Own Your Growth: How Recruiters Can Take Control of Their Development

Recruitment businesses invest significant time in targets, activity levels and results. Yet the factor connecting those measures is often given less attention - the quality of individual performance.

In this session, Jeremy Snell, Co-Founder of Your People Engine, explored how recruiters can take greater responsibility for their own development and use learning to improve commercial outcomes.

The central principle is simple. Time served does not automatically create capability. Recruiters develop when they deliberately examine what they do, identify where performance can improve and practise better behaviours.

Learning is a commercial activity

Professional development is sometimes treated as separate from the commercial work of recruitment. In reality, the two are closely connected.

Better learning can improve job selection, candidate conversations, conversion, negotiation and pricing. Each of these affects the value a recruiter creates.

Consider three recruiters working broadly similar hours.

One registers 60 jobs, fills 25 per cent of them and charges an average fee of 15 per cent on roles paying £47,000. That produces billings of approximately £105,000.

A second recruiter works on 50 jobs but improves their fill rate to 40 per cent and average fee to 18.75 per cent. Their billings rise to approximately £175,000.

A third works on only 40 jobs, fills 60 per cent, operates at an average salary of £60,000 and charges 20 per cent. Their billings reach approximately £288,000.

The increase is not driven by longer hours. It comes from stronger judgement, better conversion and greater commercial confidence.

Do not confuse tenure with experience

Recruitment leaders regularly challenge clients who use years of experience as a substitute for a clear hiring standard.

The same challenge should be applied inside recruitment businesses.

Four years in recruitment does not necessarily mean four years of development. A consultant who repeats the same behaviours may have accumulated one year of experience four times.

Meaningful experience is built through improving capability. At the end of each month, recruiters should be able to identify how they have become stronger, faster, more productive or more effective.

This creates a more useful standard for development than time served alone.

Focus on performance, not only activity and results

Most recruitment reporting focuses on two things - activity and results.

Activity includes calls, meetings, CV submissions and other inputs. Results include interviews, placements, billings and fees.

Performance is what happens between the two. It is the quality of thinking and behaviour applied while completing the activity.

A recruiter can make a high number of calls without handling candidate resistance effectively. They can submit CVs without creating urgency or setting a clear follow-up point. They can register vacancies without properly judging whether the role is fillable.

Increasing activity may produce some improvement, but it does not address the underlying capability.

Leaders should therefore move performance conversations beyond questions such as how many calls were made or whether CVs were sent.

More valuable questions include:

• What response did you receive?
• Where did the conversation become difficult?
• What appeared to discourage the candidate?
• How did you handle the objection?
• What will you try differently next time?

These questions turn day-to-day work into a source of learning.

Improve the moments that influence conversion

Recruitment performance is shaped by a series of small interactions.

A candidate saying they are not looking for a job is one example. An activity-led response is to end the conversation and call someone else. A performance-led response is to create a reason for the candidate to remain engaged.

The same applies to client communication. A passive email that ends with an open invitation to respond creates little momentum. A stronger message can clarify candidate availability and establish when the recruiter will follow up.

These are not large strategic changes. They are small behavioural improvements that can be practised repeatedly.

Recruiters do not need to transform every part of their desk at once. Improving one important moment can influence the conversion of hundreds of future interactions.

Diagnose development through data

Personal development should begin with evidence.

Recruiters can examine where activity is directed, what results it produces and the conversion between the two.

A consultant who makes 20 sales calls and books one meeting has a five per cent conversion rate. That figure creates a more useful development question than the number of calls alone.

The recruiter can examine whether the prospect list was relevant, whether the meeting was positioned effectively and which responses prevented conversion.

Useful job flow measures include:

• The proportion of jobs receiving CVs
• The proportion receiving multiple suitable CVs
• Conversion from job to placement
• The quality grading of vacancies
• The time from job registration to offer
• The speed at which opportunities move through the pipeline

The objective is not to track data for its own sake. It is to identify the one performance improvement likely to create the greatest commercial return.

Concentrate on three commercial levers

Recruitment billings are influenced by three core areas:

1. Job flow
2. Conversion
3. Margin

Job flow is not simply the number of vacancies registered. It includes the quality and viability of the work.

Conversion measures how effectively opportunities become interviews, offers and placements.

