How to scale a recruitment business to $2,000,000 (with a team of four)

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit, where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Mina Golsouki. Mina has a pretty insane story. She helped her recruitment business scale from 1 million to 2 million in just 2 years with a total of 4 people in the company. In today's episode, we're going to be breaking down exactly how she did it. We dive into the 3 core pillars that drove the company's growth, training recruiters properly, focusing on ROI instead of saying yes to everything, and reducing admin by 50 to 60% by using AI and automation. Guys, this is a masterclass in how to work smarter and not harder, and by the end of it, you will have a lot more details on how to build a profitable, efficient recruitment machine. As usual, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's get into it, shall we? Wait a second, guys. Quick question for you. If you could land a new client on LinkedIn in the next couple weeks, how much would that be worth to you? $20,000? $30,000? Maybe $40,000? Well, we have a pretty crazy offer on right now. If you are a recruitment business owner, then we will work with you for free and write you 2 posts at absolutely no cost. And here's the cool part: other recruiters that have come through this free trial have managed to win new clients. They've racked up hundreds of thousands of impressions and started conversations with with top-tier candidates. It's completely risk-free, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If you're interested, the link's in the description below. If not, no worries. We hope you enjoy the podcast. See you later. Meena, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?

Thank you. Very good. Thanks for having me.

Yes, thank you so much.

I have—

I think you've been— I remember seeing you on my post, Meena, for quite a while now, and I just remember your face popping up, and then you sent me this message. I was like, oh, Meena, I recognise her. And then we have this conversation. I was like, oh my God, we need to get you on the podcast. So I'm so excited about this episode because you've done some amazing things. But as always, we'll start off with the first question, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah, it's a mindset shift. It's a very certain mindset shift that has helped me the last years a lot, which is although we are actually service providers, right? We should not act as such. And that's something that has changed how I serve and work with clients, and each of our recruiters does as well, because what we are actually doing is solving a business problem for hiring managers and the companies themselves. So what we are trying to do is not to serve the hiring manager and their demands. What we do is we try to understand what they actually need, and we consult them and help them to solve the actual business problem. So that kind of mindset shift has changed how I negotiate with clients, how we, um, yeah, find their candidates, qualify them for them, but also how we do stakeholder management throughout the process. And that has been like the biggest toolkit, which I also, um, you know, train my recruiters on.

Fascinating. Great answer. Um, yeah. How did you have that? Because I'm guessing it sounds like if it was a mindset shift, you maybe weren't thinking that before. So what happened for you to think in this way? Mina?

So, um, I was an in-house recruiter before, and what I did at that time, I was working very closely with the management. So, talent acquisition was, um, appreciated and it was held as one core function of the business because it was a small startup and we had to hire, um, tech, we had to hire marketing from scratch, and if we didn't have the right people set up, the whole business would fail. So I was working very closely with business from early on. And then once I started freelancing, I never thought of, you know, serving the client and what they were wishing for. I always challenged them because I was also very close with other founders. I was always talking more about the business side of things, not really about years of experience or buzzwords they may have in their CVs. It was more about understanding the competencies and then, um, maybe also challenging hiring managers, we, which did not have the right, um, you know, understanding of what they need because they have read some books, but it was not, um, clear for them what is best practice in the market. And that's something that, um, helped me when I was freelancing to get my clients and they stick with me because they were like, oh, amazing. I can throw anything to her and she, it doesn't matter what kind of position. She really, you know, understands how to help us and how to consult us. And then that's how I also transitioned into a head of role, how my recruitment teams with my first company, which I had co-founded at that time, was also built around, yeah, supporting customers in trying to understand their business needs and then give them a talent acquisition strategy and then lease the recruiters to them, which was just like the execution part of it. So that's kind of something that. I naturally, um, stepped into.

Really interesting, love that. Um, and I'd love to get on to the second question because I just find this amazing, Mina. Um, you guys have scaled start to finish from 1 million to 2 million in 2 years with just 4 people, which is like almost unheard of. Like, 2 million with 4 people, I've just never heard of that. And normally 2 million, you're looking at like 8 to 10 staff at least, which is, which is amazing. So I'm interested in the specific kind of, um, growth from 1 million to 2 million. What were the most critical changes that you made to achieve that, that massive jump in just 2 years?

