20 Principles To Become The Recruiter AI Can't Replace

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.

Greg Benadiba [00:01:43]:
I really love the recruitment business. And it really pains me when I hear a recruiter never called me back, all recruiters are the same. These recruiters only care about one thing, their own paychecks. They don't give a damn about us. And I heard a lot of that. You go into a place that's a mess and you clean up the mess. But first you have to understand how that mess exists and how they've been able to operate for the last 25 years with that mess in place. Because obviously they're doing something right.

Greg Benadiba [00:02:09]:
They're making money. 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, Atlas is a CRMx, a CRM that actually understands context.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:32]:
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Greg Benadiba [00:02:53]:
That's amazing.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:55]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:03:43]:
I am excited about this episode, and I know I say I'm excited about every single time, but I am excited to sit down with a returning guest. And this is a guest that I have a ton of respect for. I've watched him not only grow as a leader, but I've watched his firm grow. But it is so cool to have him back to tell more of the story. But even more importantly, like, this is probably one of the most AI tech-focused founder— or not founders, but leaders that I personally know. But at the same time, they are drilling down the principles. of recruiting with the team. So that way, as the tech gets better, the team gets exponentially better.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:30]:
And he actually just dropped a book, Recruitment Principles. You can see it behind, behind him. Let me grab it right here. Definitely go pick it up on Amazon. It is timeless principles, but real quick, let me just jump in. Greg, how many principles did you put in this book?

Greg Benadiba [00:04:45]:
Well, I had to cut it short there, Ben. I mean, I didn't want to make it an encyclopedia, so I dropped it down to the 20 core fundamental principles, the ones that I really couldn't let out or I couldn't go without. There were a couple that I thought maybe could be good for a second edition down the line. So I kept it down to the top 20.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:03]:
So let's narrow it down even more because here's the thing, like these are 20 principles that you are calling timeless truths for recruiting in the age of AI. And I'm watching, this is like the weirdest market that I'm watching, you know, getting the, the bird's eye view that I have as a podcast guest and the conversations I have, I am watching certain recruiters The market is literally rewarding them nonstop with jobs. And then I'm watching at the same time, other recruiters struggling so hard to get even that one or two job orders. If a recruiter could only live by 3 of the principles that you put down of the 20 in this book, what would those 3 be?

Greg Benadiba [00:05:45]:
First one, be impeccable with your word. Everything flows into that. I mean, your reputation is what you have in this business. And, you know, it's funny because we're going into the age of AI now where information is really becoming commoditized, right? Everybody's going to have access to databases. If you've got a license on, you know, either LinkedIn Recruiter or on Pin or one of those other aggregate tools, which are fantastic, guess what? We all have access to the same people. So what's the difference? That brings me to principle number 2, which is trust is your only sustainable competitive advantage in the recruitment business. You know, in a world where AI can source, AI can screen, you know, it can write job descriptions, it can do reference checks for you, but who is an employer going to trust? And I think that's what it really boils down to. So those are the top 2.

Greg Benadiba [00:06:36]:
Beyond that, I would probably pick the goldmine is in the conversation. I think a lot of recruiters still don't dig very deep in those conversations. And that's likely a result of them moving too quickly. I found that some of the best recruiters in the world actually slow down to speed up. And the way to do that is to take a great deal of time in understanding in what people actually do, their reasons for change, who exists on the teams that they're in. There's so much information to be had if you're just willing to mine for it. And so the gold mine is in the conversation is probably the 3rd principle that I'd pick right off the bat.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:18]:
I love how reading the book, you kind of went all in on the first chapter about being impeccable with your word. And you talked about a phone call. And here's the thing, like us recruiters, we make how many phone calls per year, probably? Like, random guess.

Greg Benadiba [00:07:32]:
Per year? Boy, I mean, 50 a day, at least 220 business days, you know, thousands. We're making thousands of calls.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:42]:
But, and how long have you been a recruiter?

Greg Benadiba [00:07:44]:
I've been a recruiter for 21 years.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:48]:
The very first chapter of the book, you talk about a phone call that you didn't make and how it pretty much laid a huge foundation. Like, walk us through the scenario. What actually happened and why would you make this literally the very first part of this book?

Greg Benadiba [00:08:05]:
Because it was such an important learning lesson. And I mean, you know, in recruitment, we get kicked in the teeth a lot. And when you're junior and, you know, you don't really have anybody to guide you through this, I mean, that's mostly the reason that I wrote this book is it's the book that I wished I had been given on day one. It would have saved me so much turmoil, so much pain if I had actually had these principles in my hand, but unfortunately I didn't. I had to learn it the hard way. But this story is a simple story. I mean, you know, we had, we had a potential client call us up and say, Greg, you know, we're— it wasn't me, it was one of the account executives at the time. I was just a recruiter.

Greg Benadiba [00:08:46]:
We might be looking for a marketing manager. And I had interviewed this lady, her name is Sophie. You know, I had had a couple great calls with her and I called her up because, you know, there was a potential spec job that was going to come up. So I called her up, I said, Sophie, I got her all excited, you know, real momentum. I said, there's a strong chance that we're going to be getting this job order. The fee agreement had been sent out to the client, so it was almost going to rock and roll. Unfortunately, it didn't materialize. The client had budget constraints at the time and they were reorging internally, so the job was put on hold and possibly canceled entirely.

Greg Benadiba [00:09:22]:
They said they don't know, it's going to be a time thing. So, so I just simply didn't know what was going to happen. And of course, a few weeks passed. I got busy. You know, I kind of made excuses to myself, right? She'll know, right? The reason why I didn't call. I told her that it wasn't really a job order yet, right? She'll understand. I'm busy. Obviously, I got other pressing needs, so I didn't call.

Greg Benadiba [00:09:45]:
And unfortunately, recruiters do this a lot. And this is part of the reason why I've written this book. The result of that was Obviously a negative review. I got a call from my supervisor a couple weeks later.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:57]:
So because you didn't call, she actually went and left you guys a negative review. Okay.

Greg Benadiba [00:10:03]:
Which is fair. It's more than fair. You know, I think it's important for people to be serviced. Like, I mean, think about it. If you were dealing with an organization and they told you about something and then they never called back, what would be your impression of them? Man, I know, but some people have the time to do that. And you know what? It's fair. And reviews are fair. I believe that's a fair ecosystem.

Greg Benadiba [00:10:25]:
It's a nice place for people to be able to vent what it is that they're venting. And I watch reviews very carefully. That's why we've got 4.9 stars on Google. And I monitor those things very carefully because that's important information. It's a signal, not a noise. And it's important to know what people are feeling. Bottom line is I got a message a few weeks later from my manager saying, hey, did you notice this review? I looked at it and I was like, oh yeah, you know what? It's true. I didn't call her back and I should have, even though it was a potential opportunity.

Greg Benadiba [00:10:55]:
It wasn't something solid. And then I got a call from a gentleman by the name of David. He was somebody that I had been working with. He had been placed at a client corporation. He was about to mention our name to his boss so that we could start recruiting for his company. And he called me up. He's like, Greg, I just saw the review on Google. I was just happened to stumble on your reviews.

Greg Benadiba [00:11:16]:
And I was like, oh God, this is not good. This is turning into a big mess because I didn't make a call. And I learned my lesson then and there. I said to myself, Greg, moving forward, you are going to call everybody, no matter how painful it might be and how much time it might take. And I did. And as a result, the reputation and the permutations of that have been great. I can tell you that, like, when you really respect people's time and you respect and honor our craft, you'll build more. No question about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:47]:
Reading the book, I was just like, even that week, I was like, fuck, I didn't make that call. Well, let me just, well, let me just like break this down for you. Cause like, like I can give you every excuse why I have not made certain calls and I should have. I know many reasons why other recruiters haven't made other calls, but like, let me ask you this. Like, what does it actually cost you per week? In actual time to be impeccable with your word, kind of prove to recruiters that like, that say like, I don't have room for this.

Greg Benadiba [00:12:22]:
You do have room for it. 100%, you do. Okay. Listen, these are human beings. You expect them to return your call. You expect them to be prompt and act when you are coming to them. Reciprocity is important. You have to do the same for them.

