Adam Fineberg with My Personal Recruiter

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. This is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with My Personal Recruiter, Mr. Adam Fineberg. How are you, man?

Adam Fineberg: Thank you. I’m great. Stone, it’s a pleasure to be here. And thank you for having me on the show.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s a delight to have you on the broadcast. I’ve got so many questions, Adam. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could share with me and our listening audience. Mission. Purpose. What is it that you and your team are, are really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Adam Fineberg: Yeah, absolutely Well, to sum it up, we really I love helping people, and I’ve always been like that since I was a kid, just just helping people in need. And the way that we go about doing that is by essentially helping people find careers. Right. So for the vast majority of people, you know, we need to work. We got to make a living. And I’ve experienced how challenging it can be trying to find a job and really not having anyone in my corner. So I have I have a few companies now, and most recently I sold one of my one of my companies. But all of my companies are related to helping people with their career, helping them find jobs, and just making the process just a little bit more, uh, um, you know, easier for them to, to kind of get from where they are now to where they need to be.

Stone Payton: So what’s the backstory, man? What has your career path been?

Adam Fineberg: Oh, man, I don’t know if we can. I don’t know if we could fit all of that into this one show, but uh, the short version is I had a great opportunity to to to live in different countries around the world. So I lived in the Middle East, I lived in Europe, I lived in Asia. And and when I came back, I, you know, I was working in finance and sales. But when I came back to America in 2019 and I was used to making six figures and I couldn’t find a job, after 4 or 5 months, I couldn’t find a company that would be willing to compensate me what I felt that I was worth. So I actually thought about, you know, I wanted to hire my own personal recruiter. I want someone who can who can work for me to help me find that next position. But unfortunately, that type of service just wasn’t really available back in 2019. So, um, so, you know, I started a recruiting agency actually. So instead of instead of getting a job, I started, you know, tapping back into my entrepreneurial spirit, um, and I started a company called Jackson Square Company where we did recruiting and we still do recruiting for. Sales, marketing, healthcare and legal and finance. But we’re kind of. Generalists for the most part. And then when Covid hit, all of my clients called in the same week and they froze hiring.

Adam Fineberg: So, you know, naturally, my income had froze. So I decided to instead of focusing on the businesses to start helping individuals. So I started a company right after right around the pandemic in mid 2020 called Rock My Resume. And that’s, of course, a resume company where we help people with their resume. We do, you know, a la carte career services like, uh, you know, career coaching, LinkedIn optimization, resumes, cover letters and things of that nature. And, uh, and as I continued to provide services for individuals, a lot of people would purchase 4 or 5 different services from me. So I thought to myself, you know, now is a perfect opportunity for me to build a company kind of side by side with my resume. That will be more like an all inclusive service for job seekers, where it covers all the aspects from the writing of the resumes to the applications, to networking, to to coaching. And and that’s exactly what I did. So, so in the beginning of last year, we started offering this service called Reverse Recruiting. So as you may know, Stone traditional recruiting is where a recruiter works for a company and they help that company find a candidate. What we do with reverse recruiting is we reverse that process. So instead of working for the company to find candidates, we work for the candidate to try to help them secure as many interviews and offers as possible.

Adam Fineberg: So as we had somewhat of a test run with Rock my resume, we had a tremendous results. We had clients who were very happy as we were helping them find jobs. And that’s when in October of last year, I started my personal recruiter and you can check us out at my personal recruiter.com. But essentially that’s exactly what we offer. It’s a it’s an all inclusive subscription service, and our clients pay on a month to month basis. We have different tiers of service that we offer and and we have some tremendous results so far. So we’ve helped already hundreds of people this year find employment. And and I tell you, Stone, this is extremely fulfilling work because one day you speak with someone and they’re kind of down in the dumps. They don’t know what to do next with their career. And then 2 or 3 months later, they’re thanking you and they’re writing a great review for you because you helped them get to where they needed to be. So that’s the short version of kind of how we got to where we are today. But we’ve had some incredible results, and I have an incredible team behind me. And and as you know, you can’t do great things by yourself. You have to do them with great people around you. And that’s exactly what I have.

