The Mike Ames Recruitment Show

Those UK-based recruiters who decide to start placing people in America, rarely switch back to the UK. there are plenty of reasons for that. 💥 The market is less crowded: 12,500 rec firms in the US to 30,000 in the UK (and the market is 4 times bigger). 💥 Almost all candidates are open to a chat, even if they aren't active. 💥 The fees are larger than the UK and clients haggle about them less, p...

The big battle for all of us these days is getting the attention of people we want to read something we've written: emails, posts, adverts and CVs. Many of your emails you know will be useful to the recipient, are deleted unread. You can have written the greatest LinkedIn post in the world but if people don't read it, then it will die a death. Likewise, a fantastic job will only draw in candidates...

When used properly, email is still a very effective sales and marketing tool. But things are changing, and you need to know how. All the email providers are getting much stricter these days in their drive to reduce the amount of spam in your Inbox. BTW, spam is just unwanted email so if you send marketing emails the email providers may view you as a spammer! Google and Yahoo have recently changed...

Ever had that call from a client saying, "You've done a great job, but we've got an RPO in place now"? Well, you could be that RPO and here's how. We welcome Jamie Stevenson as our guest because he offers full and micro RPOs to his clients. The benefits are enormous. You can often lock the client into a 12 month or longer contract and you're in control of the vacancies during this time. Also, as t...

New Year is nearly upon us. Want to shake it up a bit, but not sure how? Well, here are 4 zero-cost ways to boost profits & reduce stress. "Why should I change things?" I hear you cry. Well, the market isn't great, and trading conditions are tough. A less than business-friendly budget, EU and UK growth forecasts revised down, and Tariff Trump in the White House. True, there's more private equity a...

Whenever I hear "so and so is a million-pound biller" I always look for the catch. A hot client, huge fees or a team behind them. But our guest on this episode of the MARShow actually was a million-pound biller. His name is Mark Harris and he did it:  💥 Working on his own 💥 With average fees of £7k (yes, that's 12 placements a month) 💥 Over 100 clients 💥 Only on a contingent deals He was quite...

As the market gets tighter one thing to focus on is being better, or at least more preferable than your competition. Here are two ways to do this. Around here we say "Everything you need to be better than the competition is contained in the hearts and minds of your clients. All you need do is liberate it." In other words, you need to find out from your client community: - ✅ Where you need to impr...

What would you give to spend time with a decision maker in a high value client to find out how to become a preferred supplier? Well now you can. In this episode of the #MARShow we interview Victoria Kirkhope, the ex-Chief People Officer for RSM UK. Amongst her many duties, she was responsible for selecting (and deselecting) recruitment agencies for the firms PSL. She is now an independent consulta...

How will AI impact the recruitment industry in the short, medium, and long term? A very interesting question. And we intend to answer it during this #MARShow with our special guest Max Armbruster. Max is the CEO and Founder of Talkpush, a leading-edge recruitment automation platform and the company behind Sam the AI voice recruiter. Over time there have been game-changing inventions: the wheel, ha...

One of the best things you can do to boost revenues and make your business more valuable is launch a Contracts desk. The benefits are enormous: recurring revenue, contractor reuse, bigger profits and a more rounded offering for your clients. We love Perm but you have to reinvent your business every month whereas with a Contract desk you already have some revenue coming in. Right then, in this edit...

Technology is a tool and like all tools is only effective when used properly. This is especially true for rec firms. Added to that, I saw one piece of research by Pendo Analytics that said 80% of the features in any piece of software are rarely or never used. When I was at university in the Sevs, one of our lecturers said something similar and when I think of how much of XL I use, I reckon it's tr...

Designing a simple, enticing, and profitable commission scheme can be a real challenge. Especially if you worked in only a few firms before setting up your own. Commission schemes, when done right, incentivize teams to go above and beyond. But when done wrong, they can demotivate your team or worse incentivize short-term gains at the expense of doing the right thing. Leading to long-term problems....

