He's Seen Billions Of Recruiting Messages: What's Dead And What Wins In 2026

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Dougie Loan [00:00:03]:
Don't rely on email. I think if you're solely reliant on email, then you're kidding yourself on— I think if you think that's going to be sustainable, I think the day of point solutions is dead, is my honest opinion, because context that is spread across different solutions means that AI and particularly agentic workers can't operate effectively. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:29]:
We cover it all from sales, marketing, I'm excited about this episode because this guest has been behind the scenes of millions upon millions upon millions of recruiting messages. He's been able to see what is actually working, what is moving the needle, what is actually helping grow not just a desk, but an entire company. Yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting. And he is here to break it all down here today. So I am so excited about this, this interview, because we are going to jump in deep into some data. So we're just going to jump right in. My first question is the outreach that most recruiters are sending right now, even this morning, is already dead. They just haven't seen the reply rates that we used to see.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:20]:
Yeah. You've looked at the data behind like all these messages and how many messages is it now?

Dougie Loan [00:01:24]:
It's billions now, Benjamin. It's absolutely insane.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:28]:
What's the thing that used to work that quietly isn't working anymore?

Dougie Loan [00:01:32]:
Great question. I think the most obvious thing to us that we're seeing in the data right now is marketing and speccing candidates. I think before it was super simple that you could take a great candidate profile that you were working with, you could put it into a 3-step email sequence campaign. And by that second or third step, you would likely have an interview for that candidate. That's completely fallen off a cliff for a number of reasons. One, and the most important being, is email deliverability has obviously dropped quite substantially, and I think everyone can see it. I think 2, AI has made it easier than ever to be able to create email campaigns, so people's inboxes, when they do get delivered, are just flooded. And the 3rd, I think, is that the requirement for candidates or less than A+ candidates has completely dried up.

Dougie Loan [00:02:17]:
I think whereas before you could take a candidate who had a mildly impressive profile and get them into an interview, I think those days are gone. certainly compared to what we saw that was working in 2021 compared to what's working in 2026.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:30]:
So there's a recruiter right now that's listening that is losing a full workday every week and they just don't know it. Like you behind the scenes, you can see exactly where recruiters are spending their time and what they're doing. Walk me through like what they're actually losing.

Dougie Loan [00:02:43]:
It's a great question, man. Like I think it just really depends on where they're spending or where their focus is on their desk. If you think of the business development process, A lot of recruiters spend time searching for contact information for people. So phone numbers and email addresses, they're trawling different sites for those. They're using different tools. They're then contacting those people and figuring out that the number's incorrect, or they're sending emails and getting bounce backs. So there's a lot of time wasted there. I think there's also a lot of time wasted just trawling through applications.

Dougie Loan [00:03:13]:
You know, we see like now that there's more applications than ever. People are spending time trawling through those, trying to find those, those good candidates. So the act of sourcing is more time intensive than it's ever been before, both reactive in terms of assessing applicants, but also proactive in terms of trying to find the right people across different sites. And for those people who are actually pretty good at using their systems in any way, they're spending a ton of time logging notes. So they're having conversations with clients, conversations with candidates, and they're doing like mass write-ups afterwards. And most of the time they're missing a lot of the information as well, but the information they are pulling together and getting into the system is taking them hours upon hours every single week. So yeah, again, I think those are probably the 3 main areas that we are seeing people lose a lot of time right now.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:57]:
All right. So real quick for everybody listening, I've gotten to know you over the years. I've watched everything that you've been doing, but do you think a quick, like, 60-second self-introduction?

Dougie Loan [00:04:06]:
Yeah, sure. So like you said, my name's Dougie, Dougie Owen. I left school when I was 16, started working in an outbound call center doing sales for American Express. So that was an interesting experience. Got into recruitment when I was 18, worked in that for a number of years before joining a rec tech startup called Audro based in Glasgow. First salesperson, grew to being CRO in there over a 5-year period, and then joined the good ship Sourcewell around 5 years ago. And we've gone from an 18-head business to a business that now employs 150 people across the UK and the US. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey.

Dougie Loan [00:04:39]:
And when I'm not doing this kind of stuff, I'm spending a lot of time with my wife and my 2 kids, my son and my daughter. who we were talking about trying to get to summer camp just before I hopped on this call.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:48]:
All right, so I got to ask, how'd you go from American Express to ending up at a recruiting desk at 18? 18, by the way.

Dougie Loan [00:04:57]:
Yeah, it was nuts, actually. So one of the guys that I worked with in that outbound sales role, he went on vacation and he met a couple of guys on that vacation who worked at a company called Nigel Frank. And he was asking them, what do you guys do for work? and they were telling him, oh, we're recruiters, we do X, Y, and Z. So he came back and he said to me, he's like, man, he's like, you know, we're in this call center, we're getting paid really poor money. We're working, you know, our butts off making hundreds of dials a day. He's like, and I met these guys and it kind of sounds like recruitment's kind of similar to that in a little bit of a way. He's like, but these guys are making like substantially more money. So he's like, I'm going to go and take that job.

Dougie Loan [00:05:33]:
I'm going to go and do that. And I was like, okay, cool. So he went away and he did that. And 6 months later, he's like, yeah, I can confirm that you can make substantially more money by doing a lot of hard work, but in the recruitment space. So I thought, why not? And then, yeah, I thought I'll take the jump and I'll go and do the same. And that was it from there. I joined Hayes, was my first job. I couldn't get into Nigel Frank.

Dougie Loan [00:05:54]:
So yeah, I started working with the team at Hayes.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:57]:
I always love that somebody that's in the rec tech space was actually a recruiter and understands everything that we've gone through because you had those ups and downs. Like, Yeah. What did one of your bad days look like on your desk?

Dougie Loan [00:06:10]:
Yeah, man, let's just call it for what it is. Like, if I was an incredible recruiter, I would probably still be doing that, right? You know, if I was building a million dollars a year, then I would probably still be doing recruitment. But I wasn't incredible. I was good enough, but not incredible. And I think like a bad day for me was probably right at the start of my career. I think getting started in recruitment on a cold desk is a very tough thing to do. When I joined Hays, I was working on a construction desk in Glasgow in Scotland, very niche. And my side of the desk was to start a contract desk.

Dougie Loan [00:06:42]:
So I was having to try and call up these 60-year-old construction workers and convince them to leave permanent work to move into construction work, all within like a 20-mile radius. So a bad day for me was honestly like, I'd get into the office at 6:30 or 7. I'd leave the office at 6:30 or 7 at night. So probably a 12-hour day. I could have made hundreds of calls and had no positive interactions with any candidates and no meetings booked with clients. So it's probably not a rare bad day for most people, but I think at 18, trying to start that cold desk from scratch, that felt pretty rough. That felt pretty rough.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:13]:
It's rare to see a recruiter in the US that starts at 18 unless like you're in the family business.

Dougie Loan [00:07:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, it's funny, like I wanted to be a lawyer when I was at school and I did well at school. I just had friends who were working already in sales roles and making money and I just I was like, I don't want to wait another 8 or 9 years before I'm earning cash by the time I do college and then postgrads and diplomas. So, yeah, I mean, it's worked out all right, but I don't think my parents were particularly happy when I made that decision in the first place.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:42]:
So, you became, you were the first salesperson at Odoro.

Dougie Loan [00:07:46]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:47]:
And then you grew to being the chief revenue officer there. I got to ask, that's a fast-moving startup, a short amount of time. What took you into that leadership role?

Dougie Loan [00:07:58]:
Good question. I think one, it's timing as well, right? The business itself was high growth. So there was a requirement for the business to go from having a very flat structure from like the founders and employees to having more of a kind of leadership structure in place. I think the thing that stood out was probably my ability to do all of the commercial side of the role. So selling, picking up the phone, cold calling. But I was also doing a lot of work in terms of when we onboarded customers, I was training those customers. I was renewing those customers. Man, if you called that office phone, it was me that was picking up the phone to do technical support.

Dougie Loan [00:08:29]:
And then from there, as we started to grow and hire more people, I started to build out our first playbooks. So it was like, okay, we understand if we're going to hire people, we need to teach them the right way to do these roles. And I spent a lot of time doing that kind of systems and process work. And I think it was the combination of the commercial work and the systems and process when you put them together probably meant that I kind of natural fit for that type of position.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:50]:
And this is going to be my last question. Looking back on your recruiting days.

