How To Identify And Retain Fantastic Talent with Patrick Cahill of #twiceasnice Recruiting
The movement that could help get the most people doing the most good is to find how to take your everyday professional knowledge and see how they can be leveraged to assist and organization focused on helping others.
As a part of my HR Strategy Series, I’m talking to top experts in the field to teach prospects what hiring managers are actually looking for, while also supporting business leaders in their hiring and retention strategies. Today I had the pleasure of talking with Patrick Cahill.
Patrick Cahill is an entrepreneur and the founder of #twiceasnice Recruiting, a fast-growing firm that helps clients save money and hire better with custom-built searches, a 9.9% fee, and an 18-month guarantee. He has a background in marketing and lead generation, and prior to launching #twiceasnice, Patrick launched two marketing-based service firms he subsequently sold.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! First, please tell us what brought you to this specific career path?
As an entrepreneur, it’s always been an interest since I can remember. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of growing an organization, from my first lemonade stand that I expanded to two locations to my current firm, #twiceasnice Recruiting.
I got involved in supporting HR and talent acquisition because I could not understand why the significant inefficiencies of the recruiting industry were accepted as ‘the way it has to be.’ I grew increasingly excited about the idea of introducing a better way until I finally did.
Can you share the most interesting or funny story that happened to you since you started this career and what lesson you learned from that?
One of the best parts of supporting hiring across North America, industries, and roles is how much I get to learn about what makes our economy tick. From the fact, there are still active salt mines in the US, how farmed Salmon are fed from Alaska to Chile to maintain their organic status, to the changing trends in backend eCommerce technology. It’s fascinating and keeps each day feeling like a business school with the best case studies.
Are you working on any exciting new projects at your company? How is this helping people?
Our entire company is an exciting project — we’re showing that you can build a recruiting firm that aligns its team with client needs, finds great talent, charges half of the industry norm and stands behind your work 6x longer than the most expensive and established players. And we’ve gone from an ‘idea’ just a few years ago to now in the top ~5% of the industry.
We’re helping hundreds of organizations of all sizes, many that could not afford the traditional recruiting model, access world-class recruiting services and connect with talent that may never have found out about what ends up being the perfect opportunity. It’s exciting AND so clear how we’re helping.
Wonderful. Now let’s jump into the main focus of our series. Hiring can be very time consuming and difficult. Can you share 5 techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill?
Define what you actually need — in skillset and personality
Really drill down the critical skills. Forgetting one is as much of an error as adding an unnecessary requirement. If the person has the required skills, interview. Don’t let other biases get in the way of finding a great hire.
Develop an advertised title that connects with the potential candidate
Many job boards are effectively search engines. If you title your job wrong, many of your potential candidates will never find you. What title would you ideal candidate think about looking for? As opposed to what do you call them internally?
Reach out to passive candidates
Zoominfo and Linkedin are great resources to find people that currently have a job you know make them a likely fit for yours AND they can give you access to a way to contact that person. Cold outreach can be a lot of work but it can uncover candidates you’d never get to speak with otherwise.
Aggressively advertise
Post ads across the major boards. Refresh. Try different titles. Refresh. Post in surrounding, commutable communities. Refresh. The days of ‘we posted an ad 2 months ago…’ are over.
Dedicate the time necessary to act decisively
As the results pour in from the above four techniques, make sure you’ve set aside the time to quickly review resumes, reach out to candidates, and push winners through a fast, thorough hiring process. Great talent can be hard to find and you want to make sure you’re ready to act (before others) when you see ‘the one.’ Sometimes this requires setting expectations with others involved in the hiring process — if they want/require involvement in the decision making — they need to make themselves available.
With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?
- Properly positioned ads
- Cold outreach
- Employee referrals
What are the 3 most effective strategies you use to retain employees?
- Transparency regarding organizational strategy, performance, and goals
- Commitment to doing right by our clients
- Work from home
In your experience, is it important for HR to keep up with the latest trends? If so, please share an example of what this might look like.
Of course, it’s important — in regards to talent acquisition alone, falling behind can be the difference between finding the talent needed to grow and not finding enough talent to stay afloat. Not understanding the best practices around speed to hire, where talent is looking for roles, and the tools available to uncover interesting passive talent could be devastating in the ongoing battle to acquire talent.
What are some creative ways to increase the value provided to employees without breaking the bank?
- Allow employees to take initiatives of personal interest that allow them to grow professionally
- Allow employees to work from home
- Expose employees to a great spectrum of business activities to help develop a greater understanding of your product, client, business and/or industry
- Provide opportunities for employees to take online courses
- Provide clear insight into how the company growth plans and the ways that could impact the employee's career
- Make sure employees are treated with respect (it’s free and not as universal as you’d expect)
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Such a big question!
My background is marketing and lead generation. I was lucky enough to learn that a Boston-area non-profit focused on helping provide clean water access to rural villages needed marketing expertise. So, I began volunteering with the non-profit, providing them with much of the same exact insight I did my paying clients (except an I enjoyed it a lot more!). Fast forward a few years and I’ve become a board member of the organization and have seen the organization increase its impacts significantly, we now sustainably serve over 100,00 people.
I share this because the movement that could help get the most people doing the most good is to find how to take your everyday professional knowledge and see how they can be leveraged to assist and organization focused on helping others. There are so many worthy causes and organizations and so much expertise available to be tapped! Bonus: it can be very personally rewarding.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how that was relevant to you in your life?
“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” — The fictional motto of Life Magazine from the 2013 movie The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
Yes, it’s from a fictional movie but the moment I saw it on the screen, I took a photo of it. I don’t think a written quote had ever more immediately resonated. In business and in life, I always want to push boundaries and explore the possibility. What if? Is this possible? But what makes it most rewarding are the relationships built through the process of exploration both out of necessity and the fun! It’s this attitude that has allowed me to be so lucky as to work with some people across decades and 2 or 3 companies.
We are very blessed to have some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have a private lunch with, and why?
Congratulations on your impressive readership! I’m not a big ‘celebrity guy’ so I’d enjoy having lunch with anyone in business who are trying to grow their organization. People who understand the stresses and rewards of taking an idea and forging into a force that changes lives, organizations, and industries. That’d be the basis of a fun lunch conversation (for me).
Thank you so much for these fantastic insights!
About the Author: Kage Spatz went from inner-city Teacher to Forbes-ft. CEO — currently growing companies of all sizes by leveraging the same team used to scale the online version of an NBA franchise and several F500 (without the same overhead). Apply today to better support your marketing efforts and serve more clients with Spacetwin.
