8X Million-Dollar Biller. Zero Business Development

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Do you realize that 2026 is almost over? Do you realize that COVID was almost 7 years ago? Crazy, right? But here's the thing. I truly believe that a short window of time and a short sprint can absolutely change your life. And who cares what has happened so far this year? That is the reason why Finish the Year Strong, the summit kicking off September 28th through October 5th, is going to help you get there. Is going to inspire you. It is going to motivate you. It is going to teach you. Remember, all the live sessions are free. If you want to get the replays, VIP, or join the Elite Recruiter Community, this is your opportunity to draw on the line in the sand.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:40]:
Make sure that you get registered. And we're going to be doing one more thing this year. Something brand new that we have not done before. We're going to do a Firm Leaders Summit on November 16th to 18th. Same thing. Live sessions are free. Make sure you get registered for both of those. And if you guys want a good laugh, I almost thought about doing the Firm Owners Summit.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:01]:
And then I realized so many of us are leaders, no matter where we are in the organization, we are a leader in the firm. So what I switched it up to Firm Leaders Summit. These are the 2 opportunities for you to get educated, get on board, grow, and absolutely crush the rest of the year and set yourself up as a foundation For 2027. I truly believe in you. I'm excited for you. I'm excited that the impact that you're going to have on your desk and other people's lives because of what you're capable of doing. I'll see you there. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Dan Lambert [00:01:43]:
I care about long-term placement. I care about people staying and, uh, always operated under the assumption that, hey, like Everybody I deal with is smarter than I am. So just give them the facts, tell them where the bodies are buried. I think there's 1,000 ways to be successful in this business. I think the only ways not to be successful is to not put in the work.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:05]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements. Atlas is a CRMx, a CRM that actually understands context. It captures everything you say, hear, read, and write. Every interview, client call, LinkedIn message, email, and WhatsApp automatically. Not because you spent the time entering it. It's because Atlas is always listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:42]:
So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks the best candidates and tells you why. No digging required. The same memory turns BD into a shortlist of who to chase and why. So you win more clients. Need to see your pipeline? Speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds a view automatically tracking whatever matters to you. Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both with a new contract suite. That means you never have to chase a timesheet again and live margin visibility on every single placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs into your, your LLMs, Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest of your stack.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:15]:
The low-value work that keeps you from billing, Atlas does it for you. Atlas customers right now are saying that they're seeing a 50% higher candidate response rates. A 35% increase in new clients won, 15 hours saved every week, monthly billings jumping 85%, and agencies hitting 150% of their annual revenue target by building their business with Atlas. If you want more information, check out Recruit with Atlas. I'm excited about this episode because so many of us, when we got started in the recruiting game, we got told this is exactly how you do business development. This is exactly how you grow your desk. And guess what? We all thought maybe there's another way. Most of us did exactly what we were told.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:58]:
I'm so excited about this guest because he actually quite, he didn't quite do exactly what he was told. He went the opposite of how many of us figured out how to really grow a desk. And he became a million-dollar biller because of it and now running an Awesome firm. But here's the cool thing. So many of us are like, maybe not, I don't want to say not salespeople at heart because like recruiting is sales, but you can become solely candidate-focused and grow an incredible desk. And that's why I am so excited about this guest. So real quick, most people in our industry spend their whole careers chasing clients. You quietly built a firm doing almost the opposite and it worked.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:51]:
I want to understand how you saw something that everybody else missed and when did, where did that start for you?

Dan Lambert [00:04:57]:
That's a great question. I think it started because I'm not a sales guy. Um, when I joined recruitment, I had been a candidate, I've been a client. Um, and to be honest, when it came to marketing, I was a little bit of a chicken shit. So I think it didn't come naturally to me. And maybe there was, there's cause and effect here. I think cause was we had a team that had a lot of jobs. They had business, they just needed inventory to fill it.

Dan Lambert [00:05:25]:
And so I think the combination of being a chicken shit, not a sales guy, and recognizing kind of that the key to recruitment is our inventory. It feels weird to refer to humans as inventory, but that's truly the commodity we're selling. And so I just went out and we were told recruit this many people. I doubled it because I didn't do any marketing. I was planning on doing this for the long game, so I wasn't looking to get in, get out. And so I figured if I had the inventory, if I would place all my candidates on my colleagues' jobs, that I was accomplishing 2 things. One, I was doing something that was comfortable. 2, I was getting placements and earning revenue.

Dan Lambert [00:06:06]:
3, those people are going to be decision makers at some point. And through no fault of my own, I would be stealing their clients because my candidates would get the jobs. And then my candidates, when they were decision makers, would call me with the jobs. So that was kind of the mindset. So I really just went hard into the recruitment side and, you know, several years later, that exactly happened. Those candidates were now my clients and I didn't have to do any business development. So it worked.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:35]:
When you look back now, hindsight is easily 20/20. Like, did it feel like you discovered this or is it just like you couldn't do it the way that everybody else was telling you to do it? And this somehow this ended up turning into something absolutely beautiful.

Dan Lambert [00:06:49]:
Yeah. Again, I, because I had been a client before, maybe I, and a candidate, I received that recruiter salesy overpromise, underdeliver kind of pitch. And it just didn't feel good to me. And so I don't think there's any kind of level of me being a pioneer here. I think it was just I saw a way that I could get the results I wanted in a way that felt right to me. And so, you know, it's kind of the same thing that I push in my firm now is I don't want 20 Dan Lamberts. I want 20 individuals doing it ways that are comfortable to them because at the end of the day, every client is isn't going to be my cup of tea and vice versa. Every candidate isn't going to be my cup of tea and vice versa.

Dan Lambert [00:07:34]:
Um, so just aligning those styles with each other is ultimately what, uh, what feels right. And, uh, 16, 17 years later, um, but still feels right.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:44]:
Well, Dan, before we go any farther, let's, can you give a quick self-introduction so that way, like, people know who you are?

Dan Lambert [00:07:52]:
Oh, geez. I don't even know where to start. Uh, married, no kids. I think that allows me to work a lot. I spent 15 years in accounting. Not a designated accountant, but I spent that time in accounting. And at the end of the day, just didn't see a long-term future in it. I love project work.

Dan Lambert [00:08:08]:
I love the analysis. I love, I just didn't love like a month-end process or grinding through a bank rec or that kind of stuff. Having been placed a few times through a recruiter, having been a client through recruiters, I was approached by actually one of the firms, funny enough, that placed me twice and didn't realize how unethical that was. Because they had placed me and pulled me and then placed me again and then pulled me to where I went. So, you know, as a, you know, again, in hindsight, you look back on and go, yeah, I would've never done that. However, it happened and kind of led me to where I am today. Like you said, I've had, you know, being Canadian, we're taught to be humble. So I really don't like talking sales numbers, but you brought up the million-dollar pillar.

Dan Lambert [00:08:54]:
I think I've done that 8 or 9 times. And, you know, doing it in a way that, again, it just feels comfortable. I care about long-term placement. I care about people staying and always operated under the assumption that, hey, like everybody I deal with is smarter than I am. So just give them the facts, tell them where the bodies are buried. People can make good decisions on their own. And, and at the end of the day, I think, you know, one thing that I hear from candidates all the time that they find different as I tell them all the way through the process, like, you can say no to me, I don't care. It's not that I don't care about them, it's just tomorrow morning if you take a new job, you're going to put on your pants and you're going to go work someplace new.

