The Resilient Recruiter

In this episode, you will hear how Emily Rushton grew her recruitment agency from start-up to $1M in profit in its first year and is on track to reach $3M profit in its second year! What’s her secret? There’s a clue in her company’s name - the keyword here is “integrated.” Emily is the Founder and CEO of Hire Integrated, a fast-growing recruiting agency based in Utah. They launched in January 2021...

Most recruiters say that Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is important but haven’t actually updated their recruitment process accordingly.  There’s a big difference between talking about ED&I and making a real commitment to implement it. This is why a lot of the discussion around this topic is performative while in reality the candidate shortlists recruiters are presenting to clients are largely ma...

Many recruiters are feeling anxious about the economy. Are you concerned about how a slowdown might affect your billings in 2023?     My special guest, Gail Audibert, has been a recruiter since 1984 and has survived four recessions. In this episode, Gail shares the steps she took in previous downturns to protect her business and achieve consistent, predictable billings.    Gail is a member of the...

When Leanne ran her own recruitment business, she managed to claw back 25 hours of her time PER WEEK by implementing automation strategies and hiring 4 offshore virtual assistants.    When was the last time you reviewed your full recruiting process and identified the recurring tasks? Are you still manually using spreadsheets and doing everything manually?    Doing everything manually instead of le...

If you believe in providing personalized customer service, you’ll love my interview with Frido Diepeveen. In this episode, Frido shared his wealth of experience from 17 years in recruitment and how his Dutch-Hungarian upbringing influenced his service-oriented approach toward his clients and candidates.   Born in the Netherlands, Frido trained as a lawyer before discovering his true passion in rec...

Imagine building a search firm from scratch to $4M in billings. An incredible achievement, right? Now imagine that same business suddenly imploding from 14 team members down to just one. How would you bounce back from such a devastating loss? Would you have the heart and will to rebuild?   This is the story of my special guest, Mark Phillips. Mark is the founder and CEO of HireEducation and in thi...

It always fascinates me to hear stories of recruitment business owners who succeed despite the most challenging circumstances. My special guest, David Fleming, shares an astounding story of both personal resilience and recruitment success.    David is the Managing Partner of Acuity Partners, the search brand from Stanton House. David established the business this year and is already on track for a...

Building a recruitment business in the Middle East and Asia presents opportunities as well as challenges. My special guest, Justin McGuire has successfully expanded his firm into MENA and APAC, becoming very knowledgeable about these markets in the process. This is Justin’s second time on the show and I am excited to have him again. In addition to providing fantastic insight into doing business in...

Want to know how a fast-growing recruitment firm generates 40 placements per month with a small team of only 11 people? Then you’re going to love my interview with Elaine Tyler. She’s the CEO of Venatrix, a London based agency that specializes in recruiting and training SDRs for SaaS companies. In 2015, Elaine partnered with James Caan and his recruitment venture capital firm, Recruitment Entrepre...

Imagine if you were a dominant recruiter in your industry with a portfolio of clients who come to you for all their hiring needs.  That doesn’t happen overnight and requires persistence. As you’ll hear in my interview with Brooke Ziolo, it’s certainly achievable with the right mindset and methodology. Brooke is the President of Egret Consulting, and has been an Executive Recruiter for 14 years. Sh...

I’m a firm believer that success leaves clues.  If someone was able to scale their staffing business not just once or twice but multiple times, that can’t be based on luck. To produce those results over and over, they must have a winning formula. That being the case, you’d want to know their formula, wouldn’t you?  Well the good news is that’s exactly what you’ll learn from my podcast interview wi...

From professional athlete to 7-figure recruitment business owner, Paul Warner’s journey is quite unique. In this interview, you’ll learn how Paul has gone from a part-time solo recruiter billing $90K per year to building a team that bills over $1M per annum in just three years. Paul shared his incredible story and breaks down the key factors that he believes contribute to increasing billings by 10...

One of the core competencies of successful recruiters is influence. When Cathy Stewart became a recruiter 15 years ago, recruiting seemed like a perfect fit based on her ability to build trust and influence others. In this episode, Cathy reveals her exact approach to influencing people which has enabled her to become a top biller.  Recruiting is actually Cathy’s third career. Prior to becoming a r...

Where do you find most of your candidates?  If LinkedIn is your primary platform for sourcing and engaging with candidates, this episode is for you. We are not telling you to stop using LinkedIn. But we believe that it’s a mistake to be over-reliant on LinkedIn as your main source of candidates. In this episode, you will hear the downsides of being dependent upon LinkedIn. You’ll also learn what s...

What’s the secret to scaling a staffing company internationally? According to my special guest Andy Mackin, relationships are a key driver of business growth. In this episode, you will hear how Andy transitioned from serving with the Irish Navy for 21 years to becoming an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. He shares his story of rapidly expanding his staffing company from six employees to 200 i...

To build a thriving executive search practice, you need to be good at winning new business. However, my special guest Somer Hackley realized early in her recruiting career that traditional approaches to business development didn’t work for her. Instead, Somer developed her own way of landing retained searches. Her approach has proven to be highly effective, enabling her to become a top producer at...

If you’re like many recruiters we speak to, you’re extremely busy right now with more job orders than you can handle. However, are you working with the right clients? Many recruiters delude themselves by thinking they’re “too busy” to do business development when in reality they’re working on low-probability searches. So they end up doing a lot of work you don’t get paid for.  Another common scena...

My next guest, Helen Plumridge, doubled her revenue last year and is on course to double again this year. But she didn’t achieve success overnight - it’s been more of a marathon than a sprint. Over a 20 year career, Helen’s experienced her share of setbacks and disappointments including the failure of her first recruitment business startup. Other areas of huge learning include choosing the right b...

“I don’t need more clients, I need more candidates.” “I don’t have time for business developments because I have several roles already and I don’t have the bandwidth or capacity for any more clients.”  Does this sound familiar? Are you relying too much on repeat business and referrals to the point that you may neglect your marketing and business development? In this episode, my co-host and colleag...

Imagine growing your recruitment business from zero to 10,000,000 in net fee income in just 10 years! That growth trajectory is highly unusual in recruitment. Yet Sphere Digital has achieved it. I was keen to uncover the key factors that enabled them to scale the business successfully so I interviewed Sphere co-founder, Ed Steer  What I learned is that they always had the mindset and intention to...

“Everybody struggles. Building a business is really hard.” “But I’m going to keep listening to these podcasts and I’m going to keep pushing with my business… There’s no silver bullet, there’s no magic recipe, there’s no pill. You just need to keep going and going and going and eventually you get there. ” These are the wise words of my next podcast guest, and valued client, Karen Lloyd. In October...

Jordan Rayboy is famous within the recruitment industry for billing millions of dollars from his RV. In this interview he reveals that now at age 43 with 3 young kids, he’s no longer interested in accumulation, significance, ego, keeping score or trying to impress people.  Jordan says he’s rebalanced his life to prioritize health, fitness and family. He told me “I try to be the best husband and fa...

“Turning around worst ever billing through the pandemic, to record-setting results currently.” In this episode, my special guest Wes Ashworth shares his story of the proactive steps he took to overcome a perfect storm of business during the height of the pandemic.  He also explains how he went from 100% contingency to 100% retained! Wes is the Vice President of Executive Search at Lee Group Search...

If you want to make more (and better) placements, you owe it to yourself to study “Performance-based Hiring.” The creator of Performance-based Hiring is Lou Adler, and I’m excited to have him on the podcast to learn from his four decades of recruitment experience. In our interview, you will hear Lou’s philosophy on figuring out the “performance objectives” for each role, instead of simply focusing...

There are significant advantages to being known as the premium brand in your market. For one, you can charge higher fees than your competitors.  Secondly, your job as a recruiter is more fulfilling because you’re focused on delivering exceptional client and candidate experiences.  Rob Bowerman is President and Executive Recruiter at The Bowerman Group, focused on recruiting for specialty and luxe...