[Podcast] FDE+ | Building a Revenue-Driving Recruiter Brand on LinkedIn with Clark Willcox, Founder – Digital Recruiter

Sign up for The Full Desk Experience updates!

Show notes

• Building a LinkedIn profile that attracts ideal clients
• Creating content that drives conversations instead of likes
• Using automation and AI without losing authenticity
• Turning LinkedIn into a consistent source of new business

Transcription

Clark Willcox [00:00:00]:
So the strategy is like, be yourself. Don’t use AI messaging. I’m seeing that more now than having to correct and scold a lot of people. A lot of clients stop. They’re using not only AI for content, but for messaging. And AI gives all this fluff and it repeats back the message the prospect said and all this stuff versus, like, I just did this with a client today and I cut about 30, 35% of her message. It was much shorter and concise. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:00:23]:
And it was saying all the same things. And so people’s attention spans are like goldfish right now. Right. Like, just look at our behavior with reels and everything else. Like, you gotta be really intentional with every word.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:34]:
Hey, guys. Kortney Harmon, host of fde. We’re bringing you a special series of episodes called fde. Those are going to be highlights from our recent virtual conference where hundreds of you joined us for an incredible event focused on boosting revenue for 2025. Each of these sessions is packed with valuable insights, expert discuss and actionable strategies to help you drive growth in your business. Whether you missed the live event or want to revisit each session, we’ve got you covered. We’re going to drop each of these 10 live events to wrap up our year and kick off the new year. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:01:16]:
So let’s dive into today’s session and uncover the key takeaways that will propel your success in the coming year. Stay tuned and let’s dive in. For those of you who don’t know Clark, please connect with him on LinkedIn. I just shared his LinkedIn profile here. He is absolutely one of my favorite people. Most recruiters, Obviously, they’re on LinkedIn every day. Few are making LinkedIn actually work for them. So our next speaker, he’s actually built an entire methodology and business around closing that gap.

Clark Willcox [00:01:51]:
We’ve had him here on the podcast before. I’ve been on his podcast before. Clark is the founder of the Digital Recruiter, a coaching and training program that has helped hundreds of agency recruiters add five and six figures to their billing business by turning LinkedIn into a system.

Clark Willcox [00:02:06]:
Add seven figures now officially.

Clark Willcox [00:02:09]:
I’m sorry, I left out.

Clark Willcox [00:02:11]:
No, I left that out. I gotta add that in there. Yeah.

Clark Willcox [00:02:14]:
Well, he’s based close to me outside of Columbus, Ohio. I think he spent some time at Aerotech, if memory serves me right, as well as now, the Digital Recruiter OS combining automation and antiviral content. Really, I’m so excited because this is something that we use every single day. And I’m curious to see how we’re going to talk about this platform and how we can do better. So I love it. Clark, did I miss anything? Did I say enough wonderful things about you? What did I miss?

Clark Willcox [00:02:44]:
You did. I mean, we could probably do more if you’d like. That’s good for now. That’s good for now. No, I. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me here. I’m excited to talk, especially since we recorded like a year ago, a year and a half ago now, like on the podcast.

Clark Willcox [00:02:57]:
We’re probably due for another one soon, but so much has evolved and all this. So. No, I appreciate the introduction. I’m excited to dive into it and. And yeah, it’s going to be LinkedIn. I’m sure some of you here have maybe seen me before and some of you have no idea who I am. Again, the goal is there’s actionable stuff that you can change right now, like live during this call, but you’ll be able to change and improve your LinkedIn presence and hopefully drive more leads and kind of learn some things. But also, really the theme, I think, right at this event, Kortney, is just like, how do I still be a human in the AI automation kind of world and landscape? And I love that because I love automation, I love AI, but.

Clark Willcox [00:03:35]:
And I’ll dive into the, you know, all that stuff as well. So should I just go right into it?

Clark Willcox [00:03:40]:
I love it. I’m going to jump off stage so I am not on here distracting you. If you have questions throughout Clark’s presentation, feel, please feel free to throw them in the chat. I’ll come in when you’re done in case there’s any other questions. But thank you so much. I’m going to jump off. Have fun.

Clark Willcox [00:03:53]:
Thanks, Kortney. All right, now it’s just us 37 people, maybe more by now, but let’s get it going. Let me bring up my screen. I’m going to make it so I can see the comments on here and I can also see my own presentation, which would probably be helpful for all of us, although I guess I’ll let you be the judge of that. So I want to talk about building a brand that drives revenue. And if you’re in recruiting, right, it’s really about, is your LinkedIn working for you? Yes, we could go after other platforms, but why would we when our market is on LinkedIn, especially even more so this decade. So what to expect? How to leverage your LinkedIn better today from a headline about section content automation. I mean, stuff that you can take and run with.

Clark Willcox [00:04:34]:
I’ve legitimately had people run with all our free stuff and message me back and like, hey, I build 500k in my first full year or you completely changed how I approached all this and I’m like, great. And they’ve never signed up for anything. So if you, if that is you, great. If you look at this and you’re like, hey, I want more help with all that, we can sort of talk about that. But there’s no pressure either way. I want to make you better at your desk today. That is the goal for the next hour. I’ll probably run about 40, 45 minutes and then leave time for questions.

Clark Willcox [00:05:00]:
So make sure to throw those in the chat as well. And obviously if I don’t get to it, just message me on LinkedIn after this and we’ll go back and forth then. So we’re gonna then talk about understanding what approaches work to get more inbound but also warm, outbound leads. We can’t just sit back and just wait for magic to happen. That is nice when it happens, but we also how can build a presence in a brand that actually makes your kind of cold outreach more warm? It makes people on hiring managers more responsive to you, but in a very human way. What’s that balance of automation and AI that’s effective then? What type of content drives revenue? And you will notice I did not say it goes viral or drives more likes, because there is more likes and going viral does not equal more revenue. We’re going to talk about the type of content that sells, if you will, or drives revenue pipeline builds authority, trust, all that good stuff and have actually examples that have posts that have gone like 9 or 10 likes that have actually turned into clients that they build hundreds of thousands with. And then of course, how to leverage automation and AI correctly and when.

Clark Willcox [00:06:03]:
And this is a constantly evolving topic, right? There’s new models and all this stuff going every day, but there are some foundational rules and kind of do’s and don’ts that have emerged pretty quickly just in the last couple of years with all this. So this is kind of in order in a linear fashion. What we’re going to be covering, the linked evolution, does it really work? Your profile, automation, content prospecting, putting it all together and going from there. I’ll slow down a little bit. So I’m not. I get into auctioneer mode a little bit when I get excited talking about this. So I’ll try to slow it down, but there’s a lot to get through so I want to get through it as well. What is Digital recruiter if you don’t know us right we help consultative recruiters is really important.

Clark Willcox [00:06:41]:
I don’t do, I don’t work very well with transactional recruiters. I like to do spray and pray and blast resumes and just don’t really care or take ownership or pride in their work. And we help those build a top of funnel engine right to get more clients, quality clients and or candidates. Some people come to us to leverage LinkedIn and everything else. I need more candidates and that I have the clients, I just need that. And then obviously some people, most people come to us looking for more business development and clients. Your market buys into you and that’s really the foundation of all this. So yes we have a system and an approach but it’s all around curating around you what your strength, your strengths you bring to the table, what’s your value prop and really leveraging that right Drawing a line in the sand of this is who the type of people I want to work with.

Clark Willcox [00:07:22]:
This is the type of people I don’t want to work with. And you’ve really if you, if you attack your business that way especially digitally you’re going to get more of what you want and don’t worry about what you don’t need all of that. So you have less time chasing right and more time closing recs, closing business. Right. That’s a whole job in of itself a little bit about me. I started in door to door sales in 2012 wearing the Verizon Polo selling third party telecom. It is as soul crushing as you can imagine. So recruiting was a piece of cake.