Dan Lambert [00:09:37]:
I'm going to get up and do exactly what I did the day before. So your life changes, not mine. So you got to be happy with that. So my job is to find you as much happiness as realistically possible. And if what I'm presenting to you isn't it, stay where you are.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:53]:
Well, I'm excited about this interview because actually somebody on your team that's been on your team for a while that has a ton of respect for you and what you've taught them is like, Dan's not on any podcast. Like, you got to get him on. You got to interview him. I absolutely love the impact that he's made.

Dan Lambert [00:10:08]:
So I'll make sure his check clears.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:11]:
So take me back to 20— you started recruiting around 2010, right?

Dan Lambert [00:10:17]:
2010. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:17]:
When you started in 2010, what did you think this job was going to be?

Dan Lambert [00:10:23]:
That's a great question. You know what? I, I think I understood kind of the business development piece that was going to be required. I didn't realize how against the grain it would be for me. So I was able to shift quickly, but I think I understood that part. I think I understood the recruitment piece. I think what I didn't understand is just the level of information at our fingertips. Like truly today, I can pick up the phone, call almost anyone. They're going to tell me what they like about their job, what they don't like about their job, how much they make, how much they, how they feel about their boss, what their family life is like, all of those kinds of things.

Dan Lambert [00:11:03]:
And it's funny because when you first start, you're, you don't tell people the why. And I think that's the one thing that came to me very quickly is if you treat people like they're smarter than you and just trust the fact that when you tell them why you're asking what you're asking them, they're going to tell you. And again, I ask people, are you married? And they get weird. Well, why are you asking me that? Because whatever your spouse does is probably going to have some impact to what it is you do and in terms of the role you take. If you're, I was raised by a single mom. If you're a single mom that's got 2 jobs and 3 kids and she can't work 60 hours a week and nights and weekends and like, it just doesn't work. Right. So again, those things are important, but until you build trust, how do you expect somebody to kind of peel back the onion and tell you everything about them? Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:55]:
So yeah, that's, uh, you know, you said that like one of the reasons why you went candidate first is like, because you didn't want to be that pushy sales guy. That you ran into when you were a hiring manager. I love how honest that is, but it's like a completely different take. Like what, what version of recruiting that you saw that wasn't right and the reason why you went candidate first instead of like attacking everything else.

Dan Lambert [00:12:21]:
Yeah. You know what? It's funny. I probably, whichever recruiter did this to me will know who I'm talking about. But, um, I remember back in the day where I just, a recruiter called me up and just said, Hey, I got a candidate. They're perfect for your culture. I like that. Like they just did the hardcore sales pitch and I stopped them dead in my tracks. I said, okay, great.

Dan Lambert [00:12:40]:
Tell me about my culture. And they just silence. And so I've never done that as a recruiter because I just, it felt like, like you're just lying to me on the onset. Right. So, so me, I don't overpromise and underdeliver. I go, hey, like if I'm chasing an ad, I saw your ad. I see the title. I understand your industry.

Dan Lambert [00:13:00]:
I see the software. I see some of the specs. I have a candidate that has some of those things. However, culturally, I don't know you from a hole in the wall, right? So if you want to talk a little bit about who's going to fit in your culture and what's the work-life balance like, and what's the pace like and all those kinds of things, if I understand that, then I can tell you if this candidate's good or not. But many times the, you know, the whole MPC kind of thing, I've always gone into it with like 5 MPCs in my head. If I'm talking to a client, almost overprepared and just going, hey, like I have a bunch of people because I was always recruitment heavy. I got a bunch of people, um, based on your, your job spec that might make sense. Let's drill down on that to see if any of these people actually make sense.

Dan Lambert [00:13:43]:
But yeah, it's, that was kind of it.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:48]:
Going candidate heavy and realizing there was an investment in the candidates that were going to turn into hiring managers. What year did that actually start compounding and start coming back to you?

Dan Lambert [00:13:57]:
Oh geez. Almost, I would say within, so I got a placement my first week.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:03]:
Damn. Yeah.

Dan Lambert [00:14:05]:
So, but, but again, it was like, we were told like, this is how many outbound dials you should make. This is how many interviews you should be having. And I just doubled it. Like literally, if everybody was supposed to interview 10 people, I, in many cases interviewed 25 a week. Right. Why? Because I'm not going to market.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:25]:
Pause real quick. So when you got started, what were the KPIs that they gave you and what did you end up doing on average?

Dan Lambert [00:14:31]:
Yeah, so they were saying, I think it was like 60 outbound dials a day. I think it was 10 or 15 interviews a week. It was, I think, 3 sendouts a week. I don't know. I think it was some, and getting a job order a week or something to that effect. Um, so I basically just said, Anything that's not candidate, forget about it. Candidate, whatever those metrics are, just pretend I'm a 180 recruiter and just recruit. So that's kind of how I adjusted my desk is just recruit.

Dan Lambert [00:15:03]:
My colleagues have jobs and I'm just going to trust the fact that when they're chasing candidates, I already have a whole shelf full of exactly what it is you're looking for.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:13]:
Did you get flack early on for going that direction?

Dan Lambert [00:15:17]:
Oh yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:18]:
Let's talk about this.

Dan Lambert [00:15:20]:
Yeah, no, I thought it, well, I definitely got hauled on the carpet a lot because they were very KPI heavy. So they immediately recognized there was no marketing calls. You're not chasing ads, you're not doing this. And I just said, listen, I'm going to live and die by my decisions. And I think that I was comfortable with that. And I just said, listen, I'm seeing something different than you guys are seeing. From my perspective, we are placing candidates no different than if you're a donut shop and you have no donuts on the shelf. Does it matter that you have 1,000 clients sitting in your donut shop trying to buy donuts? They give no donuts.

Dan Lambert [00:15:57]:
So I was just— and I'm not calling candidates donuts. Bad analogy, probably. But it was just, to me, it was so obvious that if you have the best product to sell, even if the clients don't want to do business with you, they have no choice because you have the best product to sell.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:18]:
Getting flack. I actually, real quick before my next question about how long did they give you flack for doing this?

Dan Lambert [00:16:24]:
Oh God. Honestly, I think I got flack even when I was billing $600,000, $700,000 a year because it was like, we need you to do this. And Again, that's why I think I broke away from that cookie cutter model with my firm is I have people that are very candidate focused. Like everybody's candidate centric, but some are great at business development. Some are great at recruitment. Some, I don't care how they get the results as long as it's ethical, as long as it's in the candidate's best interest. But outside of that, if you're an email heavy person, If you get your business on the golf course, if you hang out at the coffee shop, like it doesn't matter. Get the results that you're comfortable with.

Dan Lambert [00:17:09]:
Um, same thing when we do our budgeting process. Every recruiter I have doesn't have to bill the same amount. How much do you want to make next year? They tell me, we've reverse engineered exactly what they're going to have to do to make that amount of money. And there you go. Not everybody wants to be a million dollar biller. That doesn't happen in 35 hours a week. Doesn't matter how good you are, right? So, uh, at the end of the day, if you don't want it, why are we going to hold somebody's feet to the fire and then say, this is what you need to do? That's why we barely have any turnover. Um, and a recruitment firm, I'm not sure what the numbers are today for your average recruitment firm, but I have 14, 15, 16, 5, 10 years of tenure within my firm.

