Mastering the Art of Recruitment: Lessons from David Perry's 1600+ Executive Placements Part 1

Intro [00:00:01]:

Welcome to the elite recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, 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 [00:00:18]:

I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. I have a returning guest, a special guest, good friend, David Perry, who has made 16 over 1600 executive placements. And when I talk about, like, 1600, that like, What is it? You've only had 3 fallout out of those 1600? 6. 6. Okay. 6. So we're we're gonna talk about that, But we're also gonna talk about a new website that he is launching that is going to be the job board For the recruiters, but also built by the recruiters. But one of the things that we were kind of, like, chatting about before we got started, Like, we asked a question in a in a Facebook group or at least I asked a question, like, hey.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:01]:

What would you love to hear about from a person that has made 1600 Executive placement. Then we got some really good questions. We're gonna go through those, but we got some other things. David, if you wanna kinda jump in on, like, some of those questions that you saw.

David Perry  [00:01:14]:

I just thought it was funny. I would thought it was funny that the probably 40% of them were focused on, no way you could have build all those things, blah blah blah. That money got Couldn't have made that many placements blah blah blah. And all I could think was, if it was me getting a chance to talk to a big biller, Perhaps I hadn't busted the $1,000,000 mark or I hadn't busted the, you know, the 1,000 placement mark. I'd wanna know the answers to the question, like, how'd you do that? Because, You know, we've done each other for a while, and as you figured out, I'm not all that special. I don't even have the verbal acuity That, you know, a lot of the people in the industry have. So, you know, what's so particular about me? So that I thought was funny. But, you know, as I said, it's not the question I would've asked.

David Perry  [00:01:58]:

I mean, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fortune Magazine have asked all these articles, All these questions before when Wall Street Journal did their piece I think I've told you this before. When the Wall Street Journal did the piece, they interviewed me in, November of 2007. 7. I think it was 7. And for about 3 hours, and then the article never appeared. It it it took 11 months, 11 or 12 months for the the article to finally appear. I had a stroke in the meantime for god's sake. You know, not because of the art, but, you know, I've given them 7 or 8 people to to fact check on.

David Perry  [00:02:36]:

So because some of the stuff is kinda wild in the, When they when they, nicknamed me the rogue recruiter of that Wall Street Journal article. So I gave them 7 or 8 people to fact check on. Well, it I I had a stroke, so I wasn't looking for the article. And then all of a sudden, boom. The the phone went nuts because the article came out. I said, then he said to her, said, Sarah, what was the delay? She said, Nobody believed me when I wrote the article, and they and they, they read it. He said, my editor said, this guy's full of shit. You can bleep that out right over you this guy's full of Shit.

David Perry  [00:03:06]:

This guy's a flimflam artist. So she fact checked, like, 90 plus I don't know what he checked up. 90 plus People to make sure that Google back to the editor and say, no. No. This is reality. So here's the funny part. Right? The article comes out. We we wrote a whole bunch of business, because of the article, we can talk about that, how other people could do that.

David Perry  [00:03:26]:

But I flew down in New York to do Wall Street Journal's television station. You know, they got a a TV channel. So flight on to New York to do that. I walk in the the, the board or they walk in the reception, and, I had never met Sarah Needleman before. Sarah comes running across room, jumps in my arms. She's a little thing. Right? Powerhouse. I gotta tell you.

David Perry  [00:03:45]:

But, next thing you know, I go into a boardroom. There's, like, Literally hundreds of people there who wanna meet me because they had nicknamed me the rogue recruiter. She'd actually called me, the day before the article came out just to make sure she wasn't getting herself Trouble or I would be upset. No. Listen, man. It's a it's a great moniker. Right? Seriously. So, people wanted to to shake my hand because they couldn't believe they knew what She'd gone through to get this article out.

David Perry  [00:04:10]:

I had no idea. Didn't find out for quite some time. Right? But, yeah. So, you know, Wall Street Journal's asked these Questions. The New York Times have asked these questions. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:19]:

Well, in we one of the funny things that I I thought about the the some of the Questions that I got on that post were I I actually know some of the billings of the people that answered it and The people that actually there's a few people that had some really good questions. Some of them are $1,000,000 billers. Like, they wanna know, like, what your structure was and that kind of stuff. And then, like, some of the other questions were just like, you know, is this a joke? Did PGT get, like, this number wrong. Punched.

David Perry  [00:04:52]:

I was just like, Frozen, you know, enough clues from which to go.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:56]:

I know who it is. So but, yeah, like, we're gonna go through, Like so definitely, you know, stay tuned. We're gonna go through some of those, questions, go through some of those answers with David. But, let's talk about this job board. So, like, the before we talk about your job board that you're launching for recruiters, let's talk about the evolution of the job boards Because you've actually been on the back end and involved with a lot of these things before they launch and as they

David Perry  [00:05:23]:

started. Yeah. So, like, why At Work Insight, We've been so I I launched my 1st job board for the largest technology association in Canada, Arcata, back in oh my god. I'm dating myself. Sir, again, you can bleep that out. 1997 or 98, it was called techno skill. It was about 2 weeks behind Monsterboard's launch. Maybe maybe a little bit, a little bit farther behind Monsterboard's a launch.

David Perry  [00:05:53]:

And if anybody but actually believes that Jeff, who launched monster board, you know, woke up 1 morning. He had because he had this dream about this monstrously large job board. Like, get off the podcast. There's no there's no hope for you. That's it. No one's ever asked for the truth. And I won't talk about the truth, but let's just say Jeff and I had had a meeting probably about 6 months before that, and a couple of other people I had meetings with that launched job boards as as well. So, anyway, we launched Technoskill, and, it went well.

