The Mike Ames Recruitment Show

Without a doubt the hardest part of winning new clients is speaking to well protected decision makers (who don't want to speak with you). That's why Kirsty and I will be featuring it as our next topic on the hashtag#MARShow. We're going to start at the beginning by looking at the obstacles in your way – and there are plenty of these. Then we're going to show you three and half practical approaches to start that first conversation. These are proven and professional tactics I, and others, have used successfully for years. They'll draw on the very latest tools around but rely on desires that are as old as human beings. ❌ You don't need any fancy tech. ❌ You don't need to be an AI expert (we don't use it). ❌ You don't need to be one of those annoying people who are as confident AF. ✅ You just need to follow a process and be prepared to put a little time in perfecting your use of it. ADDED BONUS: I'm also going to give you a high-level framework for when you get thru and have that all important "first call". 

In simple terms the more you can automate the more you can get done in your business for less cost. In turn this will make you more efficient and more profitable (you'll probably need less staff too). With the explosion of AI products this has never been easier but there's a problem – too much choice! With so many products and options available you're probably asking yourself: what can I automate and what can I use to do so? Well, Dualta Doherty is the first guest in our new series of the MARShow and can answer both questions. This is what we'll be discussing: - ✅ As a recruiter, what should I be automating? ✅ What tools can I use to do this? ✅ What are the beartraps I can fall into (and how can I avoid them)? ✅ What should I do first. This episode of the show is a must-see if you're looking for some clarity on how you can make tech work harder for you. Is "automate or die" too strong? Probably, but it's along the right lines, I think.

Most recruiters want to stand apart from their competitors. Give their clients a positive reason to choose them. This is how anybody can do that. The good news is, it's free, it's quick to implement and no special skills are needed. All you need do is ask your clients what they really think of your people and your service. "Is that it? " I hear you cry, "you got me all excited just for that?". I promise it's not what you think – it's soooo much more. Our guest is Gemma Sleight, Group Marketing Director for FMC Talent. We're going to be exploring VOTC, a powerful way to strengthen relationships and lift revenue by getting feedback. Honestly folks, 'Voice Of The Customer' is not what you think it is. Together we'll be discussing: - ✅ What is VOTC ✅ What are the significant benefits of a VOTC programme ✅ The steps to run a VOTC Programme and who does it ✅ What you do with the feedback ✅ How you can also use it to help you win more sales pitches So, if you want to stand out, boost service levels and send a strong message out to the market, why not join us.

Account management on its own is definitely NOT client care. It's a part of it, but not the most important part. Great client care needs other ingredients. If you want to max out your client revenues and keep your competition at bay, you need an Apex Client Care system. It's where the BIG MONEY is and why some companies keep growing whilst others falter. Let's look at all four parts of such a client care system. ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT Getting vacancies, placing candidates and an escalation point for problems. DELIVERY How good you are at finding and vetting great candidates and placing them in an efficient and convenient way is a big part of client care. 'Average' is not good enough anymore. QUALITY Finding out what your clients really think about your people and the service they provide and then having a system to process the results. Called Voice of the Customer (VOTC) – so important we have a whole show on it next time. RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Building personal relationships with your key client stakeholders. Moving them from the 'client zone' to the 'friend zone'. Absolutely crucial.

Two things: we all need to find candidates and most of us use AI. But how can we bring the two together: use AI to find better candidates? This is the theme of our next MARShow, and we are delighted to welcome Vanessa Raath 🌍👩🏼‍🏫 onto the show to enlighten us. Those who don't know Vanessa should just Google her – that should satisfy your curiosity. This is what we'll be talking about: - ✅ What's your AI gameplan? Without this you'll only be partially successful. ✅ What tools can you use to find candidates ✅ Where should you look to find candidates ✅ How can you use AI to build your brand and so attract more candidates (and clients too). Let's face it, whatever the market, there are never enough good candidates around. This is a real problem, especially if you're basing your BD strategy on selling in MPCs. So, having new ways to find and engage with more candidates must be a good thing, right? - Vanessa Raath's Tried & Tested AI Tools: https://start.me/p/l6bkk7/vanessa-raath-s-tried-tested-ai-tools

Lots of people are using Chat and other AIs to generate copy and search the web but this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to recruitment. In this edition of the #MARShow we are delighted to have Nitin Sharma as our guest. He will be exploring a wide range of uses that recruiters can put these powerful AIs tools to: - ✅ Coach you thru difficult business situations with clients ✅ Rate candidates against a vacancy from their CV and any of your notes and emails ✅ Provide powerful Boolean searches for any vacancy type. ✅ Bring job adverts to life, by creating engaging, SEO optimised adverts that work ✅ Help you offer a CV assistance service to help your candidates optimise their CVs. These are only a few of the uses Nitin will explain how to do with AIs. He'll also be exploring many more uses with us that may surprise you. The key is in the way you prompt the machine to do what you want, so we'll also be looking at the best way to do that too. Finally, we'll end up by predicting how AI will affect the rec industry in the future – who knows what Deepseek and its descendants will do! So, please join us if you want to make the most of this very powerful tool. Practical, powerful, and easy to use – a bit like us really. 

