FDE+ Virtual Event | From Approach to Technology: Enhancing Recruiter-Candidate Relationships with Greg Doersching, President - Next Level Coaching
Greg Doersching [00:00:00]:
When you ask somebody to help, every single one of you had a mom, you had a kindergarten teacher, spent part of your formative years saying, learn to help your fellow man. Be nice to one another. We have it hammered into our brain and our psyche from birth. So we act differently to it. We react. If you say to somebody, have I caught you at a good time? That's easy for someone to say no to. Is now a good time to talk? No. Is now a good time for you to listen? No.
Greg Doersching [00:00:33]:
Bob, have you got a couple of minutes to help me out? Sure. How can I help you? We're wired differently. Always ask for help.
Kortney Harmon [00:00:42]:
Hey, guys. Kortney Harmon, host of FDE. We're bringing you a special series of episodes called FDE. Those are going to be highlights from our recent virtual conference where hundreds of you joined us for an incredible event focused on boosting revenue for 2025. Each of these sessions is packed with valuable insights, expert discussions and actionable strategies to help you drive growth in your business. Whether you missed the live event or want to revisit each session, we've got you covered. We're going to drop each of these 10 live events to wrap up our year and kick off the new year. Right.
Kortney Harmon [00:01:24]:
So let's dive into today's session and uncover the key takeaways that will propel success in the coming year. Stay tuned and let's dive in. I'm super excited to have Greg here. Greg is someone that I actually learned from. He doesn't know that. You don't know that, Greg. But from all of the wonderful knowledge, Greg is an award winning recruiter, trainer, coach, consultant. Joining us today, Greg, I think you're the president of Next Level Exchange.
Kortney Harmon [00:01:53]:
Correct.
Greg Doersching [00:01:54]:
I am the president of Next Level Coaching.
Kortney Harmon [00:01:56]:
Coaching. That's what it is. Sorry.
Greg Doersching [00:01:58]:
Yep. Which is part of Next Level Exchange. It's a whole family of companies. Starfish Partners, Sanford Rose, Next Level Exchange, Dimensional Search. We're all one big thing.
Kortney Harmon [00:02:10]:
One big happy family.
Greg Doersching [00:02:12]:
Very much so.
Kortney Harmon [00:02:13]:
I love that. And with a career spanning two decades.
Greg Doersching [00:02:16]:
Three.
Kortney Harmon [00:02:17]:
Three decades. I'm so sorry. You've been recognized as one of the leading trainers in our recruiting industry. Proven track record, great talk tracks. I've listened to you speak many times, whether it's at the SRA conference or beyond. And I'm so excited to listen in on your session for the art of attracting candidates. So I'm excited to hear your insights and everything that you have to share with our audience. Now if you have questions for Greg as he's talking, we'll go ahead we'll again put those in the chat, and then we will address the questions at the end.
Kortney Harmon [00:02:47]:
Barb, I love. Barb loves you. She just wanted to give you a.
Greg Doersching [00:02:50]:
Little bit of love. I will take all the love I could get at age 60. I'm like, yeah, bring it. I'll take the love. So I love it.
Kortney Harmon [00:02:59]:
Well, Greg, thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to get off stage. Thank you for being here and working through our technology challenges this morning. I'm going to move myself, and I'll come on at the end of the session. I'll help ask those questions that we're pressing as people put them in the chat.
Greg Doersching [00:03:14]:
Excellent. Thank you, Kortney, and I'm glad to be here. Good morning, everyone. I am thrilled to have a chance to talk to everybody today. I'm always excited to talk about recruiting, and especially now. The recruiting world as we know it has changed so much since COVID ended. And one of the things that I believe strongly, and I just see a lot of evidence of it with all the different offices I coach around the country and around the world, for that matter. I mean, the art of actually being good at recruiting candidates.
Greg Doersching [00:03:56]:
How do you actually take a person who wasn't expecting your phone call, who wasn't thinking about making a change, and actually talk to them about an opportunity in a way that they actually pause and say, okay, that sounds interesting enough. I'll at least consider it. I'll think about what I'm doing. And that notion of attraction, we get so hung up in submittals, and I've got to get someone in front of my client, and we're just hunting for that. Yes. As recruiters that we. We miss things. So if we look at it.
Greg Doersching [00:04:45]:
Okay, we think of it this way, let's start with the biggest picture view possible of what we do. All right. The full death cycle has basically three main phases. Phase one is business development. It's everything we do to get a search. Phase two is everything from, hey, we've taken that search intake up to the point of someone saying, we'd like to schedule an interview for so and so. That's the recruiting phase. Phase three is the interview placement phase.
