This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Most agency recruiters are excellent at one half of the job. They can fill a role. They cannot reliably win the next one.

Why agencies stall

Revenue comes from four clients, three of whom found you rather than the other way round. Business development means calling people when the desk goes quiet, which is exactly when you sound like someone whose desk has gone quiet. You take mandates you should have refused because turning work away feels like arrogance, then burn six weeks on a role the client was never serious about. And the whole operation runs on your own relationships, which means it cannot grow past you. None of that is a delivery problem. It is a selling problem wearing a delivery costume.

What this course covers

Forty-two lessons across five blocks. The selling craft first: AIDA and SPIN, FAB, the value proposition canvas, acquisition channels, BANT qualification, the five-touch sequence, objection handling with LAER and Feel-Felt-Found, closing techniques, and the metrics that tell you whether any of it works. Then the machine that produces revenue without you in every conversation: who to hire into business development and how to find them, scorecards and interview questions, training and coaching on metrics, bonus design that does not reward the wrong behaviour, lead generation and the flywheel, lead scoring and prioritisation, the agreement between sales and marketing, technology, and the experiments that actually paid off. Then the same discipline turned toward candidates: funnel audit, bottlenecks, job copy that converts, outreach to passive people, and strategies for the mandates nobody wants. Then quality of delivery: CV analysis, structured interviewing, STAR, competency assessment, tests and cases, the scorecard and the final decision. Finally the high-fee work: taking a proper job order, scanning the market before you commit, target list, long list, short list, moving a candidate who was not looking, and holding an offer against a counter-offer.

A note on the source material

Nine of the lessons come from a course on building a sales department, so the vocabulary is "salespeople" rather than "consultants". In an agency they are the same population — the people who bring in and convert client work — and the hiring, coaching, bonus and leadership material transfers directly. It is worth knowing before you hit lesson seven.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 42 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working templates: the job order, the scorecard, the search map, the market report, target list, long list, short list, the offer, the candidate development plan

• Frameworks you can use tomorrow: SPIN, BANT, LAER, the buyer journey matrix, the competency matrix

Where to start

Look at your last five mandates and mark the ones you should have declined at the intake call. If you cannot tell which, that is lesson thirty-six. Enrol now and start today.