Tricia Tamkin & Jason Thibeault on Why Perfect Candidates Cost Recruiters Money

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:00:35]:
Visit pin.com to book your demo today. All right guys, I got a gift for you guys. Excited to pull this out of the library. We were going to drop this episode prior to the summit, but unfortunately something came up and these two legends are not able to share. So what I want to do is bring them to you while the Summit's going on. And if you're listening to this right now and it's between the time of January 26th and February 2nd and you have not signed up for the Sales and BD Recruiting Summit, go register, get signed up. All of the live sessions are free, but these two amazing speakers have had such an impact on my personal desk. One Pull this out of the library and share during Summit week.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:24]:
So enjoy it, go crush it and I will see you at this live sessions.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:01:30]:
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.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:48]:
Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas. The AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. Doesn't only track resumes and calls, it remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers with magic search.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:09]:
You speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights. Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:37]:
No admin, no silos, no lost info, nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more Time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for Modern Recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com I am so excited about this talk. They kept this a secret up until last week. Then they let me know what the title of the talk was going to be. But I got to say, like, major kudos to Jason and Trisha. They helped me personally launch when I was getting my business started, took their client cornucopia class and, you know, completely changed the game.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:12]:
Helped me go from point A to point B. And I am so excited to share them with you guys. So I'll go ahead and let you guys take over.

Tricia Tamkin [00:03:22]:
All right, thank you so much, Benjamin. This is Tricia Tamkin and Jason Tebow. And today we are going to talk about lowering your standards to increase your revenue, which may feel a little bit counterintuitive. So thank you guys for joining us live. So here we are.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:03:40]:
That's what we look like. And that's about all you need in terms of a introduction.

Tricia Tamkin [00:03:46]:
Don't you guys find it so frustrating when you have a speaker that shows up and spends like the first 20 minutes telling you why they're qualified and their life story and all of the difficulties they've run into? We're not going to do that to you.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:04:00]:
What we're going to do today is show you how lowering your standards will lead to more placements and more money. Yes. Lowering your standards.

Tricia Tamkin [00:04:07]:
Lowering, which seems so crazy. So let's do a little bit of a hypothetical. And we're going to actually do a poll here. So we're going to show you a job description. Then we're going to show you two candidate profiles. And then we're going to launch a poll. And that poll is going to ask you, would you present candidate A, candidate B, Both candidates or neither?

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:04:33]:
Now, we know you're in a class that's about lowering your standards. And so, you know, don't say what you would say to please us. Answer how you truly answer.

Tricia Tamkin [00:04:42]:
Right. So let's take a moment and just look at this job description. Okay. It is for a manufacturing manager. We're looking for somebody with three years of high volume, fast paced manufacturing. They should know Lean manufacturing. They should have an understanding of machining assembly, warehouse activities.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:05:00]:
Yeah. And really a degree even in engineering or manufacturing, mrp, stuff like this.

Tricia Tamkin [00:05:07]:
We want a black belt or a green belt. So this is just a fake job. And here are two candidates. Here's Candidate A and candidate B. And I want you to really look at these two profiles. We've got one person with 10 years, one with less than a year, one that's already the supervisor, one that works the night shift. Right, We've. So what I want you guys to do now, we're going to launch this poll, and we have launched it.

Tricia Tamkin [00:05:35]:
It should be out there in front of you right now. Which candidate would you present? So we're going to give you guys just a moment. Candidate A has 10 years of experience. Candidate B has less than a year. So what we're looking for here is are you going to just present candidate A? Are you just going to present candidate B? Are you going to present both of them or are you going to present neither of them? So please come into chat and answer. We've got about 40% of you that have answered at this point, and I want to give you, like just one more moment to do it and then we will kill the the poll and give you guys the results. Okay? About 50% of you have answered at this point. We're going to give you 10 more seconds to answer.

Tricia Tamkin [00:06:26]:
And candidate A? Candidate B, both or neither. Okay, so here we go. We're going to end the poll and share the results with you guys.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:06:35]:
Let's go. I'm glad you ended it there because I felt like you had a lot of emphasis on candidate A and I was like, no, don't, don't.

Tricia Tamkin [00:06:42]:
So what we have here, 53% of you said you would go with candidate A. 3%. So one of you said candidate B. 33% said both and 11% said neither.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:06:55]:
Well, I would like to thank the one of you that said me and the, you know, the 33% of you that said both because I was candidate B. I was the candidate in that situation coming out of my time in the military where I had nothing to do with manufacturing. I gotten a night shift supervisor job and found that pretty easy and took over some of their processes and whatnot and was really just hoping for a better place to live and managed to talk my way into that job where I had less than a year of experience in anything relevant to it, no relevant degree. And then I pushed for greater than, you know, expected starting pay.

