The Elite Recruiter Podcast

Benjamin Mena
  • 4.8 (51)
  • Careers
  • Semiweekly

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 your new secret weapon. No fluff. No recycled advice. Just the unfiltered playbook of the top 1%. 🎧 Subscribe now and start leveling up like an elite.

  1. 9h ago

    8 In 10 Recruiting Firms Can’t Survive Without The Owner

    Firm Leaders Summit, November 16 to 18. Three free days on hiring, training, BD, and growth, built for the people running the firm. Register: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Michelle Masterson has spent 14 years talking to search firm owners all day, every day. She runs sales and business development for Next Level Exchange and the Sanford Rose Associates network, and works on the corporate development side of Starfish Partners, the parent company that acquires search firms. Ask her how many of the owners she talked to this month could survive getting hit by a bus and she gives you a number: in her conversations, roughly 8 in 10 firms are not bus-proof. Remove the owner and there is no business. This episode is built around the three pain points she hears from almost every owner right now, and the gap between what owners say they want and what they are actually doing about it. On business development: why picking up the phone is the pattern interrupt again, her own 14-day, four-to-seven-touch outreach sequence, and why "I just want to catch up" is the worst opening line in the industry. On getting off the desk: what "treat your business like a client" actually means (would you ghost a candidate? You do it to your own firm every week), why culture will not keep your top biller, and what a pathway to partnership can look like at a small firm. On exit: why, in the conversations she has, only about 1 in 20 owners who want to sell are anywhere close to ready, what a buyer needs to see before taking the meeting, and why most sales never blow up because they never start. She also makes the case for hiring an SDR before your next recruiter, walks through how she onboarded her own offshore SDR (a clean 200-name list, a script, and two to three role-play sessions a week), and names the most expensive hiring mistake she sees: keeping someone too long. Her answer to the question nobody asks her? Owners already know what to do. The real question is why they are not doing it. What You’ll Learn The bus test: how to find out in five minutes whether your firm survives without youMichelle's 14-day outreach sequence and why the phone is the pattern interrupt againWhen to hire an SDR instead of another recruiter, and how to onboard oneWhat to put on the table for a top biller when culture is not enoughWhat a buyer needs to see before a search firm is even sellableThe one question to ask before buying any new tool This episode is sponsored by Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures every interview, client call, LinkedIn message, email, and WhatsApp automatically, then tells you the next action to take. It ranks candidates for your open roles, turns your BD into a shortlist of who to chase and why, and builds your pipeline dashboards when you ask for them. Perm or contract, it covers both, and the new MCP and API plug it straight into Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest of your stack. https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Thinking about offshore support like Michelle's SDR? Greg Fischer at Well Oiled Machine hires proven offshore recruiters and sourcers for agencies, you pay them directly, and he tells you no if you are not ready. Tell him The Elite Recruiter sent you. https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Links 🎙 Michelle Masterson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellemastersondallas/ 🌐 Sanford Rose Associates: https://joinsranetwork.com/ 📅 Firm Leaders Summit (Nov 16 to 18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com ⚡ Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ 🌎 Well Oiled Machine: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ 🤝 Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community 📬 Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

