“Always bet on yourself. If you're a solo entrepreneur, it gets hard. You're probably going to go back to what you left right at the moment it would have paid off and given you the life that you wanted to have." - Jonathan Whistman

Setting the Stage for Success in Recruitment

In the competitive realm of recruitment, distinguishing your agency from the crowd is more than a challenge—it’s an essential battle for survival and growth. Particularly for solo entrepreneurs, mastering the art of sales is not merely a skill, but a critical necessity. Featured in the Tech Recruiter Podcast: 'Mastering the Art of Sales for Recruitment Agency Success,' a dynamic talk between Jonathan Whistman, author of 'The Sales Boss,' and Michal Juhas of Tech Recruitment Academy, explores strategic approaches to redefine sales processes and client relationships in the recruitment industry.

With that said, here are 5 strategies that can elevate a recruitment agency from struggling for visibility to becoming a dominant force in a niche market. 👊

1. The Importance of Niching Down

In a saturated market, generalists struggle to be heard. Specializing in a niche like cybersecurity not only differentiates your agency but also enhances your value proposition. Jonathan emphasizes the significance of "saying no" to grow, advising recruitment agencies to focus their efforts on specific sectors where they can offer unmatched expertise. By validating the market size and ensuring it aligns with your business goals, you can carve out a sustainable niche that promises growth and less competition.

2. Adopting an Entrepreneurial Mindset

The journey of a solo entrepreneur in recruitment begins with a clear focus on generating revenue. Jonathan suggests adopting a mindset that prioritizes strategic client acquisition and long-term business health over immediate gains. This includes understanding the fundamental reasons for entering the business and continuously aligning your strategies to these motivations. A resilient entrepreneurial spirit can drive your agency through the initial hurdles to establish a solid foundation for future success.

3. Building and Managing Client Relationships

Transitioning from an initial contact to a trusted advisor is crucial in the recruitment industry. Jonathan advocates for innovative outreach methods that make your interactions memorable and meaningful. Instead of conventional emails or calls, think of unique ways to engage decision-makers, perhaps through personalized gifts or tailored messages that highlight your deep understanding of their challenges. This approach not only differentiates you from competitors but also builds a rapport that is conducive to long-term relationships.

4. Streamlining Your Sales Process

Efficiency in your sales process is key to scaling your operations. Jonathan recommends implementing systematic approaches that are replicable and can be measured for effectiveness. Knowing your metrics, such as conversion rates and client retention numbers, allows you to adjust tactics in real time and ensures that your sales activities lead to desired outcomes. A structured sales process is essential for solo entrepreneurs who need to maximize their productivity without the support of a large team.

5. Expanding Through Thought Leadership

Establishing yourself as a thought leader in your niche can significantly amplify your market presence. Regularly publishing insightful articles, hosting webinars, and participating in industry panels are effective ways to demonstrate expertise and engage with potential clients. Jonathan notes that content that addresses specific pain points and offers real solutions will position you as an authority in your field and attract clients who are looking for high-quality, specialized recruitment services.

Securing Your Agency's Future in Recruitment

Mastering sales in the recruitment sector requires more than just tactical knowledge—it demands a deep understanding of market dynamics, a robust personal brand, and an entrepreneurial mindset geared towards innovation and strategic growth. By focusing on these areas, solo entrepreneurs can build recruitment agencies that not only survive but thrive in competitive environments.

Are you ready to elevate your recruitment agency by mastering the art of sales? Begin by identifying your niche and crafting a targeted strategy that sets you apart from the competition. Connect with us for further insights and personalized strategies designed to propel your agency to new heights.

Explore More

Interested in the full discussion? Watch the podcast episode on Tech Recruiter Michael (Michal Juhas) YouTube channel for a deeper dive into mastering sales in the recruitment industry.

Transcription:

Michal Juhas: Hey, Jonathan, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here because you have experience with sales.

You wrote a book, right? So, you are the one to discuss something that a lot of recruiters struggle with. So, the sales process and account management. And this is also something we were discussing with fellow members of the Tech Recruitment Academy, because a lot of them are solopreneurs.