Greg Doersching [00:05:21]:
Well, we're going to be focusing on that middle phase. Phase two, especially the recruiting part of it, because that recruiting phase has three very distinct steps to it. And the middle step, you as a recruiter have absolutely zero control over. And you have to understand this, because the first step is attraction. You have to make a person aware that an opportunity exists that Might be better than what they have right now. You do it predominantly with the telephone. You can do it with emails, you can do it with text, you can send them an inmail, you can do it with a job posting. But one way or another, a person has to become aware that an opportunity exists.
Greg Doersching [00:06:14]:
Once they become aware of that opportunity, they have to analyze it. They have to establish interest in an opportunity. And it takes a human being typically between 12 and 72 hours to consciously decide that they want to pursue a specific opportunity. They have to think about it. Okay, that part of it, them thinking about it, you have absolutely no control over whatsoever. But we have this tendency to skip that phase because we're trying to get to phase three, where once somebody has said, hey, you know what, I'm actually interested, we start doing the true qualifying of this candidate. Okay, do you really have the skills my client would write a check for? Are you motivated by the right things to pursue this opportunity? And if they offer you a salary of X, will you accept it? We need to qualify people so that we can actually get to the submit a resume portion of the process. Well, what I see happening over and over and over again is because recruiters are so in need of the yes, like, hey, I just, I'm trying to find someone to submit.
Greg Doersching [00:07:49]:
Candidates are so hard to find these days that what we have a tendency to do is we look at this qualifying phase and we try and jam it up front with the attraction phase and we want to skip this middle part altogether. So you wind up with recruiters on the phone talking to candidates, saying, listen, Tom, I'm glad I was able to reach you. Here's what I'm looking for. If you're talking to a candidate and you're using the phrase, here's what I'm looking for, you've already started down the wrong path. Because in the world we live in today, the candidates we're dealing with, and let's think about this for a minute. Let's be honest. The majority of the placements you as a recruiter are going to make is going to be with a candidate with somewhere between 2 and 15 years of experience. That's the majority of the need we have.
Greg Doersching [00:08:56]:
Yes, There are some of you that are doing senior level executives and you're dealing with 20 or 25 years experience. But the majority, the most in demand area we have right now is what clients asking for two to five years experience, five to seven years, seven to 10 years. We're dealing with a group of people that are predominantly under the age of 40. And that group as a whole has a much more what's in it for me? Attitude than caring about what you're looking for until they know what's in it for them. So we have to start rethinking how we even begin to put together the story we need to tell someone about the opportunity. And it starts with this thought. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me in the world of recruiting actually happened in the year 2001. I was in Phoenix, Arizona.
Greg Doersching [00:10:05]:
I was giving a presentation, and I got done. And at the end of the presentation, this gentleman walked up to me, and he said, hey, Greg, I really like the things you were talking about. I'd love to ask you some questions. Would you mind if I bought you a beer? And he put two of my favorite thoughts in the same sentence. Beer and him buying. So naturally, I said, yes. And we sat down and I said, so what kind of recruiting do you do? And he said, well, I'm not a recruiter. I'm a psychologist.
Greg Doersching [00:10:40]:
I'm getting my PhD in psychology, and I'm doing my doctoral dissertation on the effects recruiters have on people making career choices. And I went, really? And I put 50 bucks on the bar. I said, I tell you what, I'll buy. I'd like to ask you some questions. And one of the greatest things he taught me, it forever changed the way I approach recruiting is this simple thought. He said, greg, you don't understand. Every person a recruiter is talking to is looking for a new job. They just don't think of it as a job.
Greg Doersching [00:11:20]:
They think of it as in terms of happiness. Hey, I am this happy with my life, the way the job is right now. If I could find a job that would make me happier, I'm very interested in it. It's just that most of the time, we're describing opportunities for people that, on a very personal level, wouldn't make them happier. And it happens because we're not talking about what that person is listening for. Okay? And he explained this to me. He said, when someone does the initial analysis of an opportunity, they are basically listening to what you tell them. And they are comparing your story to five very specific motivators in their life choices.
Greg Doersching [00:12:20]:
And he referred to them. He said, they're called the prime motivators. Everything I talk to you about today, this is absolutely the most important thing for you to learn and take away from this, because this is the centerpiece of how all recruiting placements truly get made. Okay? The first prime motivator, very Simply quality of life. People analyze their quality of life for them, their family. It's the quality of life at work. Hey, will I like my boss? Is it a good working environment? Do I like the reputation of the company? They analyze it according to quality of life for their personal life. Hey, it would be much more convenient for me to do this.
