Sniper Recruiting: Quality Over Quantity

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 Mulligan and welcome to Recruiting Conversations. Welcome back to another Recruiting Conversations.

It's your host, Richard Mulligan.

And today I'm going to share a recent conversation that I have with a leader that was losing time. Now, I'm sure no one else has ever done that. Like me has made a decision that cost you time, right? When I think about, especially the older I get, how many places I have wasted my time. Gosh, I really don't want to look back on that because I realized that time is the only commodity that matters to us. Yes or yes. Like I, I can replace money, right? That replenishes itself. I can make more money.

But the one thing I'm realizing at the ripe old age and old is always relative, right? I remember when my mom and dad turned 30 and I thought my mom and dad were old and now I'm two decades past that. Time is something that's very precious to me. Part of that is that I have four kids. When I look at the next decade, 4 of the 5 of them will be adults And this season of life is going to pass me like that. I just know it.

And so time is something that is really precious and something we want to actually be very considerate of. And a recent conversation I had was this. A recruiting leader that had five appointments in a week, With recruits. And now you look at that and you go, when fist pump, when five meetings in a week, that's a huge win. And for most people that would be considered a huge win.

But as I dug beneath the surface of that, we begin to talk about those five or five appointments that they had for the five appointments with were, were with highly unqualified candidates. Let me just repeat that highly unqualified candidates, not qualified, unqualified. So as we begin to back into this and ask even deeper questions, which was. Where were the meetings at in relationship to where your office is located? How much time did it take to get there?

How much time did you time block for it? How much time was involved in the meeting, right? What we came up with was a loss of an equivalent of two and a half days for that particular week simply because we were meeting with unqualified candidates.

So the conversation really becomes this quality or quantity. Now, I know most of you that are here are probably like me. You ended up in this space of being a recruiting leader because you were a great salesperson and most great salespeople spent a season really focusing on quantity, number of dials that you make. And so we come from these environments where people talk about having this Power hour or, you know, this, these contests of how many connections can you make in a certain wind of time?

Like I remember one when I, as a salesperson dialing for dollars. Now there's one that a lot of you have probably heard of or something that's focused primarily on what I would call muddying the waters. Now, if you haven't, if you haven't heard that term, muddying the waters, then let me explain to you what I mean. A lot of times when we focus on, on quality, Versus quantity, what it means that we reduce the number of calls that we make.

But when we focus on quantity over quality, we increase the number of calls that we make. And our mindset, which I think is the wrong mindset, is Let's just go make contacts. Let's go create some energy, some synergy around our business. And while it's right, it's also wrong. And the reason why it's wrong, it's specifically for the recruiting leader.

Now, what is the recruiting leader? If this is your first podcast and you're showing up on the scene of this just now for the first time, the recruiting leader is someone who manages a team, but it's also responsible for recruiting to that team. If that's you, and it may not be you, And this is, there's lots of nuggets here for people that are recruiters.

But if that recruiting leader is you, what you know is this, you wear 15 hats almost every day that you're alive Monday through Friday, sometimes probably Saturday and Sunday, but you wear about 15 hats. And so you're leading the team. You're responsible for everything around the team and sometimes this is someone who's actually also producing, right?

This podcast gets heard by primarily real estate insurance and mortgage people that are in those roles And so if you're in that role in one of those industries One of the things that I know is that you are extremely busy And so the amount of time you can dedicate to recruiting is actually very small. You can't recruit 8 to 12 hours a day to recruit because you already have these pre existing responsibilities that you have to manage and manage well. So you have to be very concise.

You're a sniper when it comes to recruiting. So what does that mean? We're not going to focus over, we're not going to focus on quantity. We are going to focus on quality. Okay, so let's have that conversation because this is the conversation I had recently with the individual whose story I just shared. How do we get to the quality?