A lot of them are looking to get the first client and they don't really know what to do, how to start. So, I'm just so excited to discuss this with you.

Jonathan Whistman: Yeah. Michael, thanks for having me on the show. I'm looking forward to talking to your audience. I have a passion for the solo entrepreneur because I've always worked for myself.

And so I've grown and sold a number of companies, but I always start with just me figuring out how to sell it, how to reproduce it, how to grow it, how to build a team, how to put a process and really the Genesis of my book, the Sales Boss is really how to build, manage, hire a sales team, but when you're the solo entrepreneur, you got to wear all those hats.

Michal Juhas: Yeah. And I guess all of these solopreneurs are, probably most of them, would like to get to a point when at some point they are managing a team, a recruiting agency with 10 key account managers and sales guys, but it's always about getting the first client and then the second and third. So why don't we kind of focus on the initial part of the sales cycle. A lot of our members of the academy, they would like to focus on some niche within IT. So for example, DevOps or cybersecurity. So what would you say, like, how could they, or should they differentiate if they choose a niche and they would like to get a first client. Like what should they do?

Jonathan Whistman: Well, maybe a back up just a bit from there. I always like to talk about the entrepreneurial mindset. So you've gotten into the business for a reason, right? Either you have a background in HR, you look at the recruiting space, whatever business that you're in, it could be even something else outside of recruiting. And you've decided you have an interest in it. You're talented. You have something of value to offer.

But when you start a business, the number one thing is revenue, right? Like how can I get my first client? How can I start putting money into the bank and build a real business around that? And what I find happens when people first sort of step their foot out on their own and now they're going to be Michael Inc, right? Or Jonathan Inc. And finally, they put up their shingle.

The challenge is that they oftentimes will sell to anyone because they just need a client and they think if I get my first one or two clients then I'll be started and I can figure it out from there. And what I really recommend people to do is to back up and get really clear right from the beginning what are they going to say no to.

Right? Because if you are a recruiter, if you are an IT recruiter, you're still in a band of thousands and thousands of IT recruiters. And it's really difficult to stand out in that crowd. So how do you niche down within a niche and maybe even a sub niche of a sub niche, right? So you might go from IT recruiting, broadly speaking, and if you just said, I'm going to be an IT recruiter for cybersecurity companies. That's it. Now that means you're going to get somebody asking you to do work in other niches, right? And it might be difficult to say no to that work. In fact, maybe on the download you take some of that to feed the kids. But even inside it, if you niche down to cyber security, if you said, well, why don't I go one area deeper than that, maybe there's a sub niche within cybersecurity, maybe it's a particular one or two roles.

And then what you have to do is just validate that the market size for that. One or two roles or that cyber security is big enough to fund the sort of company that you want to have. And if the answer is yes, there's enough demand, then the question becomes, how do I build my demand around that? The reason that's so important is as a solo entrepreneur, you only have so much time.

You only have so many resources in terms of marketing and where you spend your focus. And so if you can become expert in speaking their sub language, right. If you know the sort of the key hot topics and concerns when they hire somebody that's in cyber security as a developer, that might be different than a developer or front end, back end for some other sort of platform. And the more you can speak that language, the more you're going to be attracting the sort of decision maker whose job security relies on placing talented people in that role. Does that make sense?

Michal Juhas: Totally. Totally. And I'm actually really guilty of this because I was also taking clients as they came our way. We got most of the clients from referrals, so they often just reach out and say, "Hey, Michael, could you help with a web developer role?" And then next week, "Could you help with a DevOps engineer?" And I was always like, "Hey, this is IT. So of course I do it." But it's still way too broad. So it doesn't allow us to build a list of just a small segment of candidates.

Jonathan Whistman: Yeah, and so when there's sort of the dual edge sword, everybody says, "Man, I'd love to have a referral only business", right? Because sales is hard and you've got to put effort in it and you have to make an investment in it. But as the founder, while you may take some of that business, your front appearance as a company and the language you learn has to be around getting to be an expert at that one thing.

