, TA consultant at that firm responded to me again with that automatic reply off their career, off their like recruiting agency's notice disclaimer off their website. And I responded and I said, I would honestly be much more inclined to stop doing this if you were to tell me why. Like, I just don't, this, this isn't a helpful guide. 'Cause it kind of says, we'll reach out to you if we're interested, which is essentially saying we'll never reach out to you. And that was the way I got in there. You know, it's that, that's how I penetrate that account. But The smaller firms, typically because there is already a reliance on agency, I find that HR is pretty receptive most of the time. Like, they're not, they're not, you know, they're not juggling priorities. Like, they just want to, want to fill roles. They're getting pressure from, from, from whoever's above them. And they know that they have to go to agency for, for almost all their hires. So typically HR at the smaller to medium size is, is promising, but at the bigger firms, I find that line.

Interesting. Cool.

Yes. Yeah, I'm just fascinated how many more people could be winning business if they have the guts to skip, uh, HR and go after different hiring managers. But a lot of people don't want to step on HR's toes. Um, has there ever been a point where you've gone past HR, gone to the hiring manager, won the business, but there's been a bit of an internal disagreement? Has that ever happened? And if so, how did you deal with it?

You know what, it hasn't. That's actually really interesting that you raised that. It hasn't. I know that I've annoyed some HR people, you know, but at the end of the day, I guess it's never felt like it's been an obstacle.

If they're—

if they seem a little bit butthurt, well, I suppose that's unfortunate. But once again, I always view it as I wouldn't have had to do this if you would have just had a conversation with me. I think even the way that rejections happen to recruiting vendors, like to me, it just, it makes me more competitive. It makes me like, oh no, I'm going to get in one way or another. You're not going to stop me. I think if they would even like, like let you on a bit and kind of like make it seem like they're going to, but then never, maybe they would even like play me like that. But when they just send that blurb or just give kind of generic responses saying to stop contacting us, when I know that they actually do utilize agencies. It's just, it's not a deterrent, um, for whatever reason. Um, but no, in response to your question, no, I've never felt like there's been a—

yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

How, um, how are you finding out— this is quite an obvious question, but I'm just curious— how are you finding out what candidates are going to be valuable to them? Is that just through, you know, speaking to loads of hiring managers and other candidates and understanding the business and knowing what's what's valuable and like, how are you— does that make sense, Hazen? Like, how are you understanding what candidate to sell to what, what company? Because I feel like that's probably quite a big part of success as well.

Yeah, I think it's just having a— to answer simply, I think it's just having a pulse on your market, right? Like, we, we specialize in engineering consulting, um, within Canada and, and the US. Um, our main market is Canada. So what I've identified, you know, for instance, right now it's— there's a massive talent shortage, um, really in all like for civil engineers within like the land development municipal industry. There's a huge like talent deficit within like hydrogeology. So it's just knowing that if I find a really solid, and, and that's how I won the, the big account was through a hydrogeologist. But it's knowing that if I send them somebody who is, who like they're, they're in, they're, they're looking for desperately, then That's when they're more likely to engage you and go through all that effort of bringing you on board, right? Rather than just sending them another, you know, profile that might be a dime a dozen. So I guess that's identifying where you've had trouble in your own searches too. You know, there have been those searches where, yeah, we struggle to find hydrogeologists for our clients on other searches. So when we find one, we're also not giving exclusivity. I think this is actually the biggest tool that I use. I should have mentioned.

Okay.

And I'm kind of, I'm kind of going a bit of a tangent here, but hear me out.

Yeah, please do.

Yeah. My biggest strategy has I've never been giving exclusivity to any client. So when I have a good candidate that I find, even if it was on an engaged search from one specific client, that candidate's getting sent to every single firm that hires them. Because I treat it as you're not retaining me, I'm not retaining you.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think a lot of recruiters make the mistake, right? And I think a lot of recruiters make the mistake of feeling like obligated to their clients. Like they, I've had so many candidates you know, and this was trial and error once again, but so many candidates where I really gave them like an amazing candidate in their lap and then they, for whatever reason, it didn't pan out. So at least if I can utilize that candidate to get me into other doors, then I've maximized the value of that candidate and all the effort that went into uncovering them.

