$720K in Q1, Zero Cold Calls — Nick Poloni's AI-Powered Recruiting Desk

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
I've spent years talking to big billers and the thing that usually sets them apart is judgment. The gut feeling they bring to a moment of truth in a deal. The question that surfaces, the real objection, the reframe that regains control of a stalling process. The move they make when a candidate goes quiet. Normally that kind of instinct comes from years on the desk, and when you're running 15 live processes at once, you don't have time to engineer that level of thinking into every moment. So too much is left to chance. Until now. Millie analyzes every detail of your live deals and builds the exact strategy you need.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:34]:
Powered by a curated knowledge base from elite recruiters. It's encoded intuition. The judgment and gut feel of big billers translated into real time guidance you can use for every single process. Before every call, you get sharp contextual preparation so you can lead from the first minute in your inbox. High caliber emails are already drafted. Testing, commitment, checking, fit, keeping momentum. Users save an hour a day on email alone and the way they control calls changes completely. If you've been looking for that AI edge that every top biller is using, try Mille for free today.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:05]:
Coming up on this episode of the

Nick Poloni [00:01:07]:
Elite Recruiter Podcast offers people in your space so much value that regardless if they like you or not, it is a no brainer that they need to use you because you offer too much value. And that value is not just sending a candidate, but it's advising clients. How should you hire? What's the market looking like? What are your competitors doing?

Benjamin Mena [00:01:25]:
You've qualified for the Pinnacle Society by March of this year. Yeah, zero cold calls. I got to ask, what the F are you doing?

Nick Poloni [00:01:34]:
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.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:53]:
You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year? It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:26]:
No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future of recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:02]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com I'm excited about this episode today because I have a special guest with me. We're talking about not just a million dollar year, we're talking about 720k already for this quarter. And the quarter is not done yet. This is what the year's looking like. And here's the crazy thing. He's only using three tools, PIN and ATS and a note taker. And on top of that, he hasn't done a single thing of cold call. No outbound cold calls, no outbound LinkedIn DMs.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:39]:
And the thing that I'm excited about digging into, he's actually been in the business since he was a baby. So we're going to talk about what he's doing and how he's mirrored this, the old school, everything that worked for the greatest recruiters out there and mirroring it with what we've been talking about. The potential of what is possible by an AI powered recruiter to be hitting 720k already at the time of this recording, with a quarter not being done yet, with three tools and an insane work ethic. So Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Nick Poloni [00:04:17]:
Thank you, thank you very much for having me.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:20]:
Real quick, quick 30 second self introduction.

Nick Poloni [00:04:24]:
Okay, 30 second introduction. Nick Pelloni I was have been in the business since a baby, not literally working. My parents started an agency many years ago. I jumped in when I was pretty miserable in corporate America about seven or eight or nine years ago. I don't know, time's flying, it's just blur. But about about nine, nine years ago. And the way I like to frame myself to people is I have the old school foundation of really good recruitment. And then you infuse that with what's happening now in the modern world.

Nick Poloni [00:04:53]:
AI. Combine the two together and that's who I am. I work all in the pharmaceutical biotech space, mostly on the commercial side. I do a little bit of clinical. I learn a lot and it's a lot of fun.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:05]:
Okay, so I gotta ask three tools, pin a note taker and ATS.

Nick Poloni [00:05:09]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:10]:
You're like literally looking at 720k, which is like you've qualified for the Pinnacle Society by March of this year.

Nick Poloni [00:05:19]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:19]:
Zero cold calls. I gotta ask.

Nick Poloni [00:05:21]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:21]:
What the f are you doing?

Nick Poloni [00:05:23]:
Oh, man. So loaded question. But I think it's. And I hate talking about myself, but for me it's about, number one, it's about the reputation within the industry. And from a networking standpoint, like my LinkedIn is my jam and I utilize the hell out of that. As much as it frustrates me, that is the ability where I can network on my couch 24 7. And you know, traditionally it was like go to a networking event. And although those are great, your reach is relatively limited and specific to that.

Nick Poloni [00:05:52]:
The thought process I have with that in recruiting as a whole is offer people in your space so much value that regardless if they like you or not, it is a no brainer that they need to use you because you offer too much value. And that value is not just sending a candidate, but it's advising clients. How should you hire? What's the market looking like, what are your competitors doing? And I don't say it, oh, here's what your competitors are doing. But I offer that value unsolicited, that they ask more questions and those questions lead to you answering and adding more value. And I think that's number one. Number two, I'm just real and straight up with people. And 99% of the people, it's what they're thinking and they may not say it and they appreciate it. And then there's sure 1% that don't like it.

Nick Poloni [00:06:34]:
And if that's the case, I'd rather make 99% of the people happy and 1% not. And so that's kind of my little, I guess, initial secret for success. But it's also, I have a pretty hard work ethic. I don't stop working. My Kobe Bryant is my idol. Growing up, that guy didn't stop working. I call it the Mamba mentality. I don't stop.

Nick Poloni [00:06:54]:
Nobody will work harder than I do.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:56]:
All right, we're going to, we're going to dig into that. But let's take a step back before, like, really talking about how you've developed this machine. Like, your mom was a Pinnacle Society member for a long time.

Nick Poloni [00:07:06]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:07]:
She was one of the best recruiters in the space. What was it like growing up in that house?

Nick Poloni [00:07:13]:
I was always complaining. She was on the phone and it was always weird. I remember we were in the car, and it was like, oh, calls coming through. And it was like, all right, shut up. And I'm. You're in the backseat going, this sucks. I hate this. And, like, normally I'm not talking in the car, but now we have to be quiet, and that sucks.

Nick Poloni [00:07:28]:
And she was. I mean, she worked a lot. And that's part of our job, too, is like, even though you're not in front of your desk, you get a call from somebody. And that's the other thing, too, is I'm always readily available. People can text me. People, people call me. The longest they'll have to wait is maybe an hour. And she had the same thought process and mindset, and I think that's where I adopted that from, is that growing up as a kid, there was not a moment in time where either she's taken a call and walking off somewhere, or we're in the car and it's time to be quiet.

Nick Poloni [00:07:59]:
And she had a lot of really good old school recruitment principles, such as the availability aspect, such as the. And I would just hear conversations over and over and over and over and over again in the car because it was on Bluetooth of, like, talking to candidates. And the reality is, is like, there's so many different scenarios of recruitment that it's like, I always find it's like talking it through with another recruiter, and that's how we're all able to relate is like, okay, here's what I would do in that situation. And there's never, like, a guaranteed this is the right answer. Because there is never a right answer with personalities and people. But it was like, I would hear so many conversations over and over. And then she had her desk in the back of the house, and it was just like when the door was shut and she was locked in, do not go in there. And it's always like that.

Nick Poloni [00:08:43]:
When I was a kid, and then my dad had shared with me, who's since passed when I was a baby in a bassinet. Like, I was apparently in the office on the floor in a bassinet, rocking back and forth. Don't remember those times, but it was, I guess I could say, like, yeah, I grew up in the. Literally in recruiting.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:02]:
So you actually also worked for the company while you were in high school doing data management and sucked. You told me you hated it. And you're like. Because of that, like, you did not want to ever touch recruiting or be a recruiter, like, deal with anything in recruiting. And what happened to when you went from, like, I'D rather die than do this.

Nick Poloni [00:09:22]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:22]:
To coming back to the firm in 2017.

Nick Poloni [00:09:25]:
Oh, man. So background context. I was doing data input into PCR at the time. That's where servers were located on the premise of the office. And you had to be there to do it. And it sucked. I mean, it was the worst. And I'm like, this now with our database, but it's like everything had to be proper capitalized.

Nick Poloni [00:09:46]:
First name, spacing, numbers all looking the same. So I was just, like, just focused on making sure all of that was done, but it was just never ending. It was like 95,000 records. You do one, you feel like you're making progress, but then an entire office is putting data into it, and it's like, you can't keep up. And I was honestly, like, zero percent chance I do. This sucks. I hate this. And I think it was my parents trying to be like, all right, we need to get a good work ethic in.

Nick Poloni [00:10:09]:
And so it was like, my internship over the summer, and we lived, like, 45 minutes away from the office at that, too. So I was like, in the car, morning, go to the office, not coming home until, I don't know, whatever. It was five or six. And I was miserable. It was the worst thing, worst job I've ever had in my life. And so I did that, and I was like, all right, this is what these people do all day. This sucks. But the fun part I didn't get to do, which was like, talking to people on the phone, learning about their lives, their careers or whatever.

Nick Poloni [00:10:36]:
Like, however people open up to you. And so, yeah, it was like, I'm never going to do this again. So then fast forward early career. I was selling copier machines, which is probably equally as bad in its own ways, because she was buying a copier machine. And slowly that company started to release, like, a new suite of services, which was like, cloud storage. Scan your documents. You don't need. You don't need a copy machine.

Nick Poloni [00:10:59]:
So it's like, all right, we're selling something against what we were already selling. So I left, and I was like, this is not going to be good. I leave and go to Nike. And Nike was kind of what most people would imagine. It was great on the outside. And then it was like, all right, making $35,000 a year. I don't know if this is for me. And then at the time, parents were like, okay, we haven't open.

Nick Poloni [00:11:21]:
Like, we need your help, basically. And I'm like, oh, man, flashbacks. Do I want to do this? But I'm also, like, not happy where I'm at now. Sure. But I had two requests. I was like, church and state, family business, keep it separate. And then I didn't want handouts. I hate handouts.