Stone Payton: So you’ve clearly had some experience, and it sounds like success getting a business, multiple businesses off the off the ground. Did you run into especially early on, any surprises that were like, man, I wasn’t expecting this at all.

Adam Fineberg: Oh man. It’s almost like a it’s a cycle. It’s almost like every month or two months. There’s something that says, you know what I ask myself sometimes, why am I still doing this? You know? Um, but yes, to answer your question, getting getting a business off the ground, you need grit. And, you know, I love following, you know, Uber successful people like, you know, Elon Musk, Mark Cuban. You know, there’s so much to learn from people who have done this in the past. And I think one determining factor that you see across all entrepreneurs is they probably didn’t succeed on every single project. But like Mark Cuban said, you really only need to be right once, right? So you get one, you have one exit that is six figure or seven figure exit. And then you can take that money and allocate that into your new project. So I just sold a 90% of rock my resume. So I’m still a minority shareholder. But it’s actually we just had our four year anniversary, uh, earlier this month. And it’s such a it’s such an amazing feeling to, to build something from scratch and then to watch it turn into its own entity, eventually to the point where you can sell it.

Adam Fineberg: And now, you know, it’s it’s still operating successfully without me having to be there. So, um, you know, every and another quote that I love, which I don’t want to, uh, to, to, to ruin it. Um, Elon Musk says, you know, being an entrepreneur is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. It’s like, you know, no sane person would want to do this because all of the all of the biggest problems that the company funneled down to the CEO or the founder, and they’re the only person who can really resolve those types of problems. So, uh, so yeah, the biggest, um, advice that I’d give to someone going into going into, you know, starting their first small business, um, is just sticking with it, you know, and, and, and there’s so many fantastic books that you can read out there that will, will allow you to do this in a better way. And I always like to look at the recommendations of Warren Buffett and, and people who are, uh, you know, extremely successful. And, and these individuals are recommending great books. So if you look at some of the books that they’re recommending, you know, those are the types of books that I read.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a firm like yours? How do you get the new business?

Adam Fineberg: Mm, yeah, that’s a great question. A big part of what we do is referrals, right. So of course we have, you know Google that we do advertising on we have social media manager as well. But a big part of what we do is we want to help people. And because it’s a subscription service, some people are maybe a little bit leery in the beginning saying, hey, if I’m if I’m paying you guys every month, what’s your incentive to help me find a job? And the truth is, our reputation and helping people is our incentive, right? If we can get someone a job in less time than they can get, you know, by themselves, and they recommend us to their friends and family, you know, that’s a successful relationship. So I think a lot of people that are in business don’t prioritize referrals as much as they should, but that is how we’ve been able to scale our company to a tremendous amount. And we have just actually started the process of raising capital, and not because we’re essentially in need of capital, but I want to have more people on kind of the advisory board. And we already have, you know, opportunities to exit as well with this company. So I just started this company in October. And, you know, I don’t want to share too much about the finances, but we’ve had some incredible results this year, and it hasn’t even been one year yet. So we have had, uh, several offers that I’ve declined to acquire my company, uh, you know, 100%. But I don’t want to settle, and I want to hold out until I get the valuation that I want for this company. And meanwhile, I will be, you know, raising funds from different VCs and and angel investors as well.

Stone Payton: Well, good for you. All right. So so let’s let’s dive into the work a little bit. If you if you’re up for it, kind of walk me through. If I elect to join this subscription what happens.

Adam Fineberg: Yeah. Great question. So, um, you get assigned a team of people. Okay. So you have a resume writer, a recruiter, a career coach, and a customer success manager. And these 3 or 4 individuals, excuse me? They work together for the common goal, which is really helping you secure interviews and prepare for interviews. So, for example, the writer will prepare all of the documents the resume, cover letter, thank you letter, any document needed for your for your job search. The resume writer will produce. The recruiter will find and apply for jobs on your behalf. So especially this is especially good for people who are busy who just don’t have the time to search. Or maybe they don’t know where to search, but finding a job is kind of a job in itself these days. Aside from the recruiter finding and applying for jobs, they also can submit resumes on different job boards. So they post the resume publicly. And we also have a network of recruiting agencies. So we have over 230 recruiting agencies that we partner with. And we send candidate profiles to them every day. So we’re in constant communication with these recruiters. So that’s the recruiter. The third person is a career coach. And naturally this person will help to develop a job search strategy, help implement that strategy And then of course, provide coaching and guidance as needed.

