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DG Recruit helps you maximize your career in agency recruitment. Hosted by Dandan Zhu, top-billing headhunter, the DG Recruit Podcast breaks down EVERYTHING you need to know about your career in agency recruitment and how to achieve success in our exciting industry of headhunting. With Dandan's and her guests' interesting, honest, and insightful commentary, learn more about what you can do to start, improve, and grow your career and business. Submit all questions to contact@dgrecruit.com to ...
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Look, the majority of candidates you place are likely to be passive because those are the only candidates clients want to pay a fee for. They don't want you to rep somebody who's been out of work for an extended period of time. They want you to headhunt the passive candidate at their direct competitors who they know would be an excellent hire. This…
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As a headhunter since I was 23 tasked with the immense task of creating an entire client book from scratch and building a candidate network at the same exact time, cold calling was exactly how I did it for the MOST part. Make sure to listen to all 6 Ss to cold calling & keep them in mind as you go about your day prospecting. Lastly, make sure to jo…
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Defining Senior Agency Recruiters aside, this podcast ep breaks down the 5 most common mistakes I personally made as well as some I've seen others make in the field. Many of these mistakes not only impact agency recruiters, but people from ALL careers as much of this is universal at the SENIOR levels. There is a bonus tip at the end (again, somethi…
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In recruitment, it's too easy to get sidetracked. This podcast is a real heartfelt what-I-would-do situation. This is how I talk to myself so I can toughen up, get clear on my next steps, and do what needs to be done so that the issues I face in recruitment don't re-appear too often. This episode may sound simplistic albeit harsh but sometimes that…
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There are some distinct deal killers to watch out from and it doesn't start at the closing table. Make sure you heed these 6 C's of deal killers so that you're not blindsided! What do you think? Any other deal killers to add here? As always, if you need advanced coaching one to one, reach out to dz@dandanzhu.com for more bespoke training!…
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In down recruitment markets, clients are looking to kick recruiters when they're down. You can't even blame them because that's the obvious play to deploy that the general public is used to doing. That's why it's critical to learn the RIGHT word tracks so that you don't lose negotiation ground with clients on rates and expectations on how to partne…
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As a terrible communicator in my teens and really struggling to connect with humans, it was a LONG journey for me to grow into a top salesperson by the time I hit my early 20s in my recruitment job as a globally top-ranked headhunter year after year. Here are 6 communication PRO tips that I've learned along the way to become really good at my sales…
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These 7 tips have helped me change my mindset from being a broke waitress at 22 to millionaire by 30. Seriously. These 7 tips was how I built wealth & achieved success. It was a journey, an adventure, and a challenge that was fraught with twists and turns, all of which who made me who I am today. I hope these 7 tips can apply to your life wherever …
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Over time, your KPIs are going to change and vary as your business grows, but when you first start out, volume is your best friend! Hear how I got started in the industry to build my client book from scratch. These are the KPIs my manager expected me to hit. I took their word as gospel and went all the way to the top of the billing leagues with the…
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In the next 5-10 years, here are 5 trends I predict will seriously impact recruiters' lives in the agency side of the business. These are based on observations that I've noticed that has changed the way the market works, the way I work, and what is important headed into the next decade to set yourself and your business up for success. If you're ser…
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As a cold caller shot caller since 2011, I have benefited massively from cold calling like a pro. Here are 4 tips to help you get your cold calling head on straight. It's like bungee jumping. Seems like a terrifying thought but once you make the leap, you're having the best time of your life (not that I've ever bungee jumped, but I definitely did s…
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Recruitment is a dual-sided sales job: you must sell the candidate to the client and the job/req to the cando. In order to both well, I have 5 tips to share with you in order to increase the effectiveness of your sales efforts. As always, review our podcast if you're enjoying the coachings & send any questions/comments to dz@dandanzhu.com…
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This podcast episode covers some market updates headed into second half of 2023 and includes a WEALTH of coaching tips on the following topics: Entrepreneurship vs working at a recruitment agency Switching agencies or staying Market conditions & what everyone else is seeing! Career advice on how important it is to get into selling Notes about techn…
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In this podcast, I go through the 13 chapters of my book & what it all entails! I wrote Agency Recruitment 101 with this mission in mind: spread the gospel of agency recruitment far and wide so that more people can understand this career, business, and profession more! If you'd like to join my book launch, make sure to sign up on dandanzhu.com and …
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Recruitment success is very much centered around how your business is set up and what niche you're searching. Like any endeavor, environments matter and if the commercial market you're operating in is unfriendly or inhospitable, you could work hard and be sorely disappointed. This is why picking the right niche is so important. Many recruiters are …
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In recruiting, I play a game called monopoly. I want to have the most market share in any niche market I endeavor to take on. This is the POINT of the game and how many top-billers survive and thrive without having to stress out and work themselves to exhaustion every year. The foundation to dominate your recruitment market is no easy feat, but it'…
