Recruitment has spent the last decade quietly talking itself out of selling. The story goes that recruitment is now a marketing job, that automation and AI can carry the load, that outreach is something you schedule rather than something you do. The result? A generation of consultants who have watched their sales capability erode without noticing it happen, hiding in the noise and calling it strategy. Meanwhile, the market has gotten harder. Your prospects field over 240 unsolicited emails a day. Half the salespeople on the planet are behind target because, frankly, they can't sell, and they've made peace with being forgettable. If you've ever sent the third email, heard nothing back, and quietly given up, this episode is aimed squarely at you. In it, Jeremy makes the case for putting human-to-human selling back at the center of how you win business, and hands you three components that decide whether your outreach lands or vanishes into the slop. Get them right, in the right order, and you stop blending in. You start living in your prospect's head. You become the person they think of first when a problem surfaces. No new skill set required. No clever automation. Just a willingness to do the work most of your competitors have stopped doing, and the difference that makes to relationships that turn into revenue. Press play if you're ready to be remembered by high-value clients. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your People Engine - The People Engine For The Recruitment Industry. Delivering context-rich learning and development initiatives for all levels of people in recruitment. Live sessions delivered every week and content that focuses on implementation through guided activities. From new hires through to the top performers there’s an opportunity for everyone to grow and develop. The AI assistant curates relevant content on your behalf based on your questions. That’s immediate access to what you want, when you want to develop performance.

The Great Abdication in recruitment right now is driven by weak management. Right now, "Treating People Like Adults" Is killing your performance culture. In this episode, Jeremy Snell confronts one of the most shared, most repeated complaints in modern work: the dislike of being micromanaged. Scroll any feed and the articles are everywhere. Sit in enough interviews and you will hear it again and again, consultants explaining that they are looking for a new role because the last one micromanaged them. Jeremy gets it. For a genuinely strong performer, micromanagement is suffocating. But he draws a sharp line that most of this conversation misses. When many people say they do not like being micromanaged, what they actually mean is they do not like being managed at all. Those are very different things, and conflating them has consequences across recruitment. That confusion has rippled into leadership. Managers, terrified of the micromanager label, hold back from the very things that would lift performance. Hesitation breeds tolerance. The moment we tolerate substandard behaviour, activity, or results, we endorse it. Jeremy calls this the great abdication: the quiet letting go of ownership by leaders who can see exactly what their recruitment agency needs, yet watch it slip away. In this episode, Jeremy explores: Why "we treat everyone like adults" often signals an absence of coaching culture, not the presence of maturity The critical difference between goals, which we coach to, and standards, which we hold people accountable to Why "I know what I'm doing" is frequently a defence mechanism rather than evidence of competence What happens to a business when leaders stop holding the line, and the cost of consultants who stay inconsistent The simple antidote that turns accountability into something owned by the team, not imposed on it Listen if you lead a team where: results are inconsistent, standards slip quietly, and "next week will be better" has become the running excuse. Press play to hear the full method. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your People Engine - The People Engine For The Recruitment Industry. Delivering context-rich learning and development initiatives for all levels of people in recruitment. Live sessions delivered every week and content that focuses on implementation through guided activities. From new hires through to the top performers there’s an opportunity for everyone to grow and develop. The AI assistant curates relevant content on your behalf based on your questions. That’s immediate access to what you want, when you want to develop performance.

Talent teams see volume and call it abundance. Hiring managers feel powerless. Candidates are bruised into transactional behaviour. The result is a mirage - a hiring market that looks functional on the surface and breaks down at the point of placement. In this episode, Jeremy unpacks why direct hiring is failing more often than internal teams admit, and what recruiters need to do about it. Volume has decoupled from quality. AI-enhanced CVs, AI-screened applications, and AI-written job specs are creating a feedback loop that hides real talent and surfaces look-alikes. What you'll take away: The difference between an applicant and a candidate, and how to use it in client conversations Why hiring managers feel toothless even when they are senior The data that proves direct hiring is breaking down A reframe of agency value: candidate control and deal creation are now premium skills, not commodity admin The numbers that matter: 57% of applicants abandon a process that feels like it's going nowhere 44% of candidates hold multiple offers in play 34% of Gen Z accept a job and don't turn up on day one 35% of accepted offers are reneged on (Gartner) 60% know the job is a bad fit at the point of acceptance The finish line is the start date, not the signed contract. Human recruitment has now gone up to a premium - and this episode shows you how to prove it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your People Engine - The People Engine For The Recruitment Industry. Delivering context-rich learning and development initiatives for all levels of people in recruitment. Live sessions delivered every week and content that focuses on implementation through guided activities. From new hires through to the top performers there’s an opportunity for everyone to grow and develop. The AI assistant curates relevant content on your behalf based on your questions. That’s immediate access to what you want, when you want to develop performance.

Why most "headhunting" today isn't headhunting at all  and what to do instead. Jeremy Snell unpacks the difference between true headhunting and the icky, mass-produced LinkedIn outreach that's come to wear the same name. Drawing on his executive search experience from the mid-90s (when headhunting was a telephone contact sport and being on the receiving end actually felt flattering), he makes the case that the craft hasn't died. It's just been buried under bad messaging, low response rates, and an over-reliance on people who've already decided to become candidates. If you're a recruiter relying on organic replies to in-mail blasts and reporting "low candidate interest" back to clients, this one's for you. What you'll hear Why the word "headhunter" has been diluted, and how that hurts both recruiters and the people they're trying to engage The difference between sourcing candidates and engaging individuals who haven't yet decided to become candidates The "icky message" problem: why generic outreach trains the market to ignore you Why response rates aren't a reflection of the market. They're a reflection of your messaging The job-hugging epidemic and why perceived risk has roughly doubled in the last 12 months Why the phone still beats asynchronous channels for genuine engagement, and why most recruiters avoid it A real example of a phone-led approach turning a non-candidate into a candidate mid-call ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your People Engine - The People Engine For The Recruitment Industry. Delivering context-rich learning and development initiatives for all levels of people in recruitment. Live sessions delivered every week and content that focuses on implementation through guided activities. From new hires through to the top performers there’s an opportunity for everyone to grow and develop. The AI assistant curates relevant content on your behalf based on your questions. That’s immediate access to what you want, when you want to develop performance.

Counter-Offers Are Rising. Here's Why You're Losing Candidates at Two Minutes to Midnight. Counter-offer loss is climbing again - and it's not a money problem. It's an emotional one, dressed up as logic. In this episode, I unpack why recruiters are bleeding placements at offer stage, and why the fix sits at the start of the process, not the end. We cover the three forces driving the spike: a volatile market making candidates anxious, employers fighting harder to retain productive people, and compromised processes creating buyer remorse before day one. You'll learn: Why counter-offers are an endorsement, not a failure — and what that changes The five-stage candidate confidence journey from first call to first day Three power tools to run before any CV leaves your desk: the Values Deep Dive, the Motivation Grid, and the Ecology Check The Tension Ladder — a weekly health check that tells you who will actually resign The two-number scoring system that kills false-positive pipelines Why "when they counter-offer you" beats "if" every time If you've ever heard "I just need to think about it" and felt the deal slipping, this one's for you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your People Engine - The People Engine For The Recruitment Industry. Delivering context-rich learning and development initiatives for all levels of people in recruitment. Live sessions delivered every week and content that focuses on implementation through guided activities. From new hires through to the top performers there’s an opportunity for everyone to grow and develop. The AI assistant curates relevant content on your behalf based on your questions. That’s immediate access to what you want, when you want to develop performance.