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Ok, let’s dive in for today. What’s Cooking?

Transactional vs Long Term Relationship

A lot of recruiters touch and ghost.

It’s bad for their reputations, and it’s bad for them financially as well.

When I started a decade ago in recruitment, I was churning. Or put simply, I was trying to spam as many CVs as I could to my clients.

My philosophy back was to chope (Singapore slang for putting a hold on something) the CV before another recruiter cuts in.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t very satisfying work because I was living off a scarcity mindset, subscribing to thinking such as “more is better, it’s either you or me, that’s just the way it is…”

As such, I was talking to candidates with superficial interest. My only interest was to get them to apply, and spam their CV to my clients whom I thought would be delighted with my constant flow of CVs for them to choose from.

I was dead wrong but I had no idea and that’s one of the saddest thing in life, to keep heading into the abyss of disappointment.

Then in 2018, almost a decade after being a recruiter, I had a mind blowing experience. A client referred a candidate to me and suggested I get in touch to see what I could do for that candidate.

I took a cursory glance at the CV and almost immediately wanted to bolt. The candidate is French, drawing a high salary and looking for something better. Non, merci.

First of all, I had nothing better and from my past experience, the success rate of placing locals was significantly higher than trying to place a foreign talent. However, the candidate was a referral from my client and I couldn’t muster the audacity to say No.

I got to show some respect to my client.

So I dialed the number quickly and in 20 minutes, concluded the exploratory call. Turns out the candidate is actively seeking as his company wasn’t doing well.

Well, I really couldn’t help except to be a listening ear for that 20 minutes. It’s probably the last we would hear from each other.

This time, I was wrong.

Fast forward 4 months, the candidate became the CFO of a multi-national company and was given a semi-expat package that exceeded his expectation. Not only was he elated, I was also floored. First by this unexpected twist of events and also by the LARGEST invoice I have ever billed in my career.

Since that day, I learnt the valuable lesson of investing in long term relationship and as I do that, my recruitment business began to take off. I no longer had to live the life of churning, nor hunt randomly on LinkedIn or other social platforms, as most of my placements are successfully completed through referrals.

What I did was to open my heart, and decide I would invest genuinely in learning about people I work with, and being a help to them whenever I can.

So can you.

p.s. Follow me on LinkedIn and DM “The Solo Recruiter” if you want to learn how to create genuine long lasting economic opportunities with and through your network.

Joo Kwang
​Author of Solopreneur’s Guide to Recruitment Business

​About this newsletter: You are receiving this email because you subscribed to my weekly TSR (The Solo Recruiter) newsletter. Every week, you learn the strategies that successful recruiters use to grow their businesses. So you can also do the same and launch your business.