Greg Benadiba [00:12:40]:
Again, trust is your only sustainable competitive advantage in this business. When you're a junior rookie, nobody really knows who you are. So you're calling out to a candidate base. What's going to be your response rate? What happens when you're a more seasoned recruiter, one like myself in my market, who has a reputation? Guess what? They answer the phone. Well, that reputation is built over time. What does it actually cost you? Not much, to be honest. Like, I mean, these days with our technology, I'll give you some very specific examples here. For Co-Recruit, Quill.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:10]:
We have it.

Greg Benadiba [00:13:11]:
And I mean, it was one of the feature changes that I had asked them to put in place, and they did. I mean, the technology team there is fantastic. They went ahead and did it. I said, you know, why don't you prompt every single one of our recruiters? And I think they made this a global feature where if there's any action item within the call, send them an email. And that's what it does. So when action items are promised, because sometimes you say, you know what, Ben, I'll get back to you with that link. And We forget. We forget.

Greg Benadiba [00:13:37]:
Well, guess what? That system now prevents us from doing that. So, you get these follow-up calls. It tells you the action items, the promises that you made, and then you have to follow through on keeping them. Now, listen, what this gets you really good at is make sure you don't make promises unless you plan on keeping them as well. So, sometimes being quiet and not saying anything rather than overpromising and underdelivering might be the best thing to do. But I mean, how long does it take on a Sunday going through those emails, making sure I've gone ahead and done everything I should? I can take all those emails. Nowadays I've got them all funneled into Perplexity. It automatically tells me, okay, Greg, you've done these things.

Greg Benadiba [00:14:13]:
Here are the things that are outstanding. Go get them done. And that's it. And enjoy your Sunday. Have a good day. I mean, it's, it's very simple. You just got to make sure that, you know, there's, there's no holes in the boats, right? It's got to be airtight, in my opinion, to be somebody that's regarded highly in the industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:28]:
Well, Greg, let me take a few steps back. For those of you, the listeners that have not seen you at a summit, they didn't catch your roundtable in the Elite Recruiter Community, and they haven't listened to the previous episode, a quick self-introduction. Who, who is Greg?

Greg Benadiba [00:14:42]:
I'm just a recruiter. I'm a recruiter that really loves what it is that we do. At the ripe old age of 24 years old, I was working at Dell Computer Corp. I was a customer service rep, and I decided I wanted to get into recruitment. I read Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad Poor Dad. In that book, he told me to basically go ahead and look at the skills that you possess and the skills that you'd like to develop for your future self. And I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to own a business, you know, looked at the skills that I lacked.

Greg Benadiba [00:15:10]:
And I really thought long and hard about talent acquisition. I knew that recruitment was going to be a problem. I mean, I had been a part of several different departments, some with great employees, some with subpar employees. I knew that management was always going to have a challenge recruiting talent, but I was 24. I had no experience in recruitment, right? Who was going to hire me? So I stumbled upon Bilingual Source through an ad on, at the time, Workopolis, and I interviewed here. They rejected me, told me that unfortunately I'm too junior. I came back a month later and asked for the job again. They put me through 8 hours of grilling interviews, and there we go.

Greg Benadiba [00:15:47]:
That was the beginning of my recruitment career. Um, truth be told, I wasn't a very good recruiter at first, Ben. I was pretty awful. I thought, I thought recruitment was about helping everybody. I took that customer service focus approach. I quickly learned what constituted a fee candidate, what would be a candidate for whom a client would pay a fee. Uh, so I got my target straight and, um, then they let me through the gates of business development and that's really where I thrived. Becoming a BD agent was for me a milestone moment and, uh, Moved up to leadership.

Greg Benadiba [00:16:17]:
I mean, for me, it was very organic. It was deliberate, but organic. I love what we do. And I'm very grateful to be a recruiter every single day.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:25]:
For those of you that haven't had the chance to listen to the last episode I had with Greg, actually go grab it because he actually walks through deliberately his journey from just a frontline recruiter all the way up to the CEO, shares all the steps, all the things that he did behind the scenes. Because I know Many of us, when we're sitting in that chair, we're very junior. We're like, where can we take our career? He gives you the blueprint right there, how to take your career from the company that you're at, from working the desk all the way to executive leadership. So definitely go pick that up. All right. Jumping into another principle, you made another principle, counteroffers. And I got to ask you why, because like, you know, sometimes it feels like you have no control. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:08]:
Why did you make counteroffers another important principle of this book?

Greg Benadiba [00:17:13]:
You know, I thought about taking it out, truth be told, Ben. I mean, it almost didn't make the cut, but then I thought to myself, you know, we have to integrate this into the book. It has to be something that's spoken of. Counteroffers are where placements go to die. And, you know, if you don't treat counteroffers with the respect that they need, You're going to lose a lot of deals, especially in a competitive market, depending on the niche industry that you're in. Most recruiters treat counteroffers as a surprise, and they're not a surprise. They are completely predictable events. Every time you have a strong candidate in a strong company, you know, you're going to encounter some sort of exit interview or a counteroffer.

Greg Benadiba [00:17:55]:
You know, I made it a principle because, you know, I had lost a lot of fees at the beginning to counteroffers early in my career. And I had to systemize it. And once I built that system in place, counteroffers disappeared.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:08]:
So I know you talk in the book about a story where, and in that story, one of the things that you highlighted is counteroffers, like the impact that you have on counteroffers literally starts at the very first conversation that you have with it. So I was actually thinking about doing a little bit of a role play with you.

Greg Benadiba [00:18:26]:
Sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:27]:
Just, just so like, you know, it's going to be super short, but just like picture this. I'm a candidate. We're having conversations. Yep. And I already got the offer. Excited about the offer. I gave you the call saying, oh my God, this is so amazing. Greg, you are a lifesaver.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:44]:
You are absolutely changing my life. And then fast forward the next day, I'm actually calling you up because, uh, I had a conversation with my boss. And I was going to give notice. I was like trying to say like, hey, this is what I want to do. This was where I want to go. But I've been there for over 2 years. They actually came back to the table with 15% more. I know these people.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:06]:
So I think I'm going to stay.

Greg Benadiba [00:19:10]:
Yeah. And so this happens. And so in that role play, I mean, I can go right into the role play, but I will kind of asterisk this. This will not have been the first conversation that you and I are having about this, Ben. Like, just to predicate this, the conversation would've started right at the beginning. What I would say to you at that point is I would say, Ben, do you remember when you and I spoke? When I first spoke with you and I asked you the question, what would need to change in the company for you to stay? When I told you that they're going to offer you 20, maybe even 25% more, they only offered you 15.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:43]:
Hmm.

Greg Benadiba [00:19:45]:
What would have you say yes? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a change do you want to make? Remember when you told me you were ready and you've been thinking about this for a year and it's a 10? Now they've made you a counteroffer, Ben. Okay, that's good. That means that they value you. There's no question about it. You're a valuable team member. And Whether or not you take that counteroffer, I'm not going to be mad at you. I want you to know that right now. But I care deeply about you.

Greg Benadiba [00:20:16]:
And I just want to run you through a few different statistics. As far as I've read and heard, over 60% of people that accept counteroffers are no longer within that company within a year.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:28]:
Why?

Greg Benadiba [00:20:29]:
Why do you think that is? It's probably because the trust has been broken. You know, on that Thursday when you said you were going to a doctor's appointment, you were going to an interview. And they know that you've been unhappy for one reason or another. The other question that I want you to really think about is why did it take you resigning for them to come to you with your true value?

Benjamin Mena [00:20:56]:
Good answer back. And I know you actually start talking about this in the very, very first conversation. So like, how do you word that in your initial conversation? Or like start planting the seeds.

Greg Benadiba [00:21:09]:
So I know that good companies are going to make counteroffers. I know that companies will conduct exit interviews. Okay. That this is just standard practice in real organizations. In fact, fun fact, Ben, I don't know if you know this, but I read, um, I read, uh, Reed Hastings' book about Netflix and what they do over there. It's wild in, in, in California and in the tech valley. When I read this, I was shocked. He actually made it a practice to tell his employees to go interview at other tech firms to generate counteroffers, to bring them back to him so that he could then match or exceed that offer, which is like wild stuff.

