203: To Niche or Not to Niche, That is the Question ft. Dante Nino

In this episode, Sam is joined by Dante Nino, managing partner at Tiello, a rapidly growing recruitment agency focused on the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries. Dante walks us through something he's personally passionate about: specialized recruiting.

‍Niching down isn't just about staking your claim — it's also, Dante explains, about building trust and authority. Dante's team leverages subject matter expertise to develop deeper strategic partnerships with their clients — relationships in which their clients trust them to understand the nuances of their industry and the market.

Have you been feeling the pull to niche down a bit? This conversation may just be what you need to hear to make the leap!

Transcript

Sam (00:01.547)
Hey everyone, it's Sam Keenly. Welcome back to Becoming a Hiring Machine. This is the show dedicated to fixing recruitment by going beyond saying what needs to change and instead teaches you how to make that change. Today we've got a great interview ahead of us, but before we get into that, I want to tell you a little bit about the show. Essentially, we have shows within the show here. Some days like today, we have interviews with industry thought leaders and others who are shaking up the space. While other days we cover things like trending topics. Stop by every Tuesday for a Tactical Tuesday episode where we go deep on how to do something that's going to help you drive better results in your day to day.

And lastly, you will get an occasional mic drop episode from Matt, where he shares something that he's been thinking about within the recruitment space and wants you to know. as a reminder, check the content that we share here on the show. Make sure that you subscribe for more. All right. Today we have an interview with someone that I'm, I'm pretty excited to get into. First, he came as a recommendation from Benjamin Mena, who we recently had a podcast episode with. He and his organization are one of our favorite customers as well. And.

The topic today is getting into niches. So niche wins. Why does specialized recruiting always outperform generalists? today's, uh, couldn't learn. I was about to say candidate. take this. I could tell what's on the mind. Today's guest is Dante Nino. He is managing partner at Tielo and quick background on Tielo. They were founded in 2019.

Dante Nino (01:13.55)
All good.

Sam (01:25.195)
and has become one of the fastest growing private companies within the U S with a mission to empower recruiters to become leaders in the architecture, engineering and construction industries nationwide with an overarching vision to be the nation's leading AEC company by 2029. So Dante, welcome to the show.

Dante Nino (01:43.918)
Yeah, thanks for having me Sam. We use Lockso, I've seen you guys, I've listened to a couple episodes, so it's pretty good too and exciting to be here now.

Sam (01:45.653)
Yeah.

Sam (01:52.981)
I love it. So, all right, first off, we've got to stop on just this growth trajectory since 2019 and you're already one of the fastest growing private companies in the US with the focus, especially on AEC. So just where does this focus on AEC and growth, all that come from? that just something that's ingrained in your DNA or how did this goal come to be?

Dante Nino (02:15.403)
Yeah, so originally we started out as I mean, I came from a construction background. My business partner came from a sales background and everything kind of just we're always trying to figure out like where the money's going. And I've always had a love for construction growing up. I mean, I work in the industry. once I got my job out of college, I kind of put two and two together and construction and recruiting. And I saw there was a fit there. So we kind of just took off from there. Then once we started growing,

Sam (02:32.107)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (02:45.299)
started talking to more people, we realized that yeah, there's a shortage of construction professionals here. And I think there's a quote there that's almost, I think it's like 40 % of the workforce in the construction space, they're going to be retiring by 2031. It just makes it more difficult and there's more problems there. But that also creates more opportunities for recruitment companies like ours to kind of keep going and diving into there. So that's why we're kind of in following where

Sam (02:52.031)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (03:14.583)
trajectory here for the long the next five ten years or so.

Sam (03:18.475)
Okay, I love it. And so I'm to take us a little off topic from what you and I had initially said we were going to be a few things, but within construction specifically, and what we're seeing with a lot of agencies is a shift from doing strictly perm placement to doing and leaning towards more tampon contract placement, almost viewed as a recurring revenue engine. So within your industry, is that something that you're looking at at all or actively doing?

Dante Nino (03:39.938)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (03:45.24)
We're not right now, but it's something that we're going to be implementing here the next six to 12 months. A lot of people have told us if you want to build a profitable business that's going to be here long term. And eventually, if you want to exit or anything like that, you have to look at the contract and temp site. And we have a lot of opportunity to do it. But we decided why don't we just get really good at the contingent direct placement. What we're doing right now instead of implementing that.

Sam (03:51.701)
Okay.