Yeah, we had 3 main pillars that we worked on. The first pillar was learning and development. So I trained each recruiter on the most critical skills in recruitment, which are, in my opinion, stakeholder management, copywriting and storytelling, understanding the business. So that was actually one of the core things that I was teaching them, how e-commerce worked, and they were diving into understanding each of the company stages. And then also tech affinity and AI. So that was, yeah, the main learning and development part, which we focused on. Then what we did as well was to specialize. We special— like, just to give you an idea of how it worked before, we used to take any position and any company which was happy to pay our retainer. And at the end, we had a lot of positions which we couldn't close or which took a lot of resources from us to close them. And the math wasn't working. So it wasn't ROI positive at that time. And all we did was to specialize on customers and roles where we saw the highest ROI. So we analyzed every company, every job that we have taken on. We analyzed the time to hire, the revenue we got in, and then we started to say no to any company which has a high investment of resources or which takes a lot of resources from our side and which doesn't pay enough to make it work. And since we did that, we were much more efficient. We had a better talent pool. The recruiters could specialize more, so they had a better understanding of the role. They could consult better. They could recycle candidates even better. And all in all, we had a shorter time to hire and more revenue per client as well. So that was the second pillar that helped us a lot. And the third pillar was automating, like we empowered the team with tech. We took a look at every process that is manual and takes a lot of time of the recruiter. So we automated notes, submissions, summaries, and also one of the most time-consuming parts is active sourcing. And our company is not specialized on a specific, specific role, which means that we are not just hiring for marketeers or a salesperson and have like one persona that we're hunting. We are consulting e-commerce and SaaS domains in hiring their key roles, which means that every role we are hiring is quite unique and needs deep research of the candidate. And I have built an AI which also auto-screens candidates from LinkedIn and their external databases. So we can actually, you know, the recruiters start with a shortlist instead of a longlist. And yeah, we reduce the manual time in sourcing as well. So that was like third pillar was to automate anything that takes a lot of manual effort from the recruiters. And to narrow it down, it was just two things. We trained recruiters and we optimized for efficiency for the business.

Wow. Love that. So, I'm sure, Saf, let you jump in some. Yeah, amazing. I kind of want to work my way down the three pillars, Mina, and just go into a bit more detail, but that's fantastic stuff. So I just want to start with the learning and development because I'm sure there's so many other recruiters or business owners with teams that are interested in the learning development piece. Um, can we start with stakeholder management? Why was that a key part of the learning development? And what is the 80/20 that you want your recruiters to come away with after the stakeholder management training?

Yeah. So the thing is that it's, in most cases, it's not about finding the right CV and shipping it to the business. It was more about managing the stakeholders' expectations. And it starts early on, right? So, uh, what we did is giving them a clear structure on how to prepare before they go into actual kickoffs. So they know early on how to manage the stakeholders, because if you're confident about the role, the company, you can actually give pushback very early on. And those recruiters that do not do that, they lose 2 to 5 weeks throughout the process because they're trying to solve the problem afterwards. After they find out, you know, that the budget is not working or it's not really realistic or the process is actually lacking something, um, for that. So that was kind of, um, something that was quite important, but also on how to make sure that both the hiring manager and the candidates are managed, um, properly through the process because I think, um, 80/20 also applies to, um, managing their stakeholders because maybe, um, 20% of the time you're investing in the process is to, um, manage the candidates and the hiring managers, but it makes 80% of the success of the whole, of the whole recruitment process. Because you could find the best candidate, but if you haven't done the pre-closing right, if you haven't done the, um, debrief and the briefing of the hiring manager well, they might, um, lowball them in the offer, they might let them wait for another day or two, which will, you know, result in losing the candidate. These were the things that we trained them on. And it sounds very basic, but most of the recruiters I've been working with did not know that.

Yeah, love that. Really fascinating. There's a few things you mentioned there, Mina, and the thing that jumped out to me was kind of pushback, pushing back on clients if they have unrealistic, unrealistic expectations. Can you just remind me, like, if we were to— I think you've said them there, but I just want to kind of categorize them and just remind myself of what the most important things are. So if we were to categorize the most important things you're training recruiters, it's pushing back on clients. What are the other 2 to 3 things that you're training them to do? Just to clarify.

Copywriting and storytelling, which is also quite important. So we, Oh, sorry, Mina.

Sorry to interrupt. I meant on the stakeholder management side.