That makes perfect sense. I also think, and this is, this is my, uh, brain thinking, is that that sounds like it's increasing your odds, but How do you, how do you, um, when you come across the, the potential problem of maybe upsetting candidates, or some of them, you know, 2 or 3 are saying that, you know, I'd love to speak to this guy, like, how do you manage relationships at that point and make sure— are you like picking the best client and prioritizing the one that has the biggest fee, or like, is it just the person that comes in first? Like, how are you prioritizing or managing clients when you do that, when you send it to everyone, if that makes sense?

No, you're right. And, and you do run the risk of doing that, right? You do run the risk of frustrating clients. Then again, they don't know that you're sending these candidates to other firms. These candidates could have been approached by other recruiters for those firms. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's true.

And, and so they don't necessarily know. Yeah. That being said too though, it still comes back like, you don't retain me, I don't retain you. We do have clients that pay us, that, that have us on a retained agreement and they get first dibs on our candidates.

Mm-hmm.

Because I know the money's coming in, so you're respecting my time. I know I'm getting something out of you. I think that if you don't present the candidate, my philosophy has always been if I'm not presenting the candidate to these other firms, someone else is. And so a large part of our tactics as a team now have been to focus more on engaging regional pipelines rather than like, you know, having this specific job and these candidates that we found for this job. We're more like, let's create a full pipeline of like all the mechanical engineers in, Kitchener, Ontario, and then let's market them to— when we get one, let's offer to market them to all the firms that we work with in Kitchener. That's been our main tactic, and we get a lot of success off that.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's working smart, isn't it? That's really clever.

Um, I just want to go back to, um, the— and this is kind of, uh, not random, but I'm just curious, uh, because you said you send the CV and you include the uh, the business, businesses that the candidate has worked at, which I think is a smart, smart move. And you're also disqualifying the clients that go behind your back, which again I think is really smart. How many clients have gone behind your back? Like, if you were to say out of 10 you do this, is this a regular thing or is it quite rare for a client to do a shady move like that? I'm just curious.

Um, Hazen?

Well, I guess I'll preface by saying that clearly we don't know every single time because there are going to be candidates that despite coaching them as to letting you know, they're still not going to sometimes.

Yes.

So I can't give you an exact figure. That being said, it happens way less often than you would think. It's funny, recently it's happened quite a bit, just off this one profile that we sent out recently, but I found like 3 firms and I confronted them. Like, I just, you know, didn't hear back, unsurprisingly. But, you know, it's just about knowing that that's not someone I want to work with then. And now we're removing you from the distribution. And if you have, if your candidates have trust in you, it's, it's a powerful thing. And if they know, you know, what ended up happening was that candidate that was approached by all these firms that went behind our back, he still got like several interviews through us. So he had that trust in us that we found him these great opportunities with leading firms. And so those other companies approaching him, for whatever reason, I guess he had that trust in us that that's, that's come a long way for us is like our candidates trusting us and when we tell them that, they tell us, but honestly it doesn't happen often. And I'd say that at least to my knowledge, and I'd say that I've really had situations happen where I am working with a candidate and then they take an offer from another company that I actually had marketed them to. They clearly went behind our back and messaged them. Like that's happened maybe once or twice in my 2 years. And I'm comfortable taking that risk for the benefit that it pays.

Yeah.

My gut was that it wouldn't happen that much, but I just wanted to get your clarification on that. Ben, did you have a question?

Yeah, I just wanted to jump into some of the— because what I find really interesting is the strategy and volume, I guess, because you obviously hit $600K in your second year, which is amazing. Did you have like a detailed plan of like, I'm hitting $600K in the second year and this is how I'm doing it? Or was it just a result of like constant activity and you know, did you, for example, have a plan where you were going to— okay, I'm going to NPC, I'm going to do 10 emails a day, I'm going to do 20 emails a day, 5 calls. Like, what was your— was there a plan to hit $600K? Did you have like a day plan, a weekly plan, a monthly target? How did that work?

