The Power of Niching: How Rob Bowerman Became The Luxury Recruiting Leader

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
The Elite Recruiter Podcast has multiple summits coming up that you need to make sure that you are registered for. We have the AI Recruiting Summit 2025 coming up, and on top of that, finish the year strong. These two summits are going to help you move the needle, help you achieve your goals, help you achieve your dreams, and make 2025 the year that you started out and you wanted it to be. Make sure you get registered and also stay tuned. Got something cooking for you guys. Working on another project that you guys are going to absolutely love. All right, see you guys at the summits and see you guys soon. Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:34]:
Why do you think having a niche is so important?

Rob Bowerman [00:00:38]:
Because you want to add an extraordinarily high level of value to your client, and I think you can only do that at the best level by being a real legit expert.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:50]:
What was the thing that finally I just said, like, hey, maybe it's time.

Rob Bowerman [00:00:54]:
A couple things happened? One is you start getting that feeling that you are a much bigger part of the company's business and you should be keeping a little bit more of that, and you feel like, okay, I'm not quite getting enough in the way of resources and things that are making my practice better from this particular firm, so I can probably do this better on my own. 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 [00:01:35]:
I think one of the most underrated secrets when it comes to recruiting is niching, niching down. Me personally, I talk about this a lot, even though it's something I should be taking my own medicine up for. But the recruiters that are typically absolutely crushing it have niched down. And this is so cool. Like, I actually got a chance to meet this guest in person. We were having dinner one night at a conference, and I was just, like. We started having a conversation. I'm like, wait, you're in this niche? I didn't even know that was a focus.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:01]:
Even though, like, I should probably know by now every industry has recruiters. But, like, we just started having this conversation, and he started, like, laying out the framework of why they decided to niche down, where they did, the importance of it. And it was a conversation that I knew that we had to have here actually recorded for you guys. So, Rob, I'm so excited to have you on the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Rob Bowerman [00:02:22]:
Oh, me too. Thanks for inviting me, Ben. I've been looking forward to this ever since we met back in Las Vegas at the Pinnacle Conference.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:29]:
So real quick, before we get started, a quick 30 second self introduction.

Rob Bowerman [00:02:33]:
Sure. So my name is Rob Bowerman. I've been recruiting since the mid-90s and I started my firm, the Bowerman Group in 2009. And our niche, is it niche or niche? I don't know. We'll call it one. I'll call it niche. It sounds classier. But my niche is consumer luxury brands and we focus on placements from manager level through C suite.

Rob Bowerman [00:02:56]:
We're a blended firm. We do a mix of contingency, engaged. I like to say we're narrow but deep within our very chosen world of luxury brands that I think we're going to talk a lot about in this conversation. I'm based in Massachusetts. I have a remote team of six split between Mass and the New York.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:13]:
Area that is like luxury brands. Like, who would like. I mean it just makes sense like after you have a conversation with you that it would be like an awesome niche. Niche. But it's one of those things I'm like you just like there's so many industries where recruiters are doing great in that you just don't think about.

Rob Bowerman [00:03:31]:
Right. I think there's a niche for absolutely everything out there and you've seen it.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:38]:
And we'll talk about that. So like, let's even get started. How did you end up in this wonderful world of recruiting?

Rob Bowerman [00:03:43]:
All right, so kind of a funny, circuitous story because let's face it, nobody goes to college to be a recruiter. Right. I don't know of any college that has it for a major. We all end up here accidentally somehow. So my story isn't that unique in that regard. So I went to school for business. I was convinced I wanted to go into retail. I had set my mind on the fact that I wanted to be a buyer, which I thought that was going to be a great job, incredibly sexy.

Rob Bowerman [00:04:10]:
I'd get to deal with all of this cool merchandise, cool brands, trips, they give you free swag. It sounds amazing and glamorous and all those things. So there's a path for that. So again, I'm dating myself a little bit. We're going into the mid-80s when I graduated from college and I went into a training program for a large retail department store that was long ago eaten up by Macy's. But long story short, went into the training program, made a couple career switches to become a buyer. Like I was just hell bent on that. And then you have that moment that you wake up in the morning and say, I really hate my job.

Rob Bowerman [00:04:47]:
This is not what I wanted it to be. The glamorous part is about this much of it. It's just not for me, for a whole lot of reasons. And I think, as I really look back on it, I'm somebody who. I like to help people. I like to solve problems. And I felt like, as a buyer, all I was doing was beating these vendors up for price. You'd have somebody who came in, they had this great product, they poured their heart and their soul into it, and I'm trying to squeeze every little last penny out of them.

Rob Bowerman [00:05:16]:
It just didn't feel good. I didn't like it. So it really wasn't incredibly good at the job. But I'm like, well, shit, I've spent all this time moving toward this. Maybe I'm just doing it in the wrong company. So I tried being a buyer in a different company. Nope, that was not at all different. So you end up having that existential crisis of, okay, now I've worked probably six or seven years in now.

Rob Bowerman [00:05:40]:
What do I do now? And you look for that pivot. And I'm living up in New England. I didn't really want to move from here. So a good friend of mine from college had gotten into recruiting. He worked for a big firm up here in Boston, Winter Wyman. He was doing really well with them. And he took me out to lunch one day because we were college buddies. And I kind of pumped him about what he did.

Rob Bowerman [00:06:00]:
And it wasn't lost on me who was driving this beautiful company car and making way more money than I was. And he's like, rob, you know, you might be okay at this. You know, like, here's what this is all about. This might be a good job for you. And I was kind of at the point. I felt like I had nothing to lose. You know, I had a decent salary. My wife was working.

Rob Bowerman [00:06:21]:
I'm like, okay, if I literally make nothing for six months, can I take the leap? So, long story not so short. Took the leap, went to a local company that focused in the retail industry. And my strategy at the time was, okay, I can learn recruiting, but at least I'll know what I'm talking about, because I'm already in the industry. And then when I figure out what recruiting is all about, I'll go to high tech, because that's where all the money is. I just had this in my mind. So this was going to be a short stopover. What I discovered Miraculously was. I loved what recruiting was, but I also refound my love for the retail industry, that I was just doing the wrong job in it.

Rob Bowerman [00:07:04]:
But I love the people. I love the industry. I just needed to find my place in it.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:10]:
Okay, so real quick, let me just pause right there.

Rob Bowerman [00:07:13]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:14]:
Did you go searching for a recruiting company that focused on retail?

