Derek Schlender
Appearances
The Talent Trade
Recruiter Tales - Derek Schlender and Trinity Taylor
You're not going to have five customers in a day. You're going to have five successes, five work activities that you're really proud of. But ultimately, you're just inching things forward in the process. So it's more of project management than it really is closing a sale every single day. Not only that, but we're surrounded by some of the highest performing recruiters in the industry.
The Talent Trade
Recruiter Tales - Derek Schlender and Trinity Taylor
confidence and focusing on work habits and attitude. I think that's what's allowed me to be successful in recruiting and what really early on helped me build a good foundation in building a network. What we do at Thinking Ahead, it's much more of a long game. So it's a lot more inch things forward on a daily basis. When something closes, it results from a month or two of work.
The Talent Trade
Recruiter Tales - Derek Schlender and Trinity Taylor
And so we are constantly being shown exactly how to do it at the most excellent level. You build a very good foundation of understanding the different pieces of a sales process. When you're moving to intangible sales, like recruiting... when it's a professional service, really, there's a lot more trust that you're building in who you are and your process that you're going to follow.
The Talent Trade
Recruiter Tales - Derek Schlender and Trinity Taylor
And so it really comes down to connecting with people, asking interesting questions, and being able to communicate value. It's unique in that you feel like you kind of step off the treadmill a little bit in terms of the pace to possibly three-month process. And so your daily activities are very controllable. You kind of know what you're walking into every day. It's very planned, very scheduled.
The Talent Trade
Recruiter Tales - Derek Schlender and Trinity Taylor
But you really can enjoy life outside of work. We really do maintain good work-life balance. I think that's something that we all want in our professional careers. You want to work somewhere that you're able to kind of do things outside of what you do professionally and enjoy life a little bit.
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And I think what it comes down to is a lot of recruiters don't really know what else to do with a resume than to go run to their clients and try to put it in front of them. And so for me, it's a lot different than that. So much of what I do is it's not spaghetti on the wall. It's not resume spitting. spamming.
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It's very much a partnership with candidates in the market around, hey, let's work together on developing a wish list of organizations that you want to go to. I'm going to come to the table with recommendations. I expect you to come to the table with dreams and desires. We're going to put that together and come up with a list of target organizations.
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The result is you're going to get in front of the organizations you want to get in front of. And a lot of times it's people who they have all of the qualifications, all of the resume to get them the job, but they don't have the connections. It's the timing. It's the coaching. It's the representation at the offer stage. It's giving voice to, this is what the market's supporting.
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We have a nine-year-old, seven-year-old, and a two-year-old. So my world is beautiful chaos right now.
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You need to be paid X amount to right-size you, get you paid what you're worth. Or it's, hey, you're paid very competitively. Let's go get you an opportunity that lets you maximize your incentive compensation and make you a lot more money all in. It's that expertise. And without that, it's open season. They're on their own. They don't have representation.
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And so many people I work with have had that experience. They would much rather have a advocate working with them, but somebody who's really a guide, a trusted advisor, someone who's not just going out there and saying, hey, let me go. I'll keep you posted on what I get for you in terms of an opportunity to interview you. But no, let's go target an organization we agree on. You're in charge.
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I'm going to guide you there and let's get there together. So the feedback I've gotten is that that's really value for a candidate. They appreciate that. They don't get that from everyone. And so I feel really good about the work that I do based on that feedback.
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For sure. For sure. And I'd say too that like, I think most organizations would like to have the unlimited time, unlimited bandwidth to take everything to search and competitively select the slate of candidates and pick the best one. And I mean, that's an ideal world, right? We want that on paper. But in the reality of what we are dealing with is you have a goal to meet by end of quarter one.
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It's the beginning of March. Your top producer just collected his bonus and left for whatever reason. What are you going to do? Can you go to search? Can you go find that slate of candidates? Can you go through that full process? Well, what if someone called you and said, hey, I've got someone who can produce at a level that's equivalent to what your top producer was producing at.
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Who wouldn't want to have that conversation? So again, it's a time saver and a money saver because the time it takes to take an opportunity to search, you're losing money on that top producer's revenue. And so a lot of it is, it's a monetarily efficient way to select top talent.
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But again, I think the clients that I work with value the industry expertise so that they know when I bring them a candidate, it's not just someone's resume that I got from a job postings.
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Stephanie, you probably said this already, but I think the overarching principle is that good recruiters are good listeners. Great recruiters are phenomenal listeners. And with everything I'm talking about, if you don't go in with a really active listening mindset, you're only going to be able to default to transactional recruiting.
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But if you can really listen and really learn from every conversation, you become someone who is incredibly valuable to your marketplace and to the candidates you recruit. So that's it. I mean, it's listen, listen, listen, and do something with what you've learned. Love it.