Clark Willcox [00:07:52]:
When they airtech brought me in in June 2013 I had no idea what I was doing or what was going on or what recruiting was. I just put my resume up on indeed they called me and and brought me in and they hired me. They’re paying base and they weren’t going to take away my commission so I was all in, got promoted. I hit 3k pretty quickly. 10k in 5 months and weekly spread. I got promoted within 8 months all in the skilled trade light industrial sector. I got my butt kicked the first year to in sales. I thought I was going to be so good at managing people and clients and all that I was just a robot.

Clark Willcox [00:08:29]:
I was just like stiff as could be robotic just like not comfortable. And it’s a lot of what I’ve built with digital recruiter is around remembering that feeling of how can I just expedite my learning curve. How can I get my prospects and everyone to buy into me because I know we have something to offer, but I was just kind of getting my own way. So this comes from going on the 10, 15 meetings a week, like, you know, talking to 50 candidates a week, trying to get 20 submittals out. And like all that stuff, like this is all built from being in recruiting industry. Just personally. I left Aerotech. I hit my all time high.

Clark Willcox [00:09:02]:
2017, July 2017, that was the day I decided to quit. So I quit six months later. I kind of just like, you know, silently quit for a few months because I just wasn’t incentivized. But what the big agency world was providing, it just didn’t really align. I bounced around for a couple years that did some internal consulting on recruiting and everything else, but I was out in Los Angeles and just kind of spiraled out. And I had a saving grace of a friend who brought me to Columbus, Ohio and introduced me to a mutual connection that was in the LinkedIn world. And then that January 2020 is when I learned about LinkedIn automation. And it just, every, all the light bulbs came on at the same time for me and it was just an absolute game changer.

Clark Willcox [00:09:43]:
And so I was managing 15 accounts on LinkedIn every day from owner SaaS, consultants, recruiters, like anyone you can imagine booking hundreds of calls a month. I worked with, managed a LinkedIn influencer account, Shay Robottom. I got to see the posts that went viral and the correlation between actually getting good inbound versus getting conversations that weren’t really relevant. Right. So all that stuff. So I spent a couple years like working on that day to day and then launched Digital Recruiter at the end of 2021. And now we’re here, right? Four, three and a half, almost four years next month since I’ve been full time with Digital Recruiter. So that’s just kind of a little intro there and a very cliff notes version of the very wild journey I’ve had to get here.

Clark Willcox [00:10:25]:
So I want to interact with you guys a little bit here and ask like, what are you guys trying for business development, right? What’s working? Are you trying lead gen? It didn’t work like outsourcing it. Are you leveraging, trying to AI content to post more stuff? Cold email, cold calls, what are you trying? What’s working? What hasn’t worked for you? Love to kind of have you guys throw that in the chat, if you will, just to kind of get a consensus on what everyone’s doing. LinkedIn cold calls. Oh, what’s up, Cameron? I feel like we talked a while ago. I keep seeing you post on, on LinkedIn. I see. Kimberly. Kimberly.

Clark Willcox [00:10:59]:
Oh, nice. Awesome. Well, let’s throw some more in there. So as we’re, as you’re putting that in the chat. So traditional sales is hard, right? Like agency recruiting. I have so much respect for the people that are just sold year after year. Just grind in meetings and just go, go, go. Like there is.

Clark Willcox [00:11:15]:
Those are some of the most fun clients for me to work with because that engine doesn’t shut off, but it’s simply just like leveraging it better. It’s kind of. There’s a lot of starting from zero and the, the people that are like, I can make cold calls and you know, that’s the best way to get business and all that. I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that piece. The question is, is there a way to leverage that everything that you’re doing, that skill, how can you leverage and amplify it? Right. Right now LinkedIn is a huge opportunity to do that. Right. You want to fish where the fish are and it’s just a time equation.

Clark Willcox [00:11:45]:
If I can make one post and have 10,000 people in my ideal market see it, is that more impactful than the next 10 calls I make? Right. Ideally, in a world you do both right. In the same day. Right. You want automation to scale it, but you want to kind of farm. Right. And then the content and the marketing. That feed is what you don’t have with cold calls, you don’t have with cold email, you don’t have that LinkedIn feed and it’s super powerful.

Clark Willcox [00:12:08]:
I know LinkedIn started as a business networking platform, but it’s evolved. Like, I mean it is for better or worse at times, social media, but it’s for business. So the people that are on there are ready to be buyers, if you will. Right. They’re not. It’s not scrolling TikTok to like unwind from the day. If you’re on LinkedIn, it’s business related, so keep that in mind. It’s a great way to leverage that.

Clark Willcox [00:12:29]:
Yes, you’re going to get your cheesy post. Right. You can ignore all that, but like you can really bring what you want to knowing that the platform encourages more business conversations and encourages more prospecting and selling. And yeah, we don’t want to pitch blindly, but it’s a natural, it’s an easy flow. Right. If you can tap into it. We’re going backwards here. We already covered this email or that slide.

Clark Willcox [00:12:52]:
Excuse me. Issues with current solutions. Right. Cold outreach roi I see is dropping for just from saturation in people struggling with like getting in people’s inboxes and all that. Again, any channel can work.

Clark Willcox [00:13:03]:
Right?

Clark Willcox [00:13:03]:
But it’s just what’s the degree of difficulty? Do you feel like you’re swimming upstream and downstream? I love LinkedIn because when you tap into it, it seems like everything is downstream and things just become a little bit easier. Issues. I see lead gen agencies, you know, 500 bucks a month, a thousand a month will automate everything. It’s like, do they know recruiting? Do they even understand the difference between clients and candidates? Right. Getting a client a signed agreement that’s contingent doesn’t really mean anything until you get paid. Right. A lot of them don’t offer any content, so they’re booking meetings that maybe aren’t relevant. Hey, we’ll book you 50 meetings in a month.

Clark Willcox [00:13:33]:
That’s great. How many of them are qualified? Or am I just going to waste a month of just being on meetings that don’t make sense? Right. I’m much more into quality meetings. Or one quality meeting that could turn into 300,000 in placements in that year is worth way more than just 20 kind of whatever meetings. Content, obviously the lazy AI content last year was like the rocket ship emojis and everything else. Oh, if I just post, stuff will happen and it’s just not how it works. Investing in a business development person that doesn’t get it, it is the hardest thing to do is be founder led sales and then pass off that sales and train someone new and have someone be incentivized as you are and has a level of experience and build all that. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:14:10]:
As invested in your brand as you are. So it’s really about how to get the most out of you first. Right. Your desk first before just outsourcing to even someone else that’s in on your team. Right. Expecting the same level, the same standard that you’re able to provide. Why I’ve seen recruiters avoid real business development. It can be hard to track seeds.

Clark Willcox [00:14:28]:
Results take time. If you talk to the top billers, we got Kimberly and Pinnacle Society here, their team of top billers. If you really pay attention, they’re talking about referrals and the network and maximizing as much as you can from every conversation. And they’re really strategic, but they’re planting a lot of seeds that compound over time. Right. And other people maybe don’t know what to say. Right. All you’ve ever done is like pitch or a lot of us I think just trained to just like pitch and that’s all we Got right.

Clark Willcox [00:14:55]:
There’s so much more under the surface in terms of sales and business development. Have it narrow top target accounts every day starts from zero. And it’s just kind of, I don’t know, I’m going after. I’m just kind of hoping I get something. Not knowing how to post content that actually starts conversations that’s going to resonate with hiring majors, resonate with the market. A lot of times it’s posts that are geared towards other recruiters or candidates, but not really the person that’s going to pay you those placement fees. And then sometimes just focused on rec delivery, just like not having time to get to it. But again, that should be a good problem to have and you want to be able to figure out the workflow and compliment, you know, a marketing platform or outreach like LinkedIn.

Clark Willcox [00:15:31]:
It’s like if you’re focused on rec. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve helped with their delivery on LinkedIn. Just by strategically doing some outreach and marketing, they free up delivery time. They have more time to focus on business development. So it’s not either or, it’s not biz dev or filling recs. They’re actually able to do both. The LinkedIn evolution so LinkedIn is the number one social media platform for recruiters to generate revenue, bar none. That should not surprise anyone.

