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The Elite Recruiter Podcast

The Elite Recruiter Podcast

De : Benjamin Mena
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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 scale
  • Tools, tech stacks, and sourcing strategies
  • Daily habits and workflows that drive million-dollar desks
  • Lessons from failure, breakthrough wins, and mindset shifts
  • What 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.

2026 Elite Recruiter Podcast Direction Développement personnel Economie Finances privées Management Management et direction Marketing et ventes Réussite personnelle
Épisodes
  • Direct Hire Builds a Job. Recurring Revenue Built a $28M Exit.

    Direct Hire Builds a Job. Recurring Revenue Built a $28M Exit.
    Apr 23 2026

    Diane Prince walked into staffing with zero recruiting experience and one specific intention: build a business she could scale and sell. Six years later, she sold her staffing agency for $28 million.

    🚀 Diane is speaking again at the This Is Your Year Recruiter Summit 2026 — which is exactly why this episode is back in rotation. Don't miss her live session. Register free: https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/

    Most recruiting agency owners will never have an exit like Diane's. Not because they aren't good at the work — because they built the wrong kind of business.

    Only 27% of recruiting agencies have predictable monthly recurring revenue. 63% deal with cash flow interruptions every year. And the agency owners grinding pure direct hire — even the influencers, even the people doing seven figures — are quietly admitting behind closed doors that they don't have a sellable asset. Diane talks to recruiters in their 60s and 70s every week who've finally realized it. They built a job. They never built an equity story.

    In this episode, Diane breaks down the recurring revenue model that flipped her business from a roller coaster of direct hire goose eggs into a stable, sellable, $28M company. She covers why temp staffing is something your clients legally cannot do for themselves (which is why it's so much stickier than retained or contingent), how to use an EOR to strip the operational headache out of running it, the anchor client strategy that kept her billing through 2008 even when her largest client Countrywide collapsed into the financial crisis, the easiest BD question to add to every existing client conversation to surface hidden contract revenue, and why the US temp staffing market is $218 billion — meaning you only need a tiny slice to change your business.

    She also addresses the question every direct-hire recruiter secretly has: can you build recurring revenue without going full staffing? Yes. She walks through the RPO and per-role retainer models that get you partway there.

    If your agency resets to zero every January, this episode is the answer. The model exists. Diane built it. She sold it. And she's coming back to teach more of it at the next summit.

    This episode is brought to you by Atlas — the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. Atlas captures every candidate conversation automatically and turns it into insight you can actually use. With MagicSearch, you can ask your entire database questions like "who mentioned they're open to relocating next year" and get answers instantly. Atlas customers have reported 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increases in monthly billings. Get your exclusive listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com

    🚀 This Is Your Year — Recruiter Summit 2026 (Diane is speaking again — don't miss it) https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/

    💼 Join the Elite Recruiter Community — summit replays, biweekly roundtables, Billers Club, split space — $49/month, cancel anytime https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

    📬 Subscribe to the newsletter → https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

    📺 YouTube →

    🔗 Follow Diane Prince on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianeprincejohnston/

    🌐 Benjamin Mena → http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/ 🔗 Benjamin on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/ 📸 Benjamin on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/benlmena/
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    34 min
  • Turn Your Recruiting Niche Into a $6M Practice + Venture Fund | Norm Volsky

