The Full Desk Experience

Rich Rosen [00:00:00]:
You gotta make it a game. You can't take yourself too seriously. Like, I have made more deals and gotten through more people by just, just saying, having a horrible opener. Like, never open your call by saying, hey, that I catch you at a good time. Right? But if I do say it by some stupid reason, I will literally say, oh, shit, that's all right. That was horrible. Can we go forward or can I just hang up and call you right back? And they'll just laugh, I think. You got to have fun.

Rich Rosen [00:00:24]:
You got to know what you're talking about. You got to have a reason for the call. You can't just go into it willy nilly. There's nothing wrong with having a script, all right? But you need to have tone. If you don't have the right tonality, it doesn't matter what you say.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:40]:
Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. This is the industry Spotlight, a series of the Full Desk Experience, a Crelate original podcast. In this series, we will talk with top leaders and influencers who are shaping the talent industry, shining a light on popular trends, the latest news and the stories that laid the groundwork for their success. Welcome back to another episode of the Full Desk Experience. Industry Spotlight. Welcome back to another episode of the Full Desk Experience. This is the podcast where we dive deep into the world of recruiting, talent acquisition and the ever evolving landscape of the job market. I'm your host, Kortney Harmon and today I'm super excited.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:26]:
We have a very special guest with us. Rich Rosen is a renowned executive recruiter. Rich, I think you have 28 plus years of experience in the industry, am I right?

Rich Rosen [00:01:37]:
You are. You are. I love it.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:39]:
And he's been recognized as one of Forbes top 50 recruiters, I believe for five consecutive years have placed over a thousand software sales leaders, AES, Sesame and SaaS startups. Rich is the founder of Cornerstone Search Associates and board member of Pinnacle Society and many other things I learned prior to this call. And today we're going to be discussing the current state of the recruiting industry, the challenges and pivots of the past year, and what the future holds as we approach 2025. Rich, thank you so much for joining us today and taking the time out of your ever busy schedule as we learned in scheduling this conversation itself.

Rich Rosen [00:02:20]:
Well, hey, listen, great to be here. We've talked, I think I've talked to you and everyone else at Crelate for years. So it is fantastic to finally hop on and get the time. So we're excited to be here.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:30]:
Love it. So I obviously, I know you. The people here at crelate know you very well. Give our listeners an insight of who you are, how you got into the industry, and a little bit more about Cornerstone Search.

Rich Rosen [00:02:41]:
Yeah, so I, like you said, I've been doing this, Scott, since I was like, I think 24 years old. I think so. 28. Year 20. Yeah, 28 years. So I got into this after being, I think, the youngest stockbroker in the country, actually. So I was actually a stockbroker down in Virginia before I even got out of College, managing $150 million back when that was actually a lot for a big broker back in the 90s. Now they've got billions, right? This is like one of the top 150 brokers in Dean Witter at the time.

Rich Rosen [00:03:09]:
So I was picking all the stocks, telling them, hey, buy this, buy that, writing the reports up, you know, interviewing the thing. I was super successful. I've been investing since, like, 15, and I was super successful. Crushed the market because I would call the sales guys because I found the finance guys too boring to talk to. And I figured their numbers were really bullshit. I can say bullshit here. You heard me. Other podcasts, it comes out a lot, but I love talking to sales guys, and I can figure out the BS from that or not.

Rich Rosen [00:03:39]:
And I was blowing the numbers out and so crushed it for this guy for a couple years. The short version, which is a great story, over a beer, he went a little bit crazy. I was like, F this, I'm 22, work for a guy up in Boston, back to Boston and back at Dean Winter, did their rookie training program thing, you know, which you had to do. It was a big scam, but whatever. Took a big pay cut to do it. And crushed that was. Brought in over $1 million in assets in six months. Just selling bonds and drip securities.

Rich Rosen [00:04:09]:
And I was teaching my manager more than he was teaching me. So I'm like, this is a waste of time. So six months in, top rookie broker. I'm like, where's my desk? And he's like, we can't give you a desk. You're not ready yet. I literally said, f you. I'm like, find me a desk or I'm leaving. And I left.

Rich Rosen [00:04:26]:
So then I went to management recruiters. Ten days later, I went to management recruiters. Like, started, like two weeks later and closed two deals. My 10th day on the job and made 40 grand. And I'm like, this is the best thing ever. So I was pretty much out of the five out of 77 recruiters. I was number one or in the top five, I think every month. But one that I was there and the six month I left, I went on my own and I've been on.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:53]:
My own only six months.

Rich Rosen [00:04:55]:
Yeah, yeah. So I literally had the first computer MRI in New England. I bought the first computer in the entire. They had a phone system that was literally a year old and I was alive. So it was the old phones with two rows of blinking lights. So it was like, well, this is stupid. And well, the guy they, there was some questions on. They were trying to question.

Rich Rosen [00:05:18]:
They're trying to get, not pay me on something else. And I was like, dude, once you start screwing around with commission, I'm like, I'm done.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:22]:
Yeah.

Rich Rosen [00:05:23]:
So especially I'm like, I'm starting the niche. I'm like, I have my own computer. You're really providing me a roof during the day. So it was street commission. There was a draw for like whatever 360 bucks a month or whatever silliness it was. So I kind of went into it thinking, hey listen, if I like it, I'll start my own business. If I don't like it, I'll find myself a job. That's the whole point.

Rich Rosen [00:05:44]:
So I mean I loved it, crushed it, went on my own and been doing it ever since. So.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:51]:
So tell us about Cornerstone Search, obviously. So six months at mri you were peace out and you started this bad boy.

Rich Rosen [00:05:57]:
Yeah, so I started Cornerstown initially. I was actually doing long term care, nursing homes and assisted living, placed like directors of nursing and administrators for nursing. It was fantastic until they all went bankrupt. So then what I really wanted to do anyway when I was Amorite, I really wanted to start doing software salespeople so easily. I tried a few other things in the meantime just to test some things out. But I was always attracted to the sales side. I always think you got to sell with what you like. I like tech, I like sales.