Nick Poloni [00:11:37]:
I can't stand it. And I was like, I want to start from the bottom. I want to work my way up. I do not want a handout. Zero. And so they were like, all right, cool. That's that. And so I joined on a build out sales.

Nick Poloni [00:11:48]:
Build out, which was just craziness. It was like 110 positions, everybody moving a million miles, a million miles an hour, all these different ways. I didn't have training. It wasn't like, all right, come in and do corporate training for two weeks, three weeks, or whatever. It was just like, all right, so start job. And I started to like it. I was like, this is cool. It's not what I remember.

Nick Poloni [00:12:06]:
And then, I don't know, the rest is kind of history from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:10]:
So you actually. Part of your requirements to come back was you actually didn't want to hand out.

Nick Poloni [00:12:16]:
No. 0. Because it. Most people would assume family business. You got the business in your hands and you just got it handed to you. And I was like, I don't want

Benjamin Mena [00:12:25]:
any of that, like, coming back in. You also wouldn't. I find this fascinating. Like, you came back in, you knew nothing about the business, no training, you knew less than your mom. But then down the road, you started becoming the one teaching her. And by the way, she's listening. I love you. You're amazing.

Nick Poloni [00:12:42]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:42]:
Like, what did that start to feel like? What was the conversation where you had to tell your mom, who was a pinnacle member, we need to start doing things differently.

Nick Poloni [00:12:54]:
Yeah, that was a tough one. Because the dynamic of, for anybody in the world watching, listening is your mom, your parents, your dad, grandma, whoever you grew up with. It's like the dynamic is they are always telling you what to do and how to do it because, you know, at some point you get into your adult life and then that changes and you develop more of a friendship or who knows? But typically that's how it happens for a lot of people. And so I go from like, growing up, being told what to do and how to do it, like a typical parent, to, all right, like, a lot of what she had taught and I had learned was still there, but I was like in. In my eyes and mindset and after kind of learning the business for a couple of years, like, we need to adapt to where I see things going, which was technology and Recruiting infused. And at the time we had email. We had email and we had a database that nobody used. And I was like, okay, this is a problem because something's going to pass us and I don't know what.

Nick Poloni [00:13:52]:
And so the first thing I did was after they kind of developed a little bit of trust. And this was the other wild part is like they were used to paying, what was it, $50 for a database, a user or something very small. And we had LinkedIn recruiter, I suppose, but no automation, no email contact finders, nothing. It was just like whatever's in your database in LinkedIn recruiter. And so I was like, we need to do, and this is when my dad was around at the time, we need to do something different. And it's an ATS that is more robust, that utilizes technology, so we don't work harder, we just work more efficiently. That was like my big thing and always has been. It's like, yes, AI is going to take over the world, but I don't think it's going to, I think it's just going to, everybody's going to have access to it and it's going to make that person a hundred times more efficient.

Nick Poloni [00:14:34]:
And so we adopt Loxo and the front runner. It was like I evaluated all these different ATSs and then I got their buy in, which was tough because again, son saying, hey, this is how to do it, mind you. A, they had been in recruiting for like 25 years. B, the dynamic of a family and a parent. And so it was like, it was not what people think it was of like, oh, here's the business. But like pushing back on a norm that's been our entire life of them telling me what to do and then, and I had some credibility. But I don't think I, I think my first year I did like 3 or 400. It was solid, but it wasn't like astronomical.

Nick Poloni [00:15:11]:
Holy cow, these are life changing numbers. And so they bought into it and luckily they did because shortly after you just started to see all of this automation and all these tools and all these different ATS's pop up out of nowhere and it's only gotten more extreme. So we adopted loxo. And the one thing I had never succeeded on, I will say with Jennifer, my mom, I call her Jennifer in business, is she just doesn't know what an ATS is still, she's still writing stuff down on paper. And I'm like, you gotta use the database. Like if you talk to the same candidate, I should be able to pick Up a year later and say, all right, this is what we talked to him about. This is the job. Because it's the experience of the candidate.

Nick Poloni [00:15:49]:
And over time, as you can imagine, you have all these candidates or people and context that she knew. Just being in the business for 20 years, and then all of a sudden I come in and they're like, who do we go to? You know, candidates are. So yeah, that was. That's like the very long winded answer to whatever the question was that I forgot. Like, go back to the.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:10]:
I want to go back to those early days. Like, you build it. You said, like between 3 and 400 your first year.

Nick Poloni [00:16:15]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:15]:
And like they didn't give you any training. They kind of tossed you to the wolves. Like, yeah. What were like those early days of like getting into this? Like, how was that? Was it a struggle figuring everything out and just tried to keep up, like, what. What was happening?

Nick Poloni [00:16:30]:
A lot. It was drinking from a fire hose for sure. Now, granted, like, in the early days, I didn't do any business development. I had zero contact. So it's 3 or 400,000 ticket with a grain of salt, because I was. That was where I was handed stuff. I was handed business to fill the roles. But it was.

Nick Poloni [00:16:45]:
It was a lot. It was funny. I remember there was this really. And this is where it was tough because we had a trainer in the franchise that we were in. We had a trainer and she was like dissecting the way that I leave voicemails. And she was like, great lady, but she was antiquated. And so I'm like, okay, why am I focusing on how to leave voicemails? Because in my head I'm thinking, all right, what would people want? What would people do? What. What just makes sense to me.

Nick Poloni [00:17:09]:
And it wasn't voicemails because, like, I don't know, people just at the time it was like still kind of a thing. But it wasn't like, when I got in, it was like, I felt like it was kind of leaving. And it was like, all right, now we're getting into like text messaging and other forms of communication. And so it was even harder because I'm thinking to myself, am I wrong? Or like, is somebody being brand new to the business? And all these people telling me, mostly trainer telling me, this is how you recruit, leaving voicemails. And it just, to me, it just didn't add up. And it wasn't that I wasn't going to listen. I wanted to absorb and learn. But it was just like, okay, but it was it was drinking from a fire hose.

Nick Poloni [00:17:43]:
It was a lot. The nice thing is it was salespeople, sales reps. And I feel like we're all kind of wired in a similar fashion. But the double edged sword to that is a lot of sales reps will sell themselves on something they are not. So how do I sort through the bs? And ultimately I just noticed like in the same thing I do now is I notice patterns and trends with people and when most of it is very similar and then you have one out of a hundred that's not, you're like, okay, let me look into this a little bit more. Like what? Like observe a little bit more. And so I would say my success early on was noticing a lot of patterns and trends of things going on and just observing and asking people questions. And I was honest with them.

Nick Poloni [00:18:27]:
Like I'm always been real and if I don't know, I'm not going to say, oh yeah, I know people, at the end of the day, they appreciate the authenticity and transparency and if I don't know, I'll tell them I don't know. But I will get back to you. So it was a lot, the first, really the first year or two especially.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:44]:
When did you actually start doing business development and start bringing in your clients?

Nick Poloni [00:18:50]:
Oh man, I'd say probably. I mean, I was always doing, quote unquote, doing it, but I never really knew proper ways. And I don't think to this day people really know 100%. What is it as we transition from a society that's, that's distracted and social media and attention spans to now and how much things have evolved? I would say I realistically started doing bd, like asking the questions to the hiring teams and the hiring managers probably within like two or three years and knew it, but I didn't really go full bore aggressive. I don't know, I still don't think I'm full bore. Like, I don't do bd. Is that weird to think I don't do it in the traditional sense, that hey, you have an opening, can I help you? Like type of thing. It's like my thing is just offering so much value to people, whether it's a candidate and I talk to them and then at some point they become a hiring manager.

Nick Poloni [00:19:41]:
Like I want people to walk away from a conversation of like, that was so like, holy cow, let me have. That was so valuable. And no, yeah, go for it.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:50]:
Let me just pause right there because yeah, all the time people say like, oh yeah, offer value, offer value. What are you actually giving to your candidates, what are you telling them on the phone that they're so interested that when they do need something, they're going to come back to you?

Nick Poloni [00:20:05]:
Like, everything. They'll ask me for insight on companies and I just happen to be so locked into talking to everybody at every company and I ask questions that I can relay that insight and I won't tell them who said what, but it's the insight. I mean, they see the network of LinkedIn and they're like, Holy cow, we have 350 mutual connections. And I should talk to this guy. So it generates curiosity, I think, in that and that standpoint.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:25]:
So pause real quick. So, like, are these people just having like, curiosity calls with you or is this like, candidate calls that you're doing? Like, where are they getting into the conversation?

Nick Poloni [00:20:32]:
I'd say both. It's, it's wild because I do a lot of like, candidate conversations and recruitment. I do that. And that allows me to broaden the network, right. Of like different people, all kind of within the same general sector. But I will have my outbound outreach and I am just like, that's where pin comes in 10 minutes, source the entire market and then all of them are getting. And I can tell you guys how I do the emails, but all of them are getting emails. And that generates like, okay, that part of those demographic of people, the candidates.

Nick Poloni [00:21:00]:
I talk to those people, but I don't say no to any. Well, for the most part, I don't say no to anybody that wants to have a conversation that's in pharma biotech. If they're in like some other sector, I'll be honest with them and just say, hey, I don't work in your sector. I don't have value for you. But if it's pharma biotech and they want a resource is what I say, I will offer that. And I'd say probably every day, like today. What is it? It's one o'. Clock.

Nick Poloni [00:21:25]:
I've probably had like three or four conversations with senior leaders that I don't have something for them now, but I may. And I do that because when I do have something for them, rather than putting them in an email campaign and waiting five days or six days or seven days for them to respond, I text them and they respond within 10 minutes. And then I can get that in front of the client much faster.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:44]:
So you said that you're having like a lot of your conversations from pin.