    Turn Your Recruiting Niche Into a $6M Practice + Venture Fund | Norm Volsky
    Apr 20 2026
    Norm Volsky doesn't just place people at companies. He invests in them. After 14 years in digital health and employee benefits recruiting, Norm has built something almost nobody else in this industry has pulled off: a $6M recruiting practice and a fully operational venture capital firm — running side by side, feeding each other, in the same niche. His first client, Livongo, sold to Teladoc for $18.5 billion. His second, Hinge Health, just IPO'd for $3 billion. He placed three dozen people at Hinge alone. And somewhere along the way, he realized the smartest investors in the room already trusted him more than any VC — because he knew every founder, every pricing model, every hiring trend before they did. So he stopped just taking fees. He started taking equity. 🚀 This Is Your Year Recruiter Summit — April 27th through May 4th Free live sessions with the industry's best, including Mike Williams, Brianna Rooney, and Mark Whitby. The event you don't want to miss heading into Q2. Register free: https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ This episode is the blueprint for how Norm did it — and how you can do the same thing in your niche. He walks through meeting the Hinge Health founders when they were 15 people in a garage, and the exact conversation that turned a recruiting client into an equity stake. He explains why this model only works in B2B software. He breaks down how he raised $850K from 80+ industry insiders for a single SPV, bought 4.7% of an $18M company, and grew that investor list into 500+ potential LPs across the benefits world. The lesson underneath all of it is universal: niche domination unlocks things fees alone never will. Norm didn't stumble into venture capital. He earned the right to be asked — by being the most knowledgeable, most helpful, most persistent recruiter in his space for a decade before anyone saw the investment firm coming. You'll also hear how he scaled his team to $6M in billings with roughly 10 people, why building an ops function was his biggest unlock, and the word-choice mistake he caught his younger recruiters making that sounds unprofessional to every hiring manager on the call. What you'll learn: How to dominate a niche so thoroughly your clients become your investorsThe exact pitch that turns a recruiting engagement into an equity stakeWhy B2B software is the only space this playbook works inHow Norm raised $850K from 80+ investors for a single dealWhy hiring an ops function was the unlock that doubled his ceilingThe pattern recognition that separates great investors from lucky onesHow to build 500+ high-trust investor relationships starting from zero Sponsored by Atlas Atlas is the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every candidate conversation automatically, surfaces insights through natural language search, and gives you a clear view of your entire pipeline. Atlas customers have reported 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increase in monthly billings. Get your exclusive listener offer: https://recruitwithatlas.com 🔗 Links & Resources 💼 Join the Elite Recruiter Community — biweekly roundtables, Billers Club, split space, full summit replays. $49/month, cancel anytime. https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community 🔗 Connect with Norm Volsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normanvolsky/ 🎙️ Norm's podcast — Digital Health Heavyweights: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JeFFZqvVC1lmVXCvv3D7y?si=aa28a49e63ba413f 📬 Subscribe to the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe 📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/yn-7_7cQsZs 🌐 Benjamin Mena: http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/ 🔗 Benjamin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/ 📸 Benjamin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benlmena/
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    1 h et 24 min
  • How to Go Fully Retained Without Losing Your Clients

    How to Go Fully Retained Without Losing Your Clients
    Apr 16 2026

    The This Is Your Year Recruiter Summit kicks off April 27th — less than 2 weeks away. Free live sessions with the industry's best, including Mike Williams, Brianna Rooney, and Mark Whitby. Register now: https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/

    Most contingent recruiters think the hardest part of going retained is convincing their clients to pay upfront. Andrea Colabella thought the same thing — until she actually did it, and discovered the anticipation was far worse than the conversation.

    Andrea is the founder of Cardea Group, a fully retained executive search firm based in New York City specializing in legal and compliance professionals within investment management. She started cold-calling recruiting agencies in 2005 asking to be hired as a recruiter, found her first mentor, and spent the next 18 years niching further and further — from admin and HR, to software sales, to investment management broadly, to a single laser-focused vertical: legal and compliance at hedge funds, private equity firms, and family offices. She built Cardea Group in 2009 during one of the worst markets in modern financial history. She's a Pinnacle Society member, has placed over 500 professionals, and in 2023 made the full pivot to a 100% retained model.

    You'll also hear how she uses recorded video first-round interviews through Hinterview to cut five to eight hours of client interviewing time per search, how she runs weekly steering meetings with retained clients to manage expectations and protect the search process, and why building a reputation as the expert in the room — not just the recruiter who fills the job — has become her most powerful business development tool.

    Timestamps

    00:00 — Cold-calling her way into recruiting in 2005 Boston

    10:42 — Leaving the broad market to go deep in investment management

    12:37 — What bad firm culture taught her about running her own shop

    23:00 — Recyclability: why candidates in multiple processes all move at once

    26:02 — The contingent to engaged to retained journey

    30:05 — How retained pricing works: 40/40/20 on total comp

    31:43 — Why billing on total compensation changes everything

    33:22 — What white glove service actually means operationally

    37:26 — Converting existing clients: anticipation is worse than the conversation

    39:33 — Hosting in-person industry events as a BD strategy

    44:14 — Weekly steering meetings and defensive calendar blocking

    53:16 — The retained pitch and 52-day average time to close

    54:36 — Using recorded video interviews to cut client interviewing time

    Connect with Andrea Colabella

    🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colabella/ 🌐 Cardea Group: https://thecardeagroup.com

    This episode is sponsored by Atlas

    🤖 The AI-first recruitment platform that captures every conversation, surfaces candidates through natural language search, and has driven 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increases in monthly billings for agencies. Get your exclusive listener offer: https://recruitwithatlas.com

    Join the Elite Recruiter Community

    👥 Biweekly roundtables, sourcing deep dives, the Billers Club, and a split space to partner on roles — $49/month, cancel anytime: https://eliterecruitercommunity.com

    Register for the This Is Your Year Recruiter Summit — April 27th

    🚀 Free live sessions with the industry's best. Don't miss it: https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/
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    1 h et 6 min
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