The Elite Recruiter Podcast
The Elite Recruiter Podcast is where top recruiters go to get better. Hosted by executive recruiter Benjamin Mena, this show dives deep into the stories, strategies, and mindsets of the most successful people in the industry — from $1M solo producers to 8+-figure agency founders. Each episode delivers real, tactical insights for high-performance recruiting: How elite recruiters build and scaleTools, tech stacks, and sourcing strategiesDaily habits and workflows that drive million-dollar desksLessons from failure, breakthrough wins, and mindset shiftsWhat the best are doing next — and how they’re changing the game If you’re in agency recruiting, staffing, or executive search — this is yo...
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, which Greg Fischer says is where most of the 7 out of 10 failures actually happen.
Greg says the quiet part out loud early: you do...
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 international team inside his own firm while scaling it from $1 million to $4.2 million, and recorded the conversation I wish I had before I spent a...
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 bringing it back because Tom is joining us at the Firm Leaders Summit, and the questions he raised then are the same ones firm owners a...
$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 single month. Matthieu "Matt" Beaurain built a $50M a year search group by doing the opposite.
Matt has led Lincoln for 26 years...
$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 is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that captures every call, email, and LinkedIn message automatically and tells...
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 episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that captures every interview, call, and message automatically, then...
Training Our Competition Grew Our Recruiting Firm.
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 the other built a recruiting firm. Then their entire team at a 2,000-person government contractor was let go, and both of them...
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 Minis on his desk.
The argument Alex makes is simple and uncomfortable. If you think you're...
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-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com
This episode is presented by Atlas. Atlas is the CRMx that captures every call, meeting, message, and email you touch, ranks your...
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 around one question: how do you take a recruiter who is stuck at $300K and get them...
$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 that captures every call, email, and message automatically and tells you the next action to take: https://recruitwithatlas.com/
Mary Huminski was 22, fresh out...
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 billers on how to close out the year and set up 2027. Register free: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong...
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 meetings in three months...
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. Kevin is a licensed clinical social worker and licensed clinical addiction specialist with 20 years in...
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 boss said the words that changed everything: why don't you...
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 want the replays or VIP access, this is your line...
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 October 5. It is a free virtual summit built to help...
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 permanent or contract, Atlas covers both with its new contract suite, so you never chase a timesheet...
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-workshop.heysummit.com/
Julia Arpag was laid off at five weeks postpartum with a newborn, a toddler, and two teenage foster sons at home...
$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 sponsored by Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context. It captures every call, email, and message automatically, tells you the next action to take, and does...
How To Become A Talent Engineer (Recruiting's New AI Role)
Has AI actually helped you make more placements this year, or has it just been noise? Before you dive in, this is your last call for The Recruiting Agents Workshop with Seb Sharp, August 25 and 26. Two live build-along sessions where you will create an autonomous lead agent, a placement agent, and connect your entire tech stack, plus recordings, templates, and a week of Slack access to Seb after the sessions end. Grab your seat now: https://the-recruiting-agents-workshop.heysummit.com/
In this episode Benjamin Mena sits down with Dan McCarthy, Senior Talent Engineer at Zapier and one of...
$1.5M To $6M While Everyone Watched Their Inbox Die
4X Growth While Everyone Watched Their Inbox Die.
Want to actually make money with AI instead of just talking about it? Join me and Seb Sharp for The Recruiting Agents Workshop, August 25th and 26th. Two live build-along sessions where you will create your own autonomous lead agent and placement agent, connect your entire tech stack, and walk away with recordings, templates, and a week of Slack access to Seb. Grab your spot: https://the-recruiting-agents-workshop.heysummit.com/
And mark your calendar for the Finish The Year Strong 2026 Virtual Summit, September 28th through October 5th. The...
How To Build A $1.5 Million Desk With No College Degree
Before we get into it: The Recruiting Agents Workshop with Seb Sharp is happening August 25th and 26th. Two live build-along sessions where you will build an autonomous lead agent, a placement agent, and wire your entire tech stack together, with recordings, templates, and a full week of Slack access to Seb included. Sign up here: 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...