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Absolutely. So as I got started in search, a big conversation between my mentor and myself and just our team in general was talking about, hey, what's going on in the market in terms of what drives it? Is it client driven? Is it candidate driven? Do we see that swing from year to year? The thing that really came to light with SBA as a niche is that it was incredibly candidate driven.
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And I guess the best way to think about that from a macro perspective is just simple supply and demand. My niche in SBA lending tends this way largely because there's been a high number of baby boomer generation bankers who have been retiring. There's just not been as many Gen X, millennial, there's just not enough people getting into banking to outnumber those that have been retiring.
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And so over the last 10 to 15 years, that's resulted in this growing bubble of demand where there's just a lot more need than there is talent. And so that's resulted in something for me that's just sustainably been candidate driven. I haven't really had a lot of client-driven moments in my time so far.
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There's definitely been clients who have said, hey, Derek, you're the recruiter we want to work with exclusively. There's just some roles that have to go to search. But the lion's share of what my market needs is the talent, and it's on a constant basis. And so this supply and demand idea
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And with demand so high and supply so low, if you can go bring to your clients what they're needing, that's kind of what I would define as candidate driven.
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Yeah. So it's candidate driven. I think what appealed to me a lot coming to thinking ahead was that we are not generalist recruiters. And so you've got a lot of banking recruiters in the marketplace, a lot of finance recruiters, but very few of them are truly market masterminds. Masters is what I would say we kind of call it as a niche expert.
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And so when I was starting off, and frankly, anyone who's gotten their start in search, you don't know what your niche is until you really cut your teeth and you get a sense of where can I win? Where can I go add value? And so I just started to pull what we call pull the thread in the market. Like you see a thread, you start to pull it. And what comes of that is you start to get traction.
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Where I was getting traction was SBA lending. What's unique is we were heading into the pandemic as I was gaining traction. What happened is everyone stopped coming into the office. The marketplace basically overnight was completely remote. While SBA lending is a national product, a national program, I was thrust into a market that was even more national by nature to everyone being remote.
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It didn't matter where you lived as long as a company could hire in your state. And so that just became more and more of a focus almost as a product of just circumstances around the pandemic. That's kind of where it all started for me.
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That's a great question. And I think that's the most important question because when it comes to marketing talent, why are they marketable? Why is there value? That's an important question. So for me, you've got kind of multiple candidate types that you are looking for in the world of finance. You've got people who are straight up and down revenue contributors.
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They're directly tied to the bottom line profitability. You've got people who are in the background, back office people. credit, operations. So for me, it's different depending on what type of candidate it may be. But to put it simply, if someone's a revenue contributor, have they produced is number one.
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Have they produced at a level that is recognized by the marketplace as impressive, as meaningful, but even more complex than that? Have they produced within the deal box or the buy box of the clients that I represent. If they have, I've got somebody who can add value for my clients, for the marketplace that I serve. If they haven't, there's a disconnect there.
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And so it's my job as the market master to say, hey, tell me about production, Tell me about where you've won. Let me make sure that I'm connecting the dots in a way that's going to be meaningful and recognized for the value that you bring. And so I've got to uncover that with a candidate and understand that on a deep level. If I'm a generalist who doesn't really deeply know one niche,
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over another, that's a lot harder. So if you're somebody who does accounting recruiting, commercial CNI recruiting, mortgage recruiting, all of these things, that's great. If you don't have enough depth to talk shop with somebody and understand what kinds of deals they actually do and where you could take them or that wouldn't add value, that'll be harder.
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With credit and operations, I think a lot of it comes down to efficiency and proficiency. Are they efficient at what they do in credit decisioning from a timeline perspective? But also, do they have a complexity of understanding of different deal types where they can actually get in and truly decision deals based on the experience that they have?
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For me, a lot of times, somebody who is a MPC as a credit candidate, they need to be a little bit more experienced. Because if they're not, it's a lot harder to showcase that talent and to say, hey, based on their experience, they're going to add XYZ in value. And then the same is, you know, generally true of people in operations and other capacities.
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It's a lot of just, I've had experience in key areas that I know bring value to my clients. And then on top of all that, I would just say that their resume really matters. A resume for a star candidate happens. has to look like someone who hasn't moved around a lot. You know, there's occasions where a quick stint somewhere can be explained and that's okay.
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But again, I need to understand their story in a way that can be conveyed in a way that's understood and accepted. And then the last thing is just compensation. Because as much as we're talking about representing candidates, our primary responsibility is still our clients, right?
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which is sometimes hard to think about when you're thinking about, hey, I'm representing talent and trying to go place them in the market. You still have to ethically understand, hey, my primary job is to solve a need for my client. A lot of that comes down to simple math. Does this candidate, are they someone who's affordable?
