I see high performance teams as the single biggest driver of growth inside recruitment agencies. In this blog, I share what I observe working with agency owners, lessons from elite performance environments, insights from recruitment trainers, and practical hacks to help you build high performing recruitment teams that scale with confidence.
After working with recruitment agency owners for years, one thing has become very clear to me.
Growth does not come from ambition alone. It comes from execution.
I see plenty of agencies with strong brands, good marketing, and decent client demand. But individual performance can feel fragile. One slow month and confidence dips. A couple of key people leave, and revenue wobbles. When I dig into it, the issue is rarely the market… it is usually performance consistency.
Over the last few years, hiring confidence has been mixed at best. Permanent hiring is cautious in some sectors, contract markets are still active but competitive (let’s not talk about tech in 2023/24) and decision making has slowed in certain industries. What I think is that agencies with high performance teams are not panicking. They are calm, structured, and focused on controllables.
High performance teams give you certainty when the market does not.
One thing I strongly believe is that high performance is not a personality trait. It is not about being the loudest or the most confident person in the room.
From what I see, high performance CAN be engineered. It comes from clear expectations, disciplined habits, and leadership that does not drift when things get uncomfortable.
This is where performance thinking borrowed from elite sport is useful. I LOVE watching and reading about elite sports – especially the All or Nothing series. At the highest level, athletes do not rely on feeling motivated. They rely on systems that force the right behaviours daily. Training happens whether they feel like it or not.
Recruitment is no different. The best teams do the basics relentlessly well. They control activity and review numbers… which they improve incrementally.
When I look across the agencies that consistently outperform, there are clear patterns.
High performing teams:
This is why I am cautious when agencies jump straight to incentives or quick wins. Without the fundamentals, performance spikes never last.
What I respect about trainers like Charles Kyriakou, Dan Alexander, and Nick Booth's team at Seventh Wave is that they keep performance grounded in reality.
Charles Kyriakou has long championed consistency of activity. From what I see, recruiters who commit to disciplined outreach and structured follow up outperform those constantly changing tactics. Take a listen to his podcast, as it’s one of the few that actually ADDS value.
Dan Alexander’s coaching work puts a lot of emphasis on ownership. I completely agree with this. High performers treat their desk like a business - they do not blame the market but they adapt to it.
Nick Booth (and Seventh Wave) bring a strong leadership and people focus. One thing I see too often is agencies pushing for output without clarity. Performance improves when people know EXACTLY what is expected and feel supported in reaching it.
High performance = clarity + accountability
If you do not know your numbers, you are managing on opinion.
High performance teams know:
When these numbers are visible and reviewed properly, performance conversations become quite factual (instead of emotional).
At Recbound, I see agencies transform simply by using data as a coaching tool rather than a stick.
p.s. my opinion is - numbers should create focus, not fear – but this is a personal opinion!
If I am honest, this is the uncomfortable bit for many agency owners. Your team will not outperform your leadership.
From what I see, high performance leaders do a few things exceptionally well:
Leading people is a different skill to billing.
Hack one: shorten the performance cycle
Monthly targets are too slow. I see far better results when teams work in weekly performance cycles. Weekly activity targets, weekly reviews, weekly resets. Momentum lives in short timeframes.
Hack two: one shared sprint per day
Pick a daily window where the whole team does the same high value activity.
(e.g. No meetings. No admin. No distractions.)
I have seen this alone lift output significantly within a few weeks.
The beauty is - neither hack is complicated.
There are a few patterns I repeatedly see holding teams back:
High performance is simple. It is just uncomfortable to enforce consistently.
Adam Standley is a contract recruitment specialist who has built teams from scratch and developed recruiters from zero experience into high performing experts.
When people ask me about building high performance teams, I always start with the same question. Are you clear on what actually drives results?
For me, performance begins with work ethic. Not working long hours for the sake of it, but focused effort on the right activities. If the activity is not there, nothing else matters.
Positive noise is critical, especially in contract markets. I think high performing recruiters are very visible in their sector - they are having more conversations, gathering more market intelligence, and creating momentum. (The quiet recruiters never last in contract!)
Speed is another differentiator. High performing teams move faster at every stage - faster qualification, faster CV turnaround, faster replies – generally speed creates advantage.
Recruiters who deeply understand their market make better decisions and build trust faster.
Having a specialism always wins.
Finally, data removes emotion. I track activity, ratios, and conversions obsessively. Not to micromanage, but to coach effectively. When you know your numbers, improvement becomes objective.
“High performance” is not about hype but I see it as standards, discipline, and repetition.
I genuinely believe that building high performance teams is the most reliable way to scale a recruitment agency.
Markets change, clients come and go, politicians always have an opinion - but ultimately performance fundamentals do not.
If you focus on behaviour, data, leadership, and clarity, results follow.