Tricia Tamkin [00:07:36]:
So the vast majority of you did not submit candidate B. You only submitted either candidate A. Some of you did both, which I love that in my one person that did. Candidate B. Kudos to you. Good job. One of the things that happens in our industry is that we feel like when a hiring manager Gives us a job requirement that we have to meet everything in that requirement. The requirement is set in stone.

Tricia Tamkin [00:08:11]:
Right. And that actually isn't true. When a hiring manager gives us a job requirement, they give us the pie in the sky ideal candidate profile. So because they're going to pay us a ton of money to fill the job. So of course they want the person to be perfect, but they still have to hire someone. Right? So candidate B often gets hired. Often.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:08:37]:
Well, we're going to talk about why and what's going on there all throughout this. So we don't want to jump too much ahead because I think we're already at the point where we're spewing with, all right, I want you to consider a challenge. Don't really do it. Just consider it. Imagine for the next year, you had to do two dates a week with different people. See, some of you are married. You're like, I can't. I told you not to.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:09:02]:
But if you were doing two dates a week with different people, you are, you know, on different apps, you're doing whatever. Would there be some duds along the way? We don't need a poll. Of course there's going to be some duds along the way because we're going to have to lower our standards to. To make sure that we're getting in two dates with different people every single week. But I think we all know that there would be some surprises along the way, some dates that went shockingly well, and we kind of wish we didn't have a different date later in the week.

Tricia Tamkin [00:09:34]:
Right now, clearly we don't want you to do this type of an exercise, but we want you to really sit back and think about it. How much would you have to lower your standards if what you needed to do was go on two dates every week? You'd have to. And recruiting is so much like dating that this feels like a very appropriate analogy. Let's give you one more. Okay. I want you to think about our desks. Like baseball, okay? A submittal is taking a swing at a pitch. A send out is a base hit one and done is our home run.

Tricia Tamkin [00:10:15]:
And keep in mind, just like a baseball, if we keep putting people on base, they're going to score and walks count often. What we're doing is we're going for the one and done home run.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:10:29]:
And so we're only swinging at perfect pitches, right?

Tricia Tamkin [00:10:34]:
And we don't want to just swing at perfect pitches because if you can get on base, you have a shot at score scoring. And if you're only swinging at perfect pitches, trying to get that home run. Oftentimes you're not even going to get on base. And that's not what makes you money. Okay? What makes you money is getting as many people on base as you possibly can. So let's talk about hiring accuracy as a whole, right? How accurate are we in our lives?

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:11:08]:
When you're grocery shopping, I'm sure most of you only buy exactly what's on the list because there's no reason to go off of the list. I mean, you knew what you needed when you arrived.

Tricia Tamkin [00:11:19]:
Can you imagine how much money you would save if you only bought what was on your grocery list? Like, that would be incredible, right? But as human beings, we don't do that. Neither do our hiring managers. So give us a yes in chat. Have you ever made a major purchase? Major purchase? A house, a car, Something that was, you know, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars that was different from what you intended to purchase. You had an idea in your head of what that car or house was going to be, and then you went shopping and you found something that maybe you liked more or you've always wanted.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:12:00]:
To live at the house on the corner. Oh, you know what? I went to the house on the corner, and that foundation is not where I want to be the rest of my life. I'm not there. You know, I went shopping for a car and I was sure I was going to buy this one until the dealer put me in this.

Tricia Tamkin [00:12:14]:
Woo. Okay, so we've all done this. We have all made major purchases. And when a hiring manager hires someone, that's the equivalent of a major purchase for them. Okay? So they are going to describe exactly what they want in that exact ideal, but they just simply might not be able to afford it. Or that ideal may just not exist.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:12:38]:
I think it's also important to remember that most hiring managers are spending somebody else's money. And when you're spending somebody else's money, it's easy for your own standards to change, right? Like, if I am going to go and get a new car, then I might get quite a different new vehicle. If it's your cash, right, I can.

Tricia Tamkin [00:12:59]:
Spend your money a lot faster and easier than I can spend mine. So in many cases, our hiring managers are spending other people's money. Unless you're dealing directly with a CEO and founder, at which point they are spending their own money.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:13:15]:
All right, since I have the floor, since we are on stage virtually right now, I get to complain. And it was doing a project for a. For Profit university where they wanted an it, like teaching IT department head. Right? Because it's a for profit university. And the person needed to have about three, five or more years of academic leadership, but also five of the last 10 years in a corporate IT role, at least at director level. Because it really had to be like they wanted that hands on experience. They needed to have a PhD, specifically an information technology, not a related one. Because again, we're in a university department.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:13:55]:
It's not a variable there. And they were going to pay them $80,000 a year, which is less than anybody in either of those current roles would make even close to it.