I'll give you an example in one of the companies I own, which is a technology platform. It's called WhoHire. It is around using AI prediction models to place people in roles. So it's sort of the digital version of recruiting and our platform could be used for a lot of different companies.

We have cyber security companies using our platform. We have tech companies using our platform. But if you went to our site, whohire. com, for that particular niche, it's all around home services. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofers. And the reason is, I can speak to that audience. I can get on all the podcasts that serve those sort of buyers. I can go to those trade shows. I can put my front end messaging. So when they land on my website, they're like, "Oh, this is a technology for construction, for home services." It makes the effort of closing that business lower.

Michal Juhas: Very interesting. Very interesting.

Jonathan Whistman: Right? Now that doesn't mean when a tech company comes up, you know, my way by way of referral and they say, "Hey, can you do this for me?" I say, sure. It's the same underlying technology and they still use it. They still get a lot of results, but I'm not going to shift my messaging and say, "Hey, we're the hiring platform for any company that needs to hire people."

Michal Juhas: And that's kind of interesting. And it comes back to you mentioning the goal, right? And what the goal is. The goal to kind of build a business that provides decent income, or would you like to build like international huge company with billions of revenues? Because if you would like to build business with billions of revenues, you know, billions of dollars of revenues, then probably, you know, if you choose penetration, cyber security specialist, it will not become the global business, but.

Jonathan Whistman: Well, so there's some head trash for you.

Michal Juhas: It could, it could.

Jonathan Whistman: You could build a global business just around cybersecurity recruiting. It's a huge market and certainly more than any one person or one company could do. Right? So don't allow that desire for how big you get to decide your niche, because just like home services, it doesn't mean I'll play there forever, but for the next two, three years, I can grow a billion dollar company there and then add in and then I can expand from there. But get your expertise. Be known for when somebody says, "I need personnel in the cyber security space, I'm going to call Michael." You want it to get that quick. Like I might give all my other IT jobs to some other recruiter, but when it comes to this, I have a preference for placing it because they know how to screen properly. They know what they're looking for. They know what's important to me.

Michal Juhas: Awesome. Awesome. I really like this angle. It's just so cool because at the end, it's also about the mindset and how you approach things. So it totally makes sense.

Jonathan Whistman: Do you ever eat at a restaurant? Here in the U. S. they have a restaurant called the Cheesecake Factory. And if you go into the Cheesecake Factory, their menu is like 20 pages, and you can get everything from a steak to a hamburger to vegan. Like, everything's on the menu.

If you're gonna go out with a group who all have different eating preferences, you might go to the Cheesecake Factory. Right? Because there's something for everyone. But the truth is, there's nothing excellent for anyone. You don't crave the cheesecake factory. Like, if you want a really good steak, you go to a steakhouse. If you want a really good burger, you go to a burger place, right? If you want a really good beer, you go to a brewery. And that's how I think about business, especially if you're a solo entrepreneur. What is the thing that if they want that thing, they go to you, right? It's not, I just want to eat. I want a steak.

So it's not just I want to recruit. I want to find the best cyber security developer I can or I need to find the best and you can insert anything. I don't want to over index on cyber security, right? But the benefit of that is also I see entrepreneurs sort of get frozen in indecision. It's really hard to, I'm going to go do some prospecting. Maybe I don't have a big referral list yet. Referral partners. So I log into LinkedIn and I'm like, well, I'll just message all of the IT developers or managers. And the truth is they're getting thousands of messages, right? It's much easier to go. "All right, I'm choosing cyber security. Who are the top 20 cyber security companies on the planet that have the kind of need that I have?" Now I have a very defined list. What are the top three conferences that those people all attend. Great. Now I know where they hang out. What are the magazines that they read? The blog posts? Where do they educate themselves? And I can start getting this really defined list of where are the kinds of people that I want to bump into going to be. Now, if you say, well, typically it's a funded startup, maybe they've just received a series A or a series B funding, something like that.

