Retained Masterclass Pt 2: The Dollars Are In Delivery

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
The AI recruiting summit is coming back this year, 2026 and my God things

Benjamin Mena [00:00:06]:
are starting to get crazy.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:08]:
We are seeing the change that we've been talking about for a few years now, but man, you do not want to miss a summit. Registration is free for all the live sessions.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:17]:
It is going to be kicking off

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July 13th all the way through the 20th. You do not want to miss as

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we are going to have tech tools.

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We we are going to have operators, we are going to have recruiting engineers, we are going to have recruiters that are actually using tools to make a

Benjamin Mena [00:00:33]:
difference in their recruiting desk, talking about what they're doing.

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The world's changing fast. This is a chance to see what's

Benjamin Mena [00:00:40]:
happening behind the scenes with a lot of recruiters.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:42]:
You don't want to miss this.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:43]:
Get registered today.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:44]:
I'll see you there. You just got done listening to Ali's

Benjamin Mena [00:00:48]:
masterclass on Going Retained Part one.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:52]:
Make sure to go download part two to finish the rest of the masterclass.

Intro [00:00:57]:
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 [00:01:15]:
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.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:46]:
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. 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:23]:
Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com and I want

Benjamin Mena [00:02:33]:
to maybe this is going to be

Benjamin Mena [00:02:34]:
a bit of a leverage question.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:35]:
So where in this kind of search, where is the Real money? Is it in single searches? Is it a multi hire? Is it pipeline work? I know you've built a CFO pipeline program for a PE firm. Is that the model that solo or boutique agencies should be chasing?

Allie Milbrath [00:02:55]:
I think from a cash flow standpoint, having a pipelining project or two is really important. That's different than traditional retained. You can do that on an hourly basis, but that's cash flow that you know is cyclical. And that is coming in because retained searches do tend to take a little bit longer. So. So I always like to have a mix in there. I like to have at least 20% of cash flow coming in from volume or pipelining projects.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:24]:
And for those listening, what is a pipelining project?

Allie Milbrath [00:03:27]:
Yeah, so a pipelining project is when you are partnering with an organization on typically it's an hourly basis to help them build a bench. So I'll give the example that you mentioned. Working with a private equity firm who really struggled with CFO recruitment for their portfolio. They were starting over every time. And so what we did is we built out a CFO bench, if you will. And this was an awesome project because I made so many contacts that ended up being business down the line. But you're basically reaching out to CFOs and saying, you know, hey, I'm working with this private equity firm. There's not a position right now, but I want you to be my first phone call when there is, and understand what their trigger points are.

Allie Milbrath [00:04:12]:
You know, are they better and highly leveraged environments, turnaround, high growth, like just understanding kind of where their sweet spot is, their comp information, just kind of that those baseline boxes that you need to hit just to get to know enough about someone, and then you're building out a bench. So then when this private equity firm does have a need for a CFO, they've got a list of 50 CFOs that, you know, we can narrow kind of based on, you know, what stage they're at, what they're looking for the CFO to do, and voila, we've got, you know, five candidates that they can call right away. So that's pipelining.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:48]:
And you said that you typically like at least 20% of your business to be like that.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:51]:
So, like, for a recruiter out there,

Benjamin Mena [00:04:53]:
like, how do you pitch that? As also, like, how do you pitch that? But also, like, make sure that you're getting paid your worth, if that makes sense.

Allie Milbrath [00:05:01]:
Yeah. So, you know, I would say another good example to do this. I mean, it could be sales roles, it could be like, if you're on, you know, working in manufacturing plant managers, it could be line workers looking at a company, what do they have a lot of, and what are high turnover over positions. So sales pipelining is another, you know, really good angle. And you can structure this in a lot of different ways. You always have to have the hourly component there. And if you have a lot of trust with your clients and hopefully you've done work with them before, you can put fees on top of it. So if you're charging, let's just say 100 bucks an hour to make it easy to pipeline sales talent, if they end up hiring someone, you can say there's a 10% fee or a 10k fee in addition to it.