The Inner Work That Made Her A Million Dollar Biller
Recruiters, do not limp into December. The Finish The Year Strong 2026 virtual summit runs September 28 through October 5, with the top producers and leaders in recruiting, including Pinnacle Society's Michelle Flynn, sharing exactly what is working right now to close the year with momentum. Grab your spot: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/
This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures every interview, client call, email, and message automatically, then tells you the next action to take. Agencies building on Atlas are reporting 50 percent higher candidate response rates and monthly billings jumping 85...
How To Become The Recruiter AI Recommends
Right now a hiring manager is typing "accounting recruiter near me" into ChatGPT, and somebody is coming up. Steve Gipson's argument is that the recruiter who gets named is almost never the best one. It is simply the most visible one.
Benjamin sat in a room at the Pinnacle Society conference adding up numbers as top billers casually mentioned inbound work arriving through their websites. Two hundred thousand here. Four hundred thousand there. Another hundred somewhere else. Roughly a million dollars in placement fees that nobody chased. That is the conversation that led to this episode.
<...How To Find Your Real Driver. It Was Never Money
Across more than 5,000 recruiters, Michelle Flynn has run the same values exercise. Not once, not a single time, has money come up as a core value. So if money is not your real driver, what is? And what happens to your career, your business, and your health when you finally find out?
🎯 Free registration is open for Finish The Year Strong 2026, the virtual summit for recruiters running September 28 to October 5: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/
🤖 Atlas is the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. Atlas customers have reported over 40 percent EBITDA growth and over 80 percen...
20 Placements a Month Put Her in the Hospital
Michelle Flynn was living the recruitment dream. Twenty placements a month as a solo recruiter. Working 9:30 to 4:30. Every single client on exclusive, no staff, no cold calls, and a seat inside her clients' offices where offers closed almost on autopilot. Then, three months after her wedding, at age 39, she woke up with a severe pain down the left side of her chest and hit the floor. Her husband thought he had lost her.
🎯 Free registration is open for Finish The Year Strong 2026, the virtual summit for recruiters running September 28 to October 5: https://recruiters-finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/
🤖 Atlas...
He's Seen Billions Of Recruiting Messages: What's Dead And What Wins In 2026
The AI Recruiting Summit 2026 is happening now with free live sessions. Grab your spot: https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/
This episode is brought to you in partnership with SourceWhale.
Most recruiters will send outreach this week that is already dead and never know it. Benjamin Mena sits down with Dougie Loan, the man behind billions of recruiting messages at SourceWhale, to break down exactly what has stopped working, what is quietly winning in 2026, and why the pre-AI playbook is falling apart in real time.
Dougie has a vantage point almost nobody in recruiting has...
How To Build A Multi-Million-Dollar Recruiting Firm From Zero
The AI Recruiting Summit 2026 is happening now through July 20th, and registration is free for every live session. Recruiting engineers, operators, and recruiters actually running AI on their desks are showing what is working behind the scenes. Do not miss it. Register here: https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/
This episode is brought to you by Atlas. The resume never tells the full story, and most of what candidates share ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas is the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically, and with MagicSearch you can ask...
How To Get 3 Hours Of Real Work Done Before Lunch
Gary Stauble started his firm in 1998 and almost immediately lost control of his mornings. Circumstances at home meant he could not rely on being at his desk on any given day. He had less time than his competition, and he was not hitting his goals.
So he stopped measuring hours and started measuring what the hours produced. He compressed his workday, front-loaded everything that mattered into the morning, and produced more, not less.
This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin...
How To Build A $1.3 Million AI Recruiting Desk
The AI Recruiting Summit 2026 kicks off July 13th and runs through July 20th, and this episode is your preview of exactly what you will see there. Live sessions are free, so you can pop in and out around your desk. If you want the replays, grab the VIP option or join the Elite Recruiter Community, where every summit replay lives permanently. Register now at https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/ because 2026 is the year you draw your line in the sand.
This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. Atlas...
How To Build A Million Dollar Biller. Danny Cahill.
In this second part of a two part conversation, Danny Cahill takes Benjamin Mena behind the scenes of how he builds million dollar billers, why AI is quietly turning recruiters into commodities, and the one skill he says you cannot teach.
