Latest / Recruiting Evolution / FDE+ Executive Search | Leveraging Content and Social Media to Propel Executive Search Firms with Dandan Zhu, Founder - DG Recruit

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FDE+ Executive Search | Leveraging Content and Social Media to Propel Executive Search Firms with Dandan Zhu, Founder - DG Recruit · Recruiting Evolution

• Dandan Zhu [00:00:00]: Too often people get bogged down by perfectionism. They're like, I need this to look so beautiful. I need it to look like I paid someone millions of dollars. I hired a marketing agency. I need somebody to create these amazing aesthetical pieces. Everything has to be perfection. And that does impact on how much you're able to generate because you're holding yourself back with this kind of fear of how you're going to be perceived. It gets in their way. Dandan Zhu [00:00:29]: So you have to get used to stop focusing on everything needed to be perfect and just start hitting the reps. Like I said, I'm going to do two posts a week. I'm going to do them. They don't have to be Shakespearean level imperfection. They just need to get done at that point. Kortney Harmon [00:00:45]: Welcome to the full desk experience. I'm your host Kortney Harmon. In the next few weeks, we're going to be specifically talking to the executive search industry and leaders who are ready to break through to their next revenue milestone. Over the next few weeks, we're going to deep dive into proven strategies that have helped top search firms scale. From steady performers to industry powerhouses, this series is going to provide you with actionable intelligence that you need to scale and have sustainable growth. Each one of these upcoming episodes is going to bring you conversations from industry veterans who have successfully navigated the challenges you're facing right now. Tune in over the next few weeks. Join us as we uncover the strategic shifts necessary to transform your practice and capture high value opportunities. Kortney Harmon [00:01:29]: Opportunities that are going to truly define your firm's revenue. Thank you for joining us today. Whether you're attending live or catching a replay, I realized, hey, Summit is just a smidge behind us. We deeply appreciate you carving out time and your busy schedules to be a part of this exclusive online conference specifically geared to executive search. So with all of that being said today, we've really gathered some really exceptional leaders who are going to share, dare I say, battle tested strategies to take your executive search firm to that next revenue milestone. Throughout your sessions today, you're gonna not just hear of the survive till 25. The conversation of this year is growth in 26. It doesn't have that fancy nice little alliteration, but that's what we're here for. Kortney Harmon [00:02:23]: So you're going to figure out and hear things like building and developing high performing recruiting teams, leveraging content to establish yourself as a unique place in the or, partner in the market, implementing AI tools. There are so many things I am so excited. So whether you are here for actionable Blueprints things that you can change today, breaking 5 million mark or just trying to get to the 5 million mark or then make your next 5 million. We have carefully designed the strategies and tactics and inspiration to get you there. So Dandan, the floor is yours. But I want to give you a brief introduction for our listeners. So correct me what I don't get right, but I believe at just 23, you discovered your calling into recruitment. You were quickly rising to build a technical executive search practice, I think in pharmaceuticals. Kortney Harmon [00:03:11]: And you really perfected that millionaire trifecta, I think you called that. Now, as a founder of DG Recruit, a leading voice in agency recruitment, you are really teaching people writing books. You have agency recruitment 101 in really developing training programs. And I'm excited because you're going to talk about how to transform your executive search practice through social media and branding and content. And you already Talked about making TikTok videos today and all of the other things that you've done. Dandan Zhu [00:03:40]: So teach us your ways. Kortney Harmon [00:03:41]: I am here to listen. Dandan Zhu [00:03:44]: Sounds great. You got everything right. So, yeah, I started off in the business at a very young age, fell in love with it. And actually, you know what's funny? Back in the day, 2011 to 2016, when I worked at a big recruitment agency, I never once invested at all in social media because I think even at that time it wasn't like a big deal. Nobody was really doing it. And when I started my own company and when I quit employment in 2016, I really became a student and started reading books. And that's what this presentation is going to have for you. It's going to have resources that you can look into as well and really just try to understand, like, what does business 2.0 look like today? It's a lot different than selling 1.0 that I was trained in. Dandan Zhu [00:04:35]: But I'm not saying it's gone away. So the