Allie Milbrath [00:05:49]:
You know, if you want to structure it that way. I think it depends on where you are in your recruitment journey, how much experience you have, again, how long you've worked with your clients, on how you would want to structure that. You might just need to start out doing strictly hourly work on that pipelining, and then once you start building this skill, you can attach fees to it on the back end.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:11]:
And I want to jump back over to the retained search. So I want to talk about math. How many retained searches does one recruiter run per year to typically clear a half million dollars?

Allie Milbrath [00:06:24]:
I mean, it totally depends on the level of role that you know. But I would say, you know, instead of saying it's to get to the half million or million dollar mark, I would say to be successful, you should take five to eight at a time. They need to be in various stages for you to take on more than that. Because if you take on 15 routine searches, you're going to piss a lot of people off because you're not giving the level of service that you need. So I would say one person at a time, five to eight. And again, like, they have to be in various stages for you to start adding more to that.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:05]:
And so one other thing, like, when it comes to those numbers and how you get there, like you said, I know you said this in the pregame. It was a little bit of like, hey, like a lot of contingent recruiters run into a wall. They run into a ceiling, I should say. But at the same time, like, we've had a lot of guests on this podcast, our contingent recruiters that bill a million, bill 750,000. What's the leverage of being a retained recruiter and still hitting those high numbers?

Allie Milbrath [00:07:36]:
I think everybody has their own story, their own style, what they're comfortable with. You know, I always question you know how they're going about business development. They probably have exclusivity. There are some levers to contingent. I know a lot of really good recruiters that are contingent recruiters. But I know more contingent recruiters that are frustrated, that are on the hamster wheel, that are so super transactional that they look at those contingent recruiters and they're like, well, how am I going to get there? Yes, there's a place for them. They're probably very good at what they do. But I would ask, you know, how many are repeat clients? How much business development are you doing? Where the value comes in retained is you're a true partner.

Allie Milbrath [00:08:18]:
You are seen as an advisor. My clients come to me not just for questions on recruitment. They come to me with questions about their business. Like, that is what gets me going. It's the farthest from transactional as you can get. That's where I feel valuable, when they come to me and they're asking me questions about their business.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:37]:
I want to walk into now, actually, the running of the search. But before we do that, you actually told me something that kind of like flips conventional wisdom on its head. You said most recruiters think business development fills a desk. You don't. What does?

Allie Milbrath [00:08:55]:
Great delivery is your business development.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:58]:
So in saying that, like you've said, like, the dollars are in the delivery for those listening, and we're going to walk through that, like, when did you learn that dollars were in delivery versus the bd?

Allie Milbrath [00:09:11]:
I think when I tried to do bd, when I tried to be a salesperson and I failed miserably. It's when things started kind of spider webbing out and really looking at how I was getting my business and having it come through referrals. And I think I kind of got stuck in this. Having referrals isn't a strategy. And I got that from a class. I took a business development class. I thought about. I'm like, well, isn't that the way most people would want to do business? It's like dating, right? Like, you'd rather date your friend's friend than go on a blind date, right? You'd rather do things that way.

Allie Milbrath [00:09:49]:
But I think because we're just taught business development, cold calling, email, campaign marketing, we are taught, that is business development. And then I thought about it. I'm like, but all my business, and I get good business has come from referrals. Why am I getting referrals? Because I have stellar delivery that stands out amongst the crowd. And so that's kind of where my Shift happened where I don't have to buy into all this noise. With business development and marketing, like, I am my own marketing. It's the delivery that is bringing the business in.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:25]:
So with the delivery, like walk me through from kickoff to close, what does a retained search look like?

Allie Milbrath [00:10:34]:
Yeah, so it's a process and it's a structured process. It's a repeatable process. And if you don't have that, that's going to be the game changer for you. I should count how many templates I have. I'll have to look at my playbook and see just how many templates I have. But I run a search. It's a system. You know, when you start, you are, you know, you're starting with your scoping document with your client.

Allie Milbrath [00:10:59]:
Right. It's. It's not just the transactional list of questions that you're asking. You have to get to know their business. I think a lot of recruiters, you're trying to get to know the position and understand the position that is so secondary to me. It's learning about their business. And that, that part comes in kind of later in the search. But it's really important to spend the time and know the right questions to ask in your scoping.