Greg Benadiba [00:21:51]:
When I read that in his book, I was like, okay, whoa, the tech sector has some money to play with here. They've got some capital, right? But yeah, this conversation starts early, you know? Again, it comes down to the reasons for change. Why are you truly looking to make a change? And I don't say why anymore. Sorry, I try to kind of remove that habit. What are the reasons why you are looking to make a change? If the company were to offer you 20% more, what would you do? Have you thought about resigning? How is your boss going to take it? In the last few that have resigned out of your corporation, Have any of them been granted an exit interview? What's taken place there? And you start to pry open and listen to those conversations. Listen, I've had people point blank in those conversations right off the bat, and I mean, kudos to them, hats off, tell me, Greg, you know what, I'm glad you asked these questions because really what I'm trying to do here is generate a counteroffer so I can take it to my boss to get a raise.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:51]:
Touché.

Greg Benadiba [00:22:53]:
It happens. Right? So you wanna feel them out, right? And just have a conversation. And from there, I mean, you'll be able to know. Some people are steadfast. They're like, I'm making a change one way or the other because something adverse has happened and they really are motivated to make a change. Again, change is hard. A lot of times when people want to take a counteroffer, it's because they're comfortable. They know the systems, they know the people, they know the frameworks, they know the policies, the procedures.

Greg Benadiba [00:23:22]:
They're going to get the money that they want. So now they're going to stay. It's comfortable. I get it. Change is hard, but it's also a risky proposition. Now, that being said, I have seen some people in my time who have taken counteroffers and it's been a legit counteroffer where they had no intention of doing what's called a confidential replacement. But sometimes, some corporations, what they'll do is they'll make a counteroffer because they'll actually behind the scenes start to initiate a confidential replacement. I've seen even sneakier practices where the wording on the counteroffer negates the time period that they were there prior to that.

Greg Benadiba [00:23:56]:
So, so the entire 2 years that you were in the company is now negated in some sneaky legal legalese, as I like to call it, right? So I've, I've seen all kinds in counteroffers. It's, it's a dangerous play. So just be sure of what you're doing. It's risky. If you're looking to make a move, make the move. I know it's hard, but On the other side of that pain and change is growth.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:19]:
And you've— it's one of those things that we always talk about or hear about, like, you know, systems is what actually moves you forward. You actually created a system for this. Briefly talk about that.

Greg Benadiba [00:24:33]:
I developed it in Notion, very simply put. Everything was scattered everywhere. It was all in like Word documents everywhere, right? For years. And thank God I did this before Before COVID I don't know what, I just did it and it was the right time because COVID hit and then we needed these systems badly. So I aggregated our data. I just wanted to centralize everything in one, one area. I was able to put everything in Notion, all of our policies, our procedures, the ways in which we do things, the client and candidate facing documents. And I've tethered that to our search system.

Greg Benadiba [00:25:02]:
So, you know, my employees can GPT anything within Notion. It's all tied in. I use Perplexity. It's tied into Notion. So is Claude. I mean, they're all tied into our Notion database. LLMs need data to go by. And if you give them that, they'll be able to operate better and give you more to run with.

Greg Benadiba [00:25:19]:
But, you know, beyond all of that, truth be told, it's in training, right, Ben? I mean, constantly and never-endingly having to train. So what we do is we take a topic every week. We have our Wednesday training meetings. Our trainer here, Vernon, goes ahead and takes a topic and brings everybody in the boardroom and They talk about that topic and it's great because, you know, it refreshes everybody on that particular thing. So if we're talking about counteroffers or exit interviews or how to condition somebody for an exit interview, what to say, what not to say, like we've got a plethora of data on how that should be done. Systems are good, but the adoption and utilization of those systems is what counts.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:58]:
Now picture this, before you added in these systems, And then after, what was the financial reward of implementing this before and after?

Greg Benadiba [00:26:11]:
That's a great question. You know, I think that's always hard to measure, right, Ben? Like a lot of people could tell you we've made a lot more. It's hard to measure. I'd even say that with AI, you know, it's very, I mean, there are very few people out there that I think can say, okay, I can definitely say there's been a measurable outcome. What I can tell you is that it's saved us a lot of deals. So if I were to say maybe 5% of our business has been saved as a direct result of the right policies and procedures being out there, our recruiter GPT, like Recruitment Principles, the GPT that goes with my book, has been a game changer for our company. I will say that it's probably one of my favorite tools and I'm constantly re-editing it. And it's not just to plug the tool, it's actually working.

Greg Benadiba [00:26:55]:
So what my team will do is they'll, they used to, you used to come to me, Greg, what do you think of this response? Is this what I should say to the client or the candidate? Right. And I'd be like, hold on. No, we have a better way to approach this. I don't think you're seeing the problem in its entirety, right? What they're going to think is it's, they're going to be thinking very unfavorable things to this particular response. I think you're omitting all of this. And so what I did was I built that GPT to help my recruiters with how to respond in a principled manner. And I mean, it's, it's already saved deals, so many of them, right? Where a recruiter will say, Greg, thanks, because I put that particular query into the, into the, the recruitment principles and it came back with the right answer. The client responded favorably.

Greg Benadiba [00:27:40]:
So I'll give you an example. I had a teammate of mine who, you know, a client of his was ghosting us for like, I'd say a good solid 6 weeks, no update on the search. Right? Long period of time, right? And it was one of his only searches, a junior AE, right? So he was like, what do I do? And I said, well, what, what were you gonna write? Because I always like to see what they're gonna write first, right? What were you going to write? And I looked at it and I said, not bad, not bad, but is that gonna get you your desired outcome? What's your desired outcome? You know, what he was saying is he was saying, this is how much time we've invested in the search. This is what we've done so far. It would be nice to get a response. And I'm like, yeah, that's not, that's the wrong angle. That's, you might be assuming a bunch of things. You don't know what's going on on the other end.

Greg Benadiba [00:28:23]:
You don't know why the client's not responding. You have no idea what's actually happening. So run that answer through Recruitment Principles so that it'll tell you exactly what to say. And he did. And the response came back and it was more questions and letting the client know that we've been keeping candidates warm and we can no longer do so. Uh, and it would be better for their internal or reputation, their, their brand to give us a response answer right away from the employer favorably too, in a way that was exactly what we wanted. What kind of timeframe were we looking for and why was the delay on the search happening in the first place? You know, I think that I could probably measure in saying that it's been roughly 5% of our business that's probably been saved as a result of that particular I mean, 5% is a huge number.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:14]:
Anybody listening would be like, would love to have 5% more. Yeah.

Greg Benadiba [00:29:20]:
That, that you already had. Not letting it slip.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:22]:
Yeah.

Greg Benadiba [00:29:22]:
Not letting it slip through your fingers. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:24]:
Well, that, that kind of like walks into the guarantee period. And for those listening, make sure I'm actually going to have Greg at one of the upcoming summits. So make sure you get signed up, make sure you see him. He always drops some amazing knowledge, but that kind of like walks me into the guarantee period. Like we're sitting there talking about fall-offs because that's literally this money that you had in the door that decided to just magically like get up and walk out. You have one of the most coolest systems I've seen in a long time, at least when it comes to this category. And you've shared it and it's in the Library of the Elite or Creator Community, but you shared your walkthrough of it for those listening. Let's talk about the system, but also, was there a moment that created you creating the system?

Greg Benadiba [00:30:14]:
I don't think it was a moment in particular. I mean, I'm a customer service representative at heart, Ben. I mean, that's who I am. Service is paramount to me. When you look at your credit card statement on a monthly basis, next time you do so, I want you to look and think to yourself, which one of these vendors actually knows who I am and cares about me? And I'd probably say that it's very minimal. Most are just completely transactional. They don't know who you are, nor do they care. And so—

Benjamin Mena [00:30:46]:
The bakery, and that's it.