Rob Bowerman [00:07:19]:
Yes, but it actually wasn't that hard because back in the day, there were actually three different companies that I could have commuted to that worked in some version of retail, because there was a lot of retail headquartered in New England at the time. Not the case now, but. But there was that.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:35]:
Okay. Because I'm like, I'm sitting there in my head like, you know, I started my recruiting career in Orlando, but I'm like, I can't even picture a single retail focus recruiting company focus based out of Orlando.

Rob Bowerman [00:07:47]:
Right. And probably the situation's entirely different now, but. But at that time, so it just, it kind of made sense. And I did talk to other sorts of firms and I talked to my friend's firm and it was just like, okay, this seems like a comfortable place to be. And that's where it all went.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:02]:
How long did it take for you to get ramped up going from retail to recruiting?

Rob Bowerman [00:08:06]:
They handed me a couple accounts when I came in, but this is old school, Ben. This is like index cards and faxed resumes and, you know, push button phones and all that fun stuff. But I think I probably got my first placement in three or four months. Okay. I'm going to say it went along pretty well. I'm not going to claim to be a superstar out of the gate, but, you know, I think in, in year one, I probably build like 120, which at that time was respectable.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:34]:
Okay, awesome.

Rob Bowerman [00:08:35]:
Then I ramped up quick.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:36]:
And the reason why I'm asking this is because, like, there are still a lot of people that are walking into recruiting because I get these conversations constantly where this is their second or third career. You know, they're going from like a manufacturing manager job or a plant manager job or, you know, sales in an industry into the recruiting chair. And they're always asking me, like, how long did it take for somebody to get ramped up?

Rob Bowerman [00:09:01]:
Well, it probably depends on where you come from, Ben. Right. Because in retail you're in sales. Like I was in the sales mentality, so you just had to pivot how you were doing that. Okay. Kind of. And, and we can talk about that later because I actually found through my practice, I've applied over the years Consistently a lot of solid retail practices, and it actually translates extraordinarily well to what we do.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:26]:
Well, we'll chat about that in a bit, but. Okay. So you started growing there. When did you decide to leave?

Rob Bowerman [00:09:33]:
It took me a long time. And in hindsight, I should have left sooner, candidly. But I'd convince myself that, you know, I just wanted to do the search part. I didn't want to do that messy owner stuff and that that would be a distraction. So I'm better off doing what I'm doing, head down, do my recruiting, build my practice. And I was there 15 years, and they were mostly good years. You know, I don't want to, you know, I want to give credit where credit is due. I built a good career there and we did some good things.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:04]:
So what was the thing that finally I just said, like, hey, maybe it's time.

Rob Bowerman [00:10:09]:
So, you know, we can talk about how I got into luxury. But you know, over time, I built that practice within a practice. Okay. And a couple things happened. One is you start getting that feeling that you are a much bigger part of the company's business and you should be keeping a little bit more of that. And you feel like, okay, I'm not quite getting enough in the way of resources and things that are making my practice better from this particular firm. So I can probably do this better on my own. The wake up moment.

Rob Bowerman [00:10:41]:
And again, keep in mind, I'm doing like a lot of, you know, luxury brand, multi store, single store buyer sort of searches. And our firm was still retail all over the place. And I looked at our website and next to my position for, I think it was like Versace, Beverly Hills or something, was the produce manager for the local grocery store. And I'm like, this is not helping my branding. I gotta do something on my own. So I think that was that major aha moment at the time.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:13]:
This is where I wanted to jump into. I know this is a fun story. So, like, how did you start weaving your way into the niche that you have now mastered?

Rob Bowerman [00:11:24]:
Yeah, so again, this was a smaller firm at the time, and they were part of, I think it was called Retail Recruiters, which was an offshoot of management recruiters back in the day. So kind of an MRI sort of model. And there were a lot of different versions of that. They weren't part of that franchise anymore, but they kind of thought that way. So they worked in a very geographically limited way in New England, which again, there was enough to do there. But I'm just kind of sitting there one Day. And I'm like, okay, I have this phone. The phone does go everywhere, but we're only working on positions.

Rob Bowerman [00:11:56]:
Like Connecticut is the furthest away we're going to. And I went into my boss and I said, so this phone does go everywhere. You have long distance, right? I can call anywhere. So can I market anywhere at anything? It's like, well, sure. So literally, I had a New York City Yellow Pages that a friend of mine from New York stole and FedEx up to me and I just started. I just started going, and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to call companies, call headquarters and doing, you know, this is in dialing for dollar days. And I happened to connect with somebody at Chanel, the HR manager, and introduced myself, and I had a decent pitch, I guess, at the time. And they said, oh, we.

Rob Bowerman [00:12:38]:
We have this position in California. You know, described it. Is that something you can do? Sure. And off it went. I hadn't done anything in Los Angeles yet, but I knew enough about it. You know, I could get my way through it, but ended up, you know, connecting, making a kind of a nice placement out there. And I found this is a really cool, fun world. And then it just branched from there.

Rob Bowerman [00:13:02]:
So we started making it our business. Myself and a recruiter that worked closely with me to get to know at the retail level, all of these major luxury markets, and it was just all born from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:13]:
I'm still blown away by the somebody FedEx stole yellow pages. FedEx right up to me.

Rob Bowerman [00:13:19]:
I just started with these. I'm really dating myself with these stories. This is getting a little sad, but.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:25]:
But it's still cool. It's one of those things like you just opened up a whole new environment for you. And after that, did you get your next luxury brand from the old pages or was it from a connection that you made?

Rob Bowerman [00:13:39]:
It was cold call marketing because I realized this is something that's really cool. But now I can say, I just did a great search with Chanel. I'm using that. I mean, that's real life. That's what happened. But it's also a great example because everyone knows that brand. So then it starts opening the doors and it starts building upon itself. It's a very incestuous little world, as large as it is.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:03]:
So how long did it take you from that phone call to Chanel, to being fully niched in that. That space and being established, probably about.

Rob Bowerman [00:14:16]:
Two years to really feel like you hit your stride and you were getting a very good reputation within that world. You had to build some really good successes there. You know, maybe it was shorter than that. I'm going on memory, but you know, I'm going to say it was probably, I was fully living in that world in about a two year period.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:35]:
When you were doing that, were you still doing like searches over here or did you completely stop everything else retail and you went all in on luxury?

Rob Bowerman [00:14:44]:
Well, it was still retail, but it was luxury retail.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:46]:
Luxury retail, yeah.