Dougie Loan [00:08:54]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:55]:
Looking at you back then, what do you wish somebody told you?

Dougie Loan [00:08:59]:
Bad days ain't so bad, I think. I think honestly, I think if I'd had a little bit more patience, I could have probably been a much better recruiter. I think as a young guy, 18, 19, 20, 21, I wanted that success and I wanted it really, really quickly. I think as a result of that, what happened was I often chased really bad jobs to work on, to be honest. I was like, if it was a job that was there, I would take it. I I'd worked my backside off to then fill it, but the fees were low, clients weren't, you know, client commitment wasn't great. I was up against 7 or 8 other agencies. I think, you know, there was people that I worked with at that time who were incredible billers.

Dougie Loan [00:09:33]:
And if I look back now, a lot of their work was either exclusive or retained. They would say no to work. You know, they wouldn't pick up the phone to people if they didn't think they were the right type of client. So yeah, I think patience and, um, yeah, realizing that when you have a bad day in recruitment, tomorrow's just another day and you can, you can go again. I think I'd let it eat me up a little bit at times when I was, uh, when I was a young kid.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:53]:
18, like, you know, looking back now, I'm saying this, I'm like in my 40s. I'm like, man, like who's patient at 18?

Dougie Loan [00:09:59]:
Yeah. That's a very fair point. It's a very fair point. Probably a reason why most people are in their kind of early to mid-20s before they get into recruitment.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:07]:
Right.

Dougie Loan [00:10:07]:
So yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:08]:
I want to jump over to Sourcewell because like, you know, I've seen the evolution of like RevTech tools. You, you, the way that everything used to be done is like you get one best-in-class tool here, another best-in-class tool here, and you just try stitching everything together. When did you guys decide that wasn't really the plan anymore and you guys just wanted to build out the entire layer?

Dougie Loan [00:10:30]:
Great question, man. I just want to start by saying that honestly, up until around 2 and a half years ago, I was a big believer in that too. I honestly thought, and even internally in our own business, both at Audro and at Source Whale, I was like, I'm buying best in class and I'm going to plug that together and I'm going to work with these different systems. I think what happened particularly in recruitment and in rec tech is like, the technology scene itself has just like totally exploded in the last 4 or 5 years. There's more and more solutions. And I think what was happening was people were picking very niche parts of the workflow, building really good products for that, charging a significant amount of money as well though. And I think what was happening was the desk cost for a normal recruiter was going up substantially. And something that I hear a lot, we run executive roundtables.

Dougie Loan [00:11:14]:
And when I'm sitting around the table with like CEOs of recruitment firms, the thing that they tell me is that Average billings per head haven't really increased much over the last 15 or 20 years in recruitment, but the cost to run that desk has gone up dramatically. So I think for me, I was looking at this market and I'm thinking, okay, costs are going up and I'm hearing a lot of complaints about that, but billings are not increasing, which means that a lot of these niche best-in-class tools are probably not having the revenue impact that people are purchasing them to have. And then when I started digging deeper and speaking to people, I was realizing that of these best-in-class tools, most of the time people were only using 60 or 70% of the functionality that was on there. So you'd have a really robust product that was super niche, but if you're not using all the functionality of it, then you're not getting them. There's no need to be paying that kind of cash. So we started talking at Sourcefeel about, you know, we're really specialist in this outreach area, but there's other parts of the process once you've engaged with a client or candidate that you need to do next. And right now that's getting passed off onto another system. Which is an expensive system that has only been used 60 or 70% of the time.

Dougie Loan [00:12:18]:
What if we built something that was 80% as good as that point solution, charged dramatically less, but allowed people to operate in one place? And we stress tested that idea with a couple of our clients, people who had been with us for a while, and they were like, we would bite your hand off for that. And so we started on the outreach stuff and then we expanded out into other places like a note taker, A dialer was an obvious one because you make phone calls as part of your outreach strategy. And then it's just kind of, it's grown from there. So yeah, that was the, that was the kind of logical but slightly crazy process that got us from best-in-class point solutions to kind of an entire operating layer.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:53]:
And for those that don't know Sourcewell, like, quick 60 seconds, what do you guys actually do?

Dougie Loan [00:12:58]:
Yeah, absolutely, man. So like, if you think of Sourcewell, like, we're an entire end-to-end recruitment platform. So everything from sourcing candidates and clients all the way through to placement. And a big part of that for us is making sure that when recruiters are using their tech on a day-to-day basis, they're doing it all inside one platform and running it inside Sourcefeel. So any sort of context, any interaction, any communication that you're having with your candidates and clients, it's automatically tracked and logged inside Sourcefeel. And that allows the kind of AI solutions that we have in place to run from like the full picture, essentially. They've got the entire context and they can, they can run from that. So if you think of your common rec tech stack, things like a sourcing tool, a note taker, a CRM and ATS.

Dougie Loan [00:13:36]:
a dialer, WhatsApp, all of that kind of stuff that all lives and breathes inside, inside the Sourcewheel platform every day.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:42]:
I gotta ask, because you guys started off as like a Bullhorn plugin.

Dougie Loan [00:13:46]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:47]:
How did the conversation go from like, hey, let's go from plugin to like actually take them on?

Dougie Loan [00:13:52]:
Yeah, man, that's a spicy, a spicy question. So, so yeah, we plugged into, we actually plug into over 100 different CRM systems. So, you know, we still believe that like there are occasions where plugging Sourcewheel into an existing CRM might be the best bet for some of the larger accounts that we work with. Some of the world's largest enterprises use Sourcewell and they use it alongside Bullhorn, for example. You'd kill for me to give you a slightly long-winded answer to this, like spend a couple of minutes on it. Because I think the background context is important. So what we started to see happen in the space was we'd obviously recognized that people were using 60 or 70% of the tools. What we also started to see was there was these new AI CRMs were starting to pop up.

Dougie Loan [00:14:28]:
And then a customer who was a customer of Sourcewell and let's just say Bullhorn, but it could be any of the 100 CRMs that we plugged into. They were like, well, we're looking at changing our CRM and ATS, so we're going to go and look at these other solutions, these AI systems. So they would go and talk to these AI systems and these AI systems were like, yep, we've got a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We do some of what Sourcefield does, we do some of X, Y, and Z. So the customer was like, well, look, I love you guys and we use Sourcefield every single day, but I'm moving away from, let's say, Bullhorn to this other platform and they kind of do a little bit of what you do as well. So I'm going to leave, I'm going to cancel my subscription with Sourcefield and I'm going to move over there. So it got me thinking, like, the success or failure of our business wasn't necessarily within our own hands because we were plugging into all these CRM systems and we had to rely on our customers being happy with the CRM or ATS that they were currently using. Otherwise, there was a chance that they would leave to go to a new system that would offer some of the functionality that we had.

Dougie Loan [00:15:24]:
So I think at that point, you've got to be the maker of your own destiny, right? And our decision was, well, we've got to have an AI-first CRM and ATS solution that if someone decides that they want to leave, say, Billhorn, we're not going to go and entice them away from it. But if they say, hey, I'm leaving Billhorn and I'm going to look at an AI-first system, Sourcewheel should have a solution for that. And that was the way that we've run it. So yeah, listen, I know the team well there. I've worked with them over 12 years in both roles, and I've got a lot of respect for what they do. I think this is more about making sure that we've got a solution for the future, if that makes sense. And listen, it's been really well received so far. And Yeah, the exponential growth that we've seen on it.

Dougie Loan [00:16:03]:
I think we're actually the fastest growing rec tech product that the market's ever seen based on the numbers that we've got right now. I'm excited about where that goes. Awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:09]:
Congrats.

Dougie Loan [00:16:09]:
Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:11]:
So one of the things I see you talking about online and talking about other places is a second brain. Define that for a recruiter who's never really heard of that, or what does it do for somebody that's actually running a desk?

