What It Looks Like To Recreate A Powerful Recruiting System

The other thing I did was I started getting in with the universities. I was told to become an expert in something. And the thing that I love is entrepreneurship. I've always been super addicted to entrepreneurship. I was a young entrepreneur. Starting businesses. Like, that's always been my thing. And so I thought, well, let's just go help people find their dream jobs and start companies. So I got in with the universities by talking to the program administrators and just saying, like, hey, listen, I'd love to support your university. I'm an entrepreneur. I'd love to get back. What can I do to help? And what was cool is that all of them said, what about an adjunct faculty member? So I never did that. My friends who've done that never need help recruiting. So if you want to skip all of these calls and not do Rockstar Recruiter, just get someone from your company to become an adjunct professor at the university and work 10 hours every other week. Because what do you do? You build. You build deep relationships with all of those students year after year after year. I have a friend who has nine locations. That's all he does for recruiting. Has two team members who are adjunct faculty. And I don't know how often they teach, but it's part of their job. So for me, I became. I got into this cycle of speaking where I would go speak. There's four universities back at the. Back when I was an owner, there were four universities. And so I started speaking at them once every six months, once every year. But then I would attend every job fair and then the students. Once I started really focusing on the students and throwing them. Like, we hosted a PT Pub Night 1 night, and I got in with, like, the student presidents. That's when everything shifted. The key to developing those student relationships is to own the presidents of those classes. When we know, like, and trust them. And we're on a frequent communication line, meaning, you know, we take them to lunch every six weeks or something like that, they give us access to the whole group. And then before you know it, I was keynote speaking at their annual student enclave where all the universities in Arizona came together, and I was the closer. I did that two years in a row. So in most of these people, I can't hire. Like, that's the crazy thing, right? When we're thinking selfishly and out of necessity and we think that the purpose of recruiting is to hire people, we don't waste our time getting to know amazing people that would never work for us because of other reasons, like geography. But that's the secret that's the purpose. And for me, the shock was how much I loved it. I loved being with pts and talking to them in groups and talking about, like, where they should find their dream job and, like, giving someone amazing advice just because I was an owner on where they should go and, like, how to handle a question. Minimally, I found someone who we had a great relationship with. And remember, our network is our net worth. That was the minimum. But the benefit of that was that time and time again. So what's it like? So are you guys taking applications? Yeah, we are. We're always looking to hire amazing people. And by the way, I think you would be great. Let's get together for lunch. I want to. I want to talk about what you're doing next year. And so, yeah, we focused on first years, second years, the undesirables, the ones that people don't talk to when they are super busy, overwhelmed, and can never get out from underneath their business. When we spend that time serving that community, it's. It's all about the give and take. We give and it comes back to us. The goodwill comes right back. So much so that when we merged, when Michelle and I exited Rise Rehab and we merged to create Empower, I was in charge of recruiting for 26 locations with one person named Tony, who was our recruiter underneath me who did all the entry level recruiting using group interviews and other systems we can talk about. Just her and I. We're in charge of all 26 locations. And we did it unbelievably well. Not because we're amazing, but because the network was built and it was such a big network that it covered the state of Arizona. We were hiring from a place that was an hour plus distance away. Buckeye. We were hiring for people in Buckeye. And I was shocked how it worked because they were people in my network or. And so when I was in Empower for that year, I continued to speak at events. It was challenging. It was more challenging than the four locations. But in some ways it was easier because we also had a. I've learned that PTs are kind of weird. This way we see the size of a company and we go, that must be a good company. When I say, yeah, Empower has 26 locations, they go, oh, okay, great. Like, I could just see them buying in. I'm like.

It'S not as good as it used to be.

Like, I wouldn't say that again. And so when I left. When I left to go live in Europe for six months, I. They stopped doing all that stuff. Like now, given I didn't do the greatest job of like bringing someone in and doing a handoff, but I left it. I wrote up my entire hat, I handed it to who was in charge and I said, you know, and it was Tony. I was just like, hey, you know what to do. Get a PT to do these things. This is where it's at. And they didn't do anything. Cause they got too busy. Not because they didn't believe in it, but because they didn't understand that that was the key. And then that stuff fell away. And what was funny is I was talking to Tony. Recruiting was still easy for the next year or so after I left because it takes time to build and then it just doesn't just go away. Like you take that person out of the equation, the relationship that that person represented to the company persists. And then people still are like, they're still buzzing about it, but then there's no one showing up at the Corley event, you know, and like those, those first years that thought we were awesome graduated, and now the first years have no idea about Empower, Rise, Rehab or any of those things. So it's, it's not the answer people want to hear when it comes to hiring pts. They want to know the quick fix. There is no quick fix. There are tricks that can speed things up and there's ways to do it. The email campaign for one is huge. LinkedIn, back before they charged you premium pricing to be able to contact people individually was another. But the key thing to give you guys just today, I'm just giving a super broad overview of like what it looks like to recreate a powerful recruiting system. And the person who should be doing it should be the best of us. So I want you to think about who's doing your recruiting now. Do they represent the best foot forward of your company?

Like, I have zero judgment on any of you specifically. I've just seen this before where it's like an owner takes on the recruiting because it's their job. You know, they're, they're hiring people to treat and they've got to somehow figure that out. And they're not the person who should be recruiting or they delegate it to someone who's not a salesperson, who's not naturally a network maker. Right? Like, so finding the right person. Again, we don't want to be inauthentic and hire someone who misrepresents our culture if our culture isn't outgoing. But we do need somebody who's going to focus on it more intentionally. More frequently and take the time to build relationships and who enjoy.

But so many times they have so much on their plate they don't want to do the recruiting and that's okay. But they've got they sure as heck better know who should be doing it and not just give it to someone because they have a degree in hr. Like you guys. This is a black and white you.