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.

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 platform. Get started and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com

Danny owns Hobson Associates, the firm where he started six days out of college, became rookie of the year, billed as top producer for four straight years, and then bought the company at twenty seven. He has never had a resume and never been out of a job, which he calls the great hypocrisy of a man who got wealthy helping other people change theirs.

The conversation opens on something Danny believes most recruiters are getting wrong in 2026. Leaning on AI to handle your messaging, your outreach, and your tough sales conversations is quietly making you passive and worse at the actual work of selling. As Danny puts it, all we have really done is find a way to make more noise faster.

From there he and Benjamin walk through how he has navigated four recessions and a pandemic. During the Great Recession he watched his fintech heavy niche collapse, raised his fees while everyone else cut theirs, and moved his firm into biotech. When Covid shut Connecticut down in a single afternoon, he bought thirty laptops, called in two million dollars of receivables, and had his team working remotely by the end of the day.

But the heart of this episode is people. Danny explains why he believes the best recruiters are frustrated social workers, why money is a great early motivator that never sustains anyone, and why his people want his approval more than they want to buy a house. He breaks down how he manages a recruiter differently across their career, and why he spends more time with his veterans than his rookies, because senior people need recognition their entire lives.

He closes part one with the fundamentals even twenty year veterans still butcher, the sales approaches working right now, and a hard truth about your pipeline. When you think you have four job orders, you really have one.

What You'll Learn:

Why leaning on AI for your outreach and sales conversations is making recruiters passive and worse at selling

How Danny survived four recessions and a pandemic, and the counterintuitive move he made during the Great Recession

What he did in a single afternoon when Covid shut everything down

Why the best recruiters are frustrated social workers, and what actually motivates top performers over the long term

How to manage rookies and veterans differently, and why your senior people need more of your time

The sales fundamentals even twenty year veterans still get wrong

Why you probably have far fewer real job orders than you think

Make sure to listen to Part 2, where Danny goes deep on AI, the writing skills that set elite recruiters apart, and how he builds million dollar billers behind the scenes.

Connect with Danny Cahill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-cahill-a6797a/

Listen to Part 2:

Listen on Apple Podcasts:

Watch on YouTube:

Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

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Sponsored by Atlas: recruitwithatlas.com

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.

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 done it seven years running, to the point where it has become his floor rather than his ceiling. He is candid that there is no secret sauce and no magic pill, only a set of behaviors that the biggest billers share. This conversation lays out ten of them.

This episode is brought to you by Atlas. The resume never tells the full story. Candidates share what really matters in conversations, on calls, in interviews, and over email, their motivations, salary expectations, and plans to relocate, and most of that detail ends up buried in notes and forgotten. Atlas changes that. It is the AI first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin, capturing every conversation automatically and turning it into something you can use. With MagicSearch you can ask who mentioned wanting a four day week or who is open to relocating next year, and it pulls answers from across your entire database instantly. Atlas customers have reported over 40 percent EBITDA growth and over 80 percent increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. Get started and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.

He starts with belief, because nothing else matters if you are quietly convinced a million is out of reach. From there he moves into identity, arguing that every serious biller has claimed a niche and built a brand around it, and that there is a real difference between a recruiter who sends fifteen resumes and a headhunter who sends three. Money follows attention, and the recruiters who get known for one thing become a magnet for the companies and candidates who want the best.

The rest of the talk is the engine room. Brent covers doing business development on the right clients and becoming a partner rather than a vendor, chasing the big at bats that produce forty and fifty thousand dollar fees, and obsessing over your average fee until the math of a million stops feeling impossible. He explains why he works in quarters rather than months, why he counts the Mondays he has left, and why a referral system beats cold starting every search from zero. He is blunt about removing negativity, increasing outbound when most people let it slide, and holding firm on fees instead of lowering the bar for everyone.

He closes on what he calls the real talk, the lifestyle behind the number. The people he knows who do this consistently are not sloppy, are not sleeping in, and are not built on social media. He frames the journey through three phases, the underdog with a chip on the shoulder, the villain who mutes the noise and works with dark focus, and the favorite, which he says is the hardest place of all to keep winning.

If you have looked up and wondered where the time went, this is the wake up call. Draw the line and run for it.

A note on the figures in this episode. Brent's billing numbers are his own account of his track record and are shared as he told them.

Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

Register for the AI Recruiting Summit 2026: https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/

Subscribe to the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Get started with Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com

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.

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 order-taker to trusted advisor. She has built her career entirely in retained search, and not by being the most aggressive salesperson in the room. She won it by delivering so well that clients simply stopped shopping. That distinction is the spine of this conversation.

The part that will stay with you is what Allie calls "emotional exits." Contingent recruiting, she argues, quietly trains you to bail. When a search gets hard, you have fifteen others on your desk to retreat to. When a client is difficult, you move on. When the market turns, you move on again. Over time it compounds, and you lose the ability to operate from any real depth. Retained takes the exit away. It forces you to stay in the discomfort long enough to actually solve the problem — and that, more than any script or pricing model, is the real mindset shift she thinks recruiters are afraid of. They are not afraid of the work. They are afraid of commitment.

Benjamin and Allie also get honest about who retained is not for, why "the fear holding you back" and "a market that genuinely can't bear retained" are two different things, and how AI is quietly closing the escape hatch on transactional recruiting. Then they move into the mechanics — fee structures, guarantees, fall-off and cancellation terms, off-limits clauses, and the protective language Allie now writes into every agreement after learning the hard way. Part 1 ends mid-mechanics. Part 2 drops tomorrow and finishes the masterclass: pipelining projects, the real math on how many searches one recruiter can carry, and why she believes great delivery is your best business development.