We didn't always have job boards, emails, and LinkedIn and yet we still placed people. Want to know how we did it and why you should care? Let's start with the "why". There are two reasons: - Firstly, your online sources are becoming increasingly expensive. Wouldn't it be great to have an alternative? Secondly, if you only use LinkedIn and the job boards, you're searching for talent in the same place as your competitors. Which means, you'll come up with the same candidates they do – not a brilliant outcome. So, in this edition of the #MARShow, Kirsty and I will be exploring alternative ways to find great candidates your competition won't get. Yes, we will be leveraging LinkedIn but there are other ways too. One thing though, please don't think I am suggesting you turn the clock back 30 years. Dear God, no! What I am saying though, is what would happen if you combined today's modern tech with older but equally effective sourcing methods If you're curious to find out and have a desire to outpace the competition, turn in for more.

On average, UK contingent recruiters get paid for 20% of their efforts. For retained recruiters it's 98%. Fancy learning how to only do retained work? To be clear, switching to retained could boost your profits by 500% (just do the maths). Our next guest on the MARShow is Greg Elton of search firm Day-2, is 100% retained and has been for years. Some of you might be saying "he probably only does mega-deals which is why they are retained" Well, you'd be wrong. True, some of his placements are very chunky, but Greg maintains any salary over £40k can be on a retained basis, if pitched properly. And that's the rub, many recruiters just don't pitch in the right way to win retained work. In this show we'll explore the following: - ✅ Which roles can be retained ✅ How to pitch to win retained deals ✅ How to overcome client objections ✅ The difference between retained and exclusive and why it matters ✅ What to do if the client is unconvinced ✅ How retained searches differ from contingent searches Moving to retained can massively boost your profits, well of course it will if you get paid for every role you work.

Those UK-based recruiters who decide to start placing people in America, rarely switch back to the UK. there are plenty of reasons for that. 💥 The market is less crowded: 12,500 rec firms in the US to 30,000 in the UK (and the market is 4 times bigger). 💥 Almost all candidates are open to a chat, even if they aren't active. 💥 The fees are larger than the UK and clients haggle about them less, plus counteroffers are rare 💥 US hirers are easier to speak to and they seem to like UK recruiters a lot. You get treated with respect. But surely, it's a nightmare to start trading in America from the UK? Well, no, it isn't and Lindsay Hartland, our guest on this episode of the #MARShow, is going to prove it. He left being a partner at SThree and started again even though he hadn't been "on the tools" for years. ✅ He chose his state (Florida) ✅ He chose his sector ✅ He chose his niche and then he started trading. Now he has a thriving business where he only does retained work or senior MPCs. He's going to come on the show and explain in detail how you can start placing people in the States. His instructions will be so detailed you could probably start work that afternoon! 🤣🤣🤣

The big battle for all of us these days is getting the attention of people we want to read something we've written: emails, posts, adverts and CVs. Many of your emails you know will be useful to the recipient, are deleted unread. You can have written the greatest LinkedIn post in the world but if people don't read it, then it will die a death. Likewise, a fantastic job will only draw in candidates if the advert promoting it gets the attention of the right people. Or how about CVs? Hiring managers receive stacks of them in their inbox. How can you make yours stand out, so they take the time to read it. All of this comes down to the quality of your written work, often called copy. Well, our guest on this episode of the MARShow is Mitch Sullivan, an expert in writing recruitment copy that gets noticed. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchsullivan/) Mitch explains how to write copy that people are compelled to read. He shares plenty of practical tips and also red-flagging things to avoid. You'll come away knowing how to write better copy that will increase the chances of your email, post, advert or CV being read. -- THE SUMMIT -- To find out more about the Summit click here - https://www.recruitmentpioneers.com/summits -- GET IN TOUCH -- ▹Flair Homepage:- http://www.recruitmentpioneers.com ▹LinkedIn:- - - Mike: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/mspames  - - Kirsty: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstyames/