Dougie Loan [00:16:22]:
Yeah. So if you remember what it was like to work in an office, right? Because I know not a lot of people do that anymore, but do you remember you used to work in an office and you would get a job on, or you would speak to a candidate and you you come back to your desk and you'd be speaking to your colleagues, you'd be like, hey man, like, oh, you know, I just met this great candidate, they're doing X, Y, and Z, do you guys know of any clients that we should speak to? Or, hey, I've just brought this job on, do you guys know of any candidates that might be a fit for it, etc.? So you're always sharing this like tribal knowledge around the office, right? And a lot of that is like, a lot of the work that a good recruiter does is actually in the brain, right? It's the context that they gather over years and years and years in the market. You know, they can tell you that client like that, you know, when they hear something they can link it. The problem is, is that like your brain can only hold so much information. And there's an inherent issue with it because it relies on time and market. Because you have to really then be saying, okay, well, in 5, 6, 7, or 8 years, I'm going to be a great and even better recruiter because I have more context, I have more knowledge, I have more information. And the challenge for a business that employs people in that situation as well is that if those people leave, all of that information and knowledge leaves with them as well. So there's a challenge there.

Dougie Loan [00:17:28]:
So for me, a second brain, and what we've really built with Sourcewheel, is that because we've really built solutions across the entire communication layer, is that every single interaction that you have with someone across any channel is automatically captured and contextualized and then added into the system. So that's the first step of a brain, is like, can I actually absorb the information? But the second step, and I think this is the most important part and why I think Sourcewheel truly is a second brain, is you've got to be able to have recall on that. You've got to be able to search it. So you could go into Sourcewheel, for example, and you could say, tell me who the candidate was that I met with last week who said he was interested in moving to New York. And Sourcewheel can go away, scan all of that context and conversation, and come back to you and say, that's Benjamin, and here's his profile, here's his resume, and here you go. That's obviously a very different experience to where right now in a traditional CRM, you're searching people based on tags and skills and that type of thing. So yeah, hope that answers the question. I feel like I maybe went off on a little bit of a tangent on that one for you.

Dougie Loan [00:18:24]:
Yeah, it does.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:24]:
And it kind of walks into a little bit of The next thing I was going to ask you about is, you know, your thesis is agentic AI, you know, is useless without context.

Dougie Loan [00:18:33]:
Yeah, completely.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:33]:
And context is the thing that I think most people underestimate.

Dougie Loan [00:18:38]:
Totally. Look, the way that I see it is that this market and most software markets actually have no choice but to move towards an all-in-one platform. I think the day of point solutions is dead, is my honest opinion, because context that is spread across different solutions means that AI and particularly agentic workers can't operate effectively. If I've got a note-taker over here and a CRM over here and a sourcing site over here, yes, they might be integrated, but I can't be certain that the information is flowing correctly between each of those places. So if I then want to run an AI search, for example, I don't have all the information. But if in the future I then want to start running things like agentic workers who say, analyze my data and flag to me and warn me when a job is moving in the wrong direction. Or go and automatically flag 5 new candidates for me every morning that might be a fit for the jobs that I'm currently working on. If my sourcing tool's over here, my note-taker's over here with all the conversations I've had, and my CRM's here where I'm doing that search, there's going to be a leak of context and information that just makes it harder.

Dougie Loan [00:19:41]:
So I believe that fully. And that's obviously the play that we're making at Sourcewell. I think there's a lot of other people making that play as well right now. And I think that that's the way that the market's going to market's going to move.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:51]:
So paint me a picture with this. So a recruiter running a whole desk on a second brain looks like, what does their Tuesday actually look like versus what they were doing previous to having that?

Dougie Loan [00:20:01]:
Yeah, fair enough. So I think if you take Sourcero, for example, first things first, I come in in the morning, I'm actually met with proactive prompts of the work that I need to do that day. So historically, I'm maybe coming in, I've got my old notepad and pen, I've written down my notes and I'm like, okay, what do I need to do? you know, what they need to do. Inside Sourcewell, because of the work that we're doing with that second brain, we've already preempted that information. We're delivering a kind of today list for them. So here's the most important things that you need to do today. And that could be anything from, you know, following up on CVs or resumes that you submitted over the last couple of days. It could be prepping candidates and having that information already written out.

Dougie Loan [00:20:37]:
So, hey, you've got to prep Benjamin for his interview this afternoon. We know that this client typically asks about X, Y, and Z. we've actually pre-prepared an email for you that you can then go over and send across to that person. So for me, someone who's operating with a second brain firstly is able to get all of their most important work done first thing in the morning. And that then gives them more free time and free space to then move on to start generating more business. So once I've done all that existing stuff in my pipeline, I'm then moving from there and I'm moving into doing business development. And again, because of the activity that's been done before and the knowledge that we have, We're able to point you in the right direction. Hey, here's an account that you might want to spend time on.

Dougie Loan [00:21:12]:
Here's someone that you should follow up with. Here's someone that you've placed with in the past, but you haven't had a job on within 3 months. And I think for me, that's a huge difference than coming in with a notepad and pen and being like, where do I start today? And how do I get going?

Benjamin Mena [00:21:26]:
I want to go a little deeper on this just because like you guys talk about saving like 8 hours per week per recruiter, like 8 hours of a 40-hour work week. For recruiters who work more than 40 hours.

Dougie Loan [00:21:37]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:40]:
Like, I mean, like, in reality, that's almost an entire day. Like, you know, where is that time actually coming from that's being saved?

Dougie Loan [00:21:46]:
Yeah, 100%. I think one of the most impactful things that we've seen is actually through our new sourcing module. So, if I go back to the thing that I hated most when I was working in recruitment, it was like, if you gave me a list of the 50 best candidates that could do this job, I would call them until I got a hold of I would be passionate about it because I'd know that when I spoke to them, if there was a positive conversation there, we could turn that conversation into revenue. The thing that I hated most was the 3 days that I had to spend before that getting the list together of those 50 people. That was a killer for me. And that was the thing that really impacted my enjoyment of the role. And I think our sourcing module does that really, really effectively. We're able to take what people are looking for in a conversational way, able to present to them however many they want, the top 20, 50, 100, 200 candidates, both from inside their CRM system, but also from the wider web.

Dougie Loan [00:22:35]:
And we're able to kind of put those candidates in front of them. So firstly, the activity that you're then doing to reach out to these people is on the basis of the fact that they're already a good fit. I think secondly is follow-ups. And we know that following up with people, whether that's clients or candidates, leads to conversations. But oftentimes that falls through the net, or you spend a couple hours a week, maybe half an hour a day. just chasing this up, just bubbling this to the top of your inbox, whatever it might be, that's all done automatically. And I think the final one is, there's obviously a lot of nuanced ones that save 15, 20 minutes, but the bigger one is notes after client conversations. Whether that's a video meeting that you've had with someone, a phone call that you've had with someone, some people log them straight away, some people leave them until the end of the day, some people leave them until the end of the week.

Dougie Loan [00:23:20]:
And you just know for a fact that if you're doing 2 hours on a Friday afternoon logging call notes just to hit your KPIs, It's not a great place to be. So I would say those are the 3 main ways that we're saving people time. And there's other ones as well around our inbox agent and automatically updating data in the system when we spot job moves and stuff as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:38]:
So you said something, the sourcing goes inside your platform and outside the platform?

Dougie Loan [00:23:43]:
Yes. Yeah, that's right. So we plug into a number of different data providers and those data providers have access to profiles of candidates. And so we're able to give people a place where they can say, okay, I want to search my existing database. So the people that I'm already aware of that are within my network, and I can do that not just based on the profiles, but based on conversations and notes, et cetera. But also then I want to make sure that I'm getting a look to like the wider web and seeing what else is, what else is out there as well. So I can have full confidence that I'm getting coverage basically of both things.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:14]:
So I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to like, I want to focus on like what's actually working in 2026 for the recruiters listening, because I'm seeing it like things changing so fast. What worked yesterday doesn't work as well anymore. But so, okay, so let's start with cold emails. Yes. Cold reply rates are now sliding towards probably around 3%, which is industry average. And like something like 40% of outreach is now AI written. As you guys, you guys have the data.

Dougie Loan [00:24:41]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:41]:
What is actually landing with customers?

