The Resilient Recruiter

This episode is sponsored by Spott.

Tycho De Saeytyd was enjoying his career at McKinsey when his former colleague Manu called about joining Spott. Ty told him there was less than a 1% chance he’d leave. He took the chance anyway, and today he is Head of US at Spott, which has raised US$21 million in Series A funding.

Ty walks Mark through a recruiter’s workflow, from taking a client brief to presenting a shortlist. He shows where the admin piles up after every call, how an agency’s existing database can surface the right candidates for a new search, and how AI can help identify new opportunities with clients you already know.

Mark also shares what his research taught him about AI and recruiter jobs, including why communication, influencing, qualifying and negotiation skills matter more as routine tasks become automated.

If your team spends more time updating the system than talking to people, this one is worth your time.

In this episode:

Why Ty left McKinsey after saying there was less than a 1% chance

Two ways legacy tech stacks cost agencies money

Why some top billers leave their records incomplete

How a client briefing call can become a search with suggested database matches

Why the recruiter should always see the reasons behind each suggested candidate

Turning one department at a client into an introduction to another

Using hiring growth and funding signals to identify opportunities

How a client portal shows the work behind your shortlist

Why AI is mostly replacing tasks rather than whole roles

The one question to ask any ATS or CRM vendor

Timestamps

00:00 The admin that doesn’t increase your GP
01:22 Leaving McKinsey for Spott
06:31 How legacy tech stacks cost agencies money
08:17 Making candidate conversations searchable
10:12 The 10x recruiter
14:34 From client brief to database matches
24:27 Why top billers skip their admin
30:55 Opening a new department with an existing client
32:09 Hiring and funding signals
37:26 Preparing candidate presentations
39:20 Client portals that show your work
45:20 AI, tasks and recruiter skills
54:29 The one question to ask an ATS vendor

About Tycho De Saeytyd

Tycho De Saeytyd is Head of US at Spott, an AI-native ATS and CRM for recruitment and staffing agencies. He moved from Antwerp to New York to build out Spott’s US business. Before Spott, he was a Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey, working with technology and private equity clients.

Connect with Tycho

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/desaeytydtycho/
Spott: https://spott.io/

Free Resources

Recruitment Business Scorecard: https://recruitmentcoach.com/scorecard
Free 30-minute strategy call: https://recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/

Connect with Mark Whitby

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwhitby/
Twitter: @MarkWhitby
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRecruitmentCoach/
Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter for new episodes every week.

A top biller wants equity in your recruitment firm. Can you offer them a future as an owner?

At Integra Partners, recruiters who generate $240,000 in placement revenue over 12 months become eligible for an invitation to buy shares. Eight of the firm’s 16 employees are shareholders. They receive distributions based on profitability, have access to the financials and have a defined arrangement for selling their shares when they leave.

My guests, Mark Waschek and Scott Wedel, lead Integra Partners, the employee-owned company behind Ag1Source and Career1Source. Before becoming President and COO, they were competing billers in different parts of the business.

Taking over from the founder meant learning to lead together, agreeing on where to invest and helping the founder prepare to let go. They explain why outside support, including a business psychologist, was so important to that process.

Mark and Scott explain how employee ownership works in practice, what it changes about recruiting and retaining your own team, and the tension between shareholder payouts and investing in growth.

In this episode:

How recruiters qualify for an invitation to buy shares

Why employees purchase shares with their own after-tax money

How share prices, profit distributions and exit payments work

What financial transparency demands of the leadership team

How a retiring shareholder’s priorities can conflict with growth

How two rival billers learned to lead one business

Why clearer roles helped improve employee engagement

Episode highlights:
[01:32] Why the founders built an employee-owned recruitment firm
[05:13] The $240K threshold and how recruiters buy shares
[06:55] Leading when shareholders can see the P&L
[09:42] The disagreement that brought the founder’s exit into focus
[12:54] What happens to your shares when you leave
[16:18] Balancing shareholder returns with investment
[23:23] How a psychologist helped with the leadership transition
[28:03] Dividing leadership responsibilities around their strengths

About Mark Waschek and Scott Wedel
Mark Waschek is President of Integra Partners. He joined Ag1Source in 2006 and brings a background in agriculture, executive recruitment and business development.

