Hear what others say about working with The Recruiter's Coach

I’m Chris Nace and I am the founder and CEO of Nace Partners. I have been working with Brad for about six months to help define some of the pressing issues around challenges that we have as a company and within recruiting in general. And coming up with creative ways to address those problems and look at them through different lenses. We’ve been able to tackle a couple of different things with Brad.

One is, is taking a different approach to how we look at people that we’re hiring internally into the firm and what their strengths and weaknesses might be. Two is looking at different approaches to problems. As a founder I don’t always have people to bounce ideas off of. Seeing it through an objective lens that’s outside of the organization is always really helpful.

And I’d say the biggest thing is process improvements. Looking at the processes that we have and how they can be improved. And more importantly, looking at the processes that we don’t have and helping us install those into the organization,

Working with Brad’s really easy. It’s sort of like a work psychologist where you can come in, you talk about the problems or the challenges that you’re facing on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to address them. You have a dialogue about what to do and not to do. You walk away from each meeting with some action items to follow up on.

A wide range of people could benefit from working at Brad. I took the approach or at least always thought that I knew a lot or everything that needed to be known about the recruiting business. I think that no matter how many years of experience you have in the business, being able to sit down with Brad and talk about different areas of your business and let him make suggestions and identify areas for change and process improvement could benefit literally anybody out there.

Chris Nace
CEO of Nace Partners

My name is Reed Gaskin, and I'm the president of Red Dynamics. Brought Brad on board seven months ago to help us better automate the lead generation systems that we had in place. We were falling a little behind in terms of generating new business and having enough to work on all the time.

We've had a great delivery team and the ability to take on a lot of work, and our plate just wasn't full. So, I brought Brad on to help us put in place new systems to make sure that we were having as many touchpoints as we can with as little work as we can on a weekly basis. We had a great experience.

A lot of the approaches that Brad had us put into place were really effective. Some of them are longer term, but some were pretty short term and showed some real results very quickly. To put it in business terms, it more than paid for itself pretty much right out of the gate!

We're really excited about the amount of touchpoints we're gonna have through some of the lead generation systems that were put in place. At this date, that may be less tangible, but the direct benefits were some of the introduction tactics to leverage our current network. This gave us very warm and “close to the money" potential prospects.

That was one tactic we utilized not only for myself but I implemented it across the main players within the company. And everybody enjoyed doing it to get a lot of really interesting conversations. And that resulted in a lot of new business right out of the gate. We reignited a client that I hadn't talked to in two and a half years through a simple introduction request.

This is one specific example, but there were numerous others, and I've made a lot of good contacts who are very likely to become new clients as well. That was one specific area that was really helpful and beneficial to us in the short term, which is always nice to have.

Brad is very measured and very easy to work with. One thing that I really like about his system and working with him is he is flexible. He was very understanding to make sure that we weren't forcing meetings when we couldn't actually implement anything. Brad was very consistent. Never hot, never cold. Won’t make you feel bad. It’s nice having somebody hold you accountable.

Reed Gaskin
President of Red Dynamics, Inc.

I'm Clark Harvey and I'm president of Arrowhead Talent Solutions. Brad has served as my consultant for the better part of a year now, and we've met on a very regular basis to go through strategic and tactical recruiting concerns for my firm.

My business just came through a period of significant growth and expansion, and Brad came to us at the exact right time because we were at a spot where we were under a lot of stress and pressure. Brad helped us to stabilize and operationalize the business. What I mean by that is he helped us develop processes, evaluate and buy the right tools, and put those things in place, for our team.

This provided a much smoother and more strategic operation to support our growing client base. That helped stabilize us immensely once we had the operational piece in place, and we were operating very well as a team. We then pivoted to very specific business development- sales and marketing tactics. As a result, in the last quarter of 2023, we onboarded 10 new clients to our firm!

We had a huge amount of success in a short amount of time from our business development efforts over that quarter, and we've seen the, the results continue into 2024 as well.

When you work with Brad, you should expect to be challenged. When a lot of people want to work with a consultant, they’re intellectually ready for that, but emotionally, they're not ready for it. Brad deals, so he'll tell you what you need to hear, whether or not you want to hear it. His “bedside manner” is great, but you just need to be ready to hear some things you may not want to deal with at that time.