Greg Doersching [00:13:13]:
I get to do this new work schedule, whatever it is. The first prime motivator is, how would this affect my quality of life? The second prime motivator is ego. Every human being has an ego that people want to be praised. They want to hear good things said about them and the work they do. So they look at the description and they basically ask themselves, do I believe I'd actually be good at this job you're describing to me? Would I excel? Would I be praised for it? The third prime motivator is the notion of advancement. Now, advancement doesn't necessarily mean a promotion. People will make lateral moves as long as the skills they acquire in the new move advance them for the future. So you can take a plant manager at a 300 person facility and talk to them about being a plant manager at a 500 person facility.
Greg Doersching [00:14:24]:
And even though the job title is a lateral move, that person understands, hey, if I go to a place that has 500 people underneath me now that's a bigger facility. I'm going to learn more things. I'm advancing my skills and my future sellability. That's what they're analyzing. Is this an advancement? The fourth prime motivator is geography. Where is it located? Human beings psychologically have an innate desire to want to be home. It's why the whole remote work thing has become so ridiculously popular and why some people absolutely won't switch jobs because of the remote opportunity. But they also have places, though, that people consider home.
Greg Doersching [00:15:19]:
You have home where you live right now. You have home where you grew up as a child. For most people, where you went to college is considered a home base because you understand the lifestyle there. You understand how to get around. So when people hear about opportunities, they're analyzing, how does this geography work? Does it keep me close to home? And then the final prime motivator is money. How would this affect me from a financial point of view? Now, most people, when they look at this, they are like, greg, I get it, but your list is upside down. Money needs to be at the top. Because every time I talk to a candidate about an opportunity and ask him, hey, are you interested in this? You know, the first thing they say is, well, it depends how Much does it pay? Okay, Money is actually not their top priority.
Greg Doersching [00:16:21]:
Money is the lowest thing on the list. It's simply, though, that the money part of this is the only easily objective decision they get to make. I am making X. I know I want to make Y. Will this job pay Y or greater? If it won't pay Y or greater, I don't need to analyze all of the other motivators. I don't need to even think about it. If we're not in the right sandbox financially, most of the other pieces of these motivators are very subjective. It's a good guess the candidate has to make about, hey, I think this will improve my quality of life.
Greg Doersching [00:17:16]:
Based on all the research I've done, what the recruiter has told me, what I learned during the interview process, all the information I have indicates it would improve my quality of life. But I won't really know for sure until I get there, until I accept the job and move on. So don't be misled and think that because people bring up money all the time that it's somehow the most important thing. If you want to actually make placements, having these pieces and understanding this is way more important if you really think about this, if you look at any of your placements that recently fell apart, I guarantee you it is one of these five things that that candidate looked at and said, this motivator doesn't fit. Hey, they didn't offer me enough money. That's an easy one. Hey, the commute. Yeah, I did the drive for the interview.
Greg Doersching [00:18:21]:
I thought it would only be about 10 minutes. Took me 35 minutes. And that was on a good traffic day. It's all kinds of different things, but knowing and understanding this is the key to beginning to put together an effective recruiting conversation that makes sense. Hang on to it. Put it to the side for a minute. Let's talk about some other things. The next thing you have to understand is that candidates are attracted to details, not to generalities.
Greg Doersching [00:18:56]:
This candidate, what they are actually doing. As you recruit, it is your job to paint a picture in this person's mind of what their future might look like. Kortney, I have a car I would like to sell you. It has four doors, four tires, and six windows. Would you like to buy my car?
Kortney Harmon [00:19:22]:
Can you give me more details?
Greg Doersching [00:19:24]:
Yeah. Unless Kortney rode a bike to work this morning, she is not interested in the car I just described. But if I say to her instead, Kortney, I have a 1965 Shelby Mustang GT. It's painted black, black leather interior, white racing Stripes. It's got a 455 Edelbrock engine in it, chip boost, mag wheels, 2,500 original miles. Now, are you interested in the car?
Kortney Harmon [00:19:51]:
I am definitely interested. You said some things. I don't know what it meant, but I am interested.
Greg Doersching [00:19:56]:
Yeah, exactly. And that was all I needed from Kortney for a demo she did perfect. She did exactly what I wanted her to do. It's the idea of painting the picture. Most of you, when I described that second car before I put the picture on the screen, a lot of you had a mental image of that car in your mind. And depending on your view of things, like, some of you imagined yourself driving it. And yes, to answer the question, no, I do not own that car. I just described, Lord, how I wish I did.
