Levers of a $1M Recruiter
I was never one, but I have had the privelege of learning a few tricks from million-dollar billers I had on my team in the past. Over lunch, I’d try to unpack what they did differently — and whether it could be replicated across the team. Sometimes the lessons were replicable. Other times, they weren’t.
One conversation has always stuck with me. I asked one top biller his “trade secret.” His answer was disarmingly simple:
“Most of my placements come from asking the client who they want. Then I go get them. My job isn’t to sell a role or a career story — it’s to sell the meeting.”
As simple as that. and it works wonders. The focus for the recruiter is on selling the meeting, avoiding over-engineering the pitch, and places the recruiter exactly where they belong: as a trusted partner.
The Five Levers of Recruitment Success
If you strip recruiting down to its business model, there are only a handful of levers a recruiter can pull:
Win better clients – who value your expertise and stick with you.
Close bigger deals – leadership or business-critical hires that move the needle.
Secure higher fees – harder to negotiate, but the cleanest multiplier on effort.
Make placements easier – reduce friction in sourcing, assessment, and process.
Improve success probability – every introduction should have a higher chance of closing.
The first three are obvious. The last two are where AI changes the game.
How AI Raises the Success Rate
Think about three recruiters:
Recruiter A: forwards a CV and hopes for the best.
Recruiter B: spends hours coaching candidates, prepping them for interviews, and tailoring narratives.
Recruiter C: uses an AI-native platform that automates guidance, enriches profiles, and shares founder-level IP on how to position candidates.
Recruiter C leapfrogs years of experience. They don’t just place more candidates, they place them more effectively — raising the success probability of every introduction.
The Platform Angle
That’s what we’re building at TalentHub, at least to some degree. The ability to replicate the “trade secrets” of top billers and make them available to mid-market recruiters operating on or offsite, in agency or RPO. Whether it’s simplifying client-driven searches (“just go get them”) or embedding coaching insights into candidate reports, the goal is to make the easy levers easier, and the hidden levers accessible to everyone.
Million-dollar billers aren’t magic. They’re just better at pulling the right levers. With AI, more recruiters can reach that level — without waiting years to figure it out the hard way.
