QUESTION: What is the one thing you have done in your business that you wish you did not do?
Embracing Professional Growth Through Experience
It is an excellent question because I don’t really have any regrets. Everything you have experienced professionally in your business, you needed to experience to make you the person and business owner you are today. As a mentor of mine taught me, there is no dishonor in failure; there is only dishonor in not learning from that failure.
Honestly, every mess-up I had, and there are thousands, I needed them to get me where I am sitting here; I needed to understand. I did not want to get down to $625 in my business account, being unready for the next recession. But, it showed me how I could almost go bankrupt, and put that fear in me.
Maybe I didn’t need it, but once I experienced it, I never got close to that ever again. No recession ever got me to that standpoint, and after that first year of business I never took a dime from my personal savings to grow or save my business. The 2001 recession, the 2008 recession, COVID, and all those downturns were actually profitable. As a recruiting firm owner, I was profitable in all aside from, the 1991-1992 recession. Though I don’t regret the mistakes I’ve made, I hope you can learn from mine and grow your business even faster.
Mistake 1: Over-Training New Recruiters
When I opened my recruiting firm, the way we were taught as a franchisee was to go out and hire four or five recruiters at a minimum wage draw and train them. When I hired those people, I had four weeks more experience than they did, so I was a mentor, right? After four weeks, a couple job orders, and a couple first-time interviews, I had more experience than all my new people.
I had a fear of cold calling and marketing, like a lot of people. I justified not being on the phone to train my people in something that I barely knew better than them. In 1990, it was not online, but we had VHS for all the basic recruiting training. I over-trained and only billed
$23,000 in my first year in this business, which is one thing that almost drove me out of business.
Mistake 2: Lack of Accountability for New Recruiters
The second big thing I wish I had done is when I hired recruiters, I should have held them accountable from day one to a very specific number that was black and white. Falling short by even just one was considered a failure, which is what we teach now. Letting recruiters work at their own pace without guidance when they are new, especially when they are brand new and do not know the business, is where I wish I promoted accountability like I do today.
Mistake 3: Allowing Clients to Dictate Terms
The last thing I wish I didn’t do was let clients dictate terms and ways to work with them early in my career. Meaning here is our fee; you do not get to talk to the hiring manager; here is who you send the resumes to, and on a whim, we will get back to you if we want to. Again, if I had not gone through that pain and had deals and candidates blow up, then I wouldn’t have been able to learn what I now know.
Learning from Failures to Achieve Success
There was a moment in the 1990s when I had three placements blow up in a row at offer stage. I was simply out of the loop. I was like, I am not doing this anymore. That was rock bottom. It was a second rock bottom. The first rock bottom was the $625 in my business checking account. The second one was that one, and that was a pivot point for me to go from all contingency to, two and a half years later, 97% engaged.
It was a decision. I’m not going to be treated like this anymore. It’s straightforward. If you and I could get the football scores for Sunday afternoon and have them on Saturday night to fill out those cards, we would make a lot of money gambling. These things are after the fact. What I have learned, especially as I have gotten older in life, is that all of these failures are true blessings and pivot points to move forward.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your recruitment business:
1. Get clear on what actually drives your revenue: If you’re not sure what needs to happen each week to hit your number, the Recruiter GPS gives you a simple way to stay on track so you’re not guessing day to day. https://go.therecruiteru.com/recruitergps
2. Join the Recruiter Think Tank: Connect with firm owners who are scaling, too. It’s our Facebook community where smart recruiters learn to make more money and get more freedom. https://www.facebook.com/groups/there…
3. Join me at our next event: 3x a year, I run a 3-day virtual intensive, sharing the 9 key areas that drive a 7-figure search firm. Click here to check out the dates of our upcoming event. https://go.therecruiteru.com/events
4. Learn how to build a more predictable recruiting business: If you’re ready to go deeper, this masterclass walks through the systems and structure behind how top recruiters create consistent billings and momentum. https://go.therecruiteru.com/masterclass