Greg Doersching [00:20:33]:
Okay, but the point is, when you're telling someone about an opportunity, if you're worried about giving up too much information and a candidate going behind your back and applying for a job on their own, you have to stop that. You have to be detailed in your description. You have to paint a mental picture in these people's minds for them to actually say to themselves, that sounds better than what I have. Another thing you need to think about when we talk about recruiting. One, you are never, ever recruiting just one person. You are always recruiting that person and the opinions of that person's friends and families. Making a career move is a major life decision. And for anyone who's got a significant other, you have figured out, I'm sure by now, if you want to be happy with that significant other, you don't go making major life choices without consulting them like nobody.
Greg Doersching [00:21:51]:
These decisions are too big. We want to tell other people. This is what I'm thinking. This is why this opportunity excites me. We forget that. And I'm sure some of you have experienced this. You'll talk to a candidate on the phone and you'll describe the opportunity to them, and they get all excited about the opportunity, and then they're like, yeah, I'll send you my resume tonight when I get home. And the next day, there's no resume.
Greg Doersching [00:22:25]:
And you call them and they ghost you, and you can't figure out why. And most of the time, it's because that person went home and tried to describe to their family what this opportunity was, and that person couldn't give the family good answers. I think of the way most people recruit these days where they're trying to hide things, like they don't want to give away who the client is. They don't Want to give away too much information. They hope people don't ask about the money. So you've got some person sitting at home that night talking to their significant other over dinner, going, hey honey, guess what? I got a call from a recruiter today about a director of engineering job. Oh great. With whom? Well, I don't know.
Greg Doersching [00:23:14]:
He didn't tell me who the company is. Okay, well what kind of salary are we talking about? I don't know. We didn't get into money. Well, dear God, you didn't give this person our credit card number for any reason, did you? They'll instantly kill the enthusiasm that that candidate had for the opportunity because you didn't give the candidate enough information for them to get that significant other interested. We also think about this. We always want referrals, okay? But we as people are never going to pass on to somebody we consider a friend. We're never going to pass on to someone something we don't believe is good to begin with. You never see this happen.
Greg Doersching [00:24:08]:
You never see this where somebody's calling up a friend. Hey Bob, it's Greg. Listen, I just had dinner at Shea Dorshing. The food was absolutely horrible. I made you a reservation for next Friday at 4:30. We don't share bad things with our friends. We need to remember that as you're recruiting someone, the story you tell needs to be good enough so that if that person says, hey, you know, this isn't the right opportunity for me. But it sounded like a good opportunity, so maybe Bob will be interested in it.
Greg Doersching [00:24:51]:
Because all that person cares about is what I call the brownie point effect. Hey, I shared an opportunity, it's clearly a good opportunity with a friend of mine. If they're not interested, it doesn't matter because I earn brownie points just for thinking of them and sharing this good opportunity. So if you put all of these pieces together and you start to say, okay, well, obviously now I need to rethink how I'm going to start to talk about the way I recruit. The story I'm going to tell. Recruiting is complex. Sometimes you just need a hand, someone beside you to give you that nudge to keep you on course. Introducing the new Crelate Copilot.
Greg Doersching [00:25:49]:
Copilot is Crelate's AI assistant. But it's more, more than just artificial intelligence. Copilot brings you recruiter intelligence. Need a quick reminder to reply to a candidate's email? Or maybe you're stuck writing up that new job description. Need a nudge to send a follow up to that client who hasn't gotten back to you, Copilot is there to help you craft it effortlessly. With over 30 skills at your fingertips, Crelate copilot doesn't just keep you organized, it keeps you ahead of the game. Because recruiting isn't just about filling roles, it's about building relationships. And crelate copilot is the partner you've been waiting for.
Greg Doersching [00:26:29]:
Check us out and crelate the future of recruiting. One of the biggest issues most recruiters have is, is that you literally try and put together your presentation by doing it live. Like most of us put very little thought into. Listen, here's how this story has to go. Here's what I need to talk about. Every time I would get a new search, the first thing I would do after I was done with the search intake call is I would sit down and I would create what I called an attraction based job description. And I had a template laid out that helped me organize and remind me what are the correct thoughts and questions I need to answer for myself to discover what is the best way to tell that story. And you can think of this story literally as a book with four chapters in it.
Greg Doersching [00:27:50]:
Every single time I presented an opportunity to a candidate, it always had four chapters. The first chapter, why is this a good company to work for? Why would someone want to be excited when they get asked, hey, what do you do for a living? Oh, I work for so and so. You want them to be excited about that company. So I need to know, is this company a well established company or an up and coming company? How do they own their space in the market? Are they famous for anything? Have they invented something new? What do other people say about them? One of the things you have to remember you're doing as a recruiter is everybody has figured out now that we only make money as recruiters if they take a job through us. They know we're motivated to want them to take the job. So they believe that what we say is always putting the most positive spin on the company and the opportunity. So if I were to, for example, if I'm saying to a candidate, hey, Bob, grande cheese puts an absolute premium on employee safety, I can make that statement in a recruiting pitch. And that candidate may or may not believe what I had to say.