Now I can take my, my list of cybersecurity companies and I can go out into my databases that tell me who recently have received funding. And I can match that up to my list. And I might already have started developing those relationships before I even need to place somebody.

Michal Juhas: Awesome. Awesome. Well, now when you say it, it just totally makes sense. I mean, like why we are not doing it this way. Exactly. Like this, this is kind of a no brainer now, really, you know, the way you, you outline it, but it requires some thought process which is great. It's great, right? But what what a lot of people do is exactly they just open Linkedin Sales Navigator and they start messaging people with generic messages, which is probably why it doesn't work for them.

Jonathan Whistman: Yep, and you know what I would do if I was if I was in that situation. As an example, you have an established business. So maybe less so for you. But if you decided, "Hey, I want to niche down to niche up right to get bigger", I would probably say who are the kinds of industries and developers that I like talking to because you've got screening to do. You've got like, who do I enjoy having those conversations with? And who does my database largely represent in terms of who do I have access to in that community? Right. And then pick based on that, if you're just starting out, I would probably look at where's the demand, but I would probably find an area that I'm actually interested in. So like, I'm very interested in quantum computing.

So I probably would pick the kinds of developers that would go into a quantum computing field. It's interesting. It's fascinating. And because of that, I don't mind attending their conferences. Even if I'm not getting business, right, because when you first start attending a conference and you first start going to the networking events, you're not sell, sell, sell, you're developing relationships that pay off over time.

Well, if I'm going to have to get on a plane or drive across town or log in and attend an online event, I'd rather be at an event that I find intellectually stimulating and curious outside of the thing that I'm there to do.

Michal Juhas: That's so true. Like for me, it would be data, data engineering, data science, because that's what I used to do 10, 15 years ago. So, makes sense.

Jonathan Whistman: And because you have a passion for that and you can sort of geek out on it now, when you think about candidates that are coming into your pipeline that you might be placing, isn't it true? You're probably going to have better conversations with them. You'll sort of geek out together. They'll know you get them as a person and what they're looking for. That friction to place them. If, you know, if I'm an applicant and I can be placed by you or I can be placed by somebody else, like the market pay rates and all of that sort of iron themselves out, right? There's a rate.

The real difference is who do they want to work for? Like, would they rather you be placing them from job to job to job, or would they, you know, would they rather work with a generalist?

Michal Juhas: Interesting. Okay. Okay. And then once the recruiter solopreneur has clarity about the type of consultants and IT professionals to work with, what's next? They start joining events. They start building relationships. How do they go from someone who has never done any sales and suddenly needs to get a client on board, like does it require some mindset shift or what, what, you know, what needs to be done?

Jonathan Whistman: So I go back to everything should be a process. A process has an outcome that I'm intending. So it doesn't do me any good to just do the thing that I do and not understand why I'm doing it. Because then I can't train somebody else. Right? I need to know my own numbers. I need to be able to say I make X number of contacts and I email X in order for one thing to fall out the other end because when I make my first handful of hires, I need to be able to have an understanding of what's their activity level need to be in order to make a sale.

So in my book, I use the acronym boss B. O. S. S. To represent the levers that you can pull to influence somebody's output or their results for sales.

And the first one is "Behavior". Like what is the thing they're going to do? It's not, how do they do it? It's the thing. They attend an event, they do an email outreach, they do a mailer. What is the thing they do? That's behavior. And you have to know how much behavior is normal in order to get the out outcome that you need.

And the second thing is "Outlook", which is everything to do between somebody's head. How do they feel about themselves? How do they feel about their market, their competitor? It's everything happening up here. So if the behavior is right, the outlook, right, then we can talk about "Skill". How well do they do that thing? Whatever that skill is. And you can train skills. Like how do I have a good discovery call with an IT manager for the very first time and explain our services? How do I get those things done? Right. That's a trainable skill. So I have to be able to as a entrepreneur and define what's the minimum level of skill somebody needs to have to get started and then what is expert look.

I'm getting thumbs up on my thing because I'm part of Zoom's discovery program. So this is one of their new features.