David Perry  [00:06:22]:

It took the Canadian Technology Association from about a 110 members To, like, 387. Because back in the late nineties, everybody needed people like they do now, but there were no job boards. I mean and then all of a sudden they came out, and they were a fortune. So we launched this thing, and they the condition was you have to be a member of CADA, the Advanced Technology Association, To get on the job board, but if you remember, Kathy, you can use a job board for free. Well, membership was anywhere from a low of about 20,000 To Nortel and GDS, we're paying $150,000 a year. So can't it just go, Just money. Like, you wouldn't believe. So look at that, do all kinds of fun stuff.

David Perry  [00:07:03]:

Anyway, techno skill got shelved for a variety of reasons. Doesn't really matter what. Kevin, my best friend, and I were brought out to work inside the first iteration of it. And we ran it for a while, had some fun, And did some interesting stuff, and that Kevin, unfortunately, was my best friend, and that's not the unfortunate part. He passed away. He passed away as we're getting ready to launch, the new iteration of Work Insight. And Shellpat and, his brother and I, Dave Dave Watson, Dave Kevin's brother. Actually, better developer, by the way.

David Perry  [00:07:33]:

There I said it, Kev. Can't do anything now. Right? So, took us a couple of years to develop this along with my new my new job Sister site. So we've launched WorkInsight again. Finally, it's up. It's running, and, I've designed it to be the monster killer. I've been on the back end or the front end of, so many of these things. Monster, I've been on the front end of, LinkedIn, Indeed, SimplyHired, I was on the launch committee for SimplyHired with Seth Godin.

David Perry  [00:08:01]:

You know? Because Seth had got a book with Jay when we done guerrilla marketing for job hunters. So I've seen all these things, and I know what they were I know what they were designed initially to do and how they were sold. And after 35 years in the business, I've watched So many of these things come out, so many promises made to recruiters. Oh, just come. Just help us build it. We'll take care of you, and we've been screwed every single time. So This job board is built for recruiters. It's free.

David Perry  [00:08:27]:

It'll always be free. Have people know where I live. So, like, I'll never charge for it because people could find me easily. And it's designed to take to put money back in recruiters' pockets, but but primarily, It's designed to make their job easier. And here's the logic, easier because the American economy so Canada and I'm gonna get I'm gonna get shit for this later. But America United States of America and Canada are America. It's North America. So all this, don't bother calling me.

David Perry  [00:08:58]:

I don't give a crap. You know that. So, the engine of North America's economy are small business. However, Most small business can't afford 300 or $1,000 per month per city to advertise for a job. So you could have the best idea in the world. You can be trying to build your business, but because candidates are so conditioned to go to job boards And they can't afford to, advertise on them, and they sure as hell can't afford to use recruiters. Right? And They'll they'll advertise before they'll use a recruiter because they don't get the difference yet that, they don't grow. So Work Insight is designed for recruiters? Absolutely.

David Perry  [00:09:41]:

And it's designed for recruiters and especially recruiters who wanna do more with big businesses, but also with the growing companies because You can start advertising. There are openings on work inside cost you nothing, and you're making money. That's the that's the that that's the bottom line. And that way, we're gonna grow the economy. Because otherwise, it's just just gonna be the fortune 1,000 or fortune 2,000 that grows, and all these great ideas that we need to save the world Art gonna stay. Well, and, you know, I I wasn't involved with Monster Lodge. It was kind

Benjamin Mena [00:10:15]:

of like a thing where I when I started recruiting. I remember at LinkedIn, like, you know, I was like, everybody come come here come here. And then now it's like, some of the recruiting packages are 10 plus k now.

David Perry  [00:10:28]:

And work insight's good to p f f f. The difference is it's like your television. You can you can buy cable And have all these wonderful things, every, week or every night. You wanna watch TV, or you can just, you know, pluck your TV down, stick your antenna up, and what's Free comes in, and that's ad supported. Even the stuff on cable is ad supported. So this will be ad supported. We'll put stuff in the marketplace. We're gonna put podcasts like yours.

David Perry  [00:10:54]:

We're gonna put DSP's stuff. There's a whole bunch of people I've been talking to. And some of them will be free and some of them you you you pay for. But if you don't need it, You don't pay for it. But in the meantime, you're still putting your your, your jobs up, and we built an aggregator because we built the 1st aggregator. God. We pulled it 99. You know, Kevin said it's possible.

David Perry  [00:11:13]:

I said, oh, come on, man. This is when news groups are around. Nobody's even heard of news groups anymore. That's how old I am. But, we aggregated the news groups. And right now, WorkInsight's been up and running for a year and a half, and it's gone through 17,400,000 jobs. No job on Work Insights more than 10 days old, so the stuff's all fresh. So it's not like the candidates are gonna come in and apply and be Pointed.

David Perry  [00:11:37]:

In fact, the candidates, when they come in, we give them the option. This is kinda cool, I think. We give them we do 2 things. 1, I we we've built it with the same security Ideas, principles, and mind is Bumble. Alright. Candidates come in. They're fully secure. You put your name and all this kind of stuff in, that's fine.

David Perry  [00:11:56]:

No one's gonna know who you are because we don't publish it. No one's gonna know who you are until they've read your profile and said, Todd, you know, I wanna talk to Ben, so they gotta push a button and go, Ben, I got this job, and you have the option of going, well, yes or, well, tell me more Or no. And they'll never know. So you can come once as a candidate. You can come once. You can post your stuff, and you're there for life. You don't have to worry about your employer finding you. You don't have to worry about being called 50,000 times by insurance companies.

