Here’s where we start our business coach discussion today. So if you’re listening today and you go “I find it easy to find quality people, there’s no stress in the game for me, I’ve got a line of people wrapping around my door, high quality people they always show up on time, they get their work done, they never call in sick, I mean these people are healthy, they get stuff done, they’re just awesome people, no drama” then maybe this show’s not for you. But if you need some help finding high quality people then maybe this show is for you and so here is the deal. We’re talking about these four different, they’re kinda, we’re talking about these different steps, these different points, and point number one is why organizations work with search firms to fill openings?
You may be asking yourself “Why in the world would I hire a search firm to fill job openings?” So Stacy, why, flip it to you, why do organizations work with search firms to fill those job openings?
Stacy Purcell: Can I ask what a man-journal is though, ‘cuz I heard man-journal Robert and I don’t know what that is.
Clay Clark: Well a man-journal is like a, and it’s probably just be called a journal, but-
Robert Redmond: No, no, it’s a man-journal. Mine is specifically a man-journal for business coach.
Clay Clark: You can go to like, Barnes and Noble and buy a moleskin book, you know, where you write your epiphanies and your notes as a business coach, and Robert’s a reader. He studied theology in college, so he’s got these whole books, I mean like 12 journals devoted just to his epiphanies about Proverbs, and so anyways, he carries around this little journal and I’m just messing with him but he does hold you in high regard, he knows you’re a success in the industry, you’re sorta well known, you’re sorta like a myth, you know what I mean? You’re sorta mythological and it’s great we got you inside the box that rocks ‘cuz you are a top performer my friend.
Stacy Purcell: Well I am, I exist, I’m not a myth, I’m a real person standing here, but I think your question was about why organizations high search firms.
Clay Clark: Yeah why?
Stacy Purcell: Well they hire search firms when they want the very best person for the position, not the best person that’s looking for a job.
Clay Clark: Ooh!
Now you had some statistics here, that you’re throwing at us, this is from CareerBuilder and they had a report that said that 60% of jobs seekers quit in the middle of filling out online applications, what are you talking about here Stacy? What does this mean?
Stacy Purcell: Well I talk to people all the time that see jobs posted online that they’re interested in, but they think that it’s too much trouble to fill out the application. If you’ve ever tried to do that with some of these companies, for example I was working with a doctor, person had a doctorate degree and they were on this company’s website trying to fill out this job application, and he said “I’m probably gonna have to get a second degree to figure out how to navigate this process” because it just went on forever, there were 30 pages of questions that he had to fill out he said “I have a job, I don’t have time to fill this form out.”
Clay Clark: Yeah. I will say this, we help Thrivers all the time, and at our next workshop, when is it Robert, April?
Robert Redmond: It’s April 21st, and April 22nd. 15 hours a Friday and Saturday, April 21st and April 22nd.
Clay Clark: The world’s best business coach workshop. It is unbelievable, it’s interactive, it’s, we worked with a Thriver at the last workshop and his issue, you know what his issue was Robert, as it relates to online forms?
Robert Redmond: What’s that?
Clay Clark: He only had one out of every 300 people that visited his site, who ever filled out his form. And so, we took time during the lunch break to show him, and when you reduce the amount of questions on the landing pages, and you make the pages more visually appealing, you can increase that quite a bit. But a lot of companies say “You know what I’m so busy growing my business, it just makes more sense to hire an executive recruiter like Stacy to get it done, because she has all the connections, her job is finding people who are looking for jobs, or people not looking for jobs at all, but they’re they top at what they do, and she goes out there and finds these people.” Now Stacy you wrote here, that organizations need recruiters to identify the best candidates and to recruit those candidates. What are you talking about here?
Stacy Purcell: Well to the point you just made, a company, business coach and owners, they’re busy focusing on their business, they’re running their business day in and day out and executive search consultants or recruiters like myself we spend all day long in the trenches hunting for the best candidates, like I said before not the best candidates that are looking for jobs or applying for jobs online but the best candidates period. And those individuals are typically employed somewhere else, they might be employed by your competitor. So my job is to go out and first of all identify who the top talent is, and then recruit the top talent and convince them to come work for my client’s organizations.
