Episodes

369
Oct. 27, 2026

Burnt Out At $650K. Then He Hired Offshore

Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Well Oiled Machine, proven offshore recruiters you pay directly, no middleman: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Part 2 of 2. Part 1 gave you the first three steps of the offshore playbook: function, region, and compensation. This is where it gets real. Steps four and five, finding the person and supporting them,...
368
Oct. 26, 2026

7 Out Of 10 Firms Fail At Offshoring. The Other 3 Do This

Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Well Oiled Machine, proven offshore recruiters you pay directly, no middleman: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Part 1 of 2. I lost thousands trying to offshore. Did every single thing wrong, swore it off, and avoided this topic for two years. Then I sat down with Greg Fischer, who built an 18-person internation...
Oct. 22, 2026

How To Grow A Recruiting Firm From $1M To $25M

🎟️ Tom Kosnik is speaking at the Firm Leaders Summit presented by Crelate, November 16 to 18. Every live session is free: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/ 🚀 This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that captures every conversation and tells you the next action to take: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ We recorded this conversation with Tom Kosnik in 2024, during one of the longest down stretches the recruiting and staffing industry has seen. We're bring...
366
Oct. 19, 2026

$50M A Year Proves Elite Recruiters Don't Chase Clients.

Registration is open for the Firm Leaders Summit, three days built for recruiting firm owners and leaders, November 16 to 18. Hiring and training recruiters, growth, BD, and becoming the rainmaker for your firm: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that captures every call, email, and message automatically and tells you the next action to take: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Most agency owners chase clients every si...
365
Oct. 15, 2026

$500K For Years. 1 Hire Put Him On Pace For $1M

David Dickey was a consistent $500K biller for years. This year he is on pace to break $1 million. When asked what changed, his answer was not a new sales script or a bigger client list. It was one hire. The Firm Leaders Summit is November 16, 17, and 18. Three days built for recruiting firm owners and leaders: hiring and training recruiters, growth, BD, and becoming the rainmaker for your firm. Register here: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com This episode i...
Guest: David Dickey
364
Oct. 12, 2026

Why Your Recruiting Desk Is Quiet Right Now

Your desk goes quiet. The calls slow down, the interviews dry up, and you start wondering what changed. John Ruffini has an answer, and it usually starts with what is sitting in your pipeline. The Firm Leaders Summit runs November 16 to 18, three days built for recruiting firm owners and leaders on hiring, training, BD, and growth: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Money Makers 2.0 is on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover: https://amzn.to/4AYuOqu This ...
363
Oct. 8, 2026

We Trained Our Clients' Recruiters. They Kept Calling.

Firm owners, the Firm Leaders Summit runs November 16 to 18. Save your seat: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that actually understands context. It captures every interview, client call, LinkedIn message, email, and WhatsApp automatically, then tells you the next action to take. Learn more at https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Brooke Weinert and her husband Tommy had a plan: one of them would keep the paycheck while...
362
Oct. 5, 2026

How To Build An AI-Native Firm That Beats Firms 4x Its Size.

How To Build An AI-Native Firm That Beats Firms 4x Its Size. Firm Leaders Summit, Nov 16 to 18, free live sessions: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/ Atlas, the CRMx built for recruiters: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Alex Papageorge is back. Since his last appearance the idea he was duct-taping together with n8n, Clay, and OpenAI has become a fully built recruiting firm running on Azure, with three AI agents named Donna, Sunny, and Mina sitting on Mac Mini...
361
Sept. 30, 2026

How To Build A $1.9M Firm With Just 2 People

Finish The Year Strong is live this week, September 28 through October 5. It is the final free virtual summit of 2026 and every session is built to help you close Q4 hard. Big billers, AI, automation, mindset, all week. Register here: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ If you are hearing this after October 5, the Firm Leaders Summit runs November 16 through 18, presented by Crelate. Three days for owners and firm leaders. Register here: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recru...
Guest: Bodie Nowak
360
Sept. 24, 2026

How To Take A $300K Recruiter Past $500K.

