The Resilient Recruiter
Join "the Recruitment Coach" Mark Whitby as he and his guests unpack the secrets of what it takes to be a profitable and long-lived professional in the recruitment industry.
Episodes
How Recruiters Go From Dabbling With AI to Real Results, with Vanessa Raath
Vanessa Raath recently trained a team in Canada who thought they were using AI quite well. They all had the paid version.
They just didn’t know what it could do.
Vanessa helps recruitment teams put AI to work on their desks. She was already known worldwide for talent sourcing training when ChatGPT launched in November 2022. Within six months, she recognized how much sourcing work it could suppor
Scaling: How to Build a $65M Recruiting Business That is Sellable, with Mike Kelly
For the first five to six years of his first recruiting business, Mike Kelly did everything himself. Cold calls, interviews, client meetings, even payroll. He began handing off the work when he asked himself: what's the highest and best use of my time?
Mike is the Founder and CEO of Conexus Advisors and has grown and exited three professional services businesses. In this conversation, he shares ho
How a $4M Recruiting Firm Rebuilt After a Brutal Year, with Josh Volinsky
A hot market can hide a lot of problems.
Josh Volinsky and his partners launched Synergy Search in September 2020, and the accounting and finance recruiting firm has reached as high as $6M in revenue. When the market normalized, recruiters who had learned to work transactionally struggled to adapt, a run of hires didn't work out, and the founders recognized that they weren't tracking the activity
Rainmaker: The Business Development Machine That Feeds a 22-Person Team, with Kimberly Laipple
In 2023, Kim Laipple led a 28-person team at Scientific Search and personally billed $1.4 million. Since then, the biotech market has been volatile. Between the downturn, retirements and other changes, the team dropped to about 16. Kim was also promoted to President after the previous owner retired.
Today, Scientific Search is back to around 22 people. Kim is running the business while still spend
She Sold Her Firm to Give Her Team a Bigger Ceiling, with Charlie Saffro
Every December, Charlie Saffro caught up with a friendly competitor at Hirewell to compare notes on the recruiting market. At the end of their 2024 call, after four difficult years, she said something almost as a joke: if you know anyone looking to buy a supply chain recruiting firm, let me know. About a week later, Hirewell's owner called her.
Charlie founded CS Recruiting in 2010 and spent 15 ye
How to Bill Over $1 Million in Your First Year of Business, with Ross Cohen
Ross Cohen left his role as managing director at one of Florida's leading search firms to launch Brinc Search Partners with his business partner, Brett Nortman. They gave up an established brand, a built-out book of business and the steady flow that came with a larger firm. Ross also had a non-compete preventing him from approaching his former clients.
Brinc launched in March 2025. In its first y
How to Bounce Back Stronger After Your Business Falls Apart, with Gemma Downing
What do you do when the recruitment business you've poured everything into starts to fall apart?
Gemma Downing Mapp came back from holiday to find Mixxos £100,000 behind budget. Two months later, the company recorded its highest-billing month ever with roughly half the team.
Gemma is co-founder and CEO of Mixxos Group, a boutique recruitment consultancy she built with her business partner, Chris
How to Grow Billings 33% in a Flat Market by Selling Without Selling, with Sachin Ruparelia
While much of the recruitment industry was flat last year, Sachin Ruparelia grew billings by 33% and kept hiring.
Sachin is the Founder and Managing Director of Camino Partners and Camino Search. Over the last couple of years, his businesses have grown net fee income by 20% and then 33%, while scaling to around 37 people across London and Tampa.
A big part of that growth has come from community-
How to Build a $10M Recruitment Firm With Just 11 People, with Dave Fox
There's a belief in recruitment that scaling a firm means scaling headcount.
Dave Fox has built a different model. His fully remote technology staffing firm, Focus GTS, generates more than $10 million in annual revenue with a team of just 11 people.
Early on, Dave assumed he would need 80 to 100 people to build the business he wanted. He also thought a 360 model and broader market coverage would b
How to Build Talent Pools on Autopilot With AI Agents, with David Paffenholz
David Paffenholz never worked as a recruiter. He studied economics at Harvard, led growth at Snap, and built a couple of consumer products with his co-founder, Ishan, before the two of them turned their attention to hiring. What they noticed was that most of the recruiting tech stack is built for candidates who are already in the funnel, while the harder and more valuable problem sits right at the
7 Success Secrets of Elite Recruiters with Ben Mena,
What separates recruiters building momentum from those whose desks are quietly drifting?