Greg Benadiba [00:30:47]:
The bakery, they know who you are, right? So, I mean, that's the whole thing. I mean, I'm a CSR. I want people to feel good. And so what I did was I basically took our entire process and I mapped it out. I said, okay, what are all of our touchpoints? You know, we've only got so many touchpoints in recruitment, right, Ben? Like, I mean, there's so many interactions that we have with a candidate or with a client before a placement is made and then post-placement, right? So why don't we do a job of taking great care of each one of those moments? So again, the fall-offs. Okay. In fact, we did a team meeting on this this week, okay, to refine it even further because It was good. I mean, it's been in existence now for about a year, but I want to improve it.

Greg Benadiba [00:31:29]:
I want to make it even better. So systematically, here's what our system does. On placement date, or sorry, right before placement, it sends the candidate a notification on the things that they can do to be a model employee, that they can do to do well in their first week. It also verifies that they've received all the data and the things that they need for day 1. On the night before, it speaks to them and tells them good luck on your next day. Right? Day of, it asks them how their first day was. And we're about to change it. We had it at a 1-week follow-up.

Greg Benadiba [00:32:00]:
We're going to move it to a 2-week because we've seen a little bit of a drop-off on the response rate. But we've got now a follow-up roughly at the 2-week mark that asks them if they have what they need in terms of training, if they have what they need from leadership, how they're integrating in the company. And Immediately when there's a detractor score, and a detractor score is usually 8 and below, right? So, 8 or below, and of course, the positive ones too, but the 8 or below, we get a notification right away. And it tells the account executive, it tells the recruiter in charge, hey guys, you may have a problem here. Get on the phone. So, I mean, in the book, I talk about Nancy, and I remember Nancy well. Okay, Nancy was a great candidate. She needed a remote job.

Greg Benadiba [00:32:44]:
She basically lived in the eastern part of Toronto, like in the suburbs, like Whitby, Oshawa. Anyway, it's a part of the part of Toronto where, you know, you've got to work remote, right? It's, there's no other way. So I had a client and I knew that this client was disorganized. They're a good company. They pay their fees. They have a great product, but I know that they're a little bit old-fashioned in the way that they do things. They're not modernized yet. And I knew that going into this.

Greg Benadiba [00:33:15]:
So when I pitched Nancy the job, I was very deliberate and I told her straight up, this is what you're gonna walk into. In fact, I helped her in her interview to ask questions around the systems and where they're falling short and how that's impacting the team. In fact, they had had a resignation, which is why the job was open to fill this job because of their lack of systems. So a bit of a difficult circumstance, but still a good company to work for the right individual. So I placed her there knowing full well that this was— and again, I was, I was very upfront and I prefaced this all in my submission. Her survey came back 5 out of 10. I remember right away picked up the phone, got on the line with Nancy, and I said, Nancy, what's going on? It's like, Greg, you were right. This place is a disaster.

Greg Benadiba [00:34:02]:
I'm like, yeah, but the people aren't. And she's like, you're right. They're not. They're good people. And I said, I told you that the systems were chaotic. And that was a red flag right off the bat. She's like, yeah, but you know what? It's really hard because there's no training. The manager's not there.

Greg Benadiba [00:34:19]:
You know, it's sink or swim really. Like, you know, they sit in limbo, difficult circumstance. And I spoke to her and I said, Nancy, you may not know this, but the reason why I placed you in this company is because I knew full well that you are a very organized person. And that you could be the one, once your probation period is up and you understand exactly why the systems are the way they are currently, you could be the one that could help remodel these systems. And she was like, Greg, are you serious? I'm like, yeah. You want to grow in life? This is how you do it. You go into a place that's a mess and you clean up the mess. But first you have to understand how that mess exists.

Greg Benadiba [00:35:00]:
and how they've been able to operate for the last 25 years with that mess in place. Because obviously they're doing something right. They're making money, right? So why not look at this as an opportunity rather than jump ship? Where else are you going to find a remote job that pays you this kind of money? You're not. We were looking for 6 months. You're not. This is it. Opportunity knocks. She took that to heart.

Greg Benadiba [00:35:22]:
I followed up with her sequentially. She's still there. Not only that, she's now implemented entire systems approvals, and she's fixed their entire architecture. She's fantastic. The client's over the moon with her, all as a result of a systematic survey that we have in place because I care. You have to care. You have to look at your entire placement process and think to yourself, where are the touchpoints? How can I automate them to be sure that nothing falls through the cracks? And when you start to do that seriously in your business, and again, this can't be done Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. I'm going to hit you with that.

Greg Benadiba [00:35:53]:
I mean, if you're a solopreneur, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, you're here, you're working in your business. You can't be working on your business. So the times that you work on your business are on the weekend, evening time. But for me, evening time, I mean, I want to spend time with family too, right? If I was without a family right now and I was still in my 20s, that's exactly what I'd be doing. I'd be working till 11 o'clock at night building my systems. But now that's what I devote the weekends to, is working on the business so that I can work in the business optimally during the week.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:26]:
What did that system cost for you to build? And what's it worth a year? Ballpark.

Greg Benadiba [00:36:33]:
Cost us about $20,000 US, roughly. Worth every penny. Worth every penny. It's great. It's a great little system. And I mean, I maintain it. You're constantly tweaking it, constantly looking at ways that you can improve it. I look at all of our touchpoints constantly.

Greg Benadiba [00:36:53]:
You know, here, let me put you this way. There are certain restaurants that you really remember. There are restaurants that you walk into, they make you feel special. The service is just impeccable. The food is to die for. The entire experience makes you feel like you're royalty. That's a restaurant that you want to go back to. The rest of them, okay, whatever.

Greg Benadiba [00:37:18]:
But, you know, that's, that's the shop I wanted to create here at Bilingual Source. And I think when a person has that mentality, they truly are the heart and soul of the organization, and they're the ones that are going to bring a shining light, a beacon for that industry in that marketplace. And if you do that for your business, you'll do quite well. And by the way, word spreads. It's a small world out there. And when employers have a great experience saying, wow, I mean, you know, dealing with this recruiter, boy, they took the time to come visit me. They took the time to understand the DNA of our teams. They took the time to give me a series of questions that helped me interview better so that I can protect myself further and hire the right individual.

Greg Benadiba [00:38:00]:
Not only that, the people that I've hired from them have had a tremendously long stick rate as a result. They've helped me reshape my entire team. I get these calls saying, hey, I've been recommended to you by another client. And their exclusive orders at my highest rate because they know what to expect.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:21]:
It sounds like you've mapped out like a lot of the everything that you've done. Like in reality, how many touchpoints have you mapped out for the journey?

Greg Benadiba [00:38:31]:
I'd say for the candidate journey, I mean, it's roughly 25 touchpoints. Roughly 25. And in fact, I'm reading Finkel's book again because it's a good book and he's got even more in here that I haven't thought of. So, you know, shout out to Steve. It's, there are a lot of touchpoints. Client system, probably more on the client side because client journeys are never-ending if you've got a repeat client. But you know, I'm going to add another touchpoint, like another touchpoint that I'm thinking of. And I messaged my VP today is work anniversaries.

Greg Benadiba [00:39:02]:
Why are we not messaging all the employees that we placed every single anniversary? To say happy anniversary with XYZ Corp. Congratulations. I think that's a nice touchpoint, right? So it's another one that I thought of that we'd like to add to the mix.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:14]:
And you've systemized a lot of things, but there's one of your principles that you said that can't be systematized. And there's plenty of tools that are out there. Like I've taught, I've seen the demos of that will do it for you. What's the one thing that you say that we should never systemize? Systematize.

Greg Benadiba [00:39:35]:
Recruiting itself, the prescreen. I think corporations are going in this direction and I think it's a mistake. They have to. I mean, when you're looking at a BMO, an RBC, these Bank of America, these large corporations, I mean, they're getting on average a million applications a year. It's very hard to prescreen a million people, right? You'd need an army of recruiters. So They have no choice, but for a boutique agency, like agencies like ours, like, I don't know how many interviews you do on your end, but, you know, I've got roughly 20 people here interviewing, prescreening 10 people a day, conducting one face-to-face interview a day. That still needs to be done by a human being. I think references are being automated.