Rob Bowerman [00:14:47]:
Pivot. So, yeah, I pretty much went all in on it. Yeah. I said this is going to be my world and I'm going to build it. And then the referrals start coming in and then you start building the really loyal client bases and it goes from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:02]:
If somebody's just starting looking at a brand new niche with everything that you've done, what advice would you give them? And to really start diving in, I.

Rob Bowerman [00:15:11]:
Think one of the important things is find something that you can be personally passionate about. So I told you my story. You know, it kind of came from my purposeful career decision. But I think you do much better if you can legit be excited about the jobs and the companies you're talking about, if you're chasing a niche, because, okay, this is the biggest expansion. This is most money. Sure, you can do it and you can learn it. Anybody can learn anything, right, if they're smart. But I think you have a real edge if it's something that you are first of all really excited about the product and the companies and the industry.

Rob Bowerman [00:15:49]:
And also different types of people graduate to different types of industries. Right. So if I'm wired as an engineer, I'm going to have that analytical sort of mind. I'm going to do well talking to engineers. Okay. I'm wired as a retailer and a brand builder, so I'm going to do well talking to those people. So I think you just have that little extra credibility and connection to the candidates and the clients if you are enthusiastically talking their language.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:20]:
I. No, I agree. And I see a lot of people when they're looking like, hey, I did five, 10 years in this space, but AI is hot. I'm going to go jump on AI. Where I've actually had some conversations. The perfect example, I was like, you just spent 15 years in SAP, like, why aren't you focusing on SAP as a recruiter?

Rob Bowerman [00:16:40]:
So I mean, like I said, you can, a smart person can do anything. And I certainly would never discourage that. You want to chase where the opportunity is. And listen, it's what you're passionate about as a dying industry, you Better not spend a lot of time there. Right. But if you can find something that sort of hits your sweet spots, I think you get there faster and you have more influence. That would be. I mean, that's my experience.

Rob Bowerman [00:17:04]:
And I look at how I built my firm and we have a small team, but everyone in my group did come from retail one way or the other.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:12]:
Every single person is a former retail.

Rob Bowerman [00:17:15]:
Except my admin person. I have one who was a former candidate and then another was a former candidate and a client also. But we all kind of came from that world. So it's like a shared language and mindset that we have.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:29]:
So I know retail is billions and billions, like in reality, maybe a trillion across the globe. Do you ever get searches like outside of the luxury space?

Rob Bowerman [00:17:39]:
Oh, sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:40]:
What do you do to those?

Rob Bowerman [00:17:42]:
And it's not like being in luxury. You say you're a brand snob, right? Like this is your niche and these are the companies and this is your expertise. And I actually brand myself as premium in luxury. It's kind of a fine line between there. So if something is pure mass merchandising. No, probably not for us, but we certainly will get search requests that are not quote, unquote luxury brands. But the way I'll explain it to that client is, listen, like, luxury is about the brand and its personality and the culture fit and the brand fit and all of those things. And if you have a brand where those things matter, even though you're not a quote unquote luxury brand, we probably can help you because those are sort of filters that we apply when we're doing our recruiting, which is different from what people would do in other industries.

Rob Bowerman [00:18:30]:
So you can certainly flex a little bit there. But I've also learned the hard way that you want to try to be very purposeful because you want candidate recyclability. Right. And we struggle with that a little bit anyway. Because on the retail side, you have many, many markets. I mean, you have New York all day long, you have LA all day long. But then you have smaller markets, you maybe you can't recycle them. If you start going too left of center, it's a one and done.

Rob Bowerman [00:18:56]:
And so you have to be more thoughtful before you put a lot of energy into those searches. Because A, you want the resources to get people quickly. And if you're building every single search from scratch, that's not efficient and you don't have recyclability.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:11]:
Well, being in the luxury and the premium space, like I've enjoy going to France a Lot. And France or French brands, it's like an experience when you walk in the door. Have you guys, like, taken any of that thought process behind the scenes of the brands that you support? And you found ways to kind of, like, put that into your recruiting practice all the time?

Rob Bowerman [00:19:32]:
I'm glad you kind of steered the conversation there, Ben, because I think that's also part of branding, of personal branding and branding of your firm and aligning with your industry. Okay, so let's use this example. I mean, pick a. Pick a French brand you love. Hopefully it's one I know.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:49]:
I mean, I'm just. I'm already thinking of Chanel or something like that.

Rob Bowerman [00:19:52]:
Okay, right. So go with or go with Louis Vuitton. Everyone tell us that. Right? So big, big commercial brand, right? So why do people buy the brand? There is a perceived exclusivity there right now. How exclusive is it? Not so much, because there's thousands of LV stores everywhere. But, you know, you're drawn to that merchandise and that experience because the experience makes you feel good. It feels a little bit exclusive. So we have adopted that as our mindset.

Rob Bowerman [00:20:20]:
And let me kick it up a notch. If you use Hermes, you or your wife probably aspire to have Hermes or own Hermes. You know, some piece of it. It's built on exclusivity, right? Like they have. Their most desirable piece is a Birkin bag that you literally can't buy in the store. You have to buy many, many other things from the brand before you get on the list to have the privilege of buying one. Okay? So it's completely in demand. So if we adopt that mindset a little bit, I find that works really well for us.

Rob Bowerman [00:20:51]:
You know, we want to brand ourselves as not just a luxury brand recruiter, but we say we're the best of the best, that it will be a great experience. When you work with us, we want you to have that same sort of experience you would as a luxury client. And I think that makes you more desirable, and you can apply that outside of luxury brands. If you're a real expert in your niche, whatever it is, you can have that air of exclusivity, like, hey, you know, Ben is the rock star in this world. I want to work with him and nobody else, and I aspire to work with him. So you want to try to get yourself to that place. I think it's the same mindset.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:30]:
How did you create that as a recruiter? When you walk into, like, Emirates store, like, you. You feel it like you walk into a Louis Vuitton store, they're there. Longchamp store, They're. They're there. How do you almost like duplicate that in the recruiting chair? It's a completely different world.

Rob Bowerman [00:21:48]:
It is, but it's. It's all about. We call it client journey in retail. So translate that to candidate journey or client company journey. That if you create a rock solid process that's very detail oriented, very relationship based, that they know. Okay. When I'm talking to you, you're an expert. You have my best interests at heart and you build that experience.

Rob Bowerman [00:22:12]:
And I'll pat ourselves on the back. I think we're pretty good at this. We're complimented all the time on our candidate journey, on how we treat candidates. Not just the basic preps, but just the entire journey. Our follow up, we have collaterals, we send people. It is very well branded. It's classy, it looks good, it's educational. So I think you can create that luxury brand of recruiters by doing all of those things better than your competition.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:40]:
Okay, so I understand that retail luxury will probably don't understand as well as you do, but it's a pathway that they have for you to be able to go buy something. You've created a candidate journey that is duplicatable with your entire recruiting team.