Tricia Tamkin [00:14:06]:
Can we all just take a moment and giggle about $80,000 a year for a department head in IT and academia? Because you know, here's where we start seeing totally unrealistic requirements.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:14:17]:
So that's their it, that's their perfect hire. And I was able to find people close enough to get them into the 12 person department head interview. But any one of them had to say no. It had to be unanimous. Yes. And I felt this, I saw this a lot in academia and I was just feeling that maybe it's because they didn't like to take responsibility for decisions.

Tricia Tamkin [00:14:39]:
Right. Here's who they actually hired.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:14:41]:
In English as a second language teacher, the person did not have the degree. They were paid way more than I was able to get them to approve for any of my specific candidates. It was just the hiring manager's friend from a past university. Just like just an old friend. I like this person who cares that what they teach is no way relevant whatsoever. That's who. Because she was able to maneuver through the 12 person panel and get them on board where I can't do that.

Tricia Tamkin [00:15:12]:
This happens all the time. Okay, so there's something that we can do in advance to try and anticipate how set in stone the actual requirement is. When you get a new job from a new client. What we want you to do is go look at that hiring manager's LinkedIn profile and then try to figure out the people that currently work for them in the role that you're trying to fill. Do they fit the requirement you were just given? And I'm going to tell you, if you go through this process, you are going to be shocked at how often the candidate that they hired into the role previously doesn't fit the requirement that they gave you.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:16:04]:
Now I like this method of testing their actual hiring history by looking at other people in similar roles, past people in the same role, way more than pressure testing them. When you pressure test somebody in the situation, they will typically firm up what they're looking for. It's like, I want Duke's mayonnaise and. Exactly, Duke's mayonnaise. Well, okay, I'll get you. But if they're in a situation where you didn't pressure test and they just said mayonnaise and you hand them the olive oil mayonnaise, they'll probably put it on their sandwich.

Tricia Tamkin [00:16:35]:
Right? So John asked an awesome question. How do you handle the hiring manager responding when you submit candidate B? Did you even read the job description? Were you paying attention during the intake call? I love the idea of taking some chances, but I have a few clients that might not appreciate a submission that far away from the spec. Now, John, you're 100% right to be hesitant. Okay? I want you to be hesitant because first and foremost, we're not proposing that you present candidates that you don't feel can do the job. That's the number one criteria. You have to feel that they can do the job.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:17:18]:
I should have mentioned that in the role that I got hired for, despite being in no way a background fit, I got promoted three times over the next five years that I was there, four years that I was there, somewhere around that long that I was there, I did very well in the role. It doesn't matter. The recruiter saw me, talk to me and was like, you know what? I'm going to submit this guy. And the idea is to go ahead with those ones where you're like, no, you know what? This person, I like them. And I could see them doing it, but they're too far off. No, you submit that person, even if they're like, oh, you know what? Only virtual. And the company has said only in person. Like, there is some communication, there's some selling that can still happen.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:18:03]:
The difference is whether or not you can sell the gap.

Tricia Tamkin [00:18:06]:
Right? So, John, one of the things that I love to do in this situation is be just real matter of fact with the hiring manager and say, hey, listen, John, I know that you have some hesitations looking at this candidate on paper. I'm going to ask you to trust me. Oftentimes I can find the candidate that can do the job that will be cost effective for you, even if it isn't reflected on their resume. So let's do this interview. You talk to this candidate, and then we'll calibrate after. And I promise you, once you talk to them, you'll see that in fact, I did read the job description and I was paying attention during the intake call. So trust me. Give me a little bit of trust.

Tricia Tamkin [00:18:58]:
This is what I do for a living. The candidate I've identified, I agree with you, doesn't look like a fit on paper, but I want you to think of me a little bit like a talent concierge. Right. I know where all of the hidden little nuggets are and you're paying me to bring them to you. So oftentimes early on with a brand new client, don't send paperwork in, don't present the candidate. Call your hiring manager and be like, hey, John, guess what? I got someone for you. So I'm really excited about this. Let's take a look at your calendar and look at your availability for Thursday.

