From Laid Off to In-Demand: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Successful Solo & Fractional Recruiting Business with Liam Haghighat

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast, I got laid off.

Liam Haghighat [00:00:04]:
Three times in the space of nine months from talent acquisition roles, which is essentially the reason why I launched my own consulting business. Your content is the best way to differentiate yourself from your market because it's a way to nurture passive leads. It's a way to build credibility. If a guy like me who's introverted and, you know, is quite dry and quite sarcastic, if I can post content that makes people laugh and interest people, then I'm sure you can.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:27]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements. I'm excited about this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast because this is something that I am always telling people to do. If you're just starting your firm or you've just gotten laid off as an internal recruiter, this can be the absolute biggest game changer on getting yourself set up financially. It could also be the gateway into doing something else. And I'll be honest, this was actually the gateway that happened to me when we launched our own firm. So, like, here's the thing. You need to figure out how to set yourself up properly, and you need to figure out how to get money into your business, into.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:17]:
Into your family. So that way you can, like, definitely take care of bills, take care of everything. A foundation is the proper way to start your business. And that's why I'm so excited to bring Liam on here to talk about what the hell is actually fractional. We're seeing it everywhere. I see it on LinkedIn. I see it everywhere. What the hell is it? How do you set yourself up with it? And how do you position yourself to be a fractional recruiter? So that way you can start building a foundation and figure out where you want to go next.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:47]:
So, Liam, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.

Liam Haghighat [00:01:49]:
Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:50]:
All right, before we get started, a quick 30 seconds, tell us about yourself.

Liam Haghighat [00:01:55]:
Cool. Yeah. No, so first of all, thank you for having me on. Big fan. So it's great to be on. And yeah, quick introduction. So based in the uk, Northeast, sunny Newcastle, where the weather is always rainy and gray. I've been in recruitment since 2014, so did sort of seven years agency before moving internal, and then set up my own fractional consulting business towards the end of 2023.

Liam Haghighat [00:02:16]:
A big sports fan, bit of a tech nerd as well. So, yeah, really keen to Jump into all things recruitment tech and fractional.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:24]:
Oh, that's exciting. Well, the question is, we always get started. How did you end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Liam Haghighat [00:02:31]:
To be honest, randomly. So I didn't grow up wanting to be a recruiter, actually. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So originally I wanted to be an astronaut. That didn't happen, so. So I decided to be a lawyer. So I did law at university. I've actually got a master's in law and then spent about a year working as a paralegal for a couple of firms in the uk.

Liam Haghighat [00:02:53]:
But then basically a friend of mine at the time, and bearing in mind this is sort of early 20s, I had no money basically, and friend of mine, he seemed to have loads of money and it turned out he worked in recruitment. He was, you know, quite a successful biller and he basically had loads of cash. I was jealous and he said to me, you know, you should get into recruitment. It's awesome. Like, you can make loads of money, it's really cool. You work with loads of clients, et cetera. And yeah, I applied for a few recruitment jobs. I wasn't making a lot of money as a paralegal.

Liam Haghighat [00:03:23]:
I was just basically, you're grabbing Starbucks for partners and spending hours and hours in a library researching cases, which wasn't the most exciting time. So, yeah, sent up a bunch of applications for recruitment jobs and landed a trainee recruitment consultant role with a big agency.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:40]:
Agency, okay. So you started off, you went to law school.

Liam Haghighat [00:03:43]:
I did, yeah. Yeah, basically.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:45]:
Let me just ask you this, you got your law degree, you climbed that ladder. Do you guys have student debt over there? Student loan debt?

Liam Haghighat [00:03:52]:
Yeah, we. Yes. Student loans, yeah. Student finance.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:54]:
You look at this path and you're like, do I want to give up this path for something different? Like, how did you, like, figure that out?

Liam Haghighat [00:04:00]:
It's one of those things, really. I think at the time, quite honestly, it was very much a financially driven decision. So, you know, when you go into a law firm, entry level, you know, I know quite a lot of recruiters actually, weirdly, you know, came from a legal background. I've got quite a few friends who did that. You don't make much money when you're entry level. You're kind of on a pretty, pretty bad salary, but you are working long hours. And I think at the time genuinely, you know, I wasn't really enjoying it and it genuinely was just a purely financially driven decision. I wanted to earn more and recruitment just seemed like an interesting career path.

Liam Haghighat [00:04:36]:
I'm a bit of a tech nerd. Anyway, so the thought of working for like an IT recruitment company, you know, helping, you know, tech professionals working with tech companies seem quite cool. And yeah, it was just a bit of a spur of the moment thing really. I just thought, you know, screw it, why not give it a try? And yeah, here, here I am.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:53]:
I think that's almost everybody's story. Like, yeah, I'll give it a try. Like I'll find something else down the road. And little do you know that like you've now set your career path.

Liam Haghighat [00:05:01]:
That's what I mean. It was a random one, I think. You know, again, I haven't actually met a recruiter in my entire career who actually, you know, decided when they were a kid I want to be a recruiter. I'm yet to meet anyone. I think everybody seems to accidentally end up in the industry, which I think kind of makes it quite a funny industry in general, really. You kind of end up there, but you can, you can make a lot of it basically. It's, it's a good career path.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:21]:
It's the land of the misfit toys.

Liam Haghighat [00:05:23]:
100%. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:24]:
So let's talk about your agency days. Like, you know, you spent seven years there.

Liam Haghighat [00:05:28]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:28]:
Was it all at one firm?

Liam Haghighat [00:05:30]:
It was, yeah. Yeah. So I worked for a pretty big firm and it was good. I mean, to be honest, a lot of recruiters sort of look back on their early agency days and, you know, criticize it. I can't complain. Yeah, it was good. You were thrown in the deep end. So it was very much like cold calling, you know, high volume of dials every single day, trying to convert business.

Liam Haghighat [00:05:51]:
I was given quite a cold desk, so I didn't have any clients really. So I had to essentially win my own business, which is good. And yeah, it taught me a lot about resilience, I think, getting told to get lost 100 times in a row. So yeah, I think the agency days were interesting. It was a good experience and I think, to be honest, my, I guess, confidence now in sort of doing business development, sales, it came from that agency tenure. Because it's synchro swim. Yeah. If you don't pull jobs and win business, you're out of a job.

Liam Haghighat [00:06:20]:
So yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:21]:
Wait, so they literally dropped you in, taught you how to be a recruiter, but you had to do a full 360 desk there?

Liam Haghighat [00:06:28]:
Yeah, yeah. Back then, literally. Yeah. So we didn't really have a massive amount of kind of warm clients. It was very much cold calling 360 for anybody who joins the trainee I think you were kind of, you were just given a phone. Yeah, this was kind of before the whole like 180 delivery team thing which sort of came around a few years later. At the time everybody was 360. So you literally, here's a phone, like you need to get on the phone and find a client.