Dan Lambert [00:17:51]:
People just don't leave. Some leave, but Sometimes we ask them to leave.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:57]:
So you were like billing $700 plus and they were still giving you flack for the way that you're doing it. Like, were these, I gotta ask, were some of these people like giving you flack, like billing less than you?

Dan Lambert [00:18:07]:
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:09]:
Was there a point that you almost gave in to their system, the normal quote unquote way of doing it?

Dan Lambert [00:18:16]:
Never. No, I'm, I'm French. I'm stubborn as they get. So for me, for me, it was—

Benjamin Mena [00:18:22]:
Are you really French?

Dan Lambert [00:18:23]:
Yes, I am. Yeah. Daniel Michel Guy Joseph Lambert.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:28]:
The French are stubborn. I know that for sure. For a fact. Very, very.

Dan Lambert [00:18:31]:
But no way for me, it was, again, I have to do this on my terms. And it, again, it doesn't mean slimy, dirty. Like I've had a phenomenal recruiter that worked with us who had great numbers, but they did it the wrong way. Not meaning they did it, they didn't do it Dan's way. They just did it in a way that We weren't comfortable. They weren't kind of holding true to our candidate-centric model. And so they're gone. Like we let them go and said, hey, like, thanks for showing up, but you're not who we want representing our candidates.

Dan Lambert [00:19:04]:
So for me, it was never, it was never an option to do it their way. And I think we got to the point where they wanted like 63 outbound dials and it had to be 5 of these and 10 of these and 9 of those. And I'm like, I'm not putting ticks on a board for the purpose of putting ticks on a board. I'm highly analytical. I want to do things that provide value and results. And so I'm not going to make a phone call to say I made a phone call. I'm going to do the things that I think matter. And getting back to candidates matter.

Dan Lambert [00:19:35]:
I'd rather spend my time chasing a candidate to give them a debrief on why they didn't get a job than chasing an ad that every agency in the city is chasing down. Why? Because that candidate's going to respect the fact that I chased them down and gave them that feedback, took the time to chase the client down to get that feedback, to give it to the candidate rather than chasing another ad. It's just less value for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:00]:
And this next question is going to be for recruiter listening that like truly believes in it, like that there is a way to build success on the candidate side of the house. And we've had like a few of these interviews before, but this was like one of the biggest reasons why I wanted you. you to come on and share. For the recruiter listening, if you got a chance to literally right now go back and talk to yourself and be like, hey, I stayed true. Like you stayed true to your process. You stayed true when they were giving you flack, even when you were doing better than them. What would you go back and tell yourself with everything that you know now to those early days?

Dan Lambert [00:20:33]:
You know what? Like, I don't know. I think everybody's got to get up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror. Right. And I have in our firm, like, you live and die by your decisions, right? So you're going to make a decision. It's going to work or it's going to not. That doesn't mean you're fired or you get to keep your job. It just means at the end of the day, everything I tried didn't work. Don't get me wrong.

Dan Lambert [00:20:54]:
I revised process over and over and over again, metrics over and over again. I even changed the way that I was taught how to do an interview, right? It was like, do the interview and then talk about the firm and your experience. And I did that for the first handful of times. And I noticed that I was looking into like eyes that really weren't engaged and they weren't. And so I, I flipped it and I just said, hey, this is who I am. This is who we are. This is why you might want to talk to us. This is the value we can provide you, hidden job market, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Dan Lambert [00:21:27]:
And when you get into that, you saw the light bulb go on and then they started sharing more. And they got the sense that I was doing it for their best interest. So I think that, you know, it was little things like that, that adjusting. I think just analyze your processes, be comfortable with what you're doing. Again, I have by no means that I do everything right. Are there candidates that I didn't let down that I should have let down? 1000%. There's always more candidates and clients than there are of me. And so you, you do your best, you're going to make mistakes, but just try and do better.

Dan Lambert [00:22:02]:
And again, be the recruiter you want to be because every decision you make can come back to haunt you.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:09]:
I want to go like one layer deeper in this onion because like being candidate focused and being relationship focused, you could fake it for a little while, but I don't feel like you could fake it for 16, 17 years. Like, how do you actually think about people that you work with, that work with you?

Dan Lambert [00:22:31]:
I think that's a great question. I think every good recruiter has to have a great deal of empathy and be able to put yourself in other people's shoes. I think that if I can put myself in every candidate's shoes as I'm talking to them, right, if I'm having a conversation with you, you work at Company X. I try and put myself in your shoes going, okay, I work here. This is my family life. This is what I'm making. This is what— and I look at the jobs I have and go, shit, you should stay. Like, your job is better than what I have.

Dan Lambert [00:23:03]:
And so I think many times as I'm talking to a candidate and we might be talking about a job, I literally hit them with all the negatives first, right? This is the work-life balance at a period end. This is the turnover. This is the, this is the— why? Be respectful of their time, right? So it had nothing to do with my time. It was just, why am I gonna like sell this awesome job and then hit them with the stuff that I know they can't accept in their new job? Like, why waste their time? So put yourself in people's shoes and do your best to be able to be that person. Ask questions and, and just honestly Just be a decent person. I know it sounds basic. Far too often people are worried about the result. And I think a lot of recruitment firms are, if you're not billing by this point, you're gone, right? I've had some people in my firm that weren't covering their, like we have, and some people work on a draw basis, some don't.

Dan Lambert [00:24:04]:
But some of the ones that work on a draw basis, I had some people that were in the hole for a year straight. Right. But at the end of the day, you saw the potential, you saw that they were doing things the right way in that candidate-centric model. So I don't care, I'll float them for a year, right? It wasn't like they billed nothing, but they were doing it the right way. And again, by the time we hit year 2 and year 3, we're talking a solid $600K biller. So I think some places just, they move it along too quick. And again, maybe we have the luxury of hanging on to people a little bit longer, but at the end of the day, people that have that empathy who actually give a crap about the people they're working with, you know, it's the first couple of times I had conversations with candidates letting them know why I probably wouldn't be their best resource. That's a hard conversation to have.

Dan Lambert [00:24:57]:
But some of those people came back and went, huh, Nobody's ever told me that having 9 jobs in 6 years is bad. I said, well, I didn't say it's bad. I'm just saying like some of the clients that we're representing, and I told them the why clients pay us this amount of money to find them candidates. They don't, they don't want the turnover. They don't want the risk. They want to, even though you might be the better candidate, you might be more technical, you might be a better personality. You might be all of those things. What ends up happening is this investment, and some people are going to go with a safer investment.

Dan Lambert [00:25:32]:
And again, it's, it's, you got to be comfortable having the conversation. But again, it was empathy, me putting myself in their shoes going, hey, I sent you 10 resumes. How come you're not getting back to me? And again, it's far too often recruiters are like, not worth my time, not worth my time, not worth my time. I was like, you know what? Like, that person's a person. And as long as it's realistic, take the time and go, hey, listen, like, I only got 5 minutes. I apologize for only having 5 minutes. I noticed that you sent 3 resumes in last week. This is what's going on.

