Minimize Ghosting From Top Recruits

So the big question is this, how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan and welcome to Recruiting Conversations. Hey everybody, welcome back.

It's another Recruiting Conversations with your host, Richard Milligan. I am excited to share a very simple idea with you today. And in all of the data that we've helped produce with companies and individual leaders, a simple, I hate using the word hack, but a simple tactic will improve in a very significant way, the number of people that show up to a meeting that you schedule. That seems like it's important, right? If you're a recruiter or a recruiting leader.

And you call someone and they say yes to a meeting and it's not right now, but it's tomorrow or later in the week or next week. It seems important to get that person into a meeting. Yes or yes. And I think it's not just one reason. And the one reason that we would just normally think of would be that we could then move them to some next steps that we're building a relationship with them that would give us the ability to start this journey.

Of moving in the next steps, but there's another there's another piece here that it's important to get, which is that when someone no shows a meeting that they said yes to that just creates tension. Have you ever done that? I've done that before. I said, yes, the meeting didn't get on my calendar. And all of a sudden, someone's trying to connect with me and going, hey, where are you at? You scheduled a meeting with me. And there's just tension there.

And one of the things that we do is we don't want to create tension, unnecessary friction in this relationship before it ever started. So I want to guard against them creating that tension. And so having them show up to the meeting that they said yes to is the healthiest way to begin the journey of building relationships.

We have worked with a company where over thousands of meetings, They were getting about a 45 to 50 percent no show rate to a number of people that said yes to meetings that didn't show up to the meetings and that's normal. Now, why this is why I bring this into the podcast today is that this week I was in a conversation with a recruiter that had multiple no shows in one day. The conversation kind of went like this. Hey, you had several meetings today. How'd those meetings go?

Both of those people no showed the meeting. And I asked the question, what is your process? Upon establishing a getting gaining agreement on a next step, what is your process in this case? Let's just pause here. The process for this individual was. Recruiter makes phone call recruiter gains agreement on meeting. And then an executive leader is involved in the next step. In a short conversation, which is just strictly relationship building.

This executive leader had both people that were supposed to be on the calendar. No show. Now, I, a lot of empathy for the recruiter. Because it looks bad on you. And it's, ah, I did all the work, did everything right. And people embrace that as normal. The notion is being normal, but it's not, you can solve this problem. You can solve the problem. In this case, we're, we're working with the company and thousands of meetings.

We're able to go from about 45 to 50 percent no show rate rating to single digits. Most of the time, low teens all the time. So lean in here because you start, this is a multiplying effect for you, right? Uh, let's just use a simple number. If you had a hundred meetings over the course of the year and you had 50 no shows of those meetings, you lost out on 50 recruiting opportunities. If you can get that to 8%, you have 42 additional recruiting opportunities.

I don't know anybody that won't say yes to that. If you're a growth minded leader, let's bring this on. So let's talk about a very simple thing here.

Which is create a sequence, create a system for when someone says, yes, how do you improve that no show ratio? And what I've found is that there's a simple three step process that will get that minimally down to teens. But here's one of the great things that happens with this. And you'll see this as I lay this out, is that if people said yes, and then at some point can't show up for the meeting, you give them opportunities to actually raise their hand.

Let's say I can't make that commitment where if you don't have a process here, they know should the meeting you create tension, they're gone forever. If you're a recruiting leader, a leader, who's in a market that's responsible for leading a team, but also recruiting to that team. You have a limited number of opportunities in that market. That is, that's fair, right? You have a limited, you fish in ponds. You don't fish in the ocean. So it only makes sense.

Let's create a really strong plan here. To not create tension in this market where people won't make eye contact with me, if I see them in the grocery store, I see them in a networking event, or I see them at a industry event. I don't want that kind of tension. I want strong relationships. I want to be able to bring value to you on an ongoing basis. And it showed me there's just a little bit of shame and condemnation that goes with that, right? Ah, I was better than that.