Liam Haghighat [00:06:53]:
If you don't do that, then the pressure's on. And I mean, to be honest, at the time it was awful because either I didn't have any experience in sales. I didn't come from like a telesales background. Like when I was at university I worked behind the bar. So I was, yeah, I was selling drinks. But selling a drink to someone who's intoxicated is not pretty easy. But yeah, you know, it was tough. It was a pretty like, you know, it was a pretty, pretty tough way to, to stop.

Liam Haghighat [00:07:15]:
But yeah, genuinely I enjoyed it. It was fun. Was like the sales flow was pretty crazy. Good atmosphere, like everyone was working towards the same goal. So I enjoyed it. Yeah, it was good. It was an eye opening experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:26]:
But that way I think what's interesting is like over on the US side of the house, like the, the split desk has been like the norm for I would say almost like decades. And maybe that's one of the reasons why so many great like UK recruiters are just coming out, just absolutely crushing it when many times like a sales or account manager was like a growth opportunity. Everybody just started as a recruiter and never really got the sales training. Just random thoughts I have. I'm in the middle of a podcast. Okay, so like why'd you end up, you know, you had a boss there. What spurred you at looking at something different?

Liam Haghighat [00:08:01]:
So towards the end of my, of my time in agency, I was working in like a client management capacity. So I was part of the client services team, was looking after accounts and you kind of. I've always said that when you work as an account manager or when you work in internal recruitment, you kind of see the bigger picture as to how an internal organization operates. So whether it's, you know, headcount planning, workforce planning, all that sort of stuff. And I sort of got a feel for it. And then I think I got to a point where it was during COVID to be honest. You know, I just got a bit sick of agency work. I think, you know, a long time.

Liam Haghighat [00:08:36]:
I think everybody kind of reevaluate things during COVID It was just a weird time, you're working fully remotely, etc. And it just got to a point where I Think I just needed a change. And I'd been approached by quite a few companies to come and work internally. And you probably know yourself from back then, like, salaries are pretty crazy in internal talent acquisition. Yeah. So we talk like 2021, where companies were chucking a lot of money at experienced recruiters to come internally. So yeah, I took the plunge, joined an IT consultancy and did a couple of years internal after that. Yeah, I think for me it was just a needed change out of curiosity.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:11]:
So like at least looking back at my agency days and I was pretty good up the charts in the company for a big company, but like I made so much more as an internal recruiter.

Liam Haghighat [00:09:22]:
Yeah, I mean there's a common misconception. Yeah, I mean you'll see this all the time on LinkedIn, right. That if you're a, if you're a talent acquisition professional, it means you're a failed agency recruiter. That's not the case. I was a consistent biller in agency. I definitely wasn't, you know, what I would call a failed agency recruiter, to be honest. It was just a case of, you know, I've always wanted to experience both sides. You've kind of got the, the agency side as a supplier, but also the internal side.

Liam Haghighat [00:09:47]:
And you know, I think for me it was just a case of it wasn't because I couldn't hack it in agency. I was just genuinely really bored. And you know, I'm somebody who, like, if I get bored, I will make a spare of the moment decision to make a change. I just don't see the point in staying in a role if you feel a bit unfulfilled, a bit bored. So, yeah, I think for me it was more just a case of I needed a new challenge, something to sort of really motivate me, drive me. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. I mean, internal recruitment gets a bad rap in the agency world, but actually I will. Hand on heart, I learned more about business development, working internally in terms of stakeholder management, managing processes, understanding how to actually influence senior people in the business.

Liam Haghighat [00:10:28]:
I learned more about that internally than I did during the agency, you know, 10 years. So, yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:33]:
Yeah, no, like, I'll be honest, I had a boss internally like you. You could put together some teams that you couldn't quite do on the agency side of the house.

Liam Haghighat [00:10:39]:
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, obviously at the time, you know, look, salaries were pretty awesome. Yes. I'm not gonna lie, it was again, financially driven. You know, that was urban too. But I think, I think you know, when you, when you work internally, having that guaranteed salary every month, you know, when you've been in agency for seven years is quite nice. You know, at the time I was moving house so it worked out pretty well. But yeah, I think for me it was just a case of getting that sort of 360 experience of working agency.

Liam Haghighat [00:11:04]:
And internally it helped set me up for launch of my own business.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:08]:
Fast forward. I know we spoke about this offline, but you know, the tech market went absolutely crazy. Yeah, and then the tech market kind of just went uncrazy pretty almost as fast it did.

Liam Haghighat [00:11:20]:
So I got laid off three times in the space of nine months from talent acquisition roles, which is essentially the reason why I launched my own consulting business. And yeah, it was mad because, you know, I'd been in one company for seven years. Agency, right. I was very stable. I hadn't really experienced the whole like redundancy thing. And you know, the first time I got laid off, I was working for a massive SAS company, really kind of high growth business. It was an awesome experience. Loved it.

Liam Haghighat [00:11:44]:
And it was a massive shock. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty devastating. And to be honest, it took me a couple of months just to sort of get my head around it. And then for it to happen again twice in the next sort of five months was nuts. I mean, the third time I literally started laughing during the meeting because I just thought, this can't be serious. At that point I just thought, you know, I need to do something different here. Which is essentially why I launched my own business.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:07]:
Okay. Before you launched, like you were putting in the work to try to find another job.

Liam Haghighat [00:12:11]:
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, so the last role that I got laid off from, it was a fixed term contract. So I'd actually been applying for roles before the third row because essentially, you know, I wanted to cover my own back. I think I applied to about 450 roles. So I had an Excel spreadsheet which tracked every single application. I still have that spreadsheet now, tracked every single application. It was pretty crazy. It was quite eye opening because I only heard back from a tiny number of applications and you know, you're talking hundreds and hundreds of just silence. And I still get rejection emails now from roles I applied for two, three years ago.

Liam Haghighat [00:12:51]:
So it's nuts. And I think that experience opened my eyes to the sort of state of the market because I think, you know, sometimes when you're employed, I do think you kind of insulated from that. You focus on your role, you come in every day you work whatever. And obviously you're aware of it because, you know, you notice an influx of applicants for roles or you notice a lot of candidates have got an open to work green banner. But that's a separate debate. But, yeah, sort of being involved in that and actually being, you know, someone who is applying for jobs, looking for a new role, it just opened your eyes to like, wow, the market is, you know, what's happening here. Because it was insane.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:26]:
Oh. And okay, so I know a lot of people that once they hit the 450 applications, they crumble a little bit, but then go and do another 450.

Liam Haghighat [00:13:36]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:37]:
At what point in time were you like, I got to do something different, honestly.