good news is it's not gone. It's just now amplified by the power of content. So I want to get started with our presentation. Basically, this just covers what Kortney introduced about me, which was I spent five years in pharmaceutical life sciences search, culminating in running my own executive search desk on a full desk basis. So billing, building out clients on my own, filling all the requisitions on my own. And then when 2016 hit, I really was figuring out what to do after employment. At that point, I had reached financial freedom and it really gave me an opportunity to think about what would I do. Dandan Zhu [00:05:13]: And that landed me into running my own recruitment practice. DG Recruit. And this is a very unique business that is all servicing recruitment agencies. That's my customer. And the candidate that I look for for these recruitment agencies are usually these top dealers, the movers and shakers, the rainmakers, the sales folks. Sometimes we also will do like recruiter side only folks. But that only depends on per client need. So this rec to rec market, what I really started to do was implement a lot of the things I learned in 2016-2018 around content creation. Dandan Zhu [00:05:45]: I had already started creating a lot of content on LinkedIn. And that's kind of what I again want to show you. This visualization of kind of what I saw the world change. This is sort of traditional prospecting methods. You have your cold calling, you have your email NPCs, your most placeable candidate, your beautiful executive profiles, your LinkedIn outreach and other and other sales tactics are such as advertising or podcast interviews, events that you're going to do, put on for your company, sponsoring webinars, conferences that you'll go to slash put on. These are your traditional prospecting methods. And by no means are they going away. It's just now 2.0 we're adding in the future, which is this element of content. Dandan Zhu [00:06:26]: Content is very much all the rage. And before we jump to how and what I want to go through what exactly constitutes as content for us specifically in search? Because I think there's a wider discussion of like marketing and marketing is great and all, but it's not really tied to our specific industry. Our specific industry of recruitment and executive search relies on unique talking points. And it's not just whatever you want. It should be highly curated. You could talk about your most placeable candidates, your profiles, executives that you represent, the companies that you work with. Right. That's one type of content. Dandan Zhu [00:07:04]: Other content could be promotional content about your firm, about yourself, about how you work. These are all promotional content as well as, hey, I'm going to run a webinar, come to my webinar. That's promotional videos. This could be educational nature. This could be again highlighting some top people in your industry to get on a video with you interviews. You see a lot of executive search firms featuring their network. So this is where again there is a lot of different variety of content. It could also extend to things like a post. Dandan Zhu [00:07:36]: A LinkedIn post is very much a content piece. Articles. LinkedIn allows you to put out free articles as well. You can put out articles on your own webpage. This is not platform specific. These are just things that you can do that would constitute a Content piece. Content also envelops your own email mailing lists, your own newsletters that you want to send to your network. And so which platforms are popular for content? This really does depend on who you're targeting. Dandan Zhu [00:08:08]: Everybody has a different strategy. Everybody's network tends to use different platforms. Right. LinkedIn, I think, is the most popular one as it relates to executives, especially traditional job careers that are like, white collar. LinkedIn is pretty much it. That's where like 90% of our efforts are focused upon. But there are other niches that other people use. One that comes to mind is like fishbowl for consultants. Dandan Zhu [00:08:37]: Right. That is a platform that they commonly use. So you kind of have to go where your network is. For us, a lot of people, certainly in white collar recruitment, sales and executive search, you're looking at LinkedIn now, why is content so important today and what have I seen it do for people? It does do something I call the pre sell. So something where you're trying to message a bunch of people. Without an online presence, your response rates potentially are lower. Then if you did have a robust content mechanism and apparatus, your conversion rates actually will increase just because of the impact of brand recognition, brand value. So that could mean selling to clients, they have a familiarity with the brand. Dandan Zhu [00:09:26]: It's not just a complete cold call, it's actually more or less warm because now they've seen you on the worldwide net, right? The Internet, it's a powerful selling tool. Same with candidates. By the time you do call the candidate, there is some sort of brand recognition with your company and what it does. So there's an actual real case for social media, not just being elective, but truly being a brand asset that if you do it correctly, it does sell and promote you to your customer base, which is a really great thing. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone who you talk to is like, actually, I recognize you. And this does happen quite often for us at DG Recruit because we spend a lot of time curating content to a point where people who talk to us are like, literally, it feels like we're talking to like a celebrity in the space. You literally can become the influencer for your market. And I know influencing is constantly conflated with like makeup tutorials or like selling a facial cream or selling a car or selling whatever SaaS product. Dandan Zhu [00:10:32]: Actually, influencing does exist also in the talent space because there are people within your niche that are interested, which ultimately contributes to market share. You're building market share within your niche because of the way you are presenting yourself and your Business and the investment you've made into social media, into content. Now lastly, I want to mention IR internal recruitment. When you have a stronger social media presence that again translates into tangible value when you're trying to grow your company. And so many recruitment firm owners have been doing this really well. And the scary thing, I think especially for traditional executive search which is very hush hush, there is this like, I don't know, people are too paranoid, they're paranoid about confidentiality, they'd rather say nothing than to say something, than to get in trouble for it. And so what happens is what you're doing as a whole, you're seeing a lot more contingent recruiters snatch up C level opportunities and they're doing it really well because they're not scared. They're putting out tons of content, becoming the market leader, becoming the brand leader for those niches and they're now winning all of these retained searches and they're definitely taking market share because they're not afraid to get in the fray and also increases their internal recruitment efforts because now they're the highly visible cybersecurity exec search firm or finance search firm. Dandan Zhu [00:12:02]: Now you're seeing a lot of contingent recruiters getting into the space of how easy is it just to sell retained? It's not, it's not rocket science, right? So now you're seeing this market share is becoming a real problem because the competitive forces are such that zero barriers to entry when it comes to making content. So right now, you know, a lot of people are still getting by. I'm going to go back to this traditional prospecting methods. A lot of people are still getting by with this and that's fine. They're still getting Rex through their worm network. They're still winning, you know, candidates through their known network. But right now what you're seeing down the line five to ten years from now you will see that there's a lot more market conglomeration, consolidation through those with this stronger social media presence. And that is the power of true marketing. Dandan Zhu [00:12:49]: Right? Influencing marketing. And what's more powerful is that you're the one doing the influencing. It's your own company that you're promoting. Okay, so we've talked about why it's important. Now let's talk about like some to do's. You want to get started. You've never done this before. You want some basic tips on content. Dandan Zhu [00:13:07]: I always say start out with your niche. This is where I went wrong. When I first started creating content there was a lot of elements that I wanted to talk about whether it was my interest into real estate investing and financial wealth and financial freedom, or am I talking about recruitment, how much I love this career and how much it helped me, or it was career advice. Hey, this is what you should do. If you're a random job seeker, that deception dissipates the power of your messaging. It gets in the way of building a true audience that can then buy from you because you're trying to capture too many markets at once. If you're running a search firm that's focusing on XYZ Field, that's an easy niche to immediately just focus your content on that. It should be highly curated niche content on your specific market value to again build your market presence, build that brand recognition, build it upon your SME knowledge, subject matter, expertise, knowledge, right? You want to be the SME in X, Y, Z space. Dandan Zhu [00:14:11]: That's what your niche should be on. So it should be very tight. It shouldn't be too diverse. It should be very, very clear. What is your claim to fame? Another key tip for you as it relates to content is consistency. Too often companies and or individuals will say, we're going to try this out for the next two, three weeks and see how it goes. Then they see that the response rate is like 3 likes, 2 shares, 1 comment and they're like, whatever. You're not going to see immediate wins. Dandan Zhu [00:14:41]: This is a compounding effect. And so what you really want to do is set baseline KPIs. Every single day or every