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Are they someone who's commanding a salary that the market will support? Again, if I'm not niched, I don't know my market, I may not be able to answer that question. And I may not actually be able to add value to my client. Because if I bring them someone they can't afford, it's great that this candidate's a rock star, they can produce, they add all this efficiency value.
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But if they aren't in the budget for what the client can pay, I'm wasting a lot of people's time.
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Yeah, that's a great question. I think, again, I'm going to probably beat this horse the whole time, but being very specialized is the key.
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Because if you get a phone call from someone who is specialized to represent the niche you literally operate in as a candidate, as a professional, and someone calls you, it's a different conversation when you can convey to them, hey, the only space I recruit in is your world.
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And so what I'm going to do first and foremost is I'm going to pursue understanding you as a professional before we, I mean, whether or not I have an opportunity that I'm recruiting for or not, that for me is the right approach. Even if I'm taking a search to market, because it's going to take me some time to truly understand if you're the right fit for this search.
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So even if there's a search, hey, I am specialized, I'm niche specific, let me understand your situation. And as we develop that relationship with the candidate, the beauty is the value we bring to our clients, it's not going after people who are thanking God that you called them on that Tuesday afternoon.
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It's the people who didn't really have time to talk to you, but they start to catch, oh, there's a value in talking to this recruiter because they are actually in my space. Even if it's a quick conversation, I want to keep in touch with them. It's very relationally driven.
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Wow. Thank you, Stephanie. Team mascot wasn't something I expected, but you know, sometimes you just get these little delights in life that you just got to roll with it and embrace it. So it's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.
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Again, it's a value proposition to the candidate that, hey, whether or not I go take you to one of my clients right now, we need to know each other, even if for a long-term relationship. And so that's the approach that I take. And then from there, again, being specialized, you can pick up on things that are causing pain when you hear how things are actually going. Well, Derek, it's been...
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A good year, I've produced X amount in volume. The only frustration is it's taking 60 days decision to deal. Hang on, that's a huge red flag. But I only know that if I truly know the timeframe it ought to take for a lender to decision transactions.
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So things like that, as you're talking to someone and they're engaging with you, you can say, hey, can I provide some feedback based on my expertise in the market? I think you're in a place that's kind of preventing you from being the best you could be. You mind if I give you some feedback? And so it's developing a relationship of trust based on expertise.
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That's a great question. So a lot of it for me is just paying attention in a number of ways. It's absolutely paying attention to who's producing at different levels, who are the top places that are competitively looking to be in the top 10 in the country, top 20 in the country, and having a relationship developed with those hiring managers to understand how are you going about that?
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What kind of talent is it going to take for you to achieve your goals? Do you have the support in your back office to support the production you're looking to have? But it's also understanding what are the kind of new to market, new to the stage players who may not have as much volume publicly traced where it's like, hey, you're actually going to be a player in the next two to three years.
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And I think the last six years, they've been probably the highlight just from a professional standpoint for me, not just the work that we do, but the people that I get to do it with. But yeah, I focus on SBA recruiting for our banking team. I run that niche nationally. Personally, my family, we reside in Athens, Georgia. No dogs. Family of five.
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But knowing the people in your niche, it's achieved through a number of things. It's what I just talked about in terms of the rankings. It's attending conferences and actually getting in front of your market and getting to know the people in your space. But again, it's very relational and it's asking, hey, what do you need right now? But where are you headed?
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What are you going to need in the next year? If I came across a top qualified candidate in the market, is that someone you would want to have a confidential conversation about? Every hiring manager you talk to is going to say yes. But again, it comes back down to, can you actually produce that in value to them?
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And so if you can come back to the table and say, hey, I really heard you when you and I talked about the talent that it's going to take for you to get where you're headed and give them some feedback that you actually have the talent that they're looking for, 10 times out of 10, those clients want to have a conversation with you about that.
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The challenge for most of my clients is not paying a fee to a recruiter or even going the search route. It's working with recruiters who don't bring them candidates who are well-vetted, who actually solve a need or actually thrust them toward their goal. So it's connecting those two dots.
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But again, I think it's a lot of relational business development conversations that are not just centered around what search do you have for me today, but let's have a business conversation around where are you trying to get to? What type of people are going to help you get there?
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It's honestly been extremely positive. And one of the things I love most about the world we live in is we have something called LinkedIn. Is it on the World Wide Web? It is. It is actually the website. But every placement I make, it's part of my process. I ask first for the candidates I place to leave me a review. And thankfully, almost everyone is so willing to do that.
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And the feedback I've consistently had is they just love the ethical experience that they have. And that's interesting to me that that comes to light so frequently because you would think that ethics were something that every recruiter considered to be a high priority, but it's just not.