EP73: Bentley Lewis - How to Build Sustainable Client Relationships

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal, focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for weekly episodes. My name is Lydia, and joining us today is Lewis Maleh, founder and CEO of Bentley Lewis. Welcome, Lewis, and thanks for joining us

Lewis: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, Lydia.

Making a Difference in Recruiting with Human Connections

Lydia: So, tell us about the mission and maybe some of the goals behind Bentley Lewis as a recruitment firm. I see that an area of focus is building sustainable relationships with clients. What does that entail?

Lewis: So there are a few things. I think going back to our mission, as cheesy as it might sound, we want to help make the world a little bit better, one placement at a time. I think being a recruiter, we do exec searches, we focus on senior leadership roles. It’s really important to remember that you’re dealing with humans, their lives, their money and happiness, and all of these kinds of things. So it’s important to behave in the right way and be human. So for me, that’s like our driving thing.

You’re not just placing a resume or a CV or a piece of paper, you’re finding and connecting humans together and that’s super powerful and that stems into everything that we do.

Recruiting is a P2P business, person to person. You might be hiring for one particular company because you’re friends with the HR director. They move somewhere else and suddenly you’re recruiting for another firm. So, it’s B2B because companies pay us, but the whole game is P2P. I think almost every business is P2P.

So, you have to focus on building long-term relationships with people, otherwise, you’re not in business. It just doesn’t work. Everything we do is about people, internally, externally, candidates, and clients, however, whoever we engage with, for me, the central thing is to be human and behave in the right way, and good things [will] happen.

Building Trust and Awareness Using Educational Content

Lydia: That brings me to an interesting fact about you. You've also run two podcasts, and you talk to all these recruiters, as well. How's that been coming along?

Lewis: So when I started my business back in 2010, I took an ad for the newspaper, like, “Hey, I’m a great recruiter, call me at 0-800-5050.” That’s kind of what you did back in the day. I started podcasting, and the original one was called “Don’t Take Out Your Phone.” Because everyone is on their phone all the time. You go out with your friends for dinner, and they’re glued to their phones. The irony is you listen to a podcast on your phone. That was the kind of the idea behind “Don’t Take Out Your Phone” and it was to generate content.

So macro content like 45 minutes or an hour podcast, freeform conversations with CEOs, founders, and business leaders about their story and their journey. It started to be transformational for my business. I think content is king now because attention is [a] currency. You want people to see you and a great way to do that is through educational content. You guys have a recruiting database, and you’re doing a podcast and all of these stories, and it’s so powerful. So I did that early on.

Then we started to build a nice marketing team and the recruitment show, which is my main podcast now. Again, we’re interviewing all sorts of folks. It could be Chief People Officers, CEOs, whoever it might be, and the topics are about work, recruiting, and hiring and it just stems into everything we do. If you think about what I described about building human connection, and long-term relationships, doing it through educational content, it is just such an amazing [and] powerful way to do it. Because you reach so many people, and if one piece of content helps someone secure their next role, or think about how to negotiate their next salary, or leave a job gracefully, whatever it might be, then that’s really cool.

It's a way of us staying in front of people without having to sell or do any of those things. Like you’re in their mind. So that’s how I started it. I love speaking with people, so it just ties into all of the things that make me happy and enjoy.

Using AI and Human Skills to Optimize Recruitment Process

Lydia: That's interesting. These conversational skills would also go back to how you deal with your clients and new candidates and they also enrich the business in terms of understanding what these trends might be, what's top of mind for executives.

So in your view, what might be some of the most significant recruitment trends you've observed this year, particularly?

Lewis: So content, I mean, more and more firms are doing it. Content builds brands, brand builds leverage, and leverage builds demand. That’s the flow and it’s incredibly impactful, and there are many platforms you can do it on.

I think this year, if you look globally, it’s been a hard year for the recruitment industry. The year before was probably the best ever. Suddenly, we had the banks, financial services firms struggling, tech firms struggling, and VCs pulling money out of early-stage companies. I read a survey recently on the US recruiting industry and I think on average firms there are down 35-40% or so. So I think this year, if recruitment firms sit down and look at the numbers and more, it will all go down as a difficult year. Not a dreadful year, but a bit stodgy I like to call it.

Some industries are doing better than others, some are hiring. Some depend on a recruiting agency, where you fit, if you’re focusing just on tech, it would have been a nightmare year for you. Just on financial services also [is] very tricky. But then other industries have done pretty well. It’s not universally terrible, but I’d say on average, a difficult year for the recruiting industry.