Sam (04:10.496)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (04:14.293)
and something that we have some experience on, but we don't. So we kind of want to just keep it this way. I think the next six, 12 months, we'll probably bring in someone that's experienced, that's been there, done that, and kind of make it a separate department or an arm within our company. And a lot of people tell us, I mean, we have over 300 clients now at Tielo. So I know that if we go to some of our clients and try to provide that service as a full service, we're going to have a lot of success. But

anyone that's done contract, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. mean, direct placement. Yeah, you find a resume, you present to the interview, they go to work. But once you get a contract, you got to figure out the back end payroll, insurance, you got to make sure that they're paid on time. You got to have some liquid capital as well to a credit line and so on. So it's a lot of work and we don't want to confuse our recruiters on what they're selling because some of them are more incentivized to sell direct placements because they make a lot more money.

Sam (04:46.196)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (05:10.069)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (05:10.394)
and contracts to contracts to hire contract roles.

Sam (05:14.227)
Yeah. I'm glad you said that one. You're very methodical about how you think about it too. know a lot of recruiters are worried, like, we falling behind because we're not doing this? So hearing you say like, yes, we're aware of it, but we're not jumping on it just because a bunch of people are jumping on it. You know, we want to come up with a plan. We want to think about how we approach this and do it in a way that's sustainable for our business, for our clients, for the candidates we represent and your team. which I guess it's a good segue. Like one of your superpowers is you, you help.

Dante Nino (05:30.989)
I'm sorry.

Sam (05:43.798)
Your recruiters increase their billings by two to three X and you've done this time and time again. So it's not just a couple of fluke recruiters that you're finding who just happen to be absolute killers and you're going out and finding, but you're also doing this as a self-proclaimed relatively young agency owner. So this isn't also coming from decades of experience. Like what do you believe is the source of how you've been able to craft your team around this?

Dante Nino (05:46.604)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (06:03.383)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (06:08.075)
I think we've been successful. Me and my business partner have been successful with this because we were doing it ourselves first. It's not like we just started bringing in people into our company and saying, hey, go build this. It's something that me and him kind of put together. And we're like, this is what works and this is what's working with us. How do we build a blueprint or a framework that's going to help other people follow this and come to our company and do the exact same thing?

I came from a good agency, Aerotech, then I was doing corporate recruiter. Then once I started my own agency, we did fairly well, but it was a lot of work. We took a step back and figured out what's working and how do we have any success and how do we duplicate it with other people coming in. So it was just from trial and error. Doing it ourselves first, then figure out how we could bring in people that you can't just put someone and say, hey, you're going to be a 500K, 700K biller.

You have to find the right personality, the right person that's going to be wants to work hard and put in the work there because the framework and the blueprint, you could give it to a thousand people, but not many are going to execute it. You have to have the right people that are willing to execute that and follow it.

Sam (07:19.655)
Mm-hmm So we're getting into traits there, which is interesting because that's something that I look I mean I'm hiring three roles in our team right now But there's always you know, the conversation on skills based hiring versus strictly experience But these are often traits where you as a recruiter, mean you you set it yourself You've been first principalling this for years where you're able to read between the lines and understand Okay, what traits will this person possess because they worked it?

Dante Nino (07:31.873)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (07:42.899)
a company of this size or I saw this in their career progression. So what are some of those things that you spot with the members that you're bringing into your organization that others can potentially learn from and you don't have to give away your entire secret sauce so that you can keep bringing the breast there. But curious what a few of those are.

Dante Nino (07:55.182)
I had one of our advisors, a very successful exited for multiple eight figures. And he said one thing, if it people build the business, but systems scale the business. And for us, the first 10, 20 hires were finding good people that are fitting the business here. And essentially.

I look to find people that fit 80 to 90 % of what me and my business partner are as far as the skills, personality and what they are. And when we bring in people, it's mostly like, why do you want to be successful? Why do you want to make 200, 300K a year? Why is that important to you? And we got to find little things that motivate them. That's not just money, but it was also personal as well too. If someone's just trying to buy a house for their parents, we don't say, hey, you got to

Sam (08:46.069)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (08:50.125)
keep billing just because you need to make more money. It's like, hey, you got to keep billing because you said that you wanted to do something for your parents or there's another value out of it. This is why we're doing what we're doing every single day. So I think comparing it to ourselves, how do we find people that are 80, 90 % kind of like us that are willing to work hard, put in the extra hours and build something here long term?