Tricia Tamkin [00:19:40]:
If the client says to you, oh, well, I mean, I, I need to see a resume before I agree to interview this candidate, John, you just say to them, oh yeah, you know what, you're going to have to interview this person anyway for calibration. We got to make sure that I'm on track and I understood everything that you were looking for. And so how does your schedule look for Thursday? Right. We just are going to reject the premise and you're going to ask that hiring manager to trust you. They have to trust you. If you're going to be an advisor and this isn't just a transactional relationship, there has to be trust there. If the trust doesn't exist yet, ask for it directly. I'm going to ask you to trust me.

Tricia Tamkin [00:20:26]:
And they will. Okay. But not if you're not willing to take the chance.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:20:31]:
One of the things that I have found in these situations is that when we look at the other people who have been in the role in the past, two things typically happen. One is the other people are about a 70 to 80% match on average. That's normal. That's how accurate hiring is. That's just what it is. Or the last people, or usually it's singular, the last person in the job is an exact match for what they are looking for. Basically, they want a clone of the person that left. And then one of the issues becomes a matter of selling them on the advantages of a difference.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:21:07]:
Well, if you want somebody just like the person that left, aren't you looking for someone to leave again?

Tricia Tamkin [00:21:13]:
What a great answer that is. I love that. Okay, so let's talk about where this behavior comes from inside of all of us. Right. We're going to talk about candy, we're going to talk about Starbursts for a moment.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:21:28]:
All right, So I feel like we can't see Chad. I think it goes right to Ben. So I'm not going to ask you to answer this question live. I just want you to hold the answer in your head, kind of like picking a card. And I want you to think about what is the best flavor of Starburst.

Tricia Tamkin [00:21:45]:
If you can tell us in chat, I don't know if I can see it, but I'd love for you to tell us what color.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:21:51]:
I think the chat goes to bed, so I don't know that we're going to see it, but if you can keep that color in mind, you got that color. The best one. Now imagine as a hiring manager, I am that person and I want a Starburst. Me personally. And I have hired you to find me a candidate Starburst. And you're going to hand me one candidate at a time. Because if you just hand me a package, that's the same as me posting online. I just get a whole bunch of them.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:22:16]:
I want one Starburst. What color Starburst? What flavor Starburst do you hand me? Thank you for all of you giving me those pink ones.

Tricia Tamkin [00:22:25]:
You know, it's funny because in this type of a scenario, what happens is whatever Starburst you had picked as your favorite, when Jason said, I want a Starburst, your instinct was to give him the one you think is the best. That's what happens.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:22:45]:
Right. We see this and we're, for any number of reasons, people pleasing. Because there's an implied. Well, I suggested the best. You thought what you thought was the best, and I thought what I thought was the best. Well, they stopped making the best ones when they got rid of the berries and cream one years ago. So there is no. No best ones anymore.

Tricia Tamkin [00:23:05]:
No, there really isn't. Right. But we have this really natural tendency to only want to give what we think is the best. Okay. And I understand, like, in our effort to over deliver, what we're trying to do is really, we have pure intention. We're trying to make the client happy. We're trying to give them exactly what they want most of the time. The other reasons for this, maybe you're scared of the confrontation.

Tricia Tamkin [00:23:40]:
John, I don't mean to call you out, but a little scared of the confrontation. What if they say to me, did you even read the job description? The idea of that can be scary. And so it's easy to avoid that conversation by only giving them perfect fits. If I only give them a perfect fit, I don't need to sell anything. The resume is going to Sell it for me. I won't have to.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:24:08]:
And it does seem that way. I think one of these issues comes down to sometimes being more introverted. Right? Like, okay, well, I would have to sell this person more. I would have to convince them more. Maybe that makes me feel slimy. Maybe I feel like that's going to take more time. Like there's all these issues about it. Like, you know what, What? I'm just going to find a better person and move on.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:24:30]:
And that seems like a better solution. But now we're adding time on the front end instead of adding time on the back end with the convincing. Right? Which can often be handled with a letter. You know, we're going to present the candidate in some way or another. Why not tell them about the flaws and get them to overcome it in their head. Introverts before we ever have to talk to them.

Tricia Tamkin [00:24:51]:
So a question came in. What are the situations when sending candidate B? Does not make sense. There are definitely situations. Okay, one, if you don't think candidate B is qualified, don't send them. So that's number one. It absolutely Candidate B. You have to feel you as the recruiter, that they're qualified.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:25:12]:
Another situation can be if you have a client that has turned to you and said, my reason that I am hiring you. One of my issues with the other recruiting vendors I have ever talked to is they keep bringing me people who aren't a close enough match. They're the throwing spaghetti at the wall recruiters. Well, now your accuracy is your credibility, right?