Then you’ve obviously got AI and stuff and firms like yours, integrating it into your platform so very quickly. It’s a standard that you have AI baked into recruiting software. They can write resumes, write your cover sheets, write emails for you, all of this kind of stuff. So the wonderful thing with this AI stuff for recruiting for me is that it will probably give my team like, let’s say two hours a day back, or maybe more. So two hours a day, that’s like 10 hours a week, how are you going to invest your 10 hours a week, now you have it back? So for me, recruiters need to spend more time doing what they’re good at, which is having conversations, human conversations, we can let AI do AI stuff and automate a lot of the manual tasks or the things that have taken a while writing stuff, and we can focus more on the human things. I think that’s a trend I’ve seen. That’s something that we’ve been doing a lot internally, we’ve integrated AI into everything we do, and the platforms we use all have AI in, and it’s making us more efficient. So that’s probably the biggest ones I’ve seen.

I think there are a lot of micro trends and themes, as well, like I think, just off the back of that difficult year, there are many recruiters and talent acquisition people out of work, and a lot lost their jobs this year. Quite a lot of the tech firms have still been making redundancies in TA. So I think overall, it’s been difficult, so if you are listening to this, and you’re out of work, I mean, just stay positive, stay active, network, speak with people, things change, you know. I think we’re maybe at the bottom, it’s super hard to know because so many things are happening. But I think a lot of the clients we speak with, there are some big hiring plans. We already see I’ve seen an uptick in these last six weeks in searches. So I’m cautiously optimistic about next year.

Dealing with the Uncertainty and Variability of the Recruitment Market

Lydia: In Q4, these uptakes that you're talking about are towards next year and the years after that, would that be correct to say?

Lewis: We’ve had a lot of new exec searches this past couple of months. I think with clients, we’re coming to the end of the year, so it’s going to be variable. You meet with some people and their financial year if it ends in December, they’ll be paying bonuses, and they’ll be getting budgets together and they might not hire until January or February. So you’ve got that.

On the other side of the coin, some companies have their budget and they want to use it and they want to hire people now just so they don’t lose the budget next year. You do see that in some larger firms. So it’s really hard to know.

Sometimes, December for us has been like the busiest ever. Sometimes it’s not. So it’s hard to know how it will go coming to the end of this year.

People talked about September being busy. It’s really difficult to know now because I think there are so many things going on in the world that are affecting business and investment. You know, you can’t worry about the things you can’t affect. You can only control what you can control.

And if you’re looking for work, that’s having conversations and networking.

If you’re in recruiting, if you’re running a firm, or you’re a consultant in a recruiting firm, do all the good daily activities. Reach out, create content, provide great service, get repeat business, all of the stuff that makes you an awesome recruiter.

You realize if you’ve done it in the difficult moments because you’ll get the searches from customers. They might not have that many, but you’ll get the ones that they have.

So, in good times and bad, I think, for me, it’s all stemming back to being a good human. Always behave in the right way, be honest, straight, and upfront, give good advice, be the trusted adviser, do content, and be seen as the expert in your field.

You do all of these things regularly, for a long period of time and you just put yourself in a really good spot that you can navigate the tough times, because there are always tough times, and there are always good times. It’s life. It’s always up and down. Once you realize that and appreciate that, and you’re comfortable with it, you can do your thing.

Building a Strong Sustainable Client Relationship

Lydia: So, as you said, business is not as straightforward as it may have been the past few years in terms of hiring this year. So are there any key elements that form a kind of foundation that builds a strong sustainable client relationship?

Lewis: This is basic friendship. For us to be friends, we need to spend time with each other. In the recruitment industry, I think of it like that, like be patient and invest time in building friendships, like long-term friendships. But I think people often move a little bit too much. I think there’s real value in sticking to what you do, like being an expert in your field and you can build really good long-term relationships. I started recruiting in 2006, and then I set up my own firm in 2010. So I’ve been in the game for a while, the same game, and it’s got a bit more global and it’s expanded into different industries. Obviously, I’ve evolved into not just an incredible exec search consultant, but as CEO as the role changes. But I’m still recruiting for people that I recruited in 2006. Like, I get a search, a CFO search from a CEO that I’ve known for 15 years. It’s because I’ve invested time in making friends with people in the early days.