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The #7777rule was and is still something I adhere to in order to reach financial, career, and professional success in any endeavor I undertake. Listen to the full episode for what it is, how I came up with it, and 5 reasons why it's critical to set yourself up correctly to actually achieve your goals instead of just dreaming about them.…
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In this interview, Mike Williams, founder of Carnegie Search, shares his journey from learning the business to becoming a business owner of a niche recruitment firm that is thriving. Mike shares his tips and tricks, as well as personal experiences and insights on recruitment as an industry both philosophically as well as tactically. Both are import…
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I recently had a terrible client call in which he (a recruitment owner) lambasted contingency search since "so many clients were not serious". Ironically, he was also one of those clients, which I revealed during the call. Whether you do contingent or retained, you should carefully vet out the seriousness and commitment of the client to fill to the…
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Recruitment is a long game. It's not a reactive job like working in a factory or in retail. You have to keep yourself going to reach your goals and achieve on a daily basis. As much as your manager may try to keep you motivated and help you, at the end of the day, all you got is yourself to be your cheerleader and accountability partner. Here are 6…
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To become successful, mindset is critical, as we all have heard. Having experienced the highs and lows of mindset, I personally know this to be true. It's no coincidence my best years in production have always been a result of not making excuses & being highly action-oriented. Here are 6 tips on how to curate a NO EXCUSES mindset as it relates to a…
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There are 3 main categories of KPIs and then mini-KPIs that lead you to the result of the intended reward. In this podcast, I break down how the KPIs connect to one another and how important QUALITY is. You can hit your KPIs numerically but it's a moot point if the quality isn't there.Di DG Recruit
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A lot of agency recruiters start off at college grind shops aka boiler room type sales environments where toxic sales culture is the norm. I grew up in such a shop and stayed, thrived for 5 years, which is abnormally long considering the dropout rate to be close to 80-90%. These 7 tips are from my lived experience of how to navigate toxic sales env…
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Droppers are everyone's worst nightmare. I believe strongly in never putting up deals in the first place that don't stick. There really is no point in doing that and it hurts everyone in the process. My dropper rate is about 1 every 2-3 years (I'm perm so that's a contributing factor for why it's low). For some reason (actually many reasons), I jus…
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People have been asking, now that client meetings are right back to it, how to best prepare for and win over people during these high pressure business opportunities to drive relationships. In this podcast, I break down 6 major tips on how to best handle client meetings so that you can maximize each get together to the best and ideal outcomes. As a…
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Agency recruitment is an extremely recession/depression/layoff proof profession, assuming you can produce. Like many revenue generating roles, if you're good at generating revenue, you're always going to be safe from layoffs. Regardless, I break down a number of factors to consider for any role and hopefully you can help utilize this in determining…
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As an agency recruitment professional, we literally live off of this skill. The better you are at handling candidates on calls, the more money you make and the more you get per hour since you're doing it better than your competition. Master your candidate calls by following these tips and tricks! If this podcast is helping you, make sure to DROP US…
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I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea running a recruitment firm without sales or recruitment experience is. There is a reason why headhunter fees are 20-35%. It's because this ISN'T an easy pop-in and win business. It takes expertise, experience, perseverance, cleverness, will-to-win, investment of time, and ingenuity to sustainably succeed. I…
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MPC - most placeable candidate - was a term I heard once I started DG Recruit, my recruitment firm only services top-billers or up and coming billers. But this was something that I mastered. In my world, we called this the "candidate sell-in". I used this exclusively to drive client engagement and sign-on new accounts. This is the ONLY thing that w…
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In this podcast, I share 4 strategies on how to regain your positivity, motivation, and hope when it comes to recruitment (and life). Everyone has moments of doubt, unhappiness, hopelessness, and fear. This is normal. How you react to it determines the outcome, no doubt. I've used each of these 4 mindsets to help myself out during tough times and I…
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Stacy is an absolute boss at recruitment, sales, and mentoring/supporting other top billers. As a top-biller herself, she broke 6 figures her first year in the biz and regularly earns in the $400k mark (Covid was an exception but even then was $200-250k). Like many other top-billers, Stacy also holds real estate assets and has a successful work-lif…
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I was 26/27 when I decided to take on the challenge of building out executive search as the next step of my career after 3-4 years of working the pharma market as a niche recruiter for a specific vertical. Now, I wanted to make even MORE money while working 'less'. Due to the size of exec placements, you could absolutely make less placements but ma…