Greg Doersching [00:29:25]:
But if instead I were able to say this, hey, Bob, I'm telling you, grande cheese puts an absolute premium on employee safety. So much so that the Wisconsin safety council has awarded them their presidential safety standard eight years in a row. Okay, well, now that candidate Knows for sure that Grande puts a premium on employee safety because they know the Wisconsin Safety Council doesn't care if they take a job there or not. So that third party information is way more valid in the eyes of the candidate. So I get a new search. One of the first things I'll do, I'll get on Google. I'll google the name of my client and the word awards. I'll Google the name of my client and the phrase feature article.
Greg Doersching [00:30:22]:
I'll Google the name of my client and the phrase cover story. I'm looking for anything that was written by somebody other than me or my client that talks about them being good at something. I want every award. One of the things we have to remember too. Don't forget to talk about and be ready with your own history. Hey, Bob, in the last eight years we've worked for this company. We've put nine people to work for them. Eight of them are still there.
Greg Doersching [00:30:59]:
We don't talk enough about our history with that organization and the results we've gotten. So sit down and think about all of those things as you get ready to talk about the company. The next chapter is the benefits and features of the company. Think of it this way. How does this company demonstrate they value and appreciate their employees? And that phrase, value and appreciate their employees, value. It should be in every single recruiting pitch you ever give. Because there was an article that came out not that long ago in Forbes magazine and it was the top 10 statistics every manager should know. And one of the things it talked about there was when people left companies and they did exit interviews.
Greg Doersching [00:32:02]:
The number one reason people said they left and it was like a hugely unanimous number one, like 80% of the people talked about it. They did not feel appreciated by their current employer. If we know that this is one of the big pet peeves of candidates is the fact that they do not feel appreciated, then we have to talk about it. You're doing a bad job as a recruiter if you don't talk about it. Because we know it's one of the things candidates are listening for. So you need to build out a list of not only every benefit the company offers. You want all the unofficial benefits. Hey, do they sponsor companies softball teams? Do they give away turkeys at Thanksgiving? Do they have an on site daycare center? Do they offer a cafeteria with free meals? Are company benefits 100% company paid? Do they wear jeans on Friday? You get the day off on your birthday? It's anything and everything this company does that shows we do the little things.
Greg Doersching [00:33:22]:
To take care of our own. And I want to build a list of every single one of them. The next chapter, chapter three, it's what is the role they're going to play? Okay, but this has nothing to do with what the client is looking for. This is the big picture view of how this job is important to the success of the company as a whole. This is, here are the problems you'll be solving every day. Here's what you'll be responsible for in terms of your piece of the puzzle that makes this company great. It's all of those points of view that we need to be talking about. And the last piece of it, chapter four, is location.
Greg Doersching [00:34:23]:
Okay? Now if we're talking about location, there's three choices today. There's a specific on site location, there's remote, or there's some kind of blend of the two. We call it hybrid. Well, a lot of the positions that we get asked to fill these days, they're all harder. We don't get any of the bread and butter searches, the easy slam dunks anymore because companies have added talent acquisition to their world. They can handle the layups. They're asking us to take the three point shots and make them. So a lot of our searches.
Greg Doersching [00:35:01]:
Relocation is going to be an issue. When you have relocation as part of the equation, there's some assumptions you need to make. The vast majority of placements we make as recruiters are going to be with people between the ages of 25 and 50. That's just a statistical reality. It's where 80% of our work is. Well, if you look at this country as a whole and you look at that age group, 25 to 50, what do 80% of that group, age group have in common? Families. They have children. And children and families change the dynamic of quality of life and what candidates are looking for.
Greg Doersching [00:35:53]:
I don't know how many of you out there are married, but this June, I'll have been married 30 years to the same person. And yes, I know it's a miracle, but I remember when we before our oldest son Griffin was born, the hierarchy in the Dorsching household was very simple. It was Greg, my wife Jesse, our dog Cinder. That was the ranking 10 seconds after the doctor announced 10 fingers, 10 toes, breathing. The hierarchy of the house became my son Griffin, my wife Jesse, the dog Cinder, and me. That's how quickly it changes when you have a family. I honestly believe that at every hospital, right next to the delivery room, there should be a tattoo parlor and every dad should walk from the delivery room. Into the tattoo parlor.