Adam Fineberg: So this is relating to interviewing, networking or anything really relating to the job search. And then the fourth and definitely last but not least person. This is someone who is a customer success manager, who ensures that our clients are receiving all of the benefits that they they subscribe to, so that ensuring that the resumes are accurate, ensuring that the applications are being submitted and on time and in volume, and just ensuring that the client is having a great experience. But of course, our overall objective is helping them secure an offer in a short period of time. So that’s the team. Aside from that, we have developed a client portal. So the technology aspect is where we have everything organized in one place. When we’re submitting hundreds of applications for our clients, it’s easy for things to get lost unless we have an organized way of compiling and organizing all that data. So on this client portal, clients could see all of their applications, the status of each application, the number of applications being submitted. We have, the interviews, the offers, you know, so we have a lot of great tools and resources like LinkedIn optimization video series. They also have messaging templates for cold prospecting and live chat for their, uh, that they can communicate directly with their recruiter. But Stone, as you could tell, our service is very robust.

Adam Fineberg: It’s very complex and there’s a lot of moving parts. So our objective is for our clients to have a very seamless approach to the job search, and that we cover all of these different aspects. All we need from them is to complete the onboarding. And from there, we hit the ground running and start assisting them with finding a job. So it is a monthly subscription and they can the subscription tier will determine kind of what benefits that they’ll be receiving. But we had some incredible results and we have only five star reviews online, so I’m very happy that we haven’t even had a three star or even a four star review. Um, so, you know, we’re pretty consistent in that sense. But being that we’ve only been in business for about ten months, you know, we still got to give it some more time as we continue to build that momentum. But but yeah, that’s just a quick summary of what we offer. And it’s, it’s there’s a lot of moving parts. I tried to cover all of it here today, but uh, naturally as we built the company, we’re constantly making improvements, making things better and always looking to to, to, to to streamline the process and to take a lot of that, uh, you know, heavy lifting away from the client and putting it on our shoulders instead.

Stone Payton: Well, it sounds incredibly robust to me. And I’m just, you know, thinking as you were talking, I it’s it’s I’ve got a whole team working on my behalf and I’ve got technology and systems and experience and expertise. Right there in my corner and and from more than one person. People with very highly specialized knowledge and expertise in these specific domains.

Adam Fineberg: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, this is such a needed service this day and age. And if you look around and you and you’re actually finding it looking for jobs on average, you’re going to find that there’s probably 3 or 400 applicants for each job post. Wow. So if you’re pulling a name out of a hat, you know you got less than a 1% chance of getting your name pulled. So that first means that we need an efficient approach. And secondly, you can’t just submit 20 or 30 resumes anymore expecting a call back. You got to get into 50, 60, even 100 resumes or excuse me, applications or more. Um, if you’re looking to, to take your job search seriously.

Stone Payton: So I don’t know where you would find the time, but I’m going to ask anyway. When you’re.

Stone Payton: When you’re not building companies, selling companies, helping people find the kind of work that they desire, any other pursuits, hobbies, interests, passions. A lot of our listeners know that I like to hunt, fish, and travel. Anything you do to kind of get away from it for a little bit and recharge and come back.

Adam Fineberg: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m a big traveler. I love to travel. I’ve been to over 40 countries. Um, and I just got back from Japan and South Korea actually about a month ago, uh, had an incredible time there. And I definitely would encourage anyone to visit Japan as it is just such an amazing country. From the big city of Tokyo to the smaller towns and Kyoto, everything was just simply incredible. But traveling is definitely my passion. Um, and, and you know, I do love to hunt as well, so there’s definitely that. But I don’t get a chance to to go as often. And, and being down here in Florida. I actually recently moved here back in, uh, back in March. Um, and I was in North Carolina prior to this. Uh, I definitely miss hiking. You know, the hiking back in North Carolina, they have some beautiful mountains. And I like to go hiking with my dog, who’s, who’s about a a medium sized dog. He’s a Jack Russell terrier. And I’m concerned that if I let him off the leash and we go hiking somewhere here, that I might not see him again with all the alligators and all the animals around here. So, uh, so definitely hiking is one of those. But we don’t we don’t get a chance to do that as often as we’d like to.