Rich Rosen [00:06:24]:
Made sense. So I hopped into software sales essentially since I don't even know what it was, probably the late 90s at some point and placing software sales reps and execs for early stage software companies, you know, VC backed, PE backed. I mean sometimes it's the first person in the U.S. sometimes it's the first salesperson of the company, period. And you know, dealing with the board, CEOs, CROs, obviously and building out these teams and it's been an amazing journey. I've worked with some incredible software companies. I've made countless millionaires, you know, the guys I place because of the equity. Everyone's like, equity doesn't pay.

Rich Rosen [00:07:01]:
I'm like, I don't know. It has for my clients, like, you know, Tableau and Appdio and you know, Medallia and Unica. I mean these, these are companies that all sold for ridiculous amounts of money or went public or whatever. I mean, I had one client a couple years ago, I placed their board advisor and then placed their two reps. And then the, I mean, the company got acquired a year later for a hundred times revenue. I mean, and the CEO was such a great human being because like my whole thing is I work for good people. I would not work for some schmuck. I don't care if candidate client not worth the time or the money to me.

Rich Rosen [00:07:33]:
And I mean, this guy was such a good dude, he literally paid out the reps. He accelerated other vesting as part of the deal, so. Which is unheard of, but it was pretty awesome.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:42]:
That's crazy. I love it. What an amazing story. Now we were talking prior to getting on and you kind of, you talked about being in this industry for a long time. And then I know two weeks ago you were at Pinnacle, being on the board there. I was at Staffing World last year. We've kind of been a lot of places right now. Before we dive into anything, I'm just curious, what are you hearing? How are you feeling? The temperature of our industry is today, in today, October 2024.

Rich Rosen [00:08:11]:
Yeah, it's a good question. It's seriously in flux and it really is so dependent on the niche you're in. If you're in accounting or health tech, you're probably crushing it, to be honest with you. I mean, there's multiple friends that are doing, you know, they may have 5, 6, 7 person teams and they're doing 2, 3, 4, 5 million and 7 million even in billing in some of these cases. So it depends what niche you're in. I think overall the markets, it's soft, but it's not bad. I mean like Covid was bad. That was bad.

Rich Rosen [00:08:42]:
Like this is just soft. It's a downturn, but unemployment is still historically low. Right now it's like 4%, so. And you know, people don't want to buy it, but that's the reality is the people we're all should be placing are that top 10% candidate anyway. So if that's not what you're presenting, assuming you're doing executive search, not just, yeah, entry level stuff, if that's, you know, not what you're sending to your clients, that's why you're losing. So. And the, the recruiters I talk to, they generally just send anyone with a pulse in and it's just, it's a horrible way to run your business. It's a horrible way to, to run your desk and it's not a great way to make a living.

Rich Rosen [00:09:21]:
So those that are sending quality, is it tough? Yeah, it's still not easy, but they're still making 3, 4, 500 grand or more. But it really is going to be dependent on your space, is a heavy dependent, but it's also on you and choosing better quality clients. Because I find most recruiters are not, they're taking any job order they can get, thinking busy is better than productive, you know, or I'd rather have less and fill them than more people just spinning me in circles for no reason. I don't know if that's a long winded answer to your question, but the market's okay, it's getting better.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:56]:
And there I think. And I don't know what you've been hearing or seeing when you're a niche. There's a lot of optimism too, I think in the conversations that I've had at Staffing World with clients today, they're like, I feel a little bit better this month than I did three months ago. Even if three months ago was rough. I'm very optimistic for 2025. ASA came out with a lot of numbers that they feel optimistic as well. Do you feel the same?

Rich Rosen [00:10:22]:
100%. I mean, you can see I already feel the market turning. Like, I just yesterday I sent a bunch of emails out, you know, Sunday, just checking emails with a bunch of former placements and executives and stuff like that. And I got a huge response rate. You know, a lot of them, hey, they're starting to look, a lot of them are starting looking for advisor roles. A lot of them are going to, you know, tell me their hiring plans or what's coming up for next this year and next year. So I definitely, that's going to be a better year. I mean, 2024 has been a roller coaster.

Rich Rosen [00:10:51]:
Everyone was scared between interest rates, didn't know what was happening. The election, you know, all that stuff will be gone and people will be moving on, you know, come December, quite frankly. So I have to think next year is going to be a better year. A lot, much more streamlined. I mean, right now you're dealing with executives that have never had to deal with interest rates. So they don't know what they're doing. They, especially at the startup world, they didn't know really had a managed money and they were just everyone's fighting for their job because the pes and the VC firms of my world were breathing down everyone's neck.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:25]:
Yeah. So talk to me about 2024. You just said it was a roller coaster. Talk to me about how you've pivoted in 2024, you know, as doing all of the workshops, all the things that we do. There was a lot of talk of everyone had to learn how to do sales again. And you actually did a conversation about sourcing at staff enroll. They're like, I still can't find people. Tell me how you pivoted this year, what you're doing differently.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:50]:
Maybe from the beginning of the year, kind of give me your strategy and kind of what you've seen.

Rich Rosen [00:11:54]:
Yeah, I don't know how much I've really pivoted, to be honest with you. I think it just, you know, I always take. When you get these softer markets, you got to get back to the basics. Like, I still always refer back to my MRI manual from 1990, whatever the heck it was. Six or 96, I think. I mean, seriously, because the bare bones are still good, you know, now you get AI and all the other stuff. So, like, I'm a big, you know, I love checking all the tech and all the tools, personally. I mean, most tools I find are utterly useless.