So here's what I know about the three industries that I just mentioned, insurance, real estate, and mortgages. There are some tools available to you that will help you get to a place where you can determine, is this a quality individual that I should be investing my time with? Okay, we're going to talk about those tools today. Now, I saw some recent research from an organization inside that's specific to the mortgage industry.

Let me just give you a stat as to why quality is important to you in this industry. And this is really true of most industries. Okay, the stat that I saw was that 60% of all loan officers, loan originators, loan consultants, loan advisors, whatever you want to call them, that 60 percent of loan originators actually create almost 94 percent of all production. Let's reverse engineer that. 40 percent of all loan originators create about 6 percent of all production. So what does this mean?

Well, wouldn't you rather focus your efforts and your energies On the 60 percent that are delivering the 94 percent of all production again. Yes or yes. And this is true about most industries. This is not an anomaly. The mortgage industry is not the golden unicorn in the sales universe. Okay. Most industries have very similar data that speaks to this. The top producers are generating the majority of the business, right? The Pareto principle says there's this 80 20 rule, right?

Where it's 80% Of all production comes from 20 percent of the people in the business. Now, inside that Perry Duncan wrote a book called 80 20 marketing. And one of the things that he studied inside that book is the Pareto principle inside the Pareto principle, which is that there's actually an 80 20 rule inside the 80 20 rule. And what I just gave you, Was that data right? Like 94 percent of all productions coming from a handful of people inside this industry.

So we, quality matters because I could take, if I focus my energy on just generally every loan originator in this industry, what would happen is I would chase my tail on the 40 percent to find out that I don't want them on my team. If I was to focus on quantity, Over this quality.

So I'm going to give you three questions that you should be asking yourself before you make contact. What does this mean? We're going to do some research. Okay, these three questions are really going to qualify some places that you should be going and doing research prior to actually making contact. Because I do think that there are some places that you can go and see, is this somebody that you would like to have on your team? Now let me pause here for a second.

Some of this, I'm not going to qualify any of this as in HR compliant. I'm not going to dive off into that. You need to do that at an organizational level. But one of the things I'm going to teach you is how to have the eyes to see whether this is someone that makes sense for you to go and pursue.

I'm not qualifying people on things that are going to fall under an HR umbrella, but what I'm saying is that As having spent more than 20 years as a recruiting leader myself and almost 15 years of that in one industry, what I know is that there are some indicators out there that I can see. For example, on social would be one area, right? I can see things. That would tell me, is this person going to be a fit?

Is this person going to actually be someone who is delivering production, has influence, some things that actually matter to my brand? So we're going to talk about those things, okay? So here are three things, three questions I want you to ask yourself prior to making contact.

Number one, do they have a social presence? Okay, why does this matter? What I know is this, is that those that have the strongest social presence, And the three industries that I discussed are the ones that have the most influence.

If I go back and I look at that data specific to the mortgage industry of these top originators that are creating almost 94 percent of all production, what I know is that majority of them, if not all of them, it's a really high percentage of them have strong social brands. Okay. They get, if you're going to be a professional, they, it is 2019. We go back and it's social Facebook really got strong, like 2009.

So we're a decade into Facebook over overtaking, uh, our environment in terms of social presence and a decade into this does social presence matter? Yes, it does. If you're in a front facing business where, you know, for, for real estate, insurance and mortgages. The consumer relationship matters and matters a lot. Your referral partner relationships matter and matter a lot. What's the easiest way to maintain that? Having a social presence.

One of the things that we've seen on this end is that as you look at producers that have no social presence, now it's not always true, but at a high percentage, this is true, where there's a lack of social presence, those people fall into the category of low end producers. So if I'm going to focus on quality over quantity, then social presence is going to matter. Now, let's go one step beyond that and say, what are some of the things that we can see through social presence?

A lot of organizations are now incorporating a review of social presence before they hire someone. Why is that? I can tell if someone's involved in the community from their social presence, I can tell if someone's got focuses on social presence.

That are in alignment with my business simply through their social presence Some of the things I can see are not positive are negative someone who's spewing negativity Look, it's not my kind of person like one of our one of our mantras that we abide by That's one of our core value statements is no jerks allowed. How do I figure out if you're a jerk?

Gosh, if you spend any time on social media, there's a lot of hateful things that get spewed out there I can tell in just a few second glance at your social profile You Whether you're going to be positive or whether you're going to be negative. That's an easy way for me to say in a quality conversation, is this my tribe? Is this my person? Is someone, look, one of the things that I've seen is a little people posting videos of themselves getting drunk at the lake every weekend, right?

That's not going to fit into my professional presence, especially if I'm a recruiting leader, because recruiting leaders are fishing in small ponds or fishing in markets or they're fishing in a state or at most a regional. You know, as fishing in a multi state area, brand is important, and you get that the people you're bringing into your team is an extension of your brand, right? And so, I'm going to look at the contextualization of the things that you're talking about.

I'm going to look at the videos that you're posting, and if you're someone right now that's going, Oh gosh, I hadn't thought about someone being able to see that, and you don't want people to see that, guess what? You can protect that, and you can go from having a public image.

You know setting to having a private setting so people can see that and so that actually can shield some of this So I can't see it and that's up to you to do that But if it's available to the public i'm going to go look for that and i'm going to identify this person As being someone in terms of social of being a quality conversation that I want to have Or being a conversation that I don't want to have. Okay So the first question you ask yourself is do they have a social presence?

Can I find them on social media and if I can What does that brand look like? Okay, here's the second question you're going to ask yourself.

What are their production numbers? Now, you can't always see this in every industry, but guess what? Production numbers matter, yes or yes. Going and focusing my energies on low end producers is a waste of my time. Okay. Now I get the fact that if you're one year into the industry and you haven't yet arrived and you're still looking to trying to build your book of business, that's different. Okay. But production numbers matter.

Get your hands on some production numbers that will allow you to have a better conversation. Your time is the only commodity that matters. I'll repeat that again. Your time is the only commodity that matters. If you can recruit in 30 to 45 minutes per day, guess what? You'll recruit every day. But if this is a conversation about smiling and dialing, if this is a conversation about just making contact with people, it's a waste of your time. So know the production numbers.

So the second question here you're gonna ask yourself prior to making contact is what are their production numbers? Third question, how long have they been employed? What is their average tenure? Look, length of time employer matters. And there's places where you can get that data. There's places where you can get that information, right? LinkedIn is an easy place. Now, look, LinkedIn can be fluffed, right? I can go make up whatever numbers I want to.

And to some degree, LinkedIn is a little bit like a resume for people in that it is fluffed. If you've ever gone through the process of verifying Dates of employment, most people extend the resume by a month or two either direction. And I get it, no one wants to have a gap in employment, right? Some people will disqualify immediately because of that. So they're covering their bases in some of that.

But look, length of, in a general term, length of time at employer in a larger window of time matters. Okay, I can get that at LinkedIn, I can get that on LinkedIn, and look, in the three communities that I coach, insurance, real estate, mortgages, you've got licensing portals, right? Like the NMLS, Consumer Access Licensing Portal, is an incredible portal to go find and look and see what tenure actually is, okay?

Like length of time at employer matters, someone that's transitioned, that's got seven employers in two years, look, if you're going to make that many bad decisions in a two year window of time, I don't want to be the eighth. That's not going to be a quality conversation for you. Okay, so what I'm going to say is this. Length of time an employer matters. I'm going to figure out how I can get that information, and I'm going to have some prerequisites around that.

I'm working with a company right now that says 3 years average tenure over the last 10 years is what they're looking for. Now, is it a disqualifier, disqualifier if you're at 2. 2 years and 10 months? No, there's other things that they evaluate. And production matters. That's another evaluation, another piece of the evaluation equation that they're looking at. Social presence is another part that they're looking at. All these things matter to you. Okay. So figure out your licensing portal.