If you take one thing from this episode, let it be the question Benjamin opens with. As AI gets better, you have to figure out why clients will still pay you. What part of your process actually adds value? You don't have to go fully retained to answer that. But you do have to answer it.

What You'll Learn: Why panicking about AI is the wrong response, and the harder question to ask yourself instead What "emotional exits" are, and how contingent work quietly trains you to bail Why clients return again and again to an advisor, not an attack dog How to tell the difference between fear that's holding you back and a market that can't support retained Who retained search is genuinely not the right fit for The contract terms that actually protect you: guarantees, fall-off, cancellation, and off-limits language

This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. Atlas captures every candidate conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use, so the details that usually get buried in notes are searchable in seconds. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. Get started and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.

Connect with Allie Milbrath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alliemilbrath/

Part 2 drops tomorrow — make sure you're following so you don't miss it.

Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

Register free for the AI Recruiting Summit 2026: https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/

Get the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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.

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 order-taker to trusted advisor. She has built her career entirely in retained search, and not by being the most aggressive salesperson in the room. She won it by delivering so well that clients simply stopped shopping. That distinction is the spine of this conversation.

The part that will stay with you is what Allie calls "emotional exits." Contingent recruiting, she argues, quietly trains you to bail. When a search gets hard, you have fifteen others on your desk to retreat to. When a client is difficult, you move on. When the market turns, you move on again. Over time it compounds, and you lose the ability to operate from any real depth. Retained takes the exit away. It forces you to stay in the discomfort long enough to actually solve the problem — and that, more than any script or pricing model, is the real mindset shift she thinks recruiters are afraid of. They are not afraid of the work. They are afraid of commitment.

Benjamin and Allie also get honest about who retained is not for, why "the fear holding you back" and "a market that genuinely can't bear retained" are two different things, and how AI is quietly closing the escape hatch on transactional recruiting. Then they move into the mechanics — fee structures, guarantees, fall-off and cancellation terms, off-limits clauses, and the protective language Allie now writes into every agreement after learning the hard way. Part 1 ends mid-mechanics. Part 2 drops tomorrow and finishes the masterclass: pipelining projects, the real math on how many searches one recruiter can carry, and why she believes great delivery is your best business development.

If you take one thing from this episode, let it be the question Benjamin opens with. As AI gets better, you have to figure out why clients will still pay you. What part of your process actually adds value? You don't have to go fully retained to answer that. But you do have to answer it.

What You'll Learn: Why panicking about AI is the wrong response, and the harder question to ask yourself instead What "emotional exits" are, and how contingent work quietly trains you to bail Why clients return again and again to an advisor, not an attack dog How to tell the difference between fear that's holding you back and a market that can't support retained Who retained search is genuinely not the right fit for The contract terms that actually protect you: guarantees, fall-off, cancellation, and off-limits language

This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. Atlas captures every candidate conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use, so the details that usually get buried in notes are searchable in seconds. Atlas customers have reported over 40% EBITDA growth and over 80% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. Get started and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.

Connect with Allie Milbrath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alliemilbrath/

Part 2 drops tomorrow — make sure you're following so you don't miss it.

Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

Register free for the AI Recruiting Summit 2026: https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/

Get the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

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.

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation that pulls apart exactly how that happened.

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.

Tom came up on the inside track at one of the biggest STEM recruiters on the FTSE. He spotted space as a high-growth vertical before almost anyone, pitched it internally, got shut down, and walked. He linked up with three other recruiters in the same office — Jack, Rich, and Ryan. They sketched the company out on a whiteboard at Tom's place: no KPIs, no fixed working hours, no fixed location, brand-first, give back to STEM. Eight years and over $40 million in fees later, they've stuck to every line of it.

Their first placement was a chef in a Bristol restaurant for £2,000. Hire number two was a head of marketing — a decision every advisor said was crazy. By Tom's read, recruitment and marketing are the same thing. Brand pull beats spam. That bet became the operating philosophy of the entire company.

Then COVID hit and the space industry — recession-proof, Tom argues, because satellites don't get sick — tripled their revenue and headcount. They paid LinkedIn a fortune ahead of a planned scale to three hundred people. They flew the whole company and their partners to Monaco after a million-dollar month. Tom calls that trip the moment the wheels were about to come off.

By 2021 the cracks were showing. Five account managers, thirty fillers, two RPO teams, a full operations and finance bench. Tom describes the peak as a hot mess. So the four founders sat down and made the hardest call of their careers. Contract team first — running $20K a week with no real strategy. Then perm cuts. Then operations. Then the advisors. Tom and the other three didn't pay themselves for six months. He moved his family to the US in the middle of it.

The episode ends on the moment the four founders agreed one of them had to lead, and that person would be Tom. Without ego. The single reason, Tom says, the business is still standing.

Part 2 drops Wednesday — the 25-interview rule that defines elite recruiters at EVONA, and the segmentation that explains why most agency owners are quietly losing 60% of their team.

What You'll Learn:

- Why scaling to 80 recruiters nearly broke the business, and the moment the four founders knew they had to cut to 30

- The pre-COVID hire every advisor told Tom was crazy, and why it became the engine of the company

- How EVONA tripled in COVID while most agencies were frozen

- The £300,000 company trip Tom now calls a warning sign

- What it actually costs to let 50 people go — emotionally, financially, culturally

- Why the four founders agreed one person had to take the wheel, and how they made the call without breaking the partnership

Connect with Tom Kelly:

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/evonatom/

EVONA — https://evona.com

🎙️ Resources:

Atlas — recruitwithatlas.com

Elite Recruiter Community — https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

AI Recruiting Summit 2026 — https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/

Newsletter — https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe