The Resilient Recruiter

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 alongside Guy Martin and Chris Logue.

Today, Eden Scott generates approximately £25 million in annual revenue with 38 consultants across Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow. At its peak, the business had nearly 70 people.

In this episode, Michelle talks through what it took to rebuild around a smaller, higher-performing team - and how that decision changed everything about how the business runs today.

She covers the hiring process Eden Scott uses to find recruiters who don't need managing, why they've stayed on the 360 model for 23 years while everyone else splits desks, and what keeps recruiters at Eden Scott for years in an industry known for high turnover.

She also shares what the last 18 months have looked like on the ground in Scotland - and why relationship-led recruitment still matters more than ever.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How Eden Scott rebuilt from 70 people down to 38 - and what changed

How COVID became an opportunity to rebuild around the right people

The hiring process - including why interviewers never discuss candidates between stages

What Michelle is actually looking for when she makes a hiring decision

How their commission and retention structure works, including sabbaticals at 5, 10, and 15 years

How the 360 full-desk model still produces a £25 million business

What consistent business development actually looks like in practice

Episode highlights:

[13:39] How COVID forced a complete rethink of the business

[17:51] Why Michelle has no interest in scaling back to 70 people

[26:29] Why Eden Scott has stayed on the 360 model while others split desks

[35:30] The hiring process - and why interviewers don't discuss candidates between stages

[45:11] The retention strategies that keep consultants at Eden Scott for years

[52:18] Why good recruiters don't need to be pushed

This episode is sponsored by Recruiterflow - an AI-first ATS and CRM built for recruiters who want to spend less time on admin and more time on relationships. See it in action at recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow.

About Michelle Lownie: Michelle Lownie is the CEO and co-founder of Eden Scott, one of Scotland's leading recruitment firms with annual revenue of approximately £25 million. She began her career in 1989 at Melville Craig and co-founded Eden Scott in 2003 alongside Guy Martin and Chris Logue. The firm operates across Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Glasgow with 38 consultants.

Connect with Michelle: LinkedIn: Michelle Lownie Website: edenscott.com

Connect with Mark: Free 30-minute strategy session: recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session Mark on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/markwhitby Follow on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

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 inside Greenhouse studying the top of the recruiting funnel, he launched PIN to solve a specific, persistent problem: the candidates most worth finding are the ones current sourcing tools miss.

In this episode, Steven explains why 30% of top talent is essentially invisible in LinkedIn searches. He breaks down how PIN's shadow resume technology rebuilds candidate profiles from external data to surface people who've never described themselves online. He also shares the outreach approach that generates 30 to 40% response rates, the exact sequence he recommends (3 emails and 2 LinkedIn touches), and the four most common mistakes that quietly destroy deliverability.

The bigger picture matters for every recruiter working in an increasingly noisy market. The era of high-volume outreach is coming to an end. Email providers are measuring engagement signals. Spam filters are getting sharper. The recruiters who win over the next two or three years will be the ones who source fewer candidates, make each one count, and treat every outreach like it's going to the one person who can fill the role.

This is a practical conversation about what's changing in sourcing and how to address it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why the most qualified candidates rarely appear in standard keyword searches

How PIN's shadow resume makes unfindable candidates findable

What PIN's autopilot mode does and how to set it up with just two inputs

Why you should cap your outreach sequence at five steps

The four most damaging outreach mistakes recruiters make

Why including a Google Doc link beats pasting the job description every time

How to structure omnichannel outreach across email and LinkedIn

Why the top 1% of billers operate from a very short candidate Rolodex

Episode highlights:

[3:49] From Interseller to Greenhouse to PIN - Steven's journey

[9:34] The talent curve: why top candidates don't show up in search

[13:36] PIN's North Star KPI: 7 out of 10 candidates accepted

[27:32] Autopilot mode: 50 candidates sourced for you every weekday

[37:34] Why volume sourcing is running out of road

[44:57] The four outreach mistakes killing your response rates

[49:50] The 5-step sequence Steven recommends

[1:04:12] How the top 1% of billers think about their candidate pipeline

Guest bio: Steven Lu is the co-founder and CEO of Pin.com. He previously founded Interseller, which helped place over 40,000 candidates before being acquired by Greenhouse in 2021. He spent two years at Greenhouse before launching PIN in December 2024. Steven is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Connect with Steven: Pin.com - book a free demo or start a free trial

Connect with Mark: Free 30-minute strategy session: recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session Mark on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mwhitby Follow on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

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 on the other side changed how he runs every search.

His process replaces the standard job description with a short video interview between the recruiter and the hiring manager. Qualified candidates see the role in the manager's own words before a single formal interview is scheduled. On the hiring side, the manager receives the candidate's personal why on video, written samples, and personality profiling. Both sides walk into the first conversation already informed.

A VP of HR, after seeing it, told Darwin his firm had just paid $97,000 for an executive search and received resumes and scheduling. "We didn't get anything like this."

In this episode, Darwin breaks down the collapse, the lessons, and the process he built from scratch — including two specific things every recruiter can use this week with no software required.

In this episode, you'll discover:

Why eight of nine clients can vanish in one quarter and what it exposes about your business model

The three root causes of underperformance most agency owners never diagnose

Why personal why has to match company why when hiring, or it breaks when things get hard

How a hiking idea became a platform that's changing how retained search is delivered

The hiring manager video that replaces the job description and why candidates respond differently

"How Darwin's process consistently delivers results that clients say they've never experienced before

Two things you can apply this week with whatever tools you already have

Episode highlights:

0:00 Intro

1:41 How Darwin built a $2.5M firm, then lost it

5:43 Eight of nine clients stop overnight

11:16 What the collapse taught him

22:05 The hedgehog lesson: too many projects, not enough oxygen

28:15 Why misaligned values break down when things get hard

36:39 Managing your own business vs. someone else's money

40:48 The expectation failure: "Nobody ever told me."