Tricia Tamkin [00:25:33]:
So if they tell you that directly. Here's one more thing. I don't often launch a search with a candidate B. Okay? I will hold candidate B and give them someone that is more closely aligned to their requirement first. And then I'll piggyback candidate B on the backside of it. So it isn't often the first candidate. Unless they're extraordinary. Even if they don't look extraordinary, if you do your interview and they are extraordinary, then I can still use them as a first presentation.

Tricia Tamkin [00:26:10]:
Right. One more time. We're not going to present candidate B when we already have two candidates moving forward in the process. Late stage. Or we're never going to add another candidate unless we need them. And the only way we might keep.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:26:27]:
Them warm in case somebody drops out, in case both of them fail out for some reason. Whatever happens, I might want to have another candidate, but I don't want to cause confusion. I'm not trying to win anything here by. By getting them confused. I'm trying to let them Make a decision. And more flavors in the ice cream shop doesn't help that.

Tricia Tamkin [00:26:49]:
No, it certainly doesn't. Okay, so as recruiters, we know how to sell. We're salespeople by trade. Salespeople, recruiters, even, sometimes marketers can do a good job selling themselves. Nobody else really does. Right. Like, we do this for a living, so we know how to do it. But the vast majority of your candidates do a very poor job communicating their background.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:27:17]:
But this is also why I think it's so interesting that we have interviews at all. If we had great matches on resumes, what's the purpose of an interview? Like, aren't people just then basically the same? Oh, you want to learn about somebody's soft skills and see what somebody is like in person. Now, if I just like a candidate, that's a reason enough to move forward. On paper, they might not be equal, and that's okay. But we know that the hiring process isn't. We compare pieces of paper and see which one is a better fit. That is not the process anywhere. Maybe when AI takes over in the year 2086, I think it'll be sooner than that.

Tricia Tamkin [00:28:01]:
All right, so let's talk about what the cost is of a perfect fit. Now, you can't tell us in chat, but you can tell us in the question and answer area. So I'm going to ask you to actually do that. Have you ever had a candidate that you didn't present, but then they got hired in your role? If that has happened to you in your career, tell us in the question and answer area and I'll add a piece to it. Since we're going into the question and answer area, how many fees have you lost over the course of your career? And we know it's an estimated number and a big question, but have you ever had a situation where what happened was you interviewed a candidate, they didn't seem to meet the minimum requirements that the hiring manager told you, so what you did was not present them. Then you learned that they were actually hired. That exact candidate was hired for the job. This is something that we see in our coaching practice all the time.

Tricia Tamkin [00:29:13]:
The number of times that recruiters are overly discerning and don't present the candidate, and then that's the actual individual that's hired for the role. It is such a demoralizing situation. Okay, I love this. It was from someone that was anonymous, but the most notable time was a candidate had on their CV that they taught rugby and the hiring manager was a rugby fan. I love that Heather said I'm an agency recruiter and I submit regardless to take ownership of the name if they rem. If they meet the requirements of the role.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:29:53]:
Now here's the thing. I want you to start pushing the requirements of the role. Remember that 70 to 80% is very normal. Right. And it's not just the candidates that you saw and didn't present. I also want you to consider the people that you know got hired. That when you saw who got hired, you thought to yourself, oh, that's the wrong hire. I never would even presented that person.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:30:15]:
Yep, that person. That's the person came from another agency.

Tricia Tamkin [00:30:19]:
Right.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:30:19]:
That person is somebody that was below your standards, but not below your clients standards.

Tricia Tamkin [00:30:27]:
Our clients hire people that do not meet the requirements they give you all the time. All the time. The requirements are different when there's a fee associated to it. But we have to remember that it normally isn't a situation where it's like, if I find the perfect candidate, I'll hire them, but if I don't find the perfect candidate, I'm not hiring anybody. That isn't the normal situation for hiring. That's the anomaly. Right. So if we can make the assumption that they need to hire someone or they wouldn't be talking to us, we can also make the assumption that they want an ideal candidate and that history proves they will accept less.

Tricia Tamkin [00:31:13]:
They have to fill the job. Right. So we're going to lose a ton of money if we don't present these candidates.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:31:21]:
Incidentally, I could say the same thing about myself switching over to become a recruiter because I asked a few different recruiters if I could become a recruiter before Tricia was able to be convinced because I had a tiny bit of experience with it in college, I felt like I could do it. I had people telling me, no, you're going to hate it. Yet here I am. Somebody could have had a fee based off of my eager desire to actually do the job.

