The Resilient Recruiter

Imagine building a recruitment firm where every placement creates an actual positive impact. That’s exactly what Leo Hewett did with Core3 — and this is how he made it happen.

After over a decade of experience working for large corporates up to Director level, Leo decided to take the plunge and launch his own ethical recruitment business, Core3 -specialising in Finance & Accounting talent.

Alongside their B Corp certification, Core3 are proud to have won multiple awards since launching in 2022, including REC's 'Start up of the year' (2023), and Business Leader's 'Business of the Year' (2024).

Episode Outline and Highlights

• [03:23] The story on how Leo’s mom inspired him to give back to the community through recruitment.
• [08:43] What inspired Leo to launch Core3?
• [15:30] A purpose-driven recruitment firm: how Leo set up their organization differently.
• [28:33] How making a difference can easily attract talents.
• [30:39] Highlights and challenges in Core3’s growth journey.
• [34:59] Strategies on reactivating past clients.
• [37:15] ROI from building a personal brand on LinkedIn.
• [40:41] The practicality of following through with a voice note after a LinkedIn connection or engagement.
• [43:10] Developing an inner-circle community to add value.
• [51:50] Bringing in experienced hires in your team.
• [57:15] Overcoming two setbacks when scaling: Culture & Cashflow.
• [1:05:31] Most meaningful metrics Leo and his team focus on.

Building a Purpose-Driven Recruitment Firm

Leo reached director level at Robert Half and was detached from billing for years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led his team on hands-on recruitment and rediscovered that he still enjoys doing it. With an unexpected inheritance, he built a financial buffer which helped him establish Core3. He established his business in a way that is very much different from most recruiting firms: by being B-Corp Certified!

B-Corp certification acts as a "fair trade" equivalent for businesses, signaling that Core3 is committed to high ethical standards and strong ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) credentials. Core3’s decision to pursue B-Corp certification was driven by a desire to embed impact into the business model and stay accountable to ethical standards. The certification also enhanced its attractiveness to stakeholders who value purpose-driven businesses.

“The values are more than words written on a wall and people love the culture and work I'm working here. But it's, it's different because you can feel it every single day. Because we've given 3% of revenue to these three good causes that we support. Every consultant feels it with every placement. The client, after every placement, gets a menu of which charity they would like to choose where that 3% of this placement will go,” explained Leo.

Another way that Core3 engages with its community is by building inner-circle groups.

Adding Value Through Inner-Circle Groups

Leo and his team have strategically built value-driven communities to foster meaningful conversations among finance professionals. The approach began with the Conscious Finance podcast, which explored finance’s role in meaningful change. As the podcast gained traction, clients expressed interest in deeper discussions, leading to the creation of roundtable events. These roundtables bring like-minded professionals together to discuss shared challenges in an open, collaborative environment. There are challenges in hosting events for these inner circles, such as resource, time, and event costs. However, Leo shared the benefits in adding value to your niche community by developing these inner circles:

• Stronger Client Relationships – Moves Core3 beyond transactional interactions, making them a trusted partner rather than just another recruiter.
• Enhanced Brand Authority – Hosting and facilitating discussions positions Core3 as thought leaders within the industry.
• Exclusive Networking Opportunities – Clients benefit from valuable peer discussions and insights, making them more likely to stay engaged with Core3.
• Self-Sustaining Communities – With ongoing engagement via messaging platforms, these groups create lasting professional connections beyond Core3’s direct involvement.
• Business Growth & Differentiation – Unlike traditional recruiters focused solely on job placements, Core3 creates a deeper, more meaningful engagement model that attracts both talent and businesses.

By fostering these high-value, non-sales-driven communities, Core3 successfully differentiates itself from competitors and creates lasting relationships with finance professionals.

The Challenges of Scaling Your Business

Another topic that I can relate to is how Leo deal...

How do you prep your business to be growth-ready? What are the key factors you must consider when adapting your business model and processes and hiring the right people when building your business? What would be the biggest challenge when scaling your recruitment business?

We had Amanda Brandenburg as a guest three years ago to share her winning formula for growing her firm to $2M in three years. This time, you'll hear a realistic and relatable story of how Amanda has grown her practice from a small team of three to a growing team of six.

Amanda Brandenburg is the Founding Principal at OpusLex Partners, a legal recruiting boutique servicing law firms and corporate legal departments throughout the country. For over a decade, she was a top producer at two of the country’s largest legal staffing firms, where she provided interim solutions and direct-hire placements for law firms and corporations within the continental U.S.

Episode Outline and Highlights

• [02:27] What is new for Amanda and her team in the last three years?
• [08:10] How OpusLex enhanced its business model to align with EOS.
• [16:30] What processes have been working well with Amanda’s team?
• [21:47] The practical applications of E-Myth.
• [27:54] Discussion on things that Amanda and her team are most proud of.
• [34:40] Learning to grow the team and hire the right people.
• [42:22] Effective collaboration tools and tech stack.
• [50:47] Why should working from home be balanced with working together physically?
• [53:07] Amanda shares what could be the biggest challenge when upscaling your team.