Clark Willcox [00:15:57]:
The COVID changed a lot of things. A lot of people want remote, right? I’m not going to rehash all the COVID stuff, right. Just to recap it, other people saw Remote wanted in. Where did everyone go to LinkedIn. And if we look at some numbers, this is 20% increase almost in monthly active users on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn membership alone almost doubled from 2019 to 2025. I guess now, well, I don’t have the numbers for 2026 because it’s March, but guess how many people post weekly on LinkedIn? Under 1.15 billion profiles on LinkedIn? Less than 1%. That means there are 3 million posters and they generate 9 billion impressions weekly.

Clark Willcox [00:16:37]:
But if you are posting consistently on on LinkedIn, you are one of 3 million people compared to over a billion users and membership profiles on LinkedIn. I mean, it’s. You might think there’s more content, but there are so many recruiters I work with that are in niches where that niche is not active with LinkedIn content. So like they are the person in their space. Right? A lot of, like there’s a lot of SAs gets a lot of attention, obviously a lot of recruiting gets attention, but if you’re a recruiter in specific verticals or industries or skill sets, there’s still not a lot of people that are going to be competing with you. So there is a ton of opportunity. And if you’re following a bunch of other recruiters and think you all sound the same, remember, the managers you’re targeting are not following a bunch of recruiters either. So, yes, some recruiting problems can sound similar, but the ones that are unique to you are going to resonate with your market specifically.

Clark Willcox [00:17:27]:
So there’s a huge opportunity. This is only going to continue growing, right? And now is a great time to get in. And I know AI and all that is exciting. And yes, there’s ways to leverage all that, but just getting out in front and being like, how can I be seen? Nothing beats LinkedIn feed right now. So I tried automation and content. It didn’t work. I say this is recruiters that don’t get the true problem. We’ll go in because a lot of times it looks like this, Right? Love that you’re creating a digital impact.

Clark Willcox [00:17:54]:
Keep growing, right? Can we do this? It’s very generic. It’s not really relevant. I know this is automated. I know I’m one of many. It’s not super relevant. There’s nothing really, even in this that’s giving me a lot to work with and obviously building outbound infrastructure for B2B companies. If they looked at my profile for two seconds, I’m just not the right audience. I’m not the right target.

Clark Willcox [00:18:15]:
I’m probably more of a competitor and a better one at that than anything else. So this is what a lot of us see. So we think it must not work and it’s just not true. Right? You see what doesn’t work, it’s a lot harder to kind of notice what is working, right? And then on the content side, right? Vague, boring content. Are we doing rocket ship emojis and suitcases and mismatch on the formatting, right? Spaces where they don’t belong, all that. Right. This is a post that really isn’t offering anything in terms of, like, why should I work with you? Right. This is just great.

Clark Willcox [00:18:43]:
I’m one of, you know, thousands of tens of thousands of recruiters here on LinkedIn. So how can LinkedIn work for you? The first myth, and I’ve touched on some of this, that is that you have to go viral to get leads. You definitely don’t. It can work for you without going having to go viral. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more than 400 likes on a post. I’ve maybe broke 200 likes, maybe up to five times. Honestly, I don’t even think it’s five times. And I’ve been at this for 40 years.

Clark Willcox [00:19:11]:
I’m in a sweet spot of like 10 to 30 likes per post, 1500 to 3000 impressions. I’m happy and I haven’t made a cold call in eight years. And everything is generated from the LinkedIn engine I built and I have clients that way, which I’ll show in a. What is. That’s very similar as well. You have to be polarizing. You don’t have to talk politics, don’t talk about Iran or anything else or space or whatever else is going on, right? Or fireballs in the sky or the weather and all that. Like, you don’t have to be polarizing because how many people screw up recruiting and hiring is enough that just talk about how you solve those problems for your clients and your perspectives on that is enough to drive revenue and to drive leads.

Clark Willcox [00:19:50]:
Content takes forever to generate revenue. It doesn’t. I’ve had people make 180k in placements from their first post that they. They did with us. It does not have to take. It depends on your network, what you’re bringing to the table, the industry, everything. There’s so many factors that go into it, but if you’re not in the game, you don’t know. You can’t capitalize from it.

Clark Willcox [00:20:06]:
And some people, it takes four, five, six months. But then at that point then they’re like, well, I made the biggest placement I’ve ever had and I got multiple retained searches and all that. So expect it to take some time. It’s going to take time to compound, but it doesn’t mean you can’t get results right away. Automation always has to be spammy. It does not have to be like those examples I shared. We’ll show what does work. The content’s hard to create.

Clark Willcox [00:20:28]:
It doesn’t have to be. You have the stories every day. If you’re on meetings and do candidate screens that you’re making placements, you have a million stories. It’s just kind of building content as a muscle to really understand, you know, the formatting, the hooks, when did you call to actions, what’s going to resonate and even how to kind of study the content analytics. So we’re going to, you know, meet Rachel here. Rachel’s been a client, I think three years running this month. She’s just crushed it on LinkedIn. She’s a solo operator.

Clark Willcox [00:20:55]:
She went from 100k to 500k. The first year that we were working together and that was her second full year recruiting. Every time she posts, she gets a lead. Now, part of this because her market, she focuses on physical therapy. No one can find a physical therapist, but in that she’s using the system and approach, she’s actually cut her indeed spend, which almost everyone relies on to have to find physical therapists. She’s leveraged her content and her outreach and being strategic mainly to get the right clients and to get the candidates right. So she’s reduced her tech spend. She leverages LinkedIn as the branding.

Clark Willcox [00:21:25]:
Now she’s building like a newsletter and lead magnets and that we built for her and keeping her audience that way. So she got 100 jobs. And then our goal was, okay, what are the, you know, airtech term the red zones? What is fillable? So it became okay, we have the brand, we had the conversations. Now we’ve got to really refine getting great clients. And she could sign a million agreements, but who’s actually going to deliver and pay the bills, right, and offer candidates and be good to work with and all that. She was able to raise her fees, the clients, all that good stuff. She’s never gone viral. I think we finally got her a post that maybe got 700 likes.

Clark Willcox [00:21:58]:
Like that was a few weeks ago, but most of it was, you know, in the 20 to 100 range. 35 clients in the first 18 months. It’s been three years now, so I don’t even know what we’re up to. I know we’re at least above 50. It might even be closer to 70 now. But again, getting the right clients and then this is just inbound leads and messages that she gets from people. You’ll see there’s like brand new people and that want to learn more. There’s people that she’s worked with before that want to work with her again.

Clark Willcox [00:22:24]:
And then there’s people that she actually made placement with, right, that, that came back. So you think about a new lead, someone that she knew in her network and then an old client that came back. That there’s so many different types of inbound leads that you can capture and capitalize on. If you’re putting yourself out there. It does not always have to be new people that have no idea. Sometimes it is about even real people that you already know being like, wow, I love your content, I want to work with you, or reminded me that I need to call you, that we need to meet. Right? Like, so it’s a content is a business development tool. We talked about likes that get new clients.

Clark Willcox [00:22:56]:
This is nine likes, right? This turned into, I think, a 25, $30,000 placement. And it’s just. It’s nine likes. But it hit. It resonated, right? Talking about sales, trading fees, manufacturing operations, recruiters in the title. So right away, right, that hiring manager saw Matt’s headline. You saw the hook and all that. It’s like, this is relevant to me.

Clark Willcox [00:23:18]:
Hey, I need help. Like, let’s talk 10 likes. Got to 40 exclusive wrecks. Kirsten went from 50k to then 500k in 12 months after. After working together, getting inbound leads. I mean, she was consistent. And then the. This was one of her first inbound clients.

Clark Willcox [00:23:34]:
It got a whole 10 likes. But if you look at the post, it’s super clear. And the hook and the headline that she got the exclusive react, right? Which is, that’s what we all want. And it just came from post. Again, nothing crazy, but if you see the formatting, there’s no emojis, there’s no hashtags. It’s to a specific audience for director of operations in the healthcare realm, but it’s really specific. It meets the manager where they’re at, and it feels like it’s for them. And then timing is a huge piece of it.