Nick Poloni [00:21:50]:
It's pin. It's sourcing candidates for jobs that I'M working on. And then whether or not they're a fit, I always want to leave them with the, you know, hey, keep the open dialogue. I'm here if you need me. And then oftentimes people will open up and they'll be like, hey, I'm interviewing with company X, Y, Z. And then I started notice those patterns and trends and go, a lot of people are. A lot of people have been ghosted. A lot of people this, a lot of people that.

Nick Poloni [00:22:12]:
And I can just tell people very straight up, like, I mean, there's companies I work in, my industry won't put out names, so I don't get sued. But it's like, they're bad companies. Their culture sucks. The people, like, people don't like it, but they pay really well. And so I'll be honest and say, hey, here's your upside. Your upside is money, but your downside is micromanagement and a culture that not many people like. So rather than hear from the recruiter who has some credibility in their books, go talk to somebody at the company, Go reach out to a rep on LinkedIn, another rep, or reach out to somebody, because that insight, if I'm in your shoes, is going to be much more valuable because they work there. And if it's a great culture, I'll tell people like, hey, the culture here is excellent.

Nick Poloni [00:22:52]:
Here's your upside here. And in pharma, it's like, I noticed those trends. What do people gravitate towards? It's the pipeline and the products. It's the therapeutic areas. It's, you know, smaller companies with equity. You know, your big pharma is. Is, quote, unquote secure, although not anymore. And I feel like I basically repeat what everybody says all day, and then it's a lot of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally.

Nick Poloni [00:23:12]:
And so it develops that credibility, like, right off the bat. And I don't sell people. I just tell people how it is. I say, this is. Because I say no opportunity is ever perfect. And so here's your upside, here's your downside. And for everybody, those variables are going to be different. You know, a downside for somebody might be a huge downside, like a large territory because they've got a big fan, they got a family, or, you know, a large territory for somebody single might be like, whatever.

Nick Poloni [00:23:35]:
Sure, I like to travel. So I think it's just being honest and real with people, and then people open up to me. I don't know. It's kind of weird sometimes, like, but it's also like, all right, this kind of helps so I get to know more.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:46]:
So we'll talk a little more about the machine that you've been building in a bit, but I want to go back to, like, you know, a little bit of your origin story. So, like, you're a few years in, you're now hitting, like, sales is starting to happen. You said you didn't want any handouts.

Nick Poloni [00:23:59]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:59]:
When did you feel like? I don't want to say, like you felt like you arrived, but you felt like, like, okay, cool. Like, I got this 5. Finally, I understand this. Like, I am now part of this.

Nick Poloni [00:24:09]:
I would say, like, pre pandemic era or. Well, hold on. I would say there's two, like, check boxes. In my intuition going, all right, I think I'm doing all right. Is the first was like, three. Like, the worst year I've ever had is 400. So it was like, I had consistent years of. And we had MRI network was who we were a part of.

Nick Poloni [00:24:29]:
So my benchmark of what's good was their president's club. Their president's club, I think, was like, 350. And so I was like, all right, like, I've had consistent years back to back to back of 400, 600, back to back years. That was number one. And then number two was just the reputation that I hear from people. And that part, to me, like, people being candidates, I do no networking with other recruiters. Not because of that. Like, just because we don't.

Nick Poloni [00:24:58]:
We're not in the same space. I want to be of value to the people I serve, which is the pharma, biotech professionals. And so when I would get those conversations going all the time, or it was like, hey, I got your number from so and so. I've heard this, I've heard that. Or your name came by three people this week. I just had to call you and talk to you. Like, that, to me, was like. That was like, on another level of, like, greatness.

Nick Poloni [00:25:18]:
It wasn't the billings, it wasn't the placements or any of that stuff. It was just like, all right, my name is being passed on word of mouth by so many people in the same exact week. And it wasn't because of a LinkedIn post. It was just at random. And so when I kept hearing those pieces over and over and over again, I was like, okay, A, there's value by the people, and C, they're talking about me without me being there, without me being around, without me, like, putting something out there on the Internet for them to do that. And so that to me was like my moment of like, okay, this is. And I always seek that validation even though it comes through in the numbers, because the numbers are great. But that's sales.

Nick Poloni [00:25:57]:
And sales is, I don't want to be a salesperson. I want to be somebody where people are like, holy shit. I walk away from conversations with this guy and I'm in a better place because I have more info, more tools than I was 30 minutes ago. And ideally, from our standpoint, it's like we want to place the person and get them the job so we get paid. But like, I had a client the other day talking to me about money and we were renegotiating our contract and I told him I don't like having these conversations. And I said, pay me what you think is fair based on what value I've provided. And I walked away. And I have a $20,000 a month retainer.

Nick Poloni [00:26:34]:
And I have all their sales business, I have all their, like every role that comes through that organization we have now. And I was like, totally. That's fair, 100%. And I operate on a way that's like, people are expecting me to negotiate because at the end of the day, if they came by and they're like, hey, yeah, we'll pay you 15% and no retainer and it's retained, I can walk away, I can say good luck. But my thing is showing people so much value, whether it's a client or a candidate, that they're just like, there's no other option out there. And the nice thing we have, at least in my space, pharma, biotech, recruitment, our benchmark of like, what good is, is so low. It's like if I call somebody and don't ghost them, they're like, oh my God, this is amazing. Or if I'm like calling people, giving them updates, they're not expecting it.

Nick Poloni [00:27:16]:
I'm like, that's my job. Like I have to keep you updated. Like it's a no brainer to be. And at the end of the day, I don't know, we have like probably 5ish people in a, in a interview process for each job. So it's not like it's not like I have to call like a boatload of people. And if we have 50 people in the interview process, we're doing something wrong on sourcing, so we shouldn't have that many. And that's where pin comes in.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:40]:
Let me take a step back. Like, you know, family business, you want to earn it. You talked about when you finally, like, felt. I don't say accepted, but, like, things started clicking. When did the conversations happen of them looking at passing the business on or giving ownership to you? Like, when did that. Those. The torch again?

Nick Poloni [00:27:57]:
It was one of those things where it was in talks, but, like, not, hey, we've sat down and talked about it. And I wanted them to feel comfortable. And it was my mom. My dad passed in. What was it, 20, 21. And so it was like my mom and I, and it was like, he would always run the operations of the business. She was just the hustler and the recruiter, bringing in clients, candidates. And so her.

Nick Poloni [00:28:20]:
I just. I said, when you're comfortable retiring, which, if you haven't done retired before, it's apparently pretty hard. She's always, like, messaging me, and I'm like, you need to go chill out. Go golf. Go have fun. But it was like, I don't know. She. I think she had a moment where.

Nick Poloni [00:28:36]:
Where she was like, all right, I'm wanting to go enjoy outside of work, find new hobbies. But it was funny because the conversation was more just like, I felt like I was in a good spot the whole time, and I felt like I could bring in business. Not just whenever, but I felt like I could bring in business, and I was sustaining a reasonable business with. I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket with one client, but I have a diversified clientele. And I was like, I'm good. And I'm not the kind of person where I'm like, hey, what do you think? Come up with this on the spot? I'm just like, I'm telling you where I'm at. I'm good. I'm content.

Nick Poloni [00:29:16]:
When you feel that timing is right, if it's end of a quarter, end of a year, whatever, that that chapter page is in time, like, I'm ready. And so realistically, it was like. I mean, officially, it was this year, January 1, 2026. But I think from the operations and everything else standpoint, it was. It was before that. Because our job is full time, you can't be doing half golf, half recruiting. It's hard. I mean, you can't.

Nick Poloni [00:29:46]:
Maybe you can't. Maybe some people can. But I understand what you told her. I was like, yeah, that's true. And so I just. I was just like, I'm ready whenever you are, and I'm excited. I was excited for that next step as well. Just because it's like.

Nick Poloni [00:30:00]:
I don't know, it's like a new chapter, a new Page. And there's been some things, like, I have a team now, and there's been some things that I've added in and some things that I've taken out in terms of what I think makes sense from an efficiency and a process standpoint.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:13]:
Let's talk about that in a second. But this started officially this year. That transition, when it officially happened, when it was completed, how did that feel?

Nick Poloni [00:30:23]:
It felt really good. But I also was like, I need to bust my ass. Like, I need to. Even though I'm doing fine in my head, whatever that variable was in my head, that's like, all right, now you're on your own. Something clicked and I was like, there is no, like, I, I am going to be working. Like, I am billing nothing, whether I'm billing 500,000 or, you know, whatever that number is. Like, I'm going to be working my ass off. And so I think part of that, honestly, if, like, what's happened.

Nick Poloni [00:30:50]:
Fast forward to today, like, why the numbers are where they're at is honestly because I'm like, in my head, I'm like, all right, I could do better, I could do better. I got to do better. And so it's been, I don't know, it's been interesting. I wouldn't say there's been positives, there's been negatives. I think from the positive aspect, it's like new school forward thinking, infusing a little bit more technology into. Into the entire group where everybody has the buy in. The downside is I talked to my mom less and it, I mean, I can call her after work or whatever, but it's like, she'll always call me in the middle of the day and I'm like, I'm stacked back to back calls all day. Like, I keep trying to tell her, like, hey, I.

Nick Poloni [00:31:27]:
I'm. I'm still working, but I think overall it's just been. It's been like, evens out. Where I wouldn't say it's like substantially worse or substantially better. It just is.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:39]:
What did you. With this transition? Like, what did you add in and what did you take away?