Liam Haghighat [00:13:41]:
So, I mean, the whole business thing, I've always wanted to run my own business. Right. It's been an ambition of mine for sort of five, six years. I've got so friends who, who run businesses that entrepreneurs. And I've always liked the freedom and the creative control that they seem to have that. The fact that they were able to sort of shape their own future and, you know, kind of create something that was theirs, basically. Yeah. And I think for me, it was a case of I'd been looking at it after the second layoff.

Liam Haghighat [00:14:09]:
Started thinking to myself, do I really want to go through this again and get laid off for a third time? Which ended up happening. And to be honest with you, I just thought, I don't want to be in a position where I have no control over what's happening because I just felt completely out of control. You log into your laptop for the morning and to get told, right, you've lost your job. Sorry, see you later. For the third time again, you kind of don't have that control. You just feel like you're just drifting around. And I think for me, I just thought, screw it. Like, you know, I had some cash from, you know, severance packages, and I just thought, you know, there is like, screw this.

Liam Haghighat [00:14:46]:
Like, I back myself, I'm just gonna do it. And then, you know, nowadays you don't need an office. You don't need like a team to launch your business. You need a laptop and a WI fi connection, which I had. So I just did it. It was earlier than I had planned originally. I think the plan originally was to sort of, you know, work in TA for a few more years. But yeah, I just kind of thought, take the plunge and go for it.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:09]:
Okay. And so you decided to take the pl. You made the decision, the point where many people talk about doing it now. Here's the fun part. You made the decision, now you actually have to go execute. What the hell did you do day one? Like, okay, I am now doing this day one. You sat down at your desk and you're like, what do I do? What did you do?

Liam Haghighat [00:15:27]:
Yeah. So I think for me, I'm somebody who plans. I'm somebody who typically likes to have a plan now in this situation, because it was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, my plan was kind of executed a lot faster than I would normally expect to be executed. So I think really initially it was a case of developing a solid go to market strategy. How am I going to create a value proposition that actually appeals to customers? Do I want to be another agency or do I want to do something a little bit different? Yeah, how can I create a solution? Create a service that actually appeals to a certain client. So whilst I was doing that, obviously I did what everyone does. I tapped up my network. I tried to give myself some breathing space to sort of come up with an idea and try to get some business.

Liam Haghighat [00:16:14]:
I did get some business quite quickly from old clients, from contacts. You know, I've got a pretty big LinkedIn network, to be fair, so I'm pretty lucky in that sense. And yeah, it was just a case of really, you know, getting crystal clear quite early on. You know, what is my value proposition and how can I actually service clients in a way that wins me business? And that was kind of where the whole fractional talent thing came about.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:37]:
Did you think about like direct placement? Did you think about contingent and staffing or do you just like, this is where I'm going to go?

Liam Haghighat [00:16:43]:
So yes and no, to be honest, the contingent thing. So I want to sort of make it clear I'm not anti contingent. And I think that I've post suddenly done before about the fractional model. I've had contingent recruiters message me saying, you know, why do you not work contingent and almost be offended by the fact that I've talked about something different. So I do see a place for contingent recruitment. I don't think that contingent is dead. I've seen a lot of, you know, contact LinkedIn about that. I don't believe that at all.

Liam Haghighat [00:17:10]:
But I just think that when I worked internally, I was getting pitched on a weekly basis by contingent agencies and they all said the same thing. Yeah, we've got a big database with the global leaders in blah, blah, blah, we're market specialists. Everybody's a market specialist. I've heard it all before and I thought to myself, I Don't want to be one of those agencies saying that. So for me it was just a case of I'm going to come up with something a little bit different. And I didn't really consider contingent at all. It was just, I want to do something where I, I can forecast revenue. The fractional model is more of a retained style model.

Liam Haghighat [00:17:42]:
It's, you know, safer for me as a solo business owner because it means that I've actually got potential to know what I'm going to earn, which is good. I think having a contingent business is fine, but obviously you ultimately don't know what you're going to earn because you can't guarantee pipeline because pipeline and recruitment as you know, can look amazing on a Monday, but on a Tuesday it looks like an atomic bomb has gone off in your inbox. You're always chasing your tail. So for me, like I stuck to it and just said, I'm going to focus on this fractional thing, this sort of embedded thing. And if I diversify and look at contingent as well, it kind of dilutes the message that the fractional model has. So I just thought, I'm going to commit to this and see where it takes me.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:20]:
So, okay, you jumped in and like, this is what I'm going to do, which is awesome. Phenomenal. So you made the decision, you started executing, you started branding, you started picking up some clients through like your network. When did you really start, like, I'm going to actually build this 100% as a fractional business or was it early on?

Liam Haghighat [00:18:37]:
It was pretty early on. I made a decision quite early on to focus on early stage startups. So, you know, founders of startups who didn't have an internal talent team who were probably, you know, recently funded, they had some cash they wanted to hire, but they didn't necessarily have the internal tools to do that. And from talking to those founders quite early on, I realized that a lot of them didn't really want to spend loads of money on contingent agency fees. Yeah, if you think about like, let's say you're working at 20% and you're working with a startup, they're probably hiring founding engineers on like six figure salaries. Those fees are going to start adding up pretty quickly. Right. You're talking, you know, big, big fees, a lot of outlay in recruitment costs.

Liam Haghighat [00:19:17]:
So for me it was quite clear early on that actually these founders were happy to use an external service provider, but they just didn't want to spend 100k on hiring fees. And that was kind of where I thought, right, how can I fill a gap here? And that was essentially where the whole fractional thing came along because it was offering them a subscription style model which is more kind of, you know, pay as you go, plug and play. You get an internal talent partner essentially on an interim basis without spending a fortune on huge hiring fees. And that was kind of, it started to work, I started to pitch it, it started to get some traction and I decided probably about a year ago to really, really just commit to that 100% and just do that essentially. And that was sort of where my whole fractional talent thing was, was sort of born and embedded. And from there that's pretty much all I've done since.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:11]:
So, you know, a lot of people use the word fractional. Yeah, I think, you know, I think it's one of those things that a lot of people don't understand like what are some of the misconceptions when people think about fractional recruiting.

Liam Haghighat [00:20:23]:
So I think that the main one is that you're a day rated contractor. So I often get asked by people, are you just basically using a fancy phrase for contractor? And whilst, don't get me wrong, you can offer a day rate style pricing within your service, ultimately a fractional recruiter in my view is somebody who is offering a service to a client for a fraction of the cost and you get in the expertise of a full time employee, you know, on an interim basis. So it's not necessarily a contractor per se. You're basically offering like a, you know, a retained service or in my case like a subscription style service. And that service can be priced either by time or usually in most cases, in my case anyway, via scope. So you agree a scope of a project and then you price that project based on, you know, your market knowledge or whatever and then you execute that project. So I think for me the biggest misconception is that you're just purely a contractor. And the other one is that you're a part time employee basically, which again isn't the case because actually if you work fractional, you're charging a pretty decent retainer yet it's a lot more expensive than you would pay someone full time.