Greg Benadiba [00:40:20]:
I think that's a mistake personally. The reference check call is a great marketing call. And I've converted a lot of business that way. We've talked about that before, Ben. Follow-ups, first interview follow-ups, the offer call. Never in a million years will I automate that one. Are you kidding me? How many offer calls do you make a month? How much work did it take to get there? You know, you think about your offer calls. Let's just say you're going to make, I don't know, 15 offers a month, 4 offers a month.

Greg Benadiba [00:40:46]:
If you're in executive search, you've worked very hard to make those, those 4 offer calls. You're not going to be automating that part. So, again, I think anything that's human, that remains human, should be human. In fact, we've had a lot of our candidates call us up, and even in our testimonials— now we have our testimonials go up on our site— in those testimonials, they say, you know, this agency, as advanced as they are, have not gotten away from the human touchpoints, and we never will. You know, I had the chance, much like everybody else did, to adopt voice agents early on to do outreach. I chose not to do it. It was a very deliberate choice. Maybe I'm wrong.

Greg Benadiba [00:41:27]:
Maybe history will prove me wrong. But for now, I just, I don't see it. I just don't see it as being enough of a human way to recruit. You know, are people really going to divulge their deepest, darkest thoughts to a machine? I don't know.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:42]:
Well, and that kind of goes into the next thing. This is something that we've talked about offline is like you guys do millions of dollars per year. in revenue. But it's, what is it like something like more than half of your business is all about from referrals.

Greg Benadiba [00:41:56]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:57]:
And is it because of how you've mapped out this journey both on the candidate side and the client side and making, even though like, like I saw the backend of your system, I was like, my eyes rolled back in my head. I was like, okay, you guys are on top of like everything, touching things so fast. But at the same time, like you guys have like Really keeping the human in there. Is that why all these systems? Is that why you guys have so much referral business?

Greg Benadiba [00:42:23]:
Again, I'll take you back to that restaurant, Ben. You know, that restaurant that treated you like royalty, that made you feel like a king, that served you. You brought some important guests to that restaurant and it made you feel good to bring them there. Think about that. You know, when you have that kind of an experience, Are you not going to tell everybody about it? Of course you are. So yes, the systems, the frameworks, the recruitment principles, the principles by which we live, by the way, these are not just words in a book. These are actions, tangible actions in behavior, in the way that we treat people. That is the baseline.

Greg Benadiba [00:43:01]:
So that is the foundation for referral mechanisms. You can't be asking for a referral from subpar service. But again, within all of the touchpoints, there are different things that we do to mine for referrals. You're going to get referrals if you ask for them. Ask and you shall receive. And you got to know when to ask too. It's a timing approach. Everything comes in due time and you have to be patient.

Greg Benadiba [00:43:34]:
But for me, Referrals start right in the prescreen. When I'm on the phone with somebody, I get a mental map of where all the people in their network may or may not be. I find out where they went to school, how many colleagues they had there in job A, B, C, D on their CV, how many people were in those companies, who did they all report to. I'm doing what Mike Walmsley taught me to do many, many years ago, which is 3-dimensional recruiting, always being acutely aware of candidate and client generation at every turn. So you, you mine that information within the phone screen, within the face-to-face interview, and then later on, sometimes you could get it right then and there depending on the circumstance, but later on at an emotional high point, such as a first interview follow-up or second interview follow-up, or at the placement itself, that's when you leverage that information to prompt for the referral. So I don't just ask Ben, who do you know that I could potentially assist? I lead them back to the data they had given me before to ask for them to refer them to me. You know, it might go something like this. Benjamin, I hope you've been pleased with my service.

Greg Benadiba [00:44:42]:
Greg, thank you. You changed my life. Good. Now I know you're going to put that review on Google and you're going to add that testimonial, video testimonial for me. I really appreciate that. It'll help other people know about our service. I remember when you and I first spoke, you talked about university and how you're still friends with certain people from school. Would you mind making some introductions to those folks for me? You could do it on LinkedIn.

Greg Benadiba [00:45:08]:
I'll show you how to do it. If they're looking, if they're not looking, doesn't matter either way. What they'll get is a free career consult from me where I'll sit down with them and I'll go over their careers to understand exactly where they are and see if I can help to improve their careers. At the very least, they're going to get tips on how to improve their LinkedIn profile, which will be amazing for them and for their future. So would you mind brokering that relationship for me? And I mean, I seldom get anybody saying, no, Greg, I don't want to introduce you to anybody. I mean, it's— I've added enough value in that relationship. I've done enough building and goodwill that reciprocity gets triggered. And again, my aim is to help that next person.

Greg Benadiba [00:45:48]:
full service. This is not a ruse. This is not a mechanism to just get names and call and who cares what I do along the way. No, absolutely not. This is about treating people with a great deal of respect and helping each person that I interact with to the best of my ability, which is another principle in my book. Always do your best, right? And that's a very big principle.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:09]:
One thing you also mentioned in the book was a handwritten note, which It's a long lost science and many people know that my handwriting is absolutely horrible. So I, I use a robot system to help me with that. But is there any other tiny, cheap moves, like a handwritten note that has outsized returns?

Greg Benadiba [00:46:35]:
Yeah, there's a bunch. There's a whole bunch. These days you can get on Loom. You can record a little video for that person. You can put a voice note on LinkedIn or on, yeah, on LinkedIn in the messaging area. You can go on WhatsApp and send them a little video. You know, my buddy Elias, he's in the real estate business here and he doesn't text me. He's always sending me a video voice note.

Greg Benadiba [00:47:00]:
He's on tape and I got to watch it on my phone. It's awesome. Yeah, back in the day, we used to put a stamp on everything and send off a handwritten note. It takes me a little bit longer. Sure. But when's the last time you got a handwritten note? I mean, it's, it's so rare. There's so many things you can do. You can ask the person out for a coffee.

Greg Benadiba [00:47:20]:
You can take them out to lunch. You can go have some fun with them. Who knows? There's— think, think of all the things that people have done to impact you. I mean, I've got a bunch of cards back there and stuff that people have done for me. And I think back to that card that I received and I'm like, yeah, you know what? I remember you now. You did something that was different. You went above and beyond. You didn't just write me a review.

Greg Benadiba [00:47:41]:
You went ahead and wrote a card and put a $5 or $10 Starbucks gift card. It's not about the gift card. It's about the gesture. It's what it's about. That's why with my book, I've been helping people, sending it off to people with handwritten notes because I care and I want them to know that I care. Right. And that handwritten note, I think it goes a long way because it's a lost art.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:01]:
You're right.

Greg Benadiba [00:48:02]:
And what does it cost you? A little bit of postage? Fine. You know, it's, it's okay. These are investments into the future. If there was something I could tell myself as an early recruiter is, Greg, the person that you speak to in year 2 could be a hiring authority in year 12. Treat them with great care because you're going to be here then.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:21]:
Man, I, that's, I think we as recruiters completely forget how long we are actually going to be sitting in a recruiting seat. I mean, you walk in like, I want to be a recruiter. Almost every single person I talked to, whether big bull or not, this wasn't the plan. So I think because of that plan, we haven't looked that far into the future. And if I think the mistake right now is a lot of recruiters are underestimating what they're going to be doing the next decade. So play the long game. Sorry for my rant.

Greg Benadiba [00:48:47]:
You're 100% right. There's a misconception.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:50]:
It is.

Greg Benadiba [00:48:52]:
I didn't think I was going to be here 20 years later. I thought I was going to own my own business. I didn't know that it was going to go in this direction. But I kept falling in love with this business. Why? Because it's interesting. And I'm still learning. Every single candidate interaction is another opportunity to learn something. And that's a beautiful thing.

Greg Benadiba [00:49:12]:
That's what keeps our, I guess, ADD minds, you know, I know mine is, going because we're constantly being bombarded with great new information, new people to connect with, and we can have an impact in their lives. I mean, what a recipe for success. Yeah. I mean, don't think that you're not going to be here forever. And I'm not saying that you will. Maybe, maybe some people will not, but at least treat it as though you will. You know, some people have left the industry, gone into real estate, gone into other businesses. Guess what? The people that they interfaced with as a recruiter could be a potential client down the road for them too.

