"I made a pair of shoes with Jamie Oliver."

"I built a recruitment agency without making a single cold call."

"I cuddled pandas in China."

Those are Michelle Flynn's three statements this week. One of them's a lie. Our job was to figure out which.

I headed down to Michelle's for the weekend with Kate O'Neill and Saeed Bor: breath-work on the beach in the morning, podcast in the afternoon.

So there's a full debrief on the breathwork, including a move called "dragon peering out of the cave" and a Labrador that gatecrashed the whole session. Saeed's also joined the Shoreham-by-Sea Facebook group to keep up with his new beach mates.

Michelle tells us she puts Giig It A Rest on when she doesn't want to learn anything, and that KOSI is her favourite podcast.

Cheers, Michelle.

We also have a proper catch-up on how everyone's finding the recruitment industry right now (spoiler: mixed). Perm placements have been dropping since October 2022, yet somehow we're all having our best years.

We get into why that's not luck, just a lot of graft and a fair few lows along the way.

Then it's Kate's turn to try and fool us:

"I was in a theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as a child."

"I have slept with a Grand Slam Welsh rugby player."

"I will not wash my hands unless I have access to hand cream."

We wrap up with the "Are you okay, hun?" lunchbox question, which gets interrupted by a dragonfly flying into the fan.

It survived. Just.

Enjoy x

We are taking a deep dive into the psychology of recruitment marketing this week with Sam Rasdall, founder of Potent Marketing!Sam has one of the most interesting backgrounds of anyone we've had on the pod. Armed with a master's degree in psychology (where he studied the effects of psychedelics), he jumped into recruitment at S3, quickly pitched management to let him run his own training academy, and later built a sales and marketing team that took an agency to seven figures in just one year.In this episode, Sam rips apart the traditional idea of a recruitment "USP." He explains why relying on generic values like "trust" and "transparency" is actually damaging your brand, and how to use your genuine personality as your ultimate differentiator.We also get into the weeds of practical marketing for small agencies. Sam explains why you shouldn't just post on LinkedIn for the sake of it, and shares his exact framework for turning one piece of content into a high-converting business development campaign.I felt like I spent the whole hour picking his brain for marketing advice.. If you're running a small business there's plenty of actionable tips in here! Enjoy x

"Welcome to Giig, where the only limitation is your imagination..." 🤨

This week on the podcast, we are diving deep into how AI is fundamentally changing the way recruiters work. Luke dropped an "AI hand grenade" right before going on holiday by launching our brand new Claude MCP integration, and sending Andy's diary link to 7,000 recruiters.

We break down exactly how you can connect Claude directly to your CRM to automate hours of admin from instantly updating candidate fields using call transcripts, to using our new AI "Coach" persona to audit your BD calls and point out the questions you forgot to ask.

We also pull back the curtain on the SaaS side of the business, as Andy shares what it was like to roll out Giig's first-ever price increase after keeping the Starter plan locked for three years.

But of course, it wouldn't be Giig It A Rest without the weekly catch-up. Luke returns with a string of ailments (including a terrifying 24-hour warning about an eye floater and his official initiation into the "IBS Club"), Andy recaps a devastating loss at his annual golf scramble, and we crack open Lee's Lunchbox to reveal why Andy is terrified of public speaking... unless you give him a microphone.

In this episode:

00:00 - Welcome to the IBS Club (Luke's eye floater & health updates)

12:04 - Andy's golf scramble defeat & Lucy's elite resting heart rate

21:02 - Dropping the "AI Hand Grenade" before going on holiday

32:22 - How the Claude MCP connects AI directly to your recruitment database

33:35 - The Giig AI Assistant vs. AI Coach (Auditing your sales calls)

40:00 - "The only limitation is your imagination..." (Birth of a terrible slogan)

42:34 - SaaS realities: Navigating our first-ever price increase

48:13 - Lee's Lunchbox: Public speaking fears & imposter syndrome

If you want to see what AI can actually do for your recruitment desk, book a demo with Andy (he loves it when you fill up his calendar).