Rich Rosen [00:12:24]:
They're just building an extra list for you. But for me, like, it creates is like my foundational centerpiece of my business. And then I get companies like Outplay and other things that have gotten integrated with you guys that work seamlessly and that makes my life super easy. So that stuff's all been great, just better using. I mean, like the best thing with AI is just having it write better emails. Like, people act like a lot of the writers in the different marketers, like, oh no, AI doesn't write like a human. It does if you know how to use it. You can absolutely 1000% make AI write like a human and better than most humans, but it's still something that will sound like you if you know how to prompt it properly.

Rich Rosen [00:13:07]:
So that's what people have to get good at doing. So I think doing stuff like that and honestly, just getting back to basic, like, I love cold calling and everything. I'm good at it, but somehow my stumbling through it seems to work. I still do it all the time. Like, I've probably done more business development work this year than I have in the last five years combined.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:26]:
Yeah.

Rich Rosen [00:13:27]:
And so I think getting back to cold Calling. I think there's too many recruiters are afraid to get on the phone. And I'm like, I do not. I mean, there's few recruiters that are busier than I am. I find that to sound obnoxious, but I put my numbers up online before to show people, like, how many inbound calls, emails, and inbound calls, outbound calls, emails, time on the phone, all those things. And at the end of the day is if I have time during the day. I don't understand how you don't have time. You know, I mean, or vice versa.

Rich Rosen [00:13:55]:
But it's. I've gone to people's offices or done different training calls for people, and their office is silent. Everyone's waiting for inbound calls. And I don't care what every trainer tells you. They don't teach you how to cold call because they don't like to cold call themselves. They don't know how to cold call. You didn't find them through a cold call. So it is a tool you have to use.

Rich Rosen [00:14:16]:
Is it the best only tool? Absolutely not. You got to do everything. But all these recruiters that sit there and wait for a phone to ring, I don't care how old school it sounds. I guarantee I'll bill you every year because I'm proactive and I make things happen. Opposed to praying my email got through all the spam filters that they. And they actually saw it at the right time. So, I mean, if you're not building, like, power networks of advisors and buyers and things like that, you better be on the phone, you know, or just.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:45]:
All right, so you're one of the very few humans that openly admit they like cold calling.

Rich Rosen [00:14:50]:
Like may not be the right word, but it's a necessary word. Like, I do like it. Actually, you know what? I don't know why. I think it's a dumb game. That's what.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:58]:
Okay, I'm competitive. You want to play tiddly banks, you're going down rich. That's kind of my mentality. I don't dislike cold calling. I don't want to say I like it, but for those that aren't accustomed to cold calling, there are some phone resistance. What are three tips you'd give them for cold calling?

Rich Rosen [00:15:16]:
One, you got to make it a game. You can't take yourself too seriously. Like, I have made more deals and gotten through more people by just, just saying, having a horrible opener. Like, never open your call by saying, hey, that I catch you at a good time. Right? But if I do say it by some Stupid reason. I will literally say, oh, shit. That's all right. That was horrible.

Rich Rosen [00:15:35]:
Can we go forward or can I just hang up and call you right back? And they'll just laugh. I think you gotta have fun. You gotta know what you're talking about. You gotta have a reason for the call. You can't just go into it willy nilly. There's nothing wrong with having a script. All right? But you need to have tone. If you don't have the right tonality, it doesn't matter what you say.

Rich Rosen [00:15:55]:
Like, I could say my calls are as bad as my writing. I think half the time. But people, they like them because they know they're real. And I think when you sound authentic in anything you do in this business, people respond to it.

Kortney Harmon [00:16:10]:
Yeah.

Rich Rosen [00:16:11]:
And don't expect to win every call. You could have the most incredible script in the world. You're still not going to win every call. You're still going to lose more than you're going to win. So you just got to understand it and move on and just have fun with it. Who cares? You screw it up, go on to the next. Who cares? Call the guy back in a week, he's not going to remember.

Kortney Harmon [00:16:28]:
So, you know, you're absolutely right. I love that. I always told the people that I trained, like, make eight calls before 8am or five after five. Like, make it where you like. It's a must. Well, no, I got to pick up the phone. That's a must. But like, make it at a time limit.

Kortney Harmon [00:16:45]:
Like goofy. I'm a job for a challenge. So goofy. Things like that. It was like, it was a mental thing for me. So I love that you mentioned those things totally.

Rich Rosen [00:16:53]:
Because even if you just still like, I'll take like a pad and just mark down every time I make a call and I'll make a dot on it every time I hit. Actually, someone answers the phone and you do it hour by hour and you can kind of see what your. Where your energy level is to how many calls that I get out. And yeah, you can do it through analytics, but seeing it on a piece of paper, at least for me, where it's just right there, it's raw, it's real, it's no fuzzy filter. I made 12 calls this hour. What the hell did you do the rest of the hour? If you only talk to two people, right, Then this gives you the real information and you can set up for time blocks if you need to do it nine before nine or the five after five. I always tell people you do small Bite sized chunks. If you're done at five o'clock then you make one more phone call.

Rich Rosen [00:17:38]:
You make one more call a day every single day. It's five extra a week, 20 extra a month, 200 extra 40 a year. You basically have a whole extra month worth of work compared to most recruiters by making one extra stupid call. Right. And if you can start at 8:30, you know, like you said, or even 8:00 if you're up on the phones then fantastic. I mean I'd always try to dial, try to call someone, you know, like five minutes before the hour because they're not in a meeting. No one has a meeting at 10:55. So and if they are in a meeting says great, you know, what's the meeting about? You know, maybe I can help.

Rich Rosen [00:18:11]:
You know, it's have you can say all sorts of stupid things. Everyone thinks you have to be so serious and if that's your thing, then awesome, be serious. But I'm not very serious and I don't take a whole lot seriously. So it's like listen, this whole job is a game. It's. This is roulette, the slots, however you want to. MRI used to be spin of the dial, you know, it was the sod, you know, the sog calls. This is a game no matter how you want to look at it.