David Perry  [00:12:26]:

Nothing wrong with insurance companies. But you know what I mean.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:29]:

Oh my god. I know exactly. Then the I remember, like, years ago when I was, like, actually job searching in between jobs, that was the absolute worst thing where I'd show up to a interview. And I'm like, wait. This is just a Speak and switch. Yeah. I was like, really? Like, man. I'm like, I took off for a lunch for this.

David Perry  [00:12:49]:

Yeah. And the other thing that we did for candidates is we teamed up with a company called Great People Inside. Most people have probably had a DISC assessment. Well, the people that started Great People Inside about 15 years ago, you a lot of them used to be at DISC. DISC is now owned by my publishing company, Wiley, or not my published company, but the people I publish with. And, they set up great people inside. So now as a candidate goes in, they say, hey. You wanna take a psych assessment? Because where where we're going is we're trying To teach both companies and individuals how to line themselves up correctly.

David Perry  [00:13:23]:

Now most people have heard the expression Hired for skills, fired for fit. Yeah. And we all go, shouldn't be that way. Yeah. We've all said that for 40 years. No one's ever done anything about it. We did. We did.

David Perry  [00:13:36]:

It just you just get tired of this shit. Right? Eventually, you gotta step up and stop complaining and do something about it. So now when a candidate comes in and they're you know, Some of the older stuff they can say, okay. I wanna take a psych assessment. It's free. So they take a psych assessment. It comes back and it says, Ben, you're this kind of person. So you should be looking for this kind of role.

David Perry  [00:13:56]:

Eventually, you'll be able to come to WorkInsight, take the assessment, and it'll say, Ben, you're a mauve. You know, your color the company the companies you're looking for are color coded mauve because they've taken the assess. Right? So you should be looking for move companies. So look for all the move companies, and then look for something that you wanna do inside those move companies. That's coming. But in the meantime, I just finished writing a it sounds onerous, but it's not really. It's a 40 page guide. You know, here are the 21 comp questions you should ask a company.

David Perry  [00:14:28]:

And based on their answers, here are the five Types of culture that those companies represent. And by the way, here's the 6th one. Here's the toxic culture. How to identify it? So I've asked those 21 questions depending on how the interviewer, whether it's in an interview or, You know, in in a in a preinterview, answers those questions you can go, I wanna work for them, Mark. No. Those are losers. Click Next because you don't wanna waste time. You know, the average American now takes 4 38 weeks to find a job.

David Perry  [00:15:01]:

38 weeks. 8 weeks. That not so bad, kinda, except the average job now in America last 24 months. Christ. Who's ever gonna be able to do anything? Right? And the churn is still 24, 25, 24 a half percent. So it's 51,000,000 Employment transactions a year according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm an economist. I got a degree in stats.

David Perry  [00:15:27]:

I follow this shit. It's only it's only

Benjamin Mena [00:15:30]:

boring to everybody but me. David, I think that's why I kinda like you so much is because, like, my degree's in economics also.

David Perry  [00:15:36]:

Yes. Kazoo. Minor and stats.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:43]:

So that's a side note. Sorry, guys.

David Perry  [00:15:46]:

Don't delete all this. Don't worry about

Benjamin Mena [00:15:47]:

it. Actually, may I may maybe I won't. So at least on the the YouTube channel, most of it stays on there. So, like, the good stuff is typically it just stays on there. But yeah. No. But yeah. Work okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:58]:

So WorkInsight, it's gonna be free For recruiters, what is the website's address? Just so you can say it one more time.

David Perry  [00:16:05]:

Mhmm. And then in insight, I n s I g h t dot

Benjamin Mena [00:16:10]:

IO. Okay. So.air. Dotcom.

David Perry  [00:16:13]:

I I've just finishing up on some training with DSP, And, I'm about to learn how to take because I've written a lot, and I probably have a 1,000 articles, A blog post that I've written for job hunters that go out under GM for GH, grower marketing for job hunters, or, My new job hunt .com and now Work Insight, and I've just written about 50 more. So I'm gonna use chat GPT to learn to to teach it how I think and how I write And go in and go, okay. Well, this is a big long 3,000 word piece. I think people would like it in 500 word bytes. Here at Chat GPT, take it apart for me. Boom. Out it

Benjamin Mena [00:16:54]:

goes. It's technology's crazy. Right?

David Perry  [00:16:58]:

Oh, what It's a great tool. We you're talking to a guy. You know? Someone was asking me a while ago, what did you do before, You know, Google and LinkedIn, and I went, we worked. We really, really worked. I mean, we did we had an assignment. I'll give you an example. I'm hiring I got a construction company years ago, and I'm hiring the director of MIS for, a whole bunch of reasons. They just screwed this thing up.

David Perry  [00:17:24]:

So I needed to find someone that understood a s four hundreds. I had to go to the library, deal with my favorite library librarian, Susie, I said, here's my problem. How do I find out where I get this information? She took me through some association stuff, And we found a list that I could buy so I could say, okay. List holder, I need to buy a list of All of the directors or managers or EPs of technology and all the firms in the 514-613-416 area code, please. And they sent it to me. It was about $2. This is, like, 93 92 or 93. And then I literally kinda pick up the phone because email hadn't even been invented.

David Perry  [00:18:10]:

Really? You know, literally. So pick up the phone and phone. So what did I do before LinkedIn and, Google? Work. Now, anybody can be found. Not everybody can be talked to. That's a whole different subject. Right? Now people spend more as much time hiding As they do trying to be fast. So it's a whole another another conversation.