Systems and Process for Upscaling Your Recruitment Firm

Since we last had Amanda as a guest, she has doubled her team to six. She has adapted his business model to align with the EOS - Entrepreneurial Operating System for Businesses. She shared some of the highlights and changes in how she runs things differently. To adapt her business to EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), Amanda has been implementing several key changes:

• Formalized Planning and Goal Setting: She’s following EOS's structured annual planning, setting a clear mission, vision, and values, and assigning "rocks" (specific goals) to both the company and individual team members.
• Shift from Traditional to Team-Based Roles: Amanda moved from a traditional "full desk" model (where each person handled all aspects of recruitment) to segmented roles. This structure now includes designated roles for business development, recruiting, sourcing, and administrative support, allowing each team member to specialize and master their area.
• Client Engagement and Differentiated Service: They established a high-touch approach to client relationships by requiring direct conversations with clients before working on any job order, enhancing service depth and client understanding.
• Enhanced Communication and Automation: Amanda addressed the complexity of coordinating multiple specialized roles by setting up communication workflows using tools like Monday.com and integrating them with Slack for task updates and real-time notifications, which minimized the risk of inefficiencies.
• Systematized Processes for Consistency: Amanda implemented process templates in Crelate for both candidate and job intake to ensure consistency and efficiency. This provides essential information gathered upfront, reducing repetitive follow-ups and training time for new hires.

These adjustments reflect Amanda’s commitment to EOS principles, enhancing her team's efficiency, communication, and service consistency as they scale.

Critical Elements When Hiring to Upscale Your Team

When growing your recruitment business, hiring the right person to fill critical roles can be challenging. Do you go for a full 360-degree or 180-degree model? I wanted to pick Amanda’s brain about her learnings as she started to hire and grow her team.

Amanda prioritizes understanding how a potential team member aligns with their values. “I think going back to those core values in terms of some of our core values, intellectual curiosity, earnestness, relationships first. And so really trying to stay quality over quantity, really trying to imbue those values throughout our hiring process.”

Rather than adhering to a rigid “full desk” model, she has implemented a flexible, team-based structure that allows employees to specialize and focus on specific roles, attracting diverse skill sets and reducing turnover by placing people where they can excel. Her model also enables creating specialized, replicable teams that can focus on distinct practice areas or client needs, such as intellectual property law or retained searches, allowing team members to build practices around their interests and expertise. Additionally, Amanda’s focus on tran...

Imagine this: being so meticulous in your candidate screening process invites an unexpected face-to-face investigation from Federal Agents. That is what our special guest, Lee Ann Howard, had to go through when starting as a recruiter in her early 20s. The secret to her 'suspicious' expertise? Simply asking the right questions and listening carefully to candidates.

Lee Ann is the visionary Founder of Howard & O'Brien Executive Search. With a keen eye for identifying top talent in senior management roles and a specialization in HR, finance, and sales and marketing functions, Lee Ann stands as a beacon of excellence in the realm of executive search.

You will surely enjoy Lee Ann’s insights on how to build a continuous pipeline of senior management roles for your clients and what it takes to have long-lasting strategic client relationships.

Episode Outline and Highlights

• 01:18 How Lee Ann left broadcasting to get into recruitment.
• 05:05 What made Lee Ann stand out in her early years; Her astonishing story of why she had to be investigated by the government because of her recruitment activities.
• 12:05 Emphasizing learning and development.
• 20:04 From corporate to executive search - Lee Ann shares her transition.
• 27:15 Discussion on the board recruiting business model of Howard & O’Brien.
• 45:48 Lee Ann explains their Conversation with the Board program.
• 48:38 Discussion on their Reverse Placement program.
• 51:17 How to cultivate long-term strategic client relationships.
• 57:30 Making it a family business - how Lee Ann’s children eventually joined her in the business.

Unexpected Government Investigation for Doing a Thorough Job

Lee Ann shared an astonishing story about being investigated by federal agents because of their extensive knowledge of security-cleared roles and positions.

“I ended up getting investigated by the government because they thought I was a spy because I knew too much ... I literally got visited. I was visited by the government. It was unbelievable because I was sitting in my office and the receptionist came back and they said, there's somebody here from the government to see you. And I'm like, I've paid my taxes because that's the only thing I thought I could possibly do wrong. And I got taken into a conference room and they said, we believe you know too much about what's happening. And I'm like, no, I'm not a spy. I don't work for Russia.”

This made her realize that she was probably doing something right if she was getting information that other people were not getting in their industry. Indeed she was! Asking the right questions, and being meticulous in her job, contributed highly in her success as a recruiter and later on as a recruitment business owner. Some of the takeaways on Lee Ann’s success factors are as follows:

• Instinctive Recruiting Ability
• Curiosity and Continuous Learning
• Strong Relationship Building
• Commitment to Hard Work
• Personalized Approach
• Client and Candidate Engagement
• Being Not Focused on Sales, But on Relationships

Which of the above success factors resonate most with you as a recruiter or business owner?