If you don't understand what that is in the mortgage industry, that's simply the NMLS consumer access, get comfortable with that portal because you can see length of time and employer and you can qualify better. Okay. Let's someone else chase the low end producers, right? Let's be, if you're a part of my audience and you're listening to the 34th podcast, please do me a favor, take some of the content that I'm delivering to you and use it. Okay. Your time. precious to you.

And if you're in a season like me and I value my time and so if I can put quality time into this You And I can disqualify people that would just be based off of sheer numbers, trying to get in front of sheer numbers. Then we can get to a better conversation because look, and the conversation that I had where someone had wasted two and a half days in one week, this isn't just about wasting the time on the phone. This is about wasting time. In the three major components, right?

Yes, we have to identify talent. So as I'm identifying talent, I'm going to disqualify people based on these three parameters. The other thing is this, is that I'm going to look at my initial contact, and there's a lot of energy that goes into initial contact. That may be on linked in. That may be through phone. That's then going to progress along into a face to face meeting. There's an enormous amount of time that gets wrapped up in that.

And then beyond that, where where the great recruiters actually excel is in the third component, which is going to be in the follow up. Why in the world would we follow up with someone that's an unqualified candidate, right? So this becomes a multiple time multiplier for you. This isn't about just making phone contact. Mhm. and wasting your time there. Multiply, multiply. When you're done, this is a very large equation in relationship to your time.

So let's be recruiting leaders that focus over quality and not quantity.

Look, here's one thing that you're going to be up against. If you're at a market leader role, a lot of times you're in middle management and you've got layers of management over. You might have an area, you might have a regional, you might have a divisional. What I have seen to a fault, now if you're a divisional, a regional, an area, this is a great, this is a great piece for you. What happens when organizations stop growing or they churn More than they're actually growing.

A lot of times the noise starts at the top, which is, we need to grow. And so the natural knee jerk reaction as that message comes from a CEO or a president to a divisional, a regional, or an area, is that they immediately begin to move towards some of these things I've already mentioned. Let's do a power hour. Two times per week and we're gonna have contest.

Okay, I get that you're working to try and motivate But the concept of this if you're missing quality, and it's simply quantity that Concepts broken and what you're doing is you're motivating your people towards in a broken model Which means that they're just gonna lose more So you've got to educate one of the things that we say here is that you educate before you motivate or you discourage You Let me say that again. Educate before you motivate or you discourage.

If you're in that divisional or regional area role and you're not educating your people to this particular space, that quality conversations matter over quantity, then what will happen is you're just accelerating the rate that they will actually lose, the rate of the time that they're investing that they will lose. Okay, so this is important for you to get. Here's, here's an equation for success. Okay, it's education plus motivation plus application equals transformation.

So you start with educating people and then you motivate them. And if they will apply that, then their business will be transformed. So there's some great content for you today. Take this, apply it to your business. And what it will do is it's a multiplier for the number of wins that you will have. It's a reducer for the amount of time that you actually have to invest into this to win.

And so Share this with somebody that needs this, because there's a lot of people out there like me that came from a sales background that simply focus on muddying the waters and making contacts and they think because they're doing that they're winning. Be better than that, right? Like one of the things that I tell my son all the time who plays basketball, we gotta be better than the refs because he plays basketball.

Like we gotta be better than the underlying factors in our markets and we all have a lot of candidates in our markets. That are people that will not bring value to our team. Let somebody else recruit them. Don't let the listeners of this podcast be those.

So until we meet again in our next podcast, share this with someone that this will bring value to and would love to hear your feedback. I got several messages here over the course of last week. From people that said, awesome, love what you're doing. Great content. Keep it up. Appreciate the positive feedback. We invest somewhere between 500 every single time we kick off a podcast, because that's what it actually takes for us to produce these.

Share this with somebody that will bring value to them and drop me a line and let me know it's bringing value to you. So until next week Enjoy your week everybody, and we look forward to sharing another podcast with you then. All the best. 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.