Rob Bowerman [00:22:55]:
Sure, absolutely. And you have that on the client side too. You know, you set the expectations up front in terms of partnership, follow up the things we send them. Just you make sure you do everything at the highest level possible. So it's a great journey for them.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:10]:
What are some of the things that you think that you do different in both of those sides of the journey than most other recruiters?

Rob Bowerman [00:23:15]:
It sounds really basic, but it is communication, you know, it's not dropping the ball on things. One of the biggest things of the candidate journey, let's face it, you know, three or four times a day you're telling candidates they didn't get the job. Right. Or, you know, somebody didn't get the job. And the number of candidates that any of us in the firm will call and have a very thoughtful conversation. And I always feel like it's worth doing this. It's more than just a message. Sorry, they passed on you.

Rob Bowerman [00:23:42]:
Like, we will schedule a call and treat them with respect and say, listen, like, this is what went well, this is what didn't go well. This is why they made the choice they did, because I'm going to work with that candidate again. I want them to feel good about us and the number of times that we're told, thank you for Doing that no other recruiter has. Often we're just ghosted. I'll have an interview and I never hear again. I mean, that's bad for our industry, so it should be a low bar. But that becomes a great candidate experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:14]:
Have those candidates ever ended up turning into clients?

Rob Bowerman [00:24:17]:
Oh, for sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:18]:
Do you think it's because of the candidate journey?

Rob Bowerman [00:24:21]:
I think it is. It's how you treat people and you're viewed as a relationship based firm versus a transactional based firm. There's a lot of transactional players out there and sure, you can make fine money doing that, but the long term value is in building those relationships.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:40]:
Now, with that process, did you actually have that in place over at your initial company or is that something that you actually had to sit down for your firm? Literally just slow down and start mapping this out for these changes that really happened.

Rob Bowerman [00:24:54]:
When I started my firm, I mean, I had certain standards that I upheld within the confines of how the past firm worked. And, you know, you still of course treated people well and very thorough, but when you do your own thing, you have the opportunity to hit a giant reset and build it exactly the way you want. And that's what we did. And that was important to us from the beginning. Now has it evolved over the years? Of course it has. And you layer in things and technology helps and all of that. But it all started with that very basic, we're going to do this right. And my mantra is always, you know, it's a long game.

Rob Bowerman [00:25:28]:
It's not about the placement in front of you. It's about the long term relationship and having somebody that's going to come back to you over and over again. And I think if you approach everything with that mindset, you're going to be a whole lot better off in the long run.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:41]:
Absolutely love that. The luxury premium mindset when it comes to like having your candidate journeys.

Rob Bowerman [00:25:47]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:47]:
Like looking back at niches. Like you've been in the pinnacle society for a while and we'll talk about that in a bit. So you've had a chance to chat with a lot of recruiters. Why do you think having a niche is so important?

Rob Bowerman [00:25:59]:
Because you want to add an extraordinarily high level of value to your client. And I think you can only do that at the best level by being a real legit expert in your world that you can be not just a trusted partner in recruiting, but also the industry that you have the insight for them that when you're talking about a project, you can give real life examples on Okay, I see why you're thinking you want this criteria for your brand director, but here's what we've seen from your competitors, and this is how you might want to pivot it. And having that real strategic conversation and showing that you're an expert within your world, I think that's the only way to really be the best partner that you can.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:45]:
When do you start seeing recruiters, like, realizing that they need to, like, focus more in the recruiting journey, in their recruiting careers? Like, when do you start seeing that? Like, oh, shit, I need to, like, start narrowing down on this world?

Rob Bowerman [00:26:57]:
I'm not sure I have a great answer for you on that, Ben. Being honest, I mean, haven't certainly met a lot of recruiters, but I think most of the ones, certainly through Pinnacle, most people are a niche versus being generalist. But I think it's when. My guess is it's when you find success in something, you realize there's opportunity here and you drill into it, and hopefully it's earlier in your career versus later. But, you know, we're an industry that does move, and people have to make purposeful pivots and all of those things. My niche happens to be extraordinarily strong. It's something that weathers a lot of. I've been through three recessions.

Rob Bowerman [00:27:33]:
It weathers a lot of that, so it's consistently been a good place to be, but I'm sure that's not the case across the board.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:39]:
And luxury, super luxury always does good even, no matter the market, right?

Rob Bowerman [00:27:43]:
It does. I mean, there's highs and lows, of course, but, yeah, I mean, we're dealing with all that now. We're in tariff hell with everything now, and it's affecting some brands more than others. But, you know, I talked to my Swiss watch companies, and they're like, well, we're not moving our Swiss watch manufacturing to the U.S. we just have to deal with us. Right. But, you know, when you're dealing with super luxury, if somebody's spending 50 grand on a timepiece, they don't care if it suddenly becomes 60.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:10]:
It's so true. Well, I mean, just for the recruiters out there, I want to talk about, like, the current market environment before jumping to another part of it is like, you know, there are some places where it's not doing as well as it was. And right now, you're dealing with the craziness of tariffs that are changing by the week or the month.

Rob Bowerman [00:28:31]:
Right. And it's not just the tariff itself. It puts a mindset out there, and I think a lot of people are feeling this just even outside of our world, is it. It puts us in this really strange place of indecisiveness. Because the market, whether it's the stock market, the recruiting market, doesn't like uncertainty. Right. Everything was topsy survey. Then you have an election and you think, oh, this is going to be great.

Rob Bowerman [00:28:54]:
And then there's different types of topsy turvy going on. So we're all dealing with that. You know, talking to Alan Fisher, who does accounting, he's feeling it too. Does tariffs really affect that? No, but it's this mindset of, ooh, I'm not sure what the future is going to be. I have to buckle down a little bit.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:14]:
And as a recruiter, like, how do you typically buckle down? Is it just by, like, working harder, focusing on the relationships? Like, you've made it through some of these downturns before?

Rob Bowerman [00:29:22]:
Yeah, for sure. And you just have to put your nose down and do it and do do more of what you know works. Right? So this is when you dig back into the old school of, you know, increasing your call volume, increasing your outreach volume, just doing more intense biz, Dev, all of those things. You. You just buckle down and do it. Because we all don't do know at a certain level, even if you're not niche, you know, it is an odds game, right? As long as you have enough volume and enough things going on, things are going to work. And the other thing I think is important is you don't buy into the narrative of, oh, my God, you know, the world is crazy, and I'm just going to have to ride this one out. Like, you just don't.