Finish the Year Strong 2026 kicks off Monday, September 28. It is free, it is virtual, and it runs through October 5. Register here: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ This episode is brought to you by Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ To give you a taste of what is coming, we pulled one of the most rewatched sessions from last year's Finish the Year Strong out of the Elite Recruiter Community Library. Dante Nino, co-founder and Managing Partner of Tiello, built his talk...
Guests: dante , Dante Nino
359
Sept. 21, 2026

$1M At 25. What's Possible In Your First Two Years

Before the episode, two dates. Finish the Year Strong runs September 28 through October 5, and the brand new Firm Leaders Summit runs November 16 through 18. Live sessions for both are free. Register at https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ and https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/. Replays, VIP access, and the Elite Recruiter Community are there if you want to go all in on the rest of 2026. This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx t...
Guest: Mary Huminski
358
Sept. 19, 2026

The $5.3 Million Tax You're Paying Without Knowing It.

Jay Veniard was the very first guest on the Elite Recruiter Podcast, back when the whole thing was one recorded conversation during COVID thrown on the internet to see what happened. This session is his first ever summit talk, pulled from the Elite Recruiter Community Library ahead of Finish the Year Strong, and it was the one that hit the audience hardest. Finish the Year Strong 2026 is a free virtual summit for recruiters running September 28 to October 5. Firm owners, coaches, and top bill...
Guest: Jay Veniard
357
Sept. 17, 2026

How To Beat Korn Ferry With 4 People And AI.

James Homer left a regional director job in Singapore with two young kids, a third on the way, and not enough savings to cover the risk. Eighteen months later his firm has billed just over a million dollars and takes retained searches off Korn Ferry, Egon Zehnder and Michael Page with a team of four. The number is not what makes this worth your time. The way he got there is. Before any of it worked, James spent ten thousand dollars on an AI outreach system that booked him exactly zero meet...
356
Sept. 14, 2026

The Hidden Truths of High-Performing Recruiters

Sign up for the Finish The Year Strong 2026 Summit (Sept 28 to Oct 5): https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ Check out Atlas, the AI-native CRM and ATS built for recruiters: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ What does the person who has sat across from some of the top billers in this industry actually see when he looks at them? In his first podcast appearance ever, Kevin Parker sits down with Benjamin Mena for a conversation that goes where recruiting content almost never goes....
355
Sept. 10, 2026

How To Become The Recruiter Everyone Refers

90% of her business comes from referrals. She has never made a cold call, never sent a cold email, and never pitched herself at a networking event. And she built the whole thing in four years, starting with zero recruiting background. April Ben-Sabat became a recruiter by accident. She spent six years as the right hand at a transport company, told them in her first interview she would own a business within five years, and when they could not find a transport recruiter to backfill her, her own...
254
Sept. 7, 2026

How To Stop Losing $100K Fees At The Finish Line

Ryan Sheppard mapped an entire market for a senior pharma search, tracked down the exact molecule types, built the shortlist, and then got one line back: sorry, we're on a hiring freeze. The fee that vanished was somewhere between eighty and a hundred thousand dollars, and it was not the first time. That was the moment he decided he could not keep working for free. Before we get into it, Finish The Year Strong kicks off September 28 through October 5. All live sessions are free, and if you wa...
Guests: rya , Ryan Sheppard
353
Aug. 31, 2026

20 Principles To Become The Recruiter AI Can't Replace

Greg Benadiba has been a recruiter for 21 years, and he opened his new book with the most expensive phone call of his career: the one he didn't make. In this return episode of The Elite Recruiter Podcast, Greg sits down with Benjamin Mena to put the principles from Recruitment Principles: Timeless Truths in the Age of AI to work, starting with the three he would keep if a recruiter could only live by three. Before we get into it, Finish The Year Strong 2026 kicks off September 28 through Octo...
Guest: Greg Benadiba
352
Aug. 27, 2026

8X Million-Dollar Biller. Zero Business Development

What if everything you were taught about growing a desk was optional? Finish The Year Strong 2026 kicks off September 28th through October 5th, and the live sessions are free. This is your line in the sand for the rest of the year: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ This episode is sponsored by Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures every call, email, and message automatically, then tells you the next action to take. And whether you place perman...
351
Aug. 24, 2026