🔗 Check out Giig: https://giighire.com/

In one of our most high-energy episodes to date, we are joined by Jahisha, the marketing powerhouse behind TEAM.Before making waves in the recruitment industry, Jahisha was a Division 1 track and field star on a full scholarship in the US, breaking records and securing the historic "double double" in the long jump and triple jump. But after hitting the qualifying standards for the Commonwealth Games and inexplicably getting passed over by the politics of the system, she made a life-changing pivot. The very next day, she applied for her first marketing role.Jahisha walks us through her incredible journey from the runway to recruitment. We discuss finding your authentic self on camera, why unpolished "yap content" is taking over social media, and how she navigated the transition from TRN to helping drive the TEAM network forward. Plus, we get the inside scoop on her epic 48-minute wedding outfit change and the launch of the brand new TEAM Women initiative.What we cover in this episode:- The Commonwealth Games Snub: The heartbreaking politics of elite athletics and how she took control by pivoting overnight.- The D1 Athlete Mindset: Applying a 20-year athletic discipline to building a career in recruitment marketing.- Finding "Jahisha the Marketeer": Transitioning from TRN to TEAM and learning to lean into her authentic, high-energy personality.- TEAM Women: Breaking down the new internal network initiative designed to help recruiters Build, Scale, and Lead.- Marketing Quick Wins: Why recruiters need to stop overthinking video production, overcome impostor syndrome, and embrace raw, authentic content.Enjoy x

Welcome back to the pod! In this candid episode, we dive into the rollercoaster of life and business. From the physical and mental hurdles of training for an Ironman, including a painful run-in with some deer through to the ongoing challenges of scaling a bootstrapped recruitment tech startup.We get real about the difficulty of acknowledging small victories amidst the constant pressure to move on to the next big thing. We also share personal anecdotes, from navigating family dynamics to the unexpected adventures of dog sitting.On the business front, we discuss our recent product launches, the focus on enhancing customer success, and the exciting (and slightly daunting) pivot towards integrating AI into our platform.Enjoy

Get your tickets to the The Recruiter Revenue Summit HERE! -

https://go.jamieburrows.net/recruiterrevenuesummit#section-Zzl570uUMM

This week on the pod, we are joined by Jamie Burrows, and his journey into recruitment is one hell of a story!

Before he was in the game of coaching recruiters to get more out of the industry, Jamie was the golden boy of Ted Baker—until a wild turn of events (and a bolted-down chair in a security office) saw him escorted out the door and straight into a 2008 recession-era recruitment desk.

We dive into what it actually takes to survive those grueling first 18 months on the phone, the reality of scaling an agency from a garden shed to 37 staff, and why splitting from business partners is rarely a clean break.

What we cover:

• Growing up in a Crystal Palace pub and navigating the Millwall family stand.

• The Ted Baker "cult" culture and getting sacked for doing the right thing.

• Starting in recruitment just as the 2008 credit crunch hit (and hating BD).

• Bootstrapping an education agency to 37 staff and the messy reality of exiting.

• Surviving COVID by carrying his dad’s gas-fitting toolbox.

• Why one-day recruitment training is basically a "speed awareness course" for underperformers.

  
  

  Enjoy x

Welcome back to the pod!

We kick this week off with Luke's run in with a toaster followed by a surprise birthday party he completely fails to spot.. There was banners up, cake in a box labelled "Luke's surprise birthday," and he still doesn't clock it. Plus there's been a trip to the courtroom for jury service. Then the gear shift.Andy seems to be excited about where the market's at right now. Calls have gone from flat and negative to genuinely positive, and the quarterly planning session hit different without the usual half-day spent catching everyone up.And then the big one: custom fields are live.

Fully customisable across companies, contacts, candidates, jobs unlimited fields, searchable, drag-and-drop import from any messy spreadsheet a client throws at you.Andy backs it up with a story that does all the selling for him: a small agency splits a placement 50/50 through the Team Network, feels great about it until they realise the candidate was already sitting in their own database the whole time. No searchable system, no idea. Free money left on the table because their data was a mess.Then we close it off with a Lee's Lunchbox Question that really got us thinking.. Enjoy x

This week's guest is Dan McDonald from Evelyn GordonHe's a solo recruiter, three years in, and (his estate's words, not ours) "the egg boy." Because before recruitment, before the US clients, before any of it, 12-year-old Dan was running a genuine chicken business. Buying birds at point of lay, door-knocking eggs round the village, losing half the flock to a fox. Proper P&L lessons before he could legally work.Fast forward: one year in a recruitment job, a bad experience with fees that never got chased, and Dan walked out to go solo with £4,000 and no safety net. First deal landed at three months.Then it gets into the good stuff: How he built a business that's now 90% retained, mostly working the US market from a UK number (spoiler: it's simpler than everyone thinks), and why he reckons Americans respect the "I'm doing this on my own" pitch more than UK clients do. Real talk on cash flow, the loneliness of solo recruitment, why BD never stops even when things are going well, and the honest version of "how did you break into the US", which is basically: don't overcomplicate it, send the email, see what happens.Enjoy x