Stone Payton: All right, before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners, if we could, with a couple of actionable pro tips. What should they be reading? Thinking about doing, not doing. If they’re getting ready for a serious, structured, properly constructed job search? And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Adam or somebody on his team. But yeah, let’s leave him with a couple tips. Adam.

Adam Fineberg: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I’ve always been a big advocate of self-awareness, and one of the things that has allowed me to become successful, and a lot of the people that I know who work their way up into C-suite or board positions is just knowing what they’re good at. And you know this very well, Stone. You don’t have to be great at everything in life. You got to be good at one or a set of things and and just focusing your energy on those things. And then another thing is, if you are going into your job search, making sure that you have the right tools in place, and that doesn’t mean just your resume. That also means your your mentality and and the know how. There’s a tremendous amount of great information out there just for free, right? Like your podcast, for example. You know, there’s a tremendous amount of knowledge that one can get from listening to to so many episodes but, you know, even going on YouTube, you know, doing some research on what are the best, you know, practices for interviewing, what are the most common interview questions, and how can you answer those? You know, um, these are these are so crucial to, to to your job search.

Adam Fineberg: So one of the things that we do at my personal recruiter is we also offer Disc assessments. And these Disc assessments just allow our, our, our clients to know who they are better and know what they’re good at. So between those two aspects, when you’re looking for a job, just, you know, be aware of of what you’re good at and focusing your energy on those things and then just making sure that you’re prepared. The resume is definitely important. You know as well. We have a partner company called Rock My Resume. And once again, I still am a minority shareholder of that company. We’re CPR w certified, so I can assure you we’ll provide you with great quality resume. But you know the that. Truthfully, there’s enough information online for most people to go ahead and write their own resume. So make sure that you’re prepared. Make sure that you have that self-awareness before you take that next step in your career.

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked. That’s that’s quite marvelous.

Adam Fineberg: Me too. Yeah, absolutely.

Stone Payton: All right. So what’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work, connect with you whatever you feel like is appropriate, but let’s give them some coordinates.

Adam Fineberg: Absolutely. So we have three websites that I own. So once again, Jackson Square Company, which is a recruiting agency. If you’re a company looking to hire people, you know, we can definitely help you find that right candidate. We have my resume for individuals who want to purchase just one resume, or they want to just get coaching. And then we have my personal recruiter. This is for individuals who are usually a little bit later in their career, who either don’t have the time to search for a job themselves, or they just want to be able to leverage the expertise of people who are professional job seekers. So my personal recruiter.com is my is a fairly newer project, but we’ve been able to help hundreds of people in less than a year secure their position. So those are those are the few coordinates that I would say. You’re also welcome to to connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, at it’s forward slash Adam Feinberg. Feinberg is spelled f I n e d e r g. And yeah, I’m happy to connect with people. I think I’m getting close to the limit of how many people that I, that I can connect with on, on LinkedIn, but, um, but you’re welcome to follow me as well. Um, on, on Instagram or Facebook. Um, and you can just type in Adam Feinberg and, and you’ll see my image right there.

Stone Payton: Well, Adam, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast today. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Thank you for your enthusiasm. I mean, it makes me feel recharged and want to go back and grow Business RadioX more to see all that you’ve done and all that you’re going to be doing. But what you’re doing for the marketplace and for these individuals is it’s such important work, and we sure appreciate you, man.

Adam Fineberg: I appreciate that, man. And, you know, I love helping people and it’s really fulfilling work when you get a chance to help someone. And I think you’re doing an amazing job with this podcast. So so kudos to you and your team for building such an amazing platform.

Stone Payton: Thanks, man. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Adam Feinberg with my personal recruiter and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.