Clark Willcox [00:24:01]:
So we have outreach campaigns, and I’ve seen so much of this this year with our clients. They send sequences in November, December, and then they leave it off. They keep posting and then they get replies in February, March. They’re like, hey, we actually need three new leadership hires. Or we need help hiring the salespeople or technicians. Like, can we talk? Right, Just because based on the sequence and everything else, like, it wasn’t. They didn’t shoot themselves in the foot with the initial outreach. They let the content and the outreach and a timing do its thing as the manager was building trust with them and it was just the right time.

Clark Willcox [00:24:34]:
And Hugh had this example here. Again, this was two months after the campaign ended, but he just kept posting. It’s turned into a client from a target account. All right, the first step in fixing all this, right now, get to the good stuff, is your LinkedIn profile. From the banner to. In terms of who you’re targeting, everything else you want your headline, your bout section, your banner to gear towards your ideal target market. Because this is what you want. You want to connect with your ICP or ideal client profile.

Clark Willcox [00:25:03]:
And then you want the demographics when you’re looking at the content to show, hey, I’m getting in front of the people that I want to get in front of. Right. You want to leverage your about section. Right. How do you work? But ideally for recruiters it’s show your results. Show your results and have a simple call to action on there. And ideally the placements that you want more of is what you want to put into the about section. We have had people get $70,000 searches just from fixing their LinkedIn profile before they’ve done any outreach, any automation, any content posting just because their profile was honed in onto their ideal market and they looked at them and say, we, we’ve tried recruiting, we tried agencies, but we think like you’re, it looks like you’re an industry expert.

Clark Willcox [00:25:42]:
We’d love to kind of talk about how you do things a little bit differently. Like you want to be able to capture those leads. Is that everyone going to react that way? No, but we only take a few. Right. To respond that way. Again, we want to cover all buckets from the profile, from the outreach, from the content, other tips, right. You can use your greatest hits in your featured section. It does not have to be the posts that have the most likes.

Clark Willcox [00:26:03]:
It could be a lead magnet, a newsletter, posts that are relevant. Sometimes I have people put like posts that got five likes, but it hits their ICP so perfectly that I want them to feature it as their featured post. Right. You can use little calend links if you want. There links to your website and the custom link and it asks for recommendations. Ask for recommendations when people are happy, when they’re happy with the service that you provide. Hey, would you mind writing a LinkedIn recommendation? And you can leverage those really well, especially with content. We just wrote a post for clients on like 8 or 10 of their recommendations and like stories behind each one.

Clark Willcox [00:26:35]:
And so we’ll be able to sprinkle that in over the next few weeks. The automated flywheel right on. On LinkedIn is this is platform called Dripify which is just for LinkedIn automation. Right. It’s not necessarily a competitor to, you know, crelate or anything else like that. It’s like completely separate. There’s a whole thing on like tools and everything else. And using LinkedIn outreach, there are do’s and don’ts and it may not be for everyone.

Clark Willcox [00:27:01]:
But if you’re interested in learning more, right. You can build sequences out, sending a connection request, building out, you know, sending out messaging sequences, view profiles, follows, all that stuff. Right. There are some strategies around doing this the right way and it may or may not be a fit for you, but most of the time, 99% of people I’ve talked to have zero problems. They’ve, you know, there’s just no issues or some different circumstances where maybe it might not be. It makes sense. I definitely recommend cloud based solutions versus Chrome extensions and all that good stuff. But this kind of gives you an example of sequences that you built out just for LinkedIn.

Clark Willcox [00:27:35]:
This is one year of automation from a part time recruiter. Slash, my wife, but she made a couple dozen placements 2024, early 2025. And then we had our second kid and it was just too much to have going on to recruit full time, even part time. But just because time was of the essence, we leveraged the sequences. So she was able to send 7600 connection requests, 2500 connection works, have about 33% connection rate, you know, get 2,100 messages delivered. And so you got almost 1800 replies from different people on here. So able to activate so much activity on LinkedIn alone. And when you use a tool like this, you can send up to 200 connection requests a week versus doing 100 manually.

Clark Willcox [00:28:17]:
Right. So there’s some this again the power of the volume here. And then becomes, okay, are we doing volume the right way? And so that’s the math behind the business development success or just candidate success. Here is you can send up to 10,000 connection requests in a year. Let’s say an average connection rate of 25%. I see 10%, I see 20, I see 80. I’ve seen campaigns that have turned millions of clients to get a 12% connection rate. I’ve seen connection rate campaigns at 80% that do nothing.

Clark Willcox [00:28:44]:
So there’s a lot more that goes into those numbers. But just even in the basic numbers, you could easily start 500, at minimum 1500 conversations, especially if you’re doing more marketing, get some inbound every year. Like how many of those people do you actually need to become great clients? Right? So if you get the right volume, intentional volume going, you’re going to have so many conversations that I had a client call right before this presentation. He’s like, I don’t necessarily need to reply to everyone. He’s like, but there’s some people that are replying to me that are absolute gems. And he’s like, I’m already, I’ve already built a ton this year. I’m playing with house money so I can be strategic. But he like wants to keep the volume going because he knows that that’s just going to keep building and keep giving him more of the opportunities.

Clark Willcox [00:29:27]:
So Some of the automation tips, right? You want to use cloud based software, no extensions. I cover the 200 connection requests. Be intentional with your list. Building Sales Navigator, which I’ll get into a little bit. Building out account list, right? How you’re leveraging either like zoom, if you have different tools and like data centers that you have and everything else. Like you want to be really intentional, right? If you have, obviously if you have cre, like and you have say project managers, all that, you get the LinkedIn URLs right? Like connect specifically with those people, right? Leverage the stuff that’s already in your CRE to get even more out of, out of LinkedIn and be intentional with that. That is critical to having success because you want to be excited about who you’re interacting with in your inbox. And obviously messaging that doesn’t spam.

Clark Willcox [00:30:09]:
Everyone is used to being pitched and the cadence matters. A lot of people with cold email do like one a day for four days or whatever else that does not fly on LinkedIn. Typically you want to space stuff out once a week. If so, give or take a day or a few days, could be once every couple weeks, you want to space out the cadence more. Because I’ve gotten hit up every day for four days. I’m like, I’ve been on vacation, I took a long weekend. It’s like by day three they’re like, oh, I guess you hate me, Clark. Like, good, have a good life.

Clark Willcox [00:30:36]:
I’m like, what? Like, it was a long weekend. So you want to be really careful with the cadence and the messaging and just the tone that you’re using with LinkedIn. But the end goal with this, I’ve seen people save 5, 20 hours per week and just top of funnel outreach and prospecting. And the more it’s like a good role that you’re working on, the better the intake, the more work you do on the front end to do this the right way, the better the results and the happier you’re going to be on the back end. And then 20% connection rate, 5% reply rate of all tasks and messages sent out is typically what we see. But again, this can be completely different across the board, right? I’ve had people right now that are at 50% connection rate and 20% reply rate. And then like again, it’s going to be different based on what you’re bringing to the table, your network, your industry titles and what your goal and your aim is with the approach and the messaging. And so remember, now that anyone can automate, everyone is pitching.

Clark Willcox [00:31:30]:
It’s easy to sign up for a tool. You can do it in this call and launch a campaign during the time of this presentation. So the goal is, what’s working is how can I scale conversations, not just pitching. So if you combine with content, you can leave the door open. Really only 2% of the people are ready to buy right now. So you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot. You don’t want to block off the rest. It’s like, how can I capture the leads, the right now leads.

Clark Willcox [00:31:51]:
We’re just leaving the door open for people that are going to be right in the future. And this is what I mean. So this is the first month of outreach we did for a client last fall. 800 connector requests sent out. About 20, I’m not a mathematician, with about 20% ish connection rate. Right. 50 people replied. And of those he got immediate roles and he’s still working on roles with them to this day.

