# The 60% of Recruiters Who'll Quietly Sink Your Agency. Part 2

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796/the-60-of-recruiters-who-ll-quietly-sink-your-agency-part-2
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796/the-60-of-recruiters-who-ll-quietly-sink-your-agency-part-2.md
Podcast: [The Elite Recruiter Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796)
Published: 2026-06-10T09:40:30+00:00
Episode link: https://pod.co/the-elite-recruiter-podcast/the-60-of-recruiters-who-ll-quietly-sink-your-agency-part-2
Audio file: https://downloads.pod.co/5825fd83-9e96-44b3-9cb7-112a46ad1e1b/7705ea4f-c9dc-4948-b7be-affc33ca3bde.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796/episodes/the-60-of-recruiters-who-ll-quietly-sink-your-agency-part-2
Duration seconds: 2771

## Resource

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. 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. If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, listen to that one first — it sets up everything Tom unpacks here. 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 segments every sales team into four brackets. The top 10% who don't care about anyone else — they just want to bill. The next 20% who aspire to be that top performer. The bottom 10% who were never going to make it. And then the middle 60%. The bracket nobody manages correctly. Because the middle 60% don't measure themselves against the top performers. They measure themselves against the bottom 10%. As long as they're doing enough not to be the worst person on the team, they think they're fine. That's the bracket quietly sinking most agencies, and most owners can't see it because they manage everyone on the team the same way. The second framework Tom hands over is the activity benchmark EVONA uses to define elite. 25 interviews on a rolling four-week period. Reverse engineered from a 12-to-1 interview-to-placement ratio, the number means a recruiter hitting it consistently is doing two placements a month at minimum. Drop below 25 and Tom is direct — you are not fit to play at the top level. Tom also unpacks why he would hate to be running a big recruitment company right now. AI gov…

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## Transcript

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