The Resilient Recruiter

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
Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter so you never miss an episode.

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 behind their results.

"We got sloppy. And when you aren't tracking activity in any way, you can't see it coming."

In August 2025, a breakfast conversation between the three founders became the start of what Josh calls the reboot. That October, three recruiters each billed over $100K in a single month. At the time of recording, Synergy has 15 employees and revenue in the mid- to upper-$4 M range.

Josh explains how they introduced accountability into a firm built on freedom, what their scorecard now measures, and why shared office days became part of the reset. He also discusses supporting the team following the death of their colleague Cara, and the training process that has helped accountants become successful recruiters.

In this episode:

How a strong market can disguise weaknesses in your recruiting business

The breakfast question that prompted Synergy's reboot

How conversion data encouraged a top biller to improve

Why Josh prioritizes client interviews, job orders and calls

How a Bullhorn-connected phone system reduced manual administration

Why Synergy hires accountants and trains them to recruit

How a written blueprint and regular role plays support new recruiters

Episode highlights:
[01:24] Hiring accountants as recruiters
[07:28] Preparing financially to launch the business
[18:11] Dividing responsibilities between three founders
[22:32] Building the recruiting blueprint
[25:29] Practical role plays that involve the whole team
[43:58] The market shift that exposed transactional habits
[48:31] The breakfast conversation that started the reboot
[54:06] The three recruiting metrics Josh prioritizes

About Josh Volinsky
Josh is a co-founder of Synergy Search, an accounting and finance recruiting firm with offices in Maryland and Nashville. He began recruiting in 2007 and launched Synergy with Mark Hammond and Gary Palank in September 2020. He remains an active biller and joined The Pinnacle Society in spring 2025.

Connect with Josh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshvolinsky/
Synergy Search: https://synergysearch.com/

Podcast Partners
Recruiterflow: The AI-native ATS and CRM built for serious recruiting businesses. https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow

Juicebox: The modern AI platform for recruiting search, outreach and pipeline management. https://recruitmentcoach.com/juicebox

Free Resources
Take the 7-Figure Freedom 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: https://twitter.com/markwhitby
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRecruitmentCoach/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recruitmentcoach/

Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter: https://plinkhq.com/i/1489513354

What would you change if you could start your recruitment firm again today?