The easiest message in recruitment to ignore is the one that asks a hiring director whether they have got any roles. Your desk probably sent it this week.

In this episode: why that message gets ignored, and it is not rudeness. A hiring director who answers it has handed you something and got nothing back. So the first message out of a desk I build does the opposite, and asks for the one thing a director can give without checking with anybody.

Also: the half of this most firms quietly drop, which is what you do with the answer when it comes back. Being the specialist is not what gets your call taken. What it does is stop your firm being compared like for like with the other four on the same brief.

Bill was featured in Forbes and the Huffington Post as a top 10 global influencer. That is not a bigger marketing budget. It is what happens when a desk is the one that asked.

Step 4 of the nine in The Desk Build is Launch: the first approaches going out across a counted market, asking for the thing a director can give.

One thing to do before the week is out: go to whoever runs your main desk and ask them what every hiring director in that vertical is worried about this quarter. Not what they are hiring. What is keeping them up. If they can tell you about the whole market rather than the two clients who talk to them, your desk is having real conversations. If they cannot, nobody has asked.

For owners of recruitment and executive search firms, UK and USA, perm and contract.

What would your best consultant say if you asked them that today? Tell me in the comments.

What we build, what it costs and who it is for: theapexrecruiter.com/details