Rich Rosen [00:18:37]:
So have fun.

Kortney Harmon [00:18:39]:
And it makes you human right now. I mean there's some amazing AI tools and AI has its place and its touch and its way to speed us up or make us better. Some people like to say you're superhero cape but it still shows that you're human, whatever that is and you're breaking through the noise of what the new status quo of noise is in today's environment.

Rich Rosen [00:19:00]:
Yeah. And you'd be surprised, I mean how many people execs you talk to. They're like I never get cold calls. Like you reach through, they're like no one calls anymore. You're always going to hit someone's like, oh, I got a million phone calls. All right, well they do. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, whatever, but who cares? I run a train class on Thursday mornings with Trish Tampkin.

Kortney Harmon [00:19:20]:
Yep.

Rich Rosen [00:19:20]:
With for more essentials. So you know, if anyone wants to do it 8:45 in the morning on Thursdays. The. But I mean I was telling a story in there where I cold called this guy and it was the. He was a complete asshole. Right? He was a total asshole. Like literally marked it down like complete prick called back. Like when you're bored.

Rich Rosen [00:19:39]:
So I called him back before Thanksgiving, like one year, and this is a long time ago, and we had this conversation, ended up having a great conversation, to be honest with the second time. And it was just like I figured I'd practice this new line out, or new. Whatever it was out, right? Because what do I care? This guy's a jerk. What am I going to lose? All right, turns out we had such a great conversation, became one of my best clients, even came to work for me eventually. And then his neighbor actually came to work for me for a little while. It was fantastic. And I told him on that second call, I'm like, hey, you know what, I got to tell you, the reason I only called you back was because you're such a prick a few months ago. So you would be amazed what you can get away with if you're actually honest.

Rich Rosen [00:20:17]:
It's like that is the easiest part of this job by just being who you are. And, you know, biggest thing I learned when I was a stockbroker actually was you're going to attract like minded clients. So if you're really stiff and rigid, that's what you're going to attract. You're fun and relaxed. You're going to attract fun and relaxed clients. Like I like most of my clients, you know, that first time everyone's a little feeling each other out, but once they realize that I'm actually there to help them, like the commission, the bonus for me, you know, you can crush it.

Kortney Harmon [00:20:47]:
All right, you talked clients, so let's talk about that for a second. As you look at the business you've done, this was a big conversation in the past five months. And it I had another conversation with another podcast guest and he was like, my business is great, but my business is great because of the relationships I've built. How many of your clients today are those reoccurring those key accounts that you have today that you expect business from year after year versus new clients? Do you have a percentage? 60, 40?

Rich Rosen [00:21:17]:
I would probably say I was thinking about this yesterday, actually. You know, mine are all startups, so it's weird because startups are transient and people are here today, gone tomorrow. Clients retire. Some retire late, some retire early because they made a ton of money. But I mean, I've placed like 1100 people, so I got a huge list of patch placements to go through. People. And it's not even people you place, it's people you submitted, become. You're a good recruiter, you build rapport with them so you can call them as if you made the placement anyway because you treated them well.

Rich Rosen [00:21:46]:
But I would tell you, this year, probably 75% of my business has probably come from existing clients. The rest from net new, from cold call and outreach, which in this interesting market I'm okay with. So, I mean, it's been a. I mean, I had that net new client, I mean, from a cold call I did, you know, got three retainers from and did well over a hundred thousand dollars in business with, so including a deal in Europe, so which I don't do a lot in Europe, so it was good.

Kortney Harmon [00:22:14]:
That's amazing.

Rich Rosen [00:22:15]:
Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:22:15]:
So let's go back to focus on your industry, software sales professionals in general. Did you share some insights on how the demand for software sales professionals evolved over the years? Maybe focusing on the last two to three since it's been a wonky market. The last two to three?

Rich Rosen [00:22:31]:
Yeah, I mean, two to three. So this is the struggle. 21, 22 were amazing. I mean, I placed more than a person a week for like two and a half years. I mean, like 55 placements a year for a solo recruiter is insane. So it was bananas. And, you know, 23, first half was good, second half started to tail off a little bit, you know, then 24 is. It's been a slow rise.

Rich Rosen [00:22:56]:
The clients themselves are. They're very out of sorts, especially in startups where you're so dependent on the VC money or for loans and things like that. So interest rates played a big factor. The election is a big factor, you know, to me, like, I'm always amazed when someone doesn't want to hire a top producer, especially these younger companies. I'm like, this is when you top grade, you got to make the tough decision. It's like, you know, you got a loser quarterback. Why keep him? You know, I mean, if you're like the Cleveland Browns, like, why are you keeping Deshaun Watson? All right, so of course you had.

Kortney Harmon [00:23:31]:
To pull them out of the box.

Rich Rosen [00:23:32]:
All right, the easy target. Right. So, but like, no matter how much money you're paying him, it's a waste of money, right. I mean, it's like Aaron Rodgers right now.

Kortney Harmon [00:23:42]:
Yeah.

Rich Rosen [00:23:42]:
You guys are won in forever. So, all right, you're going to keep spending that. Or you could replace them with this person who is a proven stud who has done it not three years ago, but has done it last year, two years ago. You can walk in with the con, you know, and probably even go for less and everyone wins. This gets more, you pay less, and you get from who's got fresh blood, fresh energy, and occasionally that's where you need to shake up a team. So, I mean, that's how I try to pitch it, at least to a lot of clients, but the market is definitely there. It's never going to be like 21 and 22. I mean, that was the golden years of recruiting.

Rich Rosen [00:24:20]:
It will never, unfortunately, ever be even half as strong as that is my guess.

Kortney Harmon [00:24:25]:
No, that's fair.