44:22 The hike that became a platform idea

47:48 Inside Top Talent Accelerant: the hiring manager video

53:59 How the platform is being commercialized

1:05:54 The $97K fee moment

1:11:20 Two things you can use this week

Guest bio: Darwin Shurig is the founder of Top Talent Accelerant, a medical device and medtech executive search firm. He built the firm to $2.5 million in revenue with $1.2 million in personal production before a sector-wide downturn in 2023 disrupted the business. He is a Pinnacle Society member, author of Modern Day Job, an Amazon bestseller published in 2024, and is currently writing a second book on talent management strategy.

Connect with Darwin: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darwin-shurig/ Website: https://www.toptalentaccelerant.com/

Connect with Mark: Free 30-minute strategy session: recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session Mark on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mwhitby Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

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 years of consistent billings.

He’s used the handwritten planner for nearly 40 years.

Why does he track talk time instead of call volume?

And the old-school business development strategy most recruiters have abandoned.

Rich is the founder of Team Bradley and a Pinnacle Society member for nearly 30 years. He’s billed $28 million personally. At 67, working solo alongside his wife, he’s still going strong.

This isn’t about talent.

It’s about cadence, commitment, and building a career you actually want to keep.

If you’re wondering whether you can sustain this long term, this episode will change how you think about the business.

Resources Mentioned
👉 Find out exactly where your recruitment business is getting stuck. Take the free 7-Figure Freedom Scorecard in under 10 minutes: https://recruitmentcoach.com/scorecard

Sponsors
👉 Same team, same market — but 30% more productive. Recruiterflow is an AI-first ATS and CRM built for recruitment agencies and search firms. Book a demo: https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow

👉 One 30-minute session per month gives you 30 days of LinkedIn video content — fully edited and ready to post. Built for busy recruiters: https://recruitmentcoach.com/video

What You'll Learn
Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:59 44 years in recruiting and $28 million billed — he nearly quit after 7 months
00:05:10 Growing up with abusive, alcoholic parents and running away from home at 15
00:06:21 The voice that drove him for years: "You're never going to amount to anything."
00:17:08 Six months with no placements, and the manager who refused to let him quit
00:19:38 The cardboard box moment, what he overheard walking out the door
00:21:33 Two placements in one week and what total commitment actually looks like
00:25:15 Success is cadence, not luck, the daily planning habit he's used for 40 years
00:32:09 Filling jobs versus placing applicants: the philosophy behind a client-driven business
00:39:02 Why he measures talk time, not call volume, and his daily target
00:42:22 Why reference checks are his primary business development strategy
00:53:25 Polite, professional, persistent, and why that's enough
00:56:18 The cancer diagnosis that reshaped everything and why it happened twice
01:10:28 Still targeting $600K-$700K a year, working solo, at 67

About The Resilient Recruiter
The Resilient Recruiter is hosted by Mark Whitby and is one of the top recruiting podcasts in the world, with over 520,000 downloads across 34 countries. Every week, Mark interviews recruitment agency owners, executive search leaders, and top billers to uncover what's actually working in today's market.

Connect with Rich Bradley
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbradley/
Team Bradley website: https://teambradley.com/

Connect with Mark Whitby
Free 30-minute strategy call: https://recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwhitby/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recruitmentcoach/

👍 Subscribe if you’re serious about building a recruitment career that actually lasts.

Rich Bradley has been recruiting since 1982. He’s billed $28 million. He’s been a Pinnacle Society member for nearly 30 years. And at 67, working solo alongside his wife, he has no intention of stopping.

In his first seven months, he made zero placements.

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 the moment everything changed.

This episode is about what sustained success actually looks like across four decades in recruiting.

Rich breaks down the daily planning habit he’s used for nearly 40 years, why he tracks talk time instead of call volume, and why reference checks remain one of his most reliable sources of new business long after most recruiters abandoned them.

He also talks candidly about growing up with abusive, alcoholic parents, surviving cancer twice, and how those experiences shaped both the recruiter and the person he became.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

The cardboard box moment that changed his career

The handwritten planner system he’s used for nearly 40 years and why skipping it derails his day

Why he targets three to four hours of talk time daily

How reference checks generate clients, candidates, and referrals

Why he won’t work with clients he wouldn’t want to work for

How two cancer diagnoses reshaped his business and priorities

What polite, professional, persistent looks like over a 44-year career

Episode Highlights

[0:59] 44 years in recruiting, $28 million billed and he nearly quit after 7 months
[19:38] The cardboard box moment, what he overheard walking out the door
[25:15] Success is cadence, not luck - the daily planning habit
[42:22] Why reference checks drive his business development
[56:18] The cancer diagnosis that reshaped everything
[1:10:28] Still targeting $600K–$700K a year, working solo, at 67

About Rich Bradley

Rich Bradley is the founder of Team Bradley, a boutique IT and technology recruiting firm based in the Chicago area. He started in recruiting in 1982, has billed $28 million over a 44-year career, and has been a Pinnacle Society member since 1997.

Connect

Connect with Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richbradley/
Connect with Mark: https://linktr.ee/recruitmentcoach