Scott Wedel is Chief Operating Officer. He joined as a sourcer, became a search consultant and recruited in banking before moving into leadership. He has since handed over most of his recruiting desk to focus on developing the team and running the business.

Connect with our guests:
Mark Waschek’s profile and contact details
Scott Wedel’s profile and contact details
Ag1Source
Career1Source

Podcast Partner
This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow, an AI-native ATS and CRM built for recruitment agencies and executive search firms. Learn more: https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow

Free Resources
Recruitment Business Scorecard
Free 30-minute strategy session with Mark

Connect with Mark Whitby
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach
Twitter: @MarkWhitby

Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter

If one of your top billers is asking about equity and you don’t have an answer yet, this one is worth your time.

A contingent agency filling 84.6% of its jobs? I wanted to know how.

That was Bilingual Source’s search-assignment fill rate in 2023. Every assignment comes with mandatory exclusivity. And Greg Benadiba has a way of earning that commitment even when the client is already working with other agencies.

After taking a detailed brief, he asks how confident the client is that those other agencies really understand the role. In 25 years of coaching recruiters, I hadn’t heard that question used in this way.

Greg is President and CEO of Bilingual Source and the author of Recruitment Principles. In this conversation, he explains the standards behind his team’s results, from choosing clients who will cooperate to making sure personal commission doesn’t get in the way of the best placement.

He also shares a mistake: a candidate he didn’t call back, the bad review that followed and the potential referral it put at risk. It’s a practical example of what keeping your word means in a business built on trust.

If you’re spending hours on jobs that never turn into placements, Greg’s approach will give you plenty to rethink.

What you’ll learn:

How Greg earns exclusivity through a more detailed job intake.

What asking for interview slots upfront reveals about client commitment.

How consistent business development gives you the confidence to turn work down.

How he tackles internal competition over candidates and commissions.

Where to start with allocating 10% of your time to improving the business.

How he uses AI to track the commitments he makes on calls.

How his Recruitment Principles GPT helped an account executive get a response after six weeks of client silence.

Episode highlights:

[01:56] The numbers behind Bilingual Source’s fill rate
[05:47] Two questions that help Greg earn exclusivity
[17:56] Testing client commitment before sending CVs
[26:28] Why colleagues are each other’s number one customers
[30:59] Making time to work on your business
[43:42] The missed callback and the cost of broken trust
[49:16] Getting a silent client to respond with the Recruitment Principles GPT

About Greg Benadiba

Greg Benadiba is President and CEO of Bilingual Source, a Toronto-based French and English recruitment firm. He started his career in customer service at Dell, joined Bilingual Source as a recruiter, and now owns the company. More than half of the firm’s placements come from network referrals, and it holds a 4.9-star Google rating. Greg is the author of Recruitment Principles: Timeless Truths in the Age of AI, which is required reading for everyone on his team. He first appeared on The Resilient Recruiter as guest number 14 in March 2020.

Connect with Greg:

Website and newsletter: https://gregbenadiba.com/
Recruitment Principles book: https://gregbenadiba.com/book/
Recruitment Principles Companion GPT: https://gregbenadiba.com/gpt/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbenadiba/
Bilingual Source: https://bilingualsource.com/

Podcast Partner:

This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow, an an AI-native ATS and CRM with built-in AI agents that structure your data, monitor job changes and capture call notes into your CRM.
Learn more: https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow

Free Resources:

Recruitment Business Scorecard: https://recruitmentcoach.com/scorecard
Get your FREE 30-minute strategy call: https://recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/

Connect with Mark Whitby:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwhitby/
Twitter: @MarkWhitby https://twitter.com/markwhitby
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRecruitmentCoach/
Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach https://www.instagram.com/recruitmentcoach/

Follow The Resilient Recruiter for weekly conversations with recruitment leaders about building a profitable business and a life you enjoy.

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 support and began training recruiters on AI. Today, she works with teams around the world from a small town on the South African coast.

In this conversation, Vanessa walks Mark through a repeatable workflow that combines a raw CV, interview notes and a LinkedIn profile into a formatted CV and executive summary in under five minutes. She explains how she gets AI to help write her sourcing prompts, organizes client information, and teaches it to sound like her.

They also discuss what recruiters need to do with the time they save. Vanessa explains why she ignores headhunters she can’t find online, and why a visible presence in your market gives clients and candidates a reason to trust you.

