Ever had a company you’ve talked to in the past open up a position and not give you the search?
Of course you have.
It’s happened to all of us.
It can sting like tequila in a paper cut, can’t it?
But it gets worse.
You find out they’re working with your competition. A competitor who’s not half as good, not nearly as fast, and doesn’t have the network or the recruiting muscle you have.
It’s like watching your ex date a guy who still lives in his mom’s basement.
So what happened?
One word: Proximity. Or as I like to call it, the underrated power of friendly familiarity.
The Guy on the Corner
Leo Burnett (the ad legend behind the Marlboro Man, the Jolly Green Giant, and Tony the Tiger) put it this way:
“The number one factor in building confidence is the plain old-fashioned matter of friendly familiarity. When you meet a man on the same street corner every morning and learn to like the way he smiles, the way he dresses, and the way he conducts himself, you are much more likely to be a prospect for the automobile or the insurance policy he may sometime want to sell you than you are for that of a stranger.”
“Attitudes and convictions about products and companies do not spring into your mind full blown. No matter what the stimulus, they grow.”
That was Leo Burnett. Writing in the mid-20th century. About a concept that is more relevant to your recruiting practice today than virtually anything the digital marketing “goo-roos” are selling.
They grow.
Let that one sit.
The Hibernating Bears
Here’s the mental model I want you to carry.
There’s a whole ocean of prospects in your niche. Most of them are like hibernating bears, they don’t need anything right now.
They have people. They’re not actively searching. Your call interrupts them, your email gets archived, and your LinkedIn message goes unread.
But when they do wake up hungry?
You want to be the one standing there with the honey pot.
A client who doesn't need to hire today might be on the phone tomorrow begging for your help because their star employee just quit.
That moment happens fast. And they don’t Google a replacement. They reach for the next person they remember: the one who’s been consistently in their peripheral vision.
Not the best recruiter. Not the most credentialed.
The most familiar.
The Trust Bank
Trust isn’t built in a moment. It’s cultivated through repeated exposure.
Every touchpoint is a deposit in the trust bank. Every piece of relevant content. Every value-add email. Every time your name lands in front of them while they’re thinking about their industry. That’s a deposit.
Most recruiters don’t make deposits. They only make withdrawals.
They show up when they have a candidate to pitch or a role to fill. They disappear the second the deal closes or falls apart. And then they wonder why they’re always starting from zero.
The firms that dominate a niche aren’t necessarily the best recruiters in that niche.
They’re the ones who never went away.
The Relevancy Rule
Here’s where most people get this wrong.
They worry about being a bother. They pull back. They don’t want to come across as pushy, so they go quiet, which is exactly the wrong move.
Here’s the rule: if you’re relevant, you won’t be annoying.
It’s only when you’re irrelevant that frequency becomes noise. Send a VP of Engineering generic thought-leadership fluff about mindset and hustle and you’ll get unsubscribed. Send them something that speaks directly to the talent challenges in their space and they’ll thank you for it.
You’ll get the occasional complainer no matter what. Pay those squeaky wheels no mind. They were never going to buy from you anyway.
The goal isn’t to reach everyone. It’s to stay permanently visible to the right 500 people in your niche, so that when one of them wakes up hungry, you’re already there.
Being the world's best-kept secret does not pay the bills.
What This Looks Like
This isn’t about blasting your list with garbage. It’s not about posting motivational quotes on LinkedIn.
It’s about showing up with something worth reading. Consistently. Over time.
In your niche. On your prospects’ turf. With content that makes them think, tying your name to actual insight, not just another recruiter trying to get on a call.
That’s how you become the familiar face on the corner.
That’s how you stop losing searches to people who are objectively worse than you.
That’s proximity.