Right-Brain vs. Left-Brain: Balancing Logic and Emotion in Recruiting

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, everybody. Welcome back to recruiting conversations.

It's your host, Richard Milligan. And I'm excited to bring you today's podcast for a number of reasons. I have a lot of people in this season that are bringing me problems that seem to be consistent with a lot of people in a marketplace. struggling with the same problem. I took about somewhere between 80 and 100 hours over the course of this last month to ask myself the question, what's changed with recruiting?

And the reason why I bring this topic up here in this podcast is that I have had no less than half a dozen amazing recruiting leaders. And I've shown up on my calendar, have had no relationship with me, but have found me through LinkedIn, through this podcast or YouTube shorts, and have presented

the same problem with me, which is this. The storyline is that I've been really successful in my career as a recruiting leader. And over the past six months to a year, it's as though I've lost my mojo. I can't recruit. I begin to ask myself this question. Why are these people who all have very similar? Attractive leader framework, right? I would say they're attractive. Leaders are people that have clarity around who they are as a leader. They're living those values out there.

Leaders have a vision that would historically have been able to motivate people to change, and I'm asking myself this question. Why are all of these leaders struggling to recruit? Here's the conclusion I came to. If you're in an industry Where over the last five years, recruiters have been able to recruit using market intel, market data, production numbers, volume units, transaction information.

One of the things that your recruits and probably you have experienced at a really high level is more recruiting pressure than you've ever experienced ever in the history of recruiting. And what I'm convinced is that that this is causing behavioral change that we've never experienced before. And let me explain to you how I come to this conclusion. Think about how typically salespeople would respond to recruiting pressure.

And a framework that I would call emotional response or emotional recruiting or emotional persuasion is primarily how most leaders

have had their historical success. As it is connected to recruiting. So let me give you example of this. If someone is going to be persuaded emotionally, they're going to get excited quickly. There's there are some factors here that have been true. You've experienced this, right? Which is that you show up, you presented them well, and then they say things like, I feel Being a part of your team is right for me. My gut is telling me they repeat things to you.

Like they'd say, I love that you said fill in the blanks about your company or about your team or about your leadership. I would say that in this framework, the recruit gets excited relatively quickly. And it's really more of an emotional recruiting sequence, an emotional recruiting process to get this person into your team. What has happened over the last five years as these data tools have surfaced is that we've all gotten really good at using them.

Sorting who are the top producers in our market. Sorting even the geography where they actually make, they close their deals in. Sorting, you know, Who they do business with looking to see if they've got a social presence and what we've done is taken a really large audience that we would have say historically pursued and we've narrowed this down to a very small audience and if I take, let's say the intelligence from one industry, say the mortgage industry.

And you look at over the, or at the beginning of this year, how many

recruits were in that industry? It was well over 300, 000 salespeople, loan officers in the industry. Now that numbers changed significantly this year, but within that audience of over 300, 000 licensed salespeople, what we have are approximately 13, 000 people that are doing the bulk of the business. So up to this point, last five year point. All of our recruiting energy was going at 300, 000 plus people.

And now all of that energy for about a five year window has been going at approximately 13, 000 people. And what that has created is a more sophisticated recruit. Think about it like this. Think about your organization. You have the people that are at the field level. You have market managers, area managers, regional managers, divisional managers. People that are in that higher leadership, maybe executive leadership role, president, CEO, owner.

And if you think about going up that hierarchical ladder, the higher you go on that ladder, the more sophisticated the buyer is. If you present today, an idea to purchase something to an executive, They are more logical in their approach to buy in, to make an agreement with what your offer is. And the lower you go, the more emotional that person is to buy into it, to say yes to it.

And historically, if you could convince someone emotionally to be a part of what you had to offer, and that would typically fall into things of the framework of, More money, better support, better pricing, easier workflow, whatever it is that you might sell as part of your process that has worked historically.