Rob Bowerman [00:30:06]:
You don't talk about it. I mean, I have my client calls, my candidate calls. Sure, we'll address, you know, how are tariffs affecting your world, but it doesn't control the narrative. It's just, you acknowledge it and you move on. You can't get sucked into all of that.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:20]:
So, guys, don't get sucked in. Keep grinding. The Elite recruiter podcast has multiple summits coming up that you need to make sure that you are registered for. We have the AI recruiting summit 2025 coming up. And on top of that, finish the year strong. These two summits are going to help you move the needle, help you achieve your goals, help you achieve your dreams, and make 2025 the year that you started out and you want it to be. Make sure you get registered and also stay tuned. Got something cooking for you guys.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:47]:
Working on another project that you guys are Going to absolutely love. All right, see you guys at the summits and see you guys soon. One thing I also want to talk about is, like, as you started your firm, like, it was 100% contingent recruiting when you started it. Like, when did you start realizing that you could potentially give another option and how did you do? Like, a bit of a mind ship. I came mindset shift to getting there.

Rob Bowerman [00:31:12]:
Sure. And this is one of the many, many areas that I credit Pinnacle society for and whatever your tribe is, but Pinnacle is a great one that I've been blessed to be a part of since 2009, is you listen to what other people are doing and other people that are doing more retained or engaged business, and you just wake up one morning and say, I'm really tired of working for free. You look at your metrics, you look in contingent, and, you know, even if you're really good, and I, I think we're really good and I think our fill rate is high, but it always could be better. And we also realized once we started embracing it and saying, you know, every time, ask for an engagement fee so we're not retained. We do some engagement fee up front whenever we can get it. And then the balance due upon the candidate start date. Go back to when we were talking about how you brand yourself as being luxury experience. And you realize by asking that you're actually branding yourself higher, like you're setting that mutual expectation.

Rob Bowerman [00:32:13]:
You're saying, well, of course, if you want to work with me, we will expect that you will do this. And it sort of builds that luxury feeling, like, oh, well, that's just the way it is. And maybe I'll pay a little bit more, but, well, it will be worth it. And so we found that rolled really nicely into the branding. And I'm sure you've had many recruiters on that have talked about the value of engagement fee. But even if you don't get it just by asking, you've set the tone. That also makes it easier to get the fee that you want because we sit a little bit above our transactional players in the industry. Retail can be extraordinarily cheap.

Rob Bowerman [00:32:51]:
So I compete against people that do 18% all the time contingency, and we're parked at 25, and we don't vary from that period. So that's part of how you get right.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:03]:
If somebody says, like, hey, I only do 20, I mean, I'm sure I can get rebuttals and this and that and the relationship building, but you're 25, and that's it?

Rob Bowerman [00:33:10]:
Yeah. I mean, I never say never. Right. But you hold the line or you come up with, you know, you come up with something that is a good in between. But, you know, by and large, like, we don't do 20. I haven't dropped down in years, and we've held to that, and I think that's important. But on the engagement fee side, even if somebody gives you five grand, it shows they're serious about it. And if through the negotiation that you can't, at bare minimum, you want exclusivity, even if it's pure contingency, you have to have that.

Rob Bowerman [00:33:43]:
Right. But you find, okay. If you're struggling with getting the exclusivity, if you're struggling with engagement fee, that's when you have to ask yourself how real the search really is and be honest with yourself. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:58]:
Love that. So you've consistently been a big biller for many years. Like, you've been part of the Pinnacle society, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But like, Pinnacle requires XYZ numbers to be part of them.

Rob Bowerman [00:34:10]:
Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:10]:
How have you consistently, year after year, been such a big biller?

Rob Bowerman [00:34:16]:
And I'll tell you, this is something I struggle with, is being a big biller and a manager at the same time. If we want a moment of vulnerability here. But I love recruiting. I love doing it. I push toward doing the higher searches within the group, of course, but I still love it every day. So at this point, I'm enough years into it. I have great client bases. I love doing business development.

Rob Bowerman [00:34:40]:
We get great referrals that come in, so I'm able to continue that. And we've built a model. Most of our searches are, you know, split between teams. It's very seldom just one person does everything top to bottom, between researcher and recruiting and so on. But, you know, getting back to your question, I think, you know, I've just held that high level of excellence, and I hold myself to it. You know, it's like, this is a minute to win it. You know, your friends and your colleagues, you look at, we post our numbers, and you don't want to be at the bottom of that list. So that kind of motivates you to keep going.

Rob Bowerman [00:35:13]:
So, you know, you keep honing your craft and, you know, this many years in, I still always want to get better at it and still build what.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:21]:
Is, like, what does your day typically look like? And I know you told me your numbers offline and they're, they're, they're great. But, like, what does your day typically look like as a high performance recruiter.

Rob Bowerman [00:35:32]:
I will say I do have a work ethic. I'm a good Yankee, I was born in Maine and we have this kind of New England work ethic that we can't shake no matter how hard we try. So they talk about these lifestyle recruiters and you know, you know, go out and take long walks and do all these things. I'm not great at that. I'm a workaholic. So I sit down at 7:30, I start my day early and basically 7:30 to 9 is my planning and follow up and strategizing time and so on. And then because I mentioned I have a fully virtual team. So we have a call every day at 9 o', clock, non negotiable, everybody's on it.

Rob Bowerman [00:36:07]:
We talk about wins, losses, status updates, who's working on what, that's our internal accountability. And then my calendar is usually pretty built out before I go into the day. And my target is to have a good mix of ideally BD calls, prep calls, all of the steps of the process. And I actually color code all my events in my outlook calendar. So I kind of know at a glance if you have the perfect rainbow, it's going to be a good day. You know you have every step of the process and you want rate from business development to closing calls. You strive to have that great day top to bottom. So I'm pretty much just doing that.

Rob Bowerman [00:36:48]:
I would love to say I have this perfect formula for building out call blocks and I'm super focused on it. I'm not, I'm not great at that. Sometimes you're just reactionary on things but that's basically where it goes from 7:30 to about 4 and then you take a breath and regroup and get yourself ready for the next day.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:07]:
Now regrouping, which is prior planning, what does planning actually look like for you?

