Episode 2 of my LIVE series in the UAE and I'm joined by Abdul Rahman Risilia, CEO and founder of ARC Talent. Abdul is someone I actually worked with when I started my recruitment career in Melbourne in 2011, but I didn’t realise this until the show because, back then, he worked under a completely different name! In this episode, Abdul shares his journey from door-to-door sales to building a successful recruitment business in Dubai, growing through the various challenges along the way, and his u...
Feb 07, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Season 8Ep. 26
The first of our 5 x episodes recorded Live in the UAE kicks off with ME as the guest! So Chris Redmond, who's been on our show three times since 2019, approached me about interviewing me and telling both the Hoxo story and my learnings from almost 300 episodes of the RAG on my recent trip to Dubai! In this episode, I opened up a lot! We discuss The story of Hoxo to date The impact of my personal brand on building the business Why I started The RAG Podcast The impact The RAG has had on the indus...
Jan 31, 2024•49 min•Season 8Ep. 25
In this episode of the RAG podcast, Sean Anderson interviews Richard Morton, the founder of MatchMedics. Richard shares his journey of launching a recruitment company in his 50s and emphasises that it's never too late to pursue your dreams. He discusses the challenges he faced in the early years and the turning point after reading the book 'Traction'. Richard explains how MatchMedics narrowed its focus to specialise in recruiting doctors and the subsequent growth in team size and revenue. He als...
Jan 24, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 8Ep. 24
In this week’s episode, I’m joined by Jamie Reynolds, a man who’s held some impressive titles in his career but most notably was the Former CEO of PMP Recruitment, a part of the Cordant Group, COO of Halian, and most recently, CEO of The Recruitment Co. In this in-depth episode, he shares his journey from a 17-year-old trainee to his moves toward CEO. During his time at Cordant, he delivered multiple millions in profit through a company wide business transformation programme. Jamie is passionate...
Jan 17, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 8Ep. 23
In this week's episode, I was joined by Laura Clark, CEO of OA Group, who shares her journey of joining the family business and eventually taking over as CEO. She discusses the challenges and rewards of working with her mother and the lessons she learned from her entrepreneurial upbringing. Laura also talks about the growth and operations of OA Group, her early career in recruitment, and the negotiation process of buying out her mother's stake in the business. This episode highlights the importa...
Jan 10, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 8Ep. 22
On this week's show, I'm delighted to be joined by Josh Huggins, the founder of GS2, a global sustainability search recruitment firm headquartered in Basingstoke. The business is just over 18 months old, with eight employees. Josh shares his journey from being a professional footballer to starting his own recruitment business. After becoming the second-largest shareholder at Principal People he, alongside Simon Bliss, led the process of selling the business. He had to wait five years and faced m...
Jan 03, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 8Ep. 21
On this week's show I was joined by Owen Myers and Jenna Mackie, the founders of Mackie Myers. Mackie Myers is a specialist accounting and finance recruitment firm headquartered in London, two and a half years old with 14 employees. Since launching, the business has doubled revenue year on year and operated in a sustainable way! They've introduced a 4-day work week after 12 months, which has been hugely successful. And they are now looking at growing from 14 to 40 - 50 over the next few years. I...
Dec 13, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 8Ep. 20
On this week's episode I was once again joined by Vincere, specifically their Head of Product, Kristy Gilham. This is a follow-up to the conversation we recorded back in September. In this episode, we focused exclusively on the product roadmap and the things that they're working on right now to improve for you, the customer. You’ll hear some interesting insights into how they decide on which products to put into action, and which ones to leave off the table. Despite the negative press post-acqui...
Dec 06, 2023•40 min•Season 8Ep. 19
Today I was joined by Dan Moussa and Kevin Warner, the founders of Telesca. Telesca is an 11 month old recruitment business headquartered in Brisbane with a completely unique model. These guys recruit in the energy and sustainability space and in a short space of time they’ve built a business with the following 100% retained (30% upfront / 70% on success) Productised model with clear pricing and delivery structure Utlisation of Offshore experienced recruiters in Philippines. Soon to be 11 staff,...