So sorry. I'm here. Yeah. Pushing back is quite important, but also how to manage candidates and hiring managers. So doing debriefs and with the hiring manager and the candidate, interview preps for the candidate, as well as understanding how recruitment processes should work. Because some of the clients who we work with, um, are startups and they might not have a lot of experience in hiring and then they have overloaded their recruitment process with steps where they lose candidates. So we help them to design a recruitment process, which is more conversion friendly. So, um, and that's only possible if the recruiter truly understands how to bring that to the stakeholder and make sure that it's a win-win for both sides. Because, um, what we don't want to do is like push them for a process where they cannot qualify the candidate and we can just, you know, push the candidates forward. The idea should be that they can qualify the candidate, but they don't lose them because they did some complicated steps or, uh, because they're just not sure what they need. They're not able to identify the right candidate. So we help them with scorecards if needed. We consult the hiring managers with designing the process, and then obviously pre-closing is also a big part in stakeholder management as we need to make sure that the candidate is actually mature enough for the offer because we had already positions where the client just had one meeting with them, did straight an offer in the first call with them, and the candidate declined because they were just not warm enough, you know, they needed a bit more time to make their decision. So, And that's things where we, um, focused on, uh, in stakeholder management, uh, basically is to make sure that the process and the expectations are right from the stakeholders, then manage the stakeholders through the process with briefings and debriefs, and then staying very close with the candidate, pre-closing the candidate, and making sure that after the, um, or actually before the offer, nothing is going wrong, and then after the offer, nothing is going wrong.

Really interesting. Is there— because I'm guessing you know your stuff, Mina, I can tell you're talking about this fluidly. So you've probably done 10,000 hours of it. Is there any part of the process that you find recruiters struggle with the most that you have to kind of delve deeper on consistently? What do you think?

Yeah, it's actually the part to prepare before the meeting. So I think the worst thing that happened is if they didn't know there was a bottleneck, Right. So, um, the thing where most people struggle with is that after weeks of going through candidate processes, they find out that the hiring manager has some weird recruitment process, or they have like some extra steps ahead, or they do something spontaneous, right, which was not aligned with us. And, um, this happens only if you are not in control of the process. So you have to be super prepared. You have to understand the market, you have to understand the company, and then you have to be able to consult the business and also go— I'm always thinking of worst-case scenarios first, and then I optimize for them. So if something positive happens, it's always great, but I'm always prepared for the worst case. So I always follow up, and that's also what my recruiters learned is that Um, even if their hiring manager says they have more time, or if the candidate says they have more time, they always prepare for worst cases, which means that they're closer, they push, they, um, have to think of scenarios which could go wrong throughout the process and be more proactive. And that's where most of the people lack because they, um, they think, or because someone that hasn't, um, mentioned it, they are surprised at the end, right? And if they didn't prepare correctly for that, I hope I brought the point right, but eventually it's just preparation, which is the most important thing in, in the process. So making sure that you understand the market, you understand the business, you're prepared for the hiring managers, and you're prepared for the worst-case scenarios, and you act proactively throughout this process.

Love that. Mina, that makes a lot of sense. I wanted to move on to the copywriting piece, Ben, unless you have any more specific questions. That's cool. Yeah, awesome. So team of 4 making 2, doing 2 million. It's very rare to mention copywriting at this stage. Like usually if I was speaking to someone like you, Mina, with your company, it would probably be CV speccing, potentially cold calls, you know, a lot of outbound. Not that you can't, not that copywriting isn't used with outbound, but Why is copywriting so important within your business and where is the 80/20 again with it within your business?

Yeah, it's, it's the most important part. It's not about only writing LinkedIn posts, right? Copywriting is a narrative and owning the narrative of the business makes everything because that's something that influences the in-mail. It influences your pitch and it influences the overall success of the candidate. Anyone is getting like copy-paste messages and then they get like some random, hey, I have a job for you and that's your task that you have to do. And, um, the problem is that if you're looking for great candidates, you have to have a great narrative in a process. So what we train them on is, um, how to build a narrative and this narrative is used in, uh, in mails or for in mails, it is used for job ads as well, because that's also one of our channels. It is used for LinkedIn posts because that's also one of our channels, one of our channels, how we get candidates as well and other recruiters. And then it's also used as a pitch in the interview because some of our clients are small startups. They don't have much budget for that role, and we have to convince with the story and the impact of the position. So if you cannot convince the candidate, you're gonna lose them through the process.

Really interesting. Ben, I've got a question, but I've asked like 2, so have you got any follow-ons? Or, um, probably similar to what you're thinking. I love that, and I completely understand, um, narrative. And can we just go a little bit deeper into that, Mina? So, so you actually gave a really good example, like for a startup with not, you know, with, with minimal resources, you're probably finding the best angle that's going to hook people in. Is that what you mean by narrative? Just to clarify for the audience, it's finding the best hook, the best thing that's going to get people interested in listening to you?