Nick Poloni [00:31:46]:
Microsoft Teams took away. I hate that platform. It's terrible for a tech company. Shout out Microsoft Teams. You got to get new engineers. No, but all jokes aside, I put in slack because we hired a virtual assistant. And so he does all of our interview scheduling and I offer that now. I don't really say.

Nick Poloni [00:32:05]:
It's just something I do with clients from like, we will slide send the invite. Not you have the option to Because I know we're going to get it done in 10 minutes, whereas if I forward it to somebody else within a different organization, there's too many gaps, inefficiencies. And so I bought Slack. Slack's great for remote teams. Love the platform, it's awesome. And then that allows us to have channels for each client. So when we need to schedule interviews, we have a whole pro, like a third, two second process of like, hey, John, here's the person, the time, like everything. And then he sends it out and notes everything in our CRM.

Nick Poloni [00:32:40]:
So that way we know exactly when did they talk and who. And so I think from an operational efficiency standpoint, that's what I really sat there and thought about when I was actually in Japan, end of December into January, and I was like, all right, what can I do? And I was just brainstorming when I have all this free time sitting there on an airplane, like, what can I do to make us superhuman in terms of efficiency? But we still keep the human touch that everybody wants recruiters for and everything is on the back end, like, how can we be so. So. And I hired the virtual assistant. That was like best decision in my life. He's unreal. And he does all the backend things he looks at, like just double checks to make sure everything is done. Like we have this whole system down where he like does an eye emoji when the, when I, when he sees the, the invite come in and then he does the green check emoji when it's done so he can go back at the end of every day and make sure all the green checks are there.

Nick Poloni [00:33:31]:
So it's just like little things like that to make sure that nothing slips to the cracks. And then we have an email that goes out with the hiring manager's LinkedIn profile in the email for a thank you follow up and like a hey, just making sure that you got the invite because people will claim they didn't get it and they got it. And so please respond to this to make sure you got it. And then if we don't get a response, then he goes back and he comes to me and then I go, hey, did you get the invite? Like, just want to make sure it's there so nothing slips through the cracks. This, we saw way too much of that without tech. I think that's probably one of the biggest pieces we added is goodbye teams, hello Slack. Claude, that's game changer. I built a cloud agent that is basically our third recruiting partner that writes job description.

Nick Poloni [00:34:14]:
So if a Client wants it. And they're like, I'm thinking about using the recruiter. I'm like, great, 20 minutes, there's a JD and they're like, all right, can we use you? So that's another one. And then it's like all built within, like a recruiter mindset. So, like, if we ever get this, like, ooh, what should we respond? Email wise, throw it in there. Builds pro. Like, I could throw in a resume and create five bullet points based on the job description. Focus on xyz.

Nick Poloni [00:34:36]:
I'd say that's another big one. What else? Yeah, it's like those are, I'd say those are like the two biggest ones that I've put in just in the last three months.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:46]:
So I want to kind of this like old school, new school mindset because, like, I. I got the chance to interview your mom for those listening. Go back to that episode. Like, she really talked about family and everything and how important the family is. And it's kind of cool, like, surreal. A few years later, we're sitting down. But one of the things your mom has said multiple times is phones above everything else.

Nick Poloni [00:35:07]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:08]:
Make five more calls when you think you're done. Yeah, that, that built her to being, becoming one of the best recruiters in the country. Pinnacle society. For how long was she in Pinnacle? Many, many, many years.

Nick Poloni [00:35:18]:
Yeah, she was. She was in there for a hot second. Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:21]:
Your business development is entirely inbound from LinkedIn, which is completely not the same of philosophy. Which one's right?

Nick Poloni [00:35:29]:
Who pressure? I would say that they're both right in their own eras and similar to sports. I like to make sports analogies is like you could argue about what's the best basketball player. And then you start to factor in the eras of those basketball players in which they played in and the conversation can to a degree change. Maybe not when you're talking Michael Jordan and that, that type of thing, but I think from an era standpoint in recruiting, like, it has changed so much because I have been around all the old school OG recruiters from going to all the MRI networks. And so knowing the office owners, how they run the offices, how the recruiters, you know, roll like every little nook and cranny I have. And I've like asked them, like, I know there's a recruiter guy. We were going back and forth having drinks over like a year or two ago about like the need for in person. And I was like, that is not true.

Nick Poloni [00:36:20]:
And we had this. Agree to disagree. Like, not like it was friendly but like an agree to disagree like moment where I was like, if I'm only looking in Washington, like, I'm in the Vancouver Portland market. My limit for talent is much less. A, there's no pharma recruitment. B, like, I'm at a tremendous disadvantage. But I think that is part of the era that they grew up in, in the recruitment realm that is just different. And I think from the phone to LinkedIn standpoint, like, I believe in the phone, the phone is your biggest tool and your biggest asset.

Nick Poloni [00:36:55]:
You don't have a phone, you're screwed. Now what I don't believe in is cold call. Cold calling somebody without any sort of background context, people, people don't like it. And the chances you start that conversation off where they're caught off guard, which is most times. And all the spam callers that now exist in society, right, and the spam texts that exist in society, like that has changed the mindset of who's on the other end. It used to be like, oh, if you're getting a call, it's definitely not a spam caller because they didn't exist. And now it's like, there's just a lot of changes in society that have made, I think us have to adapt. And so long story short is I don't think that it's, it's wrong.

Nick Poloni [00:37:33]:
I think in that era it was, that was what you do in this era. I think you teed up with a email and then I tee that up with a LinkedIn message. So then they go, all right, I have some context on the email now. I have LinkedIn now. I see he's connected with a bunch of people and I see his voice on LinkedIn is quite large now. I'm curious. So when he calls, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Whatever they want to say, I'm so sorry I didn't answer the call.

Nick Poloni [00:37:57]:
Instead of like, who? Yeah, no, I don't have time for this right now. Bye. And I think that's what, you know, that. And I think it's just a matter of adapting to a industry or I'm sure all industries changing with the, like, with society that's changed so dramatically. Like, attention spans are, are, are way shorter thanks to TikTok and Instagram and just all that. And so I think it's just, how do we adapt to the era that we're in?

Benjamin Mena [00:38:27]:
So with the old school mindset that you grew up in, the new school, what is something that your mom drilled into you every single Day that you still run with that, you see a lot of other recruiters skipping to their own detriment.

Nick Poloni [00:38:43]:
Persistence, persistence. I think a lot of people will make assumptions, oh, if they didn't answer my call, they're not interested. Persistence. And what I will say that I have done slightly different, but again, it's an ERA thing. We have more channels to reach out to people on. And the big one is text. Like text. 20 years ago, you talked to.

Nick Poloni [00:39:06]:
If we were on a podcast 20 years ago talking about text messages, they'd say you're like, don't ever do that. It's crazy. And what I have to like, I get really, really into the weeds with stuff I was texting on. We had Ringcentral, so it was a separate number and green text bubble. Most of my clients and most people I texted pharma have iPhones. Then I did the same exact message, everything the same, except I changed to an iPhone blue text bubble. The response rate went up like 40%. Now I can't track it because it's not hooked to my ats, but it was automatic.

Nick Poloni [00:39:38]:
I see the blue text bubble. I. I feel a little bit more comfortable. And if you text out of an ATS where you're mass texting, then you have the text to unsubscribe at the bottom. That's like, terrible if you're a candidate reading it. And so, yeah, it's more work on my end. But instead of reaching out to 500 candidates because nobody's responding now, I can reach out to 50 and get a response rate of like, half. And I can add my contact card with that.

Nick Poloni [00:40:06]:
So. So then they can open up the contact card. They can get more. More like, relevance to my reach out without me having to get it and take up all of these blocks of like a whole three paragraphs. And then I lost them because their attention span's super short. So I think from the long. Yeah, long. Long story short, I think most of the.

Nick Poloni [00:40:26]:
The answer is it's just an. It's just difference in era and adapting to the new era.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:31]:
So I want to jump a little forward and walk through the machine that you built, because you're talking about LinkedIn and all these things that you've done. And I want you to walk me through your content strategy. What type of posts are you doing? What does your conversation paths actually look like for somebody seeing your content and your search engagement?

Nick Poloni [00:40:51]:
Yeah, I'm still figuring out the LinkedIn algorithm. I think it changes so much, it's hard to figure it out. And nail it down. And I had a marketing agency doing it for a little bit, and it was just like, it wasn't good. It was expensive, and they weren't producing anything. They were actually less than what I would get in terms of engagement. In the last, like, three years, I have over 2.1 million impressions on LinkedIn. And some months are better than others, despite having the exact same type of content.

Nick Poloni [00:41:17]:
But at least for the focus that I have, which is pharma, biotech, corporate professionals, most of them seasoned, I'd say a good chunk of what I post is, like, something motivational just to make people feel good. Because right now it's a lot of, like, layoffs and downsizings. And at least the last two or three years have been people looking for jobs. Not ideal. I actually only do, like. I try to keep it a rule of, like, 10% of what I put is jobs. A, I spend too much time going through LinkedIn messages of, like, people from the pizza shop saying, hey, I'm interested in the vice president of sales. And they're, like, way too ambitious.

Nick Poloni [00:41:51]:
It's just too much. B, it's not very, like, it doesn't get as much engagement. People don't like it. The only reason I do that is so clients that are scrolling and not engaging can see, oh, he works on compliance, he works on sales, he works on marketing, he works on all of these roles. It just kind of validates, I think, people in their head that, like, if I use this guy or this agency, they've done it before, but most of it is, like, motivational slash, feel good slash. And it's not text, it's the pictures that you will see, like, on Instagram, like, the good quote, like, one of those Instagram pages. And it's just like, a bunch of, like, photos of, like, motivational texts. People love that.