Greg Benadiba [00:49:45]:
It's a small world. You don't know. And so, again, treat it as though you will be here forever. treatment and the way that you behave follows you. That's called reputation. And I think that, that is paramount.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:59]:
I remember, and like I said, I, the first conversation we had, the first episode was amazing. You walking through the steps, if anybody wants to become a leader in their firm from being a junior recruiter, but you talk in that, that episode, leader, executive. I read something in the book that kind of just, I actually, I personally stopped. I was like, wait, hold on a second. You said you own it now. Are you down for describing how like that change or how that happened?

Greg Benadiba [00:50:27]:
Absolutely. Again, I wasn't expecting all of this back in 2012, 2011, end of 2011 is when it happened. I was basically manager at O9. I think I told you back in the day when the recession happened, A lot of the house cleared up, meaning a lot of the senior staff that were here essentially left the business. One went on to open his own shop. The other one went on to human resources management. So I guess opportunity met preparation and there was talk, right? There was talk of what we're going to do. And I think I got, I guess, lucky, you could say, Because what happened is the general manager at the time, our founder, his name is Tony.

Greg Benadiba [00:51:17]:
Again, great man. I look up to him. He's taught me so much. He was starting to think about building a leadership team already. I was up there and we had a couple other partners. And so what he did was he said, okay, I'm going to gift you guys a percentage of the company. And so he gave each of them 5 and he gave me 10. I went back and negotiated for 12 because I thought that 10 was a little low based on the amount of billings that I'd brought in.

Greg Benadiba [00:51:48]:
I mean, just sheer numbers that I was bringing in was pretty insane and I was continuing to do so. So that was the infancy of our shareholder agreement. And from there, I made the conscious decision to continue to buy shares and buy them aggressively. I basically reinvested everything that I earned that I didn't need to eat. And so I bought and I bought. And I mean, 2015, I became the vice president of the corporation. That came as a surprise as well, even though I was starting to aggregate shares by then. It was, I think it was like 18%, 19%, something like that.

Greg Benadiba [00:52:27]:
It was low. But he promoted me to VP, and I was like, "Whoa, okay." So I mean, that was another step in the right direction. And again, I told you before, I'm a very, very loyal person. You know, at no point the thought of going and doing your own thing does come up. Could I be a person that could do it? Yeah, I think I could. Not too many recruiters can, by the way. If you're thinking of going and opening your own shop, I think I said in our last. Podcast that, you know, you have to be the CMO, the CEO, the COO, the receptionist.

Greg Benadiba [00:52:58]:
You got to be all parts, right? It's hard to own your own shop, right? You got to do it all. So think long and hard before you do something like that. And then, you know, in the beginning of 2019, I think he was ready to retire. So by then I had aggregated a larger portion of shares and he gave me his resignation letter. Weird, eh, for your boss to hand you His resignation letter. It was a moment. And truth be told, I was scared. Oh boy, Ben, I was so scared when he did that.

Greg Benadiba [00:53:27]:
I was like, oh my God, this entire responsibility now sits on my shoulders. What am I going to do? Am I capable of doing this? Am I qualified to run a search firm? And truth be told is I was because he had been priming me for years. He pulled a Mr. Miyagi on me where, you know, wax on, wax off. And all of a sudden I could, I could kick. And punch. So, you know, it was great. And I mean, now, you know, he sits as sort of my CFO.

Greg Benadiba [00:53:54]:
So he's still there, but he's not, he doesn't produce. He's there for me. It's great because I don't want him to go. I think, you know, he's got such a wealth of experience. It's like having a Mr. Finkel next to you all day. Like, I mean, you know, or, you know, a Benjamin Mena or a Greg Savage, like, you know, or Mike Walmsley. I mean, if you've got one of these guys, don't let them go so quick.

Greg Benadiba [00:54:10]:
You want them to stick around. And so that's how I did it. I mean, it was organic. It was not premeditated. I guess, you know, opportunity met preparation when it happened. It took a great deal of patience though. That's another thing where people are impatient sometimes. I know I have been.

Greg Benadiba [00:54:28]:
But these large purchases, we're talking about a multimillion-dollar purchase, right? These large purchases, they take time. And it's something that you have to really think through, be methodical. You have to have your family on board. These are not just my assets; they're also my wife's assets. And you know, going all in, you know, from a diversity standpoint, I'm not as well diversified as I should be. I'm really all into this because I believe in. I've bet on myself is really what I've done. I've bet on myself.

Greg Benadiba [00:54:59]:
The knowing that I can build teams, I can build recruiters, I can develop them. I've got the systems down, and so that's. That's another reason for the evolution, right? Writing this book and getting out there and, and doing my next sort of phase.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:14]:
You know, I'm gonna reference the, the last episode just 'cause of time. Like he talks through his buildings, he talks through all the stuff that he was doing behind the scenes and the after hours. So definitely go back and check that out. But I gotta ask though, what is one thing that you greenlit the first year of you being an owner that you probably would've flinched at as a junior recruiter?

Greg Benadiba [00:55:35]:
That's a good question. What is something that I greenlit in the first— oh, I think automation. Automation. I greenlit it and I said, you know what, we're gonna go in this direction. It felt kind of weird though, because I didn't—

Benjamin Mena [00:55:53]:
it was weird.

Greg Benadiba [00:55:53]:
You know, when you transitioned from senior manager to all of a sudden primary or, you know, managing director or whatever you wanna call it. owner, you don't have to ask for permission anymore. So now you really think long and hard before you make a move. You think to yourself, okay, is this the right move? Is this what I'm going to be doing? And, you know, when you make these moves, again, you really think from a tactical perspective. And again, you know this as a businessman, there are one-way doors and two-way doors, right? Some moves you can undo, some moves you can't undo. So think long and hard, especially with those one-way doors. Make sure that they're the right move.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:31]:
You are so in-depth with what, what AI tools and what AI things that really actually moves the needle for a desk or moves the needle for a company. But you mentioned that before AI replaces recruiters, it's going to reveal who is never actually really recruiting.

Greg Benadiba [00:56:50]:
Mm-hmm.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:51]:
Can you explain that?

Greg Benadiba [00:56:53]:
Yeah, it might sound like a bit of a threat there, Ben. And unfortunately it is. And it is to the specific kind of recruiter who's using volume, spray and pray approach, and is not getting into the nitty gritty and having deep conversations with people. Transactional recruiters, people that are not really getting to understand who their candidates are, get, are not understanding what their clients really need. Reading candidates beyond their resumes, AI is going to smoke you out of the water. There's no question about it. Okay, so what do you do? What do you do to become somebody who's not transactional? My best advice is to read 30 minutes a day. If there's one single practice that has made me successful, like if I could distill it all to one thing, is to read for 30 minutes a day.

Greg Benadiba [00:57:43]:
I'm talking about a book. Podcast, audiobook, something that's not social media, right? Something, you know, not scrolling on Instagram thinking you're getting smarter. That's not the way it's working. Read for 30 minutes every single day. Pick up something on interviewing. As a recruiter, how many books on interviewing have you read? Think about that. And if you haven't read more than 1 or 2 or 3, then Maybe you should read something. If the answer is zero, then, and you've been trained by your leaders and you're just kind of winging it, pick up a few books.

Greg Benadiba [00:58:18]:
One that I could recommend off the top of my head is Recruit Rockstars by Jeff Hyman. It's a great book on how to truly conduct an interview. In fact, I've used that as a template to train hiring authorities on how to become better recruiters. So how to have deeper conversations, pick up Recruitment Principles. It'll teach you a bunch of things there. But I think just reading as a practice, and of course Steve Finkel has a plethora of books, right? All these books, Craig Savage, my God, Recruit the Savage Way is a great book. If you haven't read that, pick it up, man. Read and you'll get better.