Clark Willcox [00:32:12]:
And then he got other people from this that he set meetings with that kind of kept building as he kept building his content. But that could be the activity it takes to get one super hot from that first message ready to buy right now. And if you look at the message, there’s no call to action. He just intentional. The profile and the prospecting and the message and the content all work together in his favor. All he had to do was introduce himself and he got business from it. Right. So trying to kind of break the myth of what’s possible that you have to pitch all the time to get business.

Clark Willcox [00:32:41]:
Sometimes it’s just the anti pitch that works. Let’s talk about the DMs a little bit more. Most hiring managers aren’t ready to talk right away, let alone hire, especially to another. No one wakes up in the morning like, I can’t wait to talk to another agency recruiter today. Right? This would be very weird if they did. The best clients typically in the agency world are ones that have tried agencies or maybe are using them right now, but they’re not getting the results right. But then you got to thread the needle with, okay, well has that role that maybe they want me to work on, like has it been combed through or whatever else. But typically it’s like they’ve already been able to pay.

Clark Willcox [00:33:14]:
Agencies have already willing to pay. They just need a, they need a higher level. Right. So if you can diagnose that correctly and all that, typically you can get higher pricing and higher everything. Right. But you have to demonstrate that you’re worth the time. You have the expertise you’re going to be a different experience, right? So using a messaging approach that caters you as the authority, frames you as the expert, frames you of like yeah, you’ve tried agencies, but you haven’t worked with me. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:33:40]:
And that’s really the tone that we’re looking for without being too egotistical and bragging and all that stuff. Right. There’s really kind of like a subtlety and all that that you want to do that with using open ended questions. Right? Because you want to get people to reveal where they’re at, be wary of anything that gets a yes or a no answer and have multiple touch points, whether it’s your sequence or manual follow up or content I include as a touch point. Right. You want to, to have all that, have people really build, build trust in you. This is an example because I told you I would give you examples of what it’s like. Right now in the inbox is again more messaging that the first message in purple is automated.

Clark Willcox [00:34:18]:
The last two are not automated. This recruiter got left on red. If you can’t see it on the laptop, if it’s hard to read, the message was September 18th, the prospect left them on red. Two months later, November 12th, they came back and needed help with a technician because this recruiter kept following up in email, on call and on content and they got an offer accepted within three to four weeks after that follow up. So if you are persistent, if you stay consistent with all the channels like you will be able to capture that, that timing. Another check in just turned into a $30,000 placement. Hey, congrats on the new role. You know, just saw it on LinkedIn, like nothing crazy.

Clark Willcox [00:34:56]:
Didn’t write do like hey, let me know if he could help hire or anything like that. He could have, he’s tried it but he tried not doing that. He kept posting and sure enough he got a retained search. This person followed back up which has this recruiter post three to four times a week. You know, left a good impression in the inbox and this person followed up again. They tried other agencies, it didn’t work. He came and retained and I think filled it like over the course of Thanksgiving, like within like two weeks. It was nuts.

Clark Willcox [00:35:20]:
The npc. I’ll cover this a little bit because everyone loves talking about this. I love the NPC approach, but it has been so diluted in terms of the meeting. You have to talk about cold npc, warm npc. There’s so many different things. I’m a big believer in the warm npc. What I mean by that is target industries, titles, companies and find the skill sets, you know, that they’re always looking to hire more of. If you’re trying to NPC a CEO, like good luck, right? There’s only so many of those openings.

Clark Willcox [00:35:47]:
It’s a much more delicate type search. But maintenance mechanics, like when I was out in recruiting in la, selling in la, it was food and beverage companies, always needed good mechanics, electricians especially on second and third shift. That was an easy NPC for me. So my recruiting team knew to bring that to the table for me. And that’s what I would flip around, right? Is those. So you want to, whether you know, you have the intel about the market or you ask specifically individual, right. In this case, you know, there was a conversation around like the types of roles, right? And my client here had just made placements and so he leveraged the placements he made, right. To get a client out of this, right? It’s a casual npc.

Clark Willcox [00:36:25]:
I did not spell casual right, by the way. Tell, you know, I’m, I’m using this, I made all this as a human for better or worse versus AI presentation, right? So it was just a great follow up. It’s leading with value, but it’s also very kind of casual. And you notice all this stuff is short and concise and to the point. There is not a wall of text that’s going on here and all these messages, right? Keep note of that. And so the strategy is like, be yourself, don’t use AI messaging. I’m seeing that more now than having to correct and scold a lot of people. A lot of clients stop.

Clark Willcox [00:36:55]:
They’re using not only AI for content but for messaging. And AI gives all this fluff and it repeats back the message the prospect said. And all this stuff versus like I just did this with a client today and I cut about 30, 35% of her message. It was much shorter and concise, right? And it was saying all the same things. And so people’s attention spans are like goldfish right now, right? Like just look at our behavior with reels and everything else. Like you gotta be really intentional with every word. Check in with people without it being about business, right? Find things to talk about other than hiring, like know your industry, know your vertical, know your lane. Care about what your prospects care about, right? Get to know them in and out.

Clark Willcox [00:37:32]:
It’s okay if you make a mistake, if you have a typo or whatever, who cares? You own it, right? Keep it light, not a big deal. People are like, oh, you got A typo in your post. It’s like, I don’t care. That’s how you know it’s not AI right. It’s just like you just kind of have fun with it, you know, and it’s studying the profile before you reply. Right. Do they have the company have job openings? Is it in their territory? Is it maybe under their purview, VP sales hiring for a territory manager? Are they posting content like comment? If they post, hey, we’re hiring for this, do not say, hey, I can help you or DM them like, and comment, hey, commenting for Reach. Because if it’s someone in your icp, your network is probably relatable to them and their network where I have clients literally closing clients and deals from just how they approach someone else’s comment section.

Clark Willcox [00:38:14]:
Right? A hiring manager’s comment section. And they’re not being pushy because the chances are if they’re posted publicly on it, they’re having trouble finding the role. So you comment for Reach now you follow up in three to four weeks. If you don’t hear anything, hey, how’s that search going? Because that’s when you’re able to kind of get in. If they post a job, they’re going to see how, what they can do. The first month or so, it’s that week three to six mark when it’s like, ah, it’s not going the way we hoped. That’s when they can really entertain an agency option. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:38:40]:
So a lot of this is again, fundamental agency practices and sales and all that. But how do we leverage it with a digital, you know, perspective? Mix in voice memos. I absolutely love voice memos. If you’re not using them, go to your LinkedIn app. If you go to the D, go to DM Me and you’ll see a little like microphone. I mean, if you got, If I get 50 voice memos after this, I’ll laugh. But you could test it out by sending me one if you want. Super valuable.

Clark Willcox [00:39:04]:
Especially when you have a lot to say. It’s maybe easier to do in a voice memo so it doesn’t look like a wallet. Text people hear your voice, what it’d be like to kind of talk to you and meet with you and all that good stuff. You do have a minute limit on those. Just keep that in mind. So if you get cut off either just keep it going and all that stuff. Resist the urge to pitch without having some sort of pain point aspirational, right? Like without showing some sort of value. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:39:28]:
And even the pitch, like, hey, if it works to brainstorm some of these ideas or consult or that kind of just talk shop, like, let me know, right? Get the meeting, get to know them and then figure out like if they make sense to even work with. Right. And some people get worried in the inbox about everyone could be a client. Like, yeah, they could. But most people aren’t. Like, most companies are not ready to be great clients, to be perfectly frank. And so if you have that in mind, it completely changes the tone from just like, I gotta sign this person, maybe I can get a meeting to like, ah, let me diagnose it and like do some good discovery and like see if it makes sense. And if not, like, that’s all good, right? And really changing that approach within your messaging and all that, your market’s going to resonate with that.

Clark Willcox [00:40:09]:
So you’re filtering them, right? Just as much as they are you. And then the more you post content, the more authority, the more trust, the more even if they leave you unread, they could follow back up. And then no wallet, text. Okay, let’s talk about some content. Because I’m at 341. So outreach alone right now just, it rarely is enough. Maybe it is enough for some people. You’re just not maximizing what you can.

