The RAG Podcast - Recruitment Agency Growth Podcast

Season 6 | Ep 22 - Paul Sammeroff on how starting a rec business with two strangers backfired within 3 years! On this week's show, I'm joined by Paul Sammeroff, the Founder and Director of PAS Capital, a specialist recruitment firm headquartered in Glasgow that exclusively operates within the oil and gas markets. Paul’s business is only three years old with just under 20 staff at the moment. What'...

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I wasn't able to record this week's episode with a new guest. Rather than leave you with a week of no RAG Podcast, I wanted to bring back an episode that I recorded in 2019, which was one of the best I've ever recorded. My guest is known as Tom Glanfield, founder of Lawrence Harvey, LHi group. This episode was recorded pre-pandemic in an office in London. Tom talke...

On this week’s episode of The RAG Podcast, I am joined by Chris Allaire, the founder and CEO of Averity, a specialist technology recruitment agency. Averity was initially headquartered in New York City but is now operating across the USA. They have 30 employees, are completely remote post-pandemic, and were awarded the best staffing firm to work for in the 10 to 20 employees bracket by the Staffin...

On this week's show, I am joined by Sinead Connolly. Sinead is the award-winning founder of Lotus People, a specialist business support recruitment firm headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with over 22 staff. Now, Sinead and I have known each other for a few years. She’s been a Hoxo client since just after the pandemic, and I've watched her journey go from strength to strength. In this episode, we...

On this week's show, I am excited to be joined by Luke McCormack, the founder and CEO of McCormack Partners. Luke owns a specialist recruitment business in Glasgow that focuses on the commercial roofing and cladding sectors all over the UK. Luke reached out to me a long time ago to talk about personal branding, and I've witnessed his journey ever since. I’ve been unbelievably impressed by what he’...

On this week’s show, I’m joined by Edmund Blogg, the co-founder of RecruitHub, the newest sponsor of The RAG Podcast. We’ve partnered with RecruitHub because I believe we’re on a shared mission. These guys are a leading service accelerator for recruitment businesses. They provide new founders with the infrastructure to run their business from day one and allow them to focus on building it. They re...

I am excited, delighted, and honored to be joined by Greg Savage in the latest episode of the RAG Podcast.  Now, almost everyone in our sector globally knows who this guy is.  During his time in recruitment, Greg: -Has built an incredible brand -Has been an advisor to 16 recruitment organisations in the APAC region -Has owned and scaled three organisations -Has authored a book  -Has...

On this week's show, I am joined by Ephram Stephenson. Ephram is the CEO of Collar Group, a recruitment group based in Australia with nine offices and over a hundred staff.  Interestingly, Ephram only started the business in the summer of 2021 and sent his first invoice in October 2021. Since then, he's grown an agency that covers predominantly blue-collar recruitment, but is now moving into...

On this week's episode of The RAG Podcast, I am joined by Ben Duffill. Ben is the Managing Director of MRG Group, The Management Recruitment Group.  They’re a 60-person recruitment organisation headquartered in London, with multiple global offices. Ben has a really unique and interesting story in our sector.  He went to university at 18 years old and quit within six weeks. Back in Essex,...

On today's episode, I am joined by Simon Hair. Simon is the Managing Director of Precision Sourcing Group, a business headquartered in Sydney, Australia with 31 expert recruiters in project services, SAP, data, and software development.  Now, I've wanted to have Simon on for a long time. I've worked with him for over two years and for some reason it just never happened.  But the timing i...

On this week's episode of The RAG Podcast, I am joined by Kayleigh Bottomley, the Founder and SVP of Storm4.  Storm4 is another branch of Levin, the fastest-growing group of recruitment companies in the world.  A couple of weeks ago I shared a repeat of a 2021 episode with James Brown, the founder of Leven group.  This was one of my highest played episodes since the start of the RAG...

On today’s episode, I was joined by John Dyson. John is the founder of FJR Group, a specialist recruitment firm headquartered in Manchester with an office in London, operating across financial services, HR, and technology. John started the business in May 2011, the very same month that I personally started in recruitment. In that period of time, he’s grown a business to over 50 people and has open...