  2. 4d ago

    7-Figure Recruiter: You Don’t Need More AI. You Need More Focus

    Meghan Hanson did what a lot of recruiters did this summer. She bought the AI tools. Tested sourcing platforms and BD tools. Even started learning to build AI agents. It sounded like every recruiter needed them to stay competitive. Her desk had never looked busier. More candidates interviewing than ever. Client meetings everywhere. And for the first time in almost 7 years, she went more than a month without a placement. Activity and progress are not the same thing. This is the talk recruiters voted onto the stage at the Finish the Year Strong Summit. I pulled it from the Elite Recruiter Community replay library because a lot of you are living this right now. Meghan is a former CPA and PwC alum who built Influential Search to 7 figures in revenue within 2 years, placing accounting and finance leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area. She didn’t build it with AI. She built it on focus. And this isn’t an anti-AI talk. Meghan uses AI. One of the tools she tested even survived. It’s about what AI can’t do for you, and what happens when you let it decide where your time goes. In this episode: Why more activity can feel like progress while your billings stallThe two questions to ask before you start your dayThe 5 fundamentals Meghan built her firm onWhy 5 real conversations beat 500 generic emailsHow to ask for exclusivity, and why matching other firms’ fees is a discount for nothingThe search she knew she could fill, why she walked away, and what showed up the next weekHow AI creates a false sense of capacity3 moves to make before the year closes out Timestamps 00:00 Firm Leader & Owner Summit, Nov 16 to 18 01:20 Why this talk came out of the community vault 04:11 Who here bought an AI tool? 06:55 From CPA to a 7-figure firm in 2 years 09:46 More interviews than ever, no placements 11:19 Activity vs. progress 13:32 The two questions to ask every morning 15:26 The 5 fundamentals 20:54 5 conversations beat 500 emails 26:07 Why client commitment decides the placement 27:43 Concessions should buy commitment 28:45 How to ask for exclusivity 31:39 The search she walked away from 34:07 AI’s false sense of capacity 36:07 The right job for AI on your desk 38:37 3 moves to make before the year ends Firm Leader & Owner Summit, presented by Crelate. November 16 to 18. Free to attend live: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/ Every summit replay, biweekly roundtables, and the Billers’ Club. Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Connect with Meghan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanmhanson/ This episode is brought to you by: ATLAS Atlas is a CRMx, a CRM that actually understands context. It captures every interview, call, email, and message automatically, then tells you the next action to take. With its new MCP and API, it plugs into Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest of your stack. Atlas customers report 50% higher candidate response rates and 15 hours saved every week. Check out Recruit with Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ GREG FISHER I lost thousands trying to offshore and swore it off. Then I did an episode with Greg Fisher on why 7 out of 10 firms blow it, and I’d done every single thing on the list. Greg’s talent is real: recruiters out of the same Brazil and Mexico offices Korn Ferry and Michael Page built. You pay them directly, no middleman. And if you’re not ready, he’ll tell you no. Find Greg Fisher on LinkedIn and tell him The Elite Recruiter sent you. Hear my full episode with Greg: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Qhcw6rsxKVdtp6RfHif62?si=Nlf6yci7RvivTRM-_MGXSg

    7-Figure Recruiter: You Don’t Need More AI. You Need More Focus

  3. 6d ago

    How To Grow A Recruiting Firm From $6M To $100M

    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/ Hiring offshore recruiters? Talk to Greg Fischer: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Part one was the desk. This is the board seat. Mike Walmsley has chaired and advised recruitment firms through growth and exits, and here he answers the question every owner should ask: what can’t you see from inside your own firm? It starts with the money. Most owners skip budgets and variance analysis because they are boring. Mike’s fix for the owner who swears he runs a tight ship: pay the bookkeeper to find the savings. Then the firm he chaired that grew from roughly $6M to $100M in revenue. Mike is quick to say they would have gotten there without him, but he walks through what was in place: training at the core of the business, board meetings where nobody once showed up without their actions done, a marketing hire within a month of the idea, and live metrics on a screen in the office that he says lifted profitability 30 percent. Then KPIs. Firms now brag that they do not have a KPI culture, and Mike thinks that is madness. You cannot control billings, but you can control activities, so he renamed KPIs predictive success metrics and measures what actually leads to placements, like candidate referrals and verbal references, instead of call time and resumes sent. He walks through his 15-minute one-to-one, including the blank sheet of paper that gets an underperformer to diagnose the problem themselves and still walk out feeling good. Plus the 30-minute weekly learning lunch that, as Mike puts it, takes zero time. Then the exit. How the founders of that $100M firm walked away clean, with a management tier built in-house and an MD who was already running the business by the time the buyer showed up. How a firm making £2M a year in net profit, as Mike tells it, funded a management buyout through its bank. The 14-day clause hiding in most terms of business, and the check-in call that turns recruiters into the front line of credit control. And backdoor hires: the third biggest biller at one of the UK’s largest firms, as Mike tells it, was not a recruiter at all. His full-time job was catching clients who hired around the fee. Plus why so many firms never grow past 10 people, the Friday referral competition that ran on a £25 bottle of wine, the top biller who nearly walked over one comment about her timekeeping, Mike’s approach to hiring great recruiters, and why a 7 out of 10 hire does not give you 70 percent. What You’ll Learn: The financial blind spot most owners have, and the bookkeeper move that fixes itWhat a firm had in place to grow from roughly $6M to $100MWhy Mike renamed KPIs, and what owners should actually measureHow to run a 15-minute one-to-one that coaches instead of scoldsHow founders get a clean exit without being locked in after the saleHow a profitable firm funds a management buyout through its bankThe credit control call that moves your invoice to the top of the pileHow to catch backdoor hires before the fee disappears If you missed part one, go back for the biller side: the reference call talk track, Mike’s 10-point referral plan, and how to pull a vacancy out of a client who says they are not hiring. Connect with Mike Walmsley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewalmsley/ Recruitment Training: https://recruitmenttraining.com/ Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Greg Fischer, offshore recruiter hiring: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

