Recruitment Rhythms: How Human Connection Elevates You Above the Competition, with Alex Cooke, Ep #195

The Resilient Recruiter

What are the three success factors that would help a musician become a million-dollar biller recruitment business owner?

Our special guest, Alex Cooke, shares the journey of his recruitment career from a musician background. You'll get to hear the fascinating parallels he draws between music and recruitment, emphasizing the significance of three success factors:

• How Human Connection Elevates You Above the Competition

• How Your Ability to Write Changes Everything

• How Your Market Insight Can Be Used to Build Trust

Alex is a former professional musician who entered the world of recruitment at age 29.

After 18 months with an agency in the UK, he transitioned to NYC and started on a journey that in 3.5 years would see him become a million-dollar/year biller as a biotech recruitment specialist.

Alex is now the CEO of Phase 3 Search, a biotech search firm he founded in 2018. In the last 5 years, he’s retained 95% of his clients and generated $6.5m in sales.

Episode Outline and Highlights

• 01:14 How Alex got into recruiting from a musician background.

• 06:10 Alex’s intentional approach to building connections with people.

• 12:15 How Alex progressed into the Bio-Tech niche.

• 21:55 Discussion on the effective sales approach.

• 34:52 Getting an in-depth understanding of your market - discussion on best practices.

• 39:45 Why writing is important for recruitment business owners and how Alex enhanced his writing and storytelling.

• 50:44 Understanding your clients to build relationships.

• 55:30 Difference between the different levels of searches.

How Human Connection Elevates You Above the Competition

As a musician, Alex believes that creating music is about connecting with the listeners. He sees this as a parallel to recruitment, where human connection can elevate you above the competition. We discussed the importance of networking with people in order to be successful in any career, and how to build connections with people intentionally.

He started with the value of listening to someone’s story. Doing so not only helps you build a meaningful connection, but also puts you in a position where you can assess if they can be good candidates, clients, or business partners. “I think the most interesting thing about anybody you meet is their story, right? So actually being fascinated by someone's journey. And if you take a step back and put your recruitment hats on, what I spend much of my time doing is thinking about is this person a good leader. What characteristics do they bring to the table?”

Adaptability was also emphasized. He talked about how an introvert can connect with an extrovert and vice-versa. We also talked about the style of writing and communication, on how it should be adapted geographically. We also covered their candidate-centric and relationship-driven sales approach.

Minding these little things helps Alex and his team to intentionally create human connections and build relationships.

How Your Ability to Write Changes Everything

Writing skills can help recruiters in a lot of ways, some of which are engaging with candidates, making personalized outreaches, and getting better responses in email campaigns. Alex understands that improving his writing can be a game-changer. Alex was aware that writing was not one of his strengths, so he took proactive steps to level up his game.

“Okay, so you know me and writing. I didn't think I could write even. Even through university. I really struggled to write essays. The whole thing was just a bit of a nightmare, to be honest with you, and there was this point in my career. I'm ultimately going into recruitment and realizing that the very first step of any recruitment process is typically a message sent out.”

The very first step he took was getting a really good book on grammar (reference link below). For Alex, this is critical because “there's nothing worse than receiving a message and it's talking about something deadly serious and sensible and how it's going to advance your life with the spelling mistake or a silly grammatical error in it.”

Alex shared his best practices such as asking people what frustrates them about their job and applying it to his outreach, changing their style to elicit a response from different types of people, and how to use bullet points and paragraphs to make it easier for people to read and respond.

How Your Market Insight Can Be Used to Build Trust

Alex also shared their best practices when it comes to understanding their clients and markets. Some of the key topics on this subject that we covered are:

• The importance of tracking leads and maintaining diligence when following up with clients

• How to develop an ideal client profile

• How to conduct avatar interviews to better understand your target audience

• How to effectively negotiate contracts and create successful partnerships with decision-makers and leaders

• Understanding the needs of potential partners and adopting a candidate-centric approach to build a successful pipeline

Our Sponsor

This podcast is proudly sponsored by i-intro

i-intro® is an end-to-end retained recruitment platform. Their technology and methodology allow recruiters to differentiate themselves from the competition, win more retained business, bigger fees, and increase their billings. Their software combined with world-class training enables you to transition from transactional, contingency recruiter to consultative, retained recruiter. Instead of being perceived as a “me too” vendor, you’ll be positioned as a “me only” solutions provider. Be sure to mention Mark Whitby or The Resilient Recruiter. Book your free, no-obligation consultation here: https://recruitmentcoach.com/retained

Alex Cooke Bio and Contact Info

Alex is a former professional musician who entered the world of recruitment at age 29. After 18 months with an agency in the UK, he transitioned to NYC and started on a journey that in 3.5 years would see him become a biotech specialist, a million-dollar / year biller, and the owner of a multi-million dollar biotech search firm.

• Alex on LinkedIn

• Phase 3 Search website link

People and Resources Mentioned

• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Connect with Mark Whitby

• Get your FREE 30-minute strategy call

• Mark on LinkedIn

• Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby

• Mark on Facebook

• Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

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