But if you do, you're going to be the better for it. When you're working with Brad, you're going to be challenged in all the right ways, and if you implement the processes and procedures and the suggestions that he has, you'll be all the better for it. So be ready to be challenged in all the right ways because it'll help you and your firm.

Any business owner in the recruiting search and staffing space would benefit from working with Brad. For one, it's a different perspective that he offers. This seat it's a lonely seat. When you're running a business and getting perspectives from somebody who's been in that seat before it’s invaluable. Even if you don't agree with something, it's really helpful to know what somebody else is thinking about your problems.

In Brad's case, he's very knowledgeable. He's deep in this space, so it's coming from a place of knowledge and a lot of experience. He's lived this stuff out and done it before, so that's been incredibly beneficial to me. Anybody in the recruiting space, regardless industries, geographies, or kind of positions you fill, I think you'd be able to walk away from a relationship with Brad feeling like you learned a heck of a lot more.

Clark Harvey
President of Arrowhead Talent Solutions

Brad is one of our mentors to help us as we continue to grow and scale our business. He's been very instrumental as we've continued to hire, source, and automate a lot of our systems and process improvements.

We've received a lot of benefits by working with Brad. We’ve learned to automate a lot of our systems and understand it’s not about the number of hours a day that you work, but how efficient you are in those hours of days. He's taught us to reflect and come up with a plan to continue to grow and brand our business. And he's been working on ways, whether it's checklists, templates, or conversations to help us achieve our goals.

Brad has really helped me to slow down and to take it step by step.I have a vision on where I’d like our company to go but there's steps that we need to take to get there. Brad has helped us to navigate that path; to chip the iceberg, as I like to say to achieve that goal. And,he’s been really helpful with the guidance that’s needed.

It is very comforting to work with Brad... I can be myself. If we have questions, whether about the business or other  items that may impact the business, he's been a really good listening ear. He’s very understanding. He knows that life happens and he helps us get on track. Sometimes I can get so bogged down with challenges and he really helps to come up with solutions.

Janel McNeal
Partner at McNeal & Payne Talent

I hired Brad almost a year ago to coach me on recruiting process and on sales process. I have a sales background and I’ve been in staffing sales for 22 years. I opened my own firm, but what I came to find out is operationally, I didn't have a lot of experience, so I was looking for someone to come in and really help me as almost like a fractional COO - Chief Operating Officer.  Things like metrics, structure, and process approach.

He certainly helped us set up a very structured recruiting process; from finding the right people, bringing them in, training them in the culture that we wanted, helping them to understand our process that we also created with Brad. 

We put together a pretty structured recruiting process. I feel very good about it. We've tracked some metrics and built some structure around the sales side as well. And that's yielding some nice fruit for us and just dealing with clients and thinking about our positioning and operational execution to ultimately lead us to scale. He was very instrumental in all of them.

Brad brings a lot of expertise, and he is good at allowing you to bring things that are hitting you on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. Things you want to bounce off someone while also keeping you on schedule with the things that are important to you. You’ve gotta balance the long-term goals you have with the fires that pop up, and you wanna talk to somebody about. He does a good job of balancing the two of those.

I think the biggest benefit of working with Brad is the operational expertise specific to recruiting. I did speak to a couple of coaches. People that I think would bring value to me, but it was more business in general. They could help me talk through thoughts, strengths, and weaknesses and look at where the business was succeeding and where we needed to do more. But that was a very general high level. 

Brad brings all the experience he has from his own companies and the clients he’s worked with, very specific to recruiting. He's got a whole library of things that he can carve out and bring to you that are gonna impact your organization with expertise around recruiting.  

I don't think you go that level deep when you're trying to build a company because you can't. If you're an owner, you've gotta pay bills, you've gotta look for clients, you’ve gotta hire some internal staff, and you gotta get compliant. You’ve gotta get your capital, and you gotta get your HR in order and make sure insurance is paid. 

And you’ve gotta think intimately about all the little things, that need to happen succinctly to be successful and grow. Staffing may feel, to a lot of people, very simplistic, but to be successful really takes a lot of focus and attention to detail. And so his expertise in that area was really helpful.