So the early days for me were late 2005, 2006, in London and I started out doing financial services recruiting. I used to literally march around the streets of London. I had about 10 coffees a day. I was constantly caffeinated. [I] have coffee with people, day in and day out, lunch, breakfast, and dinner. I spent time with people, all the time. I had a good follow-up system, and I would reconnect with them every few months and spend time with them, recruit for them, place them, and go out with them. So, like in anything, you got to be patient, and you got to be prepared to be in it for the long game.

Listening to Understand, Not to Respond

Lydia: That's great because it obviously shows trust. I mean to be spending that kind of time with people and also, it's clear that transparency would also play a role in this. Because it constantly communicates and pushes itself out there as an expert.

But I'm also curious in this regard when there's this kind of friendship or this sort of connection that's been built over time, in instances of disputes, or maybe some kind of dissatisfaction with a service, how do you approach them?

Lewis: I think one of the skills I’m trying to teach my kids is having difficult conversations with people. It’s just such a wonderful skill. Because look at the world right now. They find it difficult to have difficult conversations with people without turning into an argument. They find it difficult to work with people who have a different view from them. Like people talk about bringing your authentic self to work, they talk about inclusion. When it comes down to it, people find it really hard to sit next to someone in a team, knowing that that person fundamentally disagrees with them on something. It’s hard. Having difficult conversations is a skill and I think if you can develop that skill, you can be a good human and appreciate that there are many perspectives in life and that your perspective on life can be governed by where you’ve grown up, your religion, your education, etc.

But really, the most powerful thing is to be able to appreciate people’s perspectives and have a conversation and listen, because the only way that we can understand each other is to listen to what you have to say, not listen to respond, not listen to argue with you, to convince you that my way of thinking is better than yours. But just to understand where you’re coming from.

The same thing with difficult conversations in recruiting. You might have to tell a client that a candidate has pulled out of the interview process or they’ve rejected an offer or what you’re looking for doesn’t really exist. There are some tough conversations you can have. The best recruiters are able to have the conversations, they don’t shy away from it. You can sit down, you can back up your thoughts, your views, whatever with data. There’s so much data around now and you can have the conversation unemotional. “Hey, just to let you know, this is the talent pool. What you’re looking for doesn’t exist. Let’s think about some solutions.” You can really do these things in a nice way. I’ve done a few podcasts on this recently, which I love. It’s conversation. You need to have conversation as a skill and it’s different from communication. So this skill of conversation is going to set people apart as we move forward. If you’re going to work on anything this year, work on your ability to have conversations and listen. It’s so important and that will help you navigate any difficult conversation and difficult scenario. It’s just such an under-talked-about skill, in my opinion.

Choosing the Best Communication Channel

Lydia: On top of that, conversations can happen through many kinds of mediums. You've got digital, you've got video you've got in person. What would be the right kind of mix in your opinion with clients?

Lewis: For me, it’s an “and” game. So phone calls work and face to face works, and video calls work, and content works. For me, it’s all about “and.” There are so many things to your point like communicating with people. So conversation I talked about just now is one thing. I can communicate on WhatsApp, I can communicate on LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, email, face to face, whatever. So it’s all about “and” for me, and I think people have to try different things. You can find out what works better for you and where you want to focus your time. Because again, the one equitable thing on this planet is we all have 24 hours in a day and you get to choose how you spend them, and a lot of the time, if you spend them better than your colleagues, you might do better. So think carefully about how you want to spend your time.

For me, in the recruiting industry, I want to be spending my time making friends, and getting to know people. I’d rather spend my extra two hours a day, having formal phone calls, or video calls, or maybe someone wants to meet me for lunch, or I spend it with my team. It’s the same, like whether it’s team or client or candidate, I spend it with people.

We’re a fully remote recruiting firm. We have people all over the world and I give them my trust off the bat and they can spend their time how they wish. It’s about output, not time. It’s not like you have to be in at eight o’clock and you can’t leave until six. I trust you. We know where we’re at. We know where we’re headed. You choose how you spend your time and then we can measure how well it’s working and what we can do to change

Lydia: It's great that you've got technology already within the processes in your recruitment firm, as you talked about earlier. AI is everywhere and it's sped up the process and given you more time.

So what are maybe some of those tools or technologies that you've started using, whether it's dealing with clients or dealing with candidates?

Lewis: We use Google Workspace, which is wonderful and it’s been great because I’ve been able to build a global, remote team. We stay connected through video, through chats, and through Google Spaces, which are like Slack channels. So that technology, I think, for me is wonderful, and it’s just COVID accelerated it, right? Like you have Zoom. I mean, Zoom didn’t even exist pre-COVID. Then you’ve got Google, and then you’ve got Microsoft, which has been great. Obviously, LinkedIn has been a crazily successful platform for recruiters and for finding jobs. So I’m a big fan of LinkedIn. So if you’re just like, tapping away, like start to maybe have some video calls with folks, maybe even pick up the telephone, just implement other things, because there are many ways to communicate. But LinkedIn as a platform is great. Like, most people are on there for recruiting, for social, it’s great as well.