Rich Rosen [00:24:29]:
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Kortney Harmon [00:25:33]:
What do you think? And I know you don't have a crystal ball, but what trends do you see in the recruiting industry as we head into 2025?

Rich Rosen [00:25:43]:
Yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, that's the thing. I think as much as recruiting changes, it doesn't really change. I think the state. Listen, you gotta stay at car. You gotta know how to use AI or you're gonna get lost. You gotta be able to prompt, you gotta be able to use campaigns and sequences and all those types of things. It's amazing to me how many recruiters don't do automated campaigns.

Rich Rosen [00:26:07]:
And I think everyone, like, listen, everyone loves to personalize everything as you should. If you're a really finite niche, I guess you don't. It's easier. But for most of us, you can't personalize enough and do it at scale. It's just impossible. Like, I mean, I say, like, I sent out this campaign the other day and, you know, it was just like, basically, hey, it was Sunday morning. I was flipping through some research and your name popped up. Just want to say hi.

Rich Rosen [00:26:33]:
Massive response from that. All right. At the same time, I got them going through another campaign and the people that say, oh, I got Your other email, too. I'm like, okay, great. I mean, no one cares. I mean, listen, maybe I'm super wrong on this, so do what you want, but my attitude is I don't care. People are going to get back to you. If they're going to get back to you, you got to do these campaigns.

Rich Rosen [00:26:53]:
People try to do painstaking personalization, and it's just a great avoidance of productivity. I mean, I'll do a campaign with like eight steps, and I'll have the same email in it two or three times sometimes because they didn't get back to me. So maybe they didn't see it, maybe they did. Who cares? They just keep seeing your name. So that's all that really matters. And I don't know, it's worked for me. So, like, I know the marketers. I think this.

Rich Rosen [00:27:17]:
I said this to a marketer last week, and they almost had a heart attack. It's like, you know, I don't know if you get me better results, awesome. I'm open to it. But, you know, I think that's my.

Kortney Harmon [00:27:28]:
Number one complaint about recruiters is they call too frequently. They annoy the hell out of you until they get what they want. Number two is you never hear from them again. You're eliminating that second portion where they just get lost on the shuffle. They're a commodity. It's like, it's so transactional, and you're eliminating that portion. So I love it, and I think it's important. And it's all about timing.

Kortney Harmon [00:27:50]:
You never know what timing is going.

Rich Rosen [00:27:51]:
To strike when there's even your best client if you're not there at the right time. And, you know, Joey calls, Joey's getting the search. I mean, that's just the reality of it. It's, you know, I mean, I've got clients I would, you know, I consider really good friends at this point. But at the same time, listen, they got a thousand things going on, too. I know they appreciate me, and I know maybe these, you know, handful will call me no matter what, but, you know, I got 30,000 LinkedIn connections. I can tell you 29,000 and 900 and probably 95 of them are not calling me first. I wish they would.

Rich Rosen [00:28:30]:
They should, but they're. They're not. And I get too many recruiters that think that, you know, you're on their mind as much as they're on yours, and it's just not true. So you always got to send, keep on top of things.

Kortney Harmon [00:28:43]:
You just talked about your extensive network. I just want to Tap into that. How do you leverage this massive amount of contacts, these 30,000 people on LinkedIn, to find the best candidates? Obviously you have new people looking for, for new technologies, new things. How do you even keep up with that?

Rich Rosen [00:29:00]:
Yeah, I gotta tell you, I mean, I say, I mean this sincerely, it is a blessing and a curse having a massive network on LinkedIn. Because one, you know, like, I had another group basically help create something so that I can delete, mass delete candidates or profiles from my network on LinkedIn. Cause you're maxed out, and then you get new clients. You're like, I can't add to you. Who do I delete? So it's a problem. And then you do get overloaded with so much notification. I mean, like, I, if I was a smarter person, I'd hire an admin just to go through it. So.

Rich Rosen [00:29:33]:
But I just, you know, I'm a good multitasker. Even though people say that's not true, whatever. They don't have a master, their add, I guess, I don't know. So, you know, so I mean, I'm always flipping through LinkedIn and just commenting on people's stuff and, you know, two, two word comments. Again, it just gets your name out there more and more and more, you know, So, I mean, there's no great way to do it. But, I mean, every night I am trolling through my database and LinkedIn with the goal of adding like 50 new people a day to call tomorrow or email tomorrow or whatever that night. So I don't know if I have a great answer for it. It just, you just kind of do it and you get.

Rich Rosen [00:30:10]:
You got to have a reasonable memory to understand, hey, this person's good for this, this person's good for that. And, you know, I mean, I use Crete to tag everything, so it's easy to find. So it makes life, you know, makes life easy.

Kortney Harmon [00:30:23]:
Was the 50 connections a day an MRI thing? Because that was still around when I was training.

Rich Rosen [00:30:27]:
It was definitely back when you had to put on the big ink blotter, you know, the big desk plotter they used to have.

Kortney Harmon [00:30:33]:
I had to come out and ask.

Rich Rosen [00:30:35]:
But you know what? It's like, it's one of those things that's a goal. And again, like, I always get people like, oh, I can't find 50 people a day. I'm like, well. Or they don't. How do you. They can't reach all these people. Every day I'm like, if you're not picking up the phone, what are you doing? Because usually they're saying they can't reach them, but yet they're not on the phone. So if you can't find an email at this point and you've been in recruiting for more than an hour, then you probably should quit.

Rich Rosen [00:30:58]:
All right, so, I mean, every work email is pretty easy to find, 99% of them. There's nine gazillion tools to find these emails anyway, free or otherwise. So I'm like, I don't know. I do not understand what people do all day. So.