    How To Grow A Recruiting Firm From $6M To $100M

  4. Nov 2

    $100K Billers Miss What $1M Billers Catch On Every Call

    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/ Hiring offshore recruiters? Talk to Greg Fischer: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ What separates a $100K biller from a $1M biller? According to Mike Walmsley, it usually is not effort or personality. It is the opportunity sitting inside the conversation that one recruiter catches and the other walks right past. Mike has trained more than 20,000 recruiters by his count, cashed in a million in his own best year as he tells it, and was the third person in a firm that grew past 100 people across London, Dublin, Sydney, Auckland, and Bangkok before it sold. Steve Finkel sent him my way, and this is an episode to replay with a notepad. We start with what that early firm did that most founders skip: a minimum of 20 client meetings a month, including with companies that were not hiring, closing each one on a commitment to call Mike exclusively for the next vacancy. He shares the follow-up email that keeps that promise alive. Then the reference call, which most US recruiters treat as a compliance box. Mike treats it as the best business development call in recruiting. Never say the word reference. Ask for help. Then ask the question that turns a hiring manager’s quiet frustration into a dollar figure: on a scale of 0 to 100 percent, how productive was this person for you? He gives you the exact words, the off-the-record reassurance when they hesitate, and the soft close into a meeting. He is also giving away his reference form free to anyone who connects with him on LinkedIn and asks. Candidate referrals get the full 10-point treatment, starting with why “do you have any friends looking for work?” falls flat. As Mike tells it, teaching this one skill doubled a UK firm’s monthly revenue in 3 months. You get the “you about 2 years ago” framing, why you hold off on asking for the phone number, and the second ask almost everyone forgets once they have the first name. Plus the replacement-hire technique for pulling a vacancy out of a client who just told you they are not hiring, which a recruiter Mike coaches in Bangkok used to double his billings in 12 months. And what a coach actually gives a biller doing roughly £2.5M a year, why “I’m too busy” is Mike’s favorite objection, and the traits he sees in every million-dollar biller he has worked with, including a protégé who went from billing $300K to $1.8M, as Mike tells it. What You’ll Learn: The small conversational misses that separate a $100K desk from a $1M deskHow to win exclusive commitments from clients who are not hiring yetThe reference call talk track, word for word, including the 0 to 100 percent productivity questionMike’s 10-point plan for candidate referrals, including the multiple-referral askHow to walk out of a “we’re not hiring” conversation with a vacancyHow to close “I’m too busy” into a meeting before the call endsThe three traits Mike sees in the million-dollar billers he has worked with Part two drops tomorrow: the board seat. What owners cannot see from inside their own firm, from the KPIs they measure wrong to the cash sitting in client bank accounts and the backdoor hires they never catch. Connect with Mike Walmsley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewalmsley/ Recruitment Training: https://recruitmenttraining.com/ Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Greg Fischer, offshore recruiter hiring: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