Clay Clark: You know one thing that’s kind of interesting is I remember years ago, when I won the Entrepreneur of the Year award, for the small business coach administration, first off, you submit, they say you’ve been nominated, so you’re filling out all these forms you gotta show proof of income, and you gotta show your P&L, you gotta show all this stuff, you know, they wanna verify that you’re the real deal, or maybe you’re not the real deal. You fill all that, and then they call ya. You’re almost bitter when you fill out the pack, you’re like “Come on, I got nominated, why do I gotta do all this work”
Robert Redmond: “I don’t wanna be entrepreneur of the year”
Clay Clark: And then when you win, they say “Hey can you give a talk” and I had never done speaking before. So I gave what I believe to be a subpar or C- talk to a group of people, and Carlton Pearson taught me this, he said, the audience doesn’t owe you anything. You have to earn their right to clap. They don’t owe you anything, and I realized oh my gosh my talk was terrible, it was awful. And you know why? Because it wasn’t my core competency. So then when I kept getting asked to speak not because I was a good speaker, but because I had won some awards, I thought you know what, either A: I’m gonna be a bad speaker, or B: I need to hire a specialist who knows speaking.
And so I’ve invested a lot of time with Carlton Pearson and other people who’ve taught me speaking I mean, you know that Oral Roberts taught Carlton Pearson directly how to become a public speaker? And did you know that Napoleon Hill taught Oral Roberts.
Robert Redmond: Were those guys good speakers?
Clay Clark: These are the best. And did you know, that Andrew Carnegie who is like a business coach taught Napoleon Hill. So if you think about it, goes from the world’s wealthiest man to Napoleon Hill, to Napoleon Hill to Oral Roberts, to Oral Roberts to, and I say all that to say when you’re out there looking for somebody to improve your, if you wanna become a great speaker, or you wanna hire a great talent, you don’t wanna hire someone who’s doing this part time, or on the side. You don’t even really wanna do it as a part time in your own company. You want a full time, guru, devoted to this.
So I wanna ask you this here Stacy, I mean you obviously have the experience, the expertise, and you have the time, you’ve invested the time to do this, can you kinda walk me through how having experience and the time to do this, allows you to be very successful in finding top talent.
Stacy Purcell: Sure, absolutely. I mean the very first thing that I do is to talk to my client to identify exactly what their needs are. In terms of what exactly this person is going to be doing, and what qualifications they need to have in order to do this role. And then what I do is I identify who the best players are in the marketplace, and then I go and talk to them, and see what my client can do to convince them to come work for their client’s organization or actually to come and just interview for my client.
With my 20 years of my experience I have had thousands and thousands and thousands of conversations with executives and professionals and most of the people that I approach are not looking for a position, I find out what they like about their current job, what they don’t like, let me give you an example, it’s probably the best thing to do here.
A few weeks ago one of my clients reached out to me and said “Stacy we have this need for this scientist and it’s urgent.” I filled that position in three days.
Clay Clark: Three days?
Stacy Purcell: Three days.
Clay Clark: Now we come back Thrivers, Stacy’s gonna unpack for us how she was able to do it in three days, it almost sounds unbelievable. Stay tuned for the rest of the story about how Stacy found a top level talent in three days.
Clay Clark: All right Thrive-nation welcome back to the Thrive Time business coach show on your radio. I know you the listener are made of steel and it’s always easy for you to find top talent, but for many of us, many of us mere mortals, it is hard to find top talent. I mean you have a business out there, you know the majority of businesses that we’ve coached, tell me consistently, they say “My real estate company would be huge,” this is the cycle typically for a startup when they call us, they say “I need graphic design, need a website, I need a print piece, I need marketing, I need sales, I need leads, a business coach I need ah!” And then when they get the leads and the sales and the marketing then Robert they start to say what in the meetings? “My company’s now growing tremendously-
Robert Redmond: “I can’t keep up, I can’t keep up with all this, I gotta find good quality people to be able to keep up with all this success that I’m having.” And there’s been times where companies get so successful that they sometimes implode because they’re not able to keep up with the work, because they don’t have the great people in the organization.
Clay Clark: And here’s what I find, I find that a lot of companies, what they’ll do, is they’ll just sorta settle for mediocrity, and mediocrity becomes their normal. I’ll give you an example.
Robert have you been in a man-cave yet? Have you walked inside the man-cave?
Robert Redmond: I have not had the pleasure, but I think there’s gonna be a man-trip, man-cave trip planned for this Sunday morning at 5:00 am. You invited me over.
Clay Clark: Yeah, 5:00 am, and I said early time, right before church, and here’s the deal, at 5:00 am we’re gonna be doing we’re gonna be working on some projects, and you know I gotta spend time with the kids, gotta go to church, got a lot of obligations, a lot of things I want to do, and so 5:00 am’s a great time. No one’s up, my kids won’t miss me, but the point is when you walk in that room, it’s always 60. And Robert do you know why it’s always 60 degrees in the man-cave?
Robert Redmond: Because you love the 60 degree temperature?
Clay Clark: I’m a man-bear-pig.
Robert Redmond: Oh. Of course…I thought you were a business coach.