Greg Benadiba [00:58:50]:
You'll be able to provide more value. You will differentiate yourself and you'll become something that AI can never be because it just doesn't have the depth of understanding. And if there's a particular niche that you serve, become a subject matter expert in that niche. Read whatever books are written on that particular niche so that you could become of great value. If you don't know what books to read, speak to your clients. Ask them, hey, by the way, before I let you go, Mr. Employer, what's the top book that you'd recommend that every person in your industry must read? Ask that question. Tell you right away.

Greg Benadiba [00:59:24]:
Be like, oh, you got to read this one. That book is a must-read. And then you go and you dissect that book. Food for thought.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:33]:
Your book got released, but the year before your book got released, like I, from your posts and talking to other recruiters in the Canadian market, the Canadian market has been hard and your entire model is perm placement, right?

Greg Benadiba [00:59:51]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:51]:
Did any of the principles bend over that last year where things got tough?

Greg Benadiba [00:59:56]:
No, no, we don't bend on our principles. It can be easy to try. You can think, oh, it's a tough market, I'm going to not do certain things the way I should. That's going to come back and bite you, you know where, later on. Okay, don't bend. When the Canadian market has been atrocious, we have unfortunately have had very unfavorable policies. And I don't blame the United States. In fact, we're good friends with the US.

Greg Benadiba [01:00:27]:
I love the US. Unfortunately, we as a country have not done a lot of the things that we need to do to cement ourselves as an energy leader. Had we done those things, had we been a lot easier on, say, building pipelines out in the West, our country would be one of the richest countries in the world. And And unfortunately we've lost that position and we've suffered. So yeah, it's been a rough go. These last 2 years have been tremendously difficult. What I tend to do during those downturns is, and like I told you before, in '08, '09, I did the same thing. I doubled down.

Greg Benadiba [01:01:04]:
So I make twice as many calls, probably for half, but there's still value to be had in each one of those calls. During a downturn, A really important technique, something that I like to do is to look for confidential replacements. So oftentimes in a downturn, what you end up having is a surplus of candidates. So you've got a lot more candidates than you do jobs. That's good news if you're an employer that maybe has a team of A players, but one C player or a B player that you'd like to exit. A skilled recruiter who knows how to do that can contact that employer. And find out exactly who those B and C players are and start to initiate a confidential replacement search to find them their A player and to sort of shore up that team to make sure it has the right people on board. So it's a great time to level up your team during a down market.

Greg Benadiba [01:01:56]:
And I did a lot of that. So I've conducted a tremendous amount of confidential replacements in the last year.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:04]:
And I'm going to combine some of the next questions I had with the quickfire questions. But before we go into that, Is there any question that I should have asked you or something that you want to go deeper on? I literally just looked at the time. I was like, oh crap.

Greg Benadiba [01:02:17]:
Um, no, I think your questions are pretty good. I mean, what do you do on Sunday evenings? What?

Benjamin Mena [01:02:25]:
So what do you do on Sunday evenings?

Greg Benadiba [01:02:27]:
Sunday evenings is when you prepare. Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, whatever it might be, prepare for the week ahead. Read your pipeline, understand where you stand, figure out what calls you need to make. Plan your day in advance as a recruiter. If you do that, you're going to be on fire. That week will line up for you in a way that other weeks don't, simply because you're coming into the week planned and your inbox is cleared. You will not dread Mondays. You'll look forward to them.

Greg Benadiba [01:02:53]:
You'll be able to get on the phone and prospect, make a marketing call on a Monday morning because you've done the work on a Sunday. And it's not a tremendous amount. We're talking about 90 minutes, 2 hours. Get it done then.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:02]:
So what is One principle that almost didn't make the book.

Greg Benadiba [01:03:08]:
Life is a game, play at it. That's principle number 20. I thought long and hard about it, but I wanted to make sure to put that principle in there because I've seen and I've personally experienced burnout. I've seen how easy it is to burn out in this industry because of the tremendous amount of work and information that we process on a daily basis. I needed to put that in there because it's a reminder To have fun. Life is a game. Play at it. It's just fun, just like what we're doing right now.

Greg Benadiba [01:03:38]:
This is fun. This is great. And I mean, if you have that attitude and that mentality, it'll shine. I mean, the people on the phone know it. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Your family knows it. Your colleagues know it.

Greg Benadiba [01:03:50]:
It's just, you're more fun to be around rather than being angry or anxious or— having all kinds of negative emotions rolling around in your mind. Have fun. It's a great job.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:02]:
What is one principle that ended up that you learned, but it was the most expensive for you? And what was the cost?

Greg Benadiba [01:04:10]:
For me, again, it's, it's be impeccable with your word. It comes back to that same story. Your word is your bond. Trust is the only thing you have in a world where information is going to be commoditized. People are gonna trust you only because you've done what you said you were gonna do, and people have corroborated that. It's not just because you're saying it, it's because other people are saying it about you as well. Again, it's a small world. Listen, I'll put it to you this way.

Greg Benadiba [01:04:35]:
Back in the day, we had negative reviews on Google because my predecessor probably didn't monitor those things, didn't see it as a priority, thought to himself, meh, reviews, who cares? Who reads them? So untrue, by the way. They do read them. So when you're a stellar candidate, especially if you're being approached by an agency for the first time, what are you doing? First of all, you're thinking, is this a scam? Because I mean, there's a, there's so much stuff going on out there. So what they're doing is they're researching you. They're checking you out on Google. They're GPTing you. They're looking you up on LinkedIn to see if this is legit. They're looking at your reviews.

Greg Benadiba [01:05:09]:
I guarantee you they are. So trust, it's your only sustainable competitive advantage. Guard your reputation with everything you've got. It's your name. That's all you have at the end of the day. Protect that.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:22]:
And I had another guest on here recently talk about now because of AI, we're now in the trust economy. It's true.

Greg Benadiba [01:05:31]:
We're in the trust economy. Who do you trust? Who's going to fulfill this need? Who's going to actually care about me and my search and guide me in the right way, not to benefit themselves, but to truly look out for me? It's like if I was searching for a lawyer today, I'd do a long search, right? I'd make sure I know who I'm engaging with, right?

Benjamin Mena [01:05:52]:
Is there a principle that your team rolled their eyes at?

Greg Benadiba [01:06:00]:
Always do your best. Nothing more, nothing less. They roll their eyes at that, but for me, I think put simply, how you do anything is how you do everything. Do you make your bed in the morning? Do you brush your teeth every day? I mean, these are simple things, but they're not. They're how you behave. And that comes back to, are you going to call that person back? Are you going to do what you said you were going to do? If you start to deteriorate at who you are or who you're supposed to be, eventually you drift into somebody that you are not. And that's poisonous, right? Adhering to who you are every single day by doing the things you said you were going to do. By treating everything, you know, the way that you want everything done.

Greg Benadiba [01:06:46]:
That's the model way to live your life, I think, right? And when you do that, at least you know you gave it your all. You know, Ben, if something didn't work out, if somebody had something to say, if a client was upset, candidate was upset, but you really did your best, you gave it your all, you can never go back and think to yourself, you know what, Greg, this is on you. You, you didn't fulfill this person's need because you were half-assing it. You can't, you can't think that. You can't have regret when you're always doing your best. So I think they probably roll their eyes at that one a little more than the others.

Benjamin Mena [01:07:25]:
You wrote, the only time you fail is when you give up. And I know recruiting has tons of ups and downs. Like, you All in financially. We were sitting there buying shares piece by piece. What was the closest that you ever came to giving up and what kept you in?

Greg Benadiba [01:07:41]:
You know, there are many times where you're thinking to yourself, what are you doing here? Like, why are you working so hard? What's the outcome? But I just, I'll never give up, Ben. I think for me, every single challenge that I've seen and I've faced quite a few, I mean, I was given a presidency right before COVID My Lord, here you go, presidency, boom, COVID. Like, I mean, it was one of the craziest times of our lives, right? I mean, you know, the world stopped hiring all of a sudden. It was scary. You know, I think even then I didn't give up. I led. I said to myself, okay, this is no longer about me. This is about them.