Dan Lambert [00:26:07]:
This is who we are. This is how we work. This is— and again, you're going to piss off some people, right? Because you told them the truth. But I would rather do that than them send 15 more resumes and go, I sent 20 resumes to these guys. They're not getting back to me. They're asses, right? Again, in theory, I want to do it all the time. It doesn't happen all the time. So I don't want to be holier than thou.

Dan Lambert [00:26:30]:
And I, we do that every single time. We do our best. But I think that, um, that's what people got to do is try and do their best.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:38]:
With how many people that you were speaking with and how many people that were remembering you and the relationships that you had, like, how did you keep track of all that?

Dan Lambert [00:26:47]:
There's a couple lines that I found to be very helpful. And again, I told people the why, right? Like, I think right now we have something like 67,000 candidates in our network, right? So I, there's one of me, there's thousands of you, right? So do your best to keep in touch. Again, I tell them the why I'm going to try and find you stuff, but if there's nothing for you to be found. You don't want me to call you every day of the week going, hey Ben, I got nothing for you. Tuesday, hey Ben, I got nothing for you. By Wednesday you're blocking me, right? Because you don't want to hear that. So it's about, listen, I'm going to do my best. When I have something for you, I'm incented to find you.

Dan Lambert [00:27:32]:
I'm incented to reach out to you, but please do your best to keep in touch with me. It's not that I don't want to talk to you, it's just There's X amount of, and I only sleep 4 or 5 hours a night, right? So I got more hours than most people. There's not enough hours in the day to talk to every single person, right? So just being honest with them, letting them know the why and pushing it on them to, in a sense, please keep in touch with me. I can email you back. I can. But as recruiters, and most candidates don't understand this until you tell them why, I literally spend 8 hours a day on the phone. So if you're trying to call me, good luck. Text me, email me while I'm on a call.

Dan Lambert [00:28:10]:
I can text you back while I'm on a call. I can email you back. But it's my life becomes very regimented. So yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:18]:
Well, and I want to take this another step. Like you, all this stuff started compounding, the stuff started coming back to you. Like how did you flip these candidate calls and these candidate relationships into actual clients?

Dan Lambert [00:28:31]:
Well, I mean, it's kind of an evolution of every candidate, right? And that's, that's the part that I, I didn't understand about the model is that if you're a junior programmer, at some point you're going to be a senior programmer, then you're going to be a manager, and then you're going to make hiring decisions. Accountant, assistant controller to controller to CFO. Like that's the natural progression of someone's career. It was always about doing your best to keep in touch kind of post-placement. So if I place someone, I want to check in after the first week. I want to check in after the first month at the probation period at any anniversaries, any just, and it's simple. Like it can be a text, an email. Hey Ben, it's your anniversary.

Dan Lambert [00:29:15]:
If you're ever around downtown, let me grab you a beer. Like that kind of stuff. And again, there's so many candidates. There's so many. After you've placed a couple thousand candidates, it's hard to keep in touch with all of them. But again, it's kind of pushing it back on people and going, hey, like, I would love to, but I can't.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:33]:
So can you walk me through like some of these like no-pressure client calls that you have? Like maybe like a little deeper than just like a, hey, checking in on your anniversary. Like how do, how can somebody make a no-pressure call, but at the same time find ways to open it up into becoming A card for placements.

Dan Lambert [00:29:53]:
Yep. Like I said, I, I always— my favorite call was week 1 ad call from a marketing perspective. Once I got my repertoire down, and it was always the takeaway, I would call you, hey Ben, I saw you had a controller role posted. I expect you want to see what the ad response looks like, otherwise you wouldn't have posted the job, right?

Benjamin Mena [00:30:12]:
Okay.

Dan Lambert [00:30:13]:
Any market intel you need, um, like what's happening? I'm hearing from clients all day long that this and this and this is happening. I do have some candidates available if you don't want to really go through this process, but you're kind of coerced into doing so. But at the end of the day, like, I'm sure you got it covered. You're awesome at what you do. Maybe I'll check in in a week or two. How's that sound? Like, literally did the takeaway. I didn't even try and pitch a candidate in week 1. But I think the difference between me and my colleagues is that the people I wanted to build relationships with, I actually followed up.

Dan Lambert [00:30:47]:
So I called week 2 and week 3 and week 4. And every time like, hey, am I, am I annoying you? Is this too much? Right? Because again, like, if you don't want to talk to me, don't talk to me. But, but again, it was, it was always trying to give them something in terms of market intelligence or, hey, it's, it's week 3. How's your ad response look? Yeah, I got 85 candidates. None of them really, none of them checked the boxes. Okay, is it time for us to chat? Or do you even have a budget for this? If you don't have a budget for this, like I've had people over the past where after you kind of do this long enough, and I think this was one, she was a client that I was trying to get. And I think it was about week 4 of her ad. She's going, hey, like I followed up and she just said, hey, like I really only have one candidate.

Dan Lambert [00:31:36]:
And I said, okay, well, who is it? And she goes, can I tell you? And I said, well, again, you have her. I can't do anything about that. I don't want to do anything about that. Who is it? She told me the candidate's name. I said, hire her. Like, have you met her yet? Said, no. Do you want me to send you her references? I go, she's stellar. If you engaged me, that would be probably one of my top 2 or 3 calls, and I'll charge you $20 grand for her.

Dan Lambert [00:32:00]:
So like legitimately, I might be able to find you somebody 1 or 2% better. It's not worth the fee. And she said, seriously? I said, like, call her. Called her. She called me back. I think it was a week or 10 days later. Hey, I hired her. Awesome.

Dan Lambert [00:32:16]:
I had a client for life. She used me every time she had a vacancy after that. And it was as simple as me just going, hey, like, you are smarter than me. I'm not gonna pull one over on you. I'm not even gonna try. You have a great candidate. Again, you might not like the personality, but technically can do the job perfectly. I think she'd be a great fit.

Dan Lambert [00:32:39]:
Go. And so again, if you play the long game, you can give these things up. I tell candidates all the time, you're not accepting a job offer when I'm presenting a job to you. So if you're kind of 75% or better interested, have a conversation. After the conversation, you're not interested. Dan, I'm not interested. Why are you not interested? You know it's too far. Okay, cool.

Dan Lambert [00:33:04]:
Say no. Move on. Go home. I'll find somebody else for them. And guess what? I'll make a note of that. That location's that big of a consideration for you. And and so they hear you're listening, right? You're paying attention, and they're not scared to tell you stuff. And and I think that's really the the key.

Dan Lambert [00:33:22]:
is if a candidate can be honest with you and say, yeah, I met that person who's going to be my boss. Person's just a jerk. Okay. So that personality is not for you. Awesome. I'll make a note of it. When I have a client that has a similar personality, I won't call you. Cool.

Dan Lambert [00:33:39]:
Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:40]:
I love the candidate focus and we were talking about, and one of the things I want a listener to also understand is you were really focused on the candidate-centric. But also behind the scenes, you're also a workhorse.

Dan Lambert [00:33:52]:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm OCD for sure. And I think sometimes too, like, it's still, it's still something that nags at me sometimes when I'll be working on a project with some of my team members. I'm like, so who do you have? And they're like, well, I don't have anybody. I'm like, why do you have nobody? Just call someone, right? Far too often we're looking for perfection, but we're looking for perfection in a profile that might be too or 3 years out of date. So that person might've switched industries.