Rob Bowerman [00:37:14]:
For me it's looking at where the shortfalls are. Like okay, these are searches that need special attention. So I have to be recruiting intense and candidate development intents or okay, these things are humming along and we're a little lean on the new business prospects. So we're going to be more business development focused. So it's looking for the holes and the colors of the rainbow on the calendar. That's my own little internal visual. But I'm a visual person.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:44]:
I love how you actually have it as like a color coded rainbow on your calendar. I love that. What color is closing?

Rob Bowerman [00:37:53]:
Closing is red.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:55]:
Okay, cool.

Rob Bowerman [00:37:56]:
Probably should have a better color but yellow is interviewing you don't need all the colors, but we got them all.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:01]:
I was mostly still the closing one.

Rob Bowerman [00:38:04]:
Sure. Well.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:05]:
And you. Okay, you started growing your team in. Was it 2009? And you started off virtually. You hired everybody virtually. How did you have success? Like, how did you set up these recruiters to have successful careers virtually? Because, I mean, that's hard.

Rob Bowerman [00:38:23]:
It is, it is. And I'm not going to say it's perfect. So here's the wins is we set it up that way because I think I mentioned when I transitioned, I brought one person with me that I worked with. We happened to live 60 miles apart, and we said, let's just try this virtually, because who wants to have an office that we're commuting to again? And there was just enough technology in place at the time, and then I realized I wanted to hire somebody else, and she was in Virginia, and I thought, well, why let geography limit what you do? So that's kind of how we built things. And I'd say the pros is people do in general love the lifestyle. They love the flexibility, not having to commute, all those reasons that people love working at home. What you have to be mindful of is that you're still building connectivity with your group. So we have, you know, I mentioned the morning call.

Rob Bowerman [00:39:17]:
We have the Ringcentral version of Slack channels open all day, so we're like, texting and communicating through the day, so you kind of feel like you're there. So I feel like we have that connectivity. And team members will actually say, you know, we get together only one or two times a year, honestly, live. But they'll be like, I feel like I just saw you. You know, because we're just so connected in everything that we do. And like I said, it's mostly team placement, so you're working closely with other people. So those are the pros. The cons are you lose the benefit of being in the bullpen and hearing what other people are saying.

Rob Bowerman [00:39:56]:
I haven't figured out a great way to fully overcome that in all these years. That's the myth of not being in an office. Because I'll be sitting there and you'll have this great line that you use like, oh, Ben just said this amazing thing. I'm going to borrow that. And you do miss that. So we try to talk about it, and I try to open up dialogues about it, and we do training sessions every couple of weeks, but it doesn't replace it. That's your downside. But I think the pros outweigh the Cons.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:24]:
I mean, you've sounds like you've hired some great recruiters.

Rob Bowerman [00:40:28]:
We have a great team. My newest employee is three years and my oldest as well. She came with me. But.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:36]:
So we've talked a lot about a bunch of different things, whether, like how to become a premium recruiter, the, the premium brands that you support, you know, all the, these different things. And I was going to talk about the pinnacle society and the quickfire questions, so. But anything that you've covered that we talked about before, prior to all this, is there anything that you want to go deeper on?

Rob Bowerman [00:40:58]:
I mean, we've hit, we've hit the high points. I mean, you said in the beginning we wanted to talk about the importance of niching. Niching. Why can I still not say it? I have a niche now. You got me going. But no, I mean, I think that's the one big nugget that I would want people to take away from this is find a way that you can be really specialized and be the expert in your world and just go all in on it. We haven't talked about branding at all, but we're very mindful in sending out blogs every month and we're mindful about our, our company posts on LinkedIn and being, you know, putting things out there that are thoughtful and industry related. So I think you, you have to really work hard to do that.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:47]:
Love that. So quick fire questions don't need to be quick answers. You get somebody that calls you up, they know that you're part of the pinnacle society and they're just getting started in recruiting. It's 20, 25. Like the world's changing. All, like they're just seeing everything, everything. And they're like, you know what, Rob? I want to have a successful career in this. This looks like a great place recruiting.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:11]:
What advice would you give me to.

Rob Bowerman [00:42:13]:
Have success is to build your best practices early. You know, there's. Even though technology has given us a ton of gifts, you still need to go a little bit back to the old school of call volume. Following the metrics, paying attention to all of the details. I mean, shoot, I learned on the Tony Byrne VHS tapes, right. He remembers those. But still, not for nothing, a lot of those things apply. And I think if you build, you just build those best practices early and you get that work ethic early, that's what's going to stick with you.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:52]:
Love that. Same question, but for someone that's been around the block, we'll say maybe a decade or two.

Rob Bowerman [00:42:56]:
Yep. I think the biggest thing that I Feel like I've learned is stop convincing yourself a search is real when you know it isn't. We're all really good at that, right? Like, if your desk is a little leaner and then you want it to be like, wow, I can make this work and it's going to be great. But, you know, in the back of your mind, it's for whatever reason, besides being a purple squirrel, that, you know, the. The client isn't as invested in it. Maybe they didn't give you an engagement fee, but damn it, we're going to keep working on it because we can fix this. You can. If it's not real, it's not real.

Rob Bowerman [00:43:32]:
So why not put that energy that you're putting into something that's not real into business development that will give you the right job.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:41]:
Love that.

Rob Bowerman [00:43:42]:
The hard learn, but we've all learned it, so.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:48]:
So you've been part of the Pinnacle society, what is it, since 2008.

Rob Bowerman [00:43:52]:
2009.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:52]:
2009, yep. What does Pinnacle mean to you?

Rob Bowerman [00:43:58]:
Well, it means what it says. It is the pinnacle. It is the, you know, it's top billers within the industry. It's limited. I see it as a community, a community of extraordinarily high performers that we educate each other, but also we support each other, because, let's face it, recruiters are a unique breed. There's not a lot of people like us, and nobody outside of our world understands us. Right? So, a, you have people you can talk to who kind of get your daily struggles and your pains, but you have to be around people better than you. And as soon as you stop doing that, I think you stop growing.

Rob Bowerman [00:44:39]:
So even all these years in, I love learning from the new members that come in, and it's that community, and we build people up. And then if somebody is having, like, a tough time, you have resources you can go to that are going to boost you up. Not just, you know, motivationally, but also give you tools like, hey, okay, Rob, have you tried this? Have you tried that? We share information freely, and it's. It's just a great community to be a part of. I should probably say family. It really is more like a family. You've probably sensed that. You've been to a few of the.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:11]:
Meetings, so you also took a leadership role for a little while. Like, why did you do that?