Clark Willcox [00:40:29]:
So three messages for business development, four for the candidate. Outreach. That’s kind of the rule of thumb. Content’s the way to stay in front and it’s a way to stay in front without having salesy follow ups. Right? I mean, how many people right now are getting pitched like, oh, I guess you don’t need this or I guess you’re ignoring me so I’ll go outside. And it’s like, I got sick kids throwing up upstairs. I got client calls, I got to talk to the cre la crew. Like, I got stuff going on.

Clark Willcox [00:40:53]:
Like, that’s nothing personal, right? And so some people take it personally. That’s where content is kind of my way to like vent a little bit about like what I see going on or best practices and all that without like yelling at someone, right? You, you think about like when you get someone like direct feedback or you should do this, you should do that. Like, I don’t, I’m stubborn. I’m like, you don’t tell me what to do, right? But if I read a post, something smart, that person’s not calling me up by name, but I’m like, ooh, I do do that, don’t I?

Clark Willcox [00:41:19]:
Right?

Clark Willcox [00:41:19]:
Or I am having that problem. So like just the psychology around good content marketing, it’s a lot easier to receive the information than it is someone just calling me, you know, calling you out directly. And that’s how it can feel personalized. Right. Content that speaks to your ideal hiring manager’s pain points, challenges, aspirations, and that’s like hiring, but also maybe not hiring as well. Nurture relationship over time at scale. It’s part of the BD process and again, doesn’t have to go viral. We’ve talked about that simple content framework.

Clark Willcox [00:41:48]:
Share your stories, keep it confidential. You don’t have to name names. Pain agitate solution is just like a framework of like, highlight the pain. Like, are you struggling with like, not getting people? Like, not getting the right candidates on job boards. Right. Like, yep. I see this all the time you’re spending this amount on. Indeed.

Clark Willcox [00:42:04]:
And no one’s getting back to you. It’s not qualified. You don’t have the time to get through everything. Well, here’s the solution. You actually don’t need job boards. And the manager’s like, wait, what? I don’t need job boards? It’s like what we do is we don’t use job boards. We’re proactively recruiting candidates. We’re looking at this.

Clark Willcox [00:42:16]:
We know people are typically passively looking and some people that are good do apply. But you’re attracting, you’re inviting in a lot of noise versus we’re very intentional. And we’re only doing outreach to the people it makes sense to do outreach to. Right. So pain agitates solution, huh? Okay. That’s the value in using an agency recruiter that has this time and the strategy and the approach to go after only the people I really want to go after. The problem you post equals the attention that you get. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:42:42]:
So I hinted at this earlier, but I’ll double down on it. Talking about things that are problem for you gets other recruiters attention. Right. Or it’s like, oh, I set this many meetings or I did this or rise and shine. We got to grind as an agency owner. Like, that’s like, we don’t need the Gary Vee content. You’re going to speak to other recruiters and like now if that’s your market, that’s one thing. For most people that do that I talk to, it’s not their market.

Clark Willcox [00:43:04]:
They just fall into the trap of kind of talking about themselves. Right. So other recruiters identify with that. But we’re really talking to either hiring managers and or candidates. Right. If that’s your focus. So if you’re looking for business development, you’re talking too much about Job seeker stuff. If you’re looking for more like the right candidates and talking too much about the client side, so you got to gear it toward what your ideal market wants to see.

Clark Willcox [00:43:26]:
And so you want to talk about relevant industry topics. Right. This is, you know, content we created for a client that. That’s done pretty well, you know, back to back. Right. Interview fatigue. You need to hire people and all that. Like, what are the mistakes that they are making? And this is obviously getting engagement.

Clark Willcox [00:43:41]:
It’s getting. It’s for the clients, obviously. Candidates are definitely supporting this as well, but it’s driving impressions and likes and views. So if you’re a little bit more candid, focused, you’ll probably get more likes and views. Just kind of know that if you’re much more BD focused, right, it can be a little bit less on the likes and the impressions, but much more targeted. And you could still get. Still get clients. Tell people that you’re human.

Clark Willcox [00:44:03]:
This is a post I made four years ago now, my grandmother’s birthday on March 4th. And this is when I was just starting my journey. And it was, you know, she’s a super important person in my life and just kind of shared the story. And I wasn’t really trying to, like, do anything except get people, like, have the market, like, get to know me a little bit more. You don’t have to go this personal if you don’t want to. And sharing the human side, it does not have to be the majority of content. About 10% of your posts can be a little bit more on the personal side. It’s a good ratio that works, that works well for me, you know, and it just gives people a little bit more insight that I’m more than just some sort of like just random person on LinkedIn.

Clark Willcox [00:44:41]:
Right. And so, like, that’s. You want to mix in some of that beyond just kind of thought leadership and everything else. I’m probably not one that’s going to like, post pictures of my kids or anything else like that on LinkedIn. You know, I do that on Instagram, keep my Instagram private and stuff like that. So I do have like kind of my own lines that you can pick up your own lines for yourself too. There’s relevant headlines and topics, equal targeted impressions. Right.

Clark Willcox [00:45:03]:
Being clear, being direct to your vertical, your audience. You see a client here that’s doing pretty well on some of the stuff that we created for him and. Or consultant. I think we wrote two, if not three of these posts and you might have written another one, but really clear on the types of people that this is for. And then it’s a good post. Good frame and good content. He’s consistent. That gets a ton of retained searches because just of that consistency.

Clark Willcox [00:45:27]:
Isaac was someone we worked with again shortening the sales cycle. He was already a really good biller but everything for him was warm. Right. He wants to be super efficient. So he nothing was really cold anymore. And then his impressions came from his target market. Right. That’s the sweet spot that you want.

Clark Willcox [00:45:43]:
Right. If you’re in that. In that chair. Content reminders, it’s about them, not you. Tell the truth. Published is better than perfect. You want to be consistent. Two to three times a week is nice.

Clark Willcox [00:45:55]:
Three to five is even better. Focus on your ICP stories. Make people feel that they can relate to and it makes them remember you and Michael turned some of the initial content to 120k in placements of 4 months and now it’s again just the beginning. Content notes first degree are not the only people that see your stuff content spread to second third degree. I’ve had clients sign up that are still secondary connections I think. Right. It takes them a few weeks to even accept my connection request. Inbound leads can come from all sorts.

Clark Willcox [00:46:22]:
For me it’s been honestly better than even referrals. And my referrals come from my LinkedIn presence have been great. But honestly I’m like the inbound piece of it and people that have gone to know me from content is obviously the best source and to the point where like cold outbound doesn’t even make sense for me a lot of the time. So that’s a nice place to get to. And it is doable. You don’t need ads. This can all be organic. The tech stack that I’ve Talked about is 200 bucks a month for LinkedIn.

Clark Willcox [00:46:50]:
You got that creelit as your ATS to store everything. That’s all you need for a tech stack. And maybe you get some of these other AI stuff but you really don’t need it right now. $20 Cloud subscription is pretty nice and that’s really about it. And then leads are greater than likes. Do not ever forget that. All right, I’m going to give a little on Sales Navigator here. I know I’m running a little past the time I wanted to.

Clark Willcox [00:47:12]:
I love it. A lot of recruiters typically don’t know a ton about it, but it’s a great way to channel leads from LinkedIn or from ATS like Crelate and put them into sales Navigator building account list saving Your leads and then targeting leads and hiring managers just from companies you’ve had selected and put it that’s going to make your targeting way more intentional, right? You can find by hiring on LinkedIn by company headcount growth, right. Senior leadership changes which can always be a tell potentially on hiring and building out new team members. But there’s some really stuff that cool stuff that you can do here and then content led outbound. Look at your profile views, look at people that are posted on LinkedIn. Right? We have clients, they keep building the profile views. They are amazed at how many other ideal prospects are now paying attention to the profile from the system and the content that we’re launching for them and getting out there. And then they’re just fishing there.

Clark Willcox [00:48:00]:
They’re not having to fish from cold leads anymore. And so this is like the lead, the lead filter. All right, I’ll do a quick recap. So the 1, 2, right punch as outreach and content. You want to fix up your profile, be super targeted, have like intentional automation, have the sequences running, have the right content strategy, hit those pain points of your market, tell the stories, the how tos, the angles, a little bit of personal, all that coming together. But you’ll have thousands of new connections every year. You’ll have hundreds of thousands, if not a million impressions. We had a client just hit a million impressions in eight months.