Greg Doersching [00:36:54]:
You would lay your right hand palm up on the table. They would tattoo ATM in the middle of your palm so that you understand your role for the next 25 years. You are just a cash machine. Keep the cash flowing. That's your job. And I'm joking, obviously, but because of this family, how you destroy, describe where a job will be located. It all centers around family. And with family, it's the big four.
Greg Doersching [00:37:29]:
What kind of education will I be able to give my children? How safe will I be able to keep my children? What kind of fun things will I have access to do with my children? And how much is all that good school safety and fun going to cost me? What's the cost of living for the area? There is a great website out there, www.bestplaces.net and it gives you data comparisons between two locations for education, crime, recreation and cost of living. It'll answer most of these questions for you. But when you're done, when you look at this template, this is what the final product should look like. You should have a document you've created that outlines all of these things so that you can use it to build a better story. Because the way your recruiting story should look, this is how it should look every single time. It is the exact same conversation I have with people, and I know that there are variations. Hey, there are some of you out there who call people and you like to say, bob, I just want to find out about you because we have a number of opportunities that might fit your background. I want to know what you want.
Greg Doersching [00:39:05]:
Some of you have targeted very specific people where you're calling them for a specific reason. But at some point, for you to recruit anyone, you have to have them. You have to tell them about the specific opportunity you want to present them for. So when I'm talking to. When I dial the phone and I'm in recruiting mode and someone picks up the phone, the first thing I always talk about is my introduction. Tom, good morning. My name is Greg Dorsching. I'm an executive recruiter with the Griffin search group and we work extensively with engineers in the cheese industry.
Greg Doersching [00:39:52]:
And the reason for my call today is simple. I ran across your profile on LinkedIn and based on your background, I could use your help. Have you got a couple of minutes to help me out? Okay. There's no fluff question. Good morning, Tom. My name is Greg Dorseting. How you doing today? That question, how you doing today? That filler, that icebreaker, does nothing more than scream to that person. You have no earthly idea who I am.
Greg Doersching [00:40:23]:
I'm about to try and sell you something. I don't want to give them that option. I want to prove as fast as I can that what I'm about to talk to you about is relevant to you. So if I'm trying to recruit for an engineering role and I tell that person, my firm works extensively with engineers in the cheese industry. If this person is working at a cheese company, right away they're going, okay, this has real relevance to me. This matters for what I do. So I'm getting the connection that they might have something to figure out. The question I ask, Bob, do you have a couple of minutes to help me out? Okay.
Greg Doersching [00:41:16]:
It's the only question I should ask, like if I got Kortney back on the screen here and don't worry, Kortney, you don't have to come back. And I said, courtney, I need another example. Can you help me out for a minute? Her answer is going to be yes, but try this on your friends. Try this on anyone when you ask somebody to help. Every single one of you had a mom, you had a kindergarten teacher, spent part of your formative years saying, learn to help your fellow man. Be nice to one another. We have it hammered into our brain and our psyche from birth. So we act differently to it.
Greg Doersching [00:41:58]:
We react. If you say to somebody, have I caught you at a good time? That's easy for someone to say no to. Is now a good time to talk? No. Is now a good time for you to listen? No. Bob, have you got a couple of minutes to help me out? Sure. How can I help you? We're wired differently. Always ask for help. Now, there is a variation of this introduction I can do that is working extremely well these days.
Greg Doersching [00:42:26]:
And I actually literally incorporate this into my voicemails because when I do a search intake call, I ask clients all the time, are there specific companies you'd like me to recruit out of? And they will usually give me names. And then I will say, so companies similar to this, I'm assuming, would also be on your high priority target list. Yes, absolutely. So as I put that company list together and I call people who work at that company, I'm able to say to that person, bob, the reason for my call today is really simple. My clients specifically asked me to target you for a role they have as the director of engineering for their organization. If the candidate says something like, really? They knew my name? Bob, let me be clear. They told me your company, they said, we'd love to see someone from company xyz. I Had to discover your actual name and title.
Greg Doersching [00:43:45]:
They just knew someone in engineering was doing good work because they'd heard about it. But let me explain. Here's the situation. And that's the phrase we really want to get to. I have done many things in my years as a recruiter to try and be a better recruiter. One of the things I did was I took an online course in neurolinguistics. Neuro linguistics is the study of how the brain perceives language. And there are phrases in language that are very short phrases, but they contain sentences of nuance in that phrase.