Allie Milbrath [00:11:25]:
It's really important that you build alignment amongst the team during that process. You know, there might be four people that have, you know, a weighted decision in offering a candidate the job. And if three of them are in alignment and one of them's not, and you didn't know it, you went through a whole search just for it to be killed at the end. So building that alignment up front, that's all part of the scoping. From there, that's where you really start building out. And this is kind of what takes a majority of the time in the search is really building out your strategy for the search. It's taking what you've learned. First and foremost, stop with the traditional job descriptions that are so boring.

Allie Milbrath [00:12:07]:
If you want to captivate a passive audience, put some time into a job description. I don't call it a job description. I call it an opportunity outline with my candidates. And it's a deck. It's a deck that I get great feedback on that. It's so different than what others are doing out there. So I put together the opportunity outline. I put together the litmus.

Allie Milbrath [00:12:29]:
And the litmus is, you know, basically you're kind of lifting off those technical, yes, no questions. Right. Like the hard skills that they absolutely have to have. You're sprinkling in a Couple, you know, other questions just to get to know the candidate enough where you know, if it's worth, you know, a more in depth interview. You are doing market mapping and this is a big differentiator to your clients is not just throwing out on LinkedIn, you're throwing out job descriptions or you're sourcing from LinkedIn, you know, Willy nilly. It's no, you are looking at their business and you are determining these are the types of organizations and the, you know, whether it's in industry or adjacent industries where you are going to find the talent from. And then you're org charting out. And it's easy to do now with AI and zoom info.

Allie Milbrath [00:13:22]:
Like there's easy ways to do that. Taking time to do that upfront is going to build credibility and we'll talk more about that in a second too. So you've got your job description, you've got your litmus, you start to market map and I turn that over to my clients, you know, saying hey, are we in alignment? Did I capture everything that, that we need to for this opportunity? And again, building alignment. Sometimes if I have a client where I'm a little worried about that fourth decision maker, I make them sign the litmus. This is what we agreed on guys. This is what we're looking for so we can reference back to it. So if Jim is our fourth person, that's kind of the outlier, like no, Jim, like you're Trump because these three agreed on it. You don't like we, we agreed on it, we're moving forward.

Allie Milbrath [00:14:11]:
So then from there you're going out to. Well, I should also mention in your pre work, create all your templates, right? Like create your, your emails, you know, the framework for them, the emails that you're sending to candidates after you've engaged with them. Create all of that upfront and it makes your job just a lot easier once you start engaging with candidates. So from there we go into the candidate engagement. This is really important, sorry, another document because I do create a lot of templates on the front end. Create talking points. This is so important because if you're working on those five to eight contingent or I'm sorry, retained searches, even if they're contingent, please make talking points because you're working on several positions and you are jumping on one call to the next. They're not all going to be for the same position.

Allie Milbrath [00:15:00]:
And to keep yourself straight in the facts, I create talking points. So from there, you know, you start sourcing and reaching out to the market. It's really important that your talking points are concise, that you have your hook, but you aren't selling. For me, this is where the stylistic part comes in. It's probably five to eight bullet points on the company itself, what they do, their size, talking about what stage of business they're in, what they're looking to do. And then I break into. Because this is happening in the business, they're looking to bring in a, you know, a CCO or, you know, whatever they're looking to bring in. And here's what they're looking for this person to do.

Allie Milbrath [00:15:44]:
You need to convey the message to this passive candidate, the importance of this role, the influence it's going to have, and the impact it's going to have. I don't care if it's an admin assistant, I don't care if it's a CEO, it doesn't matter. People want to understand what's happening in the business right now, how they can come in and be effective. And then I pause, it might be, you know, another three or four bullet points on the position itself. And then I pause, get their reaction. Their reaction is going to tell you everything you need to know about what's missing for them in their current role, what their trigger points are. You can get into that, you know, initial compensation conversation just to make sure that would align. And then, you know, it's, hey, great, why don't we do this? Let me send you some information, take a look, let you do your due diligence, and if it makes sense, let's continue the conversation.

