In Part 1, Tom Kelly walked us through how EVONA scaled from 4 founders to 80 recruiters, then deliberately cut back to 30 — and per-head revenue doubled.

In Part 2, he hands over the framework that explains how he manages the leaner team. And it starts with a number most agency owners have never been forced to confront.

If you haven't watched Part 1 yet, watch that one first — it sets up everything Tom unpacks here.

Tom segments every sales team into four brackets. The top 10% who don't care about anyone else — they just want to bill. The next 20% who aspire to be that top performer. The bottom 10% who were never going to make it. And then the middle 60%. The bracket nobody manages correctly. Because the middle 60% don't measure themselves against the top performers — they measure themselves against the bottom 10%. As long as they're doing enough not to be the worst person on the team, they think they're fine. That's the bracket quietly sinking most agencies.

The second framework Tom hands over is the activity benchmark EVONA uses to define elite. 25 interviews on a rolling 4-week period. Reverse engineered from a 12-to-1 interview-to-placement ratio. Drop below 25 and Tom is direct — you are not fit to play at the top level.

Tom also unpacks why he'd hate to be running a big recruitment company right now, the AI governance problem coming for scaled agencies, the LinkedIn spam wave about to wash through, and why recruitment is now IQ over EQ.

He opens the conversation with the moment that built all of this — a childhood stutter so bad he was afraid to pay a phone bill. He chose recruitment specifically because it would force him onto the phone every day. That fear is the engine behind eight years of building EVONA.

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 Why most recruiting teams are quietly sinking
02:00 The stutter that built Tom Kelly's career
07:00 Why relationships are the only IP in recruitment
09:00 Why big recruiting firms will break in the next 18 months
11:00 The LinkedIn spam wave about to wash through
13:00 Why candidates will move to vertical platforms
14:00 Building tools with Claude as a founder responsibility
15:00 A day in the life of a UK recruiter on US hours
22:00 UK recruiters vs US recruiters — the honest answer
26:00 Personal brand is the new demand engine
30:00 Average to elite — mindset, consistency, control
33:00 The 25-interview rolling 4-week activity benchmark
35:00 Reverse engineering the 12-to-1 interview-to-placement ratio
35:30 The books that shaped Tom's leadership
36:00 Why Claude is the tool changing how Tom thinks
38:00 The question Tom wishes every recruiter would ask him
39:00 The 10 / 20 / 60 / 10 sales team segmentation framework
41:00 Why the middle 60% are the bracket nobody manages right

🎙️ CONNECT WITH TOM KELLY

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/evonatom/
Email — tom@evona.com
EVONA — https://evona.com

📌 RESOURCES

Atlas (episode sponsor) — recruitwithatlas.com
Elite Recruiter Community — https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community
AI Recruiting Summit 2026 — https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/
Newsletter — https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

🎧 LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORM

Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-60-of-recruiters-wholl-quietly-sink-your-agency-part-2/id1547241660?i=1000772009664
Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/episode/2MyIvMa0j2uqpN7alrXBSw?si=Jqu1g4QmSzaqfRSexjHTxA

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