Liam Haghighat [00:21:31]:
But the difference is you're getting them for a shorter period of time. So you haven't got that long term salary on the books. If, for example, in six months time like you've seen with a lot of tech companies suddenly hiring stops and you've got this internal recruiter or this head of talent on a full time huge salary of benefits, you've paid off their equipment, you pay for their training and their onboarding and you can't get shot of them.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:52]:
So if somebody's looking at becoming fractional, what are some of the first things that you would recommend them to do to get set up?

Liam Haghighat [00:21:59]:
Yeah, so I think the number one thing really, and this sort of ties into my other business, which is my coaching business. So I actually run a coaching program called the solo recruiter Launchpad which basically helps solo recruiters essentially set up a go to market strategy. Most of the recruiters I've worked with have set up fractional businesses and the first thing is having a solid go to market strategy. So understanding what is your value proposition, how can you offer a fractional service? What are you actually going to offer? And the second thing is defining an ideal client. So who are you going to help? Now I think typically with fractional, it's usually startups or companies that don't have an enormous talent team or don't have the budget to use agencies. Because if you're pitching fractional, say Microsoft or Barclays or Amazon, it's probably not going to land as much because they're not really that bothered about spending X amount of money on a hiring fee. So I think the first thing is having that defined value proposition, having that defined ideal client and that would apply to any service based business because ultimately you are a service provider if you're fractional. Right.

Liam Haghighat [00:23:02]:
I think the next thing is just having an understanding that you are going to have to, you know, sell. So it's creating a sales strategy. And a lot of this might sound like quite generic advice, but actually when you run a fractional business, especially solo like you are the business, the business is you. Right. So if you don't do the work, if you don't put in the time to create a sales strategy, to have a plan around how you're going to acquire clients quite quickly, the rest of it, the brand in, the content at all irrelevant because you won't be around long enough to make any of that work. So honestly I think for me that the first thing is really getting crystal clear on that go to market strategy and then creating an actual consistent and scalable sales process you can execute every single bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:45]:
You're right about that because I think the one thing that keeps a lot of like people from actually doing many things is a sales process and a sales system.

Liam Haghighat [00:23:53]:
Yeah, because I think the, the biggest issue that I've seen in the fractional space is you know, most fractional recruiters, the ones I've come across anyway tend to be X ta. Right. So they've been laid off, you know, from a talent acquisition role or a people role for example, and they decide I'm going to set up my own consulting business and they basically approach it with the mindset of essentially, look, you know, I've got a massive network and the second that I stick a post on LinkedIn saying I've launched my own business, you know, the floodgates are going to open and loads of my contacts are just going to send me loads of business into my inbox and I'll just be sat there turning away business because I'm going to be so busy. In reality that rarely happens because the second you launch your own business you go from being Liam, my ex colleague to Liam the commercial entity. So everybody assumes that when you message them you're trying to sell them something. And that happens. I noticed that when I launched my business, suddenly when I was sending DMs to people, my response rates dropped dramatically because they were like, well, he set up a business, he's going to try and pitch me, I'm going to pull back a bit. So I think that as I said before, having that understanding quite early on, and I say this to anybody who wants to go fractional, you have to make peace with the fact this is going to be a sales role initially and if you can make peace with that, then you should do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:10]:
Okay, so you built a sales strategy, you figured out you're going fractional. How do you actually get those first like one or two clients?

Liam Haghighat [00:25:19]:
So I think a lot of it is just again it's getting crystal clear around who your target market is, then finding out what their problems are. So I always say to people, you know, in my case for example, I decided quite early that I wanted to work with startup founders. So founders of like Seed, Series A, maybe series B startups. And I identified that when they're looking to hire, they've got three options. They've got option one, do it themselves. But the problem with that is, you know, founder led hiring, it can take up a 20, 30 hours a week of their time, which is time not spent selling, you know, marketing, whatever. Option two is hire a full time recruiter, which sounds awesome on paper, but at the end of the day hiring, it's not linear. Hiring goes up and down.

Liam Haghighat [00:26:00]:
So when you're not hiring you're still paying that recruiter a salary. What are they going to do? It's a non revenue generating role. I think when you're in a Startup, you want to be hiring people really who can contribute to revenue, whether that's sales or building the product. An option three is using agency, which is great again, but it's a short term fix. You're going to be spending some serious money, especially if you're recruiting like the founding roles, whether it's a head of sales, VP of sales or a CRO or a head of product or whatever. So the idea is for me was I wrote those three things down and said, right, I need to come up with a solution that solves those three problems and then basically pitch that to as many founders as possible. And because my value proposition essentially solves those three problems, I found that I was having warmer conversations with clients because, you know, rather than just saying what every other recruiter says, which is, I'm a specialist, I've got loads of candidates, look at me, I'm amazing. I was actually saying, I know that you're struggling with one of these three problems.

Liam Haghighat [00:26:57]:
Here's a solution to those three problems. Do you fancy grabbing a virtual coffee? And that made a massive difference. So I think to answer your question, it's about really getting crystal clear with the specific person or people you're trying to help and then coming up with a solution to their specific problems.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:14]:
So, you know, I'm putting on my like TA hat real quick. You know, many times you're in your TA recruiter, like your tools are given to you. I think one year at one company, I think my total tool spend that they just gave me was something like $35,000 worth of tools.

Liam Haghighat [00:27:31]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:32]:
You're coming in to be a fractional recruiter. Are you coming in with your own tools or are you asking them to pay for or provide tools?

Liam Haghighat [00:27:39]:
So I actually offer two options. So I offer two different prices depending on whether I have to provide my own tools. So if they have existing LinkedIn recruiter licenses, for example, and they're happy to give me one, you know, for the period of time I'm with the company, then you know, that will impact the cost of the retainer. If I have to provide my own software, my own tools to source, for example, then again that will increase the cost of my price. But I think you ultimately, tool spend is crazy. I work for a company and we used to have 20,000 unused in mills, 25,000 unused in mills just sat around. People weren't sending in mills, they were just sat waiting for inbound applications. And that company was spending an absolute fortune on LinkedIn recruiter.

Liam Haghighat [00:28:21]:
So I think the tool thing I always say a fractional recruiter is like, you don't need to jump straight into LinkedIn Recruiter. If you want to launch your own business, there are other tools you can use. I mean, even if you want to, even Sales navigator, you get 50 emails versus I think 30 for LinkedIn recruiter Lite. And it's cheaper as well. So there's loads of software out there now, which I think is, I do think will impact LinkedIn Recruiter in the longer term. Just that's a separate conversation. But yeah, no, definitely, I think, you know, for me it's a case of I offer the two options and they just pick the ones they want to go for. And I think again, that's just giving them, giving them choice, which is always better.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:53]:
If you want a good laugh. This is many, many years ago at a large defense contractor for firm I was working for as internal, the TA lead left to go for to another job. The new TA lead walked into a $900,000 unpaid LinkedIn bill.

Liam Haghighat [00:29:10]:
Wow. Honestly, that I've heard some horror stories like that didn't surprise me because, you know, LinkedIn recruiter is so expensive and if you've got a large TA team, it can add up. And I think what I've always found quite crazy working in sort of larger TA teams is that actually because you're given LinkedIn recruiter, it's not, you know, you don't have to pay for it, obviously, it's just given to you. Most of them still just rely on inbound applications. I've been part of huge TA teams where they just sort of sit back and wait for applications and they just sat not using LinkedIn recruiter. And the cost, I sit back and just think the cost must be insane on a monthly basis for those in mills.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:49]:
Well, that kind of goes into the next question I have for you. Like, you know, typically when you think of a recruiter, it's just like my job is come in and fill jobs. Yeah, no, as a fractional. Are you doing like additional things or is it just 100% focus on just the filling the positions?

Liam Haghighat [00:30:05]:
It completely depends. So the way that I price my fractional recruitment offering and the way that I advise others do it is to almost have like a pricing menu similar to like a SaaS product. So if you think about, let's say DocuSign is a product, right, you've typically got three options. You've got the basic starter version, you've got the kind of pro version which is normally more expensive with more features, and you've got the enterprise version, which is the most expensive with the most features. So what I typically offer clients is three or four different options. You've got your basic sourcing service, you've got more of a strategic offering whereby there'll be stuff like workforce planning, advert creation, job description creation, talent pool building, that sort of thing, diversity and inclusion consulting. Then you've got the most expensive version, which is basically an interim head of talent, where I'm actually heading up the talent function. It could be an early stage startup who don't have any internal process whatsoever.

Liam Haghighat [00:31:01]:
And I'm basically coming as a fractional head of talent, which I've done a couple of times. And you know, I think again, it ties back into what I said before, it's about offering variety. Yeah. I think that the main benefit of being a solo recruiter, in my opinion of launching your own businesses, is you control what you offer. Yeah. You don't need to offer the one size fits all approach that every agency offers. You can offer different options and each option includes different additional features. And you're almost using that sort of SaaS model.

Liam Haghighat [00:31:30]:
Rather than a company choosing from three different suppliers, they're choosing from your three different options. And I just think that's a much better way to do it. So yeah, I think it depends on the client. Again, so if you're working with a company who already have an internal talent team and you're coming in as like a fractional talent partner to help alleviate a period of hiring volume, then of course your role is just mainly sourcing and filling jobs. But if you're working with an early stage startup, you have nothing internally whatsoever, then that's different. You're basically offering them a talent function in a box.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:00]:
Has anybody actually been like, hey, I want you to shut down your business because I want you for us?

Liam Haghighat [00:32:04]:
Yeah, three times I've actually been offered a VP of talent role by a Series A startup and I got offered like a head of talent role from an ex contact of mine who is the CTO of a company and another sort of talent partner role. And look, I mean, don't get me wrong, I think, you know, there's always like a 0.1% part of you, which is, I think anybody who runs a business and especially a solo business and says they're never ever tempted to go back into permanent employment, I think they're probably being disingenuous because at the end of the day, like, you know, there comes a time sometimes they just think, you know, there's like you know, I wouldn't mind that security because, you know, you're having a bad week. But I think it's quite common because you're going in there as a fractional supplier. And this is actually why I advise a lot of people, you know, talent partners who are out of work currently. You know, who. They've been on the market for six, nine months. You know, just give it a try. Because if you go into a company on a fractional basis, make a real impact, they're going to want to keep you.

Liam Haghighat [00:33:00]:
And I've been offered some pretty big salaries to join permanently. Now, I haven't taken them because I actually quite enjoy the chaos of running business. But, yeah, it's a good way into a company because you're actually, you're proving yourself. It's the world's best interview. Yeah. You go into a company as a fractional consultant, deliver over, deliver on what you've promised them. I mean, that is better than any interview process, in my opinion. So, yeah, I've been offered a few jobs off the back of it, and I imagine that'll probably continue.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:25]:
Do you think there'd ever be like a salary equity package that would be like, this company's going to exit. This could be like a $10 million package.

Liam Haghighat [00:33:33]:
You never know. Listen, my inbox is open. No, I think, honestly, like I said before, look, you know, when you run a business. Yeah. I'm under no illusions that it's. It's hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Right.

Liam Haghighat [00:33:45]:
It really is. And I think I do want to make that sort of clear to anybody who is looking to go fractional. It's not easy. You are essentially in control of your revenue. I am the head of finance, the head of marketing, the head of social media content, the head of delivery, the head of sales. Yeah, I wear a lot of hats. Yeah. My head is hurting from the weight of the.

Liam Haghighat [00:34:05]:
Of hacks that I wear. So, you know, genuinely. Of course, yeah. I'm sure if you, Amazon said to me, we'll give you, you know, $10 million to be our head of Talent, I'd probably say, yeah, fair, Fair.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:18]:
The Elite Recruit podcast has multiple summits coming up that you need to make sure that you are registered for. We have the AI Recruiting Summit 2025 coming up, and on top of that, finish the year strong. These two summits are going to help you move the needle, help you achieve your goals, help you achieve your dreams, and make 2025 the year that you started out and you wanted it to be. Make sure you get registered and also stay tuned. Got something cooking for you guys. Working on another project that you guys are going to absolutely love. All right, see you guys at the summits and see you guys soon. So it's one of those things, I think you've also, we talked about this offline.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:52]:
Like you've really also leaned heavily on tech and tech has really helped you out and AI has helped you out. Can you like start talking about that on the back end? Like, how are you a super recruiter with the tech that you have?

Liam Haghighat [00:35:04]:
Yeah, so. So for me, again, this sort of ties into why I think the fractional things is a successful model. Right. So technology's leveled the playing field in my opinion. And I think we're almost in like without coming across as, you know, cliche, in a new sort of phase of recruitment, a new sort of era, which is at the AI era. Right? AI is not going anywhere. Yeah, it's. It really isn't.

Liam Haghighat [00:35:28]:
And AI and automation allows you to essentially run, you know, a business as if you've got staff. So I've got, I use two, well, three platforms really. I use clay, which is awesome. I'm actually still sort of learning about clay. It's a complex platform, but it's amazing. Right. I use a platform called lagrowth Machine for multi channel outreach, which is brilliant. And I use ChatGPT just to sort of as a, almost like a virtual assistant, to be honest, know, just because I've got loads of projects in there, sort of structuring ideas and sort of, you know, getting my thoughts together about things.