Rob Bowerman [00:45:19]:
Because it was important. I think anything you do, you should be all in on and you should give back. And Pinnacle really does espouse that value, that it's not just a little label to have on your signature or something to talk about that. You give what you get. So we're being more diligent now in new members, saying we want not just tracking attendance, but participation, being on committee, being part of the organization. So I wanted to be part of that. I kind of always like being on boards and being part of the machine that gets things done. So I joined the.

Rob Bowerman [00:45:55]:
I forgot what year I joined the board, but I've been on quite a while. And then evolved into being president before Gale Otter Bird, who is the president now, so I was her predecessor. I get to be the COVID president, which was super fun. Schedule a conference. We cancel a conference, try to figure all this stuff out.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:17]:
It done well, you like. And this is just because I saw this and we've talked about this. But outside of recruiting, outside of being a firm owner, outside of all that you've done with Pinnacle and all you're doing at Pinnacle, you also have extracurricular activities.

Rob Bowerman [00:46:33]:
Oh, everybody does. Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:46:34]:
But yours is fun. Talk about that.

Rob Bowerman [00:46:37]:
It is fun. Yeah. So we were just talking about this. So I actually do community theater on the side. My wife and I both. Our son got us into it.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:45]:
Really?

Rob Bowerman [00:46:46]:
Yeah, yeah. He wanted to do it as a kid, and we're like, sure. And my wife decided to do something with him, and then I decided to. And we got completely hooked. And guess what? I'm on the board of the theater Guild now, too, so. So I actually just produced a show that closed this past weekend. So it's. I mean, this is.

Rob Bowerman [00:47:03]:
This is community. This is like Broadway's 10. I'm like a 2. But we do a good job, and it's really fun, and it's a great outlet for you. I think everyone, especially when you're working virtually, you have to have things that can consume you outside of the house. Right.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:19]:
I just thought it was super cool that you, like, produce an entire play.

Rob Bowerman [00:47:23]:
Yeah, yeah. And I've been on stage. I liked it. My wife and I met in the singing group, actually. So we have that sort of arts thing in common.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:31]:
That's awesome.

Rob Bowerman [00:47:31]:
Well, there's commonality between theater and retail and recruiting, if you think about it. There you go. Right. Don't you have to kind of put on a Persona when you are making a call and talking to somebody? You have to match the tone. You have to match the voice. It's what we do. And retail is all theater. You know, some companies actually talk about it being on stage when you're on the selling floor.

Rob Bowerman [00:47:56]:
So there you go. So I guess I just keep doing the same thing in different places. That's what it is.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:03]:
That's exactly what it is. Well, with all the changes that you've seen in the recruiting chair right now, what is one of your favorite pieces of technology?

Rob Bowerman [00:48:13]:
Um, I'm not going to say it's my favorite, but I. I do have to acknowledge LinkedIn because as much as we hate it, you can't live without it. Okay. And we have yet to find for our world anything that works better than LinkedIn Recruiter. So I'll just acknowledge it. Is it my favorite? I don't know. We're about two years into getting better at doing drip campaigns, and for the moment, we use source whale for that, which has been pretty good. You know, there's a lot out there with.

Rob Bowerman [00:48:38]:
We're always testing new things. Small thing that I love is calendly that I'll admit we were late to the game, but that was a game changer for getting all those things booked. And then ask me again in a month on AI. I mean, we've all been playing with ChatGPT, right? If you're not, you're so far behind. Right. So we've been using it individually to help us write things and write posts and do all of that. But I'm actually speaking in a pinnacle again, borrowing some of the tips from Matt and Alan's presentation when they talked about building out customized team GPTs. So we're just in the beginning of doing that and I think it's going to be a game changer.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:21]:
When Matt showed off his customized GPT. That's a recruiting, like, you can actually do recruiting calls with.

Rob Bowerman [00:49:31]:
Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:49:32]:
Like the one where he did live. That was crazy. But behind the scenes, I actually asked him, I was like, hey, like, what kind of data did you use to make this? And he actually said it was about a thousand pages of data to make this. Like the recruiting coach that you could just have, like practice calls with. So that was kind of crazy.

Rob Bowerman [00:49:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're just. I mean, with AI, we're all just kind of scratching the surface on it now. But you have to acknowledge it. But that, that will probably be my favorite really soon.

Benjamin Mena [00:49:58]:
Awesome. What is one of the biggest failures that you've had to work through?

Rob Bowerman [00:50:04]:
So in terms of life and overall, honestly, I felt like my failures were more before recruiting, and I'm not going to say there weren't a hell of a lot of failures in recruiting, but, you know, when I was going through that sort of career existential crisis and you know, that was. That was a big thing to work through because, you know, you. You set your sights on something and you realize you made a horrible mistake, and you have to do that pivot. I think in the recruiting world, we all have failures along the way, Right. But if you adopt the mindset that you just learn from them and you get a little forensic on things and get honest with yourself and vulnerable and realize where you screwed up, then you can grow from there. As an owner, I've hired the wrong people. We all have. Recruiters are incredibly bad at hiring their own teams because we're sure that we can turn somebody around, and often you can't.

Rob Bowerman [00:51:00]:
So then you spend too long trying to save them, or you realize that if you're honest with yourself, maybe their failure to thrive was your fault too. So you have to be a little vulnerable there. But life is full of failures. Just learn from them.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:14]:
With everything that you've done with your own company, the client wins, the successes, the cool stuff that you've had to work on. If you had the chance to kind of like package everything that you know now and sit down with yourself back in 2009, have a cup of coffee with yourself, what would you give yourself for advice?

Rob Bowerman [00:51:36]:
I think two things. One is don't freak out about the lows and don't celebrate the highs too much. I mean, we live in this feast or famine sort of roller coaster all the time, right. And this comes with time and understanding that there will always be a better deal ahead of you. But when something doesn't happen, something goes south, as inevitably does. Don't dwell on it. Even though it's my instinct to, but just get on the horse, move on. And when you get that great, amazing, best placement ever, sure, have a little celebration, but don't dwell on it.

Rob Bowerman [00:52:11]:
Put some money in the bank and move forward. So I think that's part of it. And then the other very tactical sort of thing that I think has come with time is we like to talk about candidate control and client control and all of that. It's an illusion. We can't control those things. We can control the process. We can control the things we do. But don't fool yourself that you can control decisions that people are going to make.