Then we have recruiting databases, obviously, yours is one, and, every recruiting firm has a database of some sort. That’s kind of it, you know, you don’t need a huge amount of stuff. It’s all web-based, you don’t need servers anymore. It’s just, that you can set up a quite frictionless company, nowadays, a global company with all of these things. So it’s really good.

Using Database to Deliver a 5-Star Service

Lydia: So you've got team members, or you've got people working with the firm were based in various parts of the world, as you said, right, and they all remote and going back to the database, or the talent pool or the pipeline that you have. What sort of methods do you use or any best practices to keep that updated?

Lewis: I think that's down to the database, you know, you got to select the right database because again, if you don't have the right database, and it's not easy to use, your team won't use it. For me, the database isn't to police my team. We're doing an executive search. So really, we want to deliver great work for clients. We could be using the database to source people. We could use LinkedIn, and many other places to source, and we do bespoke stuff. So the aim isn't just to keep this database updated. It's to deliver great work for clients.

All of this technology is in the background, making us, hopefully, give a five-star service to customers, which is finding people, interviewing, and all that stuff. So there's no other tech that we would use to ensure that our database is good. I mean, I think it's just about selecting the right one, making sure it has the right tools that my team wants to use, and that they use it. Again, for me, it's listening to my team and if they're not using it, or if it's not good to use, then they'll lean out and I'm cool with that. You have to think about what you need because you need something that people will use.

The Three Traits to Have as a Recruiter

Lydia: What are the traits or what sort of skill set should a recruiter today have in order to be successful?

Lewis: I’ve got this phrase, and it’s not mine, I would love to have it as my own quote. It's called “batteries included.” So I want to find someone who is an A-plus human who loves recruiting, who has an open mindset, who wants to learn and develop, and grow. If they’ve got these three things, then they’ve got batteries included. They’re ready to go and they’re ready to learn and develop and grow. Those three things are what we’re looking for from someone entering into recruiting. If they’re more experienced, and they want to lead a function or do business development in a growing area, then they need to have a decent network. So if you’re in the game for a while, you build up a good network, and then suddenly, when you’re ready to build something and do business development, you have a following of people.

For me, number one is A-plus human. I’d much rather hire an A-plus human with B-minus skills than a C-plus human with A-plus skills.

Lydia: What is an A-plus human?

Lewis: Kind, empathetic, considerate, honest, open, there for you when the going gets tough. They’re the people you want next to you in the trenches. Those people who will be there for you when it’s good and be there for you when it’s bad and you can rely on them. People that can be relied upon, and people that will go far in life. Be there for people, they’ll be there for you. They’re the people you want on your team.

Lydia: So what advice would you give someone who's starting out in recruitment today?

Lewis: Patience. Be patient and I know a lot of people and let you fall into recruiting. No one dreams about being a recruiter when they're growing up. So often, you just land into it, or you're good at sales like some large recruitment agency will want someone with sales experience. If it's for you, it's not for everyone. For me, it's about trying things. I tried a few different things before I ended up doing what I do now. I did chemistry, I started my own fashion business, I worked in manufacturing, and I got into recruiting later. It's amazing. Try stuff. You have a long career.

Lydia: Thank you so much for your time with these wonderful insights and I hope you find the A-human being that you're looking for and A-person that you're looking for. So all the best with that. But before we end, do drop us your contact details and your podcast maybe you can talk then, and also your LinkedIn. Where can people find you and pick up a conversation?

Lewis: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you inviting me on. You've got a wonderful podcast, great questions, and really insightful. So thank you so much. My podcast is called The Recruitment Show, and you can find it anywhere you listen to a podcast. So we're on Spotify and Apple podcasts. We're on YouTube. We have Bentley Lewis's YouTube channel, where you can see all of the content there. I'm on LinkedIn; Lewis Maleh, feel free to connect with me. Feel free to DM me. I hope you find all the stuff, and the content helpful. Thanks again so much for inviting me.

Lydia: It's been a pleasure, Lewis. Thank you so much for your time.

And we have been in conversation with Lewis Maleh from Bentley Lewis. Thank you for joining us, and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All-In Recruitment.