Kortney Harmon [00:31:13]:
Well, and I think you hit on something. I talked about this at the beginning of the year when I played college ball. We always had a word of the year. And I said back in January, this year was going to be the word of engagement. Like, you have to stand out from people. And you said just that. Whether it's two words or a sentence, you're commenting, you're being in front of, you're being engaged with all of the network and the capacity you're able to. And I think that goes hand in hand with your success.

Rich Rosen [00:31:39]:
Yes. And then LinkedIn too. Like, I make horrible videos that I put on LinkedIn. I don't care. It's okay. You know what? They still get 10, 12,000 responses. So everyone acts like everything has to be so polished and perfect, but that's not the real world. All right, so who cares? People want to know when I talk to them that they're getting the truth.

Rich Rosen [00:32:02]:
And I don't need a glitzy video or the perfect word track to do it. I wish I always had it, but for my group, it seems to work well enough. And you can always get better. That's the beautiful thing about this business. Right. But like you said, engagement is the perfect, perfect word for this year. Because when the market's slow, you should be engaging with more people, building your network for when it does turn. I mean, you got to play one of my buddies that was in Pinnacle.

Rich Rosen [00:32:30]:
He gave a great talk about how he builds his network around his industry consultants and advisors and things like that holds different functions. If there's a big show in his niche, he's going to have a cocktail hour or whatever and has monthly or quarterly meetups online so all these people can mingle and network. That's my goal to start in 2025, because I think it's a beautiful way to do it. And it's a slow build, but it has massive return.

Kortney Harmon [00:33:00]:
Yeah.

Rich Rosen [00:33:01]:
So I love it.

Kortney Harmon [00:33:02]:
I think I read this correctly, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. Your placement success rate is 99% of resumes presented get interviewed. Am I correct?

Rich Rosen [00:33:13]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kortney Harmon [00:33:14]:
How do you maintain such a high placement to success ratio? Inquiring minds want to know that are listening. I can tell you I very rarely ever saw that when I was training people across the network.

Rich Rosen [00:33:25]:
Yeah, it's pretty rare. No one ever believes it, but I mean, and maybe it's 98% either way. Yeah, it's. I can tell you I'm a one man band. I just hired a new part time admin or actually just hired an admin, not part time, who just. I can't figure out. He does half the day, to be honest with you, because I'm not a good manager. So he's often.

Rich Rosen [00:33:44]:
I wasn't paying him twice a month, so, but he's, you know, he's helping go. I'll give him a list, he'll enter the data, find all those folks. But it's for me. I don't have time to waste sending crap out. I don't understand why recruiters do, because my goal is really one send out a day. You make one send that a day, which to me is one interview a day because my ratios are nearly perfect. In my opinion, that's going to make me a million bucks a year. Right? I mean, think of it.

Rich Rosen [00:34:10]:
If you get 240 send outs a year and you place them a third of those, you're going to do okay. Right? Obviously it doesn't always work that well, but that's the general principle. But if you're just, I mean, if you're on the fence with someone, you probably shouldn't send them out. And I know there's other opinions, but my kind of view is, you know, when it's obvious, it's obvious. If it's not obvious, it's obvious I should say too, you know, and because listen, if I don't think this guy is good, chances are my client who knows the role even better than I do is probably not going to like him. You know, sometimes I'll have a conversation with the client, say, hey listen, I talked to this guy who's done A, B and C. What are your thoughts? But you can only do that so many times in my opinion. Or then you're just an annoying recruiter.

Rich Rosen [00:34:55]:
You're like, you're not bringing them value if they have to evaluate every resume you send. Like I tell my clients up front, I'm going to send you three or four people, you know, sometimes one person. And you got to be ready to hire. And I had a Client. Two weeks ago, we sent him one person. It wasn't ready to hire. And I was like, you're not ready for me. This is a waste of my time.

Rich Rosen [00:35:16]:
You got all the way to the final. You're like, the guy's a 9 and a 10. But he's like, he's only the first person we've seen. I'm like, who cares? It's the right person. It's the right person, right? I mean, waiting to see what's better around the corner just seems silly to me. So we moved on from that client. And by bringing on working with clients that actually take you seriously, you have better results and you become a trusted advisor when you can tell them, hey, listen, I'm going to send you people that match your spec. That's why we're getting the engagement fee.

Rich Rosen [00:35:46]:
It's not to waste your time. It's not to waste my time. We're partners in this. When I send them, here's your three bullet points, four bullet points about why this guy matches, why he's perfect. And if I have a question, I'll put it in there. I'll put a negative in there, too, if I think there's a negative, and that's that. But then they start to see, hey, listen, everyone you send is right. Like most of my clients, I can avoid the internal recruiters and or partner with them.

Rich Rosen [00:36:11]:
I don't want to avoid the internal folks. I just don't have to fight with them. Yeah, I don't want them to slow me down. I want to keep them fully in the loop because sometimes they're going to get information I don't get. I'll get information they don't get sometimes. And if we all work together, we all win, you know, and so we try to make it so it's not a competitive situation. Sometimes takes a little doing, but we generally get there, you know, So I don't know. I mean, I think if you take the approach of, I just want to see the company win.

Rich Rosen [00:36:36]:
Like, I think dealing with startups, I think it's really cool when I see, like a big billboard up for, like, Tableau, who was a big client of mine back in the day, or Unica or Appeal or something like that, where I'm not dealing with the Oracles and the Dells of the world, you know, you see that stuff. So when you see a company, you say, oh, I put their top 10 reps in there. I don't know. It's kind of cool when you can say, you help build it. And that comes across to your clients, that you're a real partner. It makes a big difference.

Kortney Harmon [00:37:01]:
Well, and the investment is there. Like it's get in the game.

Rich Rosen [00:37:04]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, like, I try to take equity when I can from clients. And, you know, you want to be as much a partner, as much as a giver as you can. You always want to. The old phrase of more deposits, less withdrawals, I mean, is absolutely astoundingly true in recruiting. And, you know. Yeah. Not everyone's gonna remember it, but the ones that do are going to reward you.