Dougie Loan [00:24:44]:
Like, I think it's a really strong question, man. It varies depending on the market that people operate in. It varies depending on the region that they're operating in as well. So there's no, there is no bulletproof email playbook nowadays, as my honest answer. I would say that like, if we're talking about business development, I'd say that the first thing that you should do is not just solely rely on email as your channel. I think that a multi-touch and multi-channel outreach approach is the most important thing that you can do right now. So yes, you might have an email, but you're also thinking of how do I contact this person via phone? I'm also thinking, you know, is a touchpoint via something like LinkedIn important as well and kind of running it through that way. Something else that we see being really effective at the minute is the use of things like roundtables.

Dougie Loan [00:25:24]:
So if you look at the reply rates that are really strong on email-only campaigns, it's typically when the decision makers of the target companies are being invited to some sort of setup. So a dinner event, a 10-person, 12-person dinner event that's been run by the recruitment firm around a topic that's going to be relevant and important in that marketplace. Like the uptake on that is extremely strong. extremely strong. But the key is that it needs to be targeted, right? You can't just say, I'm running this thing for HR leaders and I'm just going to email 2,000 HR leaders in New York. It's got to be a little bit more personalized than that if you want to pull it through. So I would say for me, the first thing is don't rely on email. I think if you're solely reliant on email, then you're kidding yourself on, I think, if you think that's going to be sustainable.

Dougie Loan [00:26:07]:
And the second thing is you've got to think of a way that you can engage with these people that is beyond just the Hey, I saw that you posted X on LinkedIn and I saw that you went to this university. I'm an expert recruiter in A, B, and C, and I'd love to chat to you because that is the thing that AI has made really easy to do. Like, you need no experience to log into an AI tool, press a button, and that stuff just gets done. So I think if you want to pattern interrupt, you have to engage with people in a different way.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:34]:
So I want to go back to our pregame conversation. One of the things that you talked about was Ranking the outreach by what actually gets a reply.

Dougie Loan [00:26:42]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:42]:
You said invitations at the top, then pitching a specific candidate and then context-based and then cold at the bottom.

Dougie Loan [00:26:48]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:49]:
Put a number on it for me. Like how much better does the top of that list work than the bottom of the list?

Dougie Loan [00:26:54]:
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's a good question, man. I didn't, I should have pulled the data for that. Um, I think it's, I mean, it is dramatic. It is completely dramatic. I mean, look, there is honestly times where you'll see people who do completely cold outreach campaigns. Um, as part of the work that they're doing. And their reply rates can often be 0%. You could literally reach out to 200 people that you've never spoken with before with a really basic cold outreach message.

Dougie Loan [00:27:20]:
There's no context. I'm not reaching out to you because of any sort of trigger. It's just a simple, hey, I'm Dougie and I'm a great recruiter and I'd love to talk to you. And you could get zero responses on that. And I think that that type of approach hasn't ever been great, but I do think that 4 or 5 years ago, you probably would've repped maybe 4 or 5 conversations or at least 4 or 5 responses on the back end of it. I think that the contextual stuff that we talked about there, which is the AI-driven stuff, obviously does still catch the eye of some people. And then you've got the ability to market out a candidate. Again, though, I think it's about being— when you market a candidate or spec a candidate nowadays, you can actually lean too heavily on AI for that.

Dougie Loan [00:28:00]:
So if I'm going to market or spec out a candidate, Or how I've seen it being done well is the recruiter sat down and they said, okay, this is a great candidate I'm working with. These are the 3 to 5 reasons why this candidate is really positive. I'm going to write that myself. I know that I'm going to then take that and I'm going to apply that to like a search that I'm going to run. And I'm going to then verify that those like 50 companies that I'm going to approach actually are the types of companies that would normally hire for this candidate. I think that's the right way to do speccing or marketing of a candidate to get results. There is AI solutions. that will generate that summary of that candidate for you.

Dougie Loan [00:28:33]:
And it might be a little bit inaccurate. And then you take that information and put it into a search function. And the results that they come back with are a little bit inaccurate. And then what you've got is an email going out to 500 companies who don't often hire for this type of candidate. And that candidate's profile is not really indicative of the work experience that they've actually got. I mean, I get it all the time. People will reach out to me and they're like, hey, we know that you guys do a lot of work in the industrial space. We've got this great sales rep right now who runs a territory in Idaho.

Dougie Loan [00:29:04]:
And I'm like, what? That's so mad. I'm in Glasgow in Scotland running a software company and these guys think we're in Idaho running an industrial business. So yeah, I think that's something you've got to get right.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:17]:
What is something in the data that generally surprised you? And what is something that contradicted what recruiters believe about themselves?

Dougie Loan [00:29:24]:
So, I looked at the UK versus the US, and something that surprised me was that the UK actually does less outreach than the US. So, in terms of total volume of approaches to people, they're doing less outreach. The UK are more selective about the types of people that they approach. Typically, they're crafting slightly better subject lines. Also noticed that the UK are actually also more likely to use the phone. and connect with someone versus the US. And I thought that was really interesting, right? Because when we first went into the US market 4 years ago, and we hired a team there, but that team was very, very phone heavy, right? So like our team were doing a lot of phone calls, they were engaging with a lot of people. And we thought, okay, maybe there's just a cultural thing over here where people are just more likely to pick up the phone and more likely to have a conversation.

Dougie Loan [00:30:08]:
But actually what we see is that a recruiter in the US is less likely to pick up the phone if you're a user of Sourcewheel anyway, versus the UK. The thing that surprised me though was despite all of that, the US still win more jobs than the UK. So there is a thing here to say that even though the UK are more likely to be selective, even though the UK are more likely to pick up the phone, overall activity that they do is less. The US does 2.3 times more activity volume than the UK and they win more jobs as a result of it. So yes, they're maybe not doing as many phone calls. Yes, they're not being as selective, but they are just simply working a lot more and pulling more jobs as a result of it. Yeah, I thought that was an interesting one when I dug into it. Yeah, definitely.

Dougie Loan [00:30:50]:
And I think it contradicts this whole idea of like, oh, well, don't be spammy and everything else. I think the key thing to take away from this is we're not talking about people who are just loading up 1,000 emails and sending them out. I think that just in general, there is just a lot more activity being done to go and bring on business.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:04]:
So this podcast is running about 18,000 downloads a month. About 77% of that is US-based. Most months, like, I barely crack 5% of those downloads in the UK.

Dougie Loan [00:31:17]:
Tough nut to crack.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:18]:
That's fine.

Dougie Loan [00:31:19]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:20]:
Is there something different that the UK recruiters do better on that side of the pond than US recruiters?

Dougie Loan [00:31:26]:
It's hard, man. It's hard to say if someone does it, if somebody does something particularly better. I would say that there's a generally held belief that UK recruiters believe that when they go into the US market, that they will bring UK recruiters with them because they're more likely to work harder. Like, that is like a thing, you know, if I'm opening a UK recruiting business, a UK business in the US, people believe, okay, I'll bring my UK recruiters over because they're more likely to work harder, whatever it might be. I don't know what the data is behind that, to be honest. And actually, it's kind of contradicting it based on what I've seen in the data here, which is that the US recruiters who use our platform are doing 2.3 times more outreach, you know, in terms of the work at the work levels that they're doing. The, I suppose the other kind of commonly held belief that we have is that as a recruiter in the US, you're actually more highly respected than in the UK. So in the UK market, recruiters maybe aren't often always seen as like genuine support in your career search or whatever it might be.

Dougie Loan [00:32:22]:
Whereas there's maybe a feeling that in the US, there's maybe a bit more respect for recruiters, that people are more likely to engage with them and that companies maybe value their services a little more. And I think that's maybe based on the fact that the US market pays higher fees and UK businesses generate much more profit when they work the US market compared to the UK. But I mean, keen to get your take on that because obviously you've seen both. Well, you've talked to people on both sides. Do you feel like the US respects a recruiter more than maybe than the UK does?

Benjamin Mena [00:32:51]:
So I don't have that many conversations with UK recruiters when it comes to recruiters in the US, especially the ones that are doing great. They are a consultant, they are a partner, they are the one bringing the market data. Companies are calling them.

