The Recruiter’s Secret Weapon: Storytelling

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. Welcome back to another Recruiting Conversations. I'm your host, Richard Milligan.

Thanks for joining me today. I'm excited to welcome you. Do what I always do on this podcast, which is to share recent recruiting conversation with you. I had a recent conversation in a coaching session and it was, I was on the stage and the place that I'm working with this leader is identifying their core values and being able to share stories with recruits. That fully explain why that core value is important to the leader and in essence proves that leader is who they say that they are.

So I want to talk about stories today. I want to talk about the importance of stories. So we're going to do a couple of things here. One, I'm going to share with you live, but we are going to go to that. We're going to go to that coaching clip so she can hear it in action. But we, as recruiters I have found, we underestimate the power of story. I hear a lot of recruiters using words and statements that

are pretty abstract thoughts. And I don't think that we, when we think about using words like culture or we're innovative or best in class, or we're cutting edge, or even ideas like tech stack, our tech stack is amazing in some way, shape, or form we're communicating. And I'll put quotations around where we are awesome. And ultimately the, we are awesome framework is actually, It's not easy to move towards.

And we think that when we hype and when we sell, that it makes it easier for people to move towards us. And what I found is that if you don't use the right framework, it is more difficult for the recruit to move towards you. The reason why is that when you start using words like culture, innovation, best in class, cutting edge tech stack, we start using those frameworks.

If you went to a room of several hundred people and asked them all to define culture, just that single word, you would have all, you'd probably have 200 different answers. So we come to this place where we have to agree that those things that we typically talk about, that we typically share, they're not easy to move towards. When you're recruiting, a very simple idea to remember is this. People move towards certainty. People move towards clarity.

So the thing that will make some of these abstract thoughts and most of the abstract thoughts very concrete, very easy to move towards are stories. So I'm going to give you A couple of new job titles today that maybe someone hasn't given to you as a recruiting leader. And one of those job titles is this, is that you're a professional storyteller.

Now, if you've ever heard a professional storyteller get on stage, you know that there's a lot of influence and impact to be had in telling a story correctly. One of the people that comes to mind for me is a guy by the name of Andy Andrews. Andy Andrews has written a number of books. Several of those books I have each one of my kids read. We have our kids when they're coming up to the age of 16 read 25 books in order for us to buy them the first car.

So they've got to read 25 books and then they have to write a 300 word essay on each one of those books. And several of the books that are in that list are Andy Andrews books. One of those books is The Traveler's Gift. And one of the things I know about Andy Andrews is that Andy Andrews, if you've ever heard him speak on stage, and I have multiple times, he may be one of the best storytellers of our time, truly one of the best storytellers of this era.

And Andy Andrews can tell a story and you walk away from it. And it's a, it's memorable. Like I still remember probably five to seven years ago, maybe longer.

Andy Andrews is on stage and he's telling a story. And if you go to YouTube, you can see the story is YouTube. Andy Andrews, butterfly effect. It is a powerful story that years later has stuck with me. And so Andy Andrews is memorable. If Andy Andrews is memorable, Andy Andrews is transportable to any moment. And, and as recruiting leaders, one of the things that we want is we want to be relevant.

In a moment, when someone is ready for a change, how many times have you been recruiting that top salesperson in your market, that person you really wanted on your team. And in a moment, in that moment, something got said along the lines of, look, if I ever go to make a move, you'll be one of the first people I call. We get really excited about that. We walk away from that meeting going, man, I've got a chance. I've got a shot some point down the line.

Six months later, you look up that person's at another company and you're thinking to yourself, why didn't they call me? One of the reasons why they didn't call you is that you weren't relevant in that moment when change surfaced its head. Like when that moment trigger event, whatever it was, something changed, something happened, and they're now needed to make a move.

You weren't top of mind in that moment, and one of the reasons why you weren't relevant in that moment is that you weren't memorable when they invest the time with you in a prior season. So what are one of the reasons why you're a professional storyteller is that man, if you tell a story, you're memorable. You're incredibly memorable. So here's what I want to do. I want to break away from this. We're going to come back to it.