David Perry  [00:18:30]:

Sorry. I I I, diverted.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:34]:

Sorry. Oh, no. No. It's it's a perfect version. I mean, it is kinda funny now. It's like, you know, with technology, like, all these Chrome extensions, like, We literally have access to every single person in the world almost. But now it's just you have to make, here's a question for you. Now that we have access to every single person in the world, almost, how do you how do you get past the noise and actually have those conversations?

David Perry  [00:19:00]:

Oh, that's a great great question. You know? So what level of detail do you want? You want

Benjamin Mena [00:19:07]:

Top top of your head. Top of your head.

David Perry  [00:19:09]:

You know, the funniest one I ever did or, strangest one I ever did was years years ago. I had had to hire a chief revenue officer for a software company Where I had already liberated the, president of Motorola data from Motorola and brought him to this company, and now I needed the chief rev I needed a chief revenue officer. So there's a guy I wanted. His name was Rick Crutch. Great guy. Rick Crutchlow was the was a bag the 1st bag carrying sales rep For a little tiny little company that meant nothing, it was a pitbull out of that's ass called Oracle. And, You know, that was, like, 8 years in his past, and I wanted to talk to this guy. But I knew people that knew him, and he was the most arrogant son of a bitch.

David Perry  [00:19:51]:

I mean, way worse than me, If you could imagine, right, I I thought about this for about a day and a half, and then I phoned up and left them a voice mail. And I thought I was gonna leave them a voice mail. And I said, hey, mister Crookshole. My name is David Perry. He says and I'm just phoning to apologize. He says, I so I'm gonna swear. Right? This is a quote. Says, who the fuck are you? I don't even know who you are.

David Perry  [00:20:13]:

What are you apologizing for? I said, well, that's the reason I'm calling. I'm a recruiter, and I gotta talk to you about a a role or I wanna talk to you about a role, but I don't know you. And I apologize for that because I've been around forever. Right? I mean, Moses and I were same boat at the time. Right? And I said, so I don't You don't know me, and I don't even know who you are, but I've never had a proper introduction, so I'm just wanting to apologize. Then he says, Fuck you. Wanna have coffee? I said, okay. Boom.

David Perry  [00:20:43]:

You know? 2 months later, he comes over to the other company, And and and hiring him allowed me to pull a, you know, a Chamberlain moment or or a Gretzky moment. You know, all of a sudden, I got Rich Kretschlow. He's he was the CEO of Oracle Canada, and I ran around town and said, hey. Look what we're doing, man. What are you doing? I can't tell you. I can't tell you what we're doing, but you should come talk to us. That's how we recruited the rest of the team.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:09]:

That's awesome. That was fun.

David Perry  [00:21:12]:

And we're still friends. We're very good friends.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:14]:

That's all. That's been awful. So well, here's a question for you. Like, you you you're you have your hands at a lot of pots, like Writing books, job hunt. But you also we've had conversations. You really don't do any business development. Everything's, like, inbound.

David Perry  [00:21:30]:

So yes. And that's not quite true about Okay. The business development. Now do I do I do MPC calls? Yes. I used to do a lot. I mean, you know, they wouldn't believe the the 16th. So I wrote this down last night. If they wouldn't believe the 1600 searches that sure as hell wouldn't believe my January 1988.

David Perry  [00:21:49]:

By January 1988, I placed 29 people. I was so disappointed. I was going for 1 a day. I wasn't doing 1 a day. I was doing, like, 2 in a day or whatever. But, that was my, that was my best month effort, 29 placements. And and that year, I billed $758,000. Nice.

David Perry  [00:22:08]:

Well, nice. Minimum wage in Canada At that time was, I think, 275. It's a put it Okay. And for that, I took $52. That's what made me quit. Right? Just Just get screwed here. I gotta quit. And that's a whole another story.

David Perry  [00:22:23]:

Anyway, sorry. You got me off you got me off topic.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:26]:

It would, the the kind of the question was, like, you have your hands in a lot of different pots. Because of that, like, is a lot of stuff like id coming to you?

David Perry  [00:22:36]:

A lot of stuff is and it's because I spent time establishing my foundation. So I was trying to figure out how to how to Cement this quickly to your audience. And, if it works with you, it'll work with everybody that's listening. Are you familiar have you ever watched the series, the Lincoln

Benjamin Mena [00:22:52]:

So I've yes. I've seen the 1st season, but not the 2nd season.

David Perry  [00:22:55]:

By the way, the 2nd season Phenomenal. I just Okay. I just finished watching it. It was so good that my wife hadn't seen the 1st season. I took her back to watch the 1st season. She loved it. So what's the Lincoln lawyer got to do with this? Well, anyone that, Watch the Lincoln lawyer knows that he was pretty much a good lawyer, but nowhere. Nothing.

David Perry  [00:23:13]:

Until he did something spectacular. I'm not gonna take it away from anybody. And then it's all about what did you do, Spectacular, and that's how he built his reputation, and the rest comes for that. So I'm Canadian. I live in Ottawa. I mean, you know, exciting town. No. I'm from Montreal.

David Perry  [00:23:30]:

Okay? So I take that credit. But, I learned a long time ago that the most successful lawyer recruiters in in Ottawa were the, assholes from Toronto The PowerPoint. Literally, that I I found that out 1 night listening to guys in a bar. And so I became the asshole from Ottawa with a PowerPoint in Toronto and Montreal. And I did a lot of business development, made a lot of presentations. I started writing articles for a, a a tech newspaper Back in 1984, and, I did 1 every 2 weeks. I did 1 for employers, 1 for candidates, for employers, 1 for candidates. That became my 1st book, the one for candidates.

