Tech Founder | AI Enthusiast | DevOps Expert

First Class CS degree. 20 years in technical recruiting. 2,000+ placements.                  
                                                                                               
I've built engineering teams from seed stage through to Palantir, and served as a strategic hiring partner to Insight Partners' portfolio companies. 

Currently running TalentPipe, retained search for VC-backed startups in AI/ML, fintech, and dev tools.          

What I bring:

  → Technical fluency that engineers and CTOs respect                                          
  → Founder and CTO-level relationships across NYC and London                                  
  → A track record of placements that stick (2+ year average tenure)                           
  → 14-day average time-to-offer vs 44+ industry standard                                      
                                                                                               
"Rich served as an invaluable partner to our companies, consistently providing strategic guidance and helping teams scale."
                                 
— Kaitlyn Doig, Insight Partners

Selectively taking on retained partnerships and embedded talent engagements.

Rich Roberts

Mark Whitby

Non Executive Director

In June 2008, the recession almost killed my business. I lost 3 of my 4 biggest clients and more than 50% of my income overnight. I had a mortgage, two kids and our third on the way. I was scared out of my mind... 

I'd already invested 7 years of blood, sweat & tears to build a 6-figure sales training business for the recruitment industry. Now I was starting over again. My confidence took a huge hit.

Out of desperation, I learned everything I could about digital marketing. There's so much conflicting advice about online marketing that it's easy to get confused and overwhelmed. But my back was against the wall. I had to push through and MAKE it work. I made lots of mistakes, but I eventually figured it out.

Today, apart from referrals, I get 100% of my new business from digital marketing.  Best of all, using marketing automation the inbound leads keep flowing even when I'm busy working with clients.

Now I help recruitment business owners to escape the feast/famine roller coaster and create consistent, predictable placements. Some of my clients have doubled or even tripled their billings in 90 days. Check out my 100+ LinkedIn recommendations below.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I'm happy to share what's worked for me and the hundreds of recruitment business owners I've coached.  

𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘢 𝘋𝘔 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦.

𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗖𝗘𝗦

☑️ Webinar: Inbound Marketing Roadmap for Recruiters - How to Generate Warm Leads on Autopilot Without Cold Calling - Register now: http://www.recruitmentcoach.com/masterclass

☑️ Case Study: Solo Recruiter Wins His First Retainer Worth £35,000 ($56,000 USD)
http://recruitmentcoach.com/case-study-solo-recruiter-wins-his-first-retainer-worth-56k

𝗡𝗘𝗫𝗧 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣𝗦

Curious to learn more? Book your free strategy session here:

📆 https://recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/

Board Advisor, Executive Coach, Management Consultant, Recruitment Trainer

Helping recruiters & recruiting firm owners to maximize billings, increase profits and accelerate business growth.  We provide the following learning & development solutions:

* In-house recruitment training courses - all levels (rookies, seniors and managers);
* One-to-one performance coaching for recruitment consultants;
* Management development programmes for billing managers;
* Director development for recruitment business leaders;
* Executive coaching & management consulting for recruitment company owners, directors, partners, presidents and CEO's; 

Plus you can access our eLearning platform to receive recruitment training videos, DVDs, webinars, and audio CDs and MP3s. These multimedia recruitment training materials serve to support, re-enforce and enhance our in-person or telephone training and coaching, or can be used to run effective and inexpensive internal training sessions.

Recruitment training solutions include over 20 courses including:

* How to Develop New Business by Phone
* Consultative Selling for Recruitment Consultants
* How to Negotiate Better Recruitment Fees & Margins
* Mastering the Placement Process
* The Billing Manager: How to Maximize Your Personal and Team Sales Performance
* Secrets of Selling Retained Recruitment Solutions
* Head-hunting Demystified - Sourcing & Recruiting Placeable Candidates
* Senior Consultant Course - How to Double Your Billings

First episode of 2026.


And it's a good one. She went 100% retained and expected to lose clients.

She kept 60-80%.

Now Rebecca Hastings runs Lucent Search while consulting on AI transformation for a major energy company. And she's built a sales system that booked more meetings than anyone without making the most calls.

Here's what she told me about AI that contradicts everything you're hearing.
It doesn't make things faster. It only accelerates what you already do well if certain conditions are in place.

Most agency owners are missing those conditions entirely.

🎧 Drops Thursday on The Resilient Recruiter Podcast.

