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The Elite Recruiter Podcast

The Elite Recruiter Podcast

By: Benjamin Mena
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The Elite Recruiter Podcast is where top recruiters go to get better.

Hosted by executive recruiter Benjamin Mena, this show dives deep into the stories, strategies, and mindsets of the most successful people in the industry — from $1M solo producers to 8+-figure agency founders.

Each episode delivers real, tactical insights for high-performance recruiting:

  • How elite recruiters build and scale
  • Tools, tech stacks, and sourcing strategies
  • Daily habits and workflows that drive million-dollar desks
  • Lessons from failure, breakthrough wins, and mindset shifts
  • What the best are doing next — and how they’re changing the game

If you’re in agency recruiting, staffing, or executive search — this is your new secret weapon.

No fluff. No recycled advice. Just the unfiltered playbook of the top 1%.

🎧 Subscribe now and start leveling up like an elite.

2026 Elite Recruiter Podcast Career Success Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales Personal Development Personal Finance Personal Success
Episodes
  • She Closed a Deal in Labor — While Her Recruiting Business Kept Her Alive

    She Closed a Deal in Labor — While Her Recruiting Business Kept Her Alive
    Mar 26 2026
    Stephanie Lowenstern's LinkedIn looks like the highlight reel. South Florida recruiter. Founder. Boy mom. Building a go-to-market search firm for the best tech startups in the country. The kind of story that gets you double-tapped and scrolled past in two seconds. What the highlight reel doesn't show: her partner left when their son was five days old. She took a candidate call while she was in labor. She spent over $100,000 — on therapy, legal fees, moving costs, and healing work — funded entirely by her recruiting business. She celebrated 10 years sober in the middle of all of it. And she kept billing through every single day of it. This episode is the real story. Stephanie built her firm from scratch at 29 — no backing, no playbook, just a Squarespace website and blind faith — and hit $170K in year one without knowing what a Series B funding round was. When her personal life collapsed around a newborn, she didn't shut it down. She went on morning walks, listened to Joe Dispenza, cried at strangers in her neighborhood, and sourced candidates like a zombie who refused to stop moving. Because stopping wasn't an option. The business was the lifeline. What makes this conversation rare isn't the resilience story — it's what Stephanie learned on the other side. About rates she should have never cut. About the clients she should have walked away from sooner. About how showing up powerfully for candidates and clients starts with how you show up for yourself. And about why your peace is never going to come from the number. If you're going through something right now and still trying to run your desk — this one's for you. What You'll Learn: How Stephanie built a $170K first year with no recruiting firm experience and no external fundingWhy she kept billing through one of the most traumatic personal seasons of her life — and what three habits kept her business aliveThe $100K+ mistake she made cutting her rates to win business, and what she'd do differentlyHow to convert genuine relationships into clients without sounding like you're sellingWhy your internal state is the single biggest lever on your revenue — and how she rebuilt hersWhat she wishes more recruiters would actually ask her (and the answer she never gets to give) Atlas — The AI-first recruitment platform built to eliminate admin. It captures every conversation automatically and turns it into something you can use. With Magic Search, ask your entire database questions like "Who mentioned they're open to relocating next year?" and get instant answers — no keyword guessing, no digging through old notes. Atlas customers have reported 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increase in monthly billings. Try it free → https://recruitwithatlas.com 🎯 This Is Your Year — Recruiter Summit (April 27th, live sessions are FREE) https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ 💼 Join the Elite Recruiter Community — summit replays, biweekly roundtables, Billers Club, split space — $49/month, cancel anytime https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community 🆓 Free Trial: PeopleGPT → https://juicebox.ai/?via=b6912d 🆓 Free Trial: Talin AI → https://app.talin.ai/signup?via=recruiter 🆓 Free Trial: Pin → https://www.pin.com/ 📬 Subscribe to the newsletter → https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe 📺 YouTube → https://youtu.be/WAI55acfONw 🔗 Follow Stephanie on LinkedIn → 🌐 Benjamin Mena → http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/ 🔗 Benjamin on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/ 📸 Benjamin on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/benlmena/
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    59 mins
  • Your Next Hire Shouldn't Be a Recruiter

    Your Next Hire Shouldn't Be a Recruiter
    Mar 23 2026
    What if the best investment you could make in your recruiting firm had nothing to do with hiring another recruiter? Reyhan Khan has seen inside hundreds of agencies — and the ones scaling fastest all made the same unexpected move first. If you want to check out Clay: https://clay.com/?via=411229 Why This Episode Matters The recruiting industry is still early on the GTM adoption curve. The firms that figure this out now will have an unfair advantage over every competitor still running manual processes. This episode gives you the exact framework to stop trading time for revenue and start building a business that scales without you doing everything yourself. What You'll Learn The exact 5 things a GTM engineer should do in their first 90 days at your firmWhy intent-based outreach crushes cold volume — and the signal-stacking system that makes it workThe HR ratio playbook: how to identify companies actively hiring with zero internal TAHow to build a total addressable market table that shows you exactly how big your niche really isThe honest truth about where AI replaces recruiting work within a year — and where it never willWhy fewer than 5% of recruiters are building personal brands and what that gap is costing themHow to vet GTM vendors so you don't hand $10K to someone who just took a Clay course About the Guest Reyhan Khan is a systems and operations expert and founder of RecruiterGTM. Over the last four years he has built GTM systems for recruiting firms, placed offshore talent to run those systems, and coached hundreds of recruiters on scaling lean without adding headcount. The Transformation Imagine starting 2027 with a pipeline that runs without you, a market map that tells you exactly where your next client is coming from, and a personal brand that generates inbound while you sleep. That's what the recruiters applying these systems are building right now. This episode is the starting point. Listen Now If you're ready to stop being the bottleneck in your own business, this is the episode you've been waiting for. Hit play. Timestamp Highlights 03:06 – Reyhan's origin story: electrical engineer to GTM expert for recruiters07:18 – Why a GTM engineer may be more valuable than your next recruiter hire13:07 – Intent-based outreach: how to fish in a smaller, higher-converting pond15:27 – How to vet GTM vendors before you waste $10K–$15K23:50 – The 5 priorities for a GTM engineer's first 90 days28:15 – Market mapping and building your total addressable market table36:38 – AI's real impact on recruiting over the next 3–5 years42:13 – Can a 5-person firm double revenue with the right GTM hire?47:07 – What it actually takes to go from good to elite55:41 – The question recruiters never ask but should 🚀 Atlas – AI-first ATS & CRM Automates admin, syncs resumes/emails, and uses AI to build polished profiles and reports. Try it free or book a demo → https://recruitwithatlas.com 🎯 This is Your Year - Recruiter Summit https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ 💼 Join the Elite Recruiter Community https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Tools & Links Free Trial: PeopleGPT → https://juicebox.ai/?via=b6912d Free Trial: Talin AI → https://app.talin.ai/signup?via=recruiter Free Trial: Pin → https://www.pin.com/ Signup for emails → https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe YouTube: https://youtu.be/16SCnlUK3PE Follow Reyhan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reyhankhann/ Host Benjamin Mena: http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/ Benjamin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/ Benjamin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benlmena/
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • The Unfair Advantage AI Is Giving Agency Recruiters | Jordan Shlosberg

    The Unfair Advantage AI Is Giving Agency Recruiters | Jordan Shlosberg
    Mar 16 2026
    The AI race in recruiting has already started — and most recruiters don't even know they're losing. Jordan Shlosberg isn't a recruiter. He's the founder building the technology that's about to separate the top 1% of agency recruiters from everyone else. And in this episode, he pulls back the curtain on exactly what's coming, what it means for your desk, and why the window to get ahead is closing fast. Why This Episode Matters The recruiting industry is on the edge of a fundamental power shift. Internal TA teams are shrinking. Agency market share is growing. And the recruiters who move now — building their memory, sharpening their BD, and leveraging AI as an unfair advantage — are going to capture most of that upside. This episode gives you the strategic roadmap straight from the person whose technology is driving that change. What You'll Learn Why recruiters don't have a data problem — they have a memory problem, and how solving it creates a 100x service advantage over internal TAThe exact reason Jordan believes agency recruiters will steal market share from in-house talent teams over the next 3–5 yearsThe three skills every recruiter must double down on right now to win in an AI-driven market (hint: one of them is vibe coding)Why a 1–2 person agency team will soon be able to outbill a 20-person firm — and what that means for how you structure your deskThe "speccing autopilot" coming to Atlas this summer that could generate placements from candidates you've already forgotten you have About Jordan Shlosberg Jordan Shlosberg is the founder of Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform that's become the most talked-about CRM in the agency recruiting world. Before Atlas, he built ProSapient — an expert network — to $30M in revenue in five years. He brings a rare combination of deep technical expertise, founder-level product obsession, and an outsider's clarity on what's actually broken in recruiting. Extended Value Tease Imagine opening your laptop every morning to a system that's already ranked your best BD prospects, drafted your outreach, searched your entire candidate database without a single filter, and flagged the candidates most worth speccing today. That's not a fantasy — that's where the top agency recruiters are heading right now. This episode gives you the mental model and the tactical roadmap to be one of them. The recruiters who listen to this and act will look back on 2026 as the year everything changed. The ones who don't will feel it in their billings. Timestamp 00:06:23 — "Recruiters don't have a data problem, they have a memory problem" — the insight that reframes your entire database00:08:11 — Two agencies, same size: what the divergence looks like at 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years out00:10:35 — Is a recruiting income gap coming? Jordan's bold prediction on where agency market share is heading00:36:09 — Can a 2-person team outbill a 20-person agency? Jordan's answer and where the real bottleneck will be00:38:37 — The 3 skills every recruiter must build now: sales, relationships, and vibe coding00:48:35 — What the Atlas Top 100 recruiter rankings actually reveal about how elite billers are winning inbound business 🚀 Atlas – AI-First ATS & CRM Automates admin, syncs resumes and emails, and uses AI to build polished profiles and reports. Try it free or book a demo → https://recruitwithatlas.com 🎯 This Is Your Year — Recruiter Summit https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ 💼 Join the Elite Recruiter Community All summits, replays, Billers Club + split space https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Tools & Links Sign up for emails → https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe YouTube: https://youtu.be/1Nj7gA276Mg Follow Jordan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanshlosberg/ Host Benjamin Mena: http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/ Benjamin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/
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    58 mins
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