Yours is Not as Big as You Think

Calm down, and definitely don’t send me any pictures, that’s not what I was referring to. (And if it IS that big, why so testy?!)

What I mean is we recruiters hear this all the time from our Clients: “Why should I pay you a search fee? I am very well connected. My Network is HUGE!”

Settle down. I work for a search firm with 40 years of networking and state of the art technology designed specifically for recruiting. On a bad day we have 50,000 people we can access for your search, and not to mention the training we get on how to leverage those contacts for referrals.

You, according to Columbia University, (speaking of large endowments), if you are an average American, know 600 people. But I’m feeling generous and you’re sensitive, so I’m going to say you’re gregarious and live on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, and give you 800. Columbia also found that of those 600, you only know 10-25 people “well enough to say they trust you.”

Here’s why that’s a problem: When a person is not happy at their job, they don’t run out and tell the other 599 people they know. They suffer for a while first. “Should I move, will it disrupt my family, will it scare my wife/husband? Do we have enough $$ in the bank if I make a mistake and get fired?”

Then they get so miserable and tell their 10-25 trusted friends. And you might hear about it. But by that time, I (recruiter) have already contacted, evaluated and bonded with that person. And they tell me things they wouldn’t dream of telling you!… Because people want their friends to think they’re fine. Even when they’re not. You see, we recruiters are in the “you can tell me, I won’t judge you” biz, while you’re in the “of course I’ll judge you, that’s part of friendship” biz.

Not convinced? William Moon pondered the question, “How many people do we meet in our lives if we lived to be 90?” He defined meeting someone as “face to face, with clear, mutual recognition.” So a wave on the street, a greeting, standing in line at the DMV and saying, “pretty sure I know what hell is going to be like” to the guy behind you, all count.

So guess how many people you “Meet” by age 90?…

100,000… Dude, that is a simple keystroke for a well niched recruiter. While you read that sentence, I just pulled up 100K people in my database!!!

And you must have heard of the Dunbar Effect?! Dunbar says when a human can only think about 150 people at a time, any more beyond that is too “complex for optimal processing.” So you may know people but you won’t think of them in the timely manner needed when you are trying to find the best person for your job. Dunbar says we get:

-150 casual friends

- 50 close friends (but not true intimates)

- A handful of “close supporters” (the true intimates who know what’s really going on in your crazy head and will call you out on your crap)

The special talent a great recruiter has is to get people he/she hardly knows to open up to us as true intimates.

So maybe yours IS bigger than ours. But it’s all in how you use it.