#recruitment #executivesearch #retained #recruitmentagency #recruitmentpodcast

Host, The Resilient Recruiter Podcast | Creator, The 6 Pillars of a 7+ Figure Business™️| Helping recruitment agency owners increase billings by 200-400% in 6-12 months with tailored coaching, courses & community.

Want to know where the recruitment industry is really heading?
Analyze the quarterly earnings reports of the world’s biggest recruitment companies.

Fortunately, Recruiterflow has already done the work for you.

Here’s what we can learn from Page, Manpower, Randstad, Robert Half, Korn Ferry, and Kelly Services.

I just read their Recruitment Industry Analysis 2025 - one of the most useful breakdowns I’ve seen in a long time.

The theme? From sharp declines to modest recoveries.

Here are my top 3 takeaways:

1. RPO is the most stable (and fastest-growing) revenue stream.

It’s the one area that showed consistent performance across all six firms. If you’re not exploring recurring revenue in your model, you’re missing a massive opportunity.

2. Firms with multiple revenue streams are more resilient.

Korn Ferry and Randstad did better than their competitors by offering more than just perm and temp. Adding consulting or digital services helped protect margins.

3. The big firms are going on in on AI

The AI hype is over. Now it’s about execution. The major firms are investing heavily in AI-first systems to improve recruiter output and client results.

📊 If you own a recruitment business, this report is absolutely worth a read.
 Link in comments.

Everyone is talking about AI in recruitment.


Most of them are either overhyping it or quietly panicking.

Rebecca Hastings did neither.

She didn’t chase tools.

She didn’t automate chaos.

And she didn’t try to replace judgment with prompts.

Instead, she built a sales system first.

Clear market focus.
 
Serious listening time every week.

A disciplined, multichannel approach.

Only then did she use AI to remove friction, not thinking.

The result?

Rebecca won our Cold Calling Competition.

She booked more meetings than anyone else.
 
Without making the most calls. And without burning out.

In this episode, Rebecca breaks down:

Why AI doesn’t make recruiters faster unless the foundations are right

The sales system that books consistent meetings with fewer calls

Where AI actually helps and where it quietly causes damage

Why trust and judgment are now competitive advantages

This is one of the clearest conversations we’ve had on AI, sales systems, and what actually works.

This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow — an end-to-end, AI-first ecosystem to run and scale your recruitment business.

🎧 New episode of The Resilient Recruiter Podcast

 Link in comments.

#RecruitmentAgency #ExecutiveSearch #RecruitmentLeadership

I ran the same poll again.

60% of recruiters say they’re optimistic about 2026.

2026: 60% Optimistic | 30% Neutral | 10% Pessimistic

2025: 63% Optimistic | 28% Neutral | 10% Pessimistic

Honestly, the numbers are pretty similar to last year.

So rather than reading too much into small shifts, I’m more interested in what’s behind the votes.

If you're feeling optimistic - what's going well in your market right now?

If you're neutral - what would need to change for you to feel more 
confident?

If you're pessimistic - what's been toughest where you are?

No predictions. Just reality.

Drop your niche and location in the comments.

#recruitment #staffing #executivesearch #recruitmentbusiness

If your pitch sounds like everyone else’s, why should a client choose you? Here’s how one recruiter fixed that.


“We’ll find you great people.” “We have the best database.” “We can fill roles faster.”

Everyone says this, but few stand out.

Andrea Hoffer, MS, MBA took a different route.

She created a branded methodology called the Dream Hire framework.

It has five stages: Define, Reach, Engage, Assess, and Motivate.

Each stage has clear steps. She can explain it all in under 10 minutes. There’s a simple diagram. It’s a flywheel that shows how everything connects.

That’s the key difference between selling a service and a product.

Once Andrea packaged her process, clients knew exactly what they were getting. She stood out instantly. She shifted from competing on speed to highlighting structure.

She’s not just selling placements. She’s selling a system.

The lesson?

Stop competing on speed or price. Package your process. Give it a name. 

Make it yours.

You’re not just filling roles. You’re offering a methodology.

In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter Podcast, Andrea explains how to package your process as a signature solution, why story-based discovery is better than traditional intake, and how AI can provide real leverage.

This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow — an end-to-end, AI-first ecosystem to run and scale your recruitment business.

🎧 New episode  - link in comments.

#RecruitmentAgency #ExecutiveSearch

If you know how to sell, but struggle to stay consistent, here’s why.


Most experienced recruiters don’t have a sales skill problem.
They have a sales dependency problem.

You already know how to win work.

The issue isn’t capability. It's capacity.