So don't go anywhere because I'm going to give you some great context around this, but I want to dive into this coaching session. And so we're going to jump into this for about six minutes. We'll come back here in just a second. Okay. So stay with me. The story goes into three pieces of framework. Okay. Every great story has a beginning. Every great story has conflict and struggle and every great story has overcome.

That's the movie. Yep. Think about your favorite movie. There was a beginning, there's conflict, struggle, and there's overcome. Okay. And it doesn't have to go in that sequence. When you think about movies, sometimes you start, I'm thinking of like a Tom Cruise science fiction movie where he starts in the middle of a battlefield. I wasn't the beginning. I began to actually go backwards to get to the beginning of the story.

So what can be a challenge for you is, is the, is having it's when we recruit, what's natural for us is to tell, overcome, to overcome part of the story. Things are awesome. I think of like the Lego song, that's the average recruiter. Everything is awesome. And it's like, wait a second, that's not true. We all know it's not true. And immediately our antennas go up and we're like, can't trust that story. Can't trust that person, right? This is not ESPN's top 10 to 10.

This is, but you can, as an example, you could say, listen, I love this company. And I've been here for X number of years and I won't ever go anywhere else. And I could start with that. The things I love about the company. Okay. But I found that you can make a simple statement and it takes, it forces you to go to conflict and struggle and go back to another place, but it hasn't always been this way. It has to fit your story has to fit in that framework, or it's not a believable story.

Does that make sense? And what we're trying to do here is accelerate trust building with this individual. So put it into that framework. So I'll tell a story about leaving home at the age of 19. And only having them poverty and kind of planting my flag in the ground and saying I will never live like that and going to college for one semester when you can only be successful through going to college.

And it wasn't the age of entrepreneurship and YouTube and learning things online and leaving a semester out of college because I hated it so much learning in the classroom was just not my thing. And then learning that I could develop myself at an early age, I fast forward to 25, I'm the youngest sales manager at a fortune 500 company, age of 27, I'm the youngest regional manager at that same company.

And I can tell that story, but the confidence struggle part of it is like me coming out of poverty, me going to college for a semester and ultimately failing out of college. Okay, confidence struggle there to get to the overcome. So I could say, where's the beginning, how I was raised. Okay. Where's the confidence struggle, how I was raised leading up into college and dropping out of college. Where's the overcome. I became, I really developed my learned how to develop myself.

I would read 50, 60 books a year. I have since I was in my early twenties and I, by the age of 25, I'd taken in

more information than most 55, six year olds I was leading because I was just, I was studying Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn and Les Brown and some of the oldies and the great men of the past. And I would take those things and apply them to my business. And you'd have these other people that had another 30, 40, 50 years of experience at times almost on me and didn't have the head knowledge to apply because they weren't dynamic and trying to learn and grow.

So I could share that experience. And that would point to personal development, personal growth as being one of my really strong core values. So when you get to that and how we think about this is that we, you and I as recruiting leaders, the recruits over here, create a visual for this for you. So the recruits over here, And when we arrive on the scene for the first time, we, the recruiting leader over here, and we got this big gap in between recruits right here, we're right here.

And the only thing, literally I believe this, the only thing that's preventing that person from walking across this bridge is an aha moment, is an aha. That's it. I think a job title for us. Todd is that we're epiphany bridge builders. That's it. Like we build bridges to help people go, Oh, like we're epiphany bridge builders and how, and the connection in the bridge is our story, right? So the aha moment is my story.

And so I'm sharing my story here with you because ultimately you and I over here as a recruiting leader, we're abstract, they don't know us. And even when I start to share things like, Hey, I'm all about personal growth and personal development and hard work. And these things that I, that we've talked about here today, when I think about those, they're all abstract thoughts. My story makes them concrete, right?

