Hishem AzzouzHost Of Recruitment Mentors Podcast

$100M Valuation. 6 years. The Metric Search Story.

Name: $100M Valuation. 6 years. The Metric Search Story.
Uploaded: 2026-04-27T12:09:08+00:00
Duration: 1 min 12 s
Channel: Hishem Azzouz
Description: In this interview, the founders of Metric Search discuss how their recruitment firm achieved a $100 million valuation within six years. They describe an…

27 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:12

In this interview, the founders of Metric Search discuss how their recruitment firm achieved a $100 million valuation within six years. They describe an intensive private‑equity outreach, meeting 21 firms in New York, and debunk the myth that a large contract book is required for such deals. The conversation highlights their core performance metric – ‘send‑outs’, with a target of 16 send‑outs per four‑week period as a leading indicator of £100 k revenue. They recount closing the Southfield deal and immediately selling retainers, underscoring momentum. Both founders, aged 32 and 33, express confidence in their energized team and outline a plan to drive a further five‑fold growth for Southfield, emphasizing the need for the right leadership to expand contract‑book capabilities.

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I think the stat is 0.01% of recruitment businesses ever have an event. When we got the opportunity and we were at the size and scale to be entertained by private equity, we wanted to do that to give people opportunity to make some money for all the effort that they've put into the business and growing it so far. It's an equity story like no other. Me and Jonjo went out to New York. We met with 21 different private equity businesses over the course of a week. Whoa. It was an intense week. I think that's the biggest myth in recruitment, is that you can't do a private equity deal if you don't have contract book. We're a great perm business, we're great at exec search, we know how to deliver. We don't have the expertise to build a massive contract book. There is certainly demand from our clients for that, and it's something we'd be open to do, but you have to have the right person who can lead that.
We live and die by send-outs. We see so much in them. Joe's already spoke about the value of an individual send-out, an indicator that somebody is on track to push for a £100K period is that they are trending in and around the 16 send-out mark per 4-week period. We are showing world-class behaviours day to day in real time.
I think a great example of this is the day after we closed the Southfield deal, Jonjo and myself both sold a retainer. I think that's good. I think that's important. We're just getting started.
Again, we're 32 and 33 respectively, so we want to take it to the next level and I think we want to do it properly.
The team in the business are just fully energised and as am I to deliver another 5x growth for Southfield and the team.