Clark Willcox [00:48:32]:
He’s in the civil engineering space and so there’s like there’s so much power and visibility that you can have and he’s a solo operator. The unnecessary miners. This is all hard, right? Or maybe it was. But be intentional, have volume, have follow up, be chill, conversational, be competent and be patient. Right? A full pipeline does not equal closing stuff every single day. But you will do like play into the compounding effect. You can do nose newsletters, podcasts, in person, networking, leverages, all this kind of content stuff, video content. It’s nice.

Clark Willcox [00:48:59]:
It is definitely not a must have. Honestly, static text posts work way better than video content in our experience. Can we help? Yes. We have done for you. LinkedIn marketing, fashionable consulting group, coaching, private agency, all that good stuff. I had that in my like talks promo. There’s a free school community that we have a free tier that you could just like sign up. Now it’s free and you get some free playbooks and chat with us and all that stuff in there.

Clark Willcox [00:49:21]:
Connect with me on LinkedIn. If you want to apply to work with us, you can do that. I’ll check it out and see if it makes sense for us. To book some time to talk about. And that’s what I got.

Clark Willcox [00:49:30]:
You were running like a mile a minute at the end.

Clark Willcox [00:49:33]:
I know, I looked at the top. Crap. I want to answer some questions.

Clark Willcox [00:49:36]:
There was okay so far. Mim had a question about what does impressions on LinkedIn any value? What talk about impressions?

Clark Willcox [00:49:44]:
Yeah, it doesn’t guarantee they read the whole post technically, but if you get a. There’s. So I like the like to impression ratio. So if you get a post that I just had actually a client, I’m trying to think of the numbers and I got a screen share some more of the reporting on this. But then it got 19 likes and like 11,000 impressions. And I had someone got a post at 80 likes that’s like selfie or whatever with like a thousand impressions. The post of 19 likes is way more valuable, number one, because it showed me that people clicked. Read more.

Clark Willcox [00:50:17]:
And they were engaged the whole time. And so that is what LinkedIn is rewarding. And if you, you’ll see stuff that gets 6 likes or 15 likes from like 3 weeks ago populate in your feed, that’s people that you’re engaging with and it’s like, hey, you forgot to like, like or read this. It’ll give that back to you. So if you’re doing outreach and content consistently and you’re getting people in your market that are engaging with your stuff, LinkedIn’s gonna do the work for you. They’re gonna feed them your content. If they even gauge just at all. And the first two weeks you’re connected, they engage, like comment or view more on a post, they’re gonna, gonna, they’re, they’re going to feed more of your content to that prospect.

Clark Willcox [00:50:52]:
So it’s huge. So the impressions, if you look at the impressions and the analytics within a post, if look at the industries and the industries and all that on LinkedIn are imperfect, but they’ll give you a good gauge. Right. So I showed that construction, when there’s construction, I think there’s like civil industrial. Basically what it showed is about 70 to 80% of the people viewing that post were on point. And so that’s what you’re looking for. It’s not like super super exactly. There’s enough signals and data to understand, okay, the post that had 19 likes but 11,000 impressions, people maybe weren’t scared to like it or whatever else, but they were reading it was hitting a pain point.

Clark Willcox [00:51:29]:
It was talking about something that was relatable to them that they wanted to read more of. Right. And so those are signals to know that content is working way before you might even be getting inbound leads from it.

Clark Willcox [00:51:39]:
I love it. I mean, it’s always a question because it’s like, what is actually making the impact? So.

Clark Willcox [00:51:45]:
Yep.

Clark Willcox [00:51:46]:
Any other questions for Clark? Such great information. It’s the world in which we live every day.

Clark Willcox [00:51:53]:
Yeah. Hope I didn’t scare everyone off. I know it’s auctioneer mode a little bit, but there’s a lot of, lot of, lot of good stuff in there.

Clark Willcox [00:51:59]:
Well, honestly, there’s just so much to get through. So if you haven’t, again, follow Clark. Follow the podcast. Mim said, thank you. Follow his podcast. Oh, I mean, I think everyone. I think everyone today, except maybe one, had a podcast, which is. I know.

Clark Willcox [00:52:15]:
I love it. Always amazing insights. So thank you, thank you, thank you. We hope you found today’s session insightful and inspiring. Remember to stay tuned in the upcoming weeks as we’ll be sharing all of this amazing content of our virtual conference. If you miss any part of it, don’t forget to subscribe to our show so you don’t miss anything upcoming. And if you like this valuable content, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your network and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Clark Willcox [00:52:48]:
Together we’re building a community of growth and learning. Until next time,Kortney Harmon [00:00:00]:
Now for the harsh truth about technology. If your recruiting tech stack isn’t built on a living platform that continuously evolves with AI, it’s not an asset, it’s dragging you into irrelevance. So what exactly is a living platform? It’s the difference between survival and extinction. In recruiting, it evolves without you having to push it. Traditional systems require you to upgrade them. Living platforms upgrade themselves. It’s putting something in the box. And while you put it in the box, it’s getting sunlight, it’s getting water, it’s getting nutrition.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:35]:
To grow and thrive and be bigger every day. It gets smarter every day. Hi, I’m Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry Relations at crelate. Welcome to FDE Express, a short, sweet format of the Full Desk Experience, a Crelate original podcast. We’ll be diving into specific topics to show you how you grow your firm within 10 minutes or less. Each episode will cover quick hit topics to give you inspiration and food for thought for your talent businesses. Welcome back to the Fulldesk Experience where we talk about growth blockers across your people, process and tech. I’m your host, Kortney Harmon, Director of Industry Relations here at Crelate, and today we’re tackling the brutal truth that many in our industry do not want to hear.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:29]:
The traditional way you’ve been doing business in recruiting for decades is dead in a post AI world. That’s right, I said it dead. Let’s be completely transparent. If you’re still counting calls, submissions, interviews the same way you did five years ago, you’re not just falling behind, you’re already irrelevant. In an industry becoming transformed by AI. Those traditional metrics aren’t just failing to drive growth, they’re actually killing your business. So in this recruiting world, we’ve all been accustomed to certain metrics, me included the number of calls, your number of submissions, your number of interviews, and even placements. The uncomfortable truth is recruiting isn’t about filling seats.

Kortney Harmon [00:02:16]:
It’s actually about driving different business results. And your outdated KPIs are actually missing the point entirely. I had a call with a recruiting company last year. Each person on their team was actually making 50 calls daily, sending hundreds of LinkedIn messages weekly, submitting dozens of candidates. Their activity metrics looked incredible on paper, but as we dug deeper, their placement rates has actually dropped 15% and consultation retention was at an all time low. Our teams often get stuck in this hamster wheel of manual data. Essentially, it’s like a chore and almost never get to the point of actually producing meaningful results. Does that sound familiar? This is the death spiral of recruiting metrics and it is evolving drastically in this post AI world.

Kortney Harmon [00:03:08]:
Now let me be brutally honest, if you’re not leveraging AI in your recruiting workflows, you might as well close up shop now because your competitors who are will probably bury you in the next 18 months. Tech is evolving so fast it’s hard to keep up with. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to one of our previous episodes with Aaron Elder, the CEO here at Crelate, I encourage you to do so. He talked about that post AI world and what that means. The recruiting landscape has changed with the rise of AI technology. We’ve talked about it and and some conservative estimates show that AI driven changes will replace about 25% of jobs worldwide by 2026. And if we think recruiters or part of recruiting is immune, we probably need to think again. So let’s talk about some warning signs to show that you’re stuck on this KPI hamster wheel in the AI era.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:04]:
Number one, if you’re still doing the work AI could and should handle, that’s your first warning sign. Your team possibly is spending hours on tasks that AI systems could complete in minutes. It isn’t just efficient, it’s actually professional malpractice. In 2025, you’re falling behind by the minute. Number two warning sign is that your data lives in silos, your metrics live in different systems. And it happens. But the problem is that those systems don’t communicate. They’re preventing you from seeing the complete picture.

