No college degree. 30 years on a desk. $1.5 million a year. David Fishman breaks down exactly how he built it.

David Fishman of Sparrow Company started on a temp desk after eight years in the Coast Guard, launched his firm in 2009 in the teeth of the recession, and never stopped treating recruiting like something was chasing him. In this episode he shares the resume-reading method behind his 10-for-10 presentation-to-placement streak, the intake questions that tell you whether the wind is at your back, how he wins back lost clients by outliving the HR leaders who cut him, and why he tracks deals instead of dollars.

Build your own AI recruiting agents live with Seb Sharp at The Recruiting Agents Workshop, August 25-26: https://the-recruiting-agents-workshop.heysummit.com/

This episode is sponsored by Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures every interview, client call, email, and LinkedIn message automatically, then tells you the next action to take. Atlas customers are reporting 50% higher candidate response rates, 15 hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping 85%: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

Chapters:
0:00 The Recruiting Agents Workshop + David's hot open
4:34 Who is David Fishman
5:10 No degree and the chip on his shoulder
9:57 Eight years in the Coast Guard to a temp desk
13:37 Going out on his own
15:25 Dreaming every day and surviving dead deals
18:49 The 10-for-10 streak: reading resumes like photographs
22:14 Intake calls: wind at your back or digging through mud
25:06 The 30-year client and the power of patience
27:56 Winning back the clients who cut you
30:49 Starting Sparrow Company in the 2009 recession
34:39 What the 2009 to 2012 grind taught him
38:42 Deals not dollars and the October wave
41:53 Launching the temp business in El Paso
46:08 How he recruited his own business partner
49:25 The hardest part: hiring recruiters
50:36 His kids joined the business and his daughter out-bills him
54:34 Something is chasing me at 58
58:10 Advice for recruiters in their 20s and 30s
1:01:32 What the Pinnacle Society means to him
1:03:55 Choose which 12 hours you want to work
1:07:06 Connect with David

Connect with David Fishman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-fishman-b468112/

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