Yeah, that's a good question. I wish I could sit there and say that I did have this, you know, manifested in my, in my mind, but that wouldn't be true. I think what I identified was in the— so yeah, you're right. It was like my, it was my first full year of recruiting because I had done it for 6 months and then it was in that following 12-month period that I did the $600,000. Um, but I think what I realized was, well, I can't just do, you know, the $32,000 that I did in my first 6 months. Like, that can't happen. I have to make money. Um, I have loans to pay off. Um, so I think it was just, you know, a lot of just feeling like, okay, I have to grind. Um, but I think it was also working smart in the sense of that was my strategy from the start and that was everything that was taught to me. Um, the idea of like marketing constantly, marketing every candidate. Um, most, I know a lot of agencies teach like once a week MPCing. I was doing it like 3 to 4 days a week. Um, that helped me grow. But what I would say in terms of like how I managed the workflow to get to that number, um, it was never a specific number in mind. It was always. How much can I hit? Like, what is my limit as a recruiter? What is my limit as a human being? And I mean, we have higher goals this year than that $600K because I built a team with me now. But it was a lot of two. I think that you have to be willing to really work hard because as much as I can say that, like, I have my tricks, I'm nifty, you know, I have some, some like trade secrets. I think that it was also I worked almost every weekend. And I worked almost every evening. Like, I just really put in the hours, which you have to when you're first starting out. Now it's a bit more comfortable, which I'm not entirely happy about because I feel like it has created a bit of complacency at times in myself. But it's about now putting myself back in that, though, that situation of discomfort, right? Because yeah, we have like a great— we have, we have great clients, you know, we make steady placements. But I really want to feel that discomfort again because that's how you really succeed, is when you're just driven. on another level. So I, I guess one, one thing that I did that you might find like useful for, for people to, to hear is I always, if you really wanna work hard, um, I found that when were candidates available, they were available Monday to Friday. So that means that I had to do all of my screening and debriefing and all of that pretty much throughout the week. What that meant was the searching and the pipeline building I did and the BDEing, like the prospecting list and all that. Those were all created in the evenings and the weekends. So any, like, any computer-based work that didn't require direct candidate or client interaction was done on the evenings and the weekends. Um, it just gave me so much time for the week to be connecting with candidates, meeting great talent, and making placements that way.

Love that.

You kind of just gave us an inclination of, like, how many hours you were working, but, like, Uh, do you have— was it every, every week, every day, and like 7 to 9 PM? Hey, I'm just, I'm just want to get a deeper understanding of the hours you put in to hit 600K in your second year, which is insane.

Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that, that's— I think it's always like difficult to quantify, you know, looking back. Um, yeah, I think, I think that, you know, I saw— I still had some balance. Like, I still— but I was— I'm also in a stage, and this is what I, I understand too, is not everyone is in a stage in their life where they're able to do something like that. I just knew that coming off of uni, which I felt like I worked way harder in uni than I ever have in this job. Wow. Interesting. Oh my goodness. Like university was way harder.

Wow.

That's so crazy.

Way harder. Way harder. And so I just felt like this is nothing. Like you can do this. Like this is, you know, I would watch TV and do searches. I would, I would just find ways to make it enjoyable. But I think I had that instilled in me that like, this was so much worse. There was a precedent of something that was so much worse, so for whatever reason, this didn't feel that bad.

Um, why was uni so much worse, Hazen? What was— what, what was— what, what was going on there that made it so much worse or so much harder?

Well, I feel like, um, the Oxford workload— I did English and French, so it was a very essay and like reading-heavy degree, so it was just, you know, constant writing, like constant. I had to— I had to bang out like 3 essays a week at some points, like 6,000 words a week in essays, reading like, like long novels. It was demanding. And that was on top of other, other, other things too that I had to do as part of my degree. And when you go through that, for me it was like, and just the perfectionism of it all, like, I mean, the fact that all of my final exams were worth 100% of my grade, like, wow, all of this is just, it's a super, it's a pressure cooker, right? And it really fortifies you. And I just felt like in that environment, I, I managed. So clearly I can do this. Like, there's no pressure on me. If I fail, I guess I have to look at another job. If I succeed, then let's, let's see how far I can go. So I think it was just that mentality too. But clearly too, I'm, you know, I was 22, I'm 24 right now. I'm in a stage of my life where I'm prioritizing, like, or I, I'm taking advantage and I'm maximizing the freedom I do have. Like, I don't have children. Yeah. I don't have, a family to take care of. Like, clearly there are, um, limit— like, limiting factors for people in certain stages of their lives too, which I think is worth noting because not everyone's going to be able to drop everything and dedicate themselves wholly to their job. But I felt like it was worth doing for me to build for the future.