Laid Off At 5 Weeks Postpartum. $1.3 Million In 2.5 Years

Sign up for Finish The Year Strong 2026, free for all live sessions, September 28 to October 5: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ This episode is powered by Atlas, the CRM that captures every call, email, and LinkedIn message automatically and tells you the next action to take: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Join the Recruiting Agents Workshop with Seb Sharp, August 25 and 26, and build your own autonomous lead agent and placement agent live: https://the-recruiting-agents-w...
Guest: Julia Arpag
350
Aug. 20, 2026

$500 In The Bank. $870,000 Billed One Year Later

Finish The Year Strong 2026 is coming September 28 through October 5, and it is packed with sessions exactly like this one. Register free now: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ The Recruiting Agents Workshop with Seb Sharp runs August 25 and 26. Build an autonomous lead agent, a placement agent, and connect your entire tech stack, with recordings, templates, and a week of Slack access to Seb included: https://the-recruiting-agents-workshop.heysummit.com/ This episode is sp...
349
Aug. 17, 2026

How To Become A Talent Engineer (Recruiting's New AI Role)

Two years ago, the role of talent engineer didn't exist. Today a16z is funding a fellowship for it, and Benjamin Mena sits down with one of its founding members to find out what it means for every recruiting team, agency and in-house alike. Dan McCarthy took the least likely path into this seat: jazz musician, New York bartender, wine educator, and Brooklyn CrossFit gym owner before Shopify hired him into tech recruiting at 40 years old. Two layoffs later, he's a Senior Talent Engineer at Zapier, where he built a talent intelligence MCP in about a month using completely free APIs including the Department of Labor, WARN Act data, and Indeed Hiring Lab, so recruiters walk into every intake call armed with real market data. Benjamin and Dan get into the ego build problem on LinkedIn, the difference between building to learn and building to ship, what a solo recruiter could stand up in a weekend to change their next client pitch, whether a three person agency could really bill five …
Guest: Dan McCarthy
348
Aug. 13, 2026

4X Growth While Everyone Watched Their Inbox Die.

Cold email is dying, so Brian Abrams went old school. His boutique IT project management staffing firm grew from $1.5M to $6M while the staffing industry contracted three years straight, and 30 to 40 percent of his gross profit now comes from one channel: industry conferences. In this episode, the founder of PMO Partners lays out his entire four part playbook. How he picks his conference slate a year out, the pre-work almost nobody does including the exact no-pressure LinkedIn message he sends 30 days before every event, how his team works the floor, the follow up system that turned a 10 second booth conversation into his biggest client ever, and the story behind the legendary Run PMO shirts.
Guest: Brian Abrams
347
Aug. 10, 2026

How To Build A $1.5 Million Desk With No College Degree

David Fishman built a $1.5 million recruiting desk with no college degree, an eight-year Coast Guard stint, and a chip on his shoulder that never went away. Thirty years in, his longest client has been with him for three decades, and he just ran a streak of ten placements from ten straight presentations, first candidate presented, first candidate hired. He breaks down the intake questions that shape every search, why he reads resumes like photographs, how he wins back lost clients by outliving the HR leaders who cut him, why he tracks deals instead of dollars, and the Monday-through-Wednesday rhythm that protects his momentum. At 58, something is still chasing him.
Guest: David Fishman
346
Aug. 3, 2026

The Inner Work That Made Her A Million Dollar Biller

Kimberly Laipple was a single mom at 18 who was told she would never get a degree. She survived foreclosure, fed her kids through food banks, and poured herself into a recruiting desk at Scientific Search. Eighteen years later she is president of that same firm, a $1.4 million personal biller, and one of only 80 recruiters admitted to the Pinnacle Society, where she serves as vice president of the board. In this episode she breaks down the inner work that took her from years stuck at $550K to her first million dollar year, the Mr. Miyagi deal she makes with every new recruiter, the repeatable process behind back to back $100K months, and the path she used to climb from recruiter to president: prove yourself, then ask for it. If you are sitting at a plateau and blaming the market, this one will challenge you in the best way.