Benjamin Mena has recorded more than 300 episodes of The Elite Recruiter Podcast. Mark Whitby has done the same with The Resilient Recruiter. Between them, they have interviewed hundreds of high-performing recruiters and repeatedly seen the same success patterns.
Ben begins this conversation with an honest adm
Claude for Recruiters: How to Automate Your Recruitment Business | Reyhan Khan
Most recruiters know they should be using AI more. What they don't know is where to start, what to connect, and what it costs. Reyhan Khan makes all of that concrete.
Reyhan runs RecruiterGTM and has spent the last 60 days setting up Claude for 35 recruitment agencies. He's based in Lisbon, originally from Pakistan, and spent years running operations for US agencies before launching his own busine
How the Top 1% of Recruiters Win New Business in 2026 | Mike Williams, Jen Meyer, and Pree Sarkar
What are the top 1% of recruiters doing differently to win new business in 2026? That's exactly what Mark Whitby wanted to find out. So instead of interviewing one guest, he brought together three Pinnacle Society members for a live panel discussion in front of more than 100 recruiters.
Jen Meyer is Chief Revenue Officer at Govig and Associates, a firm doing $12 to $15 million a year. Mike William
LinkedIn Algorithm: How the Latest Changes Affect Recruiters | Richard van der Blom
LinkedIn has changed how it decides who sees your content, and many recruiters are feeling the impact. Reach is down for most creators, engagement is changing, and tactics that worked a year ago are becoming less effective.
Richard van der Blom has spent years studying those changes. His annual LinkedIn Algorithm Insights Report is now in its seventh edition, built from the analysis of 1.3 millio
How AI Is Helping Recruiters Bill More, with Jordan Shlosberg
Recruiters don't need AI to replace conversations with candidates or clients. They need AI to give them more time for those conversations. That's the philosophy Jordan Shlosberg has built his entire business around.
Jordan is the founder of Atlas, an AI-first CRMx built for recruitment agencies. Before Atlas, he built proSapient, an expert network platform, scaling it to $40 million in revenue and
How to Bill $1.29 Million Without Sacrificing Family Life, with Emily Audibert
Emily Audibert billed $1.29 million in 2025. She did it while eight and a half months pregnant with her third child, living in a 750-square-foot cottage for six months during a home renovation with her husband, two young boys, and a 70-pound dog.
Emily is the founder of EA Associates, a search firm specializing in go-to-market roles. The year before, she'd billed $800K. She knew she was capable of
How to Make More Placements with Split Fees | NPA Worldwide Panel
How many search assignments have you turned down because they were outside your niche, outside your geography, or you simply didn't have the capacity?
In this special sponsored panel episode, Mark Whitby is joined by Heather Gardner, Jeff McGraw, and Jen Anderson from NPA Worldwide to discuss how split-fee partnerships help independent recruiters make more placements without taking on more clients
How a Solo Recruiter Went From Running a Bakery to Billing $100K a Month
Michael Chambers didn't come into recruitment through the usual route.
Before becoming a recruiter, he spent eight years running a bakery with his mother in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then his father passed away from cancer, leaving behind a recruiting business that had barely gotten started. Michael decided to take it over despite having no recruiting experience.
A few years later, after navigati
How to Build a Recruitment Business That Runs Without You, with David Jenyns
David Jenyns had 15 people on his team when he realized his business still couldn't function without him. Every client wanted him personally. Every escalation came back to him. He was working long hours and couldn't switch off. When he thought about taking time off to be present for the birth of his first child, it filled him with anxiety rather than excitement.
"It was a little bit scary when I r
The Pros and Cons of Building a Recruitment Business in Dubai | Louise Vine
Dubai attracts recruiters from all over the world. Louise Vine has spent the last 18 years learning how the market really works.
Louise is the founder of Inspire Selection, a specialist finance and accounting recruitment firm based in Dubai. Over the last 13 years, she has built a fully remote business operating on a commission-only model while navigating a market where fee pressure is intense, cu
How to 10X Your Recruiting Productivity with AI, with Rich Rosen
Rich Rosen is having a strong year. But he's quick to point out that it hasn't come easily. In his words, he's working twice as hard for those results.
Rich has completed more than 1,200 placements, been recognized by Forbes as one of America's Top 50 Recruiters for seven consecutive years, and continues to bill over $1 million annually. He also spends more time testing recruiting technology than
How to Win New Clients with Personalised Video, with Sam Johnstone
Sam Johnstone has never worked for a recruitment agency.
He spent three and a half years selling video technology to agency owners. Then he decided to go and do it himself.
Four years in, he has a portfolio of repeat clients and inbound leads from LinkedIn. All built from a cabin on the Scottish coast with a few thousand pounds in the bank.
Sam is the founder of Real Recruit, a specialist sales
How to Choose the Right Recruitment Tech and Avoid Wasting Money on Tools, with Nitin Sharma
Recruitment business owners are being pitched new tools every single day. Most of it gets bought based on fear of missing out, not because there is a real problem that needs solving.
Nitin Sharma is the founder of Rectools IO, an independent directory of recruitment technology, and the host of Rectalk, the most followed recruitment podcast on YouTube with over 100,000 subscribers. He speaks to mo
How to Build a £25M Recruitment Firm Without Chasing Headcount, with Michelle Lownie
Adding more people is how you grow a recruitment firm.
Michelle Lownie spent years believing it. Then she watched it go wrong.
Michelle is the CEO and co-founder of Eden Scott, one of Scotland's leading recruitment firms. She started in recruitment in 1989, filing documents and making tea at Melville Craig on a six-week summer contract. She stayed 15 years. In 2003, she co-founded Eden Scott alo
How to Source Candidates on Autopilot Using Pin.com, with Steve Lu
Sourcing frustration is usually diagnosed as a volume problem. Not enough candidates in the funnel. Not enough searches. Not enough outreach.
Steven Lu thinks it's the opposite problem.
Steven is the co-founder and CEO of Pin.com and the founder of Interseller, a recruiting outreach platform that helped place over 40,000 candidates before being acquired by Greenhouse in 2021. After two years ins
He Lost His $2.5M Practice and Built Something Clients Have Never Seen, with Darwin Shurig
What does it take to build a search process that has a VP of HR saying they've never seen anything like it?
Darwin Shurig built a $2.5 million medtech recruiting firm with $1.2 million in personal production. Then in one quarter, eight of his nine top clients stopped using external recruiters. Revenue collapsed. His team disappeared. His 17-year marriage ended in the same period.
What he built o
$28 Million Recruiter Reveals His Daily Habits After 44 Years
He nearly quit after 7 months.
Zero placements. Nothing working.
He packed his things into a cardboard box, walked toward the door, and heard his colleagues talking about him behind his back.
What they said stopped him.
He turned around, sat back down, and made two placements by the end of that week.
That was 1982. He never left.
In this episode, Rich breaks down the daily habits behind 44 y
She Lost Everything in 2008. Then Built a Recruiting Firm with a 94% Retention Rate
Carol Ann Wentworth lost her business, her home, and nearly everything she owned in 2008. Within 10 days of clarifying her next step, three recruiting firms reached out. She had a job offer in two weeks.
That same clarity is what built Wentworth Executive Recruiting into a ten-year retained practice with a 94% retention rate. She made 48 placements with one Silicon Valley client and supported the
How She Wins $100K Placements (Without Chasing Volume)
What if your next placement paid $100,000…
…but took two years to close?
Most recruiters, especially in contingency recruiting or running a recruitment agency, wouldn’t go near that model.
Darci Smith built her entire business around it.
She specializes in moving financial advisors between firms, often transferring hundreds of millions in assets. These are high-stakes, long-cycle deals where t
Why This Recruiter Stopped Scaling His $4M Firm and What He's Doing Instead
He built a $4M recruitment firm. Then chose not to scale it.
Seb Sharpe grew Inventure to $4 million in seven years. Profitable every quarter. Retained and exclusive from day one. A clear niche in renewable energy.
Then he made a move most agency owners avoid.
Instead of hiring more recruiters and scaling headcount, he started building a platform for what comes next.
In this episode of The Res
From Zero to $400K: How He Rebuilt a Recruitment Business
From $400K to Zero.
Then nothing for six months.
Harrison Wright launched his recruitment business and billed nearly $400,000 in his first six months.
Then the market turned.
Hiring froze. Searches disappeared. He was burning $30,000 a month just to stay afloat.
Most recruiters would respond by doing more.
More calls. More CVs. More pressure.
He did exactly that.
It didn’t work.
So he reb
Why This Recruitment Firm Guarantees Every Placement for 12 Months, with Jessica and Lewis
A 12-month guarantee on every placement. That's almost unheard of in recruitment.
Most agencies offer three months. Some stretch to six. Lewis Waitt and Jessica Multhauf guarantee their hires for an entire year, and more than 90% of their placements are still in the role after 12 months.
That level of confidence doesn't come from luck.
It comes from a recruiting process built very differently from
How to Win Enterprise Clients and Turn One Deal Into Recurring Revenue | Brendan Thomas
One placement can be a transaction.
Or it can be the start of a long-term enterprise relationship.
Most recruiters treat it like the first.
Brendan Thomas built his career on the second.
He started recruiting at 36, got fired after his first $60,000 placement, and joined a new agency six months later with two clients.
By the end of that year, he had built over $600,000 in billings.
Six years later
The Real Reason Your Recruiters Aren’t Billing | Larissa Gerlach
I can’t keep making $40,000.
That’s what Larissa Gerlach told her manager in year one of recruitment.
She was making 200+ calls a week.
Hitting the activity metrics.
Doing everything she was told to do.
And still unsure whether she would make it.
Three years later, she was President’s Club.
Soon after, the CFO of a private equity-backed recruiting firm emailed her:
“What are you doing — and ho
Why AI Has Made Recruitment Harder (Not Easier) | Greg Savage
AI in recruitment was supposed to make hiring faster, smarter, and more efficient.
Greg Savage believes it has made recruitment harder.
Fraud at scale. Inflated CVs. AI screening tools producing just 14% shortlist overlap. And automation that speeds up broken recruitment processes instead of fixing them.
In Episode 300 of _The Resilient Recruiter,_ we break down AI in recruitment, the future of
How to Win Retained Recruitment Work Without Pitching Harder, with James O'Brien
Why do some recruiters close retained work in a single meeting while others pitch for weeks and still lose to contingent competitors?
In this episode of *The Resilient Recruiter,* Mark Whitby sits down with *James O’Brien,* Managing Director and COO at i-intro, to unpack what really separates recruiters who win retained and exclusive work from those stuck chasing job orders.
James has been in re
Why Candidates Ignore Recruiters and What Actually Makes Them Respond, with Theresa Nordstrom
Why do some recruiters get ghosted while others hear: *“I never respond to recruiters, but I had to respond to you”?*
In this episode of *The Resilient Recruiter,* Mark Whitby is joined by *Theresa Nordstrom,* founder of Talent Company, to break down what _actually_ makes candidates respond in today’s noisy recruitment market.
Before launching her own search firm, Theresa spent nearly 20 years a
How to Build 8 Revenue Streams That Grow Your Agency in Any Market, with Gerard Koolen
Why do some recruitment agencies collapse when the market turns, while others keep growing?
Gerard Koolen has lived through three major crises: the 2008 financial crash, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine. Each time, his recruitment business didn’t just survive. It grew.
In this episode of _The Resilient Recruiter,_ Gerard explains why growth in tough markets has nothing to do with working harder
From 3 Placements to 40% Retained: How to Win Without Competing
Why do some recruiters stay stuck on contingent work while others quietly shift a large part of their business to retained without pitching harder or sounding salesy?
James Cairns found the answer the hard way.
James left a stable corporate finance career to start a boutique search firm with no agency experience, no local network, and just $30,000 in savings. His first year was brutal. Three place
Why Your LinkedIn Content Isn’t Booking Meetings (And How to Fix It)
You’re posting on LinkedIn.
You’re showing up consistently.
And yet… the meetings aren’t coming.
This episode explains why.
Mike Mello spent 10 years in staffing sales and built what most recruiters would call a dream run: 1,300 placements, more than $100 million in revenue sold, and nearly 140 contractors on billing as an enterprise salesperson.
Then he walked away.
Not because staffing stopp
How to Generate Inbound Leads with Effective Content Marketing, with Mark Whitby and i-intro
Ever find yourself hitting a brick wall when it comes to developing engaging content? Don't despair!
Recently, I was invited as a guest speaker on the Retained Recruiter Show, which is a weekly LinkedIn live hosted by our good friends at i-Intro. The topic was How to Get More Clients with Content Marketing. i-Intro told me that this was one of the most popular live streams that they'd ever produ
How Recruiters Build Hiring Systems That Attract the Right People on Repeat, with Andrea Hoffer
Why do some recruiters command premium fees while others compete on speed and price? It's not talent or experience. It's whether they've packaged their service as a product.
Andrea Hoffer learned this lesson the hard way.
Before launching her consulting business, Andrea spent 10 years running a Massage Envy Spa franchise. She led a team of more than 30 employees. Her therapeutic staff stayed. Her
How Recruiters Can Use AI Without Losing Trust or Control with Rebecca Hastings
There’s a lot of noise around AI in recruitment.
Some people are selling it as a silver bullet. Others are predicting a job apocalypse for recruiters.
Neither is true.
In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, Mark Whitby sits down with Rebecca Hastings to talk about what’s actually happening inside businesses using AI right now and what recruiters are getting wrong.
Rebecca advises CEOs, bo
The 10 Most Popular Resilient Recruiter Episodes of 2025
This episode brings together the ten most listened-to conversations of 2025.
They weren’t popular by accident. These episodes resonated because they spoke directly to the challenges recruiters were dealing with day to day. Planning your time. Building pipeline. Positioning retained search. Recovering from burnout. Staying relevant as the market and LinkedIn both shifted.
If you missed any of the
How Better Candidate Presentations Turned a Nine-Month Drought Around Fast, with Tonya Leadman
Tonya Leadman went nine months without a single placement.
Seven searches were put on hold. Two offers fell through. Cash flow tightened. And her accountant called to check if she was okay.
Tonya is the owner of Leadman & Associates, a national executive search firm serving the food, beverage, and CPG manufacturing industries. After building her career as a top performer in the MRI network and lat
Recruitment Agency Growth: How to Go from Contingent to 10 Retained Searches, with Matt Rooney
For years, Matt Rooney did what a lot of capable recruiters do. He stayed busy. Took the work that came in. Said yes more often than he should have.
Inside private equity, that turned him into what he later called a "utility recruiter". Useful, but reactive. Some years were strong. Others weren't. And it never quite felt like a real partnership with clients.
Two decisions changed the direction o
How AI Will Reshape Recruitment and What Recruiters Must Do Now
AI is accelerating at a rate faster than at any point in recruitment history. New tools are emerging monthly. Employers are experimenting without clear guardrails. And agency owners are left wondering which developments will matter - and which are just noise.
In this episode, I sit down with Matt Alder, talent acquisition futurist and host of Recruiting Future, to cut through the hype and focus
How to Lead With Confidence Even When You Don’t Feel Ready, with Maria Sinclair
For 20 years, Maria Sinclair watched other people get promoted while she stayed stuck in her own head. She questioned whether she belonged, worried about how she was perceived, and doubted nearly every decision she made.
Then Covid hit, and everything changed.
Cobalt furloughed 45 of its 55 UK staff, leaving only ten people working. Maria picked up multiple desks, supported clients across new spe
How to Rebuild to $1M After Losing Everything, with Randee Staats
What does it take to raise your fees, win better clients, and rebuild your recruiting business from the ground up?
In this episode, I speak with Randee Staats, founder of S4 Search Partners, who went from losing everything — $250K in debt and $500 left — to rebuilding a seven-figure desk within the following year.
Randee explains the decisions that nearly destroyed his business, the turning poin
How to Build a Client Demand Engine That Replaces Cold Outreach
Why do some recruiters struggle for traction while others build demand engines that bring clients to them? My guest, Tom Froggatt, made that shift after three days of calling 600 people with no results.
Tom is the founder of Singular, a biotech search firm and one of Europe's leading specialists. Six months after launching the business, he hit a breaking point that changed everything. Instead of
Three Strategic Bets That Changed How One Recruiter Thinks About Growth, with Ollie Scott
Why do some recruitment founders build seven-figure businesses while others plateau despite working just as hard? My guest, Ollie Scott, discovered growth doesn't come from hustle alone. It comes from strategic bets.
Ollie is the founder of Unknown, a talent growth consultancy that's worked with over 500 brands including Nike, Apple, and Disney. Six years ago, he started with £13,000 on a credit
How to Triple Revenue in 5 Years Without Burning Out, with Martin Herbst
Why do some recruitment business leaders triple their revenue while others plateau despite working twice as hard? My guest, Martin Herbst, discovered the answer the hard way. After hitting rock bottom with burnout, he rebuilt his leadership philosophy from the ground up — and within five years, JobAdder tripled its revenue and client base.
Martin is the CEO of JobAdder, one of the world’s leading
How a Musician Turned Creative Thinking Into a $1.2M Recruiting Firm, with Justin Levinson
How does a professional touring musician go from the recording studio to building a $1.2M recruiting firm without ever making a single cold call?
In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, Justin Levinson, founder of Coming Up Creative, reveals how he blended creativity, authenticity, and smart systems to grow a seven-figure recruitment business serving the world’s top entertainment and gaming b
Automate Your Outreach: How to Generate Client Leads Every Day on Autopilot, with Giorgio Zanella
The hardest part of business development isn't effort, it's consistency. Most recruiters know what to do, but struggle to do it every day while juggling clients, candidates, and placements. You know you should be reaching out to prospects daily, but between managing active searches, candidate interviews, and client meetings, your pipeline suffers. The solution? Build automated systems that generat
How to Build $1.6M in 3 Years Working Retained-Only
Why do some recruiters struggle to break $300K while others hit seven figures in their third year? My guest, Tito Caceres, spotted a $160 billion industry that most recruiters have never even thought about. And he built a thriving business there with nothing but a credit card and relentless hustle.
Tito grew up in his family's landscaping business and swore he'd never work in that industry. Ironi
How to Build a Solo Recruitment Practice Without Office Rent or Salaries
What if getting fired 20 times wasn’t failure, but the perfect preparation to build something meaningful?
In this episode, recorded in London, I talk with James Rowe about what it really takes to build a six-figure solo recruitment practice without office rent, payroll, or management headaches.
James shares how experienced recruiters can keep more of what they bill using smart systems, automatio
How Agency Owners Can Scale Globally Without Losing Their Culture, with Nicholas Barton
Most recruitment agency owners hit a wall around 10–20 people. The culture that made you successful starts to crack, and the personal touch gets lost.
Nicholas Barton didn’t just avoid that wall he redefined what scaling could look like. From packing boxes in a warehouse to leading a 100-person global firm, Nicholas built The Barton Partnership into one of Forbes’ “World’s Best Management Consult
How AI-First Recruiting Could Save Your Business Or Kill It, with Manan Shah
AI isn't coming to recruitment. It's already here. And the gap between recruiters who know how to use it and those who don't is widening fast. My guest today has data proving it: recruiters adopting AI correctly are seeing up to 30% increases in GP per desk.
Manan Shah is CEO and co-founder of Recruiter Flow, an AI-first recruitment operating system built for search firms, agencies, and solo prac
From 100 Employees to RV Recruiting: Redefining Success on Her Terms, with Lauren Fernandez
What happens when you sell a 100-employee company at 28 and decide freedom matters more than settling down?
Lauren Fernandez didn’t just dream about working from anywhere—she made it a reality. But this isn’t a glossy “digital nomad” story. It’s the unfiltered truth about building a recruiting business while navigating serious health challenges, redefining success, and realizing your best life mi
Why Most Agencies Fail at Offshore Hiring And How to Succeed, with Greg Fischer
Most recruitment firms stall at $1M revenue. Greg Fischer broke through by building a high-retention offshore team, embedding himself inside client organizations with RPO, and using LinkedIn commenting as a smarter BD strategy.
As Co-Owner of AMI Network, Greg scaled from $1M to $4.2M revenue and $1.4M profit sustaining 30–40% margins. His model: hire offshore staff directly, integrate them as eq
How Solo Recruiters Multiply Success Through This Network, with Andy Dunne
Andy Dunne thought other agency owners were the enemy. They'd steal clients, poach candidates, copy ideas. Sound familiar?
Then he joined Team in 2014 just to save £130 a month on job boards. Eleven years later, he's their managing director, overseeing 500+ agencies that split over £6 million in fees last year.
What changed? Andy learned that protecting everything actually kills more business th
How to Run Your Firm on Autopilot While Starting Something New, with Brian Gabay
What if you could run your recruiting firm on autopilot while launching a completely new business? Brian Gabay has mastered this balance—his 5-person team makes placements without him while he builds a tech startup.
Brian founded Brian Simon Associates (BSA) in 2016, specializing in PR and marketing recruitment. He built systems, transforming his business from constant attention to running indepe
Why AI Recruits 100% Better Than Humans And Where Humans Still Win, with Johnny Campbell
Johnny Campbell drops a bombshell: "Can AI recruit better than humans today? Hundred percent better than humans on average." He's got the data to back it up. Johnny explains why half of all recruiters will be gone within the next decade—and how to be in the half that thrives.
Johnny runs SocialTalent and has trained over a million recruiters globally. He survived launching an agency during the 20
How Candidate Experience Became My Primary Growth Engine, with Anthony Lewis
Most recruitment agencies waste £50+ per cold call meeting. Anthony Lewis found a better way to scale from startup to 50-person team.
Anthony's team made 1,500 cold calls for just 27 placements. That 1.8% conversion rate would panic most agency owners. Instead, he built a candidate experience system that turns rejections into revenue.
What You'll Learn:
How to build agency growth without ex
How a Fired Rookie Became a $6.5M Top Biller in Recruitment, with Dario Furman
Fired in 3 days, Dario Furman rebounded to bill $6.5M. Learn his recruitment growth strategies using relationships, niche focus & AI.
Fired three days into his first recruiting job, Dario Furman could have walked away. Instead, a bold “second chance” email to the CEO got him rehired and launched a 17-year executive search career placing 500+ professionals and billing $6.5M at StevenDouglas.
In t
How to Turn a Job Board into a Lead Engine Using Cold Email, with Jordan Whilden
What if your job board wasn’t just a place to post jobs—but the top of your sales funnel?
In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, Jordan Whilden shares how he scaled Ministry Hub, a faith-based executive search firm, by transforming a niche job board into a predictable lead generation machine. Fueled by a cold email campaign that delivers a 17% reply rate, Jordan’s model shows how recruiters
How to Win Clients and Predictable Revenue with a Subscription Search Model, with Andrew Mears
Tired of the outdated “thirds” model in executive search? Andrew Mears was too. That’s why he co-founded Lead Candidate—a niche search firm serving the pharma and bio-outsourcing sector—based on a transparent, fixed-fee subscription model that’s up to 30% more cost-effective than traditional pricing.
In this episode, Andrew reveals how Lead Candidate went from break-even to 133% revenue growth by
3 Smart Revenue Streams That Separate Top Recruiting Firms From the Rest
What does it take to build a recruiting firm that survives three recessions, operates across borders, and thrives without retainers?
In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, we spotlight David Fishman, founder of Sparrow Company—a bi-national executive search and staffing firm based in both the U.S. and Mexico. David shares how he rebuilt after nearly losing everything in 2009 and developed a
How to Win Retained Searches and Scale Your Desk with the Rainmaker Model, with Carol Wenom
How do you move from being a contingency recruiter to winning retained searches consistently? And how do you scale your desk without doing it all yourself?
In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, industry veteran Carol Wenom shares the exact mindset shift, client messaging, and team model that helped her make that leap and increase her billings by 70% in one year.
With over 40 years in engin
How to Build a Culture Where Values Actually Drive Results, with Matthew Wragg
What does it take to transform a 500-person staffing company and restore profitability while maintaining high engagement and renewed purpose? In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, you'll hear how one leader rebuilt culture and strengthened organizational performance through people-first leadership, without sacrificing values or authenticity.
After joining the company as a trainee in 2001,
How to Use LinkedIn’s 2025 Algorithm to Attract More Clients and Candidates, with Richard van der Blom
Why has your LinkedIn reach dropped even though your content is better and your audience is growing? You’re not imagining things. LinkedIn changed the rules in 2025, and in this episode, LinkedIn algorithm expert Richard van der Blom breaks down exactly what’s changed—and how recruiters can adjust to stay visible and competitive.
You’ll discover why organic reach is down by 50%+ for most users an
How Selective Client Partnerships Help Recruitment Agencies Scale Faster, with Allicia Birch
What if your growth path wasn't adding more clients, but working fewer, higher-quality roles with people who genuinely value your service?
Allicia Birch, founder of 4tify Recruitment, built a six-figure recruitment firm in her first year — without cold calls, without compromising on fees, and without chasing every job. Her success came down to discipline: working to a structured 12-hour day in 15
How Blunt Messaging and Smart Systems Grew a More Profitable Recruitment Firm, with Jordana Matsos
How do you grow a high-margin recruitment business without hiring a big team—or chasing every lead? And what happens when you go all-in on yourself, right before a global pandemic?
In this episode, I’m joined by Jordana Matsos, founder of Higher Equity, who shares how she launched a solo sales recruitment agency with no prior agency experience—and grew it into a $500K+ business by being radically
How Contract and Perm Revenue Fueled Our £2.6M Growth in Two Years, with Stuart Barnes
What’s the most innovative way to scale a recruitment firm—especially in a fast-changing, competitive market?
For Stuart Barnes, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Navitas Recruitment Group, the answer was combining quick-turn perm revenue with recurring contract income. That dual strategy helped Navitas grow from zero to over £2.6M in net fee income within just two years.
In this episode, Stua
How Exclusive Candidate Representation Drives an 87% Placement Rate, with Lysha Holmes
What if you could place nearly every candidate you represent—and do it at premium fees, without racing to the bottom?
In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, Mark Whitby is joined by Lysha Holmes, founder of QUI Recruitment and host of The Recruiters Recruitment Podcast. With over 20 years in Rec2Rec, Lysha shares how she’s built a values-led, inbound-only business with zero cold calling.
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How to Attract, Hire, and Keep Top Recruiters in a Competitive Market, with Andy Miller, Ep #260
Hiring great recruiters should be second nature for recruitment business owners—after all, it's what we do for clients daily. But when it comes to growing your own team, the stakes are higher, the risks are real, and the margin for error is razor-thin.
In today’s episode, we dive into what it really takes to attract, hire, and retain high-performing recruiters—especially in a competitive market
How to Attract Top Talent with Location-Specific Value Propositions, with Lisa Walder, Ep #259
If you're struggling to hire high-performing recruiters across multiple cities or regions, the issue might not be your comp plan—it’s your value proposition. In this episode, I sit down with Lisa Dixon of FIFTEEN WEST to unpack a strategy that more recruitment agency owners need to use: customizing your EVP (Employee Value Proposition) based on location.
Lisa shares hard-won insights from helping
Success Factors of Scale from Startup to 120 People, with Clive Hutchings, Ep #258
Why do most recruitment companies stall at 10 to 20 people, while others scale to 100+ across continents? In this episode, you’ll hear directly from someone who’s done it.
STR Group is a family of specialist recruitment brands focused on STEM sectors. As co-founder, Clive Hutchings has spent over two decades growing the business to more than 120 staff across the UK, Europe, and the US—all while st
Why the Next 5 Years Will Redefine the Recruitment Industry, with DeeDee Doke, Ep #257
What does the future look like for recruitment agency owners?
In this episode, I’m joined by DeeDee Doke, Editor-in-Chief of Recruiter magazine. With over 20 years in the role, DeeDee has a unique view of the industry, both in the UK and globally.
We recorded this live at the Recruitment Agency Expo in London, and talked about how recruitment is changing — fast.
Whether it's AI, M&A trends, or
How ADHD Became My Advantage in Running a Recruitment Business, with Adam Tobias, Ep #256
What if discovering your neurodivergent could unlock a deeper sense of purpose—and make your recruitment business more impactful?
In this episode, Adam Tobias shares how getting diagnosed with ADHD and autism in his 40s reshaped not only how he works, but why he works. That discovery ignited a new mission: helping organizations remove the hidden barriers that exclude brilliant, underrepresented ta
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