Dan Lambert [00:34:22]:
They might have the right experience now. Like, just call them, update with them, let them know you're thinking about them. And at the end of the day, they might be the right fit for that role, or they might be useful for something else, or they might just appreciate that you circle back with them. They're a group, they're a decision maker now, and they give you a job order. But just call people. I literally don't send emails. Unless I absolutely have to. It's phone call, text, email.

Dan Lambert [00:34:50]:
And usually my email is, I just left you a voicemail.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:53]:
You told me there's something in the pregame chat before I go another direction. Uh, you sent, was it a meme to your team? What does that mean?

Dan Lambert [00:35:00]:
Oh, sorry. What was that?

Benjamin Mena [00:35:02]:
Uh, you sent like a, it was like a, uh, image to your team about like reaching a candidate. Do you remember?

Dan Lambert [00:35:09]:
I don't. I, I, send them all the time. Um, for it to be something that just, oh, I think it was one where, oh, I think it was like a meme of 3 different pictures and it's like a guy with a full head of hair going, call them. And then the next picture is like a guy with less hair going, call them. And then there's a guy almost completely bald and he's just call them. Okay. So it was that kind of thing. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:35]:
Yeah.

Dan Lambert [00:35:36]:
Yeah. I think that's what it was when we were chatting.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:39]:
Did you bring that up because so often you see everybody trying to do everything but call?

Dan Lambert [00:35:44]:
Oh yeah. I honestly, the, um, I remember, so I wasn't quite the yellow page, white page phone book recruiter, but we did have some technology when I started. Um, you couldn't log into it outside of the office though. Um, that's how locked down it was. But there was no LinkedIn. Um, there was no Indeed. Right. So when you start and none of that technology is there, I remember those 2 platforms came in, everybody's like, oh my God, nobody's going to need recruiters anymore.

Dan Lambert [00:36:13]:
And I've come across so many recruiters that literally live on LinkedIn and it drives me absolutely nuts. I don't use LinkedIn between 9 and 5. LinkedIn is a lookup tool. It's not where you do recruiting. I'll post ads. I will do my sourcing in the morning when I'm having a coffee or when my wife's watching reality TV or stuff like that during lunch, eating lunch at my desk. I'll use LinkedIn for some of that stuff. But if you're spending all day sourcing on LinkedIn, what do you end up doing? You do the same search 85 times in a year and you scroll through the same candidates 85 times in a year.

Dan Lambert [00:36:57]:
It just, it's zero value. So I've always been do a search, grab the candidates, push them all in your ETS, manage them, manage them that way, connect. When somebody connects with you, update your ETS, update. But LinkedIn, again, for me, I just found like it's just a lot of noise. And I've found more and more people are dropping off LinkedIn because they're consistently getting harassed by recruiters for The guy might be a CFO-level person. They're getting approached for an IT manager, a payable clerk, an executive assistant, like just getting bombed with everything. And it's just noise now. And so I just, it doesn't feel like it's effective.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:41]:
The, what I want to talk about, and I think I caught this during our pregame conversation, and it's something that I see with a lot of top billers. It's like, I think one of your secret weapons that you didn't even realize, and one of the reasons why you were consistent, was it 7 or 8 times million-dollar biller, or was it 8 or 9 times?

Dan Lambert [00:38:01]:
I stopped counting, but yeah, it's not 10.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:04]:
Sounds about right. You talked about prep being your real secret.

Dan Lambert [00:38:11]:
100%.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:13]:
You plan Sunday for Monday and you won't leave Friday without 2 interviews booked. Like, Walk me inside your prep ritual.

Dan Lambert [00:38:20]:
Yep. I know that's good because I'm an early morning guy. So, when I started, we were taught to prep end of day for the next morning. And, what I found is that when you run a busy desk, your night changes. You get emails from people, you might get a job order, you might have a— so, prepping at the end of the day, next morning my prep was useless because everything I had planned Has been derailed. It's no longer priority 1, it's priority 19. And I also found that there's, when you start Monday and you don't have a plan and you don't have interviews, guess how many interviews you're going to have that day? None. The best candidates generally, there's exclusions to the statement, but generally have jobs.

Dan Lambert [00:39:05]:
So they're not going to be able to take an interview on Monday if I reach out to them on Monday. Right. So my end of day Friday was always looking, pre-planning my week before, and I would not leave the office until I had 2 interviews booked on Monday. I probably wanted 2 interviews booked on Tuesday, and I probably wanted one on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday as well. So it was just knowing that there's gonna be a lost day if it's not planned. And that was the simple piece is just knowing you can't get that day back. My team always laughs because I always say like the only commodity we can own in this business is time. And so every minute you waste, guess what? It's gone.

Dan Lambert [00:39:46]:
You're never going to get it back. And so that was the, at least the planning ritual on just make sure. And guess what? I would get some replies on Friday night and Saturday and Sunday. And guess what? So sometimes I'd have 4 interviews on Monday, but I had to have 2.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:03]:
So when you say interviews, is that like interviews with a client or interviews with you?

Dan Lambert [00:40:07]:
Candidate. So me and candidate.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:10]:
Oh, you and candidate. Okay.

Dan Lambert [00:40:11]:
Inventory, just building up that candidate pipeline. It was, that was the key for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:17]:
You know, just for time, I want to switch to a few different gears. First of all, I know this is going to come out after the AI Recruiting Summit is done and over with, but I'm hosting an AI Recruiting Summit next week and I feel like Every recruiter is always trying to chase a magic bullet. Yep. But like, where do you see the future? And I know you're going to say something around keeping the human in the conversation, but like with you being a firm owner, you have a team of great recruiters, you being a big builder, where do you see all this?

Dan Lambert [00:40:51]:
That's a question for someone smarter than me. And that's for sure. I think like AI, so we use it for more administrative tasks. So I think AI is going to continue to be very valuable in terms of streamlining some information. I think it's a great teaching tool for some people that might not know all the intricacies of what an IT developer does or what a CFO does. It's a good training tool from that perspective. Back in the day, you literally had to Google What is a financial statement consolidation if you don't know what that means? What are eliminations? What are, like, if people don't know, they just nod and smile. So I think it's a good tool for stuff like that.

Dan Lambert [00:41:38]:
It's good for kind of helping source and I'm sure there's going to be some massive enhancements, but at the end of the day, this is a relationship business. This has always been a relationship business. I think it's always going to be a relationship business. And I don't know about you, but I can spot an AI email from a million miles away, right? So every time I get one, I automatically take you less seriously. I just do. So I don't want to be that guy. I don't like email, so I want to call you anyway, right? So, but, but I think AI, it, like every tool, LinkedIn's been useful. Indeed's been useful.

Dan Lambert [00:42:16]:
Back in the day, we used to circle the newspaper ads. Like, that was useful. But so I think this is going to become a new, faster-paced, advanced, useful. But again, if you're a client, if you're a candidate, you're not going to entrust your deepest, darkest secrets to AI. You're not going to tell me that you hate your boss through AI. You might tell me that if we have enough rapport established and you feel like when I say I'm doing everything I do in your best interest, That you believe that. Yeah, I think it certainly has a future like everything else that has been kind of thrust upon us in this business. I think what I'm seeing and hearing from clients is it's actually creating a greater necessity for recruiters because there's just so much BS floating around.