And you'd be surprised that we've had a lot of bad hires and we thought we had arrived. You're never going to get a ride. always there's always something that comes up. If you if you do enough interviews, you're going to find some people. I mean, I think the last three hires that we had, we went through one hundred and eighty four interviews, twenty seven one past two interviews, and we made three offers for three placements. So you got to realize we do interview a lot of people. We have an internal recruiter as well, too. And we have.

We have interviews on a weekly basis. It's not that we're getting it down in. I mean, we're doing the reps, interviewing the people that we want and getting down to the nitty gritty to make sure that we bring in the right people. And now, you know, our hiring, you know, for people to make placements, they used to take us around 90 to 100 days to make them profitable, a placement. Now it's taking us up to 60 days. One of our most recent hires made a placement in 39 days coming into us.

Sam (09:52.96)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (10:05.707)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (10:13.389)
And another one just hit her 90 days and she's had a poor placement 90 days. So it's just, it's just a lot, it's a lot of trial and error and finding the right people that kind of fit those personalities, but also have some recumben background as well.

Sam (10:22.495)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's crazy. Four placements in 90 days, someone just after 30. So I think that gets well into what you're saying. When we find the right people for our system, they do well. then as you say, the systems are what grow the business. So what, what are you giving to these recruiters who 31? What did you say? 31 days was when they made their, their placement 39, 39 days. What system are they operating off of where they're making a placement after 39 days?

Dante Nino (10:39.329)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (10:57.017)
We offer good systems and I tell every recruiter that comes in, like, we could give you all the systems, we could give you everything, but at the end of the day, it still comes down to the hard work that you have to execute there. But I think with our recruitment and company, when we started, we were just like everyone else. We were using Excel sheets. I was pulling information from Signal Hire, getting five credits a month that were free that eventually started paying for a few.

Sam (11:07.275)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (11:21.805)
And it was a lot of more just hard work picking up the phone, trying to more scrappy, I would say. Now our recruiters come in and I would say they're kind of they kind of have it easy, but they still have to work hard, obviously. I mean, we have an excellent ATS lock. So we use you guys and we're always trying to keep up because you guys are always bringing up new stuff that we're like, wow, this looks good. And it's been working on some of the automations that now we could kind of keep in-house instead of

Sam (11:28.17)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (11:51.56)
downloading other platforms to kind of do it. So the ATS with AI has been very helpful here. And we have a resume database with you guys that kind of helps us find phone numbers and emails as well. That's been very helpful. But besides that, we do have a Zoom info account. We do have LinkedIn recruiter. We have Indeed smart sourcing. We have Indeed job ads. We have LinkedIn job ads.

We also have, they have a mentor, either me or my business partner and a recruiting manager that could kind of help them. And once they come in, they have a framework of why, this is what you need to do first. You need to find your ideal client profile. After that, we need to do market research. We need to find 10 to 15 companies. We need to find two to three contacts in each. Now we need to build out a campaign. Now we need to build out a sales funnel. Now we need to teach you how to role play.

Sam (12:27.37)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (12:43.341)
role-play objections and selling objections and selling and kind of redo it again. Then once you get a good candidate, you send it out to market and so on. It's a whole process that we go into, but I would say we do offer our recruiters a good platforms to be successful here.

Sam (12:59.074)
And you just went through that in a minute, just the whole like, who is your ideal client profile? Find the contact, set up the cadence. That is the fundamentals though. Honestly, I'm not surprised to hear that they're as successful as they are. That's what they're doing day in, day out when they get started because so many people are just skipping that thinking it's the 2020, 2021, 21 heyday and recruiting where, you know, you just have clients coming in left and right. Oh, you do construction recruitment. I need help going and hiring 20 different people. It's like, no, you have to go and make yourself known.

Dante Nino (13:16.439)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (13:23.51)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam (13:27.445)
get the right relationships in place and be proactive with that. So I love hearing that from you all. So let's get into the topic for today. You are a big proponent of getting into niches. You believe that's where you can really differentiate yourself and where you can win. So let's start at the topic. Like, why do you believe that specialized recruiting will always outperform generalist recruiting?

Dante Nino (13:28.351)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dante Nino (13:52.654)
I think I stang very strongly on this just because I've done both. When we started out, yeah, we wanted to be construction, but we were still dealing with some off-roles like a mechanical engineer in Arkansas just because the client said, yes, 20 % and we'll hire tomorrow and so on. But the thing is that you find people for that and yes, you may get a hire. But what about those two other candidates that didn't get the job and interviewed? What do you do with them after? People don't really do much.