The story exists to prove the takeaway or the concrete, the story exists to prove the abstract. When we show up and we just say, this is who we are. If we don't connect it to stories, we will leave that meeting no better than we were when we showed up because we'll leave being an abstract person. I've got to make myself concrete to the individual and my stories is what does that. When someone goes, wow, there's a leader that has very similar values as mine.

And I don't have any question that he is who he says he is. And that's the aha moment that in whether they joined then or join a year or three years later, I've got to build that epiphany bridge for them.

Now that epiphany bridge sometimes goes the other direction. It goes this way, which is that they realize who we are. And that's, they don't want to be aligned with that. We're back here live in the podcast booth now. And I love that title of epiphany bridge builder. That's what we are as recruiting leaders. We are building these aha moments for people where someone would say, look, I'm good, I'm not looking to make a move. And you give someone just the right story with just the right framework.

And that becomes a springboard for someone to go more is available. And ultimately that's an important framework. Your story should be revealing to people more is available. How, what, one of the things that is true about the more being available is that you, the leader, the person doing the recruiting to the team is the product. So your stories need to be about you, the leader, the product.

And so you, the leader being the product, tell stories around your core values, around your greater reason why you do what you do, around the vision for your team in the future. To be a great recruiting leader, you must tell stories around those three components, your core values, your why, and your vision. Now those stories have to fit within the right framework. So what most leaders do is they walk around telling what I would call these highlight real stories.

They're the ESPN's top 10 at 10 stories. If you've ever seen ESPN's top 10 sports moments of the day at 10 p. m., you know what I'm talking about. It's nothing more than one big highlight reel. Now here's the problem with this. Highlight reels actually undermine building trust. They don't accelerate trust. And when I'm trying to recruit you, one of the things I'm trying to do is I need you to trust me. And when you think about recruiting, most people have worked at multiple different places.

And most people have worked at a someplace where they've been oversold and under delivered in some way, shape, or form. I saw a recent survey for an industry that said that 68 percent of recruits said that they still, after one year, hadn't made up their mind whether the company was the right fit or not, whether they were at the right place or not.

I would dare say that data points to the fact that that recruit has been sold something that didn't get delivered and they're still waiting to see if that thing that they got sold is going to be delivered. So as a recruiting leader, what you're up against is a lot of people have oversold things and then not delivered on them, whether it's intentional or not intentional, doesn't matter. It's happened. So our stories have to be believable and highlight real stories aren't believable. They're not.

So now we have to go to what makes for a believable story. A believable story has three important factors in it. There's three ingredients. Okay. Yes. The highlight reel is part of that. Think about any great movie that you love watching. Okay. That great movie does have an overcome part of the story. There's a highlight reel part of the story, but there are two other elements in that story that make it interesting, that make it believable. There's always a beginning.

Stories always have a starting point. And then stories, great stories have conflict or struggle in them. And as humans, a story that has a beginning, a story that has conflict and struggle and a story that has overcome or highlight reel in it is a believable story. It's also a memorable story, which means that you can now tell me that story and be transported into the future with me.

If you tell me a story aligned with your core values, align with your vision, align with your why in that framework. Here's an interesting point. So, uh, a few years ago I was on this, um, I don't know what you would call it. I was on this, uh, this, uh, journey to trying to figure out what makes for a good story. And I came across this study by a group of marketers that had taken a number of ads that have been produced and studied them to see where interest. Was peaked in stories in ad stories.

And so one of the ad stories that they used was a Guinness beer commercial. You can actually see this. If you just go to YouTube and search Guinness Barnes sisters, those three words, Guinness Barnes sisters. Now the Barnes sister, Tracy and Lanny Barnes are actually two Olympic athletes that went to the Olympic games. And, and at the final trials, didn't actually make it. Came back four years later after training incredibly hard.

And these two sisters were projected to actually make the Olympic team. And at the finals, Lanny Barnes, now full context, Tracy and Lanny are twins. Lanny Barnes actually got sick and couldn't actually compete. In the Olympic trials to make it to the Olympics, Tracy competes. Tracy makes the, makes the final cut, makes the team and gets to go to the Olympics.