When used properly, email is still a very effective sales and marketing tool. But things are changing, and you need to know how. All the email providers are getting much stricter these days in their drive to reduce the amount of spam in your Inbox. BTW, spam is just unwanted email so if you send marketing emails the email providers may view you as a spammer! Google and Yahoo have recently changed their policies and others are bound to follow. You must keep your spam rate below 0.3%, else you could have your email account blocked. Real bummer. There are several rules that you need to follow to be safe and that's what this edition of the #MARShow is going to focus on. Our guest is email delivery specialist Nick Butcher who'll be explains how to get more of your emails into inboxes. He also clarifies why you get so many opens and click-thrus but very few responses to your emails. Plus, we explore his CTA framework that does NOT require clickable links (which helps in deliverability). So, if you want to avoid being tagged as a spammer and get more of your emails thru, why not join us on the show. Jo Kelly Fundraiser - https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/jo-road-to-wtg DKMS - click here  

Ever had that call from a client saying, "You've done a great job, but we've got an RPO in place now"? Well, you could be that RPO and here's how. We welcome Jamie Stevenson as our guest because he offers full and micro RPOs to his clients. The benefits are enormous. You can often lock the client into a 12 month or longer contract and you're in control of the vacancies during this time. Also, as the RPO supplier you're often given a long lead-time on planned hires, which makes filling vacancies easier. During these difficult times it's crucial to protect those clients who may be vulnerable to an RPO deal. In this episode Jamie will be shares - ✅ The signs to look for that a good client may be considering an RPO deal ✅ How to pitch an RPO offering to a client. ✅ What you need to do to offer an RPO service to your clients (and new prospects) ✅ The legal implications and preparations ✅ What can go wrong and how you can contain these risks. Bottom line, you can be inside the tent looking out or outside the tent in the rain. I know which I prefer and so does Jamie.

New Year is nearly upon us. Want to shake it up a bit, but not sure how? Well, here are 4 zero-cost ways to boost profits & reduce stress. "Why should I change things?" I hear you cry. Well, the market isn't great, and trading conditions are tough. A less than business-friendly budget, EU and UK growth forecasts revised down, and Tariff Trump in the White House. True, there's more private equity and VC money being injected into the economy, which will benefit everybody. But next year doesn't look to be a bumper year for any of us. If you're happy with the results you're getting scroll on, otherwise you may be interested in the last #MARShow of the year. We're going to look at four zero-cost things you can do to attack the market differently: - 1️⃣ One way to get your clients to choose you over the competition 2️⃣ One marketing technique that actually boost sales 3️⃣ One BD technique that outperforms everything 4️⃣ A change in your thinking – more powerful than the other 3 added together. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got. Be different in 2025. ⭐ The MARShow is proud to be sponsored by Giant Finance ⭐ To learn more about Giant Finance options for contract, temp and perm placements contact Rich Berrisford

Whenever I hear "so and so is a million-pound biller" I always look for the catch. A hot client, huge fees or a team behind them. But our guest on this episode of the MARShow actually was a million-pound biller. His name is Mark Harris and he did it:  💥 Working on his own 💥 With average fees of £7k (yes, that's 12 placements a month) 💥 Over 100 clients 💥 Only on a contingent deals He was quite literally a placement machine, and on the show to explain exactly how he did it. Of course, there were sacrifices to be made, and he made them, but the achievement in that one year was outstanding. I want you all to know his secret and he is willing to spill the beans on: - ✅ Winning new clients ✅ Getting the lion's share of his client's vacancies ✅ Converting most of his vacancies into fees He also shares with us the price he had to pay to achieve this amazing feat. Could you see yourself as a million-pound biller? ⭐ The MARShow is proud to be sponsored by Giant Finance ⭐ To learn more about Giant Finance options for contract, temp and perm placements contact Rich Berrisford https://www.linkedin.com/in/richberrisford/ 

As the market gets tighter one thing to focus on is being better, or at least more preferable than your competition. Here are two ways to do this. Around here we say "Everything you need to be better than the competition is contained in the hearts and minds of your clients. All you need do is liberate it." In other words, you need to find out from your client community: - ✅ Where you need to improve ✅ What you do that they like ✅ What the competition are up to ✅ How can you add extra value to them ✅ What is going to get their attention But, what's the best way to do this? Well, there are two ways: you ask them informally over a coffee, breakfast, lunch or cheeky half after work. It works very well, providing you know how to do it. The second way is to use your formal client feedback process to do it, often called Voice of the Customer (VOTC). Well in this #MARShow we discuss both ways because the data it gives you is PRICELESS! It's also one of those rare occasions when we have the whole Ames team there – including that rascal Pete Ames. ⭐ The MARShow is proud to be sponsored by Giant Finance ⭐ To learn more about Giant Finance options for contract, temp and perm placements contact Rich Berrisford at Rich.Berrisford@giantgroup.com