Now we've realized that, yeah, we could turn down a little bit of business. It's a what if, it's a gamble and so on. Yeah, you might be some money on the table, but now we've seen it firsthand. we special down, especially more niche, like before we used to do general construction, general contractors that build a hundred million dollar projects and so on. But guess what? Every other recruiter is trying to go after those. So now it's like, how do we go after specialty contractors?

roofing contractors, steel manufacturers, flooring and other sub niches like that. A prime example right now, one of them that is really successful is the roofing industry. And if you would have asked me three, four years ago, if we were going to go into that, I would have said, no, there's no money there. Like, why? I don't even know anything about roofing. But we brought in a recruiter that was a subject matter expert in the roofing industry.

Now it opened up her eyes because we were doing it before, but she just kind of confirmed there were now she's working with one client. Let's say in Columbus, Ohio, she's working with one client that does commercial roofing. She finds a PM there. Great. She makes the placement. But now since she's been able to expand on that market, she has five roofing clients there in Columbus. Now one of her project managers could work for three or four companies there. So now we have a bidding war between our clients there and

We tell our clients too, once we form a really good relationship, like, hey, this candidate is not gonna be in the market first, but I wanna present to him to you first. I know that you've been good to us. I just kind of wanted to give you an example of this. And they'll be like, yes, I'll bring them in tomorrow. Don't send them out to anyone else. I want this person. And now we built those relationships with those clients there too, and they wanna use us first. So now our recruiters are having...

Dante Nino (16:07.853)
you know, three, four, five interviews a week. And some of those candidates are with all our clients with those niches markets. And now we've been seeing a lot of success there. And that's what makes the difference between a two to three hundred K recruiter where a two to three hundred recruiter could be working with 10, 20 different clients making placements all over the place. But now we got recruiters that come in with three six figure clients a year. And they're also expanding with other few that make some five, six hundred with less clients.

and more niche down on those on those roles now.

Sam (16:39.819)
Mm-hmm. mean, it's a traditional quality versus quantity. I love that. And you mentioned specifically that she came in as an SME in roofing. How powerful do you think that is to have true subject matter experts within the sub niches that you serve? Like, what does that do, whether it's in the business development aspect of generating business within those sub niches, within the retention and expansion and growing within that client base? Like, how impactful has that been to you all?

Dante Nino (16:42.754)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (17:09.624)
When you become a subject matter expert and you start talking the language and you start talking to other hiring managers about what's happening in the market, not only do you tell them what's going on in the market, you're able to provide more value to them. And we take it a little step further now too, where we believe in making the investments where let's go visit our clients. We make one placement and they're local, go out, bring lunch, bring donuts, shake their hands, go see a project site.

If you make three hires or build over six figures, go out and fly out, meet them, shake hands, take them out to dinner, take them out for a few drinks or whatever it is, go visit other local clients there as well. And not only that, we even go to stuff further where we send our recruiters to, like we had recruiters go to the roofing expo a few months ago. They're about to go to another one in September. We have recruiters going to steel manufacturing. We have people going all over the...

the country within those subject matter, those sectors there. And it just shows face to the clients that they just specialize in that. And now it's been so powerful because once we talk to a client and let them know, yeah, we were at the expo. We did see that we know that you work and bid on this project.

and that you guys won the bid against this company. We know that Roofing Project Manager getting paid within this much around this, or you guys are staying very competitive to what other companies and other competitors are doing. So maybe we suggest you guys do this and they'd be like, wow, we didn't know that other companies offer. So we give them more market information as well, which is crucial for a company. They can rely on a recruiter. And we got some clients that call us, they say, hey Dante,

We want to make a hire in New Mexico. have a, were opening a new branch there. What is the going market for an operations manager there right now? It's like, well, hey, we just made a placement there a couple of months ago and this is what we've seen. This is what the offer letter kind of looked like. This is what they were offering. And this is what we've seen the ranges are. You offer that to a client, like, wow, these guys know what's up. These guys know what's happening here. And you're going to get a lot more opportunity there. And not only that, I know you're big into branding as well and marketing, which is cute. It's like I...