single two days or every week I'm going to put out three social media pieces. Whether it's a job advert or it's a commentary via my LinkedIn post about the status of the market. Maybe I'll talk about a successful search that we have now done as a case study. Whatever it is, just keep it consistent, keep it going. Don't just do it once and say I didn't see the result I wanted and then I'm not going to do it anymore. Consistency is key as it relates to content, the topics. Dandan Zhu [00:15:17]: As much as I said focus on your niche, it can vary. Today it could be a client conversation, tomorrow it could be a candidate driven conversation, but it's still relevant to your niche. It's not just like generic selling to everybody. I've also seen cases where there were recruiters in the past that have tried to make a go of it with their like hobby. So it's like, oh, I'd like to, let's say, take me for example, I like to sing, right? I'm not going to talk about my singing journey and too much about singing because it doesn't really have anything to do with the business. But I can integrate my personal story that relates to my market. Like I'm selling to agency recruiters. That's my market. Dandan Zhu [00:15:54]: I'm selling to the agencies. Right? Part of the story is, hey, I did not work out in my career as a singer, but I discovered agency recruitment. I put my all into that and it became my claim to fame. It became my rocket ship to financial freedom. Right? You're promoting it, you're linking. You can use your personal story to link up certain elements of your search practice. Sometimes there are people that are lawyers that get into executive search for lawyers and they talk about here are the struggles that I personally experienced in the legal field. Here's what I try to help my candidates do. Dandan Zhu [00:16:26]: Right? So you can vary your topics going from professional to data based. Right? So it could be just purely factual. As in this year there are X amount of businesses in the field. Our market cap is X for the industry. It could be purely factual, it could be professional. So it's like at blah blah blah firm we do X, Y and Z. That's very professional, almost impersonal. And then there is the personal element. Dandan Zhu [00:16:50]: Hey, here is what I really enjoy out of running my executive search practice. Here's what sets me apart from other recruitment people. Then you can talk about that as well. So the topics, it's a very wide range and that's what's so fun and exciting about content creation. It should never feel stagnant. You should never feel caged in. Even though you are focusing on one niche, there are still so many ways that you can talk about that niche. A helpful tip here might be creating a market mind map in your head. Dandan Zhu [00:17:22]: Map out all the different things in your head that you could talk about relevant to your niche. Chris Hesson-Ad [00:17:30]: Recruiting is complex. Sometimes you just need a hand, someone beside you to give you that nudge to keep you on course. Introducing the new Crelate Copilot. Copilot is Crelate's AI assistant. But it's more than just artificial intelligence. Copilot brings you recruiter intelligence. Need a quick reminder to to reply to a candidate's email? Or maybe you're stuck writing up that new job description. Need a nudge to send a follow up to that client who hasn't gotten back to you? Copilot is there to help you craft it effortlessly. Chris Hesson-Ad [00:18:07]: With over 30 skills at your fingertips, Crelate Copilot doesn't just keep you organized. It keeps you ahead of the game because recruiting isn't just about filling roles, it's about building relationships. And crelate copilot is the partner you've been waiting for. Check us out and create the future of recruiting. Dandan Zhu [00:18:34]: Other things that you can do, like we talked about earlier, is simply promoting certain things that your firm is doing. So sometimes you might be running a compensation analysis report, sometimes you might be talking about the status of the market for 2025, what we think is going to happen and what you're trying to do is drive email signups, whatever that is. That's an easy promotional piece of content. So those are easy, right? Hey, we have a webinar coming up. Hey, we have a conference coming up. DM me. If you want the invite, I'll include you. You'll be automatically enrolled into our email list. Dandan Zhu [00:19:02]: Right? The promotion element isn't rocket science. That's very straightforward. Focus on one or two platforms, like I said earlier, whether it's using your own website, whether it's using your LinkedIn profile or you're using your company's LinkedIn profile. Try to focus on one or two platforms that you really think is going to make a huge difference for your audience. And then get everyone else involved with this. Right? So often, like the owners, sometimes the owners aren't even involved. But try to get your staff to buy into social media content, right? They should be integrating it. It helps them sell better. Dandan Zhu [00:19:35]: They should be learning these techniques as well. It's kind of hard