Greg Doersching [00:44:32]:
Here's the Situation is a great example of that. Anytime you're talking to someone and you say, bob, listen, here's the situation, that person hears their phrase and their brain automatically tells them, okay, this guy is about to tell me a story. There's likely to be a question at the end of the story. Without the information that's in the story, I won't be ready to answer the question the right way, so I better pay attention to the story. All of that is conveyed in the phrase, here's the situation. And when you use it to start a recruiting story, a pitch, it basically cues that person's mind to just shut up and listen to you for the next 60 to 90 seconds. You need to use that 60 to 90 seconds to learn to tell a better story. Because if I say, bob, have you got a couple of minutes to help me out? Yes.
Greg Doersching [00:45:41]:
Great. Here's the situation. One of my very best clients, Grande Cheese, is right in the middle of a search for a director of engineering. And if you're not familiar with Grande, this is a company that was founded in 1897. They have seven different manufacturing facilities here in Wisconsin. They just built a brand new state of the art technical center. But what I love best about Grande is their reputation for the way they value and appreciate their employees. On top of health, vision, dental, 401k, all the things you'd expect, they do so many little things.
Greg Doersching [00:46:23]:
They give away turkeys at Thanksgiving. They sponsor company softball teams. They have an on site daycare for their people. They have an on site laundry service for their employees. They do all the little things to make people work there. As a matter of fact, I've been lucky enough to have placed nine people with them in the last three years. Of those nine people I put to work there, eight of them are still there. Five of them have been promoted once.
Greg Doersching [00:46:55]:
The only reason the one person left was because of her husband's job. He got a big promotion this company gets it. When it comes to taking care of their own, the role they need someone to play is the director of engineering. You're the be all and end all of everything engineering related everything from a $1 million line correction to a $50 million new plant construction. If it has anything to do with the world of engineering, it lands on your desk. It's your choice, your input. You are the man in the world of engineering. The last thing I should tell you is the job would actually be at their corporate headquarters in Lomyra, Wisconsin.
Greg Doersching [00:47:47]:
Lomira is a small town, it's 30 miles north of Milwaukee, sits right in the heart of Sheboygan County. And I bring up Sheboygan county for a very simple reason. Reader's Digest did a three year study and they put together a list of the 50 best counties in America to raise a family. They based it on the school systems in the county, the crime rates for the county, the recreational access for the county, and the cost of living for the county. And when Reader's Digest was done crunching all their numbers, they said Sheboygan County, Wisconsin was the number one county in America to raise a family. This is a great place for people to live and I just wanted to find out, does this sound like the kind of opportunity you personally would make more information on? Now I know that what I just did is a way longer conversation than most of you are ever used to when you're talking to a candidate on the phone. Most of you would be absolutely afraid to try and do that because you think someone's going to hang up on you. I have one question.
Greg Doersching [00:49:07]:
How many of you want to go to work for Grande Cheese right now? The story I told, length of story does not matter if the information is relevant. How I tell the story, your enthusiasm, your excitement in representing this company paints a picture for how excited the person on the other end of the line is going to be doing all this. I promise you this is a better way to do recruiting because I'm not interested. I understand KPIs and I understand metrics and I get why we look at them. But the ultimate metric is production. The ultimate metric is a placement. There's an old saying around recruiting. Hey, just make one placement a month and you're probably going to be a pretty good recruiter.
Greg Doersching [00:50:08]:
Well, if all I need is one placement a month, then every person I get on the phone deserves that much detail in the opportunity I have so that I stand the best chance of that person becoming the one unique person who actually does the analytics, talks to their family, goes through an interview process and becomes a placement. I need to make every trip to the plate I get count. There's also another reason why I do all this stuff, because I do something slightly different when I do search intake calls with my client. Because when I do a search intake call, I will say to the client at the end of the call, instead of saying, hey, Bob, that's everything I need to get going on our end. You know, hopefully you'll start seeing resumes sometime next week. No, I say, bob, that's all the information I've got. I need to get things rolling on our end. But now our process kicks in, and this is why we get the results we do.
Greg Doersching [00:51:21]:
So I need to schedule two meetings. The first meeting I need to do, you know, the day after tomorrow. And in that meeting, I only need 15 minutes. That's all that we'll need. Because what I'm going to do is we're going to do our homework on our end. And on Friday, I'm going to call you and we're going to have decided who the lead recruiter is going to be for this role. And what I want them to do is tell your story. They're going to present this opportunity to you exactly as if you were a candidate for the role.
Greg Doersching [00:51:59]:
And I need you to hear the story. And if there's anything you want to amend, edit, correct, fix, like, you get a chance to do it before we take your message to the streets. If your lead recruiter takes these steps and they get on the phone with that client and they present the opportunity the way I just did, every single person who is your client is someone else's candidate. They have all gotten calls from recruiters. Many of them are bad recruiters who get on the phone and they tell that person, here's what I'm looking for. They will recognize the difference. They will recognize, wow, this person doesn't sound like those other recruiters. I mean, the two phrases you're going to hear most often, number one, if you do it right, you'll get this one a lot.