Not specifically. Hook is one part of it, but to specify it a bit more is you need to understand based on what do candidates decide whether a company or role is interesting and whether they will actually respond to you or not. And there are 4 Fs which we work on. One of them is the fit of the company and the candidate. Then it's fun, like how much can I have fun in the company, build personal relationships. Fortune is obviously one of the Fs, and friends and family. And I'm not going to dive into each of them because that's a whole episode itself. But the most important one when it comes to attracting candidates and closing them for such companies is to understand that The decision whether a company, a candidate will join a company or not is based on does the company and the mission of the company and the challenge that they have match with my skills and with my personal goals for my career? Because if that's given, you're most likely even open to take a pay cut in, uh, in the next role because you're able to fulfill yourself. And that also means that you're more likely to, you know, take the offer on in the process. We have higher offer acceptance rate with candidates which, you know, they can identify themselves with the company and with the position they will be working on because it's not about then the specific task because every marketeer, developer, or even recruiter is actually doing the same job at every company. You have the same tasks, right, day to day, but what actually is the difference is what impact you have and what mission you're serving. And, um, that's something that most of the recruiters in the market also get wrong because their in-mails, job ads, and also the pitch of the company and role surrounds around day-to-day tasks, which do not differentiate one role from another. So what they have to do is to understand How can I build a narrative around what the company is doing and the mission and the impact the candidate has when they step into this company and do their job? So even the titles do not matter. So we do not go out and say, oh, we're looking for that title and that title. We go out and say, that's the mission, that's the challenge. Are you able, are you able or are you open to take on this challenge? And That's where most of the candidates get excited about.

Really interesting. So maybe let's go, because we've never heard anything around narrative before from any recruiter. Like, this is literally the first time it's been mentioned. How did you come to this? How did you learn about this? Mina, was this just like natural? Did you just get an intuition? Did you learn from— did you like read books about narrative? Like, how did you learn about like forming a narrative around companies, just out of curiosity?

So I said I was working in-house before, and the company I was working for was a POS company, and we were trying to attract candidates from Uber or Amazon or any other scale-up in Europe to join our company. And it was really hard to get those candidates which come from a post-IPO or scale-up environment to join a store somewhere in Vienna, Austria, um, for a pay cut, right? So we needed a really strong narrative around this POS system and what we were building that we could actually catch those candidates to come and help us to make this mission, um, work. And yeah, I took hours of reading books and studying how to build narratives around that. And the very first time I stepped into an external role where I had to build narratives about other companies, I was lost because I had built this narrative of this company over years. I knew exactly, um, the angle from a tech perspective. I knew the software architecture of the company. I knew exactly how to market the company from a marketing perspective or a sales perspective, but then stepping into this external role and having to pitch other companies, which I had, um, you know, I have no knowledge of, or maybe just some brief summary of. That was kind of hard at the beginning for me. So I had to learn how to conduct kickoffs so I get the exact information that I need so I can build a narrative for each of the companies that I'm pitching. And at the beginning, I was writing like the notes and thinking of how I can build this narrative for each company. And it took me some while, but now it's something I can just, you know, spontaneously jump in and do a narrative about the company.

Interesting. I love that. And this might be difficult, because I'm sure this skill of building narratives is developed over just doing it lots and lots of times and testing. But if someone was listening to this, a recruiter, and they're like, oh my God, I've never heard of this before, how do I build a narrative? Or how do I look for it? What— have you got any kind of words of wisdom as to how they can get to that faster or find the sweet spot?

Yeah, get familiar with the hero story. So it's a framework, right? So understand how movies and stories are created. And it's always the same narrative. It's always the same. So Google hero story, get familiar with how a hero story is built up, and then try to understand how you can build up a hero story for your company and the role that you're hiring for.

I've seen the hero story. I mean, it's a popular Um, it's, I'm trying to think, how can we explain the hero story to people that haven't heard of it? It's a, it's a tried and tested formula that, that's used in pretty much every Hollywood film you probably ever watched. Um, I embarrassingly don't know each step, but, um, and I would love to, maybe we can input this. I don't know how we can input this in the podcast, but maybe it will just have to be in a link below to like a hero story framework. but I think that's a good idea. I mean, just Google it and you'll see a clear framework of what the hero story entails, the different steps and the frameworks. And then I'm guessing, so you, you try to use this framework with every narrative and you're asking the right questions to say, oh, how can I take that answer and put it into step 1 of the framework, for example, or step 5? Am I right in saying that, Mina?

Exactly. And I think the most important, um, steps are actually, it's a very easy framework. Like, it has a lot of steps. You do not need to overcomplicate it. Um, I did have actually, um, some workshops around that with some clients also the last 2 weeks. So I'm, uh, quite, it's quite fresh right now, I would say. And, um, yeah, you need to understand what's the introduction and then build up this excitement about the role and the challenge. And at the end, your candidate has to be your hero. So basically think of the company be having built up something, and now they need to solve a big challenge, have a big mission, and your candidate is Batman or Superman coming in and helping them to get this mission done.