Or I said, yes, and I didn't do it. And I don't need that weirdness in a small pond where I have a limited number of opportunities. Okay. So here's what you do when someone says, yes, you immediately message that individual by text. Now, if you're a recruiter, what I would recommend that you do is that you CC, you include on the text, the person that they're going to meet with. That means that you would include them on the text with their cell phone number.

Okay. And the scripting might look a little bit like this. Hey, Richard, this is David. Great call today. My market leader, my executive leader, my regional, my divisional, whatever they are, is looking forward to meeting with you on Thursday at 2 PM. I've included them on this text along with their contact information. Which is the number that they'll be calling from get that simple message that allows your executive leader or your market leader to then insert a message. It's easy, right?

They go, Hey, Richard, looking forward to talking to you on Thursday. I've heard a lot of great things about you. That little thing right there will immediately improve by about 25%, 25 to 30%, the number of people that will show up to the meeting. We do it immediately. And what we're doing is not gaining agreement again. We're just solidifying the fact that you already said yes. Okay. And so that's easy.

Now, if you said a lot of appointments, you can't do this manually, but if you set, you know, depending on where you recruit, if you set 10 meetings a week, you can handle that probably just doing it manually from your phone. You create the script one time you cut and paste it, put the name in it. Send it. Okay. In fact, the market leader, executive leader can have another cut and paste that they simply insert that they sent. That's an important first step.

The next step is this, that one day prior. So if you've got more than 48 hours in between that meeting. So if you've got a three day window or greater one day prior, you show back up and you say, Hey, Richard, I talked to my executive leader. Looking forward to talking to you tomorrow at 2 PM. Okay. Now that doesn't need the executive leader, the market leader, whatever, whoever you're recruiting for, doesn't need them on this message. It's between you and them.

And here's why times the message, what you're going to get back is, Hey, my calendar's changed. I'm not able to make tomorrow work. Let's reschedule. I don't need my executive leader in the noise of that. So now I can reschedule and guess what? If you're a recruiter, you don't look off the part of a fool because someone knows shows An executive leader, you communicate this the day prior. This makes sense, right? An hour prior is where your third message comes into play.

One hour prior, we've sent this message.

Hey, talk to my executive leader today. Looking forward. They're looking forward to talking to you at 2 PM. And then I can see, cause I, the day before they had a chance to change it. I can see my executive leader on that, or I'm neutral. They don't have to be okay. Excuse me. So here's what happens next meeting takes place or it doesn't take place. Does that seem fair? Like at times, even when you do this process, about 10 to 15 people per hundred are not going to show up for the meeting.

So now what I need my executive leader with two messages. The first message is about five minutes in, if they call or they're doing a zoom and someone no shows you do what I do. Okay. I'll pull out my phone right now. It happens all the time. It happened to me today. Someone said a meeting with me. Someone knows, showed the meeting with me. You know what I do five minutes in, I send a message by text.

And when I send that message by text, I'm actually just saying, Hey, you scheduled a meeting and you're not in the meeting I'm on standby. Waiting for you to join. Okay, so I'll read it for you. It says, Hi, Travis, this is Richard Milligan. Are you coming to the zoom meeting scheduled with me? In this case, you'd say you're coming to the phone call that we scheduled that my recruiter scheduled with you. I'm available now.

And then I send a second message if it's because I want to create a little more noise and say if you need the meeting link you can connect through the calendar invite we sent. You can also connect here. Okay, I want to, I want those messages preformed and sent. About five minutes in when someone doesn't take the call to remind them of the meeting. When someone doesn't respond to that, that's going to happen.

When someone doesn't respond to that, I want a video message from the executive leader set. And that video message might sound along the lines of, Hey, it's Richard. I know we had a meeting scheduled for today. I missed you. I was really looking forward to sharing with you some of the things that we found in our research about you. You should be doing your research. I'd love to reschedule with you. I've cc'd in my recruiter.

