{"podcast":{"title":"The Elite Recruiter Podcast","slug":"the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796","podcast_index_feed_id":3517796,"rss_url":"https://feed.pod.co/the-elite-recruiter-podcast","website_url":"https://www.eliterecruiterpodcast.com/","image_url":"https://images.pod.co/iB3nwE3qWlvCFrCJ5yhPnj0wo5JDbioPnrCyk-MyVyA/resize:fill:1500:1500/plain/artwork/6d300282-23d8-47b4-aa15-3772d4a0520b/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-1770643823.jpg","author":"Benjamin Mena","episode_count":344,"summary":"Real stories, tactics, and tools from the top 1% of recruiters and agency founders.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-27T18:19:10.918377+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796"},"episode":{"title":"The Diagnosis Method Behind $12B in Staffing Revenue","slug":"the-diagnosis-method-behind-12b-in-staffing-revenue","published_at":"2026-04-13T10:03:57+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796/the-diagnosis-method-behind-12b-in-staffing-revenue","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796","url":"https://pod.co/the-elite-recruiter-podcast/the-diagnosis-method-behind-12b-in-staffing-revenue","audio_url":"https://downloads.pod.co/5825fd83-9e96-44b3-9cb7-112a46ad1e1b/a37784a4-20cd-4c13-aba5-dce61876006c.mp3","summary":"Dave Veres started at Aerotech in September 1994. He was 22, fresh off four years as an all-conference shortstop at Michigan State, and he didn't know how to spell the company name. He got on a plane to Baltimore for training and called his parents after three days. They asked what the job was. He told them he didn't know — but it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen. What followed was 27 and a half years at one company. From entry-level recruiter to running national sales and enterprise accounts across automotive, defense, and government — while that company scaled into the largest privately held staffing firm in the country. This episode is the blueprint for how he did it. The through-line is what Dave calls diagnosis-based selling. Not transactional. Not even question-based. Diagnosis. The difference: question-based selling asks what a client needs today. Diagnosis-based selling understands where a client sits in their product life cycle, predicts what they'll need three months from now, and positions talent before the req ever exists. That shift — from reactive to predictive — is what made Dave the call people made when the stakes were too high. He breaks down how he cracked Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai when Aerotech already owned GM, Ford, and Chrysler — by becoming the expert in markets his own company didn't yet understand. He talks about stumbling into defense staffing almost by accident: a colleague drives past a shipyard, asks one right question, and six months later they're running $500,000 a week in spread with 1,800 contractors in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He was grumbling about 4am traffic until he started seeing soldiers at the airport. That moment rewired something. After that, it wasn't headhunting anymore. He talks about the long game on relationsh…","meta_description":"Dave Veres started at Aerotech in September 1994. He was 22, fresh off four years as an all-conference shortstop at Michigan State, and he didn't know how…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4782,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796/episodes/the-diagnosis-method-behind-12b-in-staffing-revenue/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-elite-recruiter-podcast-3517796/the-diagnosis-method-behind-12b-in-staffing-revenue.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}