The Elite Recruiter Podcast
The Elite Recruiter Podcast is where top recruiters go to get better. Hosted by executive recruiter Benjamin Mena, this show dives deep into the stories, strategies, and mindsets of the most successful people in the industry — from $1M solo producers to 8+-figure agency founders. Each episode delivers real, tactical insights for high-performance recruiting: How elite recruiters build and scaleTools, tech stacks, and sourcing strategiesDaily habits and workflows that drive million-dollar desksLessons from failure, breakthrough wins, and mindset shiftsWhat the best are doing next — and how they’re changing the game If you’re in agency recruiting, staffing, or executive search — this is yo...
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Danny Cahill On Building A 40 Year Career. (Pt 1)
<p>Danny Cahill is one of the biggest names in the history of the recruiting industry, and in this first part of a two part conversation he sits down with Benjamin Mena to unpack forty years of building a firm, surviving every disruption thrown at him, and developing recruiters who last entire careers.</p> <p>This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin and turn every candidate conversation into something you can use. Atlas customers have reported over 40 percent EBITDA growth and over 80 percent increase in monthly billings after adopting the...
How To Become A Million Dollar Biller
<p>Half the year is gone. That single fact is why Benjamin Mena pulled this talk out of the Elite Recruiter Community and put it in the feed. It is a reset, a line in the sand, and a challenge to decide right now what the rest of the year is going to look like.</p> <p>Brent Orsuga has spent 23 years in recruiting, the last 16 in logistics and supply chain, and 11 of those years running his own firm, Pinnacle Growth Advisors. He says it took him four years to hit a million dollar desk, and that he has now...
Retained Masterclass Pt 2: The Dollars Are In Delivery
<p>Most recruiters think AI is coming for their job. Allie Milbrath thinks it's coming for one kind of recruiter — the one whose value was sending LinkedIn messages faster than the person next to them. If that was ever the whole game, she says you should be worried. If it wasn't, this episode is the way out.</p> <p>This is Part 1 of a two-part retained search masterclass. Allie Milbrath of the Quinn Roberts Company returns to The Elite Recruiter Podcast to walk through the shift she believes our industry needs most: moving from contingent to retained, and from transactional or...
Going Retained Masterclass Part 1 with Allie Milbrath
<p>Most recruiters think AI is coming for their job. Allie Milbrath thinks it's coming for one kind of recruiter — the one whose value was sending LinkedIn messages faster than the person next to them. If that was ever the whole game, she says you should be worried. If it wasn't, this episode is the way out.</p> <p>This is Part 1 of a two-part retained search masterclass. Allie Milbrath of the Quinn Roberts Company returns to The Elite Recruiter Podcast to walk through the shift she believes our industry needs most: moving from contingent to retained, and from transactional or...
Your Best Biller Costs You $5 Million.
<p>Your best biller is the person bringing in the most money. So how could promoting them be the most expensive mistake your firm ever makes?</p> <p><br /></p> <p>That is where Benjamin Mena starts with Duncan Taylor, a healthcare staffing veteran who has spent more than 30 years on the executive side of recruiting and built his career around one unusual specialty: recruiting for recruiting companies. Duncan lays out the producer-manager trap in brutal math. Take your million-dollar biller, move them into leadership, and you do not just risk the million they were producing. You risk the top...
The NFL & Forbes 400 Hire Her. Here's Why
<p>She runs a three-person team. She places 7 to 12 people a month. She charges 18% of annual salary — right in line with the market. And somehow she's the preferred childcare provider for the LA Rams, the LA Chargers, and a meaningful slice of the Forbes 400.</p> <p>There's no SDR. There are no paid ads. She's not on LinkedIn. Every deal is referred or inbound. After 20 years.</p> <p>Rebecca Stewart is the founder of VIP Nannies. What she's built in high-end household staffing is the relationship-driven, niche-locked business most agency owners say they want and almost none actually build. This ep...
The 60% of Recruiters Who'll Quietly Sink Your Agency. Part 2
<p>In Part 1, Tom Kelly walked us through how EVONA scaled from four founders to 80 recruiters in three years, then deliberately cut back to 30 — and per-head revenue doubled.</p> <p><br /></p> <p>In Part 2, he hands over the framework that explains how he manages the leaner team. And it starts with a number most agency owners have never been forced to confront.</p> <p><br /></p> <p>If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, listen to that one first — it sets up everything Tom unpacks here.</p> <p><br /></p> <p>Brought to you by Atlas. The AI-first recruitment platform that...
$40M in Fees. Then Cut 50 Recruiters to Save It. Part 1
<p>Tom Kelly scaled EVONA from four bootstrapped founders in a tiny Bristol office to eighty recruiters in three years. Then he made the call most agency owners never make. He cut the team back to thirty. And in doing it, per-head revenue doubled.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation that pulls apart exactly how that happened.</p> <p> </p> <p>Brought to you by Atlas. The AI-first recruitment platform that captures every candidate conversation automatically. Atlas customers report 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increase in monthly billings. Get your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.</p> <p>...
$800K From Zero in 1 Year. AI Ran the BD
<p>Most recruiters think AI is coming for someone else's desk. Riece Keck isn't so sure. Two years ago he said AI wouldn't replace great recruiters, but it would replace the mediocre ones sooner than anyone wanted to admit. He still stands by it, and he thinks we're a lot closer now than we were then.</p> <p>He's also taking the stage at the AI Recruiting Summit 2026 to go even deeper on this, so if today's episode lands, that's where you see it built live: https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/</p> <p><br /></p> <p>This conversation is the proof...
7 Contractors in 4 Weeks From Clients You Already Have
<p>Most recruiters treat their client list like a closed account. You made the perm placement, the fee hit, and now you wait six months until they need you again. Dawson Henis looked at that same client list and saw six figures of recurring revenue nobody was collecting, so he picked up the phone.</p> <p> In this episode, Dawson, the founder of the Atlanta-based Henis Group, walks Benjamin Mena through what happened in the four weeks after he bolted a staffing division onto the perm search firm he started at 24. Seven contractors. Two existing clients. Roughly ten thousand dollars a...