Allie Milbrath [00:16:39]:
So you kind of leave them a little bit, they're on the hook. But now your second point is this awesome marketing material that you've put together to send to them. You know, your email can kind of go over what you talked about, how you think that this could be an interesting next step for them. And hey, if it's interesting, let's talk further from there. That's when you're going into your interview. That is not your interview. Like you're getting your litmus questions answered in that first call. But that better not be enough to trigger you to send that candidate to your client.

Allie Milbrath [00:17:10]:
From there, you don't have enough information, okay? And you didn't build enough of a relationship with them. That first conversation is when you start to close them. You're not learning enough. You're learning kind of the bare minimum to close them at the end. You need to have. You need to build more of a relationship with them. In addition to that, they might say all the right Things for an initial call. But that second call or interview is where you really get to know who they are, what they've done, what are their accomplishments.

Allie Milbrath [00:17:43]:
Because I am not just slinging resumes to my clients. They are only going to see candidates that I think have a real chance at getting an offer. I have to be like 90% sure that this is an offer worthy candidate for me to put them in front of my client. So then, yeah, you go into your full interview, you know, again, we'll talk about stylistically, it's not a list of questions. There are certainly things that you need to find out, but you have to make it a conversation. Your role is not to be the formal interviewer, but to really extract who the person is, what they've done, the culture fit. It should be very conversational. So I am not a, tell me about a time you did this and what was the outcome? That kills me.

Allie Milbrath [00:18:32]:
And I also advise my clients not to do that. But it's more of like I'm sitting across the table from you and I am learning about who you are, how you operate and you just start learning more about them as a of part person versus you know, just a professional. And again, you're going to use all of that to close them at the end. So if they're a great candidate, I am putting together a profile for them. I am highlighting their experience, their accomplishments, why I think they're a fit on every profile I'm sharing, what my watch outs are, what are my concerns, what I think they need to probe more on. So it's not just a selling document. It's, you know, hey, I think this and this and this is great. But oh, like this area, it's a little bit questionable.

Allie Milbrath [00:19:16]:
We'll have to explore further and including compensation information on that as well. So a best practice, you never just send a resume over. You call the hiring manager, you don't call hr, you call the hiring manager and you verbally present your candidate. Also best practice, never send their resume. First get on the phone with your hiring manager, talk through them and then send the resume. So from there you're, you know, you're obviously orchestrating all of the interviews. You are talking to them after every conversation they have, getting their feedback. Do they remain interested? Are you starting to sense that they're hesitating for any reason? Are there things that are coming out about your client that you weren't aware of, that you know, you need to talk through with them or help them reshape how they're approaching these Candidates and then taking them through offer.

Allie Milbrath [00:20:06]:
And again, that first call is the start of your close. And what you learn about them along the way is how you close them. If they start to get cold feet at the end, you're sort of their career therapist at that point, telling them, hey, this is what we talked about on our first call. These are your trigger points. And this is going to change for the better, because people are afraid of change. And sometimes you kind of have to remind them of why they took the call to begin with. And then we, obviously, we take them through the negotiating of the offer and placement.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:37]:
Voila. And are you presenting the offer yourself or is.

Allie Milbrath [00:20:41]:
Oh, yeah, that is also in my engagement letters that I do the offers. I present the offers. I never let my clients do that.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:50]:
Just out of curiosity, is your client the one officially setting the offer after you presented it, or are you. Do you have it in hand?

Allie Milbrath [00:20:58]:
Typically I have it in hand. Typically I draft it for them. Now, some organizations, like, you still have to go through their system, right. To get set up for onboarding and all of that. But 99% of the time, it is my template. I am entering all the information, and they're signing what I send them.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:17]:
And for those listening, like, you mentioned that you have, like, templates for all these things and you have SOPs. And maybe you don't know it off the top of your head, but how many different SOPs do you have set up that people can easily almost, like, duplicate some of the processes?

Allie Milbrath [00:21:31]:
I have one, and I make small variations if I need to. It's, you know, literally what clients can expect of me. It's what I expect of them. You know, just kind of these standards of work that we agree to, and that's that.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:48]:
And for the recruiters listening, like, you have that one template for your. Your clients, but, like, when it comes to, like, the specking document and all that stuff, you have stuff where it helps somebody new, they walk through all that, right?