    $100K Billers Miss What $1M Billers Catch On Every Call

  5. Oct 27

    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 not need a firm like his to do this. Then he shows you how. The best offshore talent does not apply to job ads, the same thing you tell your own clients. Skip Upwork and onlinejobs.ph entirely. Headhunt on LinkedIn with Boolean searches, and learn the local titles first, because a great recruiter in Mexico might show up as headhunter or reclutador. Greg interviewed 32 candidates before making his own first hire, and he walks through the 3-step interview process he recommends, including why a true solo should bring in an outside advisor for round two, and the practical assessment that exposes a weak candidate before you pay them. Then the step everybody treats as an afterthought. Support. The 30, 90, and 180-day milestones you map before you hire, including the quantitative floor Greg uses, like 12 submissions from a sourcer by day 90. Weekly meetings built around roadblocks. Why your international hires belong in the all-hands, the engagement survey, and the quarterly roadmap. Plus the question I could not stop thinking about afterward: what your offshore team figures out about you in their first week that you do not know about yourself. Greg's answer involves the biases they quietly spot, and the lifeline exercise he uses to build real connection with every hire. Steal that one even if you never hire internationally. And the case study. A solo biller doing $650K, completely burnt out, no time to work on the business. His first offshore recruiter billed $120K in placements within 4 months, as Greg tells it. The second billed $60K in her first 60 days. He is now on hire number four, on pace to more than double his best year, and went from solo operator to running an actual firm. What You'll Learn: Where to actually find top offshore recruiters and the job boards to avoidThe 3-step interview process and the practical assessment that filters out the bottom halfThe one interview question that reveals how a candidate thinks about performanceResume red flags a US owner will not recognizeThe 30-90-180 day milestone map to build before you ever make an offerWhy BD and client-facing work usually stays onshore, and the $800K exceptionThe lifeline exercise that builds loyalty with any hire, offshore or not Missed Part 1? Go back for the first three steps and the real 2026 salary numbers. Connect with Greg Fischer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/offshoreisasuperpower/ Well Oiled Machine: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

    Burnt Out At $650K. Then He Hired Offshore

  6. Oct 26

    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 dollar. Greg says 7 out of 10 firms that try offshoring end up worse off than if they had never started. Not because the talent is not there. Because they skip the playbook. This is the first half of that playbook, and it covers the first three steps: function, region, and compensation. We get into why "I want a cheap recruiter" is already the failure, and what to hire for instead. Greg breaks down the full menu, sourcers, researchers, 180s, 360s, and SDRs, and why a dedicated sourcer behind a solo biller doing $400K to $600K has produced a 30 to 50 percent revenue lift within a year, as Greg tells it. He also shares why a sourcer hire works about 8 out of 10 times while the admin assistant hire most owners start with works about 3 out of 10. Then the part nobody says out loud: the big firms are already doing this. Greg estimates 80 to 90 percent of the major players have international practices, and about half of boutique firms in the $1M to $3M range have at least one international team member. You just do not see it on LinkedIn. The compensation section alone is worth the download. Real 2026 numbers, not vendor markup numbers. What a sourcer in the Philippines actually earns. What a LATAM associate recruiter costs. What a true A player who closes $500K a year expects in base and commission. Plus the PTO mistake that insults candidates before they start, and the payment platforms Greg recommends and the two he would avoid. What You'll Learn: Why 7 out of 10 firms fail at offshoring and the one word that separates the 3 that succeedThe five-role menu and which role a first-timer should never start withThe rainmaker math: what a dedicated sourcer does to a solo biller's revenueGreg's region cheat sheet: Philippines, LATAM, and South Africa, and which jobs go whereThe 50 percent overlap rule for time zones and why 4 hours is the floorReal 2026 salary bands for offshore sourcers and recruiters, base and commissionHow to structure commission, PTO, and payment setup without getting burned Part 2 drops right after this one: headhunting the person, interviewing them, managing them, and the case study of a burnt out $650K solo biller whose offshore hires changed his firm. Connect with Greg Fischer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/offshoreisasuperpower/ Well Oiled Machine: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/ Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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