Nov 29, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 8Ep. 18
On this week's episode, I'm excited as Chris Redmond, the founder and the CEO of RedHolt, is back on the show for the third time. In Q4 2019, he came into my office in East London; we recorded in person together and he claimed that he wanted to be a digital nomad. They’d just got rid of their office, cancelled the lease and were going completely remote. This was a pre-pandemic world and I'll be honest, I thought it was a bit mad. Six months later, the world went into lockdown. Fast-forward nine ...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 8Ep. 17
On this week's show, I was super excited to be joined by Anthony Kelly, the founder of DeepRec.ai which is a niche AI recruitment agency, part of the wider Trinnovo group. He joined the Trinnovo group three and a half years ago, as part of the Trust in Soda brand. After seeing early success, he left Ireland, moving to the UK and it was here that he realised he wanted to be an entrepreneur. At the start of 2023, Anthony decided that it was this year that he wanted to launch his agency and that he...
Nov 15, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 8Ep. 16
On this week’s show, I was super excited to be joined by Stuart Fry & Lloyd Cremer. Stuart is the CEO, and Lloyd is the CRO, of Halian, a recruitment and IT services business headquartered in the UK with multiple offices all over the UK, Europe, and the Middle East. Lloyd joined me from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Stuart was in Dubai. They recently completed an MBO where they bought the original founders out, and they're on a journey now for the next four years to create an incredible wealth ...
Nov 08, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 15
On this week’s show, you’ve got me again. I know I’ve been sharing solo episodes the last few weeks and had a couple of weeks’ break, but I really wanted to take this time to share my recap of Q3 So personally, and professionally, I feel like it's probably been the most powerfully transformational quarter of my life. In this show, I discuss: Q2 being an extremely difficult quarter for our businesses (and a lot of other businesses as well) How we turned around our company for the better in Q3 Hox...
Nov 01, 2023•28 min•Season 8Ep. 14
I’m still on paternity leave, so I'm going to give you another super valuable piece of content from my recent Personal Brand Taster series. In this week's episode, I want to feature the 4 steps that any recruitment company can adopt to become what I call an inbound recruiter. And that is a recruiter that: ✔️ Lives off warm leads ✔️ Is spotting 25 warm leads a week on LinkedIn and turning that into business So I'm going to give you four actionable steps that you can take today to do less outbound...
Oct 10, 2023•37 min•Season 8Ep. 13
Because I’m away on paternity leave over the next couple of weeks, I’m giving you some super valuable information that I’ve recently shared as part of our Hoxo Academy Taster Sessions. I’m featuring a case study that I recorded about a company called Precision Sourcing. Simon Hair, the MD at the company, was previously on The RAG Podcast and was part of my Personal Brand Bootcamp in 2020, where I taught him how to build his brand and find warm leads daily on LinkedIn. As a result of that course,...
Oct 04, 2023•34 min•Season 8Ep. 12
On this week's show, I’m speaking directly to our partner, Vincere. Vincere has sponsored the RAG Podcast for the last three years, and I have a lot of love for the brand and a great relationship with the business. I’m really grateful for the support they've given me and our industry. However, about a year ago, they were acquired by The Access Group which is the fastest-growing and largest software company in Europe. After they were acquired, the two founders, Bernie Schiemer and Eloise Sutton-K...
Sep 27, 2023•57 min•Season 8Ep. 11
On this week’s show, I'm joined by Kyle Grainger, our newest RAG sponsor and the founder of a six month old recruitment agency, Untapped. Untapped specialise in finding remote, highly experienced recruiters for recruitment agencies in UK, US, Middle East, and Australia, sourced from untapped, low cost locations such as the Philippines and South Africa. The benefit of this model is that you can hire people with a proven track record, who don’t need too much management and training at a fraction o...
Sep 20, 2023•55 min•Season 8Ep. 10
This week’s show is going to be a little bit different. My guest is Mel Kang, the CEO of Mezzle, a consulting law firm, not a recruitment agency. Mezzle takes traditional lawyers who work for traditional law firms and flips the model. They attract lawyers who join them without a set salary but take home 70 percent of their annual earnings/ billings. The reason Mel’s a guest on the show is because of how similar the law industry is to the recruitment industry. The way they set their firms up is a...
Sep 13, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 8Ep. 9
This week's show is going to be different. I am featuring a recent webinar I hosted for the recruitment industry where I had over a hundred people turn up and I've had countless messages asking for this information. At Hoxo, we help brand recruitment agencies and their people better. People are your biggest asset in your organisation. Every single recruiter at a desk level can have such a huge impact on your brand, on your market, and on your business. I think it's fair to say everyone knows now...
Sep 06, 2023•35 min•Season 8Ep. 8
On this week’s show, I’m excited to be joined for the third time by DSP (David Spencer-Percival!). The founder of Life Science People, a global life science people provider based in the UK with offices in the US and soon to be opening in Europe. They are just under three years old with 100 staff. The first time David was on the show, they were on their way to a hundred people - they were flying. The second time, earlier this year, David talked about how they'd lost a lot of money in the downturn...