Dan Lambert [00:43:06]:
Candidates can literally take their resume, your job description, drop it in an AI, and they're the perfect candidate. We, we threw the BS. We're like, no, no, no. I met that guy 2 years ago. He had done none of this. And all of a sudden he's done all of that? No. So, and we had that discussion with, on the candidate side too, going, hey, this looks very AI. Like, come on.

Dan Lambert [00:43:28]:
People want to hire people. They want to work with people. So it's clients literally don't trust anything they get now. And it's interesting, but They get a resume and they're like, I don't know, is this real? Is this not? And because we're a society of convenience, people want their time saved. And that's really what we do is we bring the qualified candidates, the vetted candidates, the candidates who we know want a job like yours to you rather than you having to weed through, is this real? Is this not? Is this person even interested or is it just a AI where they're applying to 500 jobs automatically. And that's what we're hearing.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:09]:
And due to time, I'm going to switch gears again. And this section is going to be for the recruiters that want to grow into leadership. So you joined your current firm back in 2016, right?

Dan Lambert [00:44:19]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:20]:
Did you join it as a leader or did you grow into a leadership role?

Dan Lambert [00:44:24]:
So I joined as a partner with Susan Nemec and then took over Um, so yeah, it was with full intention to take over, but, uh, I had been a division director or whatever you want to call it at other places. And so I had held kind of leadership roles before. Um, but no, the intention was to take over ownership of the firm.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:47]:
Walking into your recruiting career back in 2010, that's a quick growth into leadership. Like, did you eye leadership the entire time?

Dan Lambert [00:44:57]:
No, sometimes sales can be like this. Sometimes the best salesperson is pushed into a leadership role, right? They might not even be the best leader. It's just you're the best. So let's follow the results. Not even you're the best recruiter, you just have the best results. So I had management roles since I was probably 17. So always kind of had that. But at the end of the day, I think it's, I didn't eye it.

Dan Lambert [00:45:28]:
And to be honest, when I stepped into recruitment, it was really, I want more flexibility. I wanna make a little bit more money. I think it's an interesting profession and I think I can do it. Like I went into it thinking I could do it differently. That was very much in the front of my mind going, I'm not gonna be these people. And Clients and candidates can attest to this. I vow to everybody I talk to, I said, listen, I don't want to be the douchebag recruiter that you've come across at one point in your life, right? So if I display any tendencies like that, stop me in my tracks and tell me. Because at the end of the day, not perfect, never profess to be perfect.

Dan Lambert [00:46:06]:
There's calls I've missed, there's follow-ups I've missed, all of those things have happened. But there's never the thought process of some recruiters. I've heard them say it, whatever, like they're not getting the job, so who cares, right? And you're just like, what? That's even with clients. I say to clients, like, I need feedback on every candidate you interview, even if they're not the right fit, because they might not be your hire today, but they could be your future hire. And how you deal with them, they're going to remember it, right? So That's everything. Just give the candidate a good experience because they can be your marketing tool. They'll talk about you like, hey, I didn't get the job, but it was a great interview. They gave me feedback.

Dan Lambert [00:46:50]:
Yeah, I did kind of screw up that question. Or they're right, I don't have that experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:55]:
What do you think prepared you for taking over and operating a firm?

Dan Lambert [00:47:00]:
Oh, just getting thrown in the deep end. To be honest, my wife always laughs. She says like, I don't know how you do what you do because you just learned as you went. I give a crap. I really do. I want good results and more so for my team. I want good results for me, but I want everybody to have the career they want to have. So if it's more money, if it's more flexibility, if it's— again, it's not that I don't care, but I always say I don't care.

Dan Lambert [00:47:30]:
It's your life. Like, you gotta be happy with what it is you do. So what prepared me? Probably just strong work ethic, just a burning desire to succeed. And I truly, and there's many people in my firm that are like this, our clients or our candidates' problems become our problems. I lose sleep over it, like legitimately lose sleep if a client's under pressure to hire someone, they can't get it done. It's a tough tough search. Like, I'm killing myself trying to ensure that we can satisfy the best of their ability. And so, I think again, hopefully it's seen that we take their problems on as our problems.

Dan Lambert [00:48:11]:
A candidate, I've had candidates who, again, they get downsized, they lose their job, that literally, I don't know how I'm going to pay the bills. Spend 2 days marketing for them, just calling clients. And that's the, that's where it doesn't feel like you're chasing ads and being that salesy guy. You're literally calling people, you know, going, hey, I met this candidate, this situation. I really like them. I think they could provide value to organization. Yeah. Do you have any use for someone like this? No.

Dan Lambert [00:48:42]:
Okay. Do you know anybody that might? No.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:44]:
Okay.

Dan Lambert [00:48:44]:
Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Um, you know, I'm just really trying to help this person out.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:49]:
Are those calls with a fee behind the scenes or are you just like actually like potentially giving a candidate away to a client for free?

Dan Lambert [00:48:59]:
Sometimes, yeah. So I've had somewhere, I actually just had somebody bubbled up to me from my wife actually said, hey, this person's looking for something. I can't charge somebody a fee for that person. Not that the person's bad, it's just that they're a junior candidate and at the end of the day, they don't have the experience. I've had that with co-op students and you're just going like, hey, let me call some people and see if I can get your foot in the door. I'm never going to get you the job, but I can say, hey, like I met this person. They're decent. They're hardworking.

Dan Lambert [00:49:28]:
They're not working because of X, Y, or Z. If you have any needs, like just let me know, have them. And that stuff, it just builds that. It just builds credibility that you're not out there just for the money. Trust me, I'm there for the money, but I, for the things that we should get paid for, um, when clients are just doing you a solid and say, hey, I'll refer them someplace. Great. Here's the resume. Take them.

Dan Lambert [00:49:55]:
I don't work in this vertical. I don't want to work in this vertical. Um, so yeah, it's, and, and I think people just hopefully just recognize that they see that, hey, it's, they're just trying to help someone out and If it was them, I would do the exact same thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:11]:
So looking at a decade of being this firm, leading this firm, if you can go back in time, back to 2010, with everything that you've learned with like managing people, managing a team, managing billing, billings, billers, yourself billing, what would be the top 3 things that you would tell yourself?

Dan Lambert [00:50:30]:
Wow. I'm not sure I've learned that lesson yet. You know what? I think Everybody just needs to take a breath and slow down. And I think I learned that over the years, right? Brand new business. It wasn't a new business, but new my business. You want it to be successful, it's gotta be profitable. So it's like bill, bill, right? Not in the crazy sense, but in the sense that you're like, okay, we gotta pay the bills or I might not have a living. I think if you do the right thing, it'll always come back to you.

Dan Lambert [00:51:03]:
And confidence breeds success, success breeds confidence, kind of that circle. And so when you don't have either, it's hard to pretend you have either. And so I think going back, you know what, you might have stumped me. I don't know what I would say to me that would probably be different than today because my philosophy's always been pretty deeply rooted in Be decent, work hard, right? Don't make excuses. I don't like excuses. There's a cup for every saucer. There's a candidate for every placement. There's, you just gotta find them.