Allie Milbrath [00:22:00]:
Yes. Yeah. So I have a recruiter playbook that I have with all of my templates. I think it's like 35 pages total, but, like, the scoping document accounts for, like, four or five of those. So it's scoping document, litmus, talking points, job description. It's all of these templates to kind of show, like, what you need to do and at what point in the process.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:22]:
Okay. And one of the things you said very early on is, like, you get everybody together.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:26]:
Curiosity.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:27]:
Do you get them all together in one room, or is this sometimes like, four Separate meetings.

Allie Milbrath [00:22:31]:
Sometimes they're separate and they need to be. Sometimes you learn that there's misalignment up front. You just find things out about the business and about the people. Sometimes it makes sense to have the separate conversation first and then bring them together. These are for higher level roles, mind you. I mean, you can't do that for, you know, every, every search, like a mid career search, I wouldn't necessarily do that. But you find out different things from different people and sometimes it's good for the business to do them separately, bring them together and say, hey guys, we're all thinking differently. Because that means something's fundamentally wrong in their business that they need to be aware of.

Allie Milbrath [00:23:15]:
Because if they don't fix that, you're not going to have a successful search. And even if you have a successful search, you're going to be placing somebody into a little bit of a chaotic environment. And I try not to do that.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:26]:
Out of curiosity, is there any questions that you've asked in those rooms that were the clients? Like no recruiters ever asked us before.

Allie Milbrath [00:23:35]:
The feedback that I get is, wow, you ask a lot of questions about our business. And I think some are even a little off put by it. Like, why do you need to know revenue? Why do you need to know ebitda? This is private information. I get more. Why do you need to know all of this? And that's where I have to step back and say, hey, I don't need to share this with candidates, but I need to understand your business and what's happening to truly know what kind of candidate you need to come in and actually make a difference. So I wouldn't say there's a standalone question that's like, wow, nobody's ever asked us that. But the feedback is I tend to spend more time with them and ask more questions about the business than they're used to.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:18]:
And I know we've talked about the AI thing a little bit, like where do you actually use AI and where do you stay away from AI? Because a client can just smell it from a mile away.

Allie Milbrath [00:24:29]:
Yeah. So I am starting more and more to use AI in sourcing. I think there's a lot of value in that. In market mapping, man, it's become so much easier. Like market mapping used to take days and days and you could just keep going and not really knowing if you should be finished or not. AI has helped tremendously with that. I would say AI has helped tremendously in helping me summarize conversations I've had. However, I think anybody can Sniff when something is written by AI.

Allie Milbrath [00:25:02]:
Just the type of language and words that are used that just aren't natural people, words that AI is using. So I don't just cut and paste like I am going through and still making it from my voice voice like my true voice. But it certainly has helped with that as well. I can say pretty confidently I will never use AI to interview. You know, I know that there's recruiters out there that are using AI to interview and you just, you lose that connection. You, you cannot truly understand a person and their experience and their triggers. By using AI to interview, you've built

Benjamin Mena [00:25:39]:
this incredible referral engine that has compounded over the years for a recruiter that's listening to this, that doesn't have that network, that doesn't have that referral engine built up. And they're like looking at this as building this from scratch. What would you tell them to do first to walk down this process?

Allie Milbrath [00:26:01]:
Everybody has a network. It might not be a network of people that you've done business with. Everybody has a network and I think most people are afraid to leverage it. You know, if you're young in your career, you have your parents network that you can leverage. If you're mid career, you've got kids in school, you know what their parents work, talking to them about their business. And it doesn't have to be salesy. It could be very much like, hey, I just want to learn about your business and what you do. Like let's go have coffee.

Allie Milbrath [00:26:31]:
It's about being vulnerable in a way and who you do know and learning from them. I do it to this day like there are professionals that I'm like enamored by where I think most people would be afraid to approach them. They're not in my network, they don't know me. But hey, like I saw that you built this awesome business or you just took this company to exit. I would love to talk to you about that experience. Most people want to talk about themselves. So you. Everybody has a network.