David Perry  [00:24:13]:

So I've done a lot of establishing the foundation, and that's what I thought we'd talk about today. People want to, You know, people wanna live any kind of life that that's of their own choose choosing. They need to to be in demand so people are calling them, and they're saying, well, really? No. No. I get I get you're gonna pay the fee, but why other than that? I got a lot of people to choose from. Why other than, you know, paying me a 33% fee? Should I be doing business with you? And I started saying that, like, 25, 30 years ago, and that's been The the thing ever since. So people call us because we're in the news. Very few recruiters.

David Perry  [00:24:56]:

Actually, I don't know any other recruiters that have been on the been part of the cover story for Fortune Magazine. Seriously. Got lucky, but really was it? No. It was hard work. I went from My local newspaper with a press release that I wrote because I wrote I read guerilla marketing for I wrote read guerilla marketing when I first started in 88. My marketing budget for the year was 20 $20, 25. I can't remember. And this book was 15, so I bought the book.

David Perry  [00:25:24]:

I'm I'm blown it. Right? And, Jay, Conrad Levinson, who wrote the book said, you know, start some off. Do a press release. So I did the press release. Hiccup published. That press release, I used to do the next one and the next one and the next. So I went local all through all the all the, stuff locally. I went the local new business newspaper, then I went to the regular newspaper, then I did the radio here, then I did television here, news.

David Perry  [00:25:47]:

And then that got the attention of, the people in Toronto, know the big newspapers. And did those did the ones in Toronto, and then all of a sudden, I'm getting people calling me. And you're you're familiar with Haro. Right? Help a reporter out. Yes. Yep. Okay. So I knew the guy when he first started.

David Perry  [00:26:06]:

Probably had 20 or 30 people. So we had this long conversation one day, And I said, listen. I'm gonna put in my book, guerrilla marketing for job hunters, and I did for job hunters. And all of a sudden, he's got 1,000 and tens of thousands of people Who are hooking up and becoming members of HARO, help a reporter out because it I told them it was good for their job search to be found. It's easier to be found than it is to get someone else to answer the phone. Mhmm. So that's a principle I've always worked with. We do whatever we to to be found and found Quickly.

David Perry  [00:26:38]:

I said I just finished the stuff with DSB David c Patterson because he's got techniques and tactics, and a fresh look at stuff that I haven't seen before. So we signed up, paid a lot of money. I'm sure it's all gonna be worth it. And, now we're learning to be even more omnipresent than I was before, And I'm doing this because I'm getting ready to I brought my son into business. He's been in it for 5 years. He did his 1st search by himself from start to finish because I was away. I was I think we're in Ireland giving a speech. When I came back and I was talking to the client thanking them for letting him do the search, and I wasn't very far away.

David Perry  [00:27:15]:

And they said, well, you know, we, we wanna work with him, not you.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:21]:

Well, that's good.

David Perry  [00:27:23]:

Okay. Kind of. So, you know, a lot of the stuff we're doing now, is laying the foundation for when 2nd generation kicks in, but it's the same principles, Being found for the stuff that we're great at.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:37]:

So you you literally like, you've you've pumped out articles. You've got yourself in front of news organizations, you got yourself in front of industry events. You've got yourself in front of, like, entire, like, industry communities for years That has paid the dividends. And I think that's, like, what I was trying to, like, dial into a little bit. It was, like, all the stuff that you've done behind the scenes is what has helped create a nice, like, influx. Like, I I you don't really call it, like, business development, but it is part of, like, the farming side of business development.

David Perry  [00:28:06]:

Really, as a far better society, it's easier for me, and, indeed, my partner and wife, because we're Quite genuine people. You know, we have a Christmas party. We used to have Christmas parties. We stopped about 8 years ago. Long story doesn't matter, But we'd have Christmas parties, and we'd have, you know, a 150, a 180 people at the house. The house can accommodate that easily. Well, Yeah. No.

David Perry  [00:28:28]:

Easily. No no one's pushing and shoving. But every year, we'd have 20, 25 clients come up to the Christmas press Christmas party. Even half of her Jewish. And they come out to the Christmas party even though it was a Christmas party and I refuse to say holiday party. Anyway, long story. But at the same time, we would invite a, You know, half a dozen or a dozen candidates that we knew were in between opportunities. I can't tell you the number of deals that got made at the Christmas party.

David Perry  [00:28:54]:

Right? People call me the next day, the 1st time this happened. And I had a good friend. I just hired a new c o CEO for him. He He called me and said, listen. I met this guy Blake last night at the party. I wanna hire him and say, hey. That's great. He's a great guy.

David Perry  [00:29:06]:

Blah blah blah blah blah. So how much do I owe you? I said, I think. Well, what do you mean? He said, listen. You met him at the Christmas party. I said, he's in between opportunities. I placed this guy twice, So I know he's solid gold. Hire him. He he owe me nothing if it he feel guilty about it.

David Perry  [00:29:22]:

Good. And, you know, and Give money. Give a donation to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. I said, there, that'll assage your guilt. Yeah. But I want nothing out of it. That's not why we have Christmas party. We have Christmas parties because we fight people we love.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:38]:

So because you wanna like, putting out events, like, it it's it's what I want the listeners to catch is I know you have to put in the work. You have to, like the calls, the emails, the LinkedIn messages, but there are so many things that are outside of the box of just The cookie cutter ways to develop business and develop candidates, then, like, there are so many things you could do. And I I think, David, you're a great example of, you know, writing books, being in articles, you know, being in the news, putting yourself out there. And, You know, I think that's one thing also recruiters, including myself, need to get a little better at. Like, you're sitting there talking about publishing, like, like, a news brief or, like, you know, when you something great happens. Like, we need to also celebrate our wins so that way people know what the hell is going on too. So those wins could be found.