Dan Lambert [00:51:39]:
And if you're not finding them, it's probably because you're taking a shortcut somewhere. But anyway, I didn't answer your question, but this guy's just stumped me.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:47]:
Before we jump over to the quickfire questions, and they do not need to be quick answers, is there anything that you want to go deeper on or is there a question that I should have asked you No, this is, like I said, this is my first podcast, so I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now and happy I've been able to answer almost all your questions.

Dan Lambert [00:52:06]:
No, I think got it covered so far.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:10]:
What would, if somebody on your team comes to you, they're probably billing like, we'll say $300K, $350K, and they're like, I want to go elite. I want to jump to that $600K, $700K, $800K billing. What would you tell that person to make that jump?

Dan Lambert [00:52:26]:
So first thing we would do is sit down and look how they recruit, what they're comfortable with. So sometimes people want the money, but they don't want to put in the effort. And those 2 things are kind of hand in hand. You could be a sniper and just nail every shot, but if you're only taking 3 shots, you can only hit 3 targets, right? So, so it's really, it is a bit of a volume game. It's a volume plus a quality game for sure. So I'd look at it and if they were great, I have a couple of people that are just dynamos when it comes to business development. So they'd love that side of it and say, okay, so you're good at business development. Maybe you should tackle some, some bigger accounts.

Dan Lambert [00:53:09]:
Maybe you should layer in some recruitment. So every so often you're placing your candidate in on one of your colleagues because we know how that works just from my history. So I I think we just look at the individual because I think there's a thousand ways to be successful in this business. I think the only ways not to be successful is to not put in the work, and people are gonna notice anytime you treat them horribly or put yourself before them. Every conversation can be, can be the son of a business owner. Who has 50 jobs they could send you, and that person doesn't look like they're of any value to your average recruiter. You just, you never know, right? So treat an entry-level candidate like they're the CEO of a business because they might be one day. And so again, I know I'm kind of talking in circles here, but if you treat people with respect, have that empathy.

Dan Lambert [00:54:12]:
And understand that there's volume and there's effort and there is no magic bullet. I am telling you, if somebody has one and we'll see with all this AI stuff, but Indeed wasn't it. LinkedIn wasn't it. Email marketing campaigns aren't it. Voice auto dialers aren't it. Like, what is it? What do we actually have to do to make it automatic? Because as soon as it's automatic, we're not needed. And that hasn't come true yet. And I think just the inherent connection between people and wanting to do business with people you like and entrusting people with your career.

Dan Lambert [00:54:47]:
I mean, after your friends and your family, what's the next most important thing in your life? Probably what you do for a living. Spend a lot of time doing it. So that's kind of how we operate. And I'm going, hey, like your friends and your family are number one. But after that, like you got to kind of like what you do. And most people can do the math going, 5 grand extra to cross the street for a job I hate. It's not really worth it. Right.

Dan Lambert [00:55:11]:
So, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:13]:
So I gotta ask you, you have a firm, you have a team, you bill yourself. Do you have a favorite tech tool?

Dan Lambert [00:55:20]:
Yeah, the phone.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:22]:
Cool. Perfect. Awesome.

Dan Lambert [00:55:24]:
I know that's, I mean, like we have an ETS, we use different Email marketing tools. We use AI. We use all of this stuff. To be honest, and maybe I'm just showing my age here, but it seems like everything's a fad, right? Everything comes in and this is going to, this is going to revolutionize what we do. And it's like, yeah, okay, for now, right? Until like people get used to getting bombarded that way and they just avoid it. I know I say I spend most of my time on the phone. But I also tell candidates to put my phone number in their phone. That's one of the first things I do when I connect with them.

Dan Lambert [00:56:03]:
I'm going, hey, you have a job. I know I'm going to have to connect with you. Texting is probably the best way. They're like, yeah, here's my number. Put me in your phone. So when I call you or text you, you know who I am. I'm like, oh, okay. So when I call, it actually pops up on their phone.

Dan Lambert [00:56:17]:
Right. Because—

Benjamin Mena [00:56:18]:
And you're getting through the call blockers.

Dan Lambert [00:56:20]:
Yeah. And so what do I get every single day? probably 100 likely spam phone calls. I never answer my phone unless your name pops up. And my wife's not in my phone, so I don't answer for her either.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:36]:
I'm kidding. She won't hear this.

Dan Lambert [00:56:38]:
She doesn't call me anyway.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:42]:
Do you have a book that's had a huge impact on your career?

Dan Lambert [00:56:45]:
Pardon me?

Benjamin Mena [00:56:46]:
Is there a book that has had a huge impact on your career?

Dan Lambert [00:56:50]:
I think there's a couple, and now I'm going to probably butcher the names because I read them a long time ago. I think it's something like The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, I think was one of them. Maybe that's wrong. And then the other one I think was Leadership Wisdom from the Dalai Lama. And so I know those are weird books to— I don't like sales books. It's all this hype and this feels like Wolf of Wall Street all over again. And there's probably some good ones there. And again, I'm never going to profess I'm the best at this.

Dan Lambert [00:57:24]:
So, but for me, it's always been really about relationships and people. That's who we are and that's what we do. And if we can put ego aside and if we can focus on relationships and putting you ahead of me, I think that's the hardest thing. Like we have a philosophy in our company, which is, again, it might sound hokey, but We try and ingrain in everybody that there's a— if you follow this mindset, you're always going to be successful. So candidates first, clients next, the organization you work for is next, because if it's profitable, you're going to have a job, and you're last. And if you make every decision with that mindset, you're never going to force a candidate into taking a job, never going to pressure a client into doing something they shouldn't be doing. It's like, listen, this is the order of importance. And if you're thinking of the candidate first and then the client next, how can you make a bad decision?

Benjamin Mena [00:58:19]:
So true. What has been one of the biggest challenges that you've had to walk through in this career?

Dan Lambert [00:58:27]:
Monday. No, you know what, like, it's hard, right? Recruiters are For the most part, you're selling something that somebody doesn't want to have to pay for, right? Hiring managers would just love to never lose anybody, never have to hire. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've never met a hiring manager that goes, awesome, I can't wait to hire someone. It's like, oh geez, I gotta do this. It's not the core part of their job, right? If you're a CEO, you're the CEO. If you're a CFO, you're the CFO. If you're a director of HR, like, You don't want to be recruiting all day long. So we're charging a fee for a service and that service most people really don't want to ever have to deal with, right? It's kind of like a funeral home, right? You don't want to have to do it.

Dan Lambert [00:59:23]:
So there's that breaking down those barriers and then trying to show value in what we do. And some days that's hard hearing no. Within my first two months of recruitment, I was pretty close to leaving because you're well you're getting that pressure to do it this way, right? I don't want to do it that way, and you don't know anybody, and nobody wants to take your call. And so you're like, hey, do you want to talk to me? And that you're giving these scripts as a new recruiter on what to say. Well, the eighteen people who sat in that desk before you said the exact same shit, right? To the same person, and they're just like oh. Another one of you? Can you just go away? Um, so I think it's, again, being who you are, be yourself. But it's, it's a tough business. It truly is.

Dan Lambert [01:00:09]:
Uh, it's a deeply rewarding one. I would never do anything else but this. It's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of fun when you have some success and when some people call you back and when you don't feel like you're leaving 85 voicemails and nobody's calling you back. Because those days happen. You have clients accept roles where you're billing $60 grand and then the candidate takes a counteroffer and then you want to jump out the window. So it's, I think somebody said this to me years ago and it's kind of stuck with me. They said that part of the reason they think I've been good at this is I'm not excitable. People joke that I'm kind of dead inside.

