The Lone Recruiter

The 2026 Census has added 349 new occupations. So naturally, my recruiter brain went straight to one question: Where's the opportunity? If you're looking for a new recruitment market, the Census could give you some very interesting clues. Tune in for: 👉 Why 349 new occupations creates potential new recruitment markets 👉 What changing industries and technology mean for recruiters 👉 How to spot genuine demand rather than simply chasing job volume 👉 Why national skills shortages can point towards strong recruitment opportunities 👉 How to find markets where recruiter competition is relatively low 👉 Why the best market isn't necessarily the biggest one 👉 How to use publicly available data to research your next desk If you're looking for a new market, feeling stuck in your current desk or trying to find an area where you can build a competitive advantage, this episode is for you. Don't just find a market with jobs. Find a market with opportunity.

This simple recruitment tactic can significantly shorten the time between getting a client interview request and actually getting the interview booked.
The key idea is simple: don’t ask “when?”
Instead, know your candidate’s availability and give the client a specific option, ideally today or tomorrow. Rather than asking, “When can you meet them?”, try, “I’ve got them available at 3pm today. Can you make that work?”
This small change creates urgency, keeps momentum, and stops interviews from being pushed into the end of the week or even the following week.
I also explain why recruiters need to take control of the scheduling process and why asking an innocent question like “when are you free?” can unintentionally slow the entire deal down.
No when. Try it on your next interview and see how much faster you can get things moving.

What if your best incentive wasn’t more money, but more time?
In today's ep, I sit down with Zakary Nash, Co-Founder and Director of HarperLloyd Recruitment, to unpack one of the most interesting incentives I’ve come across in recruitment.
Hit your quarterly target, and you earn Fridays off for the entire next quarter.
It sounds simple, but the psychology behind it is fascinating.
Zakary shares:
👉 Why HarperLloyd introduced the four-day incentive
👉 How consultants are using their Fridays differently
👉 Why time can be a more powerful motivator than commission
👉 What happened to performance once Fridays became something worth earning👉 How the incentive is helping people create more space for family, travel and life outside recruitment
For me, this is a great example of thinking differently about what actually motivates people.
 

I’ve spent 20 years measuring my success from behind a recruitment desk.
Placements. Revenue. Generation. Deals. 
But now my role is changing.
As the agency and the podcast grow, I’m moving away from full-throttle desk recruitment and into more of a leadership role. I’m not disappearing from recruitment. I still love the clients, the candidates and the deals. But I can’t keep doing everything myself.
And that’s where things get interesting...👉 The metrics that made me successful on the desk aren’t necessarily the metrics that will make me successful as a leader.👉 Career transitions are rarely as smooth as they look from the outside. Your habits, routines and definition of a “good day” all have to change.👉 Whether you’re moving into leadership, starting a business, taking on staff or simply stepping into a bigger role, you need to redefine what success looks like for where you are now.
The question is simple: What does success look like when the role you’re in starts to change?
Because as your responsibilities, priorities and role evolve, the way you measure a successful day needs to evolve with them.

What do a packet of soy sauce, a door handle, and recruitment have in common?
I know it sounds strange, but this week I found myself thinking about how the smallest details can have the biggest impact.
I grabbed my usual sushi lunch, something I do Monday to Thursday because it’s predictable and easy for my specific dietary needs. But when I got back to my desk, I realised they’d forgotten my gluten-free soy sauce. The sushi itself was good but the meal was not as tasty. That tiny five-cent component completely changed the experience.
It got me thinking about something a property developer once told me. When you build a home, the biggest investment goes into things people never see: the foundations, the structure, the materials behind the walls. But what sells the property? The things people touch and interact with.
A loose door handle can make someone question the quality of an entire building.
Recruitment is exactly the same.
You can have the best systems, the best candidates, and the best results in the market. But if you miss the small moments that shape a client or candidate’s experience, that’s what people remember.
In this episode, I challenge you to find the “soy sauces and door handles” in your recruitment business:
What small frustrations are you creating without realising?
What simple improvements could have a huge impact?
Where are you creating doubt when you could be creating confidence?
What parts of your process need a little more attention?
Because in recruitment, people don’t just buy the outcome. They buy the experience of getting there.
Sometimes the biggest competitive advantage isn’t doing more. It’s getting the small things right.