Greg Benadiba [01:08:21]:
You know, if you— and that can happen at all stages. So I'll answer that even better. If you're a recruiter, And you're thinking to yourself, my God, this is hard. I want to give up. Think of all the candidates that you will not impact as a direct result of that. If you're an account executive thinking, my God, this is hard. I don't want to make any more calls. I don't want to be an account executive.

Greg Benadiba [01:08:39]:
I want to just do something else. There are easier jobs out there. I could go be a farmer rather than a hunter. If you're thinking to yourself that, think of all the opportunities for change that you can have in the future that will not materialize as a direct result of this. As a leader, I won't give up because of my people, the impact that I'm having on their lives. When I turn around and I look at these folks who, who have mortgages, they've got families to feed— if I give up, I'm letting all of them down. So failure is not an option. It just never has been.

Greg Benadiba [01:09:14]:
I think the closest I've ever really come to giving up was at month 6 in recruitment, where I knew that I, I was not a very good recruiter at first. And I thought I was going to be fired, never mind give up. I thought I was going to get terminated, but I didn't because I just kept persevering. And I thought to myself, I'm going to keep going until this all clicks. And it eventually did, thank God. So failure's not an option. We never give up, Ben. We're tough as nails, man.

Greg Benadiba [01:09:40]:
This is who we are.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:41]:
And real quick, who did you dedicate this book to?

Greg Benadiba [01:09:44]:
Saren, my wife.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:46]:
What did it cost? Because writing a book's hard. I'm in the process of writing a book myself. Like, oh my God, the amount of time it takes. What did it cost you to get this book out?

Greg Benadiba [01:09:54]:
It cost a lot. And I'm very grateful to Saren. She's bared the brunt of a lot of things. She took care of the family while I needed to spend extra hours doing what I was doing. Thankfully, I have a very, very understanding wife. I mean, she's my biggest cheerleader. I'm so grateful for her. She's done so much for me and the cost was great.

Greg Benadiba [01:10:17]:
Ben, but the mission is great as well. And I explained that to her early on. I said, you know, I really love the recruitment business and it really pains me when I hear a recruiter never called me back. All recruiters are the same. These recruiters only care about one thing, their own paychecks. They don't give a damn about us. And I heard a lot of that and I love this business. This is a noble profession.

Greg Benadiba [01:10:42]:
And for that reason I said, okay, I think I'm at a point now in my life where I probably have enough clout after 20 years of doing this job successfully that people will probably listen to me. I have to publish a book because I care and I want recruiters out there to learn what it takes to be a great recruiter. If you're a hiring authority and you've got new hires and you don't have a lot of time to train them, make them read my book. If they don't come back and they're able to bill a whole lot more, call me. I'll happily do a session with them. People need to read this book. Recruiters need to read this book because again, we're in a noble profession and I take that very seriously. So once again, shout out to Sarah.

Greg Benadiba [01:11:21]:
She did so much to hold down the fort while I was able to devote time to writing and editing and copy editing and everything that it took to do this. It's a lot.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:30]:
With all the tools that you play with, do you have a favorite tech tool at the moment that you love?

Greg Benadiba [01:11:36]:
Besides the Recruitment Principles GPT, which again has saved my, uh, even my hiney a few times, I'd say my new executive assistant. I built one in Perplexity and it's been truly amazing. I've got it tethered into everything and it helps me plan my day. It helps me go through my files. So when a job gets written up, the job automatically gets sequenced in there and it goes through all of my roster to tell me which candidates I need to call. So it funnels that right through. So it's great. It's kind of like an idea that I had to build a Rolodex of calls that need to happen.

Greg Benadiba [01:12:06]:
So that's now happening at my desk live to air so that again, no candidate gets missed out on. They all get a call from Greg saying, hey Ben, hope you're doing well. Something's come up. I wanted to discuss it with you.

Benjamin Mena [01:12:16]:
This is gonna be my last question. Like you've gotten a chance to speak to a lot of recruiters and I don't remember if I asked this question back then when we first sat down, but you could probably get asked like, you know, how can you like, you crush the billings like you used to? Like how do you become the leadership position like you used to? How do you like fix this situation? All the questions that you get over all these years, because I know you're in a lot of places, you ever just sit back and like, these are all good questions, I'll answer these, but I wish you would just ask this? What would be that question? What would be that answer?

Greg Benadiba [01:12:44]:
How do I plan my day? I never get asked that question. That's too bad because that's the number one question. If you know how to plan your day as a recruiter and you literally have all of your calls planned out, And you're not flying by the seat of your pants, you will become a top biller. And I say that to you with a great deal of certainty because I did it for over a decade. Top biller as a direct result of planning, having the calls laid out that you're gonna make the next day. Again, if I were to take like a query of all of our listeners today, I bet you most who are telling you the truth would tell us that they're not fully planned. If they're telling you the truth again.

Benjamin Mena [01:13:28]:
What does fully planned look like?

Greg Benadiba [01:13:31]:
Gotta have a list of, if you're an account executive, 50 clients that you're calling the next day and 50 candidates that you're gonna call the next day. 100 calls mapped out. You're probably not gonna get through all of 'em. That's okay. You'll put the leftovers on the next day's plan and fill it up with more. Having 100 people to call every single day. If you do that, you'll be on fire. So nobody really asks me that.

Greg Benadiba [01:13:52]:
How to plan. And then maybe the other question would be, how do you not drift off course for your goals quarterly, annually, monthly? And that's my weekly rhythm register, which is also covered in the book. So teaches you my method, my Sunday planning system, exactly what it is that I do to not drift. 'Cause we all drift. It's just a matter of how do we reorient to make sure that we're back on our targets, right? So those are probably 2 of the key, most important questions that never get asked.

Benjamin Mena [01:14:17]:
Well, got a few more for you, Greg. If somebody wants to follow you or connect with you, how do they go about doing that?

Greg Benadiba [01:14:23]:
Find me on LinkedIn. I mean, that's where I post most of my stuff. You can go to gregbenedicta.com. And if you want that GPT, go to gregbenedicta.com/gpt. And you'll be able to go in there. My newsletter is coming up next week. So I'm going to have a nice newsletter directed to employers. So if you're an employer or even a recruiter, you can see how I design my newsletters.

Greg Benadiba [01:14:44]:
Feel free to join me there. But I'm happy to chat. I mean, you know, again, I want you to get stronger every single day. That's why I wrote the book.

Benjamin Mena [01:14:50]:
Excited. The book is absolutely awesome. I have a copy myself. Definitely go check it out on Amazon. And on top of that, like, I have Greg sharing at one of the next summits, so make sure you get registered. The link is in the show notes. You want to see him there because he literally, like, will light the place on fire. If it wasn't for the fact that this podcast is going to be released before he's going to be at the summit, I would have pulled one of the last Sessions he did to drop for everybody, but we have such an impact on what we do.

Benjamin Mena [01:15:17]:
I think so many of us let me take a step back. So many of us fell into this role, fell into this career, this opportunity, this land of misfit toys. This wasn't our plan A. This might not have been our plan B, but it became our life. Snap your fingers ten years in. Snap your fingers another ten years in, and if you snap your fingers again, it's going to be another ten years. So. This is your opportunity to slow down to speed up.

Benjamin Mena [01:15:41]:
This is your opportunity as AI is actually changing things. Like we've talked about, like, you know, I've been around for a while. LinkedIn's going to get rid of us all. Job boards are going to get rid of us all. AI is fundamentally changing how things are done like never before. And I'm watching right now this weird thing happening where the market is rewarding certain recruiters. And some of the things, the reason why the market is rewarding these recruiters is because of the fundamental principles of the basic foundation and many of the things that Greg has talked about. So if you want to be one of those recruiters that the market is going to reward, like Greg said, learn podcasts, books, summits.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:20]:
This is your opportunity to separate yourself from the pack. And I truly believe in you. This is your year. Draw the line in the sand, go all in for the rest of the year and make 2027 the year that the market rewards you. 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.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:45]:
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. 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.

Benjamin Mena [01:17:11]:
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.

Greg Benadiba [01:17:47]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.