What I would challenge you to think about is that all of this recruiting pressure has now created a more sophisticated recruit that operates more logically than they ever have historically. They operate more like someone who's in the executive leadership role when they make a decision, simply because they've been exposed to all this recruiting pressure. And we have all of these leaders showing up the same way that they have shown up year over year and have actually won doing so.

And now we end up in this season where the way that they've always presented, the way they've always recruited doesn't actually work.

Here's the way someone who's very logical at all. Would actually handle a recruiting sequence. They would get as much information as possible. That's how your executives would actually handle buying a software, buying something that was expensive for the organization. It's like when someone finds out that there's a recruiting strategist, coach, consultant out there, and I get invited into an executive leadership meeting.

And they vet me, they're trying to get as much information from Richard around how he would present and what he would present around on stage. They don't just watch a video of mine on YouTube or listen to a podcast of mine and say, he's the right person. They might listen to that and then invite me into a conversation, but that next conversation, they're going to ask a lot of detailed questions.

I've had recruiting leaders tell me recently that they've had a recruit that presented them with three pages. They didn't ask this. They didn't speak it. They literally had a document that they presented of three pages of questions they wanted answered before they were willing to go to any next steps. And they said they were giving that same three page questionnaire to no less than a dozen other people that they were engaging in conversations.

It's a very logical recruiting process. Most recruiting leaders aren't well equipped to present in a way, logically, that motivates a recruit to change. And let me explain to you why. The way that most recruiting leaders present logically is, my company's better. Whatever it is, whatever falls in that framework, my company is better.

If you were to present differently with what I would call future language, you can meet a recruit logically where they're at yet bringing so much more energy to the recruiting process, projecting where you're going out into the future where there's way more energy available to your recruiting idea, to your recruiting framework, to your recruiting sequence that you would be able to motivate the recruiter What I would call an unmotivated recruit to continue the journey with you.

And here's how you do this. It's a vision language. When I say future. What we're talking about is vision language. What's your vision for this recruit? What's your vision for this leader? If I'm setting what the recruit and this recruit is producing three transactions a month, can I cast a vision for this recruit to get to six and not just Wordcraft this, but logically, can I visually vision as I can see you logically, can I lay out a step by step framework that I believe in?

That I'm completely sold on being able to get you from three transactions

to six transactions a month. There has to be logic in it. I can't just say we're all about helping you grow your business. You have this awesome support. We have this internal coaching. Those things Until they're actually documented and visual in a presentation map, they don't have much energy associated with them. So I can meet a producer and I can double their business in a vision presentation. I can meet a leader and help them grow their team in a visual vision presentation.

I can meet someone who wants to go from being maybe 20th in their ranking of, Uh, in the market to being number one, visually in a vision presentation. The challenge for you as leaders is to begin taking the time to have actual strategy for the future, right? When I say vision, that gets lost and it gets redefined in society today by lots of people. Some people would say, what's the BHAG, the big hairy audacious goal for the future? Well, that's partially right.

But it also has a road map associated with it. If it's simply an idea out in the future that we want to build to this, to something in a market number one or X number of people or X number of billion or whatever you might say that would fall into that, that BHAG goal for the future. But if you don't have a roadmap for it, it has no substance to the recruit logically. It's all emotion. Here's a couple of questions to ask yourself.

If you sit with a recruit, can the recruit logically see that your roadmap, right? Vision roadmap to what you want to achieve, that your roadmap is better than where they are. And I can tell you where most of them are. Most of them have no roadmap. They're a part of an organization that probably has some amazing things, but at a market level, there isn't anybody showing up and saying, here's where we're going to go this year. And how's we're here's how we're going to get there.

Let alone someone that's saying, here's where we're going to go in 10 years. And here's how we're going to get there. Here's another question you can ask yourself. Does your scenario that you're presenting them with logically play out better than their current scenario? And if you're thinking to yourself, our tools are awesome now, the problem is that you're thinking now. When you say compensation now, Support now, products now, tech stack now.

When you start talking about the things that you have, you're talking about the present moment.