Dougie Loan [00:33:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's a rare occurrence for the majority of the UK market. I think there are pockets of people doing really, really well in the UK market, running profitable businesses on the basis of like long-term arrangements with clients. And I think more and more companies are trying to focus on that. I would say that it's rare for someone to pick up the phone to a UK recruiter and ask for those, those types of insights.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:28]:
Well, I want to switch gears a little bit, but I want to talk about high growth versus high profit.

Dougie Loan [00:33:34]:
Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:34]:
So split it for me, like high, because you have the data.

Dougie Loan [00:33:37]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:37]:
High growth firms are the ones spending money to make money. What are they doing that nobody else does?

Dougie Loan [00:33:44]:
I think they're just more likely than a profitable business to have like a really strong playbook in place. So like, again, like, you know, that if we're going to hire people, we're really focused on how quickly we can get them to their first deal. And they've got like a pretty kind of like stringent process around that. Like if I look at some of the businesses that have been successful in recent times that you hear about, people like Metric, for example, and, you know, Joe Gianni's company. I don't actually know him personally, but from listening to the work that he's done on podcasts, et cetera, I think him and his team have a very kind of solid playbook in place. Like this is how we run recruitment here. This is when you come in, this is how we're going to get you up to speed. I think another business that I've seen that's grown dramatically a lot in recent years is a company called InterX.

Dougie Loan [00:34:22]:
They've got offices in Miami. Again, same thing. They're very clear, hey, we're running this playbook. This is Interact's playbook. And if you follow this, you'll be super successful. I've also seen that companies that are going through high growth are more likely to hire more experienced consultants in recent times. So I think the model, certainly when I got my first role at Hayes, was like, bring in as many graduates and young guns as you can, hope some of them make it. And that's how we'll grow the company.

Dougie Loan [00:34:47]:
But I think There are some really good high-growth businesses that have been able to hire experienced recruiters, find a package that works for them financially, and kind of make that a sustainable growth model. And then finally, I would say that there's a trend around these higher-growth businesses where they're winning longer-term project work. I think a lot of people were burned by the growth at all costs period at the end of 2020, kind of 2021. So I think a lot of companies that are growing well right now are doing it on the basis of guaranteed cash flow coming in from these longer-term project work that they're winning. Versus let's just speculatively go and hire 20 people and see how it plays out. So that's what I'm seeing on the high growth side. On the profitable side, I think a lot more of it is around the tactical stuff that they're doing. So job scoring, for example, like if I want to be a profitable recruiter, I'm going to make sure that I'm only going to work on jobs that are super tight on things like margins.

Dougie Loan [00:35:39]:
Maybe it's exclusive or retained. I've got prior experience of filling these roles. Obviously they're keeping headcount low. So whether that's leveraging a consolidated tech stack where they're reducing costs, bringing things in, or simply just not hiring as many people, or when they are hiring people, maybe hiring some offshore talent. I know that there's been a big boom in people hiring in places like South Africa, for example, in recent times. So yeah, I think that's probably the main differences that I'm seeing right now.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:04]:
Talking about the high growth thing, I actually just saw Metric, which I think they just got bought or sold.

Dougie Loan [00:36:10]:
Yeah, I think they just raised $100 million valuation. I think it was Southfield Capital.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:13]:
Yeah. And I actually saw one of the recruiters they highlighted who started as a recruiter, zero background, 12 months ago, and it was already billing a million dollars.

Dougie Loan [00:36:22]:
Yeah. And like, that's just, yeah, it's a playbook. It's just like, it's not luck, right? Like, look, everybody needs a little sprinkle of luck, but I truly believe, and someone taught me this years ago, like when I first left school, it was like, the harder you work, the luckier you get. So like, you know, there is, there's a correlation with that. And, um, so you do need a little bit of luck. But I think to build a business to $100 million valuation in recruitment, you've got to have a process that is repeatable, predictable, and scalable. And I think that's certainly what those guys seem to have done there.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:49]:
Looking at both of those and the data behind the scenes, what's the number one way that both these, the high profit and the high growth, are actually getting new business?

Dougie Loan [00:37:00]:
Interesting. So in those high growth businesses, what we seem to see a trend of is business development teams. So they've actually split the role. And again, this probably sounds quite normal to you guys in the US because it's been a thing for years, right? Where you would have a 1A, someone doing business development and sales and someone doing recruitment. That's not been common in the UK. And normally you've been 360, you're doing the full thing. But in a high-growth business, they're kind of pulling together these teams. And rather than it just being like, hey, I'm an individual seller, I have a quota or a target to bring in X number of vacancies or whatever it might be, operating them in pods of 2 or 3 people, and their job is to go out and win that longer-term project work.

Dougie Loan [00:37:39]:
So they're identifying, okay, how do we almost position ourselves more as a consultancy where we're going in and we're understanding this business, what their goals are, what to achieve that goal, you need to build out X, Y, and Z in terms of products. Okay, cool. How do they staff those products? How are they going to do that? And a lot of statement of work business basically to go and do it. And on the profitable side, I think obviously they're more focused on how do we keep things slim? How do we make sure that we that we kind of eat what we kill and kind of focus and probably maintain that 360 role versus splitting out.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:14]:
Across your customer base, are you seeing any changes in fee structures? Is there a shift more towards contingent? Is there a shift more towards retained or embedded models?

Dougie Loan [00:38:24]:
Man, I think everyone's wanted to like, I think up until 2020, there was a trend towards people wanting to do more retained work, right? Who wouldn't? I think you'd be crazy not to. And then I think obviously the market just went nuts and it was like printing money for a couple of years.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:41]:
The golden era.

Dougie Loan [00:38:42]:
Yeah, the golden era. Yeah. I mean, take me back. I think there's obviously a— I think retained is on the top of most people's minds right now. I think it's hard though, because there's less job requirements and less requisitions. So people are like, okay, well, if I'm pitching retained here, someone else is pitching contingent, do I lose the job? then I've got to ask myself, well, did I even ever want to work on it if it was just going to be contingent in the first place? The embedded model is definitely there, even like a really small phase as well. I think when I think of embedded, I think of companies like Talentful, for example, and how that team in that business, they have scaled recruiters and they're embedded with some of the world's largest organizations and they're doing a great job there. But I'm even seeing it on like a smaller scale where 8 to 10 head software recruitment businesses like, well, You know, you're hiring 6 account execs over the next 12 months.

Dougie Loan [00:39:32]:
How do we embed ourselves in there? Give you like a fixed fee structure paid on like a monthly basis, almost like a SaaS subscription, and then run it through. But I think the economics of that model on a small scale are quite hard, but I know that some companies are definitely trying to make it work.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:46]:
I want to talk about how getting, because one of the most important things is like, you know, outreach and turning those, that outreach into a meeting. You said right now the firms that are winning right now get the conversations offline as fast as possible, whether it's roundtable event, whether it's coffee. Why does speed to offline beat an email exchange?

Dougie Loan [00:40:07]:
I just think you're so forgettable when you're in an email, to be honest. If you're an email in someone's inbox, is honestly so forgettable nowadays. Look, at the end of the day, the volume is just absolutely insane. And I think there's just a thing where once I have an emotional connection with someone, And once I've met them, I've shook their hand or I've spent some time with them, even an online meeting, you know, builds you a much stronger connection than just an email. But honestly, I think face-to-face just makes it easier. I think once you've met someone face-to-face as well, you're more likely to pick up the phone the next time that they call you. And I think that is really important. If we exchanged emails and then I called you in 6 months' time, I don't know if you're going to feel like you should take my call or have to take my call.

Dougie Loan [00:40:47]:
I feel like if we went for lunch or I took you for breakfast or we had a coffee together or whatever, and I called you, there's probably a thing in your mind that thinks I should probably pick up the phone and have this conversation with this guy. You're maybe also less likely to assume that I'm only calling to sell to you as well. Whereas if we've just exchanged emails, there's maybe an assumption that I'm just someone that you're here to make business with or make money from essentially. I just think consistently investing in a relationship, which for me is both proximity. So how close I am to that person in terms of geographically and being there. And also just consistency as well is important. And I think those are the things that take you from an initial cold connect, whether that's over the phone or email or LinkedIn or whatever, through to having that kind of first meeting and winning business, but then also continuing it beyond that point. And that's something we focus a lot on actually in Sourcio internally.