Liam Haghighat [00:36:00]:
And I think that now is the perfect time to run a business. And I've got a belief that the next, you know, the next few billion dollar companies will be tiny businesses that just rely on software. Because I just think that now we're in an era where, you know, for me personally, I run campaigns through clay and like growth machine. And it's like I've got two SDRs working for me full time. I think that is the ultimate leveling of the playing field in my view. And I think a lot of the bigger agencies who've traditionally hired based on headcount, so they've always grown based on how many people they've got on the phones. They're being outperformed by AI because AI doesn't take a toilet break. AI doesn't go make a coffee and not come back for an hour.

Liam Haghighat [00:36:45]:
AI doesn't accept this. And that's.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:47]:
And like clay, like I'm learning clay too. I Feel like I'm going to keep on learning clay. How long did it take for you to actually, like, be functional in that system?

Liam Haghighat [00:36:55]:
It took me a while, to be honest. I mean, so I'm pretty techy or recruiter. But clay is. Is the most complex tool that I've used because I've burned through a lot of credits with clay. You've got to really get used to it. I think I've spent quite a bit of time recently doing a lot of the sort of tutorials online. I mean, to be honest, YouTube is pretty good for it as well. I mean, you don't have to spend a fortune to upskilling Click.

Liam Haghighat [00:37:17]:
But yeah, I think it took me probably three months of sort of, you know, playing around with it before I got to a point where I can actually use it and, you know, use it efficiently. But it's just got so much functionality. I think it's amazing the way that it can, you know, business development, for example, it can just do things that even in SDR would probably struggle to do, to be honest.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:36]:
So, yeah, I mean, like some of the even basic stuff like you can pull LinkedIn jobs data, enrich who the hiring managers are within, like minutes. And I mean, that was a VA. That was a VA's job. Or that was like before the days of VA. Like me sitting there for eight hours.

Liam Haghighat [00:37:52]:
Oh, yeah, I remember. Yeah, I remember downloading an Excel document of exporting a list of jobs and then sitting there for like six hours finding people on LinkedIn for those companies and then, you know, the next day emailing them all. And that was like two days work and can be done now in like five minutes. It's nuts. But again, it goes back to what I said before. I do believe that, you know, now if you are a solo recruiter, solo business owner, and you've got a decent, you know, software budget, you can tackle big projects, you can really compete with the big agencies because you can still perform and deliver, you know, in a better way, a more efficient way than they do, in my opinion. So, yeah, I think we're in this kind of AI revolution, AI era. It's not going anywhere.

Liam Haghighat [00:38:36]:
I don't think AI will necessarily replace recruiters, but I do think it will massively impact those who don't use AI. That's kind of how I feel about it.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:43]:
I'm with you on that. Well, we've definitely covered a lot. One last thing before we jump over to the quickfire questions is I've seen you over the past. I think we've been connected for maybe like two years now.

Liam Haghighat [00:38:55]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:56]:
I've seen like an evolution of what you've been doing with content and you've been spending a lot more time on content. Like can you talk about that and the impact that it's had?

Liam Haghighat [00:39:05]:
Yeah. So content's a funny one. Right. So I'm introverted naturally. Right. I'm quite introverted person. I've always been quite chill by quiet. And I don't actually have like Facebook, Instagram, I don't really have social media.

Liam Haghighat [00:39:17]:
I'm not a big social media guy. However, when I launched my own consulting business, like yes, over 18 months ago, I had started to experiment with content and I kind of realized that actually if I don't market my business, if I don't market myself, nobody else is going to. And I think a lot of recruiters use LinkedIn, for example, to post jobs to message candidates. But that's all they do. And for me, the benefit of content is you're positioning yourself as a credible authority in your market. So let's say you're a recruiter who, I don't know, you're working with like Salesforce Partners. If you post content, talking about Salesforce all the time and your network is full of Salesforce people, then you're positioning yourself as an authority in their market, their ecosystem and they're more likely to come to you if they need a new job or if they want to hire. So I just started really pushing it.

Liam Haghighat [00:40:08]:
It took me a while to get used to it because again, you are stepping out your comfort zone. I do a lot of video based content which was awful and nerve wracking at the start. My first video on LinkedIn, I recorded it 18 times and it was a 63 second video. And I tell that story to people because it takes a while to get used to your own voice. I would never have done like a podcast two years ago. Right. It wouldn't have been something I did because I would have hated the thought of clips existing of me on camera talking. But content's been great.

Liam Haghighat [00:40:38]:
I mean, I've got a lot of inbound business from content and I wholeheartedly recommend anybody who sets up a business. But even if you were employed as an agency, recruiter or internal talent partner, I talk, you know, post content, talk to your network, talk to your audience. I talk about the roles you're recruiting for, talk about your candidates, talk about your clients, talk about your stories. Yeah, don't be afraid to share because actually, yeah, you get the odd troll who might criticize you or, like, you know, make fun of you, whatever. Which I don't really care now, to be honest. But actually, you'll get a lot of positives out of it as well. And people get to know you and know who you are, know what your opinion is, and I think it's really, really important.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:17]:
Awesome. What we've covered a lot, like, about how to set yourself up fractionally, what you're supposed to do, how to pitch clients, how to, like, figure out your icp, like, all sorts of stuff. The back end. Is there anything else that you want to share that we did not cover, that I forgot to cover?

Liam Haghighat [00:41:31]:
I think. Yeah, I think just on the content piece, to be honest, I wanted to just add to that. So in the last maybe 18 months to a year, I've probably had free consultations with over 200 solo recruiters about potentially working with me in a coaching capacity. And the one thing that I've seen, you know, across the board, I'd say probably over 90% of those conversations has been, you know, people being scared of posting. And I do genuinely think that. I guess my message to anybody, really, is that have the confidence to just take a chance and try it. Give yourself a month, two months, and see how it goes. Because ultimately, I really believe that your content is the best way to differentiate yourself from your market, because it's a way to nurture passive leads.

Liam Haghighat [00:42:17]:
It's a way to build credibility. And, you know, recruiters have loads of awesome stories. So when people say, I don't know what to post, I don't know what to say. Like, in one day, if you speak to most recruiters, they can tell you five or six hilarious stories from that day that would blow your mind. Talk about that. Yeah, just talk about it. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared to post it.

Liam Haghighat [00:42:34]:
If a guy like me, who's introverted and, you know, it's quite dry and quite sarcastic, if I can post content that makes people laugh and that interests people, then I'm sure you can.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:43]:
I'll tell you, this is like a cheat code, but a way more complex cheat code. Have a podcast, share stories. But I'll just say setting up a podcast is hard.

