> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://big-heart-recruitment.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # You Don’t Have to Be Alike. You Have to Listen. - URL: https://big-heart-recruitment.ghost.io/you-dont-have-to-be-alike-you-have-to-listen/ - Published: 2026-09-23T13:16:55.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-23T13:16:55.000Z - Author: Matthew Wagner I started watching *JAŸ-Z in 8* on HBO this week. The entire series is essentially two people sitting together, listening to songs, and talking about where they came from, who they were, and who they became. The simplicity is deliberate. Two chairs. Two very different-looking people. Music. And a real conversation. No narrator telling us what to think. No elaborate production trying to manufacture emotion. Rick Rubin creates space, and Jay-Z fills it. Visually, they look like they walked in from two completely different worlds. Jay-Z is a Black man from the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. Rick Rubin is a white, heavily bearded guy from Long Island who looks more like a spiritual teacher than one of the most influential music producers of all time. If you didn’t know their history, you might wonder what they could possibly have in common. Appearances don’t tell the full story. Rick Rubin co-founded Def Jam Recordings with Russell Simmons. He helped shape the early careers of LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, and Public Enemy. He produced “99 Problems” for Jay-Z. Rick didn’t enter Jay-Z’s world as an outsider trying to understand hip-hop. He helped build part of the world Jay-Z eventually came to dominate. That changed the lesson for me. These aren’t two people overcoming the fact that they have nothing in common. They are two people who look very different but share a deep respect for the same craft. Appearances suggest distance. The conversation reveals connection. There is a recruiting lesson in that. We make decisions about people quickly. How they look. How they speak. Where they came from. What companies they’ve worked for. How much business they currently produce. Whether they remind us of the other successful people we already know. We may not admit it, but familiarity makes us comfortable. We naturally gravitate toward people who communicate like us, think like us, and have taken a path we understand. But familiar doesn’t always mean better. And different doesn’t mean disconnected. Sometimes the person who appears to come from a completely different world shares more of your values than the person who looks exactly like everyone else in the room. You won’t know that from a résumé. You have to have the conversation. And you have to actually listen. That sounds simple. It isn’t. I’m a talker. I’m a salesperson. I’m a recruiter. A large part of my career has been built on my ability to start conversations with people I don’t know. I know how to ask questions. I know how to keep a conversation moving. I know how to make someone feel comfortable. But being good at talking can fool you into believing your value always comes from what you say. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the most valuable thing I can do is shut up. Rick Rubin doesn’t seem concerned with proving he’s the smartest person in the conversation. He doesn’t ask a question and then rush to fill the silence. He gives Jay-Z room to think. Room to listen to his own music. Room to remember who he was when he wrote it. Room to explain who he was becoming. That type of space is rare. Especially in recruiting. We often enter conversations carrying the pitch, the answer, and the next question before the other person has finished speaking. A candidate mentions a problem with operations, and we immediately explain why our operations are better. They mention compensation, and we start breaking down the plan. They say they’re happy, and we treat it like an objection we need to overcome. We listen for an opening instead of listening for the story. There is a difference. When someone says they’re happy, what do they actually mean? Are they fulfilled? Are they comfortable? Are they loyal? Are they scared to start over? Are they trying to convince you? Or are they trying to convince themselves? You don’t discover that by talking faster. You discover it by creating enough room for the person to keep going. Silence makes a lot of us uncomfortable. In sales, silence can feel like we are losing control of the conversation. So we jump in. We explain. We sell. We rescue the moment. But that quiet space may be where someone decides whether they trust us enough to tell the truth. Rick and Jay-Z also reminded me that we don’t need to share someone’s exact experience to respect it. Rick Rubin didn’t grow up in the Marcy Projects. He cannot fully know what Jay-Z experienced. He doesn’t pretend that he does. But he is curious. He listens. He respects the story. He understands the craft. That matters in recruiting and leadership. I won’t share every experience of every candidate I speak with. I don’t know exactly what it feels like to build a mortgage business as a woman, as a person of color, as an immigrant, or as someone trying to enter a market where nobody looks like them. I don’t have to pretend those differences don’t exist. I also don’t need to have lived the same story to believe the person telling it. I can ask better questions. I can stay curious. I can listen without immediately comparing their experience to mine. I can resist the need to prove that I understand everything. The goal is not to erase our differences. The goal is to keep those differences from becoming distance. That is where the best recruiting conversations begin. The conversation changes when a candidate stops giving you the prepared answer. When they stop telling you what they think a recruiter wants to hear. When they start talking about what they are afraid of. What they’re frustrated by. What they want their career to become. What they’ve lost along the way. What they want back. That is when you stop looking at a production number and begin seeing the person behind it. A résumé tells you where someone has been. A real conversation can tell you who they are becoming. But we can’t get there if we fill every silence. We can’t get there if we’ve already decided who someone is based on how they look, where they work, or how closely their story resembles ours. And we definitely can’t get there if we care more about delivering our pitch than understanding their truth. The dynamic between Rick Rubin and Jay-Z works because neither person needs the other one to become more like him. Rick doesn’t try to act like Jay-Z. Jay-Z doesn’t need Rick to have lived his life. They meet through curiosity, respect, history, and a genuine love for the work. They look different. Their life experiences are different. But beneath those differences is a language they both understand. That is what great recruiters and leaders learn to find. Not sameness. Connection. You don’t have to come from the same world to understand someone. You just have to be quiet long enough to hear theirs. We spend a lot of time trying to find the right words. Maybe the better question is whether we have created enough room for someone else to find theirs.