The last thing is "Stature". So it's that order: behavior, outlook, skill set has to be in that order when you've done enough of the right behaviors with the right outlook with the right skill level. All of a sudden you have stature. You become the expert. People look to you first.

So let's just go back to that example of doing if you niche down to cyber security. Think of all of the art, like if you sit down to write an article on LinkedIn or you put out a piece of content, it becomes really easy to write that from what are the five missteps to avoid when hiring a cybersecurity developer?

Michal Juhas: Mm-Hmm.

Jonathan Whistman: And I could speak right to it from experience. Right. Which is much different than a broad article saying, "How do you do IT Recruiting?" So the challenge is though, even after you have that developed, you have one problem. I call it the time problem. If you just go out and attend conferences and do what I consider casual warming up, it's sort of like turning the stove on. And you turn it on low. Eventually that water is going to get hot, but it's going to take a while and you might starve in the meantime if you're trying to cook some noodles, right?

A lot of times people are under time pressure. They're like, "Hey, I quit my job. I've got a certain amount of money in the bank. I need to have clients. I got to eat." They got to turn it up. So that's where you have to be able to do proactive outreach. Eventually you want an incoming stream of requests, but until that incoming streams comes in, you have to do outbound. So what I would do is I would sit down just a blank sheet of paper, maybe a blank computer screen. However, you like to do things. I'm very tactile so I still write. I would say, "What are the top 15 ways that it recruiters get jobs today?" So on one, they're doing automations on LinkedIn for mass outreach. Number two, they're like, just list them down. And then I would take my pencil and I would scratch every one of them out. And I would forbid myself to do that thing.

Michal Juhas: All of them?

Jonathan Whistman: All of them. And then I would ask myself, "what's left?" "What can I do differently?" The reason is, if I send out a thousand automations on LinkedIn saying, "do you want to hire a recruiter?" I'm going to be, maybe I get one out of a thousand. And I'm also putting myself in that sort of pest with everyone else, right?

When somebody works with you, there's this idea of being a trusted advisor. If you think about the levels of sales at the very bottom, you sort of have a peddler. Think about a street vendor. If you go to a beach community, right. And they come by and they're like, "Hey, can I braid your hair?" Or "do you want to buy a popsicle?" Like that's the peddler. Right. And maybe if you're in the mood, you buy. But it's not really a sustainable business.

The next level up is a vendor. If you're in a vendor relationship, they literally put you on a spreadsheet and they say: vendor A, we'll do it for this, under this timeline, this quality level. And they pick what's important to them. Quality time price. They compare you against the other and they go, Oh, we're going to go with Michael and this job this time, right? Peddler. Vendor. Then you have the next level up as salesperson. And the only difference between a vendor and a salesperson is there's a person involved. A vendor could just buy online, but you know, sometimes the buying process requires a person doesn't have to be talented. Sometimes the salesperson gets in the way of closing the deal.

The next level up is a consultant. And a consultant adds value to the buying process. They're causing their customer to think and act differently and make their purchasing decisions differently.

And then I would go one step above that, which is the trusted advisor. A trusted advisor is somebody that looks to you for advice and guidance, even outside of your area of expertise.

Michal Juhas: That's powerful.

Jonathan Whistman: They think of you first. If you said in your mind, "Hey, I have a financial problem". There's probably somebody in your mind. That's a trusted advisor. It's the person you call for anything related to finances, right? Might be the same thing in health. There's somebody that you have as a health trust advisor. So I'd be asking myself the question, how do I position myself as the trusted advisor?

The problem is if I'm a trusted advisor and I'm walking the beach, asking somebody if they want their hair braided. You can never see that peddler vendor as a trusted advisor. They don't go together. Make sense?

Michal Juhas: That's totally makes sense. Yeah.