This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin and turn every candidate conversation into something you can use. Atlas customers have reported over 40 percent EBITDA growth and over 80 percent increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. Get started and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas...
Danny Cahill On Building A 40 Year Career. (Pt 1)
Danny Cahill is one of the biggest names in the history of the recruiting industry, and in this first part of a two part conversation he sits down with Benjamin Mena to unpack forty years of building a firm, surviving every disruption thrown at him, and developing recruiters who last entire careers.
This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin and turn every candidate conversation into something you can use. Atlas customers have reported over 40 percent EBITDA growth and over 80 percent increase in monthly billings after adopting the...
How To Become A Million Dollar Biller
Half the year is gone. That single fact is why Benjamin Mena pulled this talk out of the Elite Recruiter Community and put it in the feed. It is a reset, a line in the sand, and a challenge to decide right now what the rest of the year is going to look like.
Brent Orsuga has spent 23 years in recruiting, the last 16 in logistics and supply chain, and 11 of those years running his own firm, Pinnacle Growth Advisors. He says it took him four years to hit a million dollar desk, and that he has now...
Retained Masterclass Pt 2: The Dollars Are In Delivery
Most recruiters think AI is coming for their job. Allie Milbrath thinks it's coming for one kind of recruiter — the one whose value was sending LinkedIn messages faster than the person next to them. If that was ever the whole game, she says you should be worried. If it wasn't, this episode is the way out.
This is Part 1 of a two-part retained search masterclass. Allie Milbrath of the Quinn Roberts Company returns to The Elite Recruiter Podcast to walk through the shift she believes our industry needs most: moving from contingent to retained, and from transactional or...
Going Retained Masterclass Part 1 with Allie Milbrath
Most recruiters think AI is coming for their job. Allie Milbrath thinks it's coming for one kind of recruiter — the one whose value was sending LinkedIn messages faster than the person next to them. If that was ever the whole game, she says you should be worried. If it wasn't, this episode is the way out.
This is Part 1 of a two-part retained search masterclass. Allie Milbrath of the Quinn Roberts Company returns to The Elite Recruiter Podcast to walk through the shift she believes our industry needs most: moving from contingent to retained, and from transactional or...
Your Best Biller Costs You $5 Million.
Your best biller is the person bringing in the most money. So how could promoting them be the most expensive mistake your firm ever makes?
That is where Benjamin Mena starts with Duncan Taylor, a healthcare staffing veteran who has spent more than 30 years on the executive side of recruiting and built his career around one unusual specialty: recruiting for recruiting companies. Duncan lays out the producer-manager trap in brutal math. Take your million-dollar biller, move them into leadership, and you do not just risk the million they were producing. You risk the top...
The NFL & Forbes 400 Hire Her. Here's Why
She runs a three-person team. She places 7 to 12 people a month. She charges 18% of annual salary — right in line with the market. And somehow she's the preferred childcare provider for the LA Rams, the LA Chargers, and a meaningful slice of the Forbes 400.
There's no SDR. There are no paid ads. She's not on LinkedIn. Every deal is referred or inbound. After 20 years.
Rebecca Stewart is the founder of VIP Nannies. What she's built in high-end household staffing is the relationship-driven, niche-locked business most agency owners say they want and almost none actually build. This ep...
The 60% of Recruiters Who'll Quietly Sink Your Agency. Part 2
In Part 1, Tom Kelly walked us through how EVONA scaled from four founders to 80 recruiters in three years, 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 heard Part 1 yet, listen to that one first — it sets up everything Tom unpacks here.
Brought to you by Atlas. The AI-first recruitment platform that...
$40M in Fees. Then Cut 50 Recruiters to Save It. Part 1
Tom Kelly scaled EVONA from four bootstrapped founders in a tiny Bristol office to eighty recruiters in three years. Then he made the call most agency owners never make. He cut the team back to thirty. And in doing it, per-head revenue doubled.
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation that pulls apart exactly how that happened.
Brought to you by Atlas. The AI-first recruitment platform that captures every candidate conversation automatically. Atlas customers report 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increase in monthly billings. Get your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.
...