I absolutely love that. It's just amazing that you're thinking in that way to build narratives and to sell roles or businesses. I absolutely love that. I've got the hero story here, just a bit of it. It's probably not super accurate, but We've got like the problem, the tension, the misdiagnosis, the awakening, the struggle, the breakthrough moment, the transformation, and then the return with the lesson. I know there's like 50 different versions of the hero story, but you're basically building up tension and transformation and then an outcome, aren't you, through the hero story? So it's really fascinating. Absolutely love it. Because so when you're trying to get the— because I'm guessing not every hero story will go— they vary, right? Like you're never going to get the perfect hero story with every single client. And in fact, I'm guessing sometimes you might need to focus more on one area as opposed to like the transformation. It might be another part of the framework. Have you noticed from the narrative that you've built, have you, have you focused more on one part of the framework that's typically easier and/or just, I guess, more fluid in the process? Mina?

Yeah, as I said, it depends on the story because sometimes they have overcome the challenge and now they're on the new path where things are going pretty well. But the most exciting part is when you build up the tension, like, um, that's how they got into it. Then things, um, you know, they have to scale or they just scaled and now the next step is to solve this particular problem, this particular challenge. And that's where you come in and you have to help us to build up the finance, get the next investment fund done, launch the next product, launch this market. And that's where you get in and you help us to achieve our goal, right? So you build up some tension on, oh wow, what's that? You build credibility, you build up like, some excitement about the company or the role, like depending on where the person is stepping in, because there are some roles which it's more easy. And then there are some roles like where it's a bit more repetitive, the work they will be doing. And you have to think of a bigger picture of the company, which you're selling than the specific role itself. So yeah, really depends. But if it's a startup, which is growing to have lots of hero stories hidden in their narrative. So, um, and usually founders, they love talking about that anyway. So, uh, usually I try to talk also to the founder because they will naturally present you a hero story.

Love it. And have you ever— I'm guessing there's some companies that are just really boring, and but they're great companies, but they don't have any kind of crazy stories. Those are the ones I feel like most recruiters would probably struggle with, you know, The startups that have like, like really exciting products with great founders that have this amazing background or good background, you know, those are probably easier, should I say? Not easy, but easier. Yeah. Have you ever encountered like difficult companies to sell? And in which case, what are you doing to kind of maximize the results on those ones?

Yeah, trying to find something that is interesting. So let's say if it's agency, and the agency is not really growing, um, the person that you're hiring is 1 out of 10, um, doing the same delivery function, then maybe the company and the role is not the thing where you can, um, really build a narrative on. So what I would do is maybe think of, are there any, uh, great companies they have been working with? And you take these companies and then, uh, sell that. And if, you know, there's nothing you can take about that part, try to get another F into your in-mail, for instance, or copy. So try to sell the flexibility they might have, like remote work, or maybe some exciting things like vacation they're doing, or maybe, yeah, then maybe even budget. I've been working with companies which build a tech hub, for instance, in Bosnia or Serbia, and then we had to catch the candidates and the candidates were less interested into the company challenge. They were more interested into fortune, like how much do I make in this company? So we would sell this part more. Um, also even recruitment agencies, I think there's a lot you can also sell around the company or the impact they may have with the clients, but at the end, It's a very hard job to be a recruiter. And something that actually catches a lot of good recruiters is fortune as well. So can I make good money in this job?

Lala, you're trying to find something on one of the 4 Fs essentially, right? And yeah, got it. If you can't find anything, Mina, do you turn clients down? If you're like, hey, sorry, I don't think we can create a story or a narrative out of this, it's going to be too difficult. Would you turn a client down, or what happens in that situation?

Only if I'm not able to, or if I'm confident that no candidate would be interested in the company and the challenge overall, then it's a mismatch of what they can provide and what the market is giving. So then I would turn the client on. It's not really about the narrative. It wouldn't be about, oh, you're too boring and we're not going to work with you, but if I'm sure that, you know, what you can provide and the expectations you have maybe towards a candidate do not match, then I would definitely turn them down.

It's interesting because I guess if you explain to the client, maybe not the exact framework, but like, hey, I need to get one of these Fs in place to sell your role. And if it's like, if they're not hitting them, it's like explaining it to them. I just felt like if you have a framework around it, it makes a lot more sense. And I feel like companies would would probably try harder and understand what you're trying to do to sell, which I just find fascinating.

Actually, we do that. We come up with 4 Fs.

Oh, interesting. Cool. And do you see a change in their perception or their response when you explain it like that? Do you see a difference at all? Or?