Greg Doersching [00:53:04]:
Okay, I want to work for that company. You make their own company sound so good, they almost don't recognize it. The second one, and this surprised me when I heard it, especially repeatedly. Wow, that's what you guys really do. They have no idea what we actually do for them behind the scenes. They don't see it. So if I can get on the phone with them and I can say, listen, here's what I'm going to do, but now if I start with that role play and I present the job that way, now I can verify everything. Hey, I'm glad you like the way I tell the story because that's truly what good recruiters do.
Greg Doersching [00:53:50]:
We're your professional friend of a friend. Hey, one last thing. You know, we were also going through our notes and based on everything you said, we believe these are the top six things that you want us to find in a candidate. Here they are. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Do I have those right? Actually, I would take out this. We want more of this or this is more important. Okay, great.
Greg Doersching [00:54:18]:
Glad I knew that from the beginning and didn't go down the wrong path sometimes. Most times you'll be like, do I have that right? Yes, I do. Great. And I just want to reconfirm we're targeting a salary between this and this. Is that correct? Yes. Great. Because now my mission is very simple. I have to go find people who have at minimum five out of those six things and they're willing to come to work inside this salary range.
Greg Doersching [00:54:50]:
And on top of that, they've got to be motivated by things other than money. Because I'm assuming that if I find you that person, that's someone you're going to want to interview. Correct. And you get them to agree to the correct profile before you start making the first phone call. So that everyone is what I wanted to talk about. I don't know if you've got questions or what you want or people have them.
Kortney Harmon [00:55:22]:
We still have a few minutes left. So does anybody have any questions for Greg? Larry, the question is, will Greg share his slides? Greg, would you ever be so gracious.
Greg Doersching [00:55:31]:
To send a slides? Absolutely. I will forward the slides to you. I will also include the Word document of that attraction based template that I was showing you so people can use it. If you use any kind of like AI tool that's a note taker that allows you to build custom templates. Like, I just took that template, pasted it into. I use a product called Metaview. It's great for a lot of reasons, but if it's, if I plug it in there, it will like create the attraction based job description for me based on the intake questions I ask. So I'll send it to you in Word and if people have questions or things they want to know, you can also email me, you know, separately.
Greg Doersching [00:56:25]:
It's pretty easy. Gregxtlevelexchange.com but yes, I will send the slides.
Kortney Harmon [00:56:32]:
That's amazing. There's just been rave reviews in the chat so that is amazing. Thank you, Barb. I thank you for my tree, Greg. Such great use of everything that you showed us today. So thank you very much. All just rave reviews. There's literally no questions.
Kortney Harmon [00:56:49]:
Okay. Can you use this slide for clients you do not have a relationship with, but have a good candidate you'd like to share?
Greg Doersching [00:56:58]:
Okay. If you're talking about reverse marketing, mpcing, things like that, there's a completely different program for that. As a matter of fact, if you send me an email, I can send you a link to the profile and the questions I use when I'm doing a discovery call and a presentation of a most placeable candidate. But to answer your question is literally I have a whole three hour presentation on how to do candidate marketing correctly and people need to learn how to do it. It's the number one form of business development out there. So yeah, is there a way for me to get court? Can I get a list of attendees? Is that. Cause then I'll just email everybody.
Kortney Harmon [00:57:47]:
Yes, anything. Yeah, we're going to send out all the decks for everything and then we'll make sure you get a list of all the attendees.
Greg Doersching [00:57:54]:
Yeah, I'll send a follow up email to everybody as well with how they can find things.
Kortney Harmon [00:57:58]:
Greg, what was your email? That was just another question. Greg.
Greg Doersching [00:58:01]:
Greg. greg@nextlevelexchange.com Pretty sure if you google my name it shows up on the first page like 55 times. I'm not hard to get ahold of.
Kortney Harmon [00:58:18]:
And you have your cell phone number somewhere Because I found it in my searching.
Greg Doersching [00:58:21]:
It's all over everything. Finding my cell phone. I've got to be one of the easiest people in the world to get contact information on.
Kortney Harmon [00:58:31]:
I love it. Well, Greg, thank you so very much for all of your knowledge and wisdom. Definitely a much appreciated session today, so thank you very much. You're free to have the rest of your day and we are so thankful for you.
Greg Doersching [00:58:46]:
I am ready to go to my next phone call in two minutes, so thank you for having me, Kortney. I really appreciate it.
Kortney Harmon [00:58:55]:
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