Nick Poloni [00:42:27]:
Polls. Polls get really high engagement. I do a lot. I do polls on the occasion, but I like to do good polls that people are like, I would vote in that. Not some, like, generic stuff. The biggest piece I keep is. I always. My wife is like, feel like pretty social media.

Nick Poloni [00:42:42]:
She's a sales rep, so she's like, wired the same way. And I always, like. I'm like, hey, do you like this? Like, does this sound good? And she's. They'll be like, no, that sucks. Do a different one. And I'm like, all right, what about this one? So, like, she's kind of my second pair of eyes for, like, a lot of the things the polls do pretty well. And Then I'll do like, the occasional story, like I did a story or like a long block of text about, like, candidate experience and like, kind of event sesh on the behalf of the candidate. Because the candidates can't do it.

Nick Poloni [00:43:09]:
They'll come across as a pain in the ass. But I do it. And they're like, oh, my God, totally. I experienced the same thing. So stuff that's going to make people say something like that when they're reading it in their mind.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:19]:
So you have what, 65,000 connect or followers.

Nick Poloni [00:43:23]:
Yeah, 65 or 70. Something like that. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:25]:
And I hate this word with a passion.

Nick Poloni [00:43:28]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:29]:
Which influencer. But, like, you have hit the influencer level Persona and it's like, I hate it. I get called that too.

Nick Poloni [00:43:40]:
And I'm like, no, no, no, no.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:40]:
I'm just a recruiter. I hate that. I'm not doing TikTok dances.

Nick Poloni [00:43:44]:
Yeah, 100%.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:46]:
But what's the difference in content that builds a real business versus one that just makes noise?

Nick Poloni [00:43:54]:
A combination of things. Not just only motivational quotes, like posts, things that will add value. And if you're always doing motivational quotes, you'll get burnt out if you're only doing polls. Like, it's variety. People don't. I don't even know what I'm. I have no. It's funny, a lot of these, like, marketing agencies and people, like, think, oh, he has a Rolodex of posts lined up over the next two weeks of what's coming out.

Nick Poloni [00:44:18]:
I could not tell you what my next post is going to be. When it comes in my head, I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. It goes out. I have no time period. I have no. I can see. I use shield AI or AP or whatever it's called, shield for my Instagram or my Instagram. Oh, God.

Nick Poloni [00:44:33]:
Influencer for my. I use SHIELD for my, like, managing metrics to see, all right, what times work best and stuff like that. But to be. I am an influencer at the end of the day and I hate using the word too. But, like, I do influence people's decision making in certain instances. And it's mostly on the front end of, like, should we do business with this guy? Is he legit or not? And the way I tried to describe this to my mom, because that's one error that she doesn't understand, is, like, that was not a thing for old school recruiters. Influencers were never a thing for any generation prior to. It's like if they can sit there and feel comfortable because of 15,000 connections or whatever it is, or 60,000 connections or whatever.

Nick Poloni [00:45:21]:
That doesn't exist in recruiting right now. Well, I shouldn't say that. It exists a lot less in recruiting now. You go to Instagram and like everybody's trying to be an influencer, dancing videos or whatever, and it's just overcrowded. Yeah. They're like, oh, look at me, I'm dancing to some random hype song and it's like, what are you doing? But at the end of the day, that's what society gravitates towards and that's why it's super successful when selling products. Like that is all TikTok is. That is what Instagram has become.

Nick Poloni [00:45:52]:
And I'm like, we don't really have this on LinkedIn. We don't have it on LinkedIn specifically for pharma biotech. I haven't seen. I mean, I've seen a few out there who like put stuff out there, but like, we don't really have that. And so when it comes across to people, they know that my personality is matching LinkedIn and that's just more laid back, professional, but not corporate, over the top, rigid. You can have a conversation with me. It's a vault. We could be cool and have a good conversation and you're not going to feel like, ooh, am I opening up to the right person? And it's just kind of built and snowballed its effect off of that.

Nick Poloni [00:46:32]:
And I wish I would have started earlier. I will say I'm trying to get to 100 this year.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:37]:
So let me just say this. Like I. I use word influencer. We talk about the flu word influencer. I hate the word influencer. And one of my buddies, Brent Orsuka, said that best. You almost want to become an influencer, but most importantly, doing what you're doing and how you're doing it, you become a person of influence.

Nick Poloni [00:46:54]:
Yeah, exactly. That's so well put.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:57]:
And the person of influence is the one that gets the job orders.

Nick Poloni [00:47:00]:
Yeah, yeah, that's a thousand percent. Yeah, that's a very good way to put it and a very short way to put it. I would thousand percent agree with that.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:08]:
So I want to flip gears just for time.

Nick Poloni [00:47:10]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:11]:
How are you using AI throughout your day? Like you've mentioned, use Claude, use pen coulee for like, how, like, what does your day look like when it comes to artificial intelligence?

Nick Poloni [00:47:22]:
So I'm going to give out some secret sauce. This is one thing I learned from somebody about AI is tell AI what you want. It to do and have it write your prompt, open up a new window, use that prompt as like whatever output you want to do. So tying that into what I do. So if I have like my tech stack is PIN for sourcing and outbound candidate outreach. Cluli is like just. I get on the phone with the hiring team, like, what do you want? They tell me cluly organizes all of that. And then my ats.

Nick Poloni [00:47:57]:
And so what I end up doing is when I have that intake, like, we're taking on searches, dude, where we have never done them in a million years. But we're like, oh yeah, we're experts in compliance. We have a chief compliance officer right now. And cluly and PIN have allowed me to do this is what I'll do is that the cluly which listens to the conversation and nobody can see it on the other side, basically notes down what they want. I throw that with my notes and the job description and hey, this is a compliance role in pharma biotech. Find me the best profiles and create the best search string for pin. Then I take that, like output, I throw that into pin and PIN is genius. And then.

Nick Poloni [00:48:44]:
And it knows that PIN is. It'll be like, yes, PIN is this. You can see like, Claude, like thinking it'll be like, yeah, PIN is an outbound recruitment platform. So, like knows it's the right pin. And then I throw all that output into PIN and it pulls money candidates in. Like, money. And we're like, I don't know, we got in like three days. My, my partner and I, we had like four or five candidates.

Nick Poloni [00:49:05]:
You're five for five on. And we've never touched a compliance role. Now you know what happens if the candidates ask us questions? What, Yada, yada, yada. I mean, we get as much down as we possibly can. But I mean, I'm honest with people and I'm like, yeah, this is our first time touching a compliance role. Let me get that, Let me get back to you. Get back to them, Ask them, you know, but oftentimes we know enough to get by and have conversations. And like, if somebody asks us some super specific question, like, you know, who's the third person in line reporting to this role? Like something crazy like that.

Nick Poloni [00:49:34]:
Well, nobody's gonna know that even if you're a compliance expert. So that's really it. And then on the PIN side of things, we have an outbound email. Then we have second step is a day later LinkedIn message saying, hey, sent you a message about a. Whatever the role is yesterday via email, not sure if it reached you. And then the thing about PIN is it has a custom AI sentence. So it's like I'll say in the custom AI sends, you can like give it directions. I'll say, hype the candidate up, pull out something really specific on their profile, why they're a fit, make it non generic.

Nick Poloni [00:50:05]:
And then it's like hyping them up. Like your expertise in the diabetes space the last five years and 3P clubs would make you a great asset. And then it finds everybody. You don't have to worry about the people where the contact information isn't found, because if it happens, they'll go, oh, I didn't get your email. Oh, great, what's your email? Boom. And then the third step is an email reply to the original email. So it's like staying in the thread like three days later. So it pulls off the gas a little bit.

Nick Poloni [00:50:30]:
Like, I just did a sale in this crazy november first week of December by myself. I did an entire sales build in two weeks. Now, I was working 16 hours a day and it sucked in weekends, but I did it just to see, like, all right, process wise. And I hire people and they try to come back to me and say, oh, I don't have the tools to get the job done. You have the tools to get the job done. And I'm not expecting somebody to work 16 hours a day for two weeks straight. But yeah, it, it worked very well.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:57]:
So you used the PIN just for that entire build out?

Nick Poloni [00:50:59]:
Yeah, entire.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:00]:
Commission wise, commission wise or building wise? How much was that?

Nick Poloni [00:51:03]:
It was ballpark at like 450 in two weeks. It was un. Yeah, it was unbelievable. Right before the holidays. It was great. It was wild though. It was like I was moving a million miles an hour the down. The only downside was I had LinkedIn recruiter, like hooked up to it.

Nick Poloni [00:51:20]:
So if I wasn't connected with the candidate, which is like probably at least more than half, then it sends them a LinkedIn recruiter message. Now, my LinkedIn recruiter was like over a 40% response rate, but I ran out of credits. And so then I went to LinkedIn. I'm like, hey, can I buy credits? And they're like $21 a credit if you want to buy a Molly card. I'm like, what are you on 21 a credit? So then they created this whole proposal recently. $57,000 for four seats. And I'm just like, hate it. But it's like, it works because I did a sales build with it and so you get about.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:55]:
So wait, LinkedIn was how much?

Nick Poloni [00:51:58]:
$57,000. Four seats. Yeah, because I need more credits and the only way to buy credits that's non a la carte is to buy a license that you don't use, but it comes with 100 credits a month.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:10]:
So wait, it's cheaper to buy a whole new license than buy the creditola card.