So there's a Guinness beer commercial and his commercial, it's just one photo and it's Tracy and Lanny leaning over a, uh, leaning over something. And they're staring at the camera and they've got these skis in the background. And the only thing that changes, only thing that this commercial has is music and words that change as they go. Uh, through the commercial. There's a 0. 36 seconds into this commercial.

And if you watch it, this will make sense to you, but I'll try to make sense to you here. Just give you painting a picture of this. At the 36 second mark in the story on the screen up flashes trace this picture that's there at the bottom of Tracy's side of the picture it flashes up qualified and then on Lanny's side it flashes up too ill to compete. Okay. Now in this moment, 36 seconds, they're measuring the consumer interest and engagement with the commercial.

So if you looked at this, a graph of like interest, where interest is class and all of a sudden interest spikes at the 36 second mark of this commercial, that was the peak moment of all measurements that they did. This marketing company did for interest in what's taking place in this commercial. If you think about it, like Tracy qualifying for the Olympics and Lanny not qualifying because she was sick is a conflict and interest component to the story.

Okay, now in the next moment they change the words on the screen and it says Tracy gave up her spot and then it flashes up so Lanny could go. Okay. And it's a beautiful story. It's a great commercial. It ends with Guinness beer, flashing up the choices that we make reveal the true character or the true, the true nature of our character. And that moment, conflict and struggle. If the only thing that commercial was like, uh, Lanny goes to the Olympics.

And that and everything else is just the conflict and struggle in the beginning are not part of the story. There's no interest in the story, but yet we as recruiting leaders, and I think you get this, right? Like movies, all great movies have these elements to it, but yet we show up and what do we do? My company is awesome. You wouldn't believe the winning season that we're in. Let me talk about the winning team and all those things are highlight reels.

So when you tell those you're undermining your credibility, you're leaving a lot of opportunity to motivate people to next steps. You're leaving a lot of those opportunities on the table. So here's what you're going to do. Okay, here's what I want to encourage you to do. Identify your values.

Identify the stories of your life that are actually aligned with that value and take one of those stories and identify where was the beginning of the story, where's the conflict and struggle in the story, and where's the overcome in the story, and then share that story with the recruit. Okay, I'll give you an example of this. Um, one of the stories that I regularly share is actually centered around one of my top core values, which is personal growth and personal development.

Now, my story is this, I was raised in lower income, we didn't have much money, I duct taped tennis shoes, I was really known as like the poor kid at school, and so we fast forward to like the age of 19. Now, for the purpose of keeping this short, I won't go into the full context of that, but I would normally share full context around that story. Okay, get to the age of 19, I leave home, when I left home at the age of 19, honestly, I was pissed about being known as the poor kid.

The majority of the time that I was home, my dad didn't work. There were seasons where my mom would hold several jobs trying to make ends meet. We moved a lot. We got evicted from homes, like all these things. I was mad about that. I was very aware. That these things took place. So I was mad about it. I planted my flag in the ground and said, I will never live like that. If you think about it, this would have been 93 that I'm now my first year in college.

If you go back to 93, the only people who were successful were people that went to college. I laugh about it because like, I look back on it and I'm like, there was one person that was known for being undereducated. It was Ross Perot, who was like an, a oil tycoon that ran for president. And didn't win. But to be someone of success, you had to go to college. So I went to college and didn't have the money to go. I'm working full time at a subway as a night manager. I'm I'm getting grant money.

Um, along with that, I'm taking out student debt. I'm one semester into this and I hated college. I literally despised it. I couldn't motivate myself to go to class. I just couldn't find any free space to study. I'm super creative. Noise just is such a distraction for me. I couldn't find any white space to study. And so I'm one semester into this and I was like, I just can't do it. So I left college, but I didn't give up on my dream. I was still committed to being that person of success.