to do it just with the owner. You want your team and this is what we did at DG Recruit. We had everyone at the team promote using social media. So now you have an amplification of content and market dominance. Because it's not just the owner doing it. You have every single person pulling for it. Everyone is on the same page, rowing in the same direction, promoting content. Dandan Zhu [00:20:01]: So that's what you want your team to do and you want to sell it to them and give them some basic educational material on. Here's how to get started again. Just breaking free from that fear and just trying it out and seeing how it goes. Branding kit is something else that you're responsible for as the owner. It's not rocket science. Usually people have a palette, like a color palette. Hey, my firm, we use red, black, gray and white. That's our color palette. Dandan Zhu [00:20:26]: We typically use round looking fonts like League, Spartan. If you're using Canva. And it's just like a baseline visual, like hey, all of our stuff is like black, red, White, white and gray. Right. It's not rocket science again. It's just like we have these major brand colors. Like our titles tend to be red, like blood red, and then our text tends to be black. It's just straightforward branding kit. Dandan Zhu [00:20:49]: Here's what we typically like to do. You want to disseminate this information to your team so that they can follow the same aesthetic. Here's our logo. Make sure to slap that logo on anything and everything you possibly have to release to the network. So that's your basic branding kit. It doesn't have to be anything exciting or complicated. You do not need to do some of the things I'm going to talk about next in the next slide, what not to do. But I want to end this on this concept of sort of volume is your target here. Dandan Zhu [00:21:21]: Back to the KPIs. You want to set these KPIs for yourself and just deliver on them. Too often people get bogged down by perfectionism. They're like, I need this to look so beautiful. I need it to look like I paid someone millions of hours. I hired a marketing agency. I need somebody to create these amazing aesthetical pieces. Everything has to be perfection. Dandan Zhu [00:21:47]: And that does impact on how much you're able to generate because you're holding yourself back with this kind of fear of how you're going to be perceived. It gets in their way. So you have to get used to stop focusing on everything needed to be perfect and just start hitting the reps. Like I said, I'm going to do two posts a week. I'm going to do them. They don't have to be Shakespearean level imperfection. They just need to get done at that point. And the first thing on that, especially in today's highly polarized environment, is social causes and controversial topics, especially as it relates to like executives. Dandan Zhu [00:22:25]: Right? You're trying to sell yourself to people that have varying views. Not everybody is on the same page. What we have in this country and in every country is extremism on both ends, the right and the left. And what you want to avoid doing is picking a side because it doesn't translate into business value. You're going to turn off people. And when you're trying to do marketing, there's certain things that you do want people to kind of self select out, but you can't sell to everyone's viewpoints. And so you want to just avoid it completely. Is my personal view. Dandan Zhu [00:23:02]: You should not be picking up on anything controversial at all. All of these major political stuff, unless it has to do let's say you're in the mortgage field and you want to talk about interest rates. Totally kosher. That's highly relevant to your market, right? It's actually there's a business relationship between interest rates and executive search within the mortgages business. Right. There's an actual correlation, but other than something like that, you want to limit how often you're talking about social media causes, social causes in general, because it may have nothing or very little to do with your market, your market itself. And this is where you then get distracted and you go off into becoming a crusader. And that is not what your business is doing. Dandan Zhu [00:23:53]: Your business is solving a business need in a particular market and has really nothing to do with your personal egotistical viewpoints. And this is where you have to separate you from your business because the business has certain needs and we've seen the consequences of leaders, key decision makers, sharing things that don't really have to do with their immediate business objectives. This is a very fine line to cross. Something I think is immediately needs to be said so that you do not even touch these can of worms. Now next, I mentioned this earlier. Don't worry about your engagement metrics. This is actually the biggest deterrent to social media activities in general is that, well, I'm not seeing the wins, I'm not seeing, seeing the immediate responses. I don't feel good. Dandan Zhu [00:24:44]: There is an emotional response here where I'm not feeling great, I'm not seeing that I'm winning and