Dougie Loan [00:41:38]:
We're very, very big on that, which is like, how quickly can we take our relationships from something that is just an email or a Zoom call and get that to something that's face-to-face.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:48]:
Okay, so picture this, they take the meeting. Walk me through how the best operators take a meeting to an actual job rec and where does it actually fall apart?

Dougie Loan [00:41:57]:
Yeah, it's a good question, man. It's been a long time since I've sat in a meeting trying to win business with a potential client. So I can't say this on the basis of experience of signing a retainer or anything recently. I can only do it on the basis of the conversations that I have with the owners that we work with and with the recruiters that are still doing it. Like, man, I think that when I speak to people, I think of a recruiter that we've worked with in the past, a guy called Callum Lyle, who I've known for a number of years. He's a great guy, both as a human being, but also as a recruiter. And I think the thing that's always really interesting for me when I meet with him is he comes with information on the market. So when I meet with Callum, I don't feel like I'm just there to just have a catch-up, but I feel like he's coming along and he's saying, listen, Here's how the market's moving at the minute in time.

Dougie Loan [00:42:41]:
Here's the companies that are operating in your space and how they're hiring. Here's maybe companies in your space that have lost some head recently. And those people that have went, here's where they've gone as well. So you can kind of get a bit of a pulse on it. If I think of my experience sitting down with him and why we decided to then work with him and how he took it from that to that was, I think the best thing that he did was he gave me some information. He did discovery. He wanted to understand what are we doing? What are we focused on? How are we doing it moving forward? And then he asked me, he put the ball in my court and he said to me, so what's your thoughts on how you're going to bring these people in then? How would you like to work with someone? What does that look like? And he started getting me to describe what my ideal situation was. And I think that was when he was like, well, good news is we can do that for you.

Dougie Loan [00:43:23]:
And then he took it from there. So yeah, I've not got a mass playbook for that, unfortunately, that people can apply. I can just speak from personal experience.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:31]:
I want to highlight kind of like what you guys are doing. So tell me about a firm that you guys, that was drowning in admin and what actually changed for them. And like, you don't have to name the firm.

Dougie Loan [00:43:43]:
Yeah, that's fair.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:44]:
But like, do you have like numbers behind the scenes?

Dougie Loan [00:43:47]:
Yeah, I think that, if I think of one firm in particular, the guy's name's Chris. I think like for Chris, like his biggest challenge was like as a small business, he, like when you're running a small business, by the way, like recruitment is only like, actually the job of doing recruitment is probably only like 60% of your day, right? Like, or your week, because you've got other stuff going on. You're chasing invoices, you know, you're trying to get paid, you know, you've got a life as well. You've got mortgages to pay, you've got cars to pay, like, you know, there's, you've got, maybe you have kids. So there's all of this stuff going on. And I think like for Chris, one of his biggest challenges was just like keeping on top of, keeping on top of the business development, candidate sourcing activity that he was meant to be doing, but also keeping on top of the work that was actually being done by his team. And I think that was a real challenge for him. And I think what was happening as well was it was creating this kind of tense environment where you're constantly asking people, I need you to log your KPIs, I need you to log your KPIs.

Dougie Loan [00:44:39]:
And people are like, well, why? And it's like, well, because I can't help you if you're not logging it. I don't know what's happening. And it was just creating a lot of, yeah, a bit of a bad atmosphere, I suppose, in this company. It's a 3-person company, sorry. And Basically, they brought on board the Sourceway all in one platform. So that's everything from like the sourcing right through to like CRM and ATS and everything else. And they moved away. And I think for him, the most important thing was one, was that like Sourceway was proactively keeping on top of all his follow-ups for him.

Dougie Loan [00:45:06]:
It was proactively telling him what he had to focus on that day. So he was like, okay, I come in today, I don't have to use any brainpower to get started. I can get going. Once I have the momentum, then I can start using my brainpower to think of what I'm going to do next. But most importantly, completely removed the need for his team to be manually logging the calls that they had or the KPIs or anything else. So he got the insight in terms of what was working, what wasn't working without having to be knocking on people's doors all the time saying, I need you to spend an hour doing admin work. I need you to spend this. I need you to spend that.

Dougie Loan [00:45:35]:
And for him, he's just coming off the back of his first half of the year having his best half that he's had in the business for a number of years. Well, not ever, but certainly since 2022 when things took a bit of a nosedive for him. I think little ones like that, when you hear stories like that, for me, they're not like this guy went from 3 people to 300 people and took over the world. But that's a guy that's gone from running a business that was probably reaching something that wasn't enjoyable for him, to be honest, on a day-to-day basis to now he's like, okay, now I can actually enjoy the work that I'm doing and actually see a future for what I'm doing next. And that's pretty important to me.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:10]:
So I'm going to throw out a random number and this is just me completely guessing based on how many sales calls you've had with 5 years of the last company, 5 years with Source Whale. I'm guessing you've sat down with, maybe talked to about 25,000 recruiters.

Dougie Loan [00:46:23]:
Yeah, man, probably around that number. That's, that's pretty insane, isn't it? Especially if you consider the fact that like I've been in rooms trading hundreds of people at a time as well and stuff. So yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:32]:
I gotta ask this, like all these conversations, I'm sure it's around some of the questions that I've been asking, like, you know, reply rates, what's working, how do you write an NPC email that works? Like all these questions that you get, is there a question that you wish you got, but you never actually get asked? Yeah.

Dougie Loan [00:46:48]:
Do you know what's really interesting is like you say, people want to ask the logical questions, which is like, what insight can you give me about the work that I do already every day so that I can make that better, right? Based on the market knowledge that you've gained. No one has ever asked how we are using AI internally in our business at Sourcio. And I think that's pretty crazy because we are so heavily motivated to use it, but we're also really lucky to have an incredibly talented team. The majority of people on our team are Oxford and Cambridge graduates, and they're at the forefront of that in London every single day. So yeah, I wish people would ask us a little bit more about that because I've got loads that I could probably share with them that would make their lives easier too.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:30]:
How about this? Walk me through a workflow that your team has handled to AI.

Dougie Loan [00:47:35]:
Good point, man. So there is so many. I think that for me, all of my weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting, both from a kind of just standard weekly metrics in terms of how the business is operating right through to our board pack, is completely done by our internal AI agent now. So that's an hour per week for me, 2 hours in a monthly report, and probably 4 to 6 hours in a board pack that I just don't have to do anymore. Now, obviously, you still have to add your own summary and assessment of it.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:04]:
Yeah.

Dougie Loan [00:48:04]:
But the actual pulling of the data and the presentation format of it is completely done and dusted. And that's obviously had a massive impact across the whole business. I think client-facing-wise, I look at the work that maybe Emily, who's one of our account managers, has done. So you think of 2,500 customers, we have a lot of meetings with those people, obviously. And as an account manager, I'm handling maybe around 100 accounts. I was probably spending, if I'm Emily, maybe 2 or 3 hours preparing for every conversation that I was having, pulling in insights, market knowledge, who put a presentation together, right? Which is pretty painful, man, for like Google Slides as well. She was able to write a handbook for our internal agent that basically now at the start of every day when she comes in, she has got the full brief for every client call that she has that day. Every presentation is pulled together as well.

Dougie Loan [00:48:51]:
And her job is basically to sit down with a coffee or a tea, bring herself up to speed on all of that information and the suggested next steps and make sure that she's happy with it. So now she's walking into a meeting, she's fully armed with all the context and all the conversation. And again, I think that's something that you could apply to a recruitment business. When I'm catching up with my existing clients, if I've got all the context stored within my system, I can easily pull my summary deck together and have that brief for me, but also have that brief for the team. And another one that I have personally, if I'm having a face-to-face meeting, so the agent, we call it SIA, the Sourcefield Internal Agent, SIA scans my calendar every day and looks for any external meetings that I have. And 15 minutes before every external meeting, it sends me a prep through based on criteria I've set up for it. So I want to know something personal about the person. So if they posted something on LinkedIn about running a marathon, et cetera, I want to understand our relationship with them up until this point.

Dougie Loan [00:49:44]:
I want to understand if they've got any outstanding support tickets with us. And I want to understand 3 other companies that you work with that are the same as that business. And that just drops into my Slack channel every time. So, Yeah, there's tons more, but I'm really passionate about what we've built internally because it has completely changed the way that we do work as a business.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:05]:
So with all the AI doing the AI things, what are people actually doing with their additional time they have?