I'm going to let you into a little secret on how you can pick up real vacancies from networking events – most likely exclusive or retained. Well, truth be told it won't be me, it's actually our next guest on the #MARShow – Kerry Swift.  Kerry is one of those recruiters who attends networking events and comes away with vacancies, often exclusive or retained. There's a knack to it, you know. On the...

Whether you want to change to scale up, become more profitable, win more new clients or attract better employees there are four obstacles you ALWAYS have to overcome. We see it all the time. The owner of a recruitment company is keen to develop their firm but it just doesn't happen. Or it does for a bit, then it peters out and they go back to solely working "in" their business. If you only overcom...

They say that what happens in the USA is bound to happen here shortly afterwards. So what is happening in the US recruitment world? If you'd like to know, please tune into our final episode of the Mike Ames Recruitment Show before the summer break. I have leading American recruitment industry podcaster Benjamin Mena on the show to spill the beans.  Benjamin interviews leading lights in US recruitm...

Podcasting is everywhere, but have you ever wondered why people bother, and how they make theirs popular in their community. Well, wonder no more because we have Rob Tyson as our guest on the #MARShow this week. Rob is a respected search consultant but also happens to host the number one podcast in the mining sector. He shares with us the following: - ❶ how he became the number one ❷ how often he...

So many people have already, or would very much like to, switch across to a retained recruitment model. But it isn't as easy as it sounds. Sure, the reward is obvious: a massive boost in profits because you convert more vacancies into revenue, usually on higher fees. But there are two problems: how do you persuade people to go retained and delivering a retained service is very different to deliver...

Part of running a successful business is to have a pipeline of potential business stretching into the future, which is easier said than done! But that's what we'll be discussing in this #MARShow. These are the things we'll be covering: - ❶ The difference between Relationship and Revenue pipelines. ❷ How to keep your pipelines topped up. ❸ How to manage your pipelines to fruition. If you feel you d...

I love talking to successful people especially if they've achieved things I have not. As they say, "If you're the most successful person in the room… … you're in the wrong room" because you'll be the teacher, not the pupil. On thi #MARShow we are privileged to have Justin McGuire founder and CEO of MCG Talent. It's worth just tuning in to hear Justin's journey from a marketing agency specialist to...

Most recruitment companies fail to scale for the same reason. The owner has a recruiter mentality rather than a scalability mentality. If you own a recruitment company (even if you are a solopreneur), and you have a recruiter mentality you're pushing water uphill. Step one on your journey to scale is to adopt and nurture a scalability mentality. This is the subject of this #MARShow: what is a Scal...

Client care is one of those topics very much misunderstood by some recruiters. It is NOT the act of getting vacancies off clients. The actual definition is the opposite – client care is what you do with clients when they have no vacancies for you. Research around client care overwhelmingly points to many clients not being happy with the attention they get from their suppliers. This breeds a thing...

Get your commission scheme wrong and you'll either make less money or attract less top talent.  Get it right and it can boost your profits. But what options do you have, and what are the popular schemes out there these days? Our guest on the MARShow is Carl Jones, founder and CEO of Konquest and an expert on commission schemes. Obviously, commission payments are one of the most important motivator...

It's widely accepted that when it comes to recruitment the less you focus on, the more money you make. In other words, you have to niche up. But how do you do this? Well, that's the theme of our next show. We'll be looking at: - 💥 The Pros and cons of operating a niche. 💥 How you select your niche. 💥 How you build your niche. 💥 The best way to promote and sell your niche. I think building a ni...

If you use an automailer from your CRM system or a product like Mailchimp, many of your emails won't hit the recipients inbox. Worse still, your current email policies may unwittingly be making the situation worse. This is because the ESPs (email service providers) and ISPs (internet service providers) are desperately trying to reduce the amount of spam their clients receive. Their spam-checkers a...

One of the big debates in recruitment right now is 360 or Layered. They both have their pros and cons, question is, which is best for you? Well in this episode of the hashtag #MARShow we will aim to shine the torch in all the dark corners of both models. In the red corner will be Max Learmonth a keen supporter of the 360 approach. In the blue corner is my good self, very much a devotee of the Laye...