Yeah, we had one client we've been working with, and the first person we talked to about building this narrative, was saying things like, oh, we do have cereals, and if someone wants a specific drink, we can order that, and so on. And she couldn't explain anything around the company or what they were actually doing. And then I said that we need to follow up with one of the hiring managers or with someone working in the team specifically, because I'm sure that they might get excited about something they're working on. And, uh, yeah, we brought in the founder himself and, um, we, I walked him through a narrative. I told him like, this is what I'm going to try to do. And that's what we need from you. And within 10 minutes, we got an exciting narrative and it wasn't about the company. It was about the things they're striving for and expectations they have towards their own work and how they, builds impact for their clients specifically. So that's how we build a narrative.

Really interesting. It reminds me of mine and Ben's process. When we jump on a call with a client, we're trying to find angles that we know will be powerful to sell to other people, essentially. And that's what you were doing. You're jumping on with clients, you're trying to ask as many questions as possible, and trying to find that one angle that you can then pitch to the, to the audience, which is really fascinating. I would love to shift the conversation to— it's still copywriting, I guess, unless there's anything else I don't know around this. But if I'm not mistaken, all your business is inbound, Mina, if I'm not mistaken. And so I'm guessing— Ben told me that the founder is very personal brand-led. Can you— the recruitment companies that I've seen that are very focused on content and inbound and building their brand, have typically seen some form of win, because it's a lot of time and energy and resources to, you know, to do your personal brand when you could be sending MPC campaigns or cold calling or whatever. So what wins have you guys seen, even little ones that have made you think, okay, we're gonna go all in on this?

Yeah. Let me think actually where this comes from. I think it's also something based on what you know, and your personality, and our founder is more marketeer in his mindset, I guess, than someone who is doing outreach. And he never learned doing outreach the classic way as you do in headhunting. So maybe once you start your business in recruitment, you step into what you know and what you're familiar with and do that. And once you have to do copywriting and do posts on LinkedIn, that's maybe something that you do not feel familiar with if you haven't done it before. And, but we saw the company was growing up to 1 million and then from 1 million to 2 million, sorry, without a single outreach via LinkedIn or email. So it was all inbound, all, yeah, with LinkedIn. And we just build up YouTube on top. I wouldn't say YouTube is for lead gen. I would say it's something that helps to build the credibility. And we do have leads coming in and say like, oh, I saw your video, I don't know, 2 weeks, 2 months ago. And but now it's relevant. Now I was thinking of, you know, if you could help us to close this position.

Lovely. Just to clarify the number, you went from 1 million to 2 million without doing any outbound at all. It was all inbound. Absolutely insane. Then I'm sure you have a— Yeah, I'm now interested. So me and Sam, when It might be quite organic for you, Mina, but me and Sam, when we went more inbound, we do a free trial. So we created an offer. You've probably seen it plastered all over LinkedIn. We've probably done too much of it over the last few weeks. But so we have a free trial offer and we drive people to a landing page and we can absolutely say when we do this type of post, we're going to get more inbound and we're going to get more landing page views. It might not be as like as direct as that for you. It might be more organic, but over the over the years of getting inbound, have you found triggers or things that are more likely to get inbound from the right clients?

Success stories, definitely. So that has helped us a lot. Surprisingly, also posting about jobs. So what we do is we do lead gen with LinkedIn, but our recruiters, they do also posts where they gain candidates from. So their posts are not around getting clients, it's more about finding candidates. And then sometimes they say like, hey, I have this job offers. Is there a candidate which, you know, wants to do that XYZ, whatever. And there are actually leads coming in saying like, hey, if you're hiring that, could you also help us to fill in this particular role? We also had, you know, we also presented candidates. We said like, oh, we have a candidate which has ABC experiences. Is anyone interested in this candidate? And then people were actually saying like, oh yes, we are interested. Could we see the candidate? Can we talk to the candidate? And that's something we did with a— we didn't publicly name the candidate. We— it was anonymized, but it was always done with candidates which come from companies where we thought like, oh, this candidate would go pretty fast.

Yeah, I'm so glad you said that, Mina, because, um, I've always been amazed why client, um, you know, when we interview all these recruiters, they're doing MPCs, and I'm like, why are people not marketing the same candidates on LinkedIn at scale? Like, why aren't they doing it? And I've just never understood why. And, and I'm so glad you said that because you've just proven that it works. Like, if you've got a great MPC you should be talking about it on LinkedIn as well. So that, I'm so amazed that you're doing it and that you figured that out, like without, I don't know, just, yeah, it's just amazing. So successful stories, job ads, and candidates as well, like almost equivalent to speccing. Those are the three main kind of pillars for what triggers. Really interesting. And can we just go into those in a little bit more detail, Mina? Obviously, we won't go down word for word, but just so the audience understands success stories being a successful placement, right? Something like, hey, we just helped this company, a startup, land an amazing candidate, and they were really happy. This was the process. I'm right, something like that. Am I right in saying that?