Jim Boyd
Principal at Cirrus Group Consulting

I’m Todd Patrick Dorsey President of Outside The BoxRecruiting Inc. Brad is my coach and mentor. 

We have 3 X’d our top line revenue and our profitability. We worked on and created an entire content marketing and drip sequence. We worked on the pricing, really got the pricing dialed in. We worked on the qualification process and getting rid of bad clients. We worked on the sales process and the intake process, really getting the whole thing to flow, be effective, be profitable.

We put in an ATS, we put in metrics and data so that we have a way to track our results. And we started, improving the recruiting delivery side as well,  and looking for efficiencies on that side of the house.

Brad's amazing. He's thoughtful, he really challenges your beliefs in a way that stretches your thinking and helps you get better results. He understands the business really well, so he gives you very good, practical advice. My experience of Brad is that he really cares about his clients and it comes through. At the end of the day, that that's what you want. Someone that's in your corner.

What part of Brad’s work would benefit people the most? All of it. The training's good, the system's good, all the backup is good, the thought process is good. I can just say if you are questioning whether or not you should do it, this is the highest ROI money I've spent in the last five years.

Todd Patrick Dorsey
Founder at Outside the Box Recruiting, Inc.

I’m Nicole Magaddino and I am the founder, President of Propel Recruitment out here in the San Francisco Bay area. Brad and I have been working together for a little over a year. He is my coach and advisor business owner to business owner in the recruitment field.

I really enjoy working with Brad because he gives me a different perspective on various areas such as hiring, infrastructure,  processes, as well as my approach into the marketplace with recruitment and business development.

And in other areas, Brad gives me that reassurance and affirms what we’re doing. This way we continue to stay on course in some areas, and then course-correct in other areas. This has been really helpful and has resulted in some great results.

I really enjoy how Brad listens. He’s real and he’ll hold me accountable. I need that tough-love sometimes, but he really understands and has empathy .I could feel the passion and that he just wants us to succeed.

If you work with Brad, you would benefit in so many different areas, I was in the recruitment field here for 17 years and I thought I knew a lot, which I think I do. But Brad will really give you a lot of different perspectives and things to think about and make improvements. And even just tweaks to really elevate your business and work in a more efficient manner.

Nicole Magaddino
President of Propel Recruitment

My name is Taylor Robinson, and I'm the president of Search Works.

Brad has been my coach for about the past six months or so. We have been meeting weekly, going over best practices, and implementing a lot of processes that have been helpful for my business.

One of the biggest results that I've found is that he's really helped me to develop a robust marketing campaign. I did not know where to start this campaign. I had a goal in mind of where I wanted to be, and he helped me utilize numerous tools and strategies to implement and launch a marketing campaign, which looks to be working quite well.

Brad is a no-nonsense coach. He likes to get into the weeds and the specifics of your problems and help you where the rubber meets the road. He's very good at understanding your problems and coming up with a real-world solution in a very short amount of time, and then helping you work through it.

The people who would benefit most from working with Brad would be leaders of recruiting firms, whether those be executive, contingent, retained, whatever the case may be, as well as other recruitment leaders who may not be the owners of their businesses but might be requiring some best practices and some training.

Taylor Robinson
President of SearchWorks, LLC

My name's Chris Pepin. I'm the founder and managing partner of Progressive Reliability. Brad's been a coach for us for about six or seven months. Brad's helped us a ton with our contracts, with the type of clients we go after, and with having a much better understanding of the most effective business that we can tap into.

Brad's provided us with the tools to be able to do retained and exclusive searches. Brad's great, super responsive, really easy to schedule, and has done a great job of working with and adding another perspective to our team members as well.  

If you’ve got your own recruitment company, it's nice to get an outside perspective. Even if you really know your business solidly and really know the direction you're going, having somebody with the depth of experience and, frankly, somebody who works with as many other recruitment companies as Brad really helps to gain perspective and speed up the direction you're going.