Allie Milbrath [00:27:02]:
It doesn't mean it has to be a professional network or people that you've done business with, they will eventually become that. But it's about just having those conversations to start and not being afraid to ask for the business. If you uncover that they're having challenges in recruitment or they have an open role, don't wait for them to ask you if you're interested, ask them, you know, what's the worst that can happen?

Benjamin Mena [00:27:30]:
How would you make that ask instead of wait Where a lot of recruiters might Wait.

Allie Milbrath [00:27:34]:
I think a lot of recruiters wait. You know, I will just say, you know, hey, like, I'd love to help you with that. Here's kind of what I'm thinking. You know, you need. Would love to have further conversation and, you know, hey, do you think there's a way that we can partner on this? It's just asking the question.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:50]:
Before we jump over to the next chapter, is there any questions that I should have asked you about the process?

Allie Milbrath [00:27:57]:
I think it's just really important for recruiters to understand that there is a process. Most recruiters are in this cycle of chaos or just working at such a fast pace and the level of burnout that comes from that, that if you put a process in place, it's a lot less stressful. I still get stressed. I still have things that don't go the way I want them to. But typically when that happens, I can go back and pinpoint what part of the process I need to go back to. A lot easier than it just kind of swirling of, like, what's happening. I don't know what's going on. I think so many people think that this is, you know, just.

Allie Milbrath [00:28:35]:
It's a human business, and every position looks a little bit different, and so you have to go about it different. I don't think that's true. From a systematic how you operate your desk. In delivery, there is a process, and the sooner you implement that, the less chaos is going to happen.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:55]:
I'm like, crap, don't talk to my wife. She's gonna be like, wait, Processes, Chaos. Benjamin, what? Nail you down.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:07]:
Like, why didn't you show me these things earlier?

Benjamin Mena [00:29:08]:
Like, wait, she has SOP documents? Come on.

Allie Milbrath [00:29:12]:
Anyways, it's there. It's all there. It's just a matter of being disciplined. It really is being disciplined, knowing that it doesn't have to be so difficult. And, hey, if somebody's contingent and they want to stay contingent for whatever reason, you'll fill more searches. If you have a repeatable process versus just slinging resumes and jumping in and out of searches, you know, in a very chaotic way, there's an easier way to do it and one that's going to build you more credibility.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:43]:
You said this, I think, two summits ago, but you said the searches that hurt are the ones that sharpen. You tell me about one that went sideways.

Allie Milbrath [00:29:55]:
I'm coming off of one. I am coming off the hardest search of my life, and I just had an accepted offer on Friday. I've been working on it since September. It is now May. And it was brutal. It went sideways halfway through. We had a lot of momentum. We had a few candidates in that were seemingly great candidates and ended up declining all three because I think internally there were people involved with influence that I wasn't aware of at the beginning.

Allie Milbrath [00:30:34]:
And so some odd things happened in the search. Brought in some candidates that weren't my candidates and they had me interview them. I was. I did not think they were a fit. They still interviewed them, put them in front of the team. And I think because my name was attached to it, even though it wasn't my candidate, it was a referral. All referrals come through my process. By the way, that's also should be on your contract.

Allie Milbrath [00:30:59]:
It muddied everything. It was almost like in February we were starting over. And this was for. It was essentially a CMO search in the Midwest and required relocation to this very rural town that most people have never heard of. And I kept at it. I kept at it. I think most recruiters would have walked away from. I was networking with recruiters saying, allie, you're crazy that you took that on in the first place.

Allie Milbrath [00:31:29]:
But I kept with it. I ultimately ended up getting a referral off of a cold call that I cold called this person. He lives in Boston. He is moving to the Midwest and we have a happy ending. But that search in it consumed me. I could not crack the code. I couldn't crack the code, not only on the location. I think that was just the hardest part about it.

Allie Milbrath [00:31:53]:
But cracking what the president actually wanted, what he thought he wanted, was a very traditional background in marketing when what we really needed was a commercial leader. And it took that long for us to kind of bridge that gap. But I learned. I learned a lot about myself and where things go wrong and what I need to sharpen moving forward, working at that level.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:20]:
What's the single most common mistake that you've seen recruiters make when they try to, for the first time, go retained,

Allie Milbrath [00:32:28]:
probably taking the wrong position. I think that they get so excited that they're going to get that paycheck up front. They have exclusivity that they're just going to take it. They're missing that step of pushing back and knowing that it's a role that they cannot be successful on. That takes time. It takes time. It takes guts to walk away if you need to walk away. But I think that they get so excited for that first signature that they forget they need to qualify this as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:04]:
This is something that happens a lot on the contingent side. So often, like, you work, work, and all of a sudden the manager hiring manager goes dark and disappears. Do you have that issue on the retained side? And, like, how do you prevent that?