Nick Poloni [00:52:14]:
I hate LinkedIn for that. Yes. So I went to the VP who had been there for like 20 something years and I typed an email out that was very nice and it referenced her kids, which was on LinkedIn. So it was public. I got a message from my account holder right away and I was like, look, I'm not like, this is nothing against you, but like, this is ridiculous. Like, I'm using the platform as it should be. And if influencer on the platform, getting more people to come onto it, can you at least help a brother out? And they were like, no, you can buy another license. Wow.

Nick Poloni [00:52:46]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:51]:
So there's a lot of sourcing tools out there screaming, AI. You know, I gotta ask you because like, I know I, I've seen a lot, I get hit up by a lot.

Nick Poloni [00:52:59]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:01]:
Specifically pip.

Nick Poloni [00:53:02]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:02]:
What are they doing that others aren't? Give it to me real.

Nick Poloni [00:53:09]:
So the deal with a lot of these platforms, I feel like a lot of it starts with the contact information. And what I found in doing like a deep dive is like when these companies buy data, oftentimes they're buying it structured based on industry. So like pharma biotech, when they buy that data, like what I use Lucia for contact finder. It works insanely well for pharma biotech. But then at the time we had a banking division in our office, different industry, it sucked. And so I think that's kind of step number one is like, is that data accurate? Now what I think makes PIN really, really good. A couple of things A, the sourcing for me is unreal. Like, it is, it is unbelievable.

Nick Poloni [00:53:51]:
And then number two, I think the UI is pretty solid. Like, it's easy to read. They're adding things into it left and right. And that's the one thing I think with a lot of these SaaS, companies is like, they grow, they grow, they go really fast and software is going to have bugs. And if it has bugs, some of them are like, you can't even work on the platform because there's so many of them. And what I like about PIN is that they squash Those bugs like 24 hours after I'm like, hey, here's an issue. And that I appreciate because. Because it's like, instead of releasing a bunch of new features, they're like, let's fix what we have so we have a very solid foundation to add features on top of it.

Nick Poloni [00:54:27]:
So I like, I like that part. I think they're. The team is awesome. The team is just, they're just an awesome, like, lean team that kicks ass. But most importantly, like, the outreach is unreal. And I mean, I read some of the mess. Like, I brought in my partner Tony on this one. Cause I.

Nick Poloni [00:54:42]:
To get him in. I had recruited with the guy for like five or six years. I was like, dude, come join. Never did. And then finally PIN came around and I showed him Pin and I was like, look at me, like, go through my set messages. And he was just like, what? And he doesn't like, technology is not his. He's not bad at it, but it's not like his forte. And he was just like, mind blown.

Nick Poloni [00:55:01]:
And then he comes gets into compliance. Never touched it. And now he's an expert at compliance because all these people are responding. And so I think the hard part about AI and any, like, any company out there trying to sell software, all their competitors are going to have AI in front of it to try to get the consumer in, because the consumer doesn't know enough about AI to know it's great and bad. And their AI, like pin's AI is legit, at least for what I do. Take it for how you want to take it. But they're, they're. The results for me are great and I'm not going to switch.

Nick Poloni [00:55:33]:
I don't find it's going to be possible to continue to do what we're doing. But I think, I just think they're awesome. And then they have like a little thing at the top where it like summarizes like whatever bullet points you want. If, if you want sales, if you want diabetes experience, if you want whatever marketing experience, it'll. It'll show you, like, yes, it has it, or no, it doesn't. And then the other really cool part is the company that you're sourcing for in the candidate profile, if it says like Pfizer like five years ago, there'll be like a couple little circles and it'll show like, these current employees of the company are sourcing for Pfizer at the same time as this guy that you're looking at. They may know each other. So they're, they're, they thought of some pretty, pretty.

Nick Poloni [00:56:11]:
In my Opinion revolutionary, really cool ways where they don't add too much unuseful information. And the information, the features they add for me are all like, love it.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:23]:
So just out of curiosity, looking at building numbers, like, what do you think, how much billing do you think you would have lost if PIN magically disappeared tomorrow?

Nick Poloni [00:56:30]:
Well, I wouldn't have been able to do the sales build, that's for sure. I think it's a really good question. I don't want to think about that. I don't, I don't think I would. I mean, I wouldn't be able to. The thing is, I would have to tell clients I can't bring talent to them in like five days or less. And that would suck.

Benjamin Mena [00:56:49]:
That's your pitch?

Nick Poloni [00:56:50]:
That's my pitch. Five days or less. And they, and I have not, I am so competitive. I have not hit that number. And because I have, the thing is, because I have pin, I don't work less, I work on more job orders. So like most people are going to say, oh, Instead of spending three hours sourcing today, now I do pin so I can go golfing for two hours and what is it, 50 minutes? I'm like, okay, what in that, what can I do in that 2 hour and 50 minute window where I can be more productive and make more money? And that's how it rolled. Like I'm, I am working in my desk, I am not taking time off because I have an easier tool to use. And I think that I will make or break really good recruiters.

Nick Poloni [00:57:29]:
I do. I think the really, really good ones are going to say, nope, now I can work on 30 job orders instead of 15 or five. And I think the bad ones are going to say, I'm going to cut out early today. And that's okay to cut out early, but if you're doing that every single day and that's your mindset, you're not a top builder.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:46]:
We're going to talk about the future in a second. But like, you know, just for speed and where we're at, because I looked up and like, holy crap. Like we've been talking for a while and I feel like we have talking with you, Nick.

Nick Poloni [00:57:56]:
Yep, 100%.

Benjamin Mena [00:57:58]:
In the pregame you said something about you score your network relationships, why do you do that? How do you measure it and what is the impact of scoring your network?

Nick Poloni [00:58:07]:
So I think this is super important. As I build out the agency and have other people within the organization all calling the same people and being hyper focused in the same niche is relationships are like myself, my partner, somebody else in the firm, and candidate. There's that, like, trio of, like, relationships are really interesting. Like, I may be really good at what I do, and some random hiring manager doesn't want to talk to me. I don't care if we can bring the business in because my partner or different recruiter has a better relationship with them for whatever reason. They both have golden retriever dogs or who knows what. People are just funky and they're. And that's why I said, like, recruiting is so interesting because it's like, it's a lot of talk through the scenario kind of type of things.

Nick Poloni [00:58:53]:
But I say to everybody, be honest with yourself and rate that relationship that you have with that person on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 is like, your best friends. You met up for drinks and you've been to conferences with them, and, like, you're real tight with them. One is nothing. And where it really matters is, like, the seven and a half to, like, five window. Because that's where it's like, people want to act like they have relationships with people, but do they really? And so we have this little thing going with our team where it's like. Like, candidates will send me a job and say, hey, can you get me into this company? And then I'm like, all right, let's go see who the hiring manager is. And I'm like, I'll message the whole team, hey, who knows this person? And if nobody knows him that well, then I'll just take it because the candidate reached out to me.

Nick Poloni [00:59:39]:
But if my partner's like, hey, we got like a 9 out of 10, like, I don't need an explanation. I don't need, like, just it's added fluff. Like, what number? Give me a number. It's super easy. And if there's a 10, then he will go reach out and we'll figure out a way to bring the business in. And for me, it's like, you can't be overly, like, I'm money focused in this conversation because I'm competitive. I don't talk about money at all to clients, to candidates, to anybody. Like, if you find the value there without me having to say numbers and.

Nick Poloni [01:00:10]:
And me acting all like, oh, my God, talk about myself. If you can't find the value there, then that's okay. Not everybody's going to like me, and that's understandable. But I try to make it a mission where they do. So that way, every. Every profile that every hiring manager that I could potentially reach out to, it's it's a 9 or a 10. And my thought process, like, somebody sent me a VP level search this morning. I sent it to the hiring manager.

Nick Poloni [01:00:36]:
I was like, hey, this candidate's interested in you. I'm not going to go try to business development that they don't need to. So they're like, and then they're going to. And I explicitly say, I'm not expecting a fee. I would love to work with you. And I've probably passed up on like this year alone, probably $300,000 of business. If I were to go traditional, old school npc, that maybe I could have got it. Maybe.

Nick Poloni [01:00:56]:
Realistically, no, not 100%. So I'm like, all right, let me show value to people. So much value that they're gonna eventually say, hey, he got this person in here. And then there's people that will never talk to me again when they get the job. It's happened maybe once or twice. And I'm like, all right, no taking. You call me for anything. I'm not helping you out at all.

Nick Poloni [01:01:15]:
And then there's people that are like, incredibly appreciative of it. And they're like, oh my, like, oh my God, like, biggest client I had, the guy got a job for a different role. I submitted him for, technically, they owe me the full fee. And I told the guy, pay what you think you owe, like, what you think is fair. It's like an $80,000 fee. But I do so much business with them. I don't want any sort of, like, friction. I don't want any sort of, like, I'm already making enough money with them.

Nick Poloni [01:01:38]:
There's no need to be tripping about $30,000. If I was building 50 grand, then that's where I would probably be like, oh my God, why don't I have the extra $30,000? But because my mindset is not like that. I think that's part of what makes me stand out and makes people want to work with me as they know that I'm not. I'm going to get the. Get them the damn candidate into the company, first and foremost, and then you give me more business down the road. And that's the company that they came back with a $20,000 retainer a month, no end date. So it's.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:09]:
And that retainer, like, you still get like a placement fee on top of that, right? Is it subtracted? Like, how does that actually look?