Chris Pepin
Founder and Managing Partner at PRORELI

My name's Pete Broderick. I'm the owner of Vector Search Group. Brad's been my one-on-one coach for me for over a year. Specifically, not to overstate or understate, I think Brad helped save my business by helping me understand the things that I had to do to change my business. How to put them in place and then, move forward.

It was huge because my business was on life support. Brad made me understand that I was probably no different than a lot of other people, but that there were certain habits that I had that were not good. I had slipped out of good habits and slipped into bad habits. He helped, through a variety of ways to get me back and more focused on what helps my business.

I think it's really helping me see my business. Where it can be, where it is now, where it was, and where it will be. He helps provide that vision and provides the steps to get it there.

He's a great guy. It's always enjoyable working with him. He's a good soul. I had some serious health issues this past year that I was not used to having. They were pretty serious and you knew right away that it was more than just a business relationship. He really cared about the person. So that's what it's like to work with him.

I think anybody could benefit from working with Brad, Certainly iIf your business is struggling. If you were doing well and then you've slipped, But he is also be great if you are doing well, but maybe you're just kind of plateauing and there's more out there. So a variety of people could benefit from him.

Either people who want to grow a team or individual contributors. Quite a few different people because his approach works for anyone.

Pete Broderick
President of Vector Search Group

I’m Mark Whitman, the founder of TeamBuilder Search. Brad is my coach and business adviser. When I met Brad, I had been in business for 13 years and was feeling stuck in my business. Brad’s like having a one-man advisory board. He’s been there, done that. He’s walked in my shoes before, and he’s got a bigger view of the industry.

Brad has a tremendous amount of knowledge, not only from a practitioner standpoint, but from working with a lot of people in addition to me. From the landscape of having this greater view. This really comes in handy to help you think through your options and to know where you can go. The value that he brings in helping you determine how to get there is just tremendous.

If you have a recruiting firm and you know it can be better, or like me you grow, change, and go through different seasons in life and aren’t sure what you want to do next; that’s a great time to engage with Brad. Anytime you need some outside input and outside view, it’s a good opportunity to talk to Brad.

I’m very, thrilled and excited about where we are and where we’re headed. I don’t think I’ve been this excited about my business since I started the business. And that’s been a result of working with Brad!

Mark Whitman
Founder of TeamBuilder Search

I’m Fred Williams, the founder and CEO of BWG talent. Brad is my advisor. I started this firm a year and a half ago, and I first started off with him in one of his mastermind groups, which was great. Then I realized that I needed more direct, intimate,one-on-one discussions with him on a weekly basis.

I’ve achieved better processes and streamlined the overall development of my pipeline of candidates to grow out my firm. He’s helped with my overall thought track and my head space… how I think about the growth and cultivation of my firm.

Brad’s helped me the most in the area of processes. I had a career change. I was on Wall Street for 15 years. This was a little different and he helped me streamline processes that really helped me hammer down the growth of my firm.

He’s great to work with. I really feel like he is speaking to me as an individual in a way that’s catered only to me and my specific needs on any given day. I think the most beneficial thing that people would get out of working with Brad is observation of blind spots. We all have them and he really helps hammer them down and challenges you on the things that you really need to get better at.

Fred Williams
Founder and CEO of BWG talent

I reached out to Brad as I was referred by another recruiter who I've worked with for many years. I was specifically looking for business coaching that was related to my industry. Brad’s a recruiting coach so he helps recruiters focus on what's important to grow their business.

I've been doing this for about 27 years on my own. I have a good business, and I make a good living but I've been well overdue for a mindset change and a mindset change is hard to make  happen. You need some help from a coach to walk you through it, give you the reasons why, and the process to make it successful. 

The number one benefit for me was mindset change. For me that mindset change was moving from primarily a contingent recruiting business model which I've done forever to a retained and exclusive business model. Over the years, the market has changed and I needed to change with it, not just for growth, but for my own sanity.

For the last number of years I've been making a good living, but frustrated with the market. Whereas now with that mindset change Brad's helped me achieve, I'm dramatically less frustrated. I'm working on higher quality requirements with higher quality clients. With that mindset change I’m able to say no to certain jobs and potential clients. This is a big mindset change, Brad's helped me out with.