Dougie Loan [00:50:12]:
Yeah. So I think of the use of AI in 2 ways. I think of it as efficiency, and then I think of it as effectiveness. The most important thing to me is actually, can our team be more effective? So, for me, for example, I'm probably, yes, I'm saving 5 or 10 minutes before I walk into that client meeting. But actually, I think I'm more effective in those client meetings because of the format of that brief and the way it's been given to me. Does that make sense? And I think that I can have a much deeper conversation with that person. And quite frankly, if I'm running a little bit late, at least I still have the information. I probably wouldn't have done it before.

Dougie Loan [00:50:47]:
So, I know categorically that I'm more effective in that conversation. I know that If I look at our account managers, they're more effective because they're not having to do that 5 or 6 times a day. It's already done for them. But if I look at the way that people repurpose their time, honestly, we repurpose it into client conversations. So we'll have more conversations with our clients in terms of over the phone. But actually, someone like Emily is a perfect example where she's now out on the road 2 or 3 days a week because she loves it. And she's out meeting people face to face in their offices, stuff that she just probably wouldn't have been able to do before because she's looking at her calendar thinking, God, I've got 6 client calls on Thursday. That's 6 presentations that I need to prep.

Dougie Loan [00:51:23]:
Like, how can I possibly go from London to Manchester on Wednesday and not have to spend 3 or 4 hours Wednesday night prepping these presentations for the next day? But that's completely done. So it's basically allowing us to provide a more effective service, I think, to our clients. And look, could we do better? Everyone can always do better, right? But I think that it puts us in, it gives us a really, really strong advantage. And we're not using it to we're not one of these companies. It's like, okay, now we've got AI, let's just hire less people or let's not spend as much people or let's lay people off or do any of that kind of stuff. We're really bullish on the fact that if we had someone like Emily, for example, doing all of that great work, and she's actually our biggest revenue generator across the whole company, right? And she's an account manager. So she's outselling our sales team and she's an account manager. So if we can take an account manager And give them that power, why would we not just have 4 or 5 more account managers doing that same thing and generating that type of return? And that's how we, that's how we think of it internally as well.

Dougie Loan [00:52:22]:
We're not saying we don't want to grow. We're not saying we want to remove jobs or work that people are doing. We just want to make sure that we can take people who are currently billing X and get them billing Y and getting customers happier.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:32]:
Using Sourcewell's AI, what has been one of the actual biggest surprises?

Dougie Loan [00:52:36]:
The attitude that it has. What's been really interesting is like, I think sometimes when you use AI, it can feed you like a warm, fluffy blanket. So it can be like, hey, it's all good, everything's fine, you're amazing, just try a little bit harder next time.

Benjamin Mena [00:52:48]:
Watch your back.

Dougie Loan [00:52:48]:
Yeah, exactly right. And so you've got that. I think what we've been able to do is we score every demo that we do. We have a playbook, obviously, we have a process, we have a scorecard for what a good demo looks like at Sourcewell. And historically you would take your one demo to your manager and he or she would sit down with you and you would score it together once per week. Now, you're running 15, 20 demos a week and that's just one that you're getting scored on. What we've been able to do is actually take the AI solution that we have and then score every single demo that takes place. So everything is getting scorecarded and there's learnings from every call and we obviously summarize that and give it to people in a digestible way.

Dougie Loan [00:53:27]:
But when it gives feedback, it doesn't hold back punches, man. It's pretty, which is what we want, right? We want it to be direct and say, hey, listen, because that's the culture we have. Hey, listen, this is where we thought you did well. Here's where you really need to improve. And actually, do you know what? This is probably the second or third time I've told you about this now. So what's your plan to basically make sure that I'm not having to notify you of it again moving forward? So yeah, I think that's fun for me as well. It's good to see it and people appreciate it and it brings a little bit of personality, I suppose, to the technology that we're using.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:59]:
That's tougher than Claude telling me to pack it up for the weekend. And go enjoy, go actually enjoy the weekend.

Dougie Loan [00:54:04]:
Literally told me that. That's incredible, man. I know you need a break. It's scary.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:09]:
Well, so picture this. I'm a solo recruiter listening, or I'm a recruiter that has a 10-person team. Like, what's a stripped-down version of like what I can actually run next week to be like effective like this?

Dougie Loan [00:54:22]:
Yeah, it's a good question. I think I would say Claude's pretty good at like doing reporting. for you and doing it on a recurring basis. I think that the stuff that I was talking about there around KPI reporting for our team, both on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis, on a personal level, I think you could probably pull that together with Claude as long as it had access to the data sources that you've got. And I think that you could get started on that straight away. I think the good thing about it as well is that if you do hook it up to AI, and obviously do it in a safe way, and I'll let you figure that all out for yourself to make sure that you're comfortable with the data that you're sharing with whatever AI tool that you have, is when you have a thought and an idea, rather than having to go in and build dashboards and stuff, you can actually just ask the question, hey, what's the biggest differences over the last 6 months between our UK and US users? Or when we were billing $500K per person last year, what were the top 5 things that our team were doing on a day-to-day basis? And I think there's these types of things that you, insights that you can go and grab. I think that's probably the easiest thing to get started with. I think all of the prep work before client meetings and things would be a huge game changer for people.

Dougie Loan [00:55:28]:
I'm just not so sure how easy it would be to just get that set up, if that makes sense, and get it up and running. But it's definitely worth the effort.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:38]:
But if a recruiter has Sourcewell, that's all up and running.

Dougie Loan [00:55:41]:
Yeah, it's good. Yep, absolutely. So I suppose the answer to that is buy Sourcewell. I'm only kidding. I'm only kidding.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:48]:
Well, I wanna— you could— you probably get to see things a little farther down the road than most recruiters.

Dougie Loan [00:55:55]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:55]:
So like every platform right now is like literally shouting agents, agents. 12 months from now, what does an agent actually own on an agency desk?

Dougie Loan [00:56:05]:
Yeah, that's a good question, man. I honestly, I still think it's hard to tell. Like, I think that sometimes there's days where I'm like, wow, we are like light years ahead of where I thought the world would be and where this market would be. And then there's other times where I'm like, God, I felt like 3 years ago where we're saying this would already be here and it's not here yet. So I have that kind of up and down in terms of where I see it going. I think there's some really simple stuff. I think logging notes and things is completely dead. I think you're going to have an admin agent who, doesn't matter what system you're using, you're basically doing the job and the admin agent is taking all of the context and is storing that to make it reportable for more senior people on the team, but also searchable for you as a second brain moving forward.

Dougie Loan [00:56:46]:
So I think you'll have an admin agent. I think a sourcing agent is probably going to be there as well. I think of like the idea of being like, you know, hey, here's the exact type of profile that is like an A+ star candidate for me that I know that if I had that person, I could place them in any of my clients. And it just kind of almost sitting there monitoring the CRM and the database to know that if that person ever becomes available or ever updates information or they are added to the CRM or database by a colleague. That's instantly flagged to me. I think it's going to be key. I'm trying to think of what else. Honestly, I think those are the 2 most important ones.

Dougie Loan [00:57:17]:
I think they're the ones that I could easily say with 99% certainty are going to be there within 12 months. You've got a sourcing agent, you've got an admin agent. There's obviously lots of other stuff. When I think of agents as well, I don't always think of them as being like something I sit down with and that I then instruct them and then they go away and do the work and then they come back and report to me, kind of almost like this worker bee movement. I think of agents more as how can they start to actually proactively power the work that I'm doing by like, hey, I've got this agent. It learns about what makes me good, what makes me bad. And when I come in every morning, they're preparing that to-do list for me, like on Sourcewheel, right? And to me, I think that is a really powerful way to use agentic AI because it's taken these individual worker bots across lots of different things. It's reporting back up to almost agentic managers, and then it's reporting up to an agentic executive who's summarizing all of that action activity and is then making the decision on where I should spend my time and is then feeding it to me.

Dougie Loan [00:58:09]:
But that already exists. I just think it'll take some time for that to become widespread.