David Perry  [00:30:29]:

Right now, let let's face it. Right now, the economy is in flux. I've been here I don't know how many times. Then what you need to focus on is, In my opinion, is not yourself. You need to focus on the candidates. If you focus on so people say, are you Candidate centric or employer centric? And I say yes, because I'm talent centric. Right? And sometimes talent is in between opportunities. So we'll talk about that in a second if you want to.

David Perry  [00:30:57]:

But what people could be doing that will set themselves up for the future and will bring them revenue With that small delay, maybe a delay of 30, 60 days. Some people can can handle that, some people can't. I mean, different circumstances. But what I would be doing And I learned this from Scott Love. He's actually gave away the, his tactic. Do you know Scott?

Benjamin Mena [00:31:19]:

Oh, guy head of on the actually recently published the episode with them. We act we actually if you if you wanna get a laugh, me and Scott actually live about 15 minutes apart, so we occasionally grab drinks and just chat.

David Perry  [00:31:32]:

Years ago, it's about a 200 page, you know, how to book. And there are 3 pages inside it where he talks about it gives you the script On on how to approach your industry association and and let them know that you're an expert and you're here to help and you wanna write a roundup article. K. And a Roundup article is where it's an association for, blonde hair, a left handed coders. Okay? So that's the association. She called this person, and you talked to them and said, listen. I'm gonna do this article on leadership or on whatever because I'm a recruiter. And, I'd like to interview some of your Clients.

David Perry  [00:32:08]:

And if I use their quotes in the article, because I'm publishing this article, then I will, give, you know, affirmation, all that kind of stuff. Well, the the head of business development for the association, even the CEO is going, yes. I can help my clients. Right? So They paved the way for you to go and talk to these people. And now they've been doing this for, decades. But now with the Internet, you can go and and interview someone, do a roundup article, or you hell, you can you can farm the the workout. Right? I hate writing I I just I do my own, But I hate it because I'm not good at it. Not the 1st draft, anyway.

David Perry  [00:32:45]:

So you can get the article done, and then you give it to the people that you've interviewed. Oh, you think they're gonna stick it in the drawer and tell no one? No. No. And and as long as you don't make the mistake of finishing the interview And say, oh, boy. Wait. You got any needs? Don't do that because it just yeah. It'll ruin you. And Scott talks about this, then the business will come back to you.

David Perry  [00:33:07]:

Full full stop. And you don't have to wait to do it with an association. You can just write the article, Call a couple people up and tell I'm writing an article, which is true because you wrote an article. And then write the article, quote a minute, and boom. And they're gonna send it to all their friends. And what you get is you know? We use AECOM for an exam for a good example, a because they're a client. You know? You do something with the CEO or one of the presidents from AECOM, and you not only get AECOM as a client, a repeat client, but you get all the suppliers. You get all the people.

David Perry  [00:33:41]:

I mean, right now, what we want is people. Right? So everybody that works there that reads this, because the CEO sent it to everybody, all of a sudden, They go, oh, I know who that guy is. If I ever get in trouble, I'm gonna call that guy. They file it. So all of a sudden, you know, they decide they gotta change Businesses, well, if they're an a player, every that's what we get paid to to do, figure out what the a players are. If they're an a player and they call you, it's not a lot of effort To come up with, 5 or 10 companies that could probably use this a player, I pick up the phone. I have a very Specific MPC call I make, it's quite a bit more than a call, and I'm not gonna talk about it because it's, quote, it's secret. Not even in the new book.

David Perry  [00:34:22]:

I kinda hint about it, but not really. But I can pick up, the phone and call 5 or 10, companies and have conversations with all the CEO. In fact, 2 years ago, I did an MPC. I did, I we've we've called what's called a rainmaker program. And I sent out a mess actually, I okay. I sent a letter. Sent a letter to 10 chairmans of the board. You know, you Hiring greatness.

David Perry  [00:34:46]:

See what I did there. Right? This is just a reverse. And, 7 of them called me back. 2 of them called me Christmas day Benjamin. And one of them, I could hear his wife yelling at him. So I it's it's a $7,000,000,000 companies. David, I gotta go. I can they're in the next room, and they're yelling.

David Perry  [00:35:07]:

Go. Go. But, you know, so Everything you do to make your to to help candidates I mean, that's why, guerilla marking for job hunters was originally written. It was a PR. I call it a PR stunt that wasn't really. It was me trying to help people so they wouldn't call me for god's sake. We only had 4 phone lines, and these people calling because Vertell had done this massive layoff. Right? And I just didn't wanna talk to them, but I couldn't be rude.

David Perry  [00:35:32]:

So that's how, you know, guerrilla marketing for job hunters book came about. And Now if I'm making a call and I'm calling a candidate, I don't introduce myself as blah blah blah headhunters. Hey, Ben. David Perry. I'm the author of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters. So when I say that in that sub second, they go, well, okay. I've heard of that. What the hell is he calling me for? So the walls go down, and now they want information.