Working with Brad is an easy back and forth. I chatted with four or five other potential recruiting coaches who have industry specific experience. To me, it was a no-brainer to go with Brad simply because I think there's a very easy rapport. He’s professional and knowledgeable and wants to work with me. He's not forcing anything down my throat or making me feel strange about what I've been doing. It's a very casual relationship, a mentorship and that's what I was looking for.

Who would benefit most from working with Brad?  Recruiters number one. If recruiters are at that point in their career where they're a little frustrated or need to grow, but they don't know exactly how to do it. Or they make a few changes for a month or two and then fall right back into their old ways and mindsets. If they want more growth and peace by evening out those hills and valleys, I think any recruiter would have great results.

Daryl Daley
Owner of Intelligent Minds

I’m Rob Murphy and I’m the president of Affinity Recruiting in Huntsville, Alabama, I found Brad on LinkedIn right around the time that I was starting the firm. I got into the industry with no real experience, but I knew that I needed to find people who could tell me what to do because I really didn’t know what to do.

I came across the content Brad was putting out there and knew that I needed to make that connection, given his experience and success. And it’s been, it’s been a great ride with Brad.

He’s been extremely helpful to me. Biggest thing that Brad’s done for me is that he’s allowed me to recognize what mistakes I’m about to make before I make them. And he’s also given me tactics and strategies to put in place to maximize our production.

As a owner, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so it’s very important to get somebody in your business circle who’s walked the road before you and is gonna share that. And Brad has made a huge impact from it. He’s helped me the most with :

• Calculating bill rates for temp workers. When we made the transition from just direct hire into the temp work, he really helped me to look out for the landmines there.
• Building partnerships with clients as opposed to being the commodity recruiter. He’s shared with me not only how to sell that, but even how to go back to existing clients and increase the revenue and the value of the partnership.

Working with Brad is easy. It’s very convenient. Brad’s always been very understanding and flexible with me. He’s found a way to always deliver in a way that works for me.

Whoever is either an owner or in a leadership role in a recruiting firm should definitely spend time with Brad. It’ll be more than worth the investment.

Rob Murphy
President of Affinity Recruiting in Huntsville, Alabama

My name is Julian Schrenzel. I’m President, CEO, and Owner of DyNexus Recruiting.

I retained Brad to help me scale my practice, especially this year. He’s helped me to really clarify the highest-level understanding around what my company is and how to take this company from where it is to where I want to go. I started this engagement really focused on some of the smaller aspects inside of the business.

But what Brad has helped me to do is to wrap my mind around the highest levels, the most comprehensive levels of this business. And to attack the incremental improvements of this company by touching a lot of small things, rather than trying to move a few big things.

He’s an easy-going guy. He’s easy to talk to, easy to work with, and fun to have a conversation with. He’s not afraid to disagree or to be disagreed with which in my case is really helpful to have someone that I can challenge. And that can challenge me, so that’s a great aspect about Brad. He’s a good listener. He’s thoughtful and engaging and, comprehensive around using a lot of different tools to achieve the outcomes that are needed.

I think that people who have a company that has a long way to go, someone who has a big vision for a company, and needs to achieve big steps to get to that vision. I think that Brad can be very helpful in that process of moving from here to there.

Julian Schrenzel
President, CEO and Owner of DyNexus Recruiting

I'm Ryan Solden the managing Director of Four Diamonds Recruiting. I started working with Brad about six months ago. He and I interacted a couple times a month about working on my business, while helping me work in my recruiting business too.

He opened my eyes in a number of different areas. He helped me build out a website, which I didn't have. He helped me pick and select an ATS system that helps me organize my candidates and clients that I've accumulated over a couple of decades.

He also introduced me to Expandi, which gets messages out to my LinkedIn network in an automated fashion, so I don't have to do that manually. And there were a couple other exercises that we went through leveraging my existing network through LinkedIn Sales Navigator to ask people I've known for years to make some introductions on my behalf.

He shared applicable tricks of the trade for the recruiting industry that I was kind of familiar with, but Brad shed a lot of light on to be a more kind of specific. Brad is transparent, he's organized, he is a direct communicator and he, he kept me on task and accountable. He broke things down in easily digestible steps to methodically set a goal and then outline the steps to achieve that specific goal.