If your team pays for AI but is still dabbling with it, this episode will help you decide what to set up first.

In this episode:

How to identify a recurring recruitment task for AI to help with

Building a reusable skill for candidate CVs and executive summaries

Why Claude gave Vanessa the best results when she tested three tools

Removing sensitive personal information before uploading candidate documents

Using Exa for candidate research and Tavily for competitor intelligence

Getting AI to ask questions before it writes your sourcing prompt

Using skills, projects and examples of your writing to improve the output

Building the personal brand that helps clients and candidates trust you

Episode highlights:

[06:22] Getting up to speed with the right guidance
[08:38] CVs and executive summaries in under five minutes
[12:03] Testing the same workflow in Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude
[25:55] Getting AI to help write your sourcing prompt
[30:56] Dictating email replies with Copilot in Outlook
[34:11] How Vanessa uses skills alongside projects
[48:44] Why she checks the person behind a recruiter’s message
[59:25] Start with an end goal and work towards it with AI

About Vanessa Raath

Vanessa Raath is a South Africa-based recruitment trainer who works with recruitment teams worldwide on AI and talent sourcing. She was already known internationally for sourcing training before expanding into AI following ChatGPT's launch. Her first course focused on helping recruiters build a personal brand.

Connect with Vanessa

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessaraath/
Website: https://www.vanessaraath.com/
Tried and Tested AI Tools: https://start.me/p/l6bkk7/vanessa-raaths-tried-tested-ai-tools

Podcast Partner

This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow, an AI-native ATS and CRM with built-in data enrichment for recruiting businesses.

Learn more: https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow

Free Resources

Recruitment Business Scorecard: https://recruitmentcoach.com/scorecard
Free 30-minute strategy session with Mark: https://recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/

Connect with Mark

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwhitby/
Twitter: @MarkWhitby
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRecruitmentCoach/
Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach

Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter for new episodes every week:
https://plinkhq.com/i/1489513354

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 how Conexus reached $65M in revenue, with 50 internal team members and 230 consultants working on client projects. The firm generates over $750,000 in gross profit per desk, including researchers.
About 85% of the business is project consulting and interim advisory. Mike explains how that revenue supports growth and walks through the division of work between researchers, screeners, recruiters, and account executives. Two people work on the database all year so fee earners can spend their time talking to clients and candidates.
Mike also explains how he develops managers who can take over coaching and grow their own teams. He shares why top billers don't always make good managers, how overrides and equity reward leadership, and what allowed him to hand over his own book of business for the first time in 28 years.
In this episode:
How to identify the work you should hand off first
Why Mike and his partners went nine months without a paycheck
How a split desk works from research through to offer
Why account executives personally prepare candidates for interviews
How staying within a clear niche improves desk productivity
The conversion targets Mike uses to assess recruiting performance
How to develop and reward team leaders
What makes a recruiting firm sellable
Episode highlights:
[09:24] Building a business instead of owning a job
[12:15] Protecting recruiter time and generating $750K GP per desk
[14:20] The fear that keeps owners doing everything
[16:33] Funding the team before paying yourself
[19:24] How the split desk works
[38:25] Conversion targets and the daily call report
[48:54] What makes a recruiting firm sellable
[54:49] Developing managers who take over coaching
About Mike Kelly:
Mike Kelly is the Founder and CEO of Conexus Advisors, an advisory, interim and executive search firm focused on the Office of the CFO. A former CPA, Mike began his career at Ernst & Young. Over the course of his career, he has founded, scaled and sold three professional services firms, including Spinnaker Financial Resources, Beacon Resources and Tactical Cloud.
Connect with Conexus:
https://conexusadvisors.com/
Podcast Partners:
This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow, an AI-native ATS and CRM built for serious recruiting businesses. Learn more:
https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow
It is also brought to you by Juicebox, the modern AI platform for recruiting. Juicebox combines more than 30 datasets with AI models to support search, outreach and pipeline management in one workflow. Learn more:
https://recruitmentcoach.com/juicebox
Free Resources:
Book your FREE 30-minute strategy call:
https://www.recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/
Take the Recruitment Business Scorecard:
https://recruitmentcoach.com/scorecard
Listen to more episodes:
https://recruitmentcoach.com/podcast/
Connect with Mark Whitby:
Mark on LinkedIn
Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby
Mark on Facebook
Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach
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