  7. Oct 22

    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 are working through right now. Tom is the founder and president of the Visus Group, a growth strategy and organizational development firm that works only with staffing and recruiting companies. As he tells it, close to 100 C-suite executives sit in his peer roundtables, which means he hears every few months what's working and what isn't inside firms from startup size to billions in revenue. He also got into the industry by an unusual route. He was studying for the Catholic priesthood, realized it wasn't his calling, and ended up building roundtables for staffing executives because it was the only industry left on the table. The heart of this episode is Tom's stage-by-stage breakdown of what it takes to grow a firm, and how the owner's job changes at every step. From $1M to $5M, the stakes are your next few hires and running out of cash. From $5M to $10M, you need a real sales plan, a recruiting manager who frees you to work on the business, and an owner who keeps selling. From $10M to $25M, it's an operating system, quarterly initiatives, weekly business KPIs, and getting off factoring. Past $25M, your job becomes building and running a management team. He also makes the case that hiring more salespeople and making more dials no longer grows a firm. Recruiting in places a client can't reach is now table stakes. The firms that are winning bring their clients market data and talk with them about human capital strategy, and that conversation positions them as advisors instead of a source of bodies. He explains why offshore sourcing is about to be automated away, why technology spend that doesn't raise gross profit per person is wasted, and why marketing and personal brands now carry most of the sales load. Tom also covers the personality traits that predict great recruiters, how to keep A-players from leaving to start their own firms, and the story of an operator with no staffing background who took a firm from $1M to $3.5M in EBITDA in three years, as Tom tells it. What You'll Learn What changes at $1M, $5M, $10M, and $25MWhy your sales plan matters more than your business plan below $10MWhy "more dials" is the wrong answer to a slow marketThe traits that separate top billers from friendly extrovertsHow to keep your best producers from going out on their ownWhy every firm owner needs a peer group that tells them what they don't want to hear Books mentioned: First, Break All the Rules and The Power to See Ourselves. 🔗 Connect with Tom Kosnik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkosnik/ 🌐 Visus Group: https://www.visusgroup.com/ 💬 Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community 📩 Get the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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

  8. Oct 19

    $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, taking over the firm when it was four people and growing it to roughly 230 people across more than 10 countries and four brands, with about €50M in annual revenue, as he tells it. His model is simple and radical: every consultant is a talent agent. Lincoln follows people, not companies, and the business follows the talent. In this conversation, Matt breaks news he held back from our pregame. In 2020, Lincoln sold 55% of the firm to join a larger European talent representation project. At the end of July, they bought it all back. Lincoln is 100% independently owned again, and Matt explains what that means for the next chapter. He also introduces a metric most firm owners have never heard of: Talent Lifetime Value. Lincoln measures each consultant's portfolio of talent over five years, the way a SaaS company measures customer lifetime value. Build it well and you stop starting every month from zero. Matt shares how he started in recruiting part-time at Robert Half while running a bar with his wife, why he moved his family to Shanghai after visiting a struggling office, and how he built trust in China for six years without speaking Mandarin. He walks through Lincoln's international expansion, from a small acquisition in Belgium right before the 2008 crash to Cooper Fitch in the Middle East, and why one rebrand after an acquisition probably destroyed value. He also explains why he brought in an outside CEO so he could keep doing the work he loves, how Lincoln holds fees at 25 to 28% on a fully retained model, and why the US may finally be on the map. What You'll Learn: How the talent agent model replaces traditional BDWhat Talent Lifetime Value is and how to measure itWhy Lincoln keeps acquired brands instead of rebrandingHow to defend retained fees when clients push for contingencyWhat it takes to hand your firm to an outside CEOWhy Matt believes AI won't replace the trust you build with talent Connect with Matthieu Beaurain: 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthieu-beaurain-743609/ 🌐 Lincoln: https://lincoln-group.com 🚀 Firm Leaders Summit: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com ⚙️ Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/ 🎯 Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community 📬 Subscribe to the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

    $50M A Year Proves Elite Recruiters Don't Chase Clients.
See All (372)

4.8
out of 5
51 Ratings

About

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 your new secret weapon. No fluff. No recycled advice. Just the unfiltered playbook of the top 1%. 🎧 Subscribe now and start leveling up like an elite.

Information

  • Creator
    Benjamin Mena
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    372
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Elite Recruiter Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Elite Recruiter Podcast

You Might Also Like