Kortney Harmon [00:04:40]:
In an AI era, isolated data just limits you and it actually is active sabotage towards your data and your growth of your firms. And number three, you’re looking backwards, not forwards. If you’re measuring what happened yesterday instead of what AI can predict tomorrow, you’re driving your business looking only in the review mirror. How’s that working out for you? The transition from startup to scale up is a big leap with unexpected hurdles. The same applies to transitioning from traditional recruiting to AI powered recruiting. Many aren’t going to make it, but for those who will, they’re going to thrive. So now that we’ve confronted the harsh reality, let’s talk solutions. I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable.

Kortney Harmon [00:05:29]:
Your comfort zone is potentially what could be killing your business. We’re done being on this hamster wheel of trying to solve problems ourselves. It’s time to pull up the help chain. The help is AI and it’s non negotiable. It’s on like electricity in the background. So when you’re assessing your current recruiting KPIs through a lens of AI. You need to ask yourself, why are humans doing the work that AI should handle? If your recruiters are manually searching on LinkedIn, are you wasting human capital? Are you predicting or reporting? If your metrics can’t tell you which candidates will succeed before you hire them, your metrics might be a little dated. Can your platform learn or is it brain dead? A static system in a dynamic world isn’t just limiting, it’s suicide.

Kortney Harmon [00:06:21]:
So here’s the hard truth. If you’re still measuring the number of calls recruiters are making, instead of measuring AI powered engagement quality, the quality, not the quantity, you don’t just have a metrics problem, you potentially have a leadership problem. So let’s talk about how well functioning recruiting operations can deteriorate into exhausting cycles without the right technology foundation. This decline isn’t gradual anymore. It’s about acceleration towards being obsolete again. Did you see the episode with Aaron? He talked about the evolution of AI in the last six months. And what was being talked about last week. In this world where AI can source screen engage candidates around the clock, running your recruiting desk with purely human effort isn’t just efficient, it can be negligent.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:14]:
Here’s the warning signs. Your recruiting operations has shifted from a well oiled machine to the hamster wheel in the AI era. Number one, your recruiters are doing robot work. If your team is spending hours researching candidates when AI could be doing this automatically, we’re probably paying humans a premium rate to do the work that machines could do much better. Number two, your tech stack is a disconnected mess. We talked about those data silos. If your tools don’t talk to each other, you don’t have a technology ecosystem. It’s the junkyard.

Kortney Harmon [00:07:49]:
It’s not a platform to help your teams scale. And maybe, just maybe, your teams actually hate their jobs. When recruiters spend all day on repetitive tasks instead of building relationships, they’re very unhappy. It’s trying to keep up with all the things that happen in our work days that we just can’t keep up with. And the most dangerous thing about this KPI hamster wheel is that it feels like work. It’s just motion without progress. Your 60 hour work week means nothing if an AI system can’t produce better results in shorter time. Your expectations, your metrics, your output is going to change drastically in the next few months and even year.

Kortney Harmon [00:08:36]:
So let’s talk about seven steps to better recruiting metrics in this AI era. So let’s get Practical. I’m not here to coddle you. I’m here to save your business. The foundational success of AI integration isn’t a gentle evolution. It’s truly a radical transformation. The first thing you have to do in step one is you have to first stop measuring busy work. If you’re celebrating how many calls your recruiters are making, you’re measuring effort, not results.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:06]:
It’s like praising someone for how much they sweat instead of how far they ran. Step number two, we need to embrace AI specific outcomes. So in this AI era, if your human is handling a task that AI could. You’re not running a recruiting business, you’re running museum potentially of obsolete practices. We need to change how we think. Step number three, implement radical workflow automations. And many of you are doing this already. AI doesn’t just speed things up, it fundamentally transform what’s possible.

Kortney Harmon [00:09:40]:
If you’re just using AI to do old things faster, you can put a rocket engine on a horse cart. So hopefully you have those automations set up to help you move faster. Step number four, build a digital living platform, not a digital coffin. Most ATS systems aren’t just platforms. They’re where good data goes to die. A living platform evolves. Traditional systems just age. We don’t want to put things in a box just to have them in a box.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:13]:
Step number five, we have to deploy AI agents aggressively. Every hour your recruiter spends on research, initial outreach, or scheduling, an hour is wasted time. AI could handle those tasks for you. Step number six, redefine what actually recruiters do. And this is going to change so much in the next six months. The recruiter of 2025, who isn’t an AI wrangler, relationship builder and strategic advisor, isn’t a modern recruiter. We have to evolve how we’re handling our businesses and what a recruiter looks like in this day and age. So now step number seven is evolve or die.

Kortney Harmon [00:10:55]:
There’s no middle ground anymore. You’re either committed to continuous AI evolvement and evolution, or you’re preparing for your business’s obituary. So we’ve talked about the people and the process aspect of getting the KPI hamster wheel. Now for the harsh truth about technology. If your recruiting tech stack isn’t built on a living platform that continuously evolves with AI, it’s not an asset, it’s dragging you into irrelevance. So what exactly is a living platform? It’s the difference between survival and extinction. In recruiting, it evolves without you having to push it. Traditional systems require you to Upgrade them.

Kortney Harmon [00:11:36]:
Living platforms upgrade themselves. It’s putting something in the box. And while you put it in the box, it’s getting sunlight, it’s getting water, it’s getting nutrition. To grow and thrive and be bigger every day. It gets smarter every day. Your platform isn’t measurably more intelligent this month than last month. If it’s not alive, it’s decaying. It connects everything.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:00]:
Without human intervention, manual Data entry in 2025 isn’t just efficient, it’s something that shouldn’t happen anymore, alone, on its own. And a living platform doesn’t just store data for you, it activates it. Data sitting unused in your system isn’t an asset, it’s a wasted opportunity. We’ve all heard if it’s not in the system, it didn’t happen. So let me share a vision of what recruitment looks like with a living platform as your foundation. Imagine starting your day not with a to do list of manual tasks, but with a strategic briefing from your AI agent that you’ve already completed yesterday’s to do list while you slept. Your sourcing agent has already identified and Pre qualified 25 candidates overnight. Your outreach agent has personalized and sent communication with 40% response rate.

Kortney Harmon [00:12:50]:
Your analytics agent alerts you potential issues before they even become problems. This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening now. And if it’s not happening in your business, you’re already behind. So as we wrap up today’s episode, let me be crystal clear. The future of recruiting doesn’t belong to the hardest working or the most experienced any longer. It belongs to those who harness AI most effectively. Human effort without AI amplification is just becoming inefficient.

Kortney Harmon [00:13:19]:
The recruiters who thrive won’t be those working harder on the hamster wheel, but those who will leverage AI agents to handle routine tasks while focusing on their human talents is where it’s going to make the most impact. So if you want to continue to learn from experts on time management, networking, career development, overcoming burnout, that’s commendable. But if you’re not simultaneously implementing AI through your recruiting practices, then you’re arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. So I would encourage you to start by assessing your current technology foundation. Is it a static system that requires consistent manual updates, or is it a living platform that evolves with the rapidly changing recruiting landscape that we are in today? The future isn’t just coming, it’s already here. Dividing our industry into two groups. Those who embrace AI and those who will work for them. Thank you so much for your time today.

Kortney Harmon [00:14:16]:
This is an ever changing topic that we will continue to discuss and bring to the forefront of our industry. So stay tuned as we continue to talk about the recruiting world. In a post AI era, evolution isn’t just optional, it’s existential. That’s all for today’s episode of FDE Express. I’m Kortney Harmon with Crelate. If you have any questions or topics you’d like for us to cover in future episodes, please feel free to submit them to [email protected] or ask us live next session. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. Wherever you listen and see, sign up for our monthly events to keep learning and growing your business.

Kortney Harmon [00:15:01]:
Thanks for tuning in to FDE Express, a short and sweet format of the full desk experience. We’ll see you next time.