Kortney Harmon [00:37:26]:
You talked about clients, and you've mentioned this twice. I'm going to go back to revisit it, of the idea of vetting those clients or working together in a way that is beneficial not only for them, but for you. So how do you. Do you have a process of rating your clients or vetting your clients? How do you shift through all of the people that could be working with you versus should be working with you?

Rich Rosen [00:37:50]:
Well, they all should be working. The smart ones did. But, no, I mean, for me, it's all about personalities. Like, you can have the best product in the world, but if you're just a putz and you're just, like, pompous and you think the world revolves around you and people should be so honored to come work for you, it better be paying a lot of money. And that fee is going to be really high on my end. I can't sell things I don't like. I can't sell for people I don't like. I just think changing jobs is so important to people's lives and hard for them.

Rich Rosen [00:38:21]:
It's hard to make a move even when you know you have to make a move and to knowingly put someone into, like, the firing line of some jackass. I have no interest in it whatsoever. And I have this conversation with my clients. They're like, oh, you know, what's your fee? I'm like, well, let's slow down a minute. Let's find out a couple things. Let's get this hiring manager on the phone. Let's get whoever's involved in this interview, let's talk to them and see what the story is, make sure we're all aligned. Because 9 out of 10 companies, your hiring teams aren't aligned.

Rich Rosen [00:38:52]:
So. And if they're not into it, okay, that's fine. I mean, and you never say never, but, you know, usually there's an asshole tax kind of thing. And if they're bigger jerks, then the higher the fee and if they say no, they say no.

Kortney Harmon [00:39:06]:
You know, because why do you think companies aren't aligned? Because a lot of people probably don't even connect that dot that you're like, no, I need to get everybody on the phone. And that's probably a common thing that people don't even dive deep enough into to realize that's an issue. So I'm bringing awareness to everyone outside that's looking to scale their organizations and grow. What are they not aligned on and how do you get them on the same page?

Rich Rosen [00:39:29]:
Yeah, I think one, you may have people in the interview process that they think it's their job to either just stump the chump and make these candidates feel stupid, like, how do you not know this about our industry or this about that? You know, they may be asking questions that are completely non germane to, like, the whole conversation, or you have like, I had a situation where a company was hiring. It was a super. It was like a total rocket ship unicorn for Andreessen. I think it's going to go down as one of the biggest flops. Like, I was a really good friends with the CRO, so I took a lot of this stuff on, and it turns out, like, they had four people interviewing, and four people thought this person was going to work for them. So they all interviewed the person. And this is what made me start doing this, you know, try to interview everyone on the interview panels whenever possible. Because after I found this out, after a couple interviews, I told the CEO, I'm like, listen, we got to talk to everyone.

Rich Rosen [00:40:23]:
I mean, this is. This is insane. There's no way I'm sending, you know, two or three candidates in and no one's making the cut. You know, as arrogant as that sounds, I mean. But I know what you're looking for. I've done a ton of work for the CRO in the past. I know what he wants, and this role reports to him. So why is a product manager getting to say no? And it turns out the product manager really thought, well, this guy doesn't know X, Y and Z.

Rich Rosen [00:40:46]:
And I'm like, you're right. He has no reason to know X, Y and Z because he's not going to work for you. And it's got nothing to do with his daily job, the product, or anything else. It was like a coding thing, essentially. I mean, it was just. It was silly. So it could be something as simple as that. Sometimes just understanding what the personalities are like.

Rich Rosen [00:41:03]:
So you know how to coach these candidates up too, because if you get a candidate or Someone on the panel who you just, you realize, hey, if they're not from Company X this guy's immediately going to be a no. Well, okay, you can report that back to the powers that be or you know, you can only find people from Company X and it happens a lot because they don't either respect a competitor, they have whatever grudge they have against another company. So you got to get everyone aligned to make sure, hey, we're all rolling in the right direction. Sometimes even like, you know, now a chat GPT makes it easy. It's like, all right, us these five questions. Us these five questions. You ask these five questions us these five questions and you hook them up with like attracts AI or something like that. And I'm like record.

Rich Rosen [00:41:48]:
You guys should all be recording your interviews and then you can summarize it. Use like I don't know if you guys ever use like I think tracks is going to try. They're going to go onto your under creelate marketplace soon. But they're, they're great, they're nicest guys over there too. Traq AI is where it is but it's the but theirs. You can even summarize your interview and then you can say hey, would you hire the person? And it's actually pretty good. It's like its own little chat GPT built into it. It's really, really good.

Rich Rosen [00:42:13]:
But like I encourage all my clients to do it and these ones that don't want to record their presentations, I'm like, you're missing out because you're going to lose good candidates because you guys. And they're like no, no, no, it's illegal. I mean it's not illegal. No candidate's going to say no to recorded interviews. All right? And if they do, it's probably a flag. So I'm like record them and you're going to see your panel is causing the problem, not the candidates more often than not. But a lot of people don't want to look in the mirror, so.

Kortney Harmon [00:42:44]:
But what good insights. That's very good insights. I love that. I love the consultative approach and kind of giving them insights. You've mentioned quite a few tools so I'm going to throw this question out there as a solopreneur, the one man band that has to do all the things. What's your tech stack look like? I want to pull this out. What is your tech stack? What are the must have tools that you use? And you can tell me to pound salts.

Rich Rosen [00:43:10]:
I'm behind the curtain. I get this question all the Time because I'm actually. I also pull the tools together for Pinnacle and the group and tell everyone what to grab. So my tech stack, I don't think it's that big, believe it or not, because I think most tech is really not great. I think it's just a noisemaker.

Kortney Harmon [00:43:25]:
Okay.

Rich Rosen [00:43:26]:
So like I said, crelate is what I work off. That's my base. Love it. Been on it for forever. I think I even run your guys the user group on Facebook. But I use that I been using Lead IQ has been really good. Full Enrich has been really good. Both for contact info.