because of that I'm going to either disbelieve and or I'm going to stop. The motivation then decreases, the belief in the system, if you will, decreases and what's the point? I'm not going to do it anymore. So now you're going to miss up, you're going to miss out on all of this. The future, right? The future is coming to us whether we agree with it or not. And our goal is to stay perseverant, is to stay on eyes on the prize. We are going to continue, right? I'm not going to worry about hateful comments or trolls like all executives should, this and that, right? If you're in the executive space, you're going to have people reacting negative to the pay. First of all, oh my God, I can't believe executives are making this type of money, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you're just going to. Dandan Zhu [00:25:34]: The best buttons on any sort of platform are block and report. Those are our best friends in the content creation community is that if this person is not part of your Core demographic. They are definitely not a buyer in the system. Block and Report are your best friends. You do not need them to lurk around. You do not need a club of haters following you around. Block and Report is a simple solution to that. Then obviously there's the mental health aspect of like keeping yourself motivated and not being too scared, which leads to the next point. Dandan Zhu [00:26:12]: Again, stop overthinking. Just continue to think about what is your network interested in and create content for those people. Because of AI and its rapid ascension in integration into all elements of our lives, I do think that AI is a great tool to help you with content, but don't rely too much on it. If you rely too heavily on AI, it will co opt your actual authenticity as a content creator. You'll see a lot of times the most successful content creators, their content sounds very organic and looks very organic. It doesn't have a ton of emojis, it doesn't have a ton of those selling tactics that you see a lot of like sort of the typical influencers do. And that's where they're winning. They're winning because they have a true authentic voice. Dandan Zhu [00:27:01]: And personally speaking, I don't use AI to generate any of my posts for this reason. I don't want people losing the integrity of my content to like something artificial. Once your audience feels that that's what you're doing, there's actually a negative effect, I think, of people disliking your content. They realize it's a bot when they realize that it's not a real voice. And all of the most successful content creators have done a really good job of maintaining their true voice. Trust you me, they as long as everybody else are using AI tools, they're using it across content generation ideas. But they're not leveraging AI to replace themselves. They're still heavily engaged in in the voice, of creating content in that organic tone. Dandan Zhu [00:27:55]: So be very careful on that. Another mistake I see a lot of executives do is that they think it's so easy to outsource. They just automatically assume it's not a hard task, that they can just like kind of like go to a painter and have them paint the walls. It's like that simple, right? You pay someone thousands of dollars, they'll just come and do a really great job with social media and what happens. Those content marketing agencies are not geared towards this market niche. They are not even geared towards specifically recruitment agencies and executive search firms. They are not really understanding what works to convert clients and candidates and or just build market dominance. As a recruitment executive search firm service, they don't really know that. Dandan Zhu [00:28:41]: So sometimes when you hire these external agencies, you're just kind of shooting off the hip. I'm going to just pay for this marketing person. But again, marketing, there's multiple layers to this, there's different niches. And if you don't really understand what goes on in a recruitment business, in an executive search decision making process, what are the touch points? What are the important things to do there? It's so hard to find the right person. And what usually ends up happening is they spend thousands of dollars on something that doesn't really do anything for their business. And the reality is because they wasted it, they spent it on somebody who is just having them go for a ride. It was a nice little deal for them, whatever. There's no skin in the game, right? These agencies like what is the skin in the game, right? There's no real long term buying. Dandan Zhu [00:29:24]: They don't really invest in recruitment pr. So just be careful with that. Be careful with how you're spending money on these gurus. They may or may not be the right solution for you. Lastly, this has to do with trolls. And I got very much sucked into many back and forths with people when I first started creating content was just like, wow, these people have crazy ideas. I need to respond and set the record straight. Remember those two best buttons, block and report. Dandan Zhu [00:29:53]: You do not need to get into these extended arguments