And so I began to attend conferences and live events. Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Les Brown. I could go on, I think John Maxwell was even relevant back then, he's still relevant today, which is crazy. He's written like 90 plus books or something like that. And I really began to really lean into developing myself through books, through tapes, through memorization, through live events. I became one of the top salespeople in a Fortune 500 company.

By the time I was in my mid twenties, I was already a sales manager for an outside business, a business sales team. By the time I was 27, I was a regional on the cell, on the sales side. I was the youngest in both that market manager position and also a regional manager position. And I could share that story with someone. Okay. I could share that story with someone. I've given them a gift at the beginning. I've given them conflict and struggle. I've given them overcome.

The only thing that's lacking on that story is for me to pivot in that story and to share with you what is the takeaway. Now the takeaway in that, and I would say the reason I'm sharing that story with you today is, I want you to know that one of my top core values is personal growth and personal development. And I would love to share with you what it looks like inside my team.

Now, if you are all about personal growth and personal development, if you're looking for a leader to inspire you to grow, if you're looking for Even if you're not looking for, but if you're setting a place for this, I'm happy where I'm at. And I arrive on the scene. I just may inspire you with the fact that there's a leader out here, who's focused on developing and growing his team, not just inside this business, inside the business, but also personally outside of business.

And I've given you context that allows you to say to yourself, am I aligned or am I not aligned with Richard? And if you're lacking a leader who has this. then I'll inspire you, I'll motivate you to move towards me. People always move towards clarity, people always move towards certainty, and when a leader oozes clarity around who they are through their stories, specifically, when a leader oozes this certainty, about what their identity is, what their values are.

It's easy to move towards that leader. Think about this. If you can't communicate who you are now, who, how are you going to recruit them? You're just not going to be able to. Okay. So in three simple pieces, okay, this is not complex. You've got to become an epiphany bridge builder, which means that you're going to start telling stories. You have to know your values. You've got to know your why. You've got to know your vision.

Now you need to know the stories that actually share why those things are true about you. Okay. And then what you need in the last thing you need as part of that is know where you're going to use those stories in your recruiting sequence because it's not random. Like, where are you going to use the story?

Okay. And so if you know those three things, the things that make up who you are, your values, your why, and your vision, the stories that are connected to those things and why they're important to you. And you can share those like a professional storyteller and you know where to use them in sequence while you're recruiting someone, I honestly believe that you can recruit people that are typically unrecruitable. I'm gonna leave you with a story.

So a couple of years ago, I think it was like 2019 ish, 2020. I get a message from someone on LinkedIn. So I've got 52, 000 followers on LinkedIn. I've got a massive audience there, but one of the people that's in my audience happened to be someone that I, uh, tried recruiting. And I will say that again. I tried recruiting, didn't recruit them, but I tried recruiting them and I got a message from them. Shows up in my inbox. The message is somewhere along the lines of this.

Hey, Richard, I'll never forget the story that you shared with me. Back when you and I were in conversations around me, possibly joining your team. And in some way said that the story is so memorable and has such an impact on me. I just wanted to, I saw your content and want to stop it and say, hi, I was curious how long ago had it been since I recruited this guy that's actually saying he still remembers my story. So I go and I look up his work history.

To just revisit because it's been a while, like five years, 10 years. I'm like, I don't remember a go. And I looked to figure out like where I had recruited him. It had been nine years prior that I had tried recruiting this gentleman. And now here I'm at, here I am outside the industry as a recruiting coach consultant, and he's messaging me and saying, I still remember the story. That's what you're trying to accomplish.

When you can go into your market with all the top salespeople that you want to actually recruit, and you can put them through a process and share your stories that are now memorable, that then become transportable into the future. Okay, now you're doing this. So embrace that badge. Embrace that cape, which is the cape of I'm an epiphany bridge builder.

I'm a professional storyteller and go on the journey to marking, identifying the stories that are aligned with those things that you need to be telling to people and crafting those stories in a way that have the context of you. These three components that make it a powerful story. And when you do that, there won't be anyone else in your market that will be able to recruit against you and have the success that you have. So hope this brought you some value today.

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. Mhm. Mhm.