David Perry  [00:35:59]:

And then I'll say, and I'm also, you know, the managing Partner at Perry Martell International, which is an executive search firm that specializes in blah blah. And that's why I'm calling you, frankly. You gotta admit. Of course they do. No one says no.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:13]:

Yeah. No. And so yeah. I I and real quick. David is an incredible writer. I've actually read some of his books. But there's yeah. Shut up, David.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:22]:

Shut shut up. But I as I read some of his books, I've learned a ton from his books, but I will like, I just wanna chime in. Like, if you suck at writing like me, one of the things that you could do is set up a podcast for your industry. And here's the cool thing about a podcast. You know, it's evergreen content that people just somehow keep on finding, but you can also utilize AI tools or hire somebody to to cut up the video. Like, there's a some AI tools like Opus Pro and GetMunch where you literally just, like, drop the video in. It uses AI to pick out, like, hot topics, cuts cuts those videos for social media. And so, like, The people that are on the podcast, the leaders, like, you can give the like, companies love having their people on a podcast because it is a way for them to, like, get additionally notice.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:09]:

People love talking, but now you've have technology that you can also give them to where they can actually go and promote themselves, but you're just in the background The guy that just asked the questions.

David Perry  [00:37:19]:

That's so smart. I have, I have 7 friends. Oh, there's 7 friends now. Whoopie, 7 friends. No. I have 7 friends that I've helped write books with. 5 of them are New York Times bestsellers. And what I and the way I did it was I met them most of them quite accidentally.

David Perry  [00:37:37]:

I said, listen. It was a great it was a great presentation. Did you record it? Well, though, I would record it because if you give a 45 minute presentation live, It works out when you have it transcribed to about 5,000 words. So if you're thinking that you've got enough information and maybe you've got 10 different topics, Well, you know, record it and you've got 10 chapters of a book. I you know? So that's one thing I do with friends, and then I always say, if you you wanna write a book, you're really serious about it, you gotta go out and buy you gotta go out and buy this. Hold on. You gotta go out and buy this. I got it right here.

David Perry  [00:38:15]:

Can I get it out in time? No. Of course, I can't. Anyway, I'll bring it to dish, you gotta go you gotta go buy a pack. I can't pull the pack up because my fingers are too fat. Yes. Exactly. So you, you know, you you buy that and, you know, when you when you have an idea, a thought that you think should go in a book, you write it down, and you throw it in a box or a drawer. I said, and eventually, you're gonna get up and not have any more thoughts.

David Perry  [00:38:39]:

Never gonna happen. But you call me, and we sit down and we organize it all, and there's your book. All you have to do is do the the the joining pieces. And all of a sudden, you've got a book. And, you know, you don't write a book. I'll give you some real news. You don't write a book to make money off the book. The book is yeah.

David Perry  [00:38:59]:

Hiring greatness is behind me, the red one. Hiring greatness when it came out in January of, I think it was 2016. I can't remember. We wrote $380,000 in new business that month Because the book came out, I didn't even know these people for Christ's sake, but somebody had knew somebody who gave them the book over Christmas. They thought thought it was great, and they referred their friend to it. Only read the 1st chapter, and they said I gotta call this guy. $380,000 later. So you're not gonna get rich like Stephen King because my stuff is not that interesting to read.

David Perry  [00:39:37]:

But it is a business it is a business card. It's a business tool. And, you know, when we had new clients, just picked we're on holidays for a month, and we had a a a new client a new prospect, And they wanted to know if we're any good. You actually ask that question. I said, I don't know. Let me ask my clients. I said, let's have a conversation. I'll send you a proposal.

David Perry  [00:39:56]:

And he said, And then when I'm finished with the, having this conversation, I'll send you a copy of my one of my books. Oh, great. So finish the conversation, send the proposal. Proposal's 26 pages. By the time you finish reading this thing, you're either bored, spitless, or you know that we can do this. But I sent him the the book, And he got the book 3 days later. He called me up and he said I said, did you read the proposal? He said he said, fuck no. It's 200 pages.

David Perry  [00:40:21]:

Right? You said but or the proposal was 26 pages. He said, but, I know you can do this. I said, great. So he's actually read the book now because I said after we had the 1st meeting, I said, we're about to take you through pain, Bill. I said, because, you know, everything we talked about When you talked about how you did what you did and why you got the results that you got and now you have to do it again and how much that's cost you, I said, you gotta change all that. That's gonna be painful because we're going to take you out of your, You know, some of your bad habits, you're a great presenter, you're a great talker. But, a, you're not asking the right questions, And, b, you're talking. We need the candidate to talk.

David Perry  [00:41:07]:

Oh, and by the way, you're not gonna add we're not gonna advertise this role. We're gonna make a list of the top 50 people that can do this role, and then I'm gonna phone them up, introduce myself, take them through a A conversation. And in that conversation of 5 minutes, I could tell you whether or not they're qualified. I know they're qualified because we did the research, but I can tell you whether or not they have the right It's like a profile, DNA to work with you and do the job. He says, really? I said, Call the references in the proposal. I won't ask again. I expect it to hap and I'll know if you don't Because one of them is gonna call me to tell me. And if not, one of them if some one one of them will.

David Perry  [00:41:48]:

All 4 of them did. They're gonna call me to tell me, and and they're gonna tell me how good your questions were. So if you don't call them, I I don't think we're gonna do business because if you can't do that, not gonna do any of the rest of the hard work. So he did. He did.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:06]:

And, like, the deal got solidified because he wrote a book, and the book is, like, The new calling card or the new business card almost.