Liam Haghighat [00:42:53]:
Oh, honestly, yeah. Yeah. I've spoken to people about this, but, yeah, podcasting is just. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, you know, I think it's brilliant. It's a great way to, you know, have conversations and market yourself. But I do think it's tough. I mean, I think it is tough to build an audience and to Build that credibility, build that trust. Obviously, you've done an amazing job of this.

Liam Haghighat [00:43:11]:
I'm a big fan of this podcast, so.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:12]:
Yeah, well, thank you. You're seeing, like, year four. Well, okay, well, jumping over the quick fire questions don't need to be quick answers. But, you know, with everything that you've seen from the agency, recruiting, the internal, the fractional recruiting, like just the changing environment of artificial intelligence, somebody hits up your calendar, you know, books a time with you, it's just like, hey, I'm. I'm looking at becoming a recruiter, right? Like, never been a recruiter before. What advice would you give to me to have a successful recruiting career?

Liam Haghighat [00:43:44]:
Be consistent with your habits and actions. So I've seen so many awesome recruiters get into the industry. They've, you know, gone hell for leather for the first two weeks on the phone, speaking to candidates, speaking to clients, and then they don't get any wins from it. They get nothing from it. Then they just quit. And I've always maintained that the best approach that I've seen work in recruitment is to have consistent daily habits that you repeat without fail. So whether that's posts on LinkedIn, whether that is sending in mails to candidates, you know, business development, emails, making calls, whatever, you need to set yourself daily targets that you can consistently hit. And I think if you do that, I.

Liam Haghighat [00:44:34]:
I believe you will succeed in recruitment. But I think that for me, that's been the one thing I've noticed in my entire career. Agency, internal, whatever that is. The biggest thing that most people don't do that is not consistent with the habits. They do things, you know, for a few weeks. It's like when everyone joins the gym in January. Yeah. And by February, they've quit.

Liam Haghighat [00:44:51]:
It's the same thing. You need to be consistent with your daily activity. And recruitment is a numbers game to an extent that you do have to be consistent and you have to, you know, make calls. You can't just, you know, have a week off business development. You have to do things consistently. And if you do that, I think you've got a good chance of being successful.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:09]:
Love that same question, but for somebody that's been around the block, let's say two decades, they hit you up, everything changing. What advice would it be to an old dog?

Liam Haghighat [00:45:18]:
Embrace technology. Honestly, if you want using technology, embrace it. I actually recently coached somebody who is in a recruitment for 25 years and uses an Excel spreadsheet on a phone for their candidates and clients. And I got him into using clay. And his mind is Blown. So honestly, like embrace technology. People criticize automation, right? They criticize AI. But for me, technology makes things easier to do.

Liam Haghighat [00:45:47]:
It's there to help you do things in a more efficient way, essentially. Right. And for me, I think if you embrace technology, then you haven't used it before. I just think it will open your eyes to a completely new way of working which will save you time. I mean, if I didn't use tech genuinely, I would work 24 hours a day because I wouldn't have any time. I don't know anyone who fair play to anyone who's not using tech, but. But yeah, it's embrace it.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:11]:
I mean, if it wasn't for tech, I wouldn't have this podcast while still being able to recruit too. Case in point, what's a favorite book that's had a huge impact on your career?

Liam Haghighat [00:46:22]:
Yeah, so Easily Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's quite a cliche answer because I know it gets talked about a lot, but honestly I've read it about 10, 15 times because I just think it's so applicable to recruitment. It really, really is. Yeah. I remember when I first got into agency recruitment, I was always told, X amount of calls per day, X amount of emails. You have a day plan, take off different responsibilities every single day and stick to it consistently. And Atomic Habits, it talks about the idea of building habits or you know, essentially stopping bad habits and creating good habits. And honestly, that is the best advice, you know, that I've ever read and I would ever give to anybody, especially in recruitment.

Liam Haghighat [00:47:05]:
So yeah, it's, it's a brilliant book. Massively recommend it. Yeah, I've read it numerous times and yeah, fantastic, awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:12]:
Like in your fractional career, what's one of the biggest like failures that you had to work through?

Liam Haghighat [00:47:18]:
There's been a couple. So I think initially one big failure was when I first started, it was heavily day rate focused. So I also had the misconception when I first went fractional that actually it's essentially contracting. And I'm not against day rate work. I've done some dayrate work since. But the problem with day rate work, if that is your sole method of pricing, you're essentially an employee without any benefits. Right. Because if you're working Monday, Tuesday with a client, what happens if a bunch of stuff comes on Thursday? Do you A, work that extra day and B, if you do, do you invoice them for it? So being completely reliant on day rate work on time based pricing is a mistake because every human only has a certain amount of time in the day.

Liam Haghighat [00:48:04]:
Right. So you are capped at how you can scale that model. So that's one thing I would definitely say was a mistake. And I think the other mistake that I made was I think I got really obsessed at the start with having an awesome pitch deck, having an awesome logo, having, you know, X, Y and Z, all the marketing material when I should have just been, you know, contacting clients, contacting prospects. I think I took maybe a bit too much time at the start because I'm a perfectionist. Right. So I'm really funny if I'm cooking a meal. Like, I have to have all the ingredients lined up on a kitchen counter.

Liam Haghighat [00:48:40]:
Yeah. I've got to have everything there. Everything's always kind of planned out. And I think for me, so, you know, launching into my solo business, I spent too much time at the beginning obsessing over, you know, the logo, the color scheme, the branding, the content, the marketing materials when I had no clients. So it's all well and good having an awesome PDF document, but if you haven't got anyone paying you at the end of the month, it's irrelevant. So I think, yeah, they were the two biggest mistakes I made.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:09]:
I see that happening a lot with a lot of people. It's just the, you know, it's the things that you need to take care of with a business. But how did you realize, slash, get over the fact that like, that wasn't the moving the needle and you had to do something different?

Liam Haghighat [00:49:23]:
I think it was actually a pretty stern conversation with a mentor of mine. So I've got a mentor who has, you know, he's edited three businesses, he's in marketing. And, you know, when I first launched a business, I still talk to him now, but he was quite involved in terms of like, just somewhere I can bounce ideas off, really. And I remember after like a month or two of all this, he was talking about, you know, what have you achieved? What have you done? And I showed him my pitch deck, I showed him my marketing one page and he just said to me, like, what is all this? Like, how many clients have you got? How many leads have you generated? I don't care about any of this. Like, you know, what are you doing? And it was a bit of a wake up call, to be honest, because I think again, it goes back to what I said before, like, and I see this happen all the time, honestly. Yeah. So I mentioned before, I coach solo recruiters. I've seen so many solo recruiters.

Liam Haghighat [00:50:08]:
You know, I'll say to them, what have you done this week? And they've spent the week, you know, coding their database or organizing their database or creating folders in their inbox, or creating one pager on Canva. But they've made no sales calls, they've sent no sales emails, they've done no business development whatsoever. And I just think when you are solo again, you have a limited amount of time. You have to prioritize sales and marketing immediately and that means reaching out to prospects, interacting services.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:40]:
If you didn't have that mentor that you bounce that off of, where do you think you would be?