Nick Poloni [01:02:15]:
So it's 20,000amonth. And not like just forever until they want to stop. But I mean, again, if there's so much value that we're giving them, they won't want to stop. It would be crazy. And then it's, I dropped the fee from 22 and a half percent to 20 in exchange for the retainer. But then I get every sales position, I get every position within the organization. And they're a 450 person organization. And realistically, by the end of the year, they'll probably be, I don't know, 2000 or so.

Nick Poloni [01:02:42]:
So I'm like, long term, they'll be. There's a probably 70% chance I would do over a million with them in a year. I've already done probably two. So like the way I do it is I make everybody's job so easy there. Like their HR has gotten so lazy they won't even send out calendar invites. So I make their job so easy that all they have to do is sign because I'm doing everything else for them.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:10]:
And for a recruiter listening to this, like you were, like you were handling pretty much the entire process for them, everything. So to make their lives easier, to

Nick Poloni [01:03:19]:
make their lives easier, the only thing the guy has to do is I say, hey, you're in line for the interview. Because HR has to interview the candidate. Here's the candidate's availability. And then they want to make an offer. CC the hiring manager on it. They want to make an offer. Here's the numbers, here's where we need to be put the offer together.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:34]:
I'm sure HL loves you because they're like handling so many other fires because the company's growing that fast.

Nick Poloni [01:03:39]:
Yes, thousand percent. And that's the thought process they have for working with everybody is you can call me the janitor, you can call me the scheduler, you can call me the admin. I don't care if you are paying me to do all of these things. And then we're getting more and more and more and more job orders after that. I could care less. And it was funny because I started in marketing and then I was the guy's like, can you do hr? And I'm like, of course. At the time, I've never filled an HR role, but I'm like, I'm going to figure out how to fill it. Boom.

Nick Poloni [01:04:02]:
Filled that one. Oh, can you do operations? Boom. So I've placed every single role reporting into the cco, all of their teams underneath. I did not have sales. My biggest competitor did. And they're kicking my ass because they're cheap, but they, they're not good. The benchmark's so low. And I was like, give me half your expansion half.

Nick Poloni [01:04:20]:
Because all the sales team was like annoyed with them. They're a bunch of 25 year old recruiters who don't know what they're doing. And all they're doing is checking portals of resumes. They're not even doing anything. Two weeks. Every role filled, every hiring manager had my contact information, sales leader had my phone number and anytime they needed something, it was done. Whether it was an interview, please set them up with the next person. I knew who that next person was.

Nick Poloni [01:04:39]:
I didn't have to like. All they have to do is just. And that's how people like to work. It's just like they don't want to log into a portal. They don't want to log into their portal. It's just like send me a text and get it done. And that's how I roll. It's like if I can make their job so easy.

Nick Poloni [01:04:53]:
And then they also know on the back end they have such a resource. And I knew every other comp. There's three other dermatology companies. As a dermatology company, there are three other dermatology companies all hiring at the same time. And I was like, we need to get these jobs posted because they got to post for compliance. We got to get it posted right away because you got three other competitors all posting the same week. You guys are better, you're offering more money. But if we post two weeks later, we have to move two weeks faster at some point in the interview process and you guys have a national sales meeting.

Nick Poloni [01:05:19]:
So what week are we going to move faster on? And that's where the value that I come in with is not pin is the sourcing of the candidates. I don't even do. I don't. I mean in my eyes I'm not. They think that's the value, but I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. My value is every single thing in an interview process will be handled. Every candidate experience that comes in contact with you guys will be flawless regardless of the outcome. Because more are going to get bad news than good news.

Nick Poloni [01:05:44]:
Only one gets good news and four or five or six get get bad news. How they're handled is huge because they're in the same. They only want a dermatology sales reps, so I only can source in dermatology. And so they're going to come in contact with you guys again at some point in the future, whether it's a year, five years, whatever. So let's make sure that we have a good experience with them. And so I find that it just if their jobs are made easier, regardless if it's a marketing leader, a sales leader, an operations hr, like that's my goal.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:15]:
I got one more question before we jump over to the quick fire questions.

Nick Poloni [01:06:19]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:20]:
And like you mentioned something earlier with the way technology is moving, how AI is moving, some people are going to be using AI to go take work like two, three hours a day. What do you actually see like two, three years out in our industry? Because you're probably one of the most forward thinking actually activated using AI to increase revenue. A lot of people are using AI but you've actually scaled with AI.

Nick Poloni [01:06:47]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:06:48]:
What's the future look like?

Nick Poloni [01:06:49]:
Real quick future with AI I would say is going to be, you're going to still have, I think sorcerers will be probably gone, you know, but I don't think many agencies run the source. You know, the sourcer, the recruiter, the account manager. Maybe the old school ones do. I don't, I'm 3 6. I'm like everybody's got to be 360. But I think sources will be gone. I think it's going to be harder to sort through fluff because AI will get good and people will start to get really good messages about how their seven years at Pfizer selling in the diabetes space is a great asset to the team and yada yada yada. So I think the relationship piece becomes more important and I think the influencer route becomes more important because if you are not connected with them and do not have a relationship, which is impossible for me to do the entire pharma biotech market, you're going to have to fall on your social media LinkedIn ability.

Nick Poloni [01:07:43]:
Assuming that industry that you're recruiting in is utilizing LinkedIn. Mine is a lot. So it's, it's, I have that to fall on, but I think ultimately it will make people insanely efficient. And if you hire the right team of people who also are on board with that same thing, you can scale an agency to be a $10 million agency with 10 recruiters or 10 people. I think that'll be very possible with the right people. And so I think those who sit there and try to only rely on the gap of old school recruiters who don't change and new school recruiters who adapt, that gap will become very, very, very, very wide.

Benjamin Mena [01:08:21]:
I think jumping over to quick fire questions don't need to be quick answers. What's a book that's had a huge impact on Your career.

Nick Poloni [01:08:27]:
So there's one called getting a squirrel to focus in a Virtual world. That would be my. It's interesting. It's very short. And. And that one was really kind of all about we're distracted. Kind of what we were talking about the whole time is like, all these things are going on outside. How do we focus? And then that's what we ultimately do is we have a very.

Nick Poloni [01:08:46]:
A world that's incredibly distracting for everybody, and we're trying to get people to respond. That one was great. Cause it was short, it was relatable, and it was an easy read. There's other ones that aren't related to recruiting that I would say are in there, but that one would be a really, really good one for people who just want to read something quick and get a lot out of it.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:07]:
What is one of the biggest challenges that you've had to walk through in your recruiting career?

Nick Poloni [01:09:14]:
My mom. Getting her to be like, hey, I know what I'm talking about, 100%, 150%. And I love my mom, but two different eras of recruitment. I've always been a tech head. She's been like, not tech at all. So combination of, like, teaching her how to implement that into recruiting, but also how to, like, utilize it where you can be incredibly efficient. And I still to this day think she could have been even more efficient should she have adapted and used it more. But I also understand doing it for 25 years the same way and changing it for the last three years probably wouldn't be my jam either, but I would say that would be it.

Benjamin Mena [01:09:55]:
If you can go back in time. Actually, we'll just do back in time to early in your recruiting career with everything that you know, everything you've learned. What would you tell yourself?

Nick Poloni [01:10:04]:
I would say be more confident, number one. And I would say, number two, utilize LinkedIn more. Build a better network and a Stronger Network. On LinkedIn, I think I did a decent job, but I wasn't like 150% until I was probably three or four years in. And I wish I went 200% from day one. Yeah, it's helped me out a lot. It has.

Benjamin Mena [01:10:30]:
It has changed too, so.

Nick Poloni [01:10:32]:
Yeah, that's true too. That's true too. It has. It has changed. But I think seeing the last three years, especially with the market the way it is, more and more and more people are like, in my world, are trying to network and trying to get in front of people, and I'm running into so many people who are like, really good profiles, but they had never taken the time to network because they've always gotten a job the same way, and then now they're like, oh, shit, I can't find a job. And you can't just, like, start networking and it just, like, works in three days. And I don't think I did a bad job by any means, but I think I could have done better the first, like, three, four years.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:07]:
So I know we've talked about this in pregame. We're both in a bunch of, like, recruiting circles together.

Nick Poloni [01:11:14]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:14]:
But you really don't talk with other recruiters that often.

Nick Poloni [01:11:17]:
No.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:18]:
Which is. Probably has saved you time and has increased your billings a little bit.

Nick Poloni [01:11:22]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:23]:
But in saying that, like, you did grow up around a lot of recruiters. You've seen a lot of recruiters.

Nick Poloni [01:11:28]:
That's true, too.

Benjamin Mena [01:11:30]:
What's. Like, you might not get these questions that often, but with the success you've had, but based on what you've seen, like, what's the question that you wish a recruiter would ask you, but they probably would never would or probably never have had the chance?

Nick Poloni [01:11:46]:
Ah, man. I would say, like, if I'm a recruiter and I'm just getting into recruiting, whatever industry that is, I would say, what? Like, if I was a recruiter, asking Nick, like, what that question would be, the question would probably be, what do you think are the top three. Three traits that have allowed you to be successful? And the one that you asked earlier, what did you wish you had done early on in your career? And I think those. There's so many questions that people ask in all these groups and Facebook and all these different recruiting groups that I see. And they're great questions, but they're always asked. So I'm like. I'm going to imagine, like, people always ask those questions, but there's ones that I see that are so simple, yet not asked at all. And it's like, what are the top three things I could do getting started in recruiting that would basically project them ahead much faster than everybody else? Like, what are those traits? Yeah, that's a really good question, though.