And the challenge for you is to stop talking about now, because what you can create into the future, that's where all the energy is. You want to recruit someone? You've got to start laying out a very specific plan for how you're going to get from now to this amazing place in the future. If I went to my daughter right now, and I said, Haven, Between Christmas and New Year's, we're going to go on a family vacation, or we're thinking about going on a family vacation. What do you think about that?

Haven would say, I would rather stay home. I would rather ride my horse. And I would rather hang out with my friends over Christmas break because haven doesn't know what's possible into the future. If I said to her, let me show you some pictures of Disney world. Let me show you what the rides look like there. Let me show you what we could do while we were there and what it would look like to take the path to get there. Would we drive? Would we fly? Where would we stay? How long would we stay?

If I pulled out some photos and said, we're gonna go to, we may go to Borat. Let me show you what it looks like to stay in a little tiki hut over the water, and all of the adventurous things that we would be doing while we're there, and the beautiful scenery that's there. I have no doubt in my mind that I would be able to shift Haven's thinking to what I have now, to what's possible in the future.

And the energy associated with that would have her excited, jazzed, ready to, you know, Go do whatever it is that we're wanting to do as a family as a leader. When you say this is what we have, your recruit will say, I'd rather stay home and do the thing that I'm already doing. And so you've got to ask yourself that question. Does this scenario logically play out better and not just better, but significantly better than their current scenario? As leaders, we've got to embrace this.

This is the future of recruiting. When you can impress. Upon a recruit where you're going into the future, what you start to do is I just sat here and I said, what does, what goes through recruits mind in this situation? A couple of things takes place.

They, if I'm not in this market and I'm launching a new team in this market, When I say these are all the reasons why we're coming to your market and this is what it looks like into the future in this market, they know that launching a team in this market is not optional. It's going to happen. And what happens is that when you can present this amazing view of what's going to take place when we come into your market, that this recruit now has to seriously consider.

You as an option, you would present yourself as understanding the market. You'd present yourself as being committed to the market.

You'd present yourself as likely to succeed in this market because you're strategic in your approach. You'd present yourself as a great leader. How you recruit reveals who you are as a leader. Are you transactional? Or are you transformational? Are you a leader with a vision? Are you a leader with no vision? Are you a leader who is strategic? Or are you a leader that's not strategic?

The other thing that this does is this, is it shifts The language, even in a first conversation, let me give you an example of this. If I called a recruit in a market and I said, we don't know each other. The reason why I'm reaching out to you is because I've done some homework on you. I'd love everything that I've seen about you. And here are the things I've seen about you that I loved. And the reason why I'm reaching out to you is that I think the market's changing dramatically right now.

And because of that, I'd love to invite you into a 15 minute meeting where if you said yes to that, the only thing that I'd be wanting to accomplish that meeting is getting to know you for the future. All of that's great scripting framework, but if I have a vision and you're one of the three people in this market that I want to have a conversation with around launching a team, it shifts the dynamics of that conversation. The dynamic of what I would present to you would be this.

You're one of three people that we've identified as wanting to have a conversation with because we would love to share our vision with you for how we enter your market over the course of the next 12 months. And how we actually go to being number one and purchase market share. Would you be interested in seeing that vision? It shifts the language. It shifts the energy around this recruiting.

And you've heard me say this from time to time in this podcast, recruiting is simply a transference of passion. It's a transference of energy. It's a transference of belief. And the truth about belief is this is that belief is not an absolute belief sits on a continuum. And if there's a 0 to 10, and 0 is you have no belief, and 10 is you have the highest belief that you can possibly have, you've got to be out here at a level 10.

With your belief system because you can't convince me that you're going to enter this market and you're going to go to number one Unless you have this amazing belief system and part of what will actually take you on this Continuum to attend is your research of the market your research of the recruits that you want to go after your understanding of your own roadmap your plan around recruiting and retaining and coaching and How you're going to sell in this

market and who your partners are going to be And all of these things are part of that vision Structure that you should be able to communicate to people. And when I'm up, when you're a level 10, you have no problem recruiting people to your idea. So we go back to the, how do we, what do we impress this recruit with? We have more resources than they currently have. And it's not necessarily because you have more resources.