Dante Nino (19:18.637)
I want her be that guy that just stays low and does her work. early on back in 2018, I started posting jobs. I started posting jobs on LinkedIn. I started getting a lot of candidate inflow and client inflow. We had a recruiter, the same recruiter that I'm talking about. In six weeks, she's had four new clients that are all inbound. And one of them is already paying, a paying client that there was like a 24,000 placement. And

She hasn't done any cold outreach in a very long time just because she's very busy with what she does. But hey, we do videos on roofing. She does roofing videos when she's on an expo. She's always promoting jobs that she has. So people are kind of seeing like, this is the she's she knows what's in the market. She always has good people. If I need a job, I need to go look at that recruiter, which is very powerful. And we've been seeing that it pays. And a lot of people say, well,

I posted and I haven't seen success. Well, how long have you done it? A month or two months. Like, well, do it for six months, a year, two years, and you'll see consistently.

Sam (20:19.755)
Mm-hmm. It's the testament to subject my expertise and also just the value that that you provide to them Yeah, if you've only been doing it for a month, of course, you don't have much you're still in learning You don't know there's no and if you pretend to know more than your client at that point You're gonna irritate them more than they're gonna trust you with it. So That I think it's a very underrated element that more recruiters should think about and how do you leverage?

Dante Nino (20:35.969)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sam (20:44.671)
The aspect of just subject matter expertise when you know your niche is like go make that investment. It's going to pay back in itself 10 fold if you do it properly.

Dante Nino (20:52.365)
Especially if you want to make it a long-term opportunity. I feel like a lot of recruiters are, they just want to make quick money and make quick placements and so on. It's like, yeah, you can, but that's why recruiters get such a reputation of being transactional. If you're going to be working under a good leader and a good company, it's going to take some time. Don't expect it to be easy and short-term. Build a good base.

then build around that base and expand it from there. I always see it like with a success, it's gonna be like this, but then it's just gonna keep going up and up and up.

Sam (21:30.483)
If you compound it and that's you, kind of hinted at this earlier when you're bouncing around, what are you going to do with those other two candidates? When you had three in the final, if you stay in the same niche and you have that, that's into your CRM. Those are the relationships that you have. They're great candidates still. It may just not have been the perfect fit for that one hiring organization. That doesn't mean that they're not for the next client that might come up with a similar need to them. So that's a power of also staying in there. So when.

Dante Nino (21:31.938)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (21:38.349)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (21:46.69)
Mm.

Dante Nino (21:52.929)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (21:58.835)
We've talked about subject matter expertise. We've talked about giving value, but how do you really, like, how have you all built authority within your specific vertical that you're serving?

Dante Nino (22:10.689)
We, it's been taking us years. It's not something that happens very quick, but I feel like anyone can build authority, but it has to be small and it compounds over time. optimize your LinkedIn profile. A lot of people don't do this, but optimize your LinkedIn profile. That's the first. If you're going to be recruiting and general contractors with light industrial experience, make sure you put that on your profile. Make sure.

it's known that you're the go-to person for this type of roles, this type of companies and so on. After that, I mean, I'm kind of giving you a framework of what we tell recruiters. But second is start posting your jobs. What do you work on? What do you constantly have on? Let companies know that about this, about the industry and so on. Now people are starting to see your name. They're starting to see your profile. They're starting to see who you are and what type of work you do.

Sam (22:46.443)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (23:03.639)
Then after that, you start making a few placements, start providing more value to people. like, hey, I was able to get, I had a great conversation. I was able to get this project manager a 20 % bump in pay. This is what he was looking for. Our client is very happy. If you're looking for, if you want to see what's out there in the market, please let me know. If you're looking to hire, please let me know. I specialize in X, Y, and Z. And slowly but surely, you start building some authority there.

Sam (23:28.298)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (23:32.407)
people start noticing you and you kind of start building from there. But I think it just takes time. But if you take those steps, it's gonna work. It's gonna work. And I only say that because it's working for us now. It's not something that I'm saying, go do it and see what happens. Like we're actually doing it right now with our recruiters and anyone that comes in.

Sam (23:40.384)
Yeah.

Sam (23:49.479)
Mm-hmm. So my mind immediately goes to, there's so much information to be given to help build this authority. And also in the age of AI that we're going through, it's easier than ever to aggregate that information, synthesize it, and then package it up in a way that can be helpful. for example, you know, if you've got a recruiter that just made, say they made a placement a month, they just made 12 placements, the very specific type of role.

If they went and put that into, you use ChatGPT or something else, but say, you know, here are the 12 titles that I placed within this specific niche, the region that they were at, the comp range, don't put the hiring organization, but anonymize it enough. That's a great mechanism to go and do some biz dev outreach with and say, you might be looking at comps if you're hiring or saw that you're about to start this new bid for a construction project that's going up in the area, here's what to expect. Like that's a great way to me where it's how do you demonstrate authority, your subject matter expertise.