In early 2021, I interviewed James, the CEO of Levin, to discuss his growth plans on The RAG Podcast. Now, almost 2 years later, the company with brands Storm2 , Storm3 , Storm4 , Storm5 , and Storm6 , published $44m USD NFI in its third year and has grown to over 600 people. This trajectory is remarkable! I am re-releasing my episode with James as so many people loved it. It is still in the top 3...

On this week's episode of the RAG Podcast, you are stuck with me again!  In October, I was invited to the very first recruitment expo in Germany. This was hosted by a company called StaffingPro, in coordination with APSco.  This expo was targeted mainly at the agency market, but also at some in-house recruiters. I was invited to Frankfurt for a couple of days and I spoke on stage about t...

On this week’s episode of The RAG Podcast I was joined by Richard Wright, CEO of Acre. Acre is a specialist recruitment consultancy focusing on everything to do with sustainability, which includes climate change, social issues, and more. Richard has a long history in the recruitment sector.  He originally worked for one of the biggest organisations in the world and later bought into a boutiqu...

On this week’s episode, I was joined by Laurie Boyall, the Founder & Group CEO of McGregor Boyall, one of the most renowned recruitment agencies headquartered in London. Laurie started the agency in 1987, having never worked a day in recruitment in his life!  He was a self trained computer programmer and having found a job via a recruitment agency in 86, he saw the invoice attached to his...

On this week’s episode of the RAG, I’m excited to be featuring one of my own talks. Last week I presented at the Birmingham Recruitment Agency Expo in a room filled with well over 200 recruitment professionals. I discussed my thoughts and opinions on how LinkedIn is going to change over the next few years and what every recruiter should be doing now to make the most of their own opportunity before...

On this week’s episode, I was joined by David Morgan, who in 2000 co-founded Morgan Law, a UK specialist public sector recruitment agency with 35 staff.  In this episode, we went through David’s 22 years as a founder to unearth the highs, the lows, and the learnings you can take from them. We covered: -The reality of setting up a business in 2000 when the recruitment industry still operated u...

Hannah was a guest on The RAG in June 2021 and she told the story of growing Meet, an international talent provider to the life sciences sector. At this point the business was 12 years old,  135 staff and multiple offices globally. She ended the episode by telling me that they had significant and strategic growth plans. I wasn’t entirely sure what this meant as Hannah chose not to elaborate.&...

Lloyd is BACK! This is episode 3 with Lloyd, as he came onto the show twice in 2019.  In part 1, he was leading a small agency of 15 staff and spoke mainly about his career as a £1.6m biller and how/why he launched his original agency known as Focus Cloud. In late 2019, he talked about the growth of his agency to over 30 people and how his dream was to build Focus Cloud to 100 staff in the fu...

On this week’s episode, I was delighted to be joined by Alex Odwell, Founder of fintech specialist recruitment agency Referment and most recently of tech business - Radar. Alex has been in the recruitment industry for 14 years. Previously a member of the founding team at Harrington Starr group, he left to launch his own agency in 2016. Referment was born to attract more candidates via referrals. A...

We are back with season 6 and WHAT a guest to kick this season off! In this season, we will be continually digging into the stories of amazing recruitment founders but also talking about the reality of today’s economy. If any changes are happening in our sector then I want to find out and bring it to you first. On this week’s episode I was delighted to be joined by Ed Rossiter, Co-Founder & CE...

On this week’s episode we wrap up Season 5 of the show in spectacular style! I was honoured to be joined by Ben and Dan, Co-Founders of Edison Search a specialist IoT recruitment firm headquartered in Basingstoke UK with 20 staff within 14 months since inception. Ben and Dan worked together for a long time in their previous company, Ben was head of perm and Dan was head of contract recruitment. Th...

On this week's episode of The RAG Podcast, I was joined by Rogier, the CEO of PCN Recruitment, a payments sector specialist recruitment agency with 30+ staff across offices in Amsterdam, Berlin and the USA. Rogier joined the business as an entry-level recruiter 9 years ago. He knew he wanted to work in sales and was keen on the payments sector - but he had no interest in staying in recruitment! Wh...

On this week’s episode, I was joined by Chris O’Connell, a Leadership Coach, NED 🚀 and the host of The Purpose-Led Leadership Podcast.  A top billing recruiter at S3, in his early 20s Chris co-founded Timothy James Recruitment, which he and his business partner grew to £25 million in turnover within 9 years. Chris had a life where he focused on the business 100% and sacrificed all else. Over...