It's simply because you're able to articulate the framework of your resources better that they could lose business when you enter the market, because you're going to enter the market, right? And you have a strategy for being dominant in the market that they don't understand the market as well as you do. All of these things are possible when you start to invest time here in this space.

And ultimately at the end of the day, you can come across a recruit that says, I'm happy where I'm at and present to them this idea that we've been selective about who we're selecting and having a conversation with because we have a vision plan that says, we're going to go to number one and I can sit with you and present that vision plan to you and I can actually create FOMO and FOMO is real.

This idea that someone would be fearful of missing out or fearful of you taking some of their Business are taking some of their key people. All of that's very real. And when you show up with a very low, low belief system and transactional in your presentation, you have no shot of creating that because it all looks the same. Or at best, it looks like it might be a little bit better. And what you have to present is different because different is better than better.

And as we sit here at this moment, one of the things that I'm convinced of and why I'm coming to this podcast to share this with you is that as a recruiting leader, If you don't pivot now, the future version of you is going to be having that same conversation that I've had with a lot of people recently, which is at some point in my career. I've had a lot of success and I'm winning. But what happened? I don't understand it. And it's not you. It's that the recruit.

And the way that they are recruited has changed because the amount of pressure that we're applying to that recruit, and you've got to sit here and say, and assess what am I doing? How am I presenting? And how do I improve it? Because the best version of you is going to be able to engage people at an emotional level. And once the emotion's gone, they're able to look at it logically.

And make a decision around what you presented to them emotionally because your belief system is so strong, but it's also so logical that they have to join you. And when you get to that level of belief and that level of logic, there's nothing that can stop you from dominating the marketplace. Earlier this week, I met an executive for the first time. We engaged on LinkedIn. I said, we haven't ever met. I'd love to meet you. I said this live in my newsfeed. And I was like, here's my life calendar.

Set up a meeting. We'd love to invest an hour with you. We get into a conversation for an hour. They're attracting low level talent. They're not attracting any high level talent. I laid out a roadmap for him over the course of about 30 minutes. I explained to him why I believe they were attracting low level talent and not attracting high level talent. And at the end of that, I literally said this, you're crazy. If you don't hire me to help you. And I didn't say it.

in a beating my chest kind of way of the Muhammad Ali line. I'm the greatest there ever was. I didn't say it in that framework. I said it authentically. I said it real. I set it from a deep rooted place because I know my strategy. I know how it helped them. I know the amount of value that me and my team would bring to them. I know where we would start. I know where we would begin and I know where we'd finish because I've got a very clear vision around this.

So I can sit in that moment with an executive who's built a multi billion dollar organization and say, you're crazy if you don't hire me. That on the continuum is the place that you've got to get as a recruiting leader in order to recruit the talent that you need to recruit in order to be dominant in your marketplace. And when you get there, it's the funnest place that you can be. Because you can pick and choose the people you want on your team.

You're not stuck just hoping that someone says yes or hoping some company implodes and that you show up at the right place at the right time. This right here is the future of recruiting. Follow some of my content. In the coming weeks I'll be talking about this more. I just this last week did four or five masterminds that were like four and five hours apiece where I'm sitting with some executive leaders and presenting this to them. Go deeper here. More is available here.

And if there's anything that I can do. To assist you in this framework of, yes, I need this. My calendar's live. It's bookrichardnow. com. It's at the end of my outro. So my LinkedIn profile, it's on my Linktree account. You'll find it in a lot of places. And if this is like the aha, and like, I'm struggling and I can't seem to break through to recruits. And I've got this massive pipeline of people that are just saying I'm happy where I'm at, or it goes to me and not going anywhere.

This is why go here. And until I talk to you again, another recruiting conversation. 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.