David Perry  [00:42:14]:

And I so so not only do I will I get his business, I will do it, and we'll do it well, but I will get his customers or his partners Business as well. And that's what recruiters have to think about. It's not the it's like playing pool. Right? Anybody can think I took Corey, my son, out out to prove this point. We went out with friends. Father son thing with other friends. And, you know, I've always talked I I play pool I play well. I always talk about it's not sick of the 1st ball.

David Perry  [00:42:46]:

It's setting it up so you can sink the whole table. So we're playing this game, and I'm a pretty good pool player. And, he's laughing at me because, you know, I'm missing shots, and I'm only sinking 1. And this goes on for 2 or 3 games. We lose you know, as a team, we lose. We we won on 1, and he's really rubbing it in. And and Mike goes, 1 more games? Absolutely. All or nothing.

David Perry  [00:43:07]:

Right? So I broke and I cleared the table. And then Corey goes, oh, Yeah. Oh, I mean, getting the 1st deal, yeah, that's important. But getting the 1st deal is not as important as setting up the second And the 3rd and the 4th in getting their partners. And that's what it's all about. You know, 1 customer can bring, You know, a a deal or 2, but, really, 1 customer could bring another half dozen clients because they're all in this boys' club or girls' club, whatever you wanna call it, But friends wanna brag that they got a great recruiter. You know? They'll only tell their friends. I mean, we've got, like, I don't know, 100 Testimonials on the website, Perry Martell.

David Perry  [00:43:53]:

We've done 1600 projects. Okay. So some of them are multiple projects, but The secret to being a good recruiter, but my opinion is understanding your place. If you're a Star Trek fan, you'll get it. I'm Riker. I'm Riker. I'm not Picard. I'm the number 2.

David Perry  [00:44:13]:

I'm in the background. I'm making sure that you got a vision. You got a dream. I'm gonna help you achieve the dream. I'm gonna hit your targets. You're gonna take credit for it, not me. And that's one of the big secrets that people don't quite get. You know, within the next 6 months, you'll see all the, case studies on our website.

David Perry  [00:44:33]:

We'll scrub I I mean, the clients have given us permission to have their names up there, but we're gonna scrub the names, in case because a couple of them have gotten Calls from other recruiters saying, hey. I I know you use. Fantastic. I would do the same thing. But she didn't get the seals. I wouldn't I was proud. That's thinking. That's guerilla.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:54]:

Awesome. No. No. This is perfect. This is the like, this is why I wanted you on the podcast to sit there and talk about the stuff, like, You know, that not every recruiter is thinking about what we many times, we are so transactional with what we're doing. It's, like, got this on to the next one. What if we go to the a bit deeper? So that way, like, increase the experience, increase what we're doing where 1 client can turn into 12. So but, yeah, let's jump into some of the questions that we had from, you know, some of the listeners and from the Facebook group.

David Perry  [00:45:25]:

So I'll just unplug.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:26]:

What do what does your team look like?

David Perry  [00:45:28]:

My team on a typical search is myself, Anita and Corey. And then we've got researchers that we have on contract. We've had the same group of, you know, 9 to 10 researchers for decades decades. And most of them were librarians, by the way, because that's where the research comes from. We didn't always have ZoomInfo, for god's sake. In fact, I was the I was the 2nd customer of ZoomInfo ever when they were Ilion Technologies. In fact, you know, the old chair, the the old CEO will tell you, that I would the the actual idea came for me. I met these guys in Chicago at a trade fair, and I'm going through the trade fair.

David Perry  [00:46:06]:

And this guy tries to sell me this A little machine, that read business cards. You know? Didn't I need this to take all my business cards and get them read in so I could put them in my database? And I said, yeah. It's kinda cool, but I got secretaries for that. I said it would be cooler if you could, like, whack this thing, the web. You could just whack the web and collect all that shit. So So I so about 3 months later, I get this phone call and I become a beta tester. I'm either number 1 or number 2 beta tester. You know, years later, back in two 1,008.

David Perry  [00:46:38]:

You know? I I had talked about, about ZoomInfo on the Wall Street Journal TV, CAST. And, it crashed their servers. They didn't know what I was gonna talk about, but it crashed their servers because they're I said, if you're not on ZoomInfo, you don't exist. So the next so the next day, couple times apparently, the CEO calls me up and he says, hey. Listen. This is what happened. And I said, sorry about that. I said, but I got a new book coming up.

David Perry  [00:47:02]:

It's gonna happen again because I mentioned you guys in the book. And he said, well, what can we do? I said, well, I don't know. So 2 days later, he calls back and says, we're hiring a PR guy for you. Says, we're hiring the PR guy, and he's gonna do the PR so long as you keep talking about Zoom income. I said, I will, because it's a great service. I mean, it's brilliant. I mean, they had maybe 2,000,000 people on the database at that point. In fact, they came out with a special tool just for the book, which ended up becoming the community edition.

David Perry  [00:47:30]:

So if you were a job hunter And you'd read and you'd read Gorilla Marketing for Job Hunting 2 point o. You could go to ZoomInfo and sign up, And they would let you use it for free for 10 or 15. It was either days or, you know, searches or whatever, but it was a way for job hunters to find the people Quickly that they need to talk to. So that's what happened with, with Now,

Benjamin Mena [00:47:54]:

well, I think what's, I wanna kinda dial in. So do you have a a team of researchers?

David Perry  [00:47:59]:

So so continue so here's what happens. Right? And we're put we're on vacation.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:03]:

The end of part 1 with David Perry. Make sure to go check out part 2 To finish the rest of this awesome

Intro [00:48:10]:

interview. Thanks for listening to this episode of the elite recruiter podcast with Benjamin Menna. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe