Growing & Scaling Your Agency in 2026: The Greg Savage Masterclass

In this special masterclass, Sam and Jory from H People — who have built and scaled their own recruitment agency, sit down with industry titan Greg Savage to unpack what real agency growth looks like in 2026.

Greg lays out a sharper path: decide whether you’re building a lifestyle shop or a sellable asset, then align your structure, metrics, and leverage to match. We get candid about the biggest threat and opportunity facing recruiters in 2026 and why chasing revenue at the expense of margin often leaves agencies bigger, but less profitable.

They explore the make-or-break decisions founders face before hiring: appetite for risk, willingness to step away from billing, and the discipline to niche down. Greg breaks down the “valley of death” at 10–15 staff, where owners cling to production and starve the business of leadership.

You’ll hear the KPIs that actually drive decisions — GP per staff member, staff costs as a percentage of GP, temp GP mix, debtor days, and expenditure per head — plus how to increase GP per recruiter without adding headcount and eliminate the time sinks quietly crushing productivity.

If you’re serious about scaling profitably in 2026, this masterclass is essential listening.

Transcript

Setting The Stakes For 2026

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome to Confessions of a Recruiter. This episode hosted by Sam Hope and Jory Humphreys. And in this episode, we're going to be looking forward specifically at what it takes to grow and scale the recruitment agency in 2026. With a very, very special guest today. One of the most respected voices in our industry, an advisor, author, commentator, Greg Savage. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Thank you, Sam, and thank you very much for that very, very flattering introduction. I love the way you read it exactly the way I wrote it for.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Great to have you here, Greg. Matt, you've seen multiple recruitment cycles over your decades here. What feels fundamentally different about growing an agency in 2026 compared to, say, 10 or 5 years ago?

Lifestyle Business Or Scalable Asset

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's totally different. You mentioned I've been in recruitment a long time, and it has been a long time. I'm in my fifth decade. So I've seen lots of cycles and I've seen the whole evolution of tech because there was no tech in recruitment when I started. And all of those things, you can you can name them the internet, uh social media, um job boards, LinkedIn, they all were predicted to destroy recruitment or change it. And they did change it, didn't destroy it. We we've done wonderfully through all those years. But I think I would sum it up by saying that right now, by no exaggeration, I I think it's the time of the biggest threat I've ever seen to our industry. And the flip side of the same coin, it's the time of the biggest opportunity. And what I'm driving at there is I think um the it's not only the technology, but it's customer expectations, it's um cost of running a business, it's a fundamental shift.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

At what point do you think an agency owner should start to think about scaling before they start their business? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Because in recruitment, as uh I think I was telling you, you must be sick of me today because we've had a we've had a few we've had a few chats. Um but um 80% of recruitment companies in Australia and the world have less than 10 staff. They are micro businesses, they are lifestyle businesses. In most cases, they dominated with permanent placement, which means they have no value to sell. They might be producing good income for the um owner, and and that's wonderful. Um but uh what I said before is I think that somebody who's starting a recruitment company, there's a lot of excitement around that. Sometimes it's done because it's a knee-jerk, you've lost your job, so you go out on your own or whatever. Somebody approaches you, you start your business. What you do, what you really should do is to think about what is your goal out of this thing. And there's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business. If you know, uh uh if you have five of you in a room, each building$500,000, everyone's gonna make a good living, and the owner could take a million dollars a year out of the business, but you will have nothing to sell. No one's gonna pay you for it. On the other hand, if you scale a business successfully, you might have an asset that someone will pay you significant money for. More likely, though, you'll scale it unsuccessfully, which means it'll get bigger and less profitable. In which case you'll stop getting the big income and you'll have nothing to sell. So you need to really plan what what what do I like? Do I want, do I have the skills to run a business? Do I have the appetite for risk? Do I have the cash? Or am I happy to work on my own, work with one or two other like-minded people, have a lot of flexibility in my life, earn a good living, but realize that when the day comes for me to close the door, I will lock the key and walk away. There'll be nothing there. So you should, you should. It doesn't mean to say you can't change your mind. Um, but I I think a lot of people scale their business or try to scale it because they just think they should. And I encourage them to work out whether they want to.

Pre‑Scaling Reality Checks

SPEAKER_02 3:59

For sure. Jory and I are quite well immersed into an ex-recruiter community. So we see a lot of uh, I guess exceptional recruiters come out and and start their own businesses. And I find over time, Jory, you might as well, that people, people's views change of their agency. You know, a lot of the time people will sort of come out expecting and wanting to sort of be a solo operator and grow the business on their own. And, you know, generally I find within sort of about six months or so, um, you know, when they've started making some good billings and, you know, look into the future and having some planning sessions and whatnot, you know, their their views and opinions change, and that's when they sort of, you know, start to start to look at at scaling or potentially hiring their first onshore or offshore uh recruiter to assist them. Um what are what are three key things uh an agency owner should do before they even think or consider about scaling or hiring?

SPEAKER_03 4:50

It just it follows on from what you just said. They should think about what their goal is. If you take your your your example you gave of someone that was six months or a year and then they think they should scale, sometimes that's driven by um boredom or loneliness. And and that may not be the best reason. Um uh sometimes it's driven by uh envy's the wrong word, but watching other people that have done things and they think maybe they should be there. You've really got to, I think, do a frank assessment of what your skills are and what your appetite is to take on the journey because it is not easy and the failure rate is extremely high. Are you prepared to change your role? A lot of people don't realize as they grow their business, they will have to stop doing things that currently they love. But you're not gonna grow a business if you're gonna be on the tools every day. You're gonna have to do other things. Uh, do you have the ability to manage people? Are you are you a leader? Are you prepared to sacrifice personal income in the short term, which is usually what happens, for the longer term goal? And sometimes you sacrifice the income and you still don't get the longer term. So, so um I uh I answer your question. A lot of thought, a lot of planning, a lot of soul searching, a lot of um talking to trusted uh trusted advisors and uh and and uh informally, I mean, uh, and just work out whether the dream of running a big business is the same as uh, or you understand the journey.

Ego, Niches, And Structure Traps

SPEAKER_02 6:12

What's the biggest mistake, I guess, um, or biggest mistake recruitment founders make when trying to scale? And I guess we've we've had a bit of an experience that ourselves as well, haven't we? But from your side, Greg, what what would you say the biggest mistake would be?

SPEAKER_03 6:24

Well, when you asked that question, I was thinking, why don't you guys just tell me your story?

SPEAKER_02 6:29

We we do have we do have some stories. Like we're you know, we we've we've grown and scaled quite quickly. We've uh you know moved into state as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

And yeah, I suppose the interstate thing is like probably not researching the market uh like thoroughly enough and thinking you can sort of replicate what you've done in one city and duplicate in the next. And turns out it's not as easy as copy and paste.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

No, it's not. And and I've and you know I I I was giving you guys a bit of curry, but I I wrote a book basically on the mistakes I've made in trying to scale businesses, which I did learn from and and and got a few things right eventually. But I think one of the biggest mistakes is hubris and ego and dream over reality, and and you need a plan. You need a very clear plan, preferably with advice from somebody who's done it. Um, because a lot of a lot of owners say, I'm gonna scale, and then they just hire two people and throw them at the at the mix. Hope it all works out, and it's not going to. The other thing is falling back on old habits. You you you actually have to actively say, I'm I'm no longer going to chase that business. I'm gonna flick it over to recruiter number one and I'm gonna coach recruiter number two because she'll never make it without my input. Whatever, I'm making it up. But there needs to be allocation of resources. Um, other mistakes I see is we're scaling, we're growing. Every business is good business. Let's have a go at that. Yes, we're an accounting specialist, but you can take that marketing job and have a go at that uh hospitality job. Uh, and that's a mistake. It's a distraction, there's no synergy, there's no leverage, the candidates are not uh serviced properly, um, etc. So not sticking to a niche is usually a mistake. And then not getting the structure as you grow. Usually they they're like, well, we're a small business, it's all hands to the deck. And there is an element of that, but I think you need people very focused. So, for example, if you're going to grow, you might what most people do is they say, well, let's do a bit of temp and perm and let's just do that. I don't think that's smart. You can do temp and perm, but you need dedicated people to focus on dedicated areas, accountable to grow those areas. Um, and of course, not having enough cash to support your dreams of growth.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Yeah. And that's that's part of the the the next point was what's the role of cash flow versus revenue when when you're deciding to scale and build your team?

Revenue Vs Cash Flow And Margin

SPEAKER_03 8:42

Well, revenue in itself is is good. It's increased revenue, but revenue doesn't equate, as you well know, to gross profit uh or net fee income. And neither of those things tell us whether the gross profit exceeds the expenses. So um uh chasing revenue at low margins and chasing revenue and increasing increasing your cost base too fast will uh result in very painful outcomes, obviously, and it's extremely common. It's extremely common. Um, you know, the I've I've sat around tables with people and and we've doubled our revenue this year, and I'm like, yeah, but we don't make any money and we're in debt. But Greg, we've doubled our revenue. Well, you're paying too much to generate that revenue, and that is not sustainable. Kind of obvious academically, but it happens all the time.

KPIs That Actually Matter

SPEAKER_02 9:34

I guess when we started H people and started scaling, we we relied on, I guess, metrics, didn't we, from when it was when it was time to hire internally or start a new desk or division. And that was mainly based around GP into the business. So we were we pretty much banked on$40,000 periods. So once we hit$40,000,$80,000 between us, that gave us enough cash to to break out into a new area, which s supported us quite well, I guess. As the business has evolved, we've got some some amazing business mentors.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

And I suppose that probably leads into like what like what would be your opinion? Are there any particular metrics or KPIs you think that are important for founders when they're when they're looking at scaling to be successful?

SPEAKER_03 10:13

Yeah, there are. And by the way, if someone would like to go to my website under free resources, there's a drop-down of ebooks, and one of them is is is metrics and KPIs, free. So grab that. But for this, I mean, pure revenue growth is a nice blunt metric, at least it's better than revenue decline. So we'd look at that. But gross profit per staff member on a monthly basis is a beautiful metric. Because um, you know, we might be able to say in a board meeting, look, our gross profit is increasing every month. And then someone like me will come along and say, but you've toppled your staff and your gross profit per person's going down, and that is not good. Um, management and staff costs as a percentage of total GP is also a very, very powerful and important metric to manage. So you take all your staff costs of everyone in the business as a percentage of total GP. When that gets anywhere above 60, it's not percent. It's not great. Um, if you're if you're really trying to grow a business that you want to sell, then you uh have a value of equity, then you're gonna want to grow your temp business. And so measuring temp GP is a percentage of permanent GP. We love permanent GP. It's very, very profitable. It's beautiful, it's very unfaithful, though, as you'll know. Um, and if you can grow your temp GP, it'll it will smoothen out the rough declines, but it'll also make you more profitable, but also make you more valuable. So in terms of a buyer. So I would I would look at that. Um, the other thing that that is worth looking at is debtor days. I mean, it's very unsexy, but how the amount of time I've seen a look a beautiful looking PL, they look at the balance sheet, there's no money because we don't collect our debts. And you know, we we charge the worst sort of scenario is we we we charge our clients low fees, low margins on temp, um, we give them massive guarantee periods like a year, and we also allow them to pay within six months. Well, good night nurse. So debtor's days. Um and then another beautiful one, mostly ugly when you look at it, but beautiful in its concept is expenditure per staff member. Because um, as you add staff, your expenditures is going to go up, but your expenditure per staff member shouldn't should go up because you should be getting leverage. So um those are four or five that I that I like, but as I said, I've got that ebook, it's got everything spelt out because there was a lot of words, what I've just spoken. I know it was quite uh, you know, hard for people to take that all in. So get the ebook off my um off my website.

Where Recruiters Waste Time

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Perfect. Um leading to a bit of the next section in regards to productivity. Um, where do you think, or where do you see recruiters wasting most of their time inside their business? Uh obviously billings is a big thing, but what's holding their billings back typically, do you believe?

SPEAKER_03 12:50

Well, I visited your company today, and I'd say mostly visiting the pub on the corner is the uh the biggest danger there. It sees a workout on a Friday afternoon. Yeah. Um look, there's a lot of things. Um not utilizing the database, not having access to candidates in the database, not having an up-to-date database, a database which we're proud of and tell everyone we've got 300,000 candidates on it, and yet it's actually a candidate graveyard because we don't know who's active and we don't know who's alive, and in some cases we literally don't know whether they're alive. Um and so we run ads. And we run ads which cost a lot and it generates a lot of candidates, most of whom are inappropriate, and we screen and we sort, and that is a tremendously inappropriate use of time. I'm not saying you shouldn't run ads. Searching for LinkedIn leads and then getting distracted by the birthday celebration articles and just going down that rabbit for um is a waste of time. Screening candidates via phone calls when they shouldn't even have made it because the candidates are putting in very beautifully presented uh applications that are AI enhanced and are not entirely true. Let's not let's not beat around the bush. People are lying on their applications and it's slowing recruiters down. Um and importantly, working on unqualified briefs from clients who are not even sincere about hiring or have given the job to six recruiters and have their internal team working on it and are advertising themselves. And then Johnny Recruiter is spending three weeks trying to fill that job, and there was only one chance out of a hundred he ever was. And so that's a lot of things, isn't it? Big time, definitely.

Founder Focus And The Valley Of Death

SPEAKER_00 14:33

What if, with a click of a finger, you could start your own recruitment agency? Well, now you can. With XRecruiter, launching your own agency has never been easier. In less than three weeks, you could be taking home 85% more of your billings with everything handled for you. You recruit, we take care of the rest. Click the link in the description to see if you are ready to take that next step.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Something that I'm quite interested to get you the perspective as well, um, given the case that we're scaling a little bit, but that in your experience, what activities should the founder um not be doing once the agency reaches a certain size?

SPEAKER_03 15:16

It's um it depends on the plan. Um, but I I again we mentioned this earlier today, but it's be helpful for the audience. I think recruitment companies, when they get over 10 people, between 10 and 15, they hit what I call the valley of death. And the valley of death is where recruitment company growth comes to die. And it's because the recruitment company owners um hang on to their old jobs. Now, when you when you've got under 10 people, they say two owners like like like you guys, you can manage those 10 people directly. You don't need a second tier. Uh you can also do your own billings, and then you know if you've got uh overseas professionals like like you do, and which adds a different dimension, then you you can you can scale to a degree. But once you start to get to hiring 12, 13, 14, 15 people, you cannot put your arms around that. And so when when that does happen, sometimes you get a false dawn and the company grows to 20. But I promise you, uh six months later it's it's back to eight because it all it all imploded. Um so um r the leaders have to consciously work out their strengths. Say there's two of you. Um one of you might be a good people leader, the other might be a great sales champion, for example. Um, play to those strengths and build a second tier of management. You cannot scale a business without a second tier of billing managers, and billing is the operative word, as well as the managing. The managing is more coaching. So they can help their four or five people reporting to them to the highest degree of productivity, but at the same time, they are billing and paying the way. The other mistake people make is they have non-billing managers in a small company. You shouldn't have them in any company, really, but certainly a small company, it's not going to work. It just doesn't add up.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

So the magic number sort of between that five and ten where you'd put in another level of management between the owner, agency owner, and the consultants.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Yeah, I always I don't know where I got this from, just experience, I suppose. I think a good billing manager can manage eight people, but then that billing manager is not actually transacting a lot. They are they are sales and they might be account managing. So they are doing sales, account managing, and they might make they should make the odd placement just to show that they've got this, they still do it, and they're chipping in, you know, uh 20 grand a month that sort of helps pay their salary, but they're getting massive leverage through the other rate. The other rate are billing exponentially more. If someone if someone's a billing manager is managing one person, then they've got to bill almost full-time.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Hate's the magic number. Any more than that, it gets a little bit loose.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

You're just juggling too much, you're not giving them what they want and what they need to thrive. You'll have staff turnover, you'll have you'll have service delivery issues, you'll have um, yeah, it's not a good place to be.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Now we're talking about billings. Um now, what's the quickest way you believe of increasing your billings without hiring more recruiters?

Profit Leaks And Compensation Plans

SPEAKER_03 18:02

Um, well, you're that's where you're gonna look at your metric at GP per recruiter. And okay, this is a generalization, but I bet you 90% of the people listening to this are gonna nod their heads in agreement. If you've got six recruiters in a recruitment company, you're gonna have two big billers, probably, one or two. They'll bill much more than anyone else. You're gonna have two underperformers or people on the way up learning, and you're gonna have two mediocre people. And so the big billers are carrying that. So instead of what people then do say we want to grow, we're gonna hire another person who typically ends up on the mediocre side of the scale or or not, and so it reduces our productivity per recruiter. More important to focus on individuals, get of the two that are underperforming, go hardcore, 90-day plan, help them to go from underperforming to at least average. Yeah. And with the average ones, try and get them up into the above average. And that means I'm not talking about bullying or anything silly like that. I'm talking about training, support, advice, accountability, and helping them get to the next level. Now, if you if you get an extra small number, five grand a month from six recruiters, that's thirty grand a month, which is half a million dollars. And a third of that goes to the recruiter, and the rest goes to profit. That's um, you know,$400,000, extra profit I just gave you by giving you that tip. You can put my commission on the corner. So that would be the one thing to do. Um, I I would you know, I was telling you guys this morning about the secret formula, which would apply in this case to activity, quality of that activity, and and activity with the right people. You've got to have the whole business focused on it. You know, let me just talk about KPIs for a minute. KPIs are a dirty word in recruitment, and they're a dirty word not because measurement is bad, it's how KPIs are implemented, implemented by by um mediocre managers that's given it a bad name because somebody's come in and said make a hundred calls, or somebody's come in and said send 50 resumes. Quality activity with the right people is what's going to drive the productivity. And you've got to help people, and you do have to measure. You can't how could okay, you two guys, you're billing 300 a year. Uh I'll change that. Have another look at you. You're billing million. You're bullying you're billing 200 a year for my example. Stay calm. And you're billing 500. You're both good guys, you both work hard, but you're billing 200. What am I gonna say to you? This is what most recruits make more calls. Yeah, make more calls, do more stuff. Come on, Sam, do better. That's that's that's like selling a soccer goal scorer to score more goals. He's trying, he's trying. He doesn't need you, you've got to give practical advice. These are the action steps. The other thing is harking back to what I said to the previous answer better qualified job orders, teaching your recruiters how to qualify a job order. I mean, a client gives a recruiter a job order, that's actually a wish list. It's a dream. And no one has ever placed anyone who fitted a job description 100%. So we know that. So we should work with the client through pushback, consulting advice to say, does it really need to have do you really need a double degree from Sydney University and a diploma in Mongolian throat singing for this accounting job? Do we really? No, we probably don't. So let's drop a few things. Do they really, you know, 80,000 and you tell stories, 80,000? I've placed several people true, all true.

unknown 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

Advice. You then shape the job description, make it villable, which is in your interest. I don't deny that, but it's also in the interest of the client and the candidate who gets the job. So those are just some of the things. Some of those things I've mentioned are as old school as recruitment itself, but just because things are old school doesn't make them wrong.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

For sure. So back to basics, constant training, uh clarity about what a productive day looks like, support through the downtime.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

Um And also um making sure that your processes support your recruiters. So that that means that you have an ATS that works, that we stick to it. We by that I mean we we implement and input the right data. Um maybe an offshore professional to support a recruiter or a team of recruiters so that they're not getting sucked into the admin would be smart. You've got to work that out. That's what you guys at at Wingman do. So that's I I completely support um both tech and offshore professionals to support recruiters to do high-value work that only recruiters can do. That last two sentences was the most most important part of what I've said today, and all of it was genius.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Very much so, very much so. Um next next segments on profitability and healthy business practices. Um, a lot of agencies grow their revenue but struggle with m with margins. Uh, what's the biggest profit leaks that you've seen in in recruitment businesses historically?

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Well, there's there's there's several, so we'll dive into them. The biggest one is chasing revenue over margin. Um so I've sat around board tables and I've you know I've also I've also made this mistake myself several times. So I'm sort of speaking a little bit as though you know everyone else is stupid and I'm I'm clever. I'm the stupidest because I've done them all multiple times, but I've I got to the point where I can now recognize them. So um a conversation like so we're gonna we're gonna we've been offered this opportunity to for a preferred supply agreement with um ABC Limited. It's a million dollars a year in in revenue. Uh we've got to take it. And then someone like me might say, um, what's the actual gross profit that's gonna come from it? Um that's 180,000. And and how how many people we'll have to have two people working full-time on it. So just do the math.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

So you've got 70k wages and you've got no profit in the business. Yeah.

What A Healthy Desk Looks Like

SPEAKER_03 23:59

But it's a million dollars, Greg. We're gonna go from 67 million. You're fucking going backwards. So I think that's um a huge um denuder of profit in a business. Um the wrong sal the wrong compensation plans. Oh, by the way, you can go again to my website under free resources. There is a an ebook on compensation plans. And um, you know, there is no such thing as a perfect compensation plan, but there are some that are disastrously wrong. And and they include those that um give commission to consultants too early, and by that I mean they haven't really even covered their basic costs. And we it's a C monkey, feed monkey thing. It's like, oh, you made your first placement. Here's five percent. No, you're on 80 grand or 100 grand, you've got to cover that, and then we'll give you a bigger share. And you should reward people who have perform well generously. So if somebody's covered their salary three times, once for the salary, once for the cost of the seat, in other words, the on cost the on cost, and one as a return to the business. Above that, you can be generous. You can give them 40% because they already made a profit. But don't give them 20% of every dollar as an example.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

No, they've got to cover their seats.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

They've got to cover it. So the other thing is that uh so you've got you've got compensation plans that this is to to to to cut into your profits, chasing margin, chasing revenue over profitable business, um, and your back office costs rising more quickly. So we've got five billers, five good billers, six, but we've also added a marketing person and an accountant, and um, we're spending a lot more on marketing and we're doing all these things. They all sound good, and we all, but we've got to cut our coats according to our cloth. So we can't, if we're not seeing the revenue climb, now you might you might take a strategic punt where you say, I'm investing, and it'll drop through. A couple more I can mention to you, non-billing managers. I still see that. It's not as uh common as it was. Now, look, if you're running a business under under 25 people, I don't see why that's ever necessary. Everyone should be involved in sales um at some point. Yeah. I mean, in my last job actually running a recruitment company, which was Firebrand, I did I think 65 client visits. I was a CEO. It was a company with offices all over the world. Um, but that's only two a week. It's not even two a week, is it? It's like one a week. Um so a couple of hours.

unknown 26:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

But the benefits were Greg says we've all got to sell, but he's doing it. Um, I was going out with consultants. You don't get credibility just because you're titled CEO. You've got to show that you're in the trenches. Uh yeah, and and that there's a lot of, I mean, I believe in marketing, um, but I don't believe in uh marketing that is brand, just brand marketing. We're not Nike. We don't like a classical conversation. So your marketing needs to create uh, I don't know, a document that allows a consultant to go on a meeting. That's valuable marketing. But just saying it increases our brand, please.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Don't don't fool yourself. What what defines a healthy recruitment desk? Um, I I guess looking at both temp and perm in your opinion?

Modern Leverage: Tech And Offshore

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Are you asking whether I should do temp and perm on the same desk?

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Maybe within the business, I'll rephrase that. Uh a healthy recruitment business, um, and should it include both both temp and perm in your opinion?

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Well, yes, it it should, in my opinion, include both temp and perm, and I'll justify that. But even though you didn't ask the question because you saw the look in my eye and you were scared, you big baby generation Z marshmallow. Don't make people, one recruiter do temp and perm. They're different jobs, they need focus. And if you've got someone who's a perm recruiter and you get them to do temp, they'll be distracted and they'll gravitate back to perm because perm is juicy, it's huge rewards. Um, so you're never going to build a temp site. Um, you've got to have if someone's doing temp in your business, and and there should be, then that person's got to wake up every morning dreaming temp and focused on it. Um there can be very rare occasions where you might have an overlap, but I won't even go down there. It's not unique a situation. So what what what what we need is to help um a healthy recruitment desk or to define it. The first thing is that the quality of the job orders is high. They're exclusive, they are um well qualified. Uh the client is acting as a partner with that recruiter. That is the first sign of a healthy recruitment desk. It won't be healthy. It might bill sporadically quite a lot, but it's not healthy if it's transactional, because if the person's away for four weeks, it collapses. That's the end of that. Let alone if they leave. Um, it's a desk that has a high history of repeat business. And not only repeat business, but preferably where we've got the accounting desk, but also the marketing desk, the perm desk, the temp desk, we've got multiple points of contact. We'd make it healthy. Um, the quality of the client itself, and by that I mean the behavior of the hiring manager or the talent acquisition person, which is more collaborative. Partnership returns your calls, gives you feedback, doesn't cut across your lines, like call the call the candidate directly, um uh responds to your advice. I mean, the they it's their company, they make their decisions, but you know, you don't go to a doctor and then tell the doctor what to prescribe. You don't go to the accountant and then tell the accountant what to do on your tax return. You don't go to the lawyer and tell them what to put in the contract. If you trust them, you take their advice. That's a healthy recruitment desk. Um there's a good there's a good repeat supply and flow of candidates. Uh the client, the the the desk, the recruiter running the desk has a lot of warm candidates. And by that I mean they're not actively looking, but they are available to be seduced. You wouldn't be able to measure it, but but where the client thinks of the recruiter by name. They think, I'm gonna call Sam. I'm gonna call those guys over at H people. I'm gonna call Sam. He's my man.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

That's it. More of a partnership rather than a transaction repeat business.

Trust, Change, And Adoption

SPEAKER_03 29:53

Those are all signs that don't protect you completely, um, but usually they can withstand a few screw-ups, they can withstand a downturn, uh, and and when it picks up, a desk like that can just fly.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Um, might change gears a little bit, and and we've obviously brought up Wingman a couple of times throughout the conversation. And next segment's a little bit about the modern leverage and what a company like Wingman could offer. Recently you've partnered with the Wingman team, which is very exciting. But what problem do you see them solving that recruitment agencies may have struggled with for years?

AI, Temp Growth, And Retained Search

SPEAKER_03 30:26

Okay, well, I'll answer that question by by just addressing I think at the beginning of this um webinar I said, or this podcast, I said it's time of greatest risk and time of greater opportunity. And as I said then, that is not just uh attention grabbing. I believe that to be the case. And one of the risks is um and uh and the opportunities, depending on how you respond, is for recruitment company owners to understand that we have to evolve the way the work within the recruitment gets done. What do I mean by that? Well, there's three there's three main parameters. One is big chunks of the job will and and need to be automated. So stuff that's transactional, that's hack work, that's repetitive, that you know we spoke earlier about that recruiters hate doing and absorbs their time, uh screening, uh short listing, uh reference checking, maybe, um, quite a lot of that sort of work, logistics, um, some outreach, etc. That can be automated. And we should um a big part of a recruitment company owner's job right now is to work out what it is for him or her and what tech will do that seamlessly without destroying the other processes in the business. But we're not talking about AI today, so that's another whole story. But you're gonna order so a lot of work will be automated. The second thing is a lot of work will become more human than ever before. You know, the days of recruiters sitting behind, hiding behind digital, spamming resumes around town and making a lot of money are fast becoming redundant or over. Um, I think the recruiter's job will evolve to a much more consultative one. I think they'll need to be a trusted advisor. I think they'll need to be a confidant, I think they'll need to um um really partner with their clients. And so you work is going to, yes, we're automating that, but this is actually getting more face-to-face. And then the third part is a lot of the work that recruiters do can be heavily automated, but also still requires a human touch. But it doesn't require the human touch of someone being paid$150,000 a year who is a deeply skilled consultant. That person doesn't, shouldn't, in the new world of work, be drawn into hours of screening irrelevant people, updating the ATS, etc. That's where I believe what Wingman does offers magnificent help. And and I think um, you know, let's be let me be perfectly honest. Um, offshoring is not new. In fact, it's been around decades. Um, it may have a slightly sullied name in some people's minds. They're not even sure why. Maybe they think it's second second standard work being done. I think what's what needs to be understood is, and this is what Wingman does offer, is that you can get high-quality people who who actually, in some cases, will do the work better than your staff because that's their main job. And that complementary nature of those three components, uh, I think is what an owner of recruitment company should be planning right now. Most of them are not doing anything like what I've just described.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

That's it. It was it was a pleasure to have you in the the Hage people office earlier and introduce you to our team and got to spend a little bit of time with uh with Kaz as well, one of our offshore remote professionals, and hear a little bit about, I guess, how she supports Kurt and how we turn Kurt's 50 hours a week that he works into you know 90 hours a week to really free him up to grow.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

Well, I mean, I don't want this to sound like an advertorial because it's not, and I'm I don't say anything I don't believe. But I really enjoyed meeting your people today because you heard me ask them, has this made you more productive? And tell me how, and it definitely has. And they are enthusiastic about it. And I think that's the other thing. You know, I I think you should do what I've described, and that is um have offshore or remote professionals supporting your recruiters. But you've got to get the recruiters on board because it won't work unless the recruiters engage and one-on-one makes three. That's the beauty of it. One-on-one makes three. The all guys told me that they bill more than they possibly could on their own, and it certainly bills more than the salary of the offshore professional. So we are miles ahead. Everybody's ahead.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

What's the mindset shift that founders, recruitment agency owners, senior leaders need to get to really trust a remote professional inside their business?

Uncomfortable Advice And Closing

SPEAKER_03 34:48

Well, the first thing is that um owners of recruitment companies are similar to most human beings, is that they're very slow to accept change and they're comfortable with what they've done before. And that's their biggest Achilles heel, to be honest. You know, the one thing you cannot do in this market is nothing. So that's what I'd say to you. Doing nothing will put you into the category of those recruiters who are going to be phased out because it's not we're not a lot of the values and a lot of the skills of the past will still be relevant, don't get me wrong. In fact, some of them will come back into vogue, and some of the older school recruiters will love the fact that it's going to be more consulted. So I think there's a feeling that the, as I touched on before, the work's inferior. Um, it's something you add on if you're not serious about that part of your business. Um it's it's low-value work only. It's not, you know, these things are not uh universally true about offshoring. Um also, you can't trust the person over there to do good work. You know, I can't even trust my local recruiters when they're at home because I think they're at the beach. So how am I going to trust a guy in Manila? Um, but indeed, um there the people are hired for their trustworthiness, but also they're trained. Also, they're online and you can measure their activities exactly the same as you can as a as a locally based recruiter. Um, and um, I think if you've ever had an experience of offshoring and it didn't go well, one of the things that often was the case is that the people weren't fully trained, they were just tacked on and like good luck. Well, you know, even if you do that with a local recruiter, they are very likely not to work out. So you've got to put the effort in if you want the return.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

It sounds like in in 2026, as more technology comes, it's what can you do to get that competitive advantage against your against your competition.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Absolutely. And and um solving this puzzle, I'm not sure if that's the right word, of of what work should be done by what of broadly speaking, the tech, the local highly skilled consultant, or the offshore professional who is also highly skilled, but just handles that sort of work which is within their capability. And some of it's very capable. I mean, we've got as I was telling the story, you know, this wasn't even Wingman, it's another organization. My my client there was getting all his nurse temp jobs filled by offshore people, and his actual fill rate and efficiency and candidate and client satisfaction went up by offshoring it. Um he still had on onshore people, but he hasn't hide any extra of those since then. Um, because there's a massive arbitrage on the salaries as well. And let's not hide away from that. It is a cost saving, but it's not the reason I do it. It is actually making your highly expensive, highly valued onshore recruiters more productive.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Allows your consultants to provide a better service to their clients because they get to spend more time with them, and the candidates also get a better experience because there's more time in the day to spend with both parties. Um, next section future of recruitment and advice to agency owners. Um, how do you see AI automation and offshore talent reshaping recruitment agencies over the next, say, three to five years?