Jonathan Whistman: So that's why I want to scratch off the list, the thing that everybody's doing that would put them in that category. And I want to draw a line above salesperson. I only want to be in that consultant trusted advisor. I'm not going to get to trusted advisor with everyone might just be, but I'm going to play in that space. So what do. What do you trusted advisors do? They run podcasts. You're running a podcast. You're automatically casting yourself as that way. You're training other people that puts you in a trusted advisor category, right? Makes sense. So I'm writing articles. If you're starting a business, yes, you're hungry. Yes. You got to close deals, but that doesn't mean you're walking the beach, selling three for a dollar, right? Because you're gonna, because as soon as you have success in that space, that's all you're ever going to do. Cause you will get addicted to that easy revenue. That's not very profitable. And if you want to move upstream, you actually should just start upstream. It's way easier to start here than down here.

Michal Juhas: That's very powerful. That's very powerful.

Jonathan Whistman: It just takes a little time. So let's go back to, and I know I'm ranting. I hope that's okay.

Michal Juhas: No, no, no. I really like love this part. Like that's, that's super cool.

Jonathan Whistman: On one end you have, it's going to take me time, right? I put out articles, I do shows. It's not like tomorrow, the faucet turns on. So I've written a list of things I can't do. What can I do? So I'll give you an example. I was trying to grow a business and I was doing leadership development classes and there's thousands and thousands of leadership gurus out there that can sell training to you.

So what did I do? Well, I decided I was going to send out five. First, I researched my market. I knew who the top 30 companies I wanted to go after. I actually did a hundred. And then I divided it that my top 30, my middle 30, my bottom 40. And I did physical mailer. So I decided I'm going to mail five things.

I'm going to wrap them all in brown wrapping paper, and they're going to be tied with a physical string and they're going to have a wax seal stamp on them. And they're all going to be different, but the first one's going to be a wooden puzzle. And it's going to have 100 bill in it and they can see the 100 bill, but they can't get it out. And I'm going to put a letter in there saying, you know, " Michael, being able to get the best results out of your leadership team without breaking them is probably like trying to get this 100 bill out of this puzzle without breaking it. If you'll take 10 minutes with me, I'll show you how to do both."

I'm not going to get a call back on that. Right. But I, I mail it a week later, they get something else. It's a can of WD 40. There's a little thing tied into it, but by the time I actually call them, I'm like, I'm the guy that keeps sending you the stuff in the brown paper packages, tied up with string which ties into sort of a popular song, right? And they laugh. I'm already different. I've already invested significantly. I have control of that from the time I do the first mailing to the time I'm on the phone with them as a month. And I know I'm going to get that phone call and I know I'm going to close at a higher rate. That's totally different than saying, let me just put a thousand things out on LinkedIn. They have to take my call. Does that make sense?

I was in another situation where I needed to get a hold of the hospital administrator, the CEO of the hospital. It's really tough to get a hold of a CEO of a hospital at any time. And in the particular market here in the U. S. I was working in, there was a new law that, that hospitals would get reimbursed based on a quality score. And the government would publish their quality score. So you knew who was in first place is the hospital, who is second place, third place. So I wanted the second place person. That's who I was going to help. So how are you going to get a hold of that person? Get your message across. You could spend a lot of time. I just you just spend time thinking, how can I be different? How can I be unique? What I ended up doing was getting a four by eight, you know, like a sheet of plywood, massive board.

And I put the picture of the CEO on one side of the first place hospital, their competitor and second place number two, right under their name with the big letters. How long will you be satisfied being in second place? And my message on the other side and I wrapped it and I had it hand delivered into their office. So it would go into their office. It looked like a gift. They would unwrap it. And here was this controversial calling them out for being in second place. Well, they couldn't stick it in the trash can. There was no easy way to get it out. Like I have made a memory for them. And by the way, I didn't include any way for them to contact me. Because a salesperson leaves a way to contact, right? So I've just scratched that off my list, but then I can call and I can talk to the gatekeeper, the secretary. And I can say, Susan, I'm the guy that sent that big four by eight. How long are you going to be in second place? And she's going to laugh. She go, Oh man, you really pissed him off. And I'll be like, well, do you think I pissed him off enough that he'll take my call? Right? So I closed a lot of hospitals. And I could have spent a lot of time and a lot of salespeople effort in trying to get through that. And so I just reinforce to people, if you're the solo entrepreneur, niche down, get your targets. And then figure out how am I going to be different to accelerate that time?