with people, debates with people that aren't true buyers, that aren't relevant to your business are not really helping your brand in any way. It is kind of a waste of your energy and your time. Our next piece is really about resources. If you're looking to just kind of learn this business and get upskilled, obviously you can do one on one coaching. I do offer one on one coaching, but you can also just figure this stuff out. It really isn't something. Again, you have to pay someone thousands of dollars to just get started. There are so many ways that you can just look at other people's content within the recruiter recruitment community, within the executive search firm who is doing it the way that you like and copy what they're doing. Dandan Zhu [00:30:37]: So you can look at people like myself, like my partner Grace at DG Recruit. You can see the type of stuff we're putting out and those are the exact same things that you can think about. How can I customize that for our industry? How can I customize that for our specific market niche? So you can literally copy what Grace and I are doing. You can also look at people on YouTube, such as Ali Abdaal. He has a ton of content on how to get started with like your niche. What can you talk about? What are the different things you can do? Just motivational things on that front. Productivity, how do you manage all the things you have going on? I think he's a great resource. Russell Brunson talks a lot more about kind of the different idea generation, concept generation. Dandan Zhu [00:31:18]: What could you be selling? Like marketing ideas, digital marketing. So that's like using your email lists, conversions, like, what are the lead magnets? What are things that your company can offer to get clients to engage with you? Like, hey, want a free compensation analysis on your company? Do you want to talk about what are the things that other executives are looking for in a career move? So that's more candidate driven, whatever it is, these are lead magnets. These are things that your business can sponsor and engage with your network on. So Russell Brunson talks a lot about lead magnets and what you can do there. Mel Robbins. I love what she's talking about more so about the mental health element of content creation and just kind of putting herself out there. Sarah Blakely does a ton of social media content on LinkedIn. I think she does a fantastic job of selling through LinkedIn. Dandan Zhu [00:32:05]: She's a great example of someone that can generate tons of internal recruitment leads because she's so publicly out there. She shares herself personally. She shares herself so, like publicly, whether it's about her business, what she's working on, her travels and she's obsessed with like these mugs. So every day it's like this content on mugs. So you can just get all sorts of ideas from like other people. What are they doing? You don't have to copy any one of these people. They're all just great ideas that you can say, hmm, I like that. I can see my network being interested in a content piece like that and literally just copy it. Dandan Zhu [00:32:42]: And this is something again, that Ali Abdaal talks a lot about, which is like the bias towards action. How often is it that you hear content is the future, content is the future, content is the future. How often have I heard people say, oh, I'm really going to try, I'm really going to try because you know an agency, recruitment academy.com. so that's my training business that I help. Recruitment owners, recruitment producers, search firms. Like all of this is falling under the umbrella of agency recruitment. If you run a recruitment agency, if you're agency recruiter, every month we do two kind of Open Q and A to talk about. What are you struggling with, what do you need help on, what are the tactical things that you want to address? And then we're also talking about NPCs, right? NPCs is a big part of what we talk about, which is like a core piece of content that you still are using today. Dandan Zhu [00:33:28]: All the top builders are using today. The NPC method that still falls under not so so much social media, although you can promote NPCs on social media too, right? So it's all about how do we take action? And so often you hear people say, oh, I'm going to do it. I'm really going to NPC someone this week. Oh, I'm really going to try it. I'm going to try a voice note, I'm going to try a video note. And they never try it. And it's just like this concept that is never acted upon. So I really think that if there is one thing you take away from today's presentation, what is the one thing you are going to commit to doing? What is the one thing you will commit to doing that you're learning from this presentation? Not just, oh, I'm going to review the information. Dandan Zhu [00:34:10]: What are you going to do from this presentation today? What are you going to leverage from all of the things we talked about today? So many action items, so many ideas. What's one thing you can do this afternoon? Not even tomorrow? What can you do this afternoon? Now I want to talk about something real quick. Back to that, like