Yeah, of course. There's one thing I wish I did more is just take advantage of the extra time I had before I had a kid, and now like my life has changed completely.

In a good way, of course.

I absolutely love her.

I love you, Akira.

Um, cool. This is—

go ahead, Sam.

No, no, another thing I just want to— because again, it was such a jump from $30K in 6 months to $600K. One thing that, you know, being in business for a while with Ben, I've had to go through quite a few mindset shifts to get to the next level. I'm just wondering if there was any paradigm shifts that you had on that second year, or barriers you had to overcome or mindset shifts you had in order to hit that level? Was there anything going through your mind at that point, Hazen, in that second year?

Yeah, it's interesting though, because I think in my first 6 months I worked even harder than I did in that year that I did $600K. Like, I made— I built $32K in my first 6 months, but I think I worked harder. Um, I think when you're building something from scratch, I had no clients, no candidates, no teacher, No, like, yes, I had my mom who was a mentor about recruiting, but she didn't, she'd never recruited on engineering before. So I had to completely learn the technicalities of the role all by myself. So I think that, um, it wasn't a matter of like revving up my, my work ethic. That wasn't it. Um, I think just naturally, um, I kept feeling as time went on that it's going to, it's going to happen for me. Um, I remember in that like December, November before the, the year that I did my— had that big year. And so in my 5th or 6th month doing the job, I had like 4 or 5 offers declined in that, in that like period. And I remember thinking like, oh my goodness, I was so close though. So I didn't view it as a negative. It was like I actually probably could have done a lot more than $30K even in those first 6 months. Just as fate would have it, it didn't work out for me. But I knew that I was doing everything right and I knew that I was on the right track. So I had faith in the process. I think just trusting the process And just knowing over time and like scaling too, right? Like I identified after that $600K year, I thought to myself, okay, you know, I could, you know, this year now stay as a solo recruiter, maybe do like $800K, $900K, but I'm going to reach a limit of just how much time there is in the day. And I'm leaving a lot on the table. There could be better clients out there in other areas where I don't even have the capacity to expand. So I think too, knowing how to scale and like building a team underneath you, at least in my opinion, is like that's how you actually really maximize your productivity too. There's challenges that come with that of relying on other people and having other people and training other people. But I think too, yeah, it's, it's not been a matter of like something in my mindset changed. I think it was just as time has gone on, I've just gotten busier and busier and busier and the process has kept working out. So it's about just not stopping that, not getting comfortable, just keep driving forward.

Love that. Really interesting. Cool.

Awesome.

Is there anything else, um, Hazen? I was like, I asked this to everyone and you've given an insane amount of value, so thank you. Um, is there anything else that we've meant that we haven't spoken about that you think other recruiters listening to this right now might find valuable? Um, with regards to BD, with regards to anything to do with billing, hitting bigger numbers, getting more business through the door, what's your feeling?

I mean, we've covered a lot, but I think one thing that I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but one key to both myself and a lot of the people we have on our team now is, well, I've always been full commission, and I'm not sure whether this is something that just forces a mindset, but when you don't have something to fall back on, I think it does breed some motivation. Our top performers are on pure commission at our agency. And I just think that it's that mindset of like, you have to be money motivated to do this job. I mean, in my opinion, I don't know why I would put myself through the day to day if there wasn't something very fulfilling and maybe that's different for other people. But I think that for me, knowing that money was my motivator, depriving myself of the comfort of a salary was how I've been able to constantly be chasing more, right? Um, so I think, you know, clearly work ethic is, is a big part of BD success. It's a big part of recruitment success. Um, so if you can just find ways to almost like manually inject motivation and work ethic, that can be a tactic too.