Rob Bowerman [00:52:40]:
Yeah, I wish I would have figured that a lot sooner. Saved me a lot of stress.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:47]:
Well, this is a fun one. So, you know, you're visible, you're part of Pinnacle. You talk to a lot of recruiters, you know, especially people that are looking at joining and stuff like that. Typically, like the questions that I'm guessing you probably get are like, you know, about firm ownership, building in a niche, why you're a top biller, what's working for business development. Is there a question that you actually wish a recruiter would ask you and what would that be?

Rob Bowerman [00:53:12]:
It's probably if somebody would say, so what is the secret to longevity in the business? Now that I can say I have a little bit of that. Not as much as Mike Goldman, but I have a fair amount of it. So I think that's something that I could add value in the answer.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:29]:
Okay.

Rob Bowerman [00:53:30]:
All right.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:31]:
I just had a chat with Mike last week. I should have asked him that.

Rob Bowerman [00:53:34]:
Yeah, there you go.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:38]:
Well, two quick things. First of all, if somebody wants to follow you, how do they go about following you?

Rob Bowerman [00:53:44]:
Okay, so I don't do a podcast. I keep getting. I probably should. I get inspired by these things and maybe I'll be inspired to do it now. So follow me on LinkedIn. Look at our website. We have a lot of collateral on our website, bowermangroup.com our resources page. We've been building out over the years.

Rob Bowerman [00:54:02]:
So we put a lot there in both candidate focused and client focused content. Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:09]:
So when are you starting your podcast?

Rob Bowerman [00:54:12]:
Are you going to hold me accountable for that? I'll get back by now and I think I have to. I mean, how you really should. And I have fun people I could talk to and I think it would be awesome. So I think you inspired me.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:23]:
I mean, it's such a great way for easy content for you. You ask them some questions, have fun, and then you share it online.

Rob Bowerman [00:54:28]:
Yeah, and we have really interesting clients that people would enjoy talking about. I think so.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:34]:
Oh, there you go. Well, and last question before I let you go. Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

Rob Bowerman [00:54:41]:
I mean, we've talked to death about niching, but I just think that's so important. It is a secret to success. And I'll allude back to the pinnacle thing, is that it's really important to find your tribe. You know, if you're. And especially if you're a big biller and you know, I go back to when I was in my firm and you know, like 70% of the company's revenue and you have nobody else you're learning from. You gotta find other people that are better than you to be around, people that you can learn from, people that will inspire you and they're gonna challenge you. And I think you, you stop growing if you're not around people Better than you. So you have to seek those people out.

Rob Bowerman [00:55:19]:
Critically important.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:21]:
Love that, Rob. Well, Rob, this has been fun. Like, like I said, the very beginning of this interview is like, we sat next to each other, enjoyed some wine, enjoyed dinner, and it was just such a fun conversation. I was literally picking your brain without you realizing that I was picking your brain the entire time. And I'm like, I have to have this conversation to actually hit the record button.

Rob Bowerman [00:55:41]:
Yeah, no, for sure. Well, in our next one, we can talk about all those sexy luxury recruiting stories because there's some doozies out there. So that'll do.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:49]:
Another one before we hit, like, finish. Give me one of those.

Rob Bowerman [00:55:54]:
1. Let me think of one. Can I give you a short one and a slightly longer one?

Benjamin Mena [00:56:00]:
Yeah, let's do it.

Rob Bowerman [00:56:01]:
Because there's one that I always sort of love this story, and it's how I got a job. So this was a big menswear client in Beverly Hills, California. Okay. Rodeo Drive. We do a lot of Rodeo Drive work. And we picked up the search. We got the call from the head of stores from the company, said, you need to replace our Beverly Hills person now. Person there wasn't ours.

Rob Bowerman [00:56:22]:
They had had a giant party. You know, luxury has a lot of parties. They have client parties, champagne, whatever is flowing. The daughter of the founder of the company was in town staying in LA for the party. She's walking down Rodeo Drive that morning, looks in the window of her family's store, and the manager was passed out from the party in the front window amongst the mannequins. So how often do you get a job order when that happens? Right? And I had this very, very fun search with an up and coming designer, young guy. He was very, very cool. And he'd found.

Rob Bowerman [00:57:00]:
Found his niche. He was an accessories designer. Built this following on Instagram, like, exploded from 2 to 30 million in a year, basically because his product was seen on the arms of one of the Kardashians. He started there anyway, but young guy who was like 28. And he said, rob, I was referred to you. I need a president. I need somebody to do all the business shit. He said, you know, help me out with this.

Rob Bowerman [00:57:28]:
So, you know, we did it. I embraced it. Super fun. We're doing the interviews and of course they're starting off. There's no HR department. They're interviewing with this kid. And, you know, so I have company presence, interviewing. I said.

Rob Bowerman [00:57:40]:
And the guy's like, rob, I've never interviewed. What do I ask for questions? So I send him questions. He's like, no, no, I need you to be there. I need you to guide it. But I don't want you being on camera because I want this to be me. But can you guide me? So we finally figured out, okay, if we're in zoom, I'll have my camera off, my mic off. I can go into chat and feed you questions based on how the conversation's going. After I do a couple of questions, I realize he's looking down at the screen saying, so please tell me about how you did X.

Rob Bowerman [00:58:11]:
And like, okay, he's reading this. So I start typing the questions, the way he talks. So I'm typing. So, like, that was really cool. Can you tell me more about that? Because he was reading it like, so, like, that was really cool. Can you tell me more about that? So these are the things we do to make our clients happy.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:36]:
That is awesome. And did you find that person for them?

Rob Bowerman [00:58:38]:
We did. We did.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:40]:
Love that.

Rob Bowerman [00:58:41]:
It was, like, really cool.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:42]:
Yeah, it was really cool. Rob, we're going to have to do another round for some of these stories. I should probably do a podcast of just all fun stories and stitch them together.

Rob Bowerman [00:58:54]:
All recruiters have to write a book. There's a lot of good stories. Come up with some good ones.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:59]:
Rob, like I said originally when we first started, like, I wanted you to come on just to talk about one and why it is so important for you to find a niche and the benefits of you finding a niche. And I think it was important for you to share your story and how you ended up in yours. Secondly, I'm really glad that you talked about this being your second career. Like, you had an identity. You had a place that you wanted to go, and you put time, effort, and years into work, but that identity had to take a complete change. You fell into recruiting, and it, like, everything changed after that. So thank you for sharing, Rob.

Rob Bowerman [00:59:36]:
Thank you. This was awesome. I love what you do for the industry. It's a gift. So keep doing it.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:41]:
Will do. And for everybody out there, I want you guys to keep crushing it. Okay.

Rob Bowerman [00:59:45]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.