Aug 30, 2023•47 min•Season 8Ep. 7
Part 2 with Ben Wallin and Dan Cox on growing their business to 31 recruiters and being no longer reliant on their own billings within 24 months of trading! On this week's episode, I'm excited to be joined for the second time by Ben Wallin and Dan Cox, who was previously on the show 12 months ago in August 2022. Ben and Dan are the founders of Edison Smart (previously Edison Search). When I interviewed these guys in 2022, we talked about how, in just over a year, they billed £1.7 million in reve...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 8Ep. 6
On this week’s episode, I'm excited to be joined by an old friend, Joe Curtis. Initially, Joe was the founder of a recruitment company called 3Search, which then led to building a bigger business called 11 Investments. 11 Investments is a series of niche recruitment organisations that work together and share a common goal with a central operational function. Joe's role as founder is to bring more people into the portfolio, both people who want to start their own recruitment company and also peop...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 8Ep. 5
On this week’s show I’m sharing one of the most powerful episodes I've ever recorded with a lady called Janette Marx. Jeanette is the global CEO at a company called Airswift, a huge workforce, staffing and solutions organisation headquartered in the US with 62 offices worldwide, 900 employees, and 7500 contractors that they support. Jeanette's been with the business for nine years and in the recruitment industry for over 20 years. She previously worked for Adecco and was leading a huge operation...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Season 8Ep. 4
I'm super excited to be joined by Alexander Antoniou, the founder of AL Solutions, a Life Sciences specialist recruiter headquartered in London, just over five years old, with 25 staff. Now, the reason I wanted to interview Alexander is because he’s not only grown AL Solutions, but he's also built a portfolio of five other businesses that he does the back office support for. They share infrastructure, and he's basically set other people up. Alexander is only 25 years old! He got into recruitment...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 3
On this week’s show, I am joined by Louise Campbell, Global Head of Learning and Development at Robert Walters. Robert Walters is a global, household name in our sector, with over 4000 employees around the world. Louise is based in Ireland. She was the MD of their Irish business for over 20 years. Recently, she reinvented herself and moved into L&D wth the goal of making a difference across the global team. I love understanding Louise's mindset. I've personally worked with Robert Walters for...
Jul 26, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 8Ep. 2
I’m thrilled to have Kevin Frater join me for the first episode of Season 7 of The RAG Podcast! I usually interview founders and leaders of recruitment firms on the show, but this week we’re interviewing our first unemployed guest. Kevin is an absolute legend! He was part of the Frank Recruitment Group (FRG) for over 10 years and left in January of 2023. He started off in a role where he was doing client development, having spent four and a half years with the Allegis Group. He soon became the f...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 8Ep. 1
On this week's show, I was joined by Stuart Mitchell, the founder of Hampton North, a specialist cybersecurity search firm, headquartered in the US with 3 staff. He's based in Connecticut, just between Boston and New York. He launched the business in September 2022, so we're only nine months into his journey. I wanted to interview Stuart because he’s built an incredible personal brand. I have never worked with Stuart, so I can't take any credit, but the way he works is exactly how I believe the ...
Jul 12, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 7Ep. 41
On this week's show, I'm joined by James Emmett, CEO and founder of Hanover Group. Having recently interviewed Anthony Pitt, President at Hanover USA, I was really excited to welcome James, the original founder, on to the show. James started the business 27 years ago and has now grown to an organisation of over hundred people across multiple international locations including both the UK and USA. The business has not only grown organically, but also has a clear acquisition strategy too. In this e...
Jul 05, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 7Ep. 40
Roheel Ahmad on growing to 80 staff in 8 years and looking at the next phase of growth - to IPO with a £60 million valuation. I'm delighted to be joined by Roheel Ahmad. Roheel is the managing partner and co-founder of Forsyth Barnes. I interviewed his partner, Scott, a few years ago during the pandemic and have watched their journey ever since. These guys are just pushing 80 staff across Nottingham, London, and New York, and they specialise in exec search and leadership roles across three diffe...
Jun 28, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 7Ep. 39
On this week's show, I'm joined by an old client of mine, Matt Green. Matt is the founder and CEO of IDEX, a recruitment organisation with an employer branding arm and an advisory arm working with the insurance industry, the financial services sector, and now the legal sector. Matt founded IDEX 17 years ago and they are now fully remote with 60 people in Manchester, Birmingham, London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. What I love about this business is that over 17 years, they've managed to do things the...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 7Ep. 38