Dante Nino (24:41.121)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (24:46.667)
Proactively give that versus hey, I saw that you're probably gonna be bidding on this that may be the best recruiter and they have no idea who you are what you specialize in because your LinkedIn profile just says general recruiter something but there's so much that we can do and Just hearing your approach I bet that something I wouldn't be surprised if I see you all doing something like that with just how innovative and forward-thinking that you are with Really getting to the trust and proactiveness in your outreach

Dante Nino (24:55.371)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (25:09.591)
Yeah, yeah, no. And we actually did something similar to that a few weeks ago where we placed an estimator with the company and within the first month they were able to bid a new project for the company that was a $6 million project awarded. And the company only does $15 million a year in revenue. So, you now you bring an estimator like that, guess what?

Now they're going to be using us. And that was the word. I think our recruiter post is like, hey, we just helped the client. We just placed an estimate with our client. Estimator was able to win a $6 million project in the commercial space. This was able to add this much percentage to their annual revenue. And now they're looking to expand. If you guys are looking to do something similar, need estimators in your space. Please let me know. And not only you're saying, hey, I can help you, but hey, we have proof to back it up. And that's what works. People want to see that.

Sam (26:01.907)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Looking to the pews for that. So...

That's an example it sounds like where when you start to think about how do you make more placements and whether that's, we've talked about is it quantity or is it the quality and the depth of it, but you said that niching down has helped 10X your placements. So when you say 10X first, let's talk about is that a quantity aspect or is that in terms of like the bookings and then how did you go about doing that?

Dante Nino (26:36.061)
We've been able to make a lot more placements just by, I mean, niching down and also too, if I could take it back a little bit, our company has evolved over the last few years. When we first started, we expect our recruiters to a good year is one placement a month, which is $20,000 a month, which is the $240, $350, you're doing well.

and you're having a good year. Now, I mean, we have a recruiter this coming a month. She's about to have like 160K month in billing. And that's kind of unheard of. I mean, we have had recruiters do that or more before, but we have evolved as a company where 100K months is very doable here where before you're having quarter million dollar years.

Sam (27:33.075)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (27:33.198)
I feel like the company has evolved over that, but that's because we have more expertise and more contracts in what we do now. So before when you're starting out, yes, you might have one contract in Ohio, one contract in California and all that. But now imagine you have five, seven contracts in each. Now you're finding two, three candidates. You have five, six, seven opportunities for them. So that's how you're able to multiply your placements.

by getting more contracts, more agreements and those markets. And now you're finding good people that you could place with those companies there. And one thing that we do dial in on now is like, hey, we're doing good with the company. How do we go in there and not say, hey, we're doing well. What can we do more? It's like, hey, let's find out what gaps we're missing to do even better with them. Hey, I know we've made a few placement to you guys. We just want to know what gaps or what things can we be doing

better to make sure that we have a better partnership here. And there's some, okay, great. Well, hey, we want to double down and we feel very competent and working with you long-term. Where else can we support you guys? And what other locations can we provide more work, more support for you guys? And you'll be surprised. You could take a 100K client to 150, 200K client if you expand to different locations instead of getting more agreements and so on. So it's always...

Sam (28:57.194)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (28:58.125)
It's always good to look at what you currently have and double down on that. And that's how you're going to get, able to get more placements there. But it all starts with getting more agreements in certain locations. Now you have more opportunities for candidates. Not only do you have, do you have them interviewing at one company, but you could have them interview at two, three companies now where you up your chances of placing people.

Sam (29:17.387)
What are some of the responses that you've got that have surprised you in a good way when you've asked that how can we continue to support you or else what are some gaps that we can we can plug in like has that led to any aha moments for you as a business owner and what you're doing with your team?

Dante Nino (29:33.74)
Mm-hmm. We've, mean, some of them have been very small, but people appreciate it. But we had a big shift from Zoom to Teams meetings because it's a lot easier to set where Zooms you have kind of have to change the user. You have to plug in a password or Teams you just log in. Something's little like that. It made a big difference in our company, which was kind of funny. But I think some of the things were, were actually made us better.