Allie Milbrath [00:33:21]:
I don't. Because they have skin in the game. That's the beauty of retained. They have the skin in the game. If it's contingent, there's no reason. There's really. They don't have that initial reason, I should say, to have that communication. So when you're retained, it's just a different level of partnership that you have and you're building the relationship in the right way out of the gate.

Allie Milbrath [00:33:48]:
So, yeah, they've got skin in the game. You've already started building the relationship and the trust up front versus the, you know, hey, we'll take a shot at this, we'll see what we can find. Because that's what they think. Even if you spend time with them up front, there's no contractual anything, there's no money being exchanged. So it's, it's very transactional.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:11]:
And for those listening, like, if you. If somebody does hit a point where, like, it is actually time to walk away from a search, what does that look like? Do you give back everything or how does it come? What happens?

Allie Milbrath [00:34:27]:
I've never been in that situation to give advice on it. However, if I were, there's probably been a couple times where I've been close. Where I've been close to that point. You have to show your body of work and you have to show your value from day one. And I don't think they're going to ask for that retainer back because they can see the level of work that's been put in. Something is very fundamentally wrong with the search. If you get to that point and if you've taken all the right steps up to that point, I think you'd have to ask them what changed in your business, put it on them, because it's likely something has changed in their business or there's just been some kind of change. It's not necessarily your work that the problem has been.

Allie Milbrath [00:35:14]:
It's been the business. Or if you've brought them three, you know, consistent reasons of why candidates are declining and they're not shifting. You have that for them. You are giving them all of the reasons. If they don't want to change, you know, you're giving them market intel, you've given them the value where I don't think that you would need to refund a retainer.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:37]:
I know we've talked a lot about the process and this. It was supposed to be a bit of a master class, and I'm so excited, like, the amount of stuff that you walk through. Is there any other questions that I should be asking you for the listener on, like, this process, selling it, or any. Or anything in general that I should have asked?

Allie Milbrath [00:35:57]:
I mean, we could spend so much time diving into the actual process and how you need to be engaging with candidates and how you need to be engaging with clients, because that's where the magic really happens, is how you engage, how you're building relationships. A lot of that's. It's really hard to teach in a one session on how you should be conversing with your candidates and your clients, but people can feel when you're transactional. If you're calling your candidate after an interview and just say, you know, how the interview go, it went good. You have good feedback. Any concerns? No. Okay, we'll schedule next steps. You are missing your opportunity to build the relationship right there.

Allie Milbrath [00:36:39]:
It's just knowing and having that curiosity, right, to want to know more about not only what's happening in the interview process, but, you know, what's happening in their current role. You know, any changes in your current role. How does your family feel about this potential change? That's a huge driving factor in somebody's decision. What does their spouse think? What does their family think? You know, is that going to be a hurdle down the road? If you are. If you're used to being transactional, you need to learn to shift that into better relationship building, both on the candidate side as well as the client side.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:18]:
And I know you're so good at what you do that you, like, live on other referrals. So I almost want to say, like, your call to action for you, Ali. You have a lot of these sops and the playbook where people can have access to. To that. Can you talk about that real quick?

Allie Milbrath [00:37:36]:
Yeah. So a couple of years ago, I actually created a digital course about recruitment. And initially, it wasn't necessarily to convert contingent into retained, because in my head, this is just how recruiters should operate in general. I was really frustrated by consistently having to prove myself against terrible experiences that clients were having and consistently having these conversations with clients that they've been burned so many times by recruiters. Why should I trust you? And then it just became abundantly clear that we have an industry problem with reputation. People look at recruiters like they look at salespeople, for the most part, and, like, not good salespeople. And then, you know, just after being in a firm for so many years and just seeing how other recruiters operate, operate. I was like, man, well, no wonder we have such a problem.