That's a brilliant— yeah, it's really, really interesting actually. Yeah, um, really fascinating. And, and I hear this all the time, like the best, the best billers and the best salespeople always ask about commission, and they're always more concerned about commission than base salary because they, they have confidence in themselves and they know they can hit those numbers, which is interesting. Um, cool, really, really great, um, answer, Hazen. Thank you so much. Sam, did you have anything that you wanted to jump in with?

Yeah, I guess just, um, like, what are you— what's your next goal you want to hit, like, financially, and any— anything else that you're looking for in the, in the next year or so, Hazen? I'm just curious now that you've hit $600K in your second year, which is insane for, you know, any recruiter. What's the next goal you're trying to hit?

Yeah, that's a good question, um, and I appreciate the interest. Um, but yeah, you know, I think that goal is to like— yeah, you can say like, oh, I want to do a million. Um, I think too that it becomes the dangling carrot, um, you know, theory of like when is enough enough. Um, I think for me it's less about money now because, you know, I feel comfortable and that's fine. I think it's been about growing the team. After COVID, my mom had to reduce it to just her and one other person. And since then, I've been able to hire 3 people underneath me. So I joined and we've hired 3 people. So just the growth is really exciting. Like there's something about doing it alone. And, you know, I know that I can always do this job alone and I can, you know, like I can build, you know, high numbers or whatnot. But I think that there's a lot of satisfaction in like having a team underneath you. Like providing employment to people, like to good people and seeing them succeed and like teaching them your tactics and, and also just like growing and expanding our client roster and being in different provinces, covering a larger territory, doing more in revenue. I think scaling is what's excitement, is what's exciting for me. And so over the next couple of years, that's really our, our main kind of goal. And yeah, of course the numbers, you know, you always try to exceed what you've done the year prior. It might get to a point where you can't really do that, But yeah, I've had a lot of, I've had, I've really derived a lot of joy in just like training people and working with people and just building like a really good kind of culture here of like performing at a high level and giving yourself that financial freedom. Because it's certainly like I could have never have imagined that I'd be in this situation from where I was when I finished university just 2 years ago. So that's what I'd say. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, yeah, great answer, dude. I wasn't expecting that, but yeah, that's really lovely answer and it makes a lot of sense. Um, Ben, have you got any more questions?

No, but I want to create some because it's been such a great, uh, podcast, Hazen, and you're really interesting. Just, uh, just we can have Hazen on for round 2. Um, yeah, I feel like that would be good, Hazen. But I don't think we've got any more questions, but I just feel like it's been an epic podcast. Thank you so much for coming on today. It's been really interesting just to hear your journey and, um, Yeah, thank you so much for your value and your time today. It's been really awesome. Yeah.

And just, yeah, inspirational as well, Hazen, like for your age, the amount you're billing, your passion, your, your drive, it's just, it's infectious. So it's been lovely just to speak to you and meet you, man. So thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate it. And I guess this is a kind of parting words, like, um, it's a huge, like, it's a huge honor for me to even be here. I think that what I felt in my short journey in staffing is a tremendous amount of imposter syndrome. Like, even hitting the numbers I've hit, I didn't even know if those numbers were good. It was just what I was doing. Um, yeah, you're doing a good job. I didn't really know. I had no— I had no— nothing to measure the gains.

But, um, interesting. Yeah, you're in like the top one— I'm not sure what percent— in the top percentile of recruiters, uh, Hazen. Um, yeah, like, okay, in your second year as well.

It's—

to get to hit 600 in your second year is like—

it's unheard of.

Unheard of. It's very unlikely. Like, it's a very small percentage. So you should be really proud of yourself, man. It's like You've definitely got a knack for this. So well done.

Yeah, appreciate it.

Yeah.

And thanks again for having me on. It's been very enjoyable to chat with you guys.

Thanks, dude. Hey guys, thanks for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week and we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace and love.

Mm-hmm.