How to Grow Your Recruitment Business by Hiring Top Recruiters, with Leanne Sara Jones Hunt, Ep #66

When scaling your recruitment business, one of the biggest challenges you have most likely experienced is finding good recruiters to join your own team. In this episode, my very special guest, Leanne Jones Hunt, shares her unique perspective on recruiting recruiters based on having successfully placed over 700 recruiters with growing recruitment businesses. 

Leanne is my Chief Operations Officer, and also a fellow coach here at Recruitment Coach. Leanne started her recruiting career in 2010, after completing her Master’s Degree in Law. Eventually, she launched her own recruitment agency in the recruitment to recruitment or “Rec to Rec” space which she ran for five years before entering the coaching industry.

Episode Outline and Highlights

• [2:20] Leanne’s career highlights, including billing £47,000 in her first 5 weeks and being promoted to director within 12 months
• [5:55] What is “Rec to Rec”?
• [13:15] Discussion on career progression in the recruitment industry.
• [16:04] Characteristics of successful recruiters that business owners should look for
• [21:05] How Leanne started her own recruitment business at a very young age.
• [33:46] Business model: 180 vs 360 degree billers - which is better?
• [38:15] Effective assessment methods for recruiting recruiters.
• [45:00] Best practices for hiring great recruiters.
• [48:30] Improving your employee retention.
• [55:05] Resilience: What was Leanne’s biggest challenge in her recruitment business?

The Challenge of Recruiting Recruiters

What are the characteristics of successful recruiters that business owners should look for when they are hiring for their own teams? Indeed, one of the ironies in the recruitment industry especially for growing businesses is that it can be challenging to find and recruit good recruiters. Having been a top-performing recruiter herself, as well as running her own recruitment agency and placing recruiters with some of the fastest-growing recruitment companies in the country, Leanne is well placed to provide perspectives on the characteristics of effective recruiters.

This is how Leanne puts it, “There are quite a few different traits that make up a good recruiter. But for me, it was work ethic and urgency.” During our interview, Leanne shared her own experience and how it shaped her mindset on why she places such value on work ethic and having a sense of urgency.

Leanne encourages business owners to think beyond the typical profile of salesy, extrovert types who are very confident, maybe with a background as a real estate agent or telesales.  

“Throughout my career, I tried to challenge the status quo and it did work.” Leanne gave an example of someone she placed who was celebrating their 7th anniversary with the company who broke the mould of what a stereotypical recruiter looks like.

Assessment Methods: How to Ensure You Hire the Right Person for Your Growing Recruitment Business

What are some of the most effective assessment methods when hiring a good recruiter? Having a thorough hiring process can definitely help when increasing the success rate and retention of new recruiters. So based on experience, what are the best hiring processes that Leanne has seen when working in the recruitment space? Some of her top methods include: 

• Introduce a working interview/trial day as a stage in the hiring process
• Focus on assessing their skills, not just a subjective decision based on the way they come across
• Develop a structured training program

Listen to the full interview to hear other takeaways, especially on mistakes and success factors when scaling your business and growing your team of recruiters.

Leanne Sara Jones Hunt Bio and Contact Info

Leanne Sara Jones Hunt is our Chief Operations Officer here at Recruitment Coach.  Prior to joining forces with Mark, Leanne worked in the recruitment-to-recruitment space in London for 10+ years and placed over 700 recruiters with some of the fastest-growing recruitment companies in the UK.

She ran her own successful recruitment-to-recruitment business, Excell Jones, for 5 years which placed trainees/graduates into the recruitment arena.   Before starting her own business, Leanne rapidly progressed from graduate trainee all the way to director.  She has performed every role from office manager, resourcer, 360 recruiter and billing manager.  As a manager, she created extensive training manuals and developed multiple trainees from scratch who didn’t have any recruitment experience to become successful billing recruiters.  

In addition to her role as COO, Leanne is also a Coach for our Inner Circle members, and is the resident ‘Queen of Automation’. She regularly shares the secrets on how she was able to claw back 30% of her time through implementing various automation processes, strategies and systems.  Leanne has successfully hired, trained and managed teams of virtual assistants.

As well as holding the Inner Circle members accountable, and inspiring them to take action to implement strategies, Leanne is also able to share with our Inner Circle members how to hire and manage a remote team. 

• Leanne on LinkedIn

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