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*explicit language warning Of course selling today isn't just about phone sales. If that's how you're going to do it, it's 100% the hard way versus leveraging the internet, but I digress. Today's topic is about old school recruitment phone sales to land clients. There are 6 major tips that I certainly learned the hard way that actually works to bui…
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*Explicit - language warning This is a heartfelt spiel that I genuinely want EVERY. Single. Junior Recruiter (or someone who isn't already a global top biller) to listen to. Recruitment at the highest levels requires a strong mental state and confidence to persevere. It isn't a game but you have to find the fun in it. I share 6 tips here that I hop…
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Amanda Brandenburg, founder of OpusLex partners, is a gamechanger and top biller at the highest levels. A pro at both temp & perm recruitment, sales and recruiting, Amanda is the ultimate recruitment leader, producer, and inspiration. In this interview, Amanda shares so much valuable insight about her own career as a real estate investor, recruitme…
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There are top billers and then there are people who really knocked it out of the park. For these people, recruitment was like for many of us, an accident, but it was life changing and exceeded even the wildest of dreams. Matt Abbasfard is one of those people who broke unto the recruitment scene with a big splash as a top-biller from the first year …
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This one is a good one. Instead of operating on dinosaur recruitment tactics, here are SIX tips on what MODERN agency recruiters are doing. Recruiting has changed a LOT even since when I started not so long ago in 2011. Now, it's EVEN more volatile, innovative, and ripe for disruption IF you know how to play the game. Recruiters fall into two camps…
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As a full-desk recruiter since day one on a brand new desk, I was cold calling clients and candidates to build my book from a standing start of zero. I had literally NOTHING to recruit for so I had to essentially bullsh*t my way into mattering within my market. I had to fight tooth and nail and learn this business ASAP or else I would fail and star…
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As a recruiter, our brains are going 100 miles an hour doing a million different things. As much as that ability is a superpower, it can also be extremely hard to stay on task and get sh*t done as well! In this podcast, Dandan shares with you some of her own struggles with focus, how recruitment has evolved over the years, and how external factors …
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Di Recruiter Prep
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As a senior recruitment professional, the career now gets really fun. You already know the basics, how to do deals, and the grind is pretty straightforward at this point. Now, the challenge is to continue elevating your game and building up your mastery of the art of recruitment. It won't take too long for you to completely nail this career, but it…
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As someone who started off knowing nothing about recruitment, I started selling and recruiting since it was my job that I was responsible to do. Here are the top tips of what helped me "make it" as a top-biller to set my career up for success in my market and within a large recruitment firm to make a name for myself. I hope these 5 tips help you ge…
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Hear our Recruiter Prep interview with AJ Mahmoud, Founder of Scott Humphrey to learn more about his career, life, and experience within the recruitment industry. AJ shares critical advice AND lessons from his journey in recruitment including the following highlights: -Why he left a 6-figure job to take a 50% decrease on his base to do recruitment,…
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Whether dealing with client or candidate drama, objection handling no matter how big or small the issue, is a KEY skill that is a make or break to get deals through the door or impede deals from closing. Here are a few tips on how to approach objection handling and selling so as to get your issues resolved so that you can either move forward to clo…
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Counteroffers are not a new phenom. You can bet a company will find it cheaper, easier, and safer to throw money at existing staff rather than a new hire that they need to pay a headhunter for ANYWAYS. If you're mostly going after passive candidates, you better cover counters til you're blue in the face, at EVERY stage, not only during closing or o…
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If you are thinking of hiring someone who already has agency recruitment experience, you have to proceed with caution because 80-90% of the industry leave the job and the turnover is bonkers. You don't want to be the sucker who ends up hiring someone from another agency and wastes your money, time, and effort on someone who fails at your firm befor…
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As someone very good with money, Dandan was able to leverage it fully to achieve FIRE by 28, breaking 7 figures networth by 30. Here are the major tips that Dandan implemented in her 20s and now to avoid being entrapped in a bad job, mortgage enslavement, and lack of freedom to build a life you want for the rewards you aspire to have. Do you have a…
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Yes, I say "deal" here because I don't enjoy working with active candidates as a choice or preference; we need to DEAL with the fact that they're already active. This poses a real threat to our time, our energy, and ultimately our survival in this industry if we let one too many active candidates get under our skin. The ideal goal is to work with t…
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To sustain a long term career within agency recruitment, you have to navigate the inevitable stress that builds up from this career of managing PEOPLE on both ends of the spectrum: clients AND candidates. While this job sounds so straightforward and easy, it is hardly anything but that! You have to manage your mental health in order to continue fee…
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For lack of a better way to put it, if you're a young gun trying to make it staffing/agency recruiting/headhunting to get new clients signed up, for the love of everything that's holy, DO NOT SELL TO HR PEOPLE. If you didn't know, please do know this: They are NOT your friend. They are NOT on your side. They do not CARE about you/your livelihood an…
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