SPEAKER_03 37:54

Well, I kind of answered that in my description of um how work will be done, but I will give you a flat out prediction for how our industry is going to reshape. And it is a prediction, and I think uh Executive Search uh will thrive, those big global firms. Their revenues are well up on previous years, they are thriving. And and that, of course, is in a domain which it's a partnership, it's nuanced, it's networking, it's bespoke, it's consultative, it's at a senior level. And um technology still will play into that, but that's thriving. I think I think temp and contract will thrive. Uh, I think it will be affected by um technology and and and and and uh lower level or more shift work type temp will be increasingly automated. But um I think we're heading towards a world of increasingly gig economy. I think your children, and I know we talked about having kids, will actually maybe have several jobs at once. You know, I think that's the sort of world we're moving to though. A career that we have all grown up with may not be, it may be that I've got several jobs. Um but anyway, I think it'll be a gig economy. So I think matching people and skills to the available jobs and vice versa will grow. So I think temp will grow. But I think multi-listed contingent, non-exclusive, non-retained perm placements will decline because it's based on speed of a client giving a job to four agencies and basically saying, doggies, here's a bone. On the beach doggies run.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

And everyone goes and does this thing.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

And they all run, and then one of them gets the bone. Yeah, the other three.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

It's just a race, isn't it? A race to submit.

SPEAKER_03 39:42

It's a race, and it's not in anyone's interest. No. Right? The recruiters um fill one job out of four, which means they only get paid for 25% of what they do. The client is actually getting their critical hire based on speed instead of quality. Now, if you had to have some brain surgery, would you go to the surgeon who did the best or the one who did it the fastest? I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what they're doing. Um, and candidates who routinely say recruiters are terrible at getting back to them, which is true, but no recruiter came in in the morning and said, let's let's have a let's have a candidate pissing off strategy day. We've really got to piss our candidates off. No recruiter wants to piss off. They just can't do it because they're so busy chasing all those job orders on the beach with the other little doggies. And I can't get the geez, I mix the metaphors there, metaphors there, haven't I? So I think that automation, um, in-house talent teams, access to resumes is not the differentiator. Access to candidates that clients can't find themselves is now that takes search, networks, niche specialization. And that's why I believe smart recruiters will move, even if they're not at executive search, they will move to exclusive retained, even at more junior levels. And so you should actually ironically be looking to handle less job orders, but fill a higher percentage of them. Having said that, I think a lot of people will be slow to make that shift and they will lose. So I think you've got to be proactive on this. So it's gonna be counterintuitive. It's like, what's that crazy savage talking about? We don't even have enough jobs, and he's saying get less jobs. Well, if you're filling one out of five, wouldn't it be better if you got two out of three and filled um, you know, it's sort of it's sort of how can I put it? If you're filling one, two jobs out of ten, wouldn't it be better if you only got four and filled three?

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

You know, that's that's the thinking.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

What's one piece of uncomfortable advice most agency owners need to hear right now, in your opinion? Lay it on him.

SPEAKER_03 41:32

Lay it on him. I would have thought I've said quite a few, but I I think, I think um you've got to work on yourself as a project. You've got to run towards the technology, you've got to um avoid complacency. And and um, as I think I know I said earlier today, people get very upset when I call them complacent because they think I mean lazy. And it's not there's no one lazy in recruitment, you can't last a week. Um complacent means satisfied with the status quo, and that is your biggest danger. You've got to you've got to proactively slaughter some sacred cows. Um, not everything, not willy-nilly, but with thought. Some stuff that we've always done that we think is here forever, it's got to go. Like accepting job orders in competition and then reinventing ourselves as a specialized niche, mini search firm, and then we can charge higher fees and we can hold our. The other thing about contingent, because the the my prediction of it dying will take years, right? It'll slowly decline. People will make and what's gonna happen is that the cost of running a recruitment business is gonna go up, but the fees are gonna go down. Well, you know what that ends up in. That's what's that's gonna happen unless you change.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

For sure. Greg, look, thank you so much for joining us on the special episode of Confessions of a Recruiter today. It's been uh great hearing it having a bit of a chat with you and hearing you talk. For anyone that's uh I guess looking into or open to working with an offshore provider, feel free to get in touch with us today. Jory, Greg, thank you so much. Thanks so much. Thanks, Greg.