Tricia Tamkin [00:31:47]:
Right? Now, when you're recruiting, if you take that candidate that is an almost fit and you pass on them and then you keep sourcing and you keep recruiting and you keep looking for that perfect fit, we've got a lot of elapsed time if it's a competitive search. Trust me, your competitors do not all have your high standards. I promise you they don't. They will present anybody close and you're missing out because of it.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:32:21]:
I mean, if you've ever shopped for produce, this idea makes sense. You know, finding the perfect apple is going to take you a whole lot Longer than finding an 80% apple?

Tricia Tamkin [00:32:29]:
Yeah, it sure is. Right. All right, so there's also personal costs for those of you that have ever had a candidate get hired when you didn't present them, but you knew them, you interviewed them and didn't present them. Chances are your inner critic had a field day with that. Beat you up over it, right? That little voice inside of your head that said, wow, maybe you're not a good recruiter. How did you miss this guy? We don't want that. If this happens to you and you keep getting to the point where you're beaten to the punch on a search, it's incredibly demoralizing, and we don't want that to happen to you guys.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:33:13]:
It's so important to just remember that perfect fits can't exist. Their true idea, your client's true idea of a perfect fit is everything they put down on paper to a master level. Everything they didn't think to put down on paper and tell you also that they get along with the person very well and the person is going to work perfectly on their team and accepts the minimum pay. That's their perfect hire. No, no.

Tricia Tamkin [00:33:45]:
Perfect doesn't exist. I'm a perfectionist, and I will tell you, perfect is the lowest standard possible because it doesn't exist. Perfect doesn't exist. So if we're going for perfect, we have no standards. Actually, not the highest standards. None. Which is a hard thing to wrap your head around. Right? All right, so let's talk.

Tricia Tamkin [00:34:10]:
We're going to share something with you, and I'm just going to look really quickly in our attendees to see if Nanette is here. I don't think she is. She's not here. Nanette is awesome. Nanette is a longtime recruiter, big biller, and we're going to ask you to indulge us for about four minutes because we want you to hear this story.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:34:31]:
Now, I do want to share, to start off this story, that we taught a lot of this program and it's nearly exact format to our coaching clients, our group coaching clients, back in February, I think.

Tricia Tamkin [00:34:43]:
January.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:34:44]:
January.

Tricia Tamkin [00:34:44]:
But yes. Okay, so here we go. Pay attention. Four minutes. So, Nanette, can you come on, tell everybody what happened to you last week?

Nanette [00:34:55]:
So I was in the 11th hour on a search for a VP GM for a client. And the whole purpose of the job is really to take this company and get the EBITDA over a certain amount so the company can actually sell it. They're owned by a venture capitalist, so it took a really special person to know that the job that they were going to be taking within a few years, they might actually be out of. So I ended up really taking to.

Tricia Tamkin [00:35:24]:
Heart what was said in group coaching.

Nanette [00:35:27]:
A couple weeks ago about wilving her standards. So the hardcore standards that my company gave me was the person has to live in Houston.

Tricia Tamkin [00:35:36]:
They.

Nanette [00:35:36]:
If they don't live in Houston, they have to relocate because we need someone there every single day. And so I have a candidate that I've known for about 20 years, actually. He was hiring manager for me at one point, and I just needed to be perfect for it. So I went to him and I was like, look, this is what the situation is. And he goes, I want to talk to him because I think I can sell them on a hybrid role. So fast forward, we already had two candidates that they really liked. Oh, and this candidate costs like $50,000 for his will, and he sold them on a hybrid row. They agree.

Nanette [00:36:12]:
They're actually paying for his temporary housing for a year because he'll be there more often. And then after that, they'll just pay for him to travel backwards and forth every other week. It got me, obviously, a fee that was much larger because I went from a base pay of 200, and they ended up making him an offer of 257. All the paperwork was sent this weekend. He's already turned in his notice and we have a start date.

Tricia Tamkin [00:36:38]:
Okay, so if you hadn't been in class on lowering your standards, would you have presented this candidate?

Nanette [00:36:46]:
Oh, God, no. Not in a million years. I mean, I. I am so revisiting every single job order that I have right now.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:36:56]:
Nice.

Nanette [00:36:56]:
Especially the ones that I'm like, oh, this is so tough. They're retained. This. They want this purple swirl. I'm officially done with purple swirl. I'm not going to be like a plate of spaghetti. Right. I'm not going to send somebody in with a kindergarten or teacher and they need an engineering degree.

Nanette [00:37:13]:
But I'm definitely looking at the personality. Can the person sell themselves? Is there a reason the company should talk with them?

Tricia Tamkin [00:37:22]:
Outstanding. This was just important to reinforce to everybody in the group. Okay. We all have a tendency to be perfectionists. We think that the candidates we present have to be 100% fit, otherwise we're not doing our job right. And it's just categorically false. Like it. It's a.