> When delivery heats up, business development slips.
> When BD slips, income becomes uneven.
> When income becomes uneven, pressure builds — and everything starts to feel harder than it should.

Sales shouldn’t depend on your motivation.

If sales only happens when you have time, energy, and headspace, it will always be fragile.

That’s not a character flaw.
It’s a structural one.

Owner-led recruitment firms usually rely on memory and willpower.

And any structure built on constant effort eventually breaks.

Reliable billings don’t come from discipline or heroic effort.

They come from design.

A system that:

* defines who to speak to and when
* removes “what should I do next?” from your day
* protects credibility instead of eroding it
* keeps sales moving even when delivery takes priority

That’s the shift:
From sales driven by effort → to sales driven by design.

That’s exactly what I'm discussing in today’s webinar with Rebecca Hastings

You'll see a live walkthrough of the sales system that helped Rebecca book 23 C-level sales meetings in 30 days without volume outreach.

👉 Register via the link in the comments.

AI will not fix your sales.

A system will.

I keep seeing people adopt AI tools expecting them to improve their sales conversations. What actually happens? They get busier but no closer to better clients.

Here's what they're missing.

AI doesn't create relevance. It accelerates whatever you already have.

If your targeting is vague, AI speeds up vague outreach. If your positioning is unclear, AI scales confusion.

Speed without judgment isn't leverage. It's noise.

On Wednesday, Rebecca Hastings is walking through how she actually uses AI in sales.

She runs a retained search firm in the AI sector and advises CEOs on AI 
strategy. More importantly, she's built a sales system that booked 23 C-level meetings in 30 days.

That didn't come from automation or volume. It came from having a clear path to a first conversation and using AI to support that path, not replace it.

You'll see three things:
Her Sales Playbook and how sales decisions happen week to week
The Custom GPTs she uses to prepare, not perform
How she uses AI for research and context before any outreach happens

This is what it looks like when the process comes before the tools.

The session is free. Wednesday, 11am EST / 4pm GMT.

Register at recruitmentcoach.com/ai

If you've been trying to work out where AI actually helps versus where it creates risk, this will clarify it.

70% of buyers have already made up their mind before they take a meeting with you. That stat changed everything for Mike Mello.

If buyers are already deciding before the call, you need to win them over before it.

Mike spent 10 years making 1,300 placements and selling $100M in staffing. Then he walked away to launch Simple Side AI because he'd figured out what most recruiters struggle with.

How to turn LinkedIn visibility into an actual pipeline.

One of his clients had a prospect watch the same video 17 times before booking a meeting. By email six or seven, the trust was already built.

In this week's episode, Mike explains why content without outbound is just noise. And why outbound without content is just spam.

The answer? Both are working together.

If you're creating content but not seeing it convert, this one's for you.

This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow — an end-to-end, AI-first ecosystem to run and scale your recruitment business.

🎧 Link in comments.

Most recruiters ask clients to describe their ideal candidate. Andrea Hoffer, MS, MBA does it differently. She asks for stories.

"Tell me about someone in this role who was amazing. You'd want 20 of them. Share one story."

Then she flips it: "Tell me about someone who wasn't a good fit. What story made you realize that?"

Real examples reveal the truth. What did that person do? What traits led to their success?

Andrea records these sessions and puts the transcripts into Notebook LM. AI then extracts patterns and creates interview questions based on what really matters.

While most recruiters rush the intake, Andrea builds her entire hiring system on these stories.

In this episode, she explains her Dream Hire framework. She shows why story-based discovery beats traditional intake and how AI adds value without replacing human judgment.

#RecruitmentAgency #ExecutiveSearch #RecruiterTraining

Why do some recruiters command premium fees while others compete on speed and price? The difference isn’t talent or experience. It’s whether you’ve pa

Open article: How to Build a Hiring Machine That Attracts the Right People on Repeat by Mark Whitby • 3 min read

How to Build a Hiring Machine That Attracts the Right People on Repeat

If your leadership team is always catching up on the numbers…

You’re not measuring performance. You’re documenting history.

After 290+ episodes of The Resilient Recruiter Podcast Recruiter, I’ve noticed something.

The same issues come up in nearly every conversation.

Growth

Culture

Efficiency as you scale

And underneath all of it sits one consistent challenge.

Measurement.

Almost every agency owner I speak to agrees tracking performance matters.

Very few feel they’re doing it well.

Spreadsheets work fine at first.

Then they don’t.

As your team grows, markets diversify, and targets get more complex, the problem isn’t effort.

It’s visibility.