Brad can help small to mid-size recruiting and headhunting firms that have some resources but maybe do not have all the tech and, and necessary resources. And Brad can point these folks in the right direction and give them a lift in their business.

Ryan Soldan
Managing Director at 4 Diamonds Recruiting

“I have been working with Brad Wolff of PeopleMax for about five to six months now and it’s been an incredible experience. Brad’s really good at helping find clarity, working with accountability, and problem-solving. He really helps me look at behavioral patterns and open my eyes to certain things that I do and things for me to work on. Overall, my experience has been really great, and it’s been impactful in my business. I’m grateful for his coaching and if you decide to work with him, he’d be a great coach for you as well.”

Melissa Davis
Founder of Elev8 Hire Solution

“We’ve been working with Brad for training and development and as a mentor and business advisor to us for a while. He’s helped us with:

• Onboarding and training
• Providing us actual documentation and plans for how we go about bringing new people on board
• How we develop our own practices each week
• What our plans and our agenda are

And, he keeps us committed. He gives us an outline of what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it. It’s helped us during a very difficult market that we’ve never experienced. And it’s given us hope and plans. Beyond that, he’s got a lot of integrity and is very trustworthy. He’s very responsive…he’s answered any questions we have right away. He always does what he says he’ll do and provides substance that’s detailed and very strategic.

He’s a very smart and I know we could trust working with him. He’s held us accountable in many ways and given us hope through a difficult time. I would highly, highly recommend working with him and have highly recommended people working with him.”

 Robin Wilson Payne
Co – Owner of McNeal & Payne Talent

Brad is my coach and advisor. He helps guide me through the business of recruiting and trying to master the skills and aspects of the business that we might struggle with or not look at at certain times.

We were able to build our business development aspects as we grew clients. To have clients reach out to us via linkedin and other specific areas. We were able to put systems in place to consistently grow and meet the quality and needs of our current clients, as well as grow our systems internally to help handle the influx of workflow.

Brad has helped my firm the most with systems and processes. He's really helped us internally grow by looking outside the box and utilizing different tools and applications that we might not necessarily have used in the beginning. He's really got us out of our comfort zone to help grow those areas.

Working with Brad is great. He's friendly, he's direct, and pushes you, to where you really you know don't want to disappoint him. He's very friendly and he helps you. You can tell he's very knowledgeable about the recruiting industry and loves what he does. He enjoys helping you and the follow ups are great. Not only do you work with him professionally but you get to know him personally, and he becomes a friend.

I think anybody within the recruiting industry who runs their own business or management level recruiter within a company would benefit by working with Brad.  He has outside the box ideas and really gets you to kind of look at all aspects of the business. Not just the candidate aspect and employer aspect, but the entire business. Anyone in the industry would benefit from working with Brad.

Randee Staats, Jr.
CEO/Owner of S4 Search Partners

My name is Judd Borakove. I am Partner at Red Monkey Consulting. Brad is our coach and he’s helping us to scale our recruiting firm. Working with Brad’s been great. We have been able to scale, improve our hiring process, improve our time to fill, everything you could ever ask for really… it’s been great!

Brad’s helped us the most, honestly, in thinking through a lot of the problems. His experience has really helped us shorten the testing phase of new things, which really saves us a ton of money. Brad is dialed, very straightforward, to the point, makes sure that you understand what he’s trying to get across and makes sure to work at your pace.

Really it’s just been simple. It’s easy. He’s there when you need him. And he disappears when you don’t, which is great. We know we have access to his knowledge, his background, and his connections. Who would benefit the most working with Brad? Anybody in staffing and recruiting who is looking to take their company to the next level.

Judd Borakove
Partner at Red Monkey Consulting

I’ve been working with Brad Wolff as my business advisor and coach. Some of the specific benefits that I’ve received through working with Brad would be accountability to our processes, clarity and purpose within our business, best practices for developing our new strategic business strategies, and tightening up some individual and team processes which are vital to our operation.

I would highly recommend Brad to anyone who may be stuck within their business and searching to move their efficiency and processes to the next level.

Andrew Lavoie
President & CEO of Next Level Group