Tricia Tamkin [00:37:49]:
We all have great intentions. We want to be delivering exactly what the client asks for. But the logic or the psychology around it when they're going to end up paying nanette's fee was $60,000. When they're going to end up paying a giant chunk of change to hire someone, they give us the absolute description of a perfect candidate because they're going to pay a giant fee. But let's not forget, they have to hire someone and they're going to make a decision to hire someone. Most of the time, you can't find the hundred percent fit. So when we lower our standards a little bit and we get more comfortable with that 70 to 80% fit, we make more money.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:38:39]:
Yeah. You know what? They want the purple squirrel. Send them the squirrel. Let the purple be some sort of management dress code decision. That's not on us.

Tricia Tamkin [00:38:47]:
It's not on us. So thank you, Nanette. I really appreciate you coming on and reinforcing this concept for the whole group. All right, so almost $60,000. She never, ever would have presented this candidate. And I need everybody to understand that we need to be looking at our candidates as not perfection, not exact fits. If you can get to 70% of that requirement, that candidate is worth presenting. The paper is what gets them the interview.

Tricia Tamkin [00:39:26]:
Their personality is what gets them the offer. Your job as the recruiter is to get them in the door.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:39:33]:
If it's the right personality and you know they can be successful. It doesn't matter that they said, absolutely. This person needs to only be in Houston. Like, I'll do it hybrid from where I am.

Tricia Tamkin [00:39:46]:
Right. Because that happened, they'll change the requirement for the right person, but they gotta.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:39:51]:
Pay me at least 25 to 30% more.

Tricia Tamkin [00:39:54]:
How about it? All right, so we wouldn't be us if we didn't give you some AI to support this process. Okay, so first, let's just quick talk about presenting an almost fit.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:40:07]:
We don't want them to think that we are throwing spaghetti at a wall. We want to own it. We need to show them I like to lead with it in any sort of conversation or presentation, because if they want to continue with either the conversation or the email or the candidate presentation, then they are overcoming that objection in their head. If they said, this has to be an engineering degree and my guy has a philosophy degree, I need to point out that difference. I know this person does not have the degree you're looking for, and it may not seem compatible, but when you talk to the person and get an understanding of their logic and their ability to understand engineering principles, I think you'll be great with them. If they keep reading from that point, they have decided, probably, let's keep reading. Let's find out more.

Tricia Tamkin [00:40:58]:
Right all right, so we built you a GPT for this, so I just put it out in chat. Benjamin, help us out. If they can't see chat, will you? Make sure that everybody has that link for selling an almost fit candidate in a GPT. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull this GPT right over. What we're going to do here is we're going to put in the job description, the candidate resume in your notes. Now, I don't have notes on a candidate right now. So what I'm going to do is start with a job description.

Tricia Tamkin [00:41:34]:
Okay. So what I did was I searched for a Java Architect, quality assurance Architect. Feels like maybe not a Java Architect. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come here and I'm going to grab first the full job description. Clearly, I'm not even reading this. Okay, so we're just going to grab the job description and I'm going to first paste the job description into the GPT. From that point, I'm going to add the candidate's resume. So we have this guy.

Tricia Tamkin [00:42:06]:
We. His name is Frank Nye.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:42:08]:
We call him Frank Nye the resume guy.

Nanette [00:42:10]:
Right.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:42:10]:
Sometimes Frank Nye the Java guy.

Tricia Tamkin [00:42:13]:
And Frank Nye is somebody that has put his resume all over the Internet. So what I'm actually attaching is his Resume and his LinkedIn profile.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:42:24]:
May our exposure of Frank to the world help him in his job search.

Tricia Tamkin [00:42:28]:
Right. So all I have here, I've not had a conversation with this candidate at all. I've got his Resume and his LinkedIn profile and I've got the job. So now I'm going to run the GPT. And what you're going to find here is that the GPT is going to first assess how the candidate fits for what the specific criteria are. Okay. Once it does that, it's going to look at where the candidate doesn't fit and then it's going to tell you how to sell it. Okay.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:43:02]:
It's also telling us things like robust communication skills. They're telling us what things that it would count as robust communication skills. Which gives us a whole section to write out.

Tricia Tamkin [00:43:13]:
Right. So what it's doing here, I want you to look at some of this content. Right? So specific QA architecture experience. He doesn't have direct QA architect experience, but he developed the GATE authentication system, which showcases his ability to design. Right. So this is a very technical person. And what the GPT is doing for you is it's looking at first, all of the different areas that the person fits, then telling you where they don't fit, but what experience they have might actually contribute to the element of the job they don't fit. And then it's going to give you selling points, right?