When performance data is delayed or manually updated, you’re always looking backwards. You’re analysing what already happened instead of shaping what’s happening now.

Bottlenecks show up too late.

One to ones become reporting sessions instead of coaching conversations.

That’s what caught my attention about Recruiterflow’s Goals Tracking feature.

Not the dashboards themselves.

What they enable.

When you and a recruiter walk into a one to one already aligned on the numbers, the conversation changes.

Less explaining. More coaching.

Less hindsight. More direction.

That shift, from reviewing the past to shaping the future, is often what separates agencies that scale from those that stall.

If visibility is on your radar this year, it’s worth taking a look:

https://lnkd.in/eZXW8DTx

There's a lot of noise around AI in recruitment right now. 


Rebecca Hastings ignored it. She built a sales system first - clear focus, disciplined outreach, hours of listening, then used AI to remove friction, not thinking. 

The result? More meetings booked than anyone else, without making the most calls. In this episode, 

Rebecca shares why AI won't replace recruiters but will expose weak businesses, where it actually helps versus where it quietly fails, and why trust and judgment are now your biggest competitive advantages.

There’s a lot of noise around AI in recruitment right now. Some people are selling it as a silver bullet. Others are warning it will wipe recruiters o

Open article: How Recruiters Can Use AI Without Losing Trust or Control by Mark Whitby • 3 min read

How Recruiters Can Use AI Without Losing Trust or Control

You're posting on LinkedIn
Showing up consistently
Creating content

And yet... the meetings aren't coming.

Mike Mello explains why in this week's episode.

Why do some recruiters post weekly but never get meetings? Meanwhile, others turn LinkedIn videos into sales talks that close deals. Mike Mello can he

Open article: How to Turn LinkedIn Videos Into Real Client Meetings by Mark Whitby • 3 min read

How to Turn LinkedIn Videos Into Real Client Meetings

I've been hearing the same thing from recruitment business owners for months now.

They're using AI for sales. Automating outreach. Sending more messages. Scaling their activity.

But their response rates haven't changed. Sometimes they've got worse.

Rebecca Hastings runs a recruitment business in the AI sector. Over the past year, she's built something different. A sales system where AI makes her more relevant to clients, not just faster.

I'm doing a live session with her on January 28th where she'll walk through how she's done it. Her actual playbook. Real examples from her business.

You'll see her Sales Playbook, the automations she uses, her Custom GPTs, and the AI Agents that prep her before every client conversation.

This isn't about replacing your judgement. It's about having better information before you pick up the phone or send that message.

Who's this for? Recruitment business owners who are using AI but aren't seeing it translate to more quality meetings. People who know there's a better way but haven't seen it clearly explained.

Wednesday, January 28th - 11:00 AM US ET / 4:00 PM UK

Register at recruitmentcoach.com/ai

I'd love you to join us.

#recruiters: How optimistic are you about the #recruitment market in 2026?

Vote ➕ Comment below 👇 regarding what you're seeing in your specific market niche and location.

Let's get a real read on where things stand.

#staffing 
#executivesearch

Recruiters: How optimistic are you about the recruitment market in 2026?

Same pattern. Different recruitment business owner. "I want consistent sales results, but I can't be the only one selling."

Most are stuck in one of four places.

What's your biggest barrier to consistent sales results?

Vote below 👇 and tell me what's blocking you in the comments.

#recruitment #sales #AI #businessdevelopment

What's your biggest barrier to consistent sales results?

Your client needs three services.

You offer one.

Your competitor just walked in with the other two.

Here's what happens next.

They start with temp. You still own perm.
For now.

But once they're inside the account, they don't stay in their lane.

They pitch direct hire. 
They pitch contract. 
They pitch whatever you're NOT doing.

And suddenly, you're fighting to keep what you had.

The fix?

Diversify your revenue streams.

Your clients already trust you. 
They already pay your invoices. 
They know where to send the money.

Selling them a second service is easier than winning a new client.
Way easier.

If you're only working one revenue stream, you're not just leaving money on the table.

You're inviting competitors to take it.

Gerard Koolen built €280M across 11 countries with eight revenue streams.
In this episode, he explains how diversifying kept him growing through 2008, COVID, and every crisis since.

Link in comments.

#RecruitmentBusiness #RecruitmentAgency #RecruiterGrowth

taplio

The Battle

Rich Roberts

Mark Whitby

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMark Whitby's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Rich Roberts

Mark Whitby

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mark Whitby's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMark Whitby's LinkedIn Performance