Exactly. Yeah. Or we placed 10 candidates at this company, um, or we have been working for 2 years with this company, we have hired XYZ. So, um, depends on the success story, but, um, either we post directly after we have hired, and if the company agrees to that, obviously. Or we have clients which we have been working with for some while, and then we do like a bigger success story around that.

Amazing. And then job ads, are you— is it a pretty standard job ad, or are you kind of using that same narrative to sell it online? Like, how does the job ad look, just roughly speaking?

It's not always a narrative, but it's also not a job ad. It's more like, hey, I have that role, and then you list the most important aspects which may indicate the fit for the company and the challenge itself, without mentioning the company and asking for candidates or asking for anyone who is interested in the network.

Got it. Cool. So it's more kind of informative job description type thing. Am I right in saying that instead of like a seller? Yeah, cool. Awesome. Okay, great. And then the candidates, how do they look? Again, are they just quite to the point? There's not, there's not much story around the candidates, kind of just to the point. Like a spec CV, am I right in saying that, just done online?

Oh, I actually don't remember that because I'm quite out of marketing. So we do have a marketer who is helping our recruiters to actually write that. So, but I guess it's more like, oh, we have someone with this track record, is anyone interested?

It sounds like it might be more like a spec, which is interesting. But it's fascinating because that's exactly what me and Tam are experimenting with right now, like doing more candidate-led posts, and even driving people to like landing pages with candidates, like just one landing page, which is really cool. So that has given me a lot of hope, Mina. So thank you. Yeah, thanks, Mina. Two little— we got about 15 minutes left, guys. I just want to say that now because I have got a client call annoyingly. I would have probably done it differently in hindsight. However, there's just two little arcs I want to go into. You reduce admin by 50 to 60% using AI and automation. Mina, if there was one thing that a recruitment business owner could automate for their staff that would make the biggest impact in terms of reducing admin, what would that one thing be, do you think? Is it one thing? Could there be one thing?

Yeah, I would say active sourcing, definitely, because it's the most time-consuming part of recruitment. So if you can automate that, and by that, I don't mean that you use an AI which randomly picks candidates and then sends some copy-paste messages because I don't believe that really works. I have received those messages myself from AI agents and I always see that. I can read that instantly. But if you use that to reduce the manual part of it, which is screening, understanding, enriching the candidates, then you have actually reduced 50% of the active sourcing part, or 50% of the tasks which a recruiter actually has throughout the week.

Fascinating. Were there any things, any, any difficulties you came up against building that system? Did you find like, oh, wow, like, the responses are too generic, or they're not finding the right people? Or was there any particular thing that was quite difficult to crack, Mina?

Yeah, so we do not do the outreach via AI. As I said, our recruiters are trained on copywriting. They have to write it manual for the candidates, and they do have even more time to personalize their outreaches if they spend less time on screening those candidates. So what we did particularly is to make sure that they get the right candidates at the beginning. And since, I mean, I have built the software as well, right? So I've been, um, scouting software the last years and seeing like if there is something in the market and most of the tools were just fuzzy matching keywords with the CV and we had to build something that actually puts the entire CV into context and analyzes the candidate the same way as we would do as a recruiter, which is taking a look at the employer and the environmental track record as well as the specific role that they have been doing and then consider some other screening criteria such as blacklist companies or whatever is considered as job hopping, if that's a thing for the hiring manager and so on. So this part to set up this business logic and to set up this complexity in a tool, that was definitely a challenge, but I would say now it has been definitely worth it to build it.

Amazing. And could people replicate this without your software? Because it sounds like you've done a lot of this kind of personalized kind of discovery through your own research. Could people replicate what you're doing, or would they have to have like a specific software that you're using?

Yeah, so you could definitely replicate it. I think what you need to do is, yeah, I think the easy part without coding, would be easy if you just upload the profile in ChatGPT and then you have a specific system prompt that analyzes the candidate, then you have done actually the same thing. The other thing is like, how do you get like the number of candidates into ChatGPT or into the system? And that's something where you need code for, right? So you would have to build a software or something where you can import candidate profiles or CV in bulk. Which can actually shortlist the candidates for you. But under— like analyzing the candidate one by one is very easy. It's nothing but any system prompt. You just need to make sure that you have cleared or structured the prompt in a way that your screening criteria are considered interesting.

So you could work with like an AI expert to help you to build that like specific prompt engineering kind of process, right?

Exactly. Exactly.