If you've got a recruiter, I've cc'd in my person who's going to work to get you back on my calendar, looking forward to talking to you in the future. The reason why we do this. Is we want to remove all the tension, get that like there's, if you don't address this tension will exist. We want to be grace filled. We want to make it easy for them to come back and say, yes, the meeting, that is a great sequence. Now, if I was writing this as an email, I'd write a PS line.

Okay. This is really important. PS on the very first message that you send if you're a recruiter having a PS line that looks like this. PS Richard's active on LinkedIn. I've included his LinkedIn a link to his profile. Here you can find out more about Richard there, something along the lines of that, a PS line. Here's what we found. 'cause we've ab tested this to the tunes of thousands of messages trying to solve this problem for large organizations. The PS line. Okay. 18 out of a hundred.

Okay. Let me give you that, that stat again in our data, 18 out of a hundred 18 percent

that would no show would actually show up simply because that leader is active on the platform attached to the link that you sent and here's your big, aha, the personal brand, the social presence. Of the leader that you're trying to get into the meeting matters. It doesn't just matter. It matters a lot. We created a guide and a book that is geared around dominating recruiting in the digital world and what we've been able to unpack through our own data.

Through our own journey of helping people get the best results in recruiting and in the peripheral data that's around us that we're pulling from other research companies and data aggregators that are pulling some of this information. What we've been able to prove is that the personal brand of a market leader. Matters to more than just the little PS line on this text. It matters to whether when they show up, they go to next steps.

It matters to when they actually get an offer letter, whether they sign it, it matters to whether they get the offer letter, sign the offer letter and show up to work on the first day. It matters to this entire sequence in this entire process. So if you're a market leader. Here's a challenge for you. You may not have recruiting support. I didn't have recruiting support the entire time I was in the, I was in the corporate world. It was always me.

Okay. You being active on social as a recruiting leader, not a recruiter, but a recruiting leader. It matters a lot. If you've got recruiting partnerships or people are recruiting for you, it matters to them. It helps them get people to show up to meetings. If you don't have it, it matters to you because it helps you get people to show up to meetings. Okay.

Okay. So that little PS lines, a big piece of this. Don't miss that. And if you follow the simple process, once you set up an appointment, you will have way more success. Now, let me give you one added piece of information. For those of you that are recruiting at a high level, some of you are setting 20, 30, 40 appointments a week, sometimes maybe more. If you're doing that, you're going to want to embrace some technology here. One of the ways I've been able to do it very simply.

Is going to like Calendly or going to a tool like book now calendar and behind that in the settings of that tool, actually having it responsible for sending the initial text, sending the one day reminder and sending the one hour prior reminder. And now you can systematize this. So it's something to consider. I've used other tools like Grayscale, which actually is a text messaging software that can be used in the that's that can be used in your recruiting sequences.

So there's other ways to approach this, but I love building a system around this. And here's why I have totally bought into this idea. It's proven in my own life. It's proven in the, in the, um, successes of the people that I coach. It's proven in the, the successes, the companies that we consult and strategize with. That we never rise to the level of the goals that we establish. We always fall to level of systems that we implement. And so where you as a recruiter go, here's my goal.

And you go turn the treadmill from 10 to 12 and you run a little bit faster and you run a little bit longer and you're like, this is winning. And you will win if you work harder. There's just a way the universe has been wired to work. There's a comma there, not a, but there's a comma there. And okay. The and part is yes. Work hard. And implement a system here because the system is a direct, there's a direct connection there to the amount of success that you're going to have.

Okay. So implement this in your business. You'll see immediate results from it. And until I talk to you again, here on another recruiting conversations, have a great week, everybody. Want more recruiting conversations? You can register for my weekly email at 4crecruiting. com. If you need help creating your own unique recruiting system, you can book a time with me at BookRichardNow. com.