Sam (29:53.845)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (30:02.849)
where like, hey, like we seem to always be asking you the reason for leaving the companies and reason for other companies. Would you guys mind just putting all that in the initial email and so on? So now we've redefined our submission process 10 some times over the last few years. And every time we find something else, we're doing even more. Yeah, I mean, even this last week we had, we have to update our candidate interview process.

where now when we find candidates and we're done, before we submit them, let's do a Google search and see if they have any criminal history. Because we were having a lot of people go through the process and they got the offer. And then once they got to the last stage, we found out they had criminal history. And our clients said, hey, can you guys do a better job and figure out if people have criminal histories? Because you could ask candidates, but sometimes they're not being very truthful. we've been able to identify a few now that we stopped sending before.

Sam (30:54.677)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (30:59.147)
because of the criminal history. So it's just little things like that that you keep moving to your process that makes you feel, it makes you better to be honest. And if you, that's working with that client, it could work with your other clients now. So if you look back five years, six years ago to what our submissions are today, they're night and day. And that's a big difference because before when you're, when we're getting started, yeah, you could go at 10, 15 % placement fees just because you're trying to get in the door with every client.

Sam (31:27.541)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (31:28.127)
Now we start at 30 % and then even 30 % we it's not just the first year salary, it's bonuses, relocation costs and everything that comes into it as well. So we're expensive, but it's because we do bring that expertise and we dial in on every canner that we send over. So it's night and day and this is how you could justify higher fees with your clients.

Sam (31:50.495)
Yeah, I love that. There's so much goodness just packed right in that. mean, that's a master class in itself. Just a testament to the value, the quality that you bring being confident in it, but also taking that feedback iterative approach where you're taking instead of siloing, let's do background checks for this one client of ours. Like, no, why wouldn't we do that for multiple of them include that in the value package shows again, the subject matter expertise. We understand the space. We understand common roadblocks obstacles that are coming.

up along the way and this is why our fee is what it is because we're going and doing all this on your behalf. So.

Dante Nino (32:24.237)
Yeah, there's also, so sorry to cut you out there. There's also one that we're actually in the midst of implementing as well too, but we're starting to hire a lot of sales professionals for sales jobs. And one of the common themes that we've seen with some of these companies is disc testing. So now it's like, how can we offer that disc testing personality test to the client after the submission process as well?

That's just an add-on that clients appreciate and not many other companies do. So that's how you separate yourself. And that's because one of our clients kept telling us, yeah, we need to do a disk testing. Then one of our recruiters said, hey, why don't we offer a disk testing so they don't have to do it. And it's just a value add service we could sell when we pitch new clients. And I was like, yeah, that's pretty smart. I mean, it's an investment, but I guess it could work long-term. So those are always things that we're looking at as well.

Sam (33:10.219)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (33:16.395)
Okay. So this testing that you've brought in team members have the skills that they have. You roll it out to clients. You mentioned that you send some recruiters to specific conferences to go deeper on it. You invest in really understanding your market and being able to speak their language going beyond just, know, we're going to help you like talk about bidding. If I were to just read something at face, I'll be like, how do you, how do you win this project? I'd get laughed out of a room if I probably said something like that, but you know,

Dante Nino (33:42.987)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (33:44.491)
the nuances and the value of being able to communicate in that language. So when was the like the aha moment when you realized, oh, if we operate at that level where we speak on their terms, we're going to win more, we're going to get more trust. And then the second part to that question is how much resource, not in terms of cost, but like how much time are you having your team dedicate to just that type of learning so that when they have those conversations, they're able to hold their ground within it.

Dante Nino (34:12.237)
We've gotten lucky with some of the recruiters that come in and have that expertise, but we want to dial it even more. So one thing that we do is, you know, what conferences can we take you out where you can learn more and make more connections to? And also to I'll be honest, I don't know half the things that my recruiters talk about. And I tell them, like, if you guys don't know, just be honest with the clients. Like, hey, Sam, like.

I'll be honest with you. I don't know what that means, but what is it? Like I hear it all the time and I really want to learn that you'll be surprised. People want to talk about it. People want to talk about what they know and stuff. So it's been one of the biggest things that has been a learning point for our recruiters here, but it's something that takes takes a while. And that's why I our recruiters and anyone that joins the recruiting industry. A lot of people make it seem like you're going to be very successful, very quick, and you may, but it's going to take some time. It's going to take a lot of hard work.