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:43:57]:
Like if I want you to look at all of these things as drafts of things that you could talk about, right? So if I look at this and it says, oh, he doesn't have experience in the options and futures industry, but he's got 30 years in it and he's going to quickly gain knowledge. Now how would I communicate this to a hiring manager? I'd say something like, oh, you know what, if you've got, you know, like Lotus Notes and you're not running Microsoft Word and you hire an IT guy, it's not going to require them to do a whole lot. They're just going to open it up and almost instantly figure it out. That's what these guys do. And I just put it down, I dumb it down for them. And now I have eliminated the options and futures industry as even a concern.

Tricia Tamkin [00:44:41]:
Now here's your presentation, right. It's actually even going to tell you the word tracks for how to sell it. Okay, I have to just read your comments on because it's delightful. This is crazy good stuff. I have a retained search I just took on and this attitude shift is going to help me make this placement faster. I am so pumped about this. I need to embrace this 100% going forward. I'm going to give you guys great advice.

Tricia Tamkin [00:45:11]:
Be like John. Okay? That's our great advice. Be like John for more than one.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:45:17]:
Reason, one of those being the enthusiasm and the turnaround and do your calls and approach something with excitement and enthusiasm. It comes through the phone, it comes through your attitude. You and people like to work with that more than non enthusiastic and non energetic. So why not find the enthusiasm? Why not go, yeah, I can get pumped up for this because they love it. They love our energy.

Tricia Tamkin [00:45:43]:
They do. I'm going to also say be like John because John was also the first person that said, oh, I'm a little unsure about this. This makes me a little bit nervous. Okay, it's okay to be nervous. You should be nervous. What you're trying to do is deliver the best possible candidate that you can to the client. You just can't work off of the assumption of exactly the candidate they want. You're just simply not going to fill the job if that's what the criteria is.

Tricia Tamkin [00:46:15]:
All right, I want you to. We've given You a lot of analogies Today, right between 100 dates in a year and getting up to bat at a baseball game. But I want you to actually think about your pretend open job requirement right now for a chauffeur.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:46:33]:
You've come into some money. Congratulations on your Powerball win tonight and you've decided to hire a driver. Would you want the perfect driver? And you probably wouldn't, right? They're going to be less experience behind the wheel because eventually you're going to get a ticket, right? They're not going to speed you to the airport if you're late. They're a perfect driver. They're not going to take those risks. If you want maximum performance, you need some risk taking.

Tricia Tamkin [00:47:03]:
We don't want you guys to be perfect drivers. We want you to be efficient chauffeurs. And that means sometimes you're going to get a speeding ticket.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:47:12]:
You know what? I know you told me to get to the airport. Trust me, this is a shortcut, right? This is going to get us there faster. My candidate knows the way.

Tricia Tamkin [00:47:21]:
Yes, they do. All right, so that is going to wrap us up. Thank you guys for joining us. It has absolutely been our pleasure.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:30]:
Make sure that you spend the next few minutes like writing down what you took from Jason and Trisha. Take some notes. What are you going to change? How are you going to use this to make more money this year? So excited for you guys to keep growing and let's go. See you guys later.

Tricia Tamkin [00:47:42]:
All right, Bye, Benjamin.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:44]:
The Recruiter Sales and Business Development Summit is coming back. It is kicking off January 26, 2026. It is going to be the best, biggest, most focused conference for recruiters to help them grow with business development of sales. Remember, with all the summits, the live sessions are free. If you want to go for the replays, you got two options. You can go VIP on the Summit platform or you can join. Join the community, have access to all the summits. But this is a summit that you do not want to miss.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:12]:
If you want 2026 to be the absolute best year possible, be there, be ready to learn and be ready to crush it. I'll see you there. Recruiters. Imagine having a recruiting sidekick that works 24 hours a day. Meet Pin, your AI powered assistant that never sleeps. Pin combs through over 850 million candidate profiles to find perfect fits for your clients, even those hard to find unicorns. It then engages them across email, LinkedIn and SMS with smart outreach that gets nearly half of candidates to respond. And PIN doesn't stop there.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:42]:
It automatically screens resumes with pinpoint precision and handles the back and forth of interview scheduling for you. It's like having an extra team member who never clocks out so you can fill roles faster and focus on closing deals. Visit pin.com to book your demo today. Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track resumes and calls, it remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:12]:
And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With MagicSearch, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever with opportunities you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:46]:
No admin, no silos, no lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com thanks for listening to this episode.

Jason Bote Thibeault [00:50:06]:
Of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.