Margin determines the commercial return generated by each successful outcome.

These levers apply across permanent, temporary, contract and retained recruitment. They also provide a practical structure for development.

A recruiter should be able to identify which area is currently limiting performance and which capability would improve it.

Look for value already inside the desk

Recruiters often concentrate on completing the immediate assignment and overlook the wider value created during the process.

One consultant reviewed during the session had worked on 23 jobs, submitted 42 CVs and arranged 33 interviews. The interview conversion was strong, but each interview involved a different candidate. No candidate had been introduced to a second client.

The recruiter had focused on converting individual jobs without considering how each strong candidate relationship could create further client opportunities.

A wider business example produced 557 permanent placements from 1,777 jobs and 12,468 CV submissions. Within that activity, 4,502 candidates secured an interview but were not placed by the agency.

That creates important questions. Where did those candidates go? Which organisations hired them? What could the business learn from the attrition?

A monthly review of work completed, opportunities lost and relationships left undeveloped can reveal commercial value that is already present.

Build the confidence to improve margin

Development is not limited to sourcing and conversion. Recruiters also need to improve their ability to negotiate and protect margin.

Many consultants could generate a better return from the work they already perform. This might mean increasing an average permanent fee from £5,000 to £6,000, moving a larger fee from £20,000 to £25,000 or improving an hourly contract margin.

Achieving this requires the confidence to present value, negotiate and sometimes say no.

Accepting the same terms a client pays suppliers they are unhappy with does not demonstrate value. Stronger recruiters learn to explain why their service deserves a different commercial arrangement.

Incremental improvements can compound significantly. A 25 per cent improvement in job quality or velocity, conversion and average deal value can collectively double billings.

Turn development into deliberate practice

Every recruiter has several development needs. Trying to address all of them at once is rarely effective.

A better approach is to identify one priority, or no more than three closely defined behaviours, and practise them throughout the month.

These might include:

• Opening candidate calls more effectively
• Closing CV submission emails with a clear next step
• Qualifying vacancies more thoroughly

The behaviour should be specific enough to practise during real work.

For a new recruiter whose candidate calls end in the first few seconds, the immediate development priority is not presenting a vacancy. It is creating enough curiosity for the candidate to stay on the phone.

Purposeful practice turns ordinary activity into development.

Use the expertise already in the team

Recruiters can create a simple support structure around their development.

A champion is someone who already performs the skill well. They provide an example to observe and learn from.

A cheerleader offers encouragement as new behaviours are tested and confidence develops.

An accountability partner asks what was practised, what changed and what was learned.

This support does not remove personal ownership. It makes learning more visible and easier to sustain.

For leaders, it also provides a practical way to use the capability already present within the business.

Measure progress through learning

Placements and billings remain important, but they are not the only signs of progress.

A recruiter may finish a week without an immediate commercial result but with a stronger call opening, a better way to handle an objection or a clearer understanding of which jobs to prioritise.

Those improvements create future value.

A simple learning journal can help recruiters record what they practised, what they observed and what they will take into the following week.

Regular reflection also helps people recognise progress during difficult periods. Questions such as what was learned, what improved and what the person is grateful for can create a more balanced view of performance.

Information only becomes learning through application

Books, podcasts, videos, webinars and training sessions provide information. They do not automatically create learning.

Learning happens when an idea is applied.

Most development should therefore take place through doing the job differently, observing the effect and refining the approach.

Reflection and coaching strengthen that process. Listening back to calls, for example, gives recruiters evidence of what happened and how the other person responded. This is more reliable than depending on memory.

The practical challenge for recruitment leaders is not simply to provide more content. It is to help people turn useful ideas into repeated behaviours.

Create a culture of ownership

Managers influence development, but they cannot complete it on someone else's behalf.

Recruiters need a clear view of the capability they are building, the behaviour they are practising and the commercial measure they expect it to affect.

Leaders can support that ownership by making performance part of everyday conversations. One-to-ones should not stop at activity completed and results achieved. They should explore how the work was done, what the person learned and what they will improve next.

The strongest development cultures do not separate learning from delivery. They use the desk, the data and the working day as the environment in which improvement happens.

Speaker: Jeremy Snell - Co-Founder, Your People Engine