Benjamin Mena [00:58:16]:
I know we've covered a lot about what Sourcewell's doing, what's happening with high-growth firms, high-profit firms, what's actually working in 2026. Before we jump over to the quickfire questions, is there anything that you want to go deeper on or a question I should have asked you?

Dougie Loan [00:58:29]:
I think we've covered a lot. Like, honestly, I think, I think, you know, we're an hour in. I think it's been a, yeah, I think it's been a good conversation. Look, honestly, I think for me, like, this is not a pitch just for Sourcewheel. I just truly believe that if you are a recruitment business right now and you want to make AI, and in particular, agentic AI, because that's very much the next phase and it's happening now, work for your business, you do need to consolidate your tech stack. Whether that's Sourcewheel or whether that's something else, obviously it's your call. But I do think that the lack of full context is the thing that will mean that you won't be able to get as much out of AI and as much out of agents as you might want to. And I think of it as that old picture that you sometimes see where it's like 2 ships on the water and they're 1 degree apart at the beginning, but as they go further, they kind of get further and further apart.

Dougie Loan [00:59:13]:
And I think for me, that's what's going to happen with businesses that are not running off full context is like, it might not feel terrible right now, but over time, The people that have that context and the AI operating from it are going to see much bigger advantages than those that don't.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:28]:
You've seen the data behind the scenes, and I don't know if you get a chance to see the conversations that's happening, but have you ever, what do you see behind the scenes that has really taken a recruiter from average to elite?

Dougie Loan [00:59:41]:
That's a great question, man. I think there is many, many things. I think I'm going to give you a very boring answer here that is not technology related.

Benjamin Mena [00:59:48]:
Cool.

Dougie Loan [00:59:50]:
Honestly, I think it's consistency. I think it's consistency. When I speak to anyone, either people that I know personally that I've worked with or people that are the highest performers within the firms that are doing really well, they just, they know what they need to do and they turn up and they do it every single day, no matter if they feel like it or not. And they know that when they reach, they don't have a number that is a number of like, okay, I got there, so now I can chill a little bit. When they get to that number, they're like, okay, cool, how much more can I do? And I think that is the big difference for me. And I'm talking about monthly billings, quarterly billings, whatever. People should still have a life, obviously, outside of work. But I think if you want to be a truly elite recruiter, you do need to accept that your hours outside the 9 to 5 are normally where you make a lot of money on candidate conversations, et cetera.

Dougie Loan [01:00:34]:
You're dealing with things and being able to be consistent with that and being able to just apply consistent energy to to the work that you're doing, I think, is the most common trait that I see on a human basis when I speak to people.

Benjamin Mena [01:00:46]:
For those that are listening audio version, which is, I know, most of you guys, he has books above him, he has books below him. What is a book that has changed how you operate?

Dougie Loan [01:00:56]:
What is a book that has changed how I operate? Wow, there's so many up here. Changed how I operate. I would say on a tactical level, probably The Sales Acceleration Formula by Marc Roberge. So he was the CRO at HubSpot and I read that book back 2019, I think, 2018. And that was the first book that introduced me to the concept of playbooks, structure, measurable outcomes and success, and how having something that is repeatable, predictable, and scalable is basically the key to running a successful go-to-market operation. So yeah, on a business level, that one. I think on a personal level, I read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, who was the founder of Nike. And Wow, man, what a story.

Dougie Loan [01:01:37]:
What a story. I mean, I'd just come back from Japan. I was working with clients down there when I was at Audro. And, you know, I just felt like this, like, real connection with this guy who had, like, went down to Japan and bought shoes from this Japanese company and he was going to sell them in America. And I was like, wow, you know, I just, yeah, I just think his story is absolutely incredible. And he talks about some of the troubles that he's had along the way in terms of athletes that he worked with who died in unfortunate circumstances and stuff like that as well. So it's a real roller coaster, both from, like, a business success perspective, but also a personal journey as well.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:07]:
Prefontaine.

Dougie Loan [01:02:08]:
Yeah, exactly. You know it, man. You know it.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:11]:
What is a tool that you respect that isn't Source Whale?

Dougie Loan [01:02:17]:
A tool that I respect that isn't Source Whale.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:19]:
Or you genuinely admire?

Dougie Loan [01:02:21]:
Genuinely admire. Man, it's a good question. I think, does it have to be recruitment specific or do you want me to go? No, no, no. It could be anything.

Benjamin Mena [01:02:30]:
Yeah.

Dougie Loan [01:02:32]:
Obviously, the likes of Claude and ChatGPT, and the work that they're doing are pretty cool. I'd probably say HubSpot. I think for me, HubSpot has been like a— when I was at Audro, and again, we're trying to scale a business, and I look at that system and I'm like, okay, I need to be able to build X, Y, and Z. I'm trying to build this repeatable, predictable, scalable process. The thing that I really respect about HubSpot is they innovated and went from being a marketing solution to actually covering the full end-to-end cycle. But more than that, they kept it usable by normal guys like me. So I could go in and I could build new pipelines and I could do all that stuff and I didn't have to be a technical whiz and I was able to customize it and build it to what I needed. And I just really respect the way that they'd run it.

Dougie Loan [01:03:12]:
I also respect, someone that I respect is probably more from an individual perspective versus the product is Henry Shuck at ZoomInfo. I think, man, that dude is the CEO of a publicly traded company. He's clearly a sales focused and commercial leader. And he's on LinkedIn replying to people. He posts his own videos. I mean, I do it, right? I'll do a little demo of here's the latest feature, but we're a 150-head company. This dude's running a $1.2 billion company and he's doing that on a Friday morning. And I just think, do you know what? Talk about leading from the front.

Dougie Loan [01:03:41]:
I think that's a really commendable thing to do. I really believe in that. I think if you want to be a good leader, you need to do the thing that you're asking other people to do. So HubSpot is a tech tool, probably Henry is someone from an individual perspective.

Benjamin Mena [01:03:54]:
We've covered a lot. Is there anything else that you want to leave the listener about Sourcewell before I let you go?

Dougie Loan [01:04:01]:
I think that if you haven't seen Sourcewell in the last 3 months, then you just haven't seen Sourcewell. I think our business has evolved so much over the last 5 years. I think it evolved dramatically in the last year as we released our CRM and ATS. And I think the fact of the matter is, like, as a business, we're pushing 3 to 5 new releases every single day right now. the product is nothing compared to maybe what it was when you saw it before. So if you've seen SourceWheel in the past and you're maybe interested to see how it's evolved, then I'd love you to come and take a look. And if you think you know what SourceWheel is based on what you saw in 2024 or 2025, then I'd say you're wrong. You need to come and have a chat.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:36]:
Got one more question for you.

Dougie Loan [01:04:37]:
Let's go.

Benjamin Mena [01:04:39]:
If anybody wants to follow or connect with you, how do they go about doing that?

Dougie Loan [01:04:42]:
LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn, man. I do it all the time. I mean, like back in 2016, I was recording selfie videos. I was like, you know, traveling to obscure places, teaching people about video technology and recruitment, even in 2015. So yeah, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. And yeah, please, you know, drop me a connection request on there. I'm always, always happy to chat to people.

Dougie Loan [01:05:00]:
I love it.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:01]:
I just want to say thank you so much for jumping on today. I love like the data that you guys have. It's billions upon billions of messages. So you guys get a chance to see what works. It's not just like theory. It's not just like, hey, like, I think this is going to be an awesome, like, most placeable candidate email. It's like, no, this is how you actually write it. Like you even said, like, No, write it yourself.

Dougie Loan [01:05:22]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:22]:
Billions of emails, write it yourself. We see the data.

Dougie Loan [01:05:26]:
100%. 100%.

Benjamin Mena [01:05:29]:
So once again, I've gotten a chance to see you from afar, know you online, pleasure sitting down and, uh, hey guys, check out SourceWell. It's, it's changed. So for the listeners, like, what can you take away? What can you take away from this conversation that's gonna help you win 2026? Do you wanna be a high growth company? Do you wanna be a highly profitable company? Do you want your messages to go through? Pick up what he said, like maybe do a roundtable, take these conversations offline. And the winner, the recruiters that are taking this stuff offline are the ones that winning. So crush it. 2026 is your year.

Dougie Loan [01:06:04]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit subscribe and leave a rating.