Like keep the pot on the stove on low, right? Still go to your events, develop your network. Eventually that's going to start flowing. But in the meantime. But don't market to a thousand mindless, faceless people. Just take a list, get it down to a hundred, if you can manage a hundred. If you can't afford a hundred and do it over the top, I'd rather you spend on ten people and go over the top. Because you only need one or two of them. And now you have some revenue that you can invest. And I'm going to charge high enough that I can grow, right?

Michal Juhas: Wow, that's just so powerful. I'm almost speechless. But I try to visualize what does this look like in practice when let's say we apply it in the cyber security space, let's say, right? Let's say there is an agency that specializes in cyber security. They need to get clients that hire cyber security specialists, right? So we can do some research. We find help and companies, let's say in some region, and then we can see on LinkedIn that they are looking for the cybersecurity specialist.

So what would you advise? Now we have a few options, for example, to reach out to the head of HR or reach out to the recruiter. Maybe there is some internal talent acquisition specialist, or reach out to the director of IT, CTO, or reach out to CEO. What would be your strategy? You know, kind of already see.

Jonathan Whistman: I don't know the industry well enough to give you a blanket answer to that question. And I would always say it depends. It depends on who makes the decision in that organization. And that's where I'm going to spend a little bit of time and research. I'm going to, I'm going to really understand what the playing field is.

Michal Juhas: Yeah. Yeah. But just as I was asking the question, I kind of visualize the list, as you were saying, and scratch item, reach out to the recruiter, because that's the obvious one, reach out to the head of HR, that's the obvious one. So I would scratch it as well.

Jonathan Whistman: Well, the person you're reaching out to might be obvious and it might be the right person for a reason.

Michal Juhas: Mm hmm.

Jonathan Whistman: It's how you reach out to them.

Michal Juhas: Oh, I see. I see.

Jonathan Whistman: If they're the one that makes the decision you for sure start with them. Yeah, they should be your best friend. Like, I want to know who actually when they say yes, then you get to you get to be on their list. You get to work with them. And where do they and where do they hang out? What do they read? What do they look at? What do they what do they find amusing?

Michal Juhas: And now when we have this clarity about the target person, it's probably easier to really connect with them and build a relationship because what a lot of recruiters and solopreneurs within this space do, they just send the mass messages on LinkedIn and mass emails, but that way you would not build a relationship, right?

Jonathan Whistman: And nobody wants to read it. It's just becoming background noise.

Michal Juhas: Yeah. So it gives you the false impression of some work and some progress because you send hundreds of messages every day, but then at the end there may not be any outcome.

Jonathan Whistman: Yeah. And it's not very satisfying, right?

Like bringing your creativity to it, at least it's satisfying, even if you don't get any business. Well, I know we're running up against the time we committed, but I've certainly enjoyed our conversation.

Michal Juhas: Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Thanks a lot for all your insights. And before we wrap it up, is there any final advice you would have to the, solo printers who are trying to make it in the IT recruiting space?

Jonathan Whistman: Wow. That's a wide open question. I'm going to just go with the solo entrepreneur. Always bet on yourself. .

Michal Juhas: That's a good one.

Jonathan Whistman: Always bet on yourself. What happens if you're in the solo entrepreneur is it gets hard. And then you think about going back to what you left and you're probably going to go back to what you left right at the moment it would have paid off and given you the life that you wanted to have.

Michal Juhas: Awesome. Well, that's, that's powerful. Well, thanks a lot for all your insights. I need to redo our business development strategy. So far we relied on the referrals.

Jonathan Whistman: Let's schedule episode two after Michael has done his rework. How about that?

Michal Juhas: That sounds like a plan. Let's do it.

Jonathan Whistman: Look forward to chatting to you then.

Michal Juhas: Thank you. Have a wonderful day. See you soon again.

Jonathan Whistman: Bye.