Sam (34:48.096)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (35:10.157)
And you're going to get a lot of moments where you feel like an idiot. You're going to get a lot of moments where you feel like you don't know what you're doing. And that's OK. That means you're learning and you're growing. Just don't be afraid to let people know that, hey, I don't know about this. Tell me more about it. What does it mean? How does it work? If I were to say to someone else, what's the easiest way to tell someone how this is? And you'd be surprised. You're kind of learning from there. And every day you're having those conversations. You're able to use it on your next conversation the next week and so on. And if you're just focusing on that.

day after day, week after week, month after month, you're gonna start getting better and start having more knowledge there. So that's the way that we implement it with our people. It's not just, hey, this is a two week bootcamp that you're gonna learn everything. It's a continuous thing that you're gonna be learning from.

Sam (35:56.189)
Okay. That makes sense. And it's, coming from a place of humility and people, people like to help people like to teach, especially when they recognize that you have a genuine desire to understand versus just trying to win their business or something else. So I think just how that rolls up with the entire approach your team is taking, they can get that sense that it is coming from that place of, of goodness and curiosity versus the other. So I love that that

Dante Nino (36:17.698)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (36:24.063)
I think that's a lesson in and of itself. So is there anything else that you think we should share as part of just this topic of niching? I mean, we've covered a lot. There's so many nuggets within here that I don't want to dilute all of them, but anything else that we should cover?

Dante Nino (36:35.373)
Mm.

Dante Nino (36:40.845)
I think now, I mean, for anyone that's looking to kind of scale or grow their book of business and recruiting, one of the things that I would suggest is and that we're looking at even with our company that I wish I would have done a lot sooner is I wish I would have invested in the infrastructure and delved in on that the sooner, the better, because now we're even looking, you know, I wish

I wish we had a good ATS in the beginning that we could have just dialed in and kind of nourish from there. Where now we're doing it with lock. So we're, we're, we have all our information there. Soon enough, we're going to do candidate auto matching. And once we have a candidate, we can match them to all our jobs there. Now, once we, now that we have a good database, we're able to move a lot quicker, store data better. And data is very important nowadays. And I feel like for anyone that's looking to grow their book of business, to scale their agency.

Make sure you invest in the infrastructure in the beginning. And that's getting us good ATS, getting your recruiting platforms as well too. Yeah, it takes money, but you have to use that money to grow your business. If you wanna grow your business, if you wanna just make a couple hundred thousand and kind of stay slim, that's totally fine. But if you wanna scale your business and build it up to 20 heads or more.

Don't buy that super car. Don't buy the big house yet. Kind of reinvest in your company first and you'll kind of go from there.

Sam (38:10.955)
I like how you think about that. It's where are you now? Yes, that's important and staying within your budget. But also if you know that you want to grow 10, 20, 30 X from where you're at, think about what systems, what processes, what frameworks you need then. And are you doing yourself a favor by going for a cheap alternative, a very manual alternative, or is the upfront cost now going to be worth it in the long run for the, the

Dante Nino (38:35.671)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sam (38:36.925)
upside that you'll get from that. that's an interesting, interesting point. I'm glad you, glad you brought that up there. So, all right. Well, Dante, where, where can people learn more about you? Where can people find out about TLO and everything else that you all are up to?

Dante Nino (38:42.132)
No.

Dante Nino (38:51.009)
Yeah, you guys can find me on LinkedIn, Dante Nino. I'm pretty active there. So you'll definitely see me there. it's pretty much a visit our website, TL.com. We have lots of jobs there. And yeah, I mean, we're looking to add 10, 15 more recruiters this year. So we're always hiring here.

Sam (39:11.435)
I it. I love it. And that's something that so so many agencies should also take to heart is a lot of people like, recruiting so hard, businesses aren't growing. They're absolutely growing. Your testament to this. You just said you're about to attend this year. You're in a niche for people are just like, do I broaden out? Do I niche down? There's a lot to be learned from this conversation. So Dante, I truly appreciate the time, the energy, the knowledge that you've shared as part of this. I know that everyone that's listened has has been able to take something away from this conversation today.

Dante Nino (39:21.975)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (39:26.989)
Mm-hmm.

Dante Nino (39:38.241)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Sam.

Sam (39:41.129)
Well, as we wrap, Becoming a Hiring Machine is a production of Loxo, if you like this episode, but you're not sure where to go next, we do have a link to a similar one. And you can find that in the show notes within the description of your favorite podcast streaming platform. Full video episodes are available on YouTube. If you ever have questions, send them away, podcast at loxo.co. And lastly, if you love this episode, make sure to leave us a quick rating in your podcast streaming platform. It takes three seconds, but it's going to help other recruiters like you to find us. So, all right, everyone, that's the show. That was an absolutely incredible interview with Dante Nino. Till next time, bye y'all.

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