Last week I attended an NPAworldwide Regional call where Ed Wallach had been invited by Melanie Johnson as a speaker.
His story greatly resonated with me. While he joined NPA in 1991 as a part of his father’s firm, it wasn’t until 15 years later that he leveraged his network.
My dad’s been an NPA partner for around 17 years now and while he’s used it to keep up to date with the best hiring practices globally, Ed’s story has inspired me to make NPA a bigger part of our work from 2025 onwards.
The NPA conference in Bali last year was an encouraging experience that allowed me to meet exceptional - and incredibly welcoming - recruiters like Parvathy Krishnan, Dietrich De Roeck, lakshmikanth iyengar, Hemant Balwani (to name a few). I’m still fairly new to recruitment but I'm excited to build new connections and conduct business internationally this year!
Here are some of the key points I learned from Ed on call:
- Relationship Building: Treat your affiliates like top clients to foster trust and collaboration. Building relationships with other recruiters is key to success.
- Communication: Keep messages short, crisp, honest, and quick when engaging with your clients and affiliates.
- Consistency: Post jobs and candidates regularly on the platform and stay in touch with recruiters to understand their client needs.
- Focus on Niche: Avoid diversification; establish yourself as the go-to expert in a specific field.
- Building Trust: Success takes time and trust with clients, which leads to repeat business. Building good client relationships is harder than simply submitting candidates.
- AI in Recruitment: AI won’t threaten good recruiters but will weed out bad ones. Hard work and persistence remain crucial.
- Repeatable Processes: Recruitment success lies in developing and refining repeatable processes.
- A-Lister Candidates: Boutique firms prioritize top-tier candidates with stable career histories. Job-hoppers are frowned upon in the executive space.
- Networking: Attending all meetings (online or in-person) is crucial to building connections and trust within the network.