Dan Lambert [01:00:49]:
So if we, if we have a great month, a great day, a great This is my disposition. If I have the worst day of my career, this is my disposition. At the end of the day, if your highs are too high and your lows are too low, this is a roller coaster that's really tough for some people, even when you're having success. Because there's days, 16, 17 years later, you question yourself, can I, do I know how to do this job? Like, I think I know how to do this job, but what am I doing that's There doesn't seem to be any jobs, no candidates calling me back. Everybody's going to have those doubts. And because I have that rigor in what I do, it's, I always have told myself, when you have a bad day, when you have a bad call, when you have somebody take a counteroffer, just make one more phone call. Never leave the office with a bad call. Leave it with a good call.

Dan Lambert [01:01:43]:
And so even if it's with a candidate, you know, and like, and you got enough, hey, I know you're a Jets fan. See the Jets game the other day? Yeah. Cool. Awesome. So what's going on this summer? Not much. Okay, cool. Uh, hey, we have a golf tournament. I'm not sure if you want to come.

Dan Lambert [01:01:58]:
No, I'm good. Okay. Yeah, it was great talking. Bye. End it on that, right? Versus the negative. It'll keep you coming back.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:05]:
Love that. One more question for you. And I know you're not super out there online. But you've had the chance to sit down with plenty of your recruiters on your team. I'm sure they've asked you like, how are you doing BD? How do I do this? You know, being the firm owner, like at the end of the day, like you probably have to show everybody something. All those conversations that you had over these years, do you ever just wish that a recruiter would ask you like a certain question, but they never do?

Dan Lambert [01:02:31]:
You know what's funny? My wife says this and I think it's because she's my wife, right? Your wife thinks you're the best. So she always says like, how come people that work with you never grab you and say, how did you build this book? How did you get from A to Z? Or not, I'm not at Z yet, but A to L, how did you get there? And funny enough, I've never had that. I've never had somebody say, hey, you've been really successful, or you've built a lot. Let's just call it you've built a lot. I want to build a lot. How did you bill a lot? Literally, I've never had that. I've shown people bits and pieces, but yeah, like the candidate update call to me is the one thing I'm just— it blows my mind that people don't do. If I was brand new, day one, brand new firm, 60,000 candidates in a database, how many of them haven't been talked to in a year? I'm grabbing 100 of them and I'm just, hey, how's it going? Dan Cohen, Lambert Demick.

Dan Lambert [01:03:29]:
How's it going? Like rinse, repeat, because what are you going to have after you do 20 of them a day? Maybe you get 10 people, right? That's 50 a week. That's 200 a month. That's 2,400 in a year. I have 2,400 candidates in a year. That's a pretty good number, right? And just by all these people sit in a database, it's kind of like a graveyard for some people. We do a pretty good job of maintaining it, but a lot of firms don't. They have phone numbers, you have resumes, you have past interview notes, you have, and people ignore it. They spend all day doing this zombie scroll on LinkedIn trying to find, you know, the one unique profile.

Dan Lambert [01:04:07]:
It's like, get out of here. I want to call 100 people that already have phone numbers that kind of know us, that kind of like us. And so yeah, that's, that's the advice that I have given to my team members, but it's, it takes a certain level of diligence and some people want They want the cracker now, right? I want to play somebody now. And it's like, why? Like, why? What do you get out of it now? Like, maybe you feel good now, but I would rather have a bench of 200 people that kind of know me, that kind of like me, that'll take my call. I know what they're looking for. And when I find it, I call them. And to me, that's the easy part, but people want to make it complicated. I just, I'm, like I said, I'm not the smartest guy.

Dan Lambert [01:04:51]:
I probably outwork most people and I just keep it simple and stay true to myself. So keep it simple, talk to people, be decent, let them know you're doing this for their best interest and tell them the why. That the why is critical. Sometimes people don't get why you're asking the questions you're asking, but if they know why, it's a benefit to them to tell you.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:12]:
I lied. I do have one more question for you. If somebody wants to follow you or connect with you, how do they go about doing that?

Dan Lambert [01:05:19]:
I think I'm on LinkedIn. I look at it sometimes. Um, yeah, so I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. I don't really do all the other— again, I think I'm showing my age— all the other kind of social media stuff. I have a marketing team. They force me to like stuff and comment on stuff. But for the most part, I, I know I'm on LinkedIn. I do connect with most people.

Dan Lambert [01:05:42]:
And like I said, I legitimately, like, I started work last night at 11 PM, started. So I've been working since then and it's 3 PM the next day. So I only need 4 or 5 hours sleep. If people message me, I typically get back to them. I have more time than brains. So happy to connect with people if they have questions, happy to share. I remember when I started recruiting, it was like, go connect with everyone because to try and copy you and steal your stuff.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:09]:
Remember that?

Dan Lambert [01:06:10]:
Like, no, I connect with people. And honestly, there's so much business out there. This market's growing rapidly.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:17]:
I—

Dan Lambert [01:06:17]:
yeah, there's just too much of it. So if somebody wants to come and take some of it, awesome, because then I can just go home.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:25]:
Well, Dan, I just, I just wanted to say thank you for coming on and sharing today. Just, I know there's recruiters out there that have a true belief on the impact of a candidate-focused desk. And I really wanted this interview to be almost a bit of a belief builder of like, you can become that million-dollar biller, you can become that top biller, or whatever you want to bill and put the work in. You could do it by flipping the desk over and chasing it a different way.

Dan Lambert [01:06:53]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:54]:
There's so many ways to grow a recruiting business, a recruiting desk, a recruiting career. And huge thank you for sharing how you have done it.

Dan Lambert [01:07:05]:
Awesome. Oh, I appreciate the opportunity to share. It's been awesome chatting with you a couple of times. And if you ever want me on again, maybe I'll be better next time.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:16]:
Dan, I just want to say thank you. For the listener, 2026 is over halfway over. This is your chance to draw a line in the sand. If you are that candidate-focused person at heart, This is your chance to redraw the desk. This is your chance to go in this quarter and make it your best quarter. Make it your best work. Make this your year. Sorry, guys.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:35]:
Keep crushing it. I'll see you soon.

Dan Lambert [01:07:37]:
Cool.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:38]:
Atlas is a CRMx, a CRM that actually understands context. It captures everything you say, hear, read, and write. Every interview, client call, LinkedIn message, email, and WhatsApp automatically. Not because you spent the time entering it. It's because Atlas is always listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take. So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks the best candidates and tells you why. No digging required.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:02]:
The same memory turns BD into a shortlist of who to chase and why, so you win more clients. Need to see your pipeline? Speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds a view automatically tracking whatever matters to you. Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both with a new contract suite that means you never have to chase a timesheet again and live margin visibility on every single placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs into your, your LLMs, Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest of your stack. The low-value work that keeps you from billing, Atlas does it for you. Atlas customers right now are saying that they're seeing a 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15 hours saved every week, monthly billings jumping 85%, and agencies hitting 150% of their annual revenue target by building their business with Atlas. If you want more information, check out Recruit with Atlas. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:59]:
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