Liam Haghighat [00:50:46]:
I do definitely think it was something I was aware of at the time and I was aware that actually I need to stop spending so much time doing this like this kind of, you know, this graphic design basically because it's actually completely pointless. But I think sometimes hearing it from somebody else is quite good. And it's why I say that I do think if you launch a business, it is good to have mentors. It's good to surround yourself with people who are maybe two or three steps ahead. So I coach recruiters who have just launched. I've been going for 18 months, so I've been where they are now. I've got mentors who have been in business for five, six, seven years, in this guy's case, 20 years. They've walked where I am now.

Liam Haghighat [00:51:24]:
They've been there. And I do think that having a mentor can sometimes be quite a good shortcut because you can experience something that somebody else has experienced a hundred times and that firsthand experience through their eyes can sometimes help you get through a situation a lot faster than if you have to do it yourself. So I do think, to answer your question, I would have been able to get through it. I was aware of it. I was, you know, I'm pretty self aware guy. But yeah, just hearing it from somebody else and he's quite direct talker. So yeah, it was good to hear.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:54]:
You get a chance to chat with a lot of recruiters. You get a chance to, you know, because of the content, because of the coaching, because of just the interaction that you do online that I see you constantly having. I'm sure you get asked by a lot of recruiters just like questions like, you know, what about this, what about that? Like how do I get XYZ set up? Is there a question that you wish they would actually ask you? If so, what is that?

Liam Haghighat [00:52:15]:
Yeah, so to be honest, I get asked a lot of questions. A lot of the time it ties into superficial stuff like, you know, what Software do you use? They might ask about, you know, what website you use to design your logo, like, you know, what mobile banking app you use, etc. And a lot of that stuff is great. And don't get me wrong, like, it is important to know if you launch your business. But I think for me, the one question I wish they would ask me, it ties back into confidence. So how do I start posting, you know, how do I get over the self doubt of launching a business, put myself out there? Because that was my biggest question when I launched my business. It was, how do I just do it? Yeah. How do I just embrace it? How do I just forget about all the noise and just go for it? And I think that a lot of the time when I'm talking to recruiters who are, you know, on the fence, they might be employed and thinking about going fractional, they might be out of work.

Liam Haghighat [00:53:08]:
I almost feel like sometimes when they're asking me about software, they're asking about, you know, do you use Canva, do you use clay? They're almost giving themselves reasons to not just launch. So I think for me it's just, you know, I wish every single recruiter that I spoke to who wants to go fractional would just say, how do I have the confidence or develop the confidence to just do it and just go for it. If you have that mindset, if you're sort of at that stage, I think you, you will actually launch and you will actually go for it. I think if you want, then it's probably not the best idea.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:41]:
Got to get going. All that.

Liam Haghighat [00:53:42]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:43]:
Do you want to go laugh about, like logo stuff? I hate logos with the passion. It just requires like art and I don't have an art brain. My elite recruiter podcast logo. When I started the podcast, I typed into Canva podcast art and it was like the second option. And it's been that since.

Liam Haghighat [00:54:02]:
Yeah, so my, my logo, yeah, so my, my logo was again similar. So my fractional business is called your remote tech recruiter. And it was basically just different graphics of a capital Y. And I just saw this cool one that looked interesting and then just kind of decided, I'm going to, you know, write the word, you're a bottle career next to it, other words. And that was like the second design that I created and I've just sort of stuck with it because again, when I first launched, I considered like using a company who were going to charge a thousand pounds to create a logo in a website and everything. My website was actually created on Squarespace Initially, because much still is. Yeah, I mean, I think I've upgraded it to like, I think to another sort of similar thing, but like it was like 17 pounds a month to host it. It doesn't matter.

Liam Haghighat [00:54:50]:
I think people. Again, it goes back to what I said before. People obsess over stuff like websites, logos. It doesn't really matter, like no one really cares. It's actually about the service you offer. Do you have a service that people want to spend money on? If you don't have your website, being a 10,000 pound creation from a digital agency doesn't really matter.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:08]:
Now there's some AI stuff that can. Click, click, click, boom. Website.

Liam Haghighat [00:55:12]:
That's what I mean. Exactly. AI is there anyway, so it can go use AI.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:16]:
Awesome. Well, for people that want to follow you, Liam, how do they go about doing that?

Liam Haghighat [00:55:20]:
LinkedIn. So my surname Hagayat is pretty recognizable, so it's pretty easy to find. I'm just liam Hagayat on LinkedIn. Search for me on there and yeah, drop me a follow. You know, I'm always posting content, probably too much content to be fair, but yeah, drop me a follow and send me a dm.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:38]:
Awesome. And before I let you go, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Liam Haghighat [00:55:42]:
Yeah, I actually want to share one thing just around. We talked about technology before and I think for me, my biggest advice to anybody, and I say this all the time to be honest, on LinkedIn anyway, but my biggest advice to anybody who wants to launch a solo business or fractional business, is be very careful how much you spend on software at the start because, you know, it's very easy to, you know, go from Nothing to like £2,000amonth on software. $2,000 a month, right. And I think that there's a lot of software out there actually, which, you know, it does the job that like a zoom info or, you know, a source whale does, but for, you know, 80% less. So just be very mindful that, you know, you will be pitched when you become a founder on LinkedIn of any company, you will start getting pitched up by SDRs of software companies. And you know, I made the mistake, I think when I first launched, I had about 100 demos of different software because I was curious and I nearly spent a fortune. So just be careful about how much you spend on software because you can quite quickly spiral out of control.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:43]:
Yeah, so true. Well, Liam, I just want to say thank you. Like it's one of those things that I hate to say this, I wish I had this conversation a year ago. I've been actually looking forward to chatting with you just because I think this is an opportunity for so many people. You know, create a baseline revenue if you're in between jobs. Like, this is the way to kind of like attack the job market and just be absolutely different and not just hitting the the apply. I think in the US there's something like 160,000 recruiters still looking for work that are open to work.

Liam Haghighat [00:57:10]:
Crazy.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:11]:
You've got to be different in today's AI world. You have to find a way to differentiate yourself. And, you know, maybe going fractional could be the thing for you. But, Liam, I just want to say thank you, man. I've enjoyed your content. I've enjoyed being connected with you, and I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. So for the recruiters out there, go out there, put in the work. Go out there, get the confidence to sell.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:31]:
Get the confidence to go out there to reach out to your next client, your next customer, and go make 2025 the year that you crush your dreams. Make it happen.

Liam Haghighat [00:57:39]:
Love it. Thank you.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:41]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.