And for anyone listening to this, you can find AI experts, and they may not be as good as the people that you're working with, Mina, but you can find good AI experts on like Upwork, on Fiverr. There's a lot of people that are good, I think, at AI that can help you with this stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of rubbish out there as well, but I think it's like just becoming quite a popular skill to get good at naturally. God, this has been such a good podcast. I feel like I want to rinse this for just one more question, Mina, because I feel like we've just had so much value here. But there's one question that I found fascinating that 40 to 50% of your new jobs come from account management, which is amazing. And so I'd love to understand what are you doing in the account management phase to get more business? Like, I know that you had a the process that we talked about? Can you just help us understand a little bit more about that?

Yeah, sure. I mean, first of all, they need to do a good job, right, in recruitment. That's the, I would say, 80% of the success. But other than that, if they do a good job, they can still, you know, influence if they're getting an upsell or not by making sure that they're close to the account. So we do have— let me just double-check. Sorry, I was structuring my thoughts before on that.

No problem. Yeah, it's fascinating. I just feel like, oh yeah, probably a lot of recruiters that are leaving a ton of money on the table by not having a proper process to like upsell, as you say. Sorry, go ahead, Mina.

Yes, so exactly. So of course they have to do a great job on the, on the recruitment side, but, um, aside of that, they have to just follow a certain process. First of all, they need to engage with the account throughout the process, specifically when they're the hottest to upsell. So we identified that clients are the hottest for an upsell once we have just delivered the value. So if you got like 2 to 3 really strong candidates in a process or in offer stage, that's a great timing to talk around the next positions, right? And also it's a great timing because the client has nothing which they can see as, you know, a reason for negotiation when it comes to the conditions as well, because you can say, hey, we delivered, right? So that's also something that helps a lot. So trying to not wait until it's over, that's the most important part. Obviously, that's not something that always works out because some companies just do not have the demand for more positions. And when it comes to that, we just stay close to the client. Every account manager is connected with their account managers. They have, sorry, every account manager is connected with their account, the hiring managers and the decision makers of the company. They follow them and then they make sure that they comment, react, engage with their posts. And whenever they post something about either position and so on, they immediately react on that. And also they try to do a call once in a while. They do have a classification of A, B clients. A clients are such as, which have high growth demands in general, and also where we figured out that the overall collaboration went quite smooth because they have a good process, everything is set up, we have a high chance or high probability of placing in the future. And those they try to engage with once in a month by calling them or setting up a call. And then B clients every quarter or 6 months, depending on how small they are, or what we believe makes sense due to their demands or their growth plans.

Yeah, interesting. Love that. And what it sounds like, you've got like different points of contact depending on the client and the circumstances. What tends to be the most successful if you were to look at all of your client management process, like what tends to be the best time? That you get the best kind of results from, do you think?

Actually, the offer stage. So once we have offers out to talk about the next positions.

Really interesting. So sorry, go ahead, Sam. Now just, just with the upsell, because the offer stage, they've been, they've accepted the candidate, I'm guessing that's what you mean. You've given a great candidate, they've accepted, everyone's on a high. And then you'll go in with an upsell. What do you typically say at that stage? Does it I'm guessing it varies depending on the company, but is it basically, hey, have you got any more positions open that we can help with? Is it, is it along those lines or is it anything else?

We do ask in the kickoff a lot about the company growth and plans. So we ask them like, which, how the departments are growing, what are other plans. So if you're talking about a position, we're not talking just about the role itself, we are talking about the entire company. So the account manager does have already information about if there is anything else planned through it, and they actually usually just follow up on this. They say like, hey, have you thought about this position? And then they ask them, when are you planning to fill it in? And then usually they say like, oh, let's say in June, and then we do the math for them. We say like, oh, if the person should start in June, then they should have been, have signed your contract in March, and typically it takes 1 to 2 months to find a candidate. So I guess now is the best time to start. So let's get that rolling. And, um, that's how we help them.

That's so— so you start off with timing and then you, you kind of work backwards from there with an advisory approach. I thought that's really clever. Um, and then you've also proved your worth, so this person now feels confident to either give you another role in the same department or refer you on to someone else. Um, which is, which is brilliant. It's so simple, but we very— I don't think we've heard that before, which is So funny. It's often like these simple things, like with the right timing, that are the biggest needle movers, aren't they? Fascinating. Mina, you have been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. I feel like we could easily have another podcast to talk about what you've learned over the years. I'm so impressed genuinely about what you've learned and what you're doing. I can see why you've built a successful business from 1 to 2 million in such a short space of time because you are Just very, very smart and just an inspiration, I think, for other recruiters and how you're doing things. So thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Highly appreciate it.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week, and we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace and love. Mm-hmm.