Allie Milbrath [00:38:33]:
Like, we, we just aren't operating in the right way. And so I put this course together first and foremost to really help recruiters get over that hump. Like, if you operate this way, you're not going to fit into that reputation to build some ethics around our industry. That is really what was most important to me. And kind of as I've gone through the process and people have gone through the program, it's been these light bulb moments of, oh, like, there is a repeatable process and, you know, when things do go sideways, like, this is what I need to revisit in the search. So I put together this program to really help recruiters learn how to deliver and then teach them that it is through delivery that you will get more business. So you're spending less time on business development and spending your time on what really matters.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:25]:
And do they just hit you up on LinkedIn to chat about that course?

Allie Milbrath [00:39:28]:
Yep, they can hit me up on LinkedIn. You could go to want to recruit.com to learn more about it. We do have a promo code for anybody that's interested in it listening to the podcast, so I'm happy to talk through it. I've got a list of the modules if you want to, you know, take a look at what we cover. The first, you know, the first two modules are pretty elementary. That is for people that are looking to get into recruitment and to understand the differences between contingent and retained and, you know, really what our purpose is. And then we've got 10 modules that go really into the meat of a search and delivery and just how you need to operate your desk before I let you go.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:08]:
If somebody's listening to this right now, like, and they want to really start moving, what are the three things that you think they should do this week?

Allie Milbrath [00:40:17]:
Leverage your network. Everybody has a network. It's learning how to utilize it, knowing what questions to ask, and building authentic, genuine conversations. Again, it can't be transactional. People can see through that. You have to, like, dig in and really look at the why. It's not just about, okay, if I reach out to somebody I know who's a cfo, they're going to give me business. That.

Allie Milbrath [00:40:42]:
That can't be the intention. The intention is I need to learn and I'm going to leverage my network to learn. I would say, number two is really dissecting their process and maybe even, number one, determining, do I have a process and if you don't, you need to fix that. I think it's, it's just vital to have an actual process because it helps, it just helps tremendously with keeping your searches organized and having successful searches. And number three, don't be afraid to ask for the business. I think just having enough self confidence in what you do and even if you have to fake it till you make it, I am like the poster board for that. I did not have confidence when I started. I was so freaking scared.

Allie Milbrath [00:41:32]:
But I was in a no fail situation that if I didn't figure this out, the way it was going to impact my family was catastrophic. And so I had to figure it out. So even if you're not quite confident yet, still ask for it. And if you follow a process and you get really good at delivery, everything else is going to follow.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:53]:
For those listening, if they want to follow or connect with you, how do they go about doing that?

Allie Milbrath [00:41:57]:
LinkedIn is probably the best way to do that. Send me a connection request, I'll send you my email and my phone number and we can connect live. I love talking to recruiters. I love to lift other recruiters because I know how hard it can be when you're working through chaos versus working in defined delivery process. There is a better way to do it and I just love talking through it because I do think one by one we can change our industry, we can change the ethics, we can change the stereotypes and I think it's going to be a lot easier to do than what people think.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:33]:
Ali, I'm so excited that this is round two of being on the podcast. I know you've spoken at a few of the summits and if you have, for those listening, if you haven't seen any of the summits, you definitely need to get on board. We have about four per year. I love when you come on because you help move the needle. I love when you come on and share because I truly believe watching how the impact and the things that you shared has helped other recruiters. And for those listening, there are some massive takeaways. You don't have to go fully retained. They're probably looking at my note card, probably about six or seven things that I personally can now fix without even going fully retained.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:14]:
So like, what can you do in your process? Because as AI is getting better, you have to figure out why clients are still going to pay you,

Benjamin Mena [00:43:24]:
what part

Benjamin Mena [00:43:25]:
of your process can add value. And that was one of the biggest takeaways. On top of less chaos.

Allie Milbrath [00:43:33]:
Less chaos in that, that mind shift change is so important.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:36]:
2026 is your year.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:38]:
Make it happen. See you guys next time.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:41]:
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 [00:44:15]:
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 [00:44:51]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com

Intro [00:44:59]:
thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.