perfectionism. People are like trying to win the algorithm. You hear that a lot. How can I win the algo? I even think about that time. I also think about that topic. I'm like, oof, my content is getting 20 likes, 30 likes. Dandan Zhu [00:34:42]: Is it the specific time I'm posting? Is it the frequency of the post? Is it the type of post? The reality is you won't know until you really try. And you just have to try it. Which is again a really common concept that I heard Ali Abdaal make a video about. Now you know who I'm watching a lot of videos on. But he talked about tiny experiments, right? Just trying little things. Like maybe today I'm going to put up five posts. One in the morning, one around midday, one around just after lunch, one in the afternoon, one after work, just to see how it goes. Maybe tomorrow I'm just going to post two. Dandan Zhu [00:35:17]: Maybe posting less gets me more. Maybe I'm going to do a picture with my thing. Maybe I'm gonna do a Video, Right? We don't know. We're like all live ab testing this stuff. Nobody has answers. Although people say they do. They don't because it's constantly changing. What is the algorithm? The algorithm follows what people in your network are interested in in that moment in time. Dandan Zhu [00:35:41]: So that's what these algorithms really do. Whether it's YouTube or LinkedIn or whatever, they're just looking at what are other people similarly looking at and where are they following next? Where are they going next? And that's what these algorithms are kind of tracking. So as long as you're in the mix and you're creating content of some sort, you'll get part of that action again, we don't have to be perfectionist about it. We don't need to win 100% of the action. It'd be nice to get 5%. Let's start off with that. It'd be nice to get 5%. And now after I do two to three posts a week, okay, now I'm getting 5% consistently. Dandan Zhu [00:36:17]: Now what can I do differently? Can I throw up a picture? Can I throw up a video? Yeah. Can I throw a client event? Can I throw up a candidate event? Sure. Right. These are all things that we're going to then build upon. It's not going to be immediate. Okay, so some other actions that you can immediately do. Next Monday, I'm hosting an MPC workshop, Executive search. Very well. Dandan Zhu [00:36:39]: Very much is included in this. So few people. I wonder how many executive search people are really leveraging NPCs. This is not something that you just do in technical search. There's a specific format for executive search NPCs as well. The best executives that you're representing. Confidentially, of course, you have to have the supply, right? You have to have the goods. This is a common thing that literally I built 600,000 in my first year doing executive search from a standing start. Dandan Zhu [00:37:04]: How I started mpcing, right? These are the executives I'm working with. This is the $400,000 person I'm literally about to place with you. I have them. Easy peasy. That is literally what I did. Just start sending it out. Because you're building a market from scratch. You're trying to win new accounts, right? So MPC workshops are super important, not only for technical search, but absolutely for executive search. Dandan Zhu [00:37:25]: They just look a little different. Executive search profiles look a little bit different. So we're going to talk about that more on next Monday. Another thing too is if you want to get involved at agencyrecruitmentacademy.com, you get two open ask me Anything hours per month, usually on Tuesdays, every other Tuesday in the afternoon at 2pm this is an open forum where you can literally ask me anything you want about anything related to recruitment or anything else. So make sure you tap into that resource. The first month of Agency Recruitment Academy is free and you can send me any personal questions or any other issues that you're facing to my email dz@dandanzhu.com so yeah, make sure that you email me if you have any questions and I'll make sure that this presentation is given to Kortney as she can disseminate it to you and or email me directly. I'll be happy to send you all of these slides. Kortney Harmon [00:38:17]: Danjan this is great. I know Mary already had the question if she could have this, so we will make sure we follow up with an email post today. Such amazing content. Dandan, I appreciate everything and your insights. This is great. Obviously the audience thinks that as well. Very helpful. Great presentation. Kortney Harmon [00:38:36]: Thank you so much guys. If you're not connected with her, please make sure you go to her LinkedIn profile. It's in the top part of our session today. If not, look her up on LinkedIn. Follow her because she has such amazing stuff that is going to help you grow your desk in 2026. Dandan Zhu [00:38:51]: Awesome. Thank you everyone. Kortney Harmon [00:38:55]: Thanks for tuning into the full desk experience specifically focused on the executive search industry over the next few weeks. Tune in next week as we talk to the next industry veteran that you're going to learn the best tips from. Have a great day. See you next time.