Board Recruiting, Conversation with the Board, and Reverse Placement Programs

Lee Ann also discussed key strategies that they implement in Howard & O’Brien with the focus of providing a continuous stream of C-level talents to their clients. The three main programs she discussed are Board Recruiting, Conversation with the Board, and Reverse Placement. Below are the key concepts of the programs:

Board Recruiting

Board recruiting is the process of identifying and placing individuals in board positions for organizations. Unlike traditional executive search, it involves adding responsibilities rather than replacing someone. The process includes:

• Engaging with CEOs, board chairs, or governance committees to define the board’s needs.
• Creating a strategic long-term plan for board composition.
• Ensuring cultural fit and alignment with the company’s strategic direction.

Conversation with the Board

This is a program aimed at increasing diversity and exposing more candidates—particularly women—to board opportunities. It was developed as a way to help executives, who may not see themselves as board material, realize their potential for board service. It involves:

• Facilitating networking opportunities between potential board members and current board leaders.
• Encouraging companies to consider non-traditional candidates who bring valuable perspectives.

Reverse Placement Programs

This is a specialized career development service for executives looking to join boards. It is either funded by companies or ...

In the fast-paced world of recruitment, you’re under constant pressure to deliver results for your clients and achieve sales targets. So what’s the secret to maintaining peak performance without burning out?

In this episode of The Resilient Recruiter, our special guest, Scott Eastin, provides a fresh perspective on achieving sustainable, long-lasting success in recruitment. Drawing from his own successful career, having navigating many ups and downs, Scott emphasizes the pivotal relationship between prioritizing health and recruitment success.

Scott is the Director of Eastin IT Security. Over the last 13 years established himself as a leading Microsoft Security consultant. He’s worked with major organizations such as Coca-Cola, American Express as well as state and local governments. For the last 5 years, he’s built an IT consulting and staffing firm winning high-value, long-term projects that generate recurring revenue.

In this episode, Scott unpacks his remarkable transition from being a software developer to becoming a successful recruiter. He divulges his four cornerstone strategies for business development. Most importantly, emphasizes why prioritizing physical health is a non-negotiable component in maintaining his overall productivity.

Episode Outline and Highlights

• [02:25] Scott’s journey from being a software developer to a successful recruiter.
• [10:14] Insights on challenges when transitioning to a career in recruiting.
• [14:47] Sharing a story of how embracing an idea that was not done became a game-changer.
• [24:00] Scott’s Top 4 Business Development strategies
• [30:35] Hosting networking events - an effective way to engage with your community.
• [36:15] Comparison of consulting practice versus permanent direct hire models in the tech space.
• [44:36] Managing cash flow challenges in a consulting and IT staffing business.
• [54:40] Mindfulness, health and well-being.

The Advantages of a Consulting Business in the IT Space

Is it easier to manage an IT consulting business model versus a permanent direct hire practice? For Scott, having a consulting business model works well for him for the following reasons:

• Trusted Independent Contractors - He has already established a network of reliable independent contractors, which makes it easy to take in projects from his clients.
• Long-term Contracts - Because of quality service delivery, he can secure long-term contracts that assure him six-digit revenues at the beginning of the year.

If you are running an executive search firm or permanent hire practice, you might want to consider exploring the option of a consulting or contract service as an additional revenue stream. Scott believes that this is a great time for such a business model:

“Quite frankly, if you look at the statistics that are coming out now, more and more people are interested in contracting and independent consulting work. I know I was reading an article from the staffing industry where I think they said literally 38% of the U.S. workforce has done some type of gig work.”

Of course, there are also challenges in this type of business model, such as cash flow management - sometimes you would have to pay your contractors before the client even pays you. Scott shared how he solves this. He also elaborated on his approach to business development.

The 4 Cornerstones of Scott’s Business Development Strategy

Scott describes himself as a “reluctant salesman.” Before becoming a recruitment business owner, he had this preconceived notion about salespeople: “Selling is somewhat, maybe a dirty word for some people in the technical industry.”

Part of his journey is getting over that mindset. Scott’s primary principle regarding selling and business development is “Great service, great people, and great value.” He shared four key pointers about this topic and elaborated on how this helps him to get continued repeat businesses:

1. Referrals - Scott’s mantra of great service, great people, and great value is the foundation of providing excellent services consistently. This leads to referrals and repeat businesses across his market and industry.
2. LinkedIn Visibility - Scott consistently posts content and videos on LinkedIn.
3. BDR - Scott hired an experienced Business Development Representative part-time on a contract basis to make cold calls and set up sales appointments for him.
4. Hosting meet-up events - this is something that Scott picked up from one of our guests in a previous episode, Steven Li, and he is thankful that he applied this approach.

Mindfulness, Health, and Well-Being

Being a one-man shop is not easy and can be stressful. Scott shared how he manages stress by prioritizing his health and consistently implementing hea...