Nick Poloni [01:12:52]:
I'd say that it would be something around, like, what traits should I have? Or what things should I work on right out of the gate to be the goat? What's the answer? Yeah, I would say, oddly enough, organization is like, it's huge because so many things slip through cracks. So, like, I'm working on, I don't know, like, 29 job orders right now, and I'm like, okay, they're all over the like, just all over the place. I. I would say that's number one. I would say follow up is number two, because that will define your reputation amongst an industry and that is just. It's so simple to do. And then I would say number three, like, lock in to your industry and learn every nut, bolt, nook and cranny. Like, I am not a science guy at all.

Nick Poloni [01:13:34]:
I was a communications major. I hated school. I was not good in school. And people would maybe make the assumption, oh, he's in pharma, so he must be really high science. And like, no science. I understand the industry very, very, very, very well. But I. Somebody starts talking about a molecule of a compound, I'm like, whoa, see you later.

Nick Poloni [01:13:51]:
But I think what I have done is I have locked in on my industry based on conversations. Yes, like some podcasts and email newsletters and things of that degree. But I know everything about why things happen in my industry, in the general path that people take. Because then I can go back and advise people and say, here's the why. Because most people ask questions because they want to know the why. Like, why would this be a good next step in my career? Why do people do this? What do you see most often? And I can't BS it because it's this. The. The good human part of me is not going to say, oh, I'm going to BS it to act like I know what I'm talking about and then you.

Nick Poloni [01:14:32]:
And then you're screwed over later on life because I told you to do something stupid. But, like, if you were to survey a random group of 50 pharmaceutical professionals in the industry in pharma biotech, I am so locked into that industry, I would be surprised if not 75% knew who I was, either through name working with me or some sort of value and resource. And that's why I take those conversations. Because A, I can learn more about the industry and what's going on. B, I can help somebody. And then they walk away going, holy cow, that was so helpful. So all of my bd, I look at it as like the conversations I had with somebody a year ago and they walked away with a really good experience. They walked away with a ton of knowledge, and they walked away with transparency and straight shirt.

Nick Poloni [01:15:15]:
They're like, I like that approach because most people are going in with this cookie cutter BS approach. What makes it tough is most people I talk to have not had a good experience of the recruiter. So I'm like, ooh, okay. So I'm already starting, like, if levels Here, I'm already starting off here and I'm trying to go here and like, mind blow them, but I'm. I'm already under. I'm already like below ground level. And so it makes it a fun challenge yet, but it also is. It's more work.

Nick Poloni [01:15:40]:
So I think if I could say the biggest out of all of those three, since I've been talking about it like the longest, it's like, know your industry, know your ins and the outs, know the key players, what drives people and what motivates people, and notice those patterns. Because I'm sure every industry and I haven't worked in other ones, but I'm sure every industry like, is patterns and trends. And when you notice people are running away from this company. Okay, why? And when you notice people are going into this company, what's attractive? Because at the end of the day, we're all humans and everybody's like, very similar in their thought process, you know, generally speaking. Yeah. Long winded answer.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:20]:
This is going to be my last, my true last question.

Nick Poloni [01:16:23]:
Okay.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:23]:
I like your mom a lot. She's amazing.

Nick Poloni [01:16:25]:
Yes, I would agree.

Benjamin Mena [01:16:27]:
What do you think your mom is most proud of with you? The reason why I'm asking this question is because there's a lot of people that have family in their business. There's a lot of recruiters out there that have looked at what the opportunity to have family in the business, and it sometimes doesn't work out or people want to go that direction. But this is a story where you can go back and listen to my interview with Nick's mom. And now I'm sitting with Nick, the new CEO. What do you think your mom would be most proud of?

Nick Poloni [01:16:54]:
Wow. Deep. In a good way? I would say probably. And I would say it's. It's kind of myself as well. It's like the, like, I've been so true to myself and it's taken so much more time to build a foundation of good recruitment, build a good foundation of an industry reputation. Because we all know there's ways to be shady and rise to the top faster and make a bunch of money right away, then it's faster, but there's downfalls. And I think at the end of the day, I think what she has been most proud of is the fact that I've been true to myself.

Nick Poloni [01:17:31]:
And if now the success is now starting to come through. And I think that in this industry especially is tough because I'm 33, I'm young in comparison to all of the people that I'm working with. And so I already have that against me. I mean, most people are gonna look like you get on a zoom call, and they're gonna be like, all right, not what we're used to saying, some younger dude. And then they're skeptical because it's a recruiter, and then you have all these pieces against you. And I use that as fuel in leverage. But at the end of the day, I think she's probably. I mean, she's most likely very proud about the NUM.

Nick Poloni [01:18:09]:
The 700,000 that we've done on our own this year alone. But I think what ultimately is I can feel proud about, and what she's felt proud about is I've been true to myself in doing that, and I haven't been like some person that people are like, oh, stay away from that guy, because I know them in our space. And so. And I think what's also really neat if I'm in her shoes, is she's having conversations with people she's placed before and knows well for 20 years. They're coming over and having conversations and reporting back to her. Not that she needs it or they need it, but it's just. I think they see that full 360 moment, and they're like, okay, we're in good hands. This guy's noticed what he's doing, and he's helping us out.

Nick Poloni [01:18:51]:
And his style is different, but it's. It's a complimenting different to yours, and it's a good different.

Benjamin Mena [01:18:57]:
I know you're not looking for more connections because you save it for your space, but if a recruiter listening wants to follow you, how do they go. Go about doing that?

Nick Poloni [01:19:07]:
It's sad to say, click the follow button now. I can't have any. I'm capped at 30,000 connections on LinkedIn, so click the follow button. I do like my content that I put out there for people is not only pharma, biotech. Actually, most of it's not. And so I like people to be scrolling on their news feed, see something that's relatable, and that most likely makes them smile. And so if you're a recruiter out there and you want to see a different industry, learn about something different, Follow. I hate to say, comment, subscribe, like I'm an influencer, but here I am.

Nick Poloni [01:19:44]:
I can't do. Like, I can only do follow now because I'm capped at 30,000, but please do follow. And if you ever have any questions or you're in a different space and you just want to shoot the Shit and chat. I'm always happy to. I try to prioritize Those for like 5 or 6pm my time Pacific time. But I will not say no to conversations. So just because you're not pharma biotech professional does not mean I'm too cool or too good or too whatever to talk to. Would always love conversations.

Nick Poloni [01:20:12]:
I always like different perspectives too from different industries.

Benjamin Mena [01:20:15]:
So this is, this has been an awesome conversation and likewise, this has been phenomenal. I normally say like, hey, one more thing, but looking at the time like we could be sitting down for like Joe Rogan.

Nick Poloni [01:20:26]:
Yeah, another hour. 100%.

Benjamin Mena [01:20:29]:
I like cut through a bunch of things like nope, nope, nope. My little checklist.

Nick Poloni [01:20:33]:
So that's so funny.

Benjamin Mena [01:20:35]:
This is, this has been just such a real conversation. One you know, I loved like walking in like you built over a million dollars in the last four months just in like under three months that you're over 720k. You're an AI powered recruiter. But I think the most important thing for the listeners, like this has been a conversation of how you actually marry the old school. This stuff that has made thousands of recruiters big billers. Yes to the new school and how the future is going to be happening in the recruiting world. So 2026 is your year. Nick believes in you.

Nick Poloni [01:21:09]:
I believe, I believe in you.

Benjamin Mena [01:21:10]:
Make it happen.

Nick Poloni [01:21:11]:
Make it happen. Kick some ass. Let's go out there, knock it out. Appreciate you.

Benjamin Mena [01:21:15]:
I've spent years talking to big billers and the thing that usually sets them apart is judgment. The gut feeling they bring to a moment of truth in a deal. The question that surfaces, the real objection, the reframe that regains control of a stalling process. The move they make when a candidate goes quiet. Normally that kind of instinct comes from years on the desk. And when you're running 15 live processes at once, you don't have time to engineer that level of thinking into every moment. So too much is left to chance. Until now.

Benjamin Mena [01:21:45]:
Millie analyzes every detail of your live deals and builds the exact strategy you need. Powered by a curated knowledge base from elite recruiters. It's encoded intuition, the judgment and gut feel of big billers translated into real time guidance you can use for every single process. Before every call. You get sharp contextual preparation so you can lead from the first minute. In your inbox. High caliber emails are already drafted. Testing, commitment, checking, fit, keeping momentum.

Benjamin Mena [01:22:11]:
Users save an hour a day on email alone and the way they control calls changes completely. If you've been looking for that AI edge that every top biller is using Try Mill E for free today. You know the resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters during conversations, on calls and interviews, over email. Their motivations, salary expectations, plans to relocate. Most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It's the AI first recruitment platform.

Benjamin Mena [01:22:38]:
Built to eliminate admin, it captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use with MagicSearch. You can ask Atlas questions like who talked about wanting a four day week? Or who mentioned they're open to relocating next year. It searches across your entire database and pulls the answers instantly. No keyword guessing and no digging through old notes. You get insight from real conversations, not limited resume fields. Atlas also makes BD easier with opportunities you can track and grow client relationships powered by generative AI and built into your existing workflow. If you want visibility, smart dashboards give you a clear view of the pipeline across your business. And that's not theory.

Benjamin Mena [01:23:16]:
Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. It's built for agencies that want to grow without adding more manual work. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com thanks for listening

Nick Poloni [01:23:38]:
to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed hit subscribe and leave a rating.