Funny story:
A few years ago, Intro Limited got hired to find a particular type of VP for a lifestyle brand. To kick off the search, the company gave us a list of 90 people from their previous recruiter. “We hated all of these people. Bring us better candidates.”
I thought wow, the previous recruiter presented 90 people?! All of them a hard no? And now it's our turn? (This is pretty normal actually. So we dug in.)
On that long list, I saw many familiar names, but one stuck out. We’ll call her Annie. I called the company. “Why didn’t you like Annie?”
“We never talked to her. We just dismissed her profile because we don’t like the brand she comes from.”
I gave them 5 unexpected reasons why Annie was likely the right person for their VP role.“OK, we’ll take a second look at Annie. Set up an interview. But meanwhile, show us more people.”
We showed them 40 more people. They interviewed and deliberated. For 4 months.
Then they hired Annie.
What was the difference between us presenting Annie, vs. the other recruiter presenting her? I came to find out that the other recruiter didn’t really KNOW most of the 90 people that they had shown. Their “presentation” was basically a data dump. Keyword: Streetwear. Download .CSV.
We had known Annie for 6 years; she was a friend who we deeply admired. I had worked with her professionally too, and seen her capabilities. With the firsthand context that we provided, Annie was a completely different person in the company’s eyes.
3 years later, Annie is still at that company, exceeding expectations.
But this is not a story about recruiting, it’s about relationship building. A lot of people believe that merit should stand on its own, but let me tell you: the higher the stakes, the more important relationships are.
Another story:
A few years back my baby daughter needed an important but very specific surgery. The doctor we had been assigned was quite, to use the parlance of our times, mid. Stressed out and scared, we mentioned this to our neighbor, also a doctor. She had become a dear friend, and loved our daughter. “Oh, let me connect you to Dr. Smith. He specializes in this. He’s usually booked up, but we’re close. He’ll take you on.”
We had previously attempted to get in touch with Dr. Smith, but to no avail. Now, he was a friend of a friend. A week later, he was our doctor.
Dr. Smith was not mid. I asked him how many times he’d performed this specific surgery on a child. He chuckled and said “I stopped counting at 2,500.” A month later my daughter was as good as new.
Reminder to my friends and to myself:
“Small circle big checks” looks cool on a tee shirt, but “huge community of high quality people who share values and do nice things for each other” might be a more joyful reality.