Rich Rosen [00:43:45]:
Obviously ChatGPT is like basically a third arm at this point. What else do I use? That's really good. That's a must. One tab is great if you're building lists. One tab allows me. I can go to LinkedIn and open like a thousand tabs. Like, I like this guy, I like this guy. I like this guy.

Rich Rosen [00:44:00]:
I like this guy, like this guy. And then I right click and it saves them all to a list. And then I send that list, just that link to my admin who then he just goes, he says, all the people I like, he enters all those in. Because maybe it's just me. I'm not comfortable finding having an admin overseas who doesn't really know the space. Especially in software where there's so many nuanced titles and roles and companies and they just, they're never going to source as well as I'm going to source. 30 years of doing this or whatever. There's just no way they're going to the same amount of information.

Rich Rosen [00:44:32]:
And like I can give them say, hey, go pull people from Company X with this title and this many years and they can get a pretty. They can do well. But I can't give them a list of 300 people to go through and say find the best 50 on this list essentially. But I can do it in half an hour. So one tab is like a must.

Kortney Harmon [00:44:50]:
Cool.

Rich Rosen [00:44:51]:
What else do I got that's good? I'm working on a few others. Chatterworks I love. For contact info you need a couple of different contact finders because I think most of them are pretty bad. Chatterworks is a go to one, though they've generally been pretty good. For me, Full Enrich is probably the most accurate, but it's pretty slow to dig up the number, but it does a waterfall, so it goes to like 15 different, you know, sites to dig it up. And what else am I using that's of any value? I mean, I don't even mean for sales. I just use sales. I don't even use.

Rich Rosen [00:45:19]:
I have sales now, but I don't really use it too often. I just use free LinkedIn probably tracks. I mean, tracks. AI is great for summarizing, recording your calls. It hops onto every call and then summarizes. You can ask it questions. You know, say, hey, what'd you think of this? It gives you coaching, so. And Adam, they really want to build it out for recruiters, so it's a pretty inexpensive tool, and they'll give you, like, a free month trial on it, too.

Rich Rosen [00:45:42]:
But that thing is amazing, you know, just makes. Taking notes. Like, if you forget a note, you don't say, I'll go repeat that. Because I like to type and talk. But now I have this. Do most of it, and I can summarize it, and then I can even have it just build my. My candidate summary. So when I send it out, I can just have it do that for me, too.

Rich Rosen [00:46:00]:
If you're recording, like, an intake call for a job gives you so much more information, you know, even ask them, hey, what are the questions? You can ask it, like, what are the questions these guys are likely to ask on an interview? I mean, you can do so many cool things with it. It's phenomenal. Yeah, I mean, that's. I mean, I play with everything, right? But most people, they just don't. They're not worth, like, loom. I use loom a lot. I love loom, but, yeah, I mean, I've tried them all. I've probably looked at every tool under the sun, so it's a hobby, you know, I love it.

Kortney Harmon [00:46:30]:
No, I think that's great. It gives insights. Just. I mean, we did a sourcing talk at Staffing World, and I pulled up just 20 different sourcing tools. If you're in one of these industries and people are like, oh, my gosh, I never heard of that. It's just one more thing if. To give you a different perspective and a different swizzle if it's right for you. So all good.

Kortney Harmon [00:46:49]:
My last and final question, and I'll leave you be rich, I promise, is as you look into 2025 and looking ahead, what are your goals for Cornerstone search Associates and 2025 and beyond?

Rich Rosen [00:47:02]:
Yeah, I just. I'm like a mouse and a wheel man. I just keep going. There's no. It's. It sounds so horrible to say, like, I've kind of hit the goals I want to hit. I don't want to grow. I don't want to get bigger.

Rich Rosen [00:47:14]:
I just, you know, as we all know, like I said, when this job is easy, it's the best job in the world. Right. My only goal is just to keep finding, like, sane clients. Like, clients that actually appreciate what we do, where it's not an argument to get simple stuff done. Like this year's. This year has been crazy, I think. I don't know if you've heard this. I've heard more, myself included.

Rich Rosen [00:47:34]:
More companies trying to stiff us on fees and just kind of unscrupulous people. So, I mean, money makes people do a lot of dumb things. So my whole goal is just to find better, easier clients. Like, I'm going to try to start doing more of these. Yeah. Actually, my only goal, fiance, is start doing more conferences. Like, I don't do. I haven't gone to, like, a trade show in years.

Rich Rosen [00:47:55]:
Like an industry trade show. Like, I'll do Pinnacle Conference, but I haven't got the naps in 10 years. Probably even that was there for Pinnacle. I wasn't even there for Naps, so. But yeah, man, just try some new outreach techniques, build some community groups and things like that. I think that's probably the biggest goal I've got of any value.

Kortney Harmon [00:48:13]:
I love it and it's ever changing. But you're right. The foundation of our industry and our business does not change. It's just how we get to the end goal. So, Rich, thank you so much for joining me today. You're amazing with your insights. Your experience and expertise are, bar none, in this industry. So as for our listeners that want to learn more about Rich and Pinnacle Associates or the Pinnacle Group, we can put that in the chat as well.

Kortney Harmon [00:48:38]:
But thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to talk about what you do best.

Rich Rosen [00:48:43]:
Awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much for having us. Great.

Kortney Harmon [00:48:44]:
Absolutely.

Rich Rosen [00:48:45]:
Appreciate it.

Kortney Harmon [00:48:48]:
I'm Kortney Harmon with crelate. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Industry Spotlight, a new series from the Full Desk Experience. New episodes will be dropping monthly. Be sure you're subscribed to our podcast so you can catch the next Industry Spotlight episode and all episodes of the Full Desk Experience here or wherever you listen.