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Confessions of a Recruiter
Confessions of a Recruiter is a podcast built for recruiters who want more than surface-level stories.
We’ve stepped into a new era with a sharper look and a stronger voice. This rebrand isn’t just about a new logo. It reflects our commitment to real conversations, genuine insight, and a brand that matches the impact we’re making in the recruitment industry.
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Confessions of a Recruiter
Wingman Recruitment | COAR Special Episode
Tired of choosing between growth and service quality? We unpack a model that lets you have both: embed a trained remote professional alongside every recruiter so admin, sourcing, compliance, and follow-up run in the background while your team spends more time winning and keeping clients.
We sit down with Sam and Jory and Jonny to map the exact structure, from hitting $50k GP every four weeks with one RP through to scaling past $70–$80k with a second RP or an onshore account manager.
We tackle the big myths too such as brand integrity, accents, client perception and show why embedded offshoring improves response times, protects relationships, and builds a moat as your desk grows. The cost equation is compelling, but the real story is consistency under load: more interviews, faster fills, better retention.
Want to know how H People scaled and grew their agencies with Remote Professionals? Download the task list below.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UB2CirhD8fkHdyyKLqe3nW_B95b_AN2b
· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
Welcome back to another Confessions of a Recruiter episode. We are joined by the kings of outsourcing. So you've got one onshore recruiter. They're supported by two remote professionals. Like what does that structure look like?
SPEAKER_04:Our revenue targets that we aim to get our consultants to is making 50,000 in four weeks.
SPEAKER_01:One question we get a lot at Confessions is how do we scale our agency? How do we get more time back? How do we make more money? And today we've got the answers. So welcome, Johnny, Sam, and Jory. Thanks for joining us. I think we should start with um giving everyone a little bit of context on why this episode exists. And I gave I alluded to that in the intro, but one common problem that we see with recruiters is they've got to do so much to get a deal over the line. Outsourcing and finding remote professionals has always been a keen interest for many recruiters looking to try and scale their agency without scaling overheads and scaling costs. However, the challenge that many have is being able to do that consistently, time and time again. And to be fair, I know a lot of recruitment agency owners that have been burnt with it. Possibly it's the remote person that's coming into the business. Possibly it's the way that they're managing them. There's so many different elements that could derail this process. So I think hearing from Sam and Jory around how they've been able to scale their agency to ultimately becoming one of Australia's fastest growing companies, and that'll come out in November. So fingers crossed, boys. Um I think it'd be really nice to get a bit of a download on that and then tie in how Johnny fits into this picture and what he's been able to do. Let's just kind of start with a a two or three minute high-level overview on the structure of H people and where you've come from and where you are today.
SPEAKER_04:Um I guess, you know, Jory and I have been working together for probably about the last four or five years now. Um and we've we've essentially been working with remote professionals in our day-to-day lives during that entire period. Um H people came around uh about two and a half years ago. Um we we'd been working with a number of remote professionals before we'd started Hage People. Um, some had sort of left during that time and mentioned to us that if we ever you know started our own business or or went out anywhere else, they'd be they'd really love to join us on our journey. So when when we started Hage People two and a half years ago, Celeste, the OG, um, we let her know. Um, and she she literally joined us on the journey. So we've we've pretty much been working hand in hand with remote professionals since day one. So Cell started with us at the beginning. Um and essentially what it allowed Jory and I to do was just um really double down on business development to to bring in more revenue into the business. So um the what the way that we work with the remote professionals is more so in sort of a partnership than looking at outsourcing certain tasks, which is sort of I guess how we've we've cracked the code.
SPEAKER_00:The first sort of six months of HP, when we had just myself and Sam, and then we had Cell, Josh, and then Christina. Um we saw Just to clarify, sorry to jump in there.
SPEAKER_01:So you and Sam, and then you had three remote professionals. Correct, yes, yeah. Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so there was there was five of us in the business, and that gave Sam and I the time to spend time doing business development, relationship building, while um Josh, Christina, and and Cell would be doing all of the resourcing and back-end support for us to get the delivery piece done right. So um six months into the business, obviously going pretty well, and then we saw an opportunity that each time that we would hire our own internal staff member on Australia, that it would be important and imperative for our business and our growth to support them with their own remote professional. So each time that we would bring someone on, they would also get a remote professional work in alongside with them to help essentially double their output. Yeah. Um so we brought on uh two onshore consultants in the February. Um, we brought on another two um remote professionals, and then we did the same thing in June, um, two and two, uh, and then October we brought in some more as well. So um bringing our structure up to, I think, our highest was about 20 staff members, but half of that has always been based out in the Philippines. Yeah. Um and time and time again, it's just been the case that all of our consultants have had the opportunity to double their output and bring in and maximize their revenue because they've got the support and the partnership from the remote professional that helps with the sourcing, the admin, the compliance, um, so they can file they can focus on those high, high value generating revenue generating activities.
SPEAKER_01:So, so what are the outcomes that you've achieved in H people through remote professionals? Like where are you at today?
SPEAKER_04:Harry would be a good example, I would say. You know, Har Harry joined our team at the end of last year, um, and we uh we always train up a remote professional before we hire an onshore staff member now, um, so that the the onshore staff member can really spend the majority of their time. And and Harry started a brand new division for us in a new location where nobody knew who H people was, which if you start if anyone anyone that's listening has started a cold desk from scratch in a new area before, you know the graft. Um and what Harry and his remote professionals you know managed to to do within a six-month period was essentially get their get their weekly margins up. What was his peak, 8,800 rips in B like a week?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 8.5 in a week. So Harry's on track to do between four and five hundred K in his first year of recruitment. Yeah. Completely green to the industry because of the support that he's had um with Cell and now Josh in his team.
SPEAKER_04:Now running one of our biggest clients. He's he's plugged 10 candidates into a business within two weeks, and that there's scope to get, you know, 50 into one business, you know, which uh and you know, we'll we'll continue to support Harry by training up another remote professional to support him so that he can manage that client um that client relationship and ensure that the service that we provide. Because what we see is like as you know, as people get busier and as consultants' desks grow and the temp numbers they're running grows and the revenue grows, the service drops. And then that's where you know you're at risk of losing accounts and you know clients becoming unhappy. Um, you know, we're we're actually at the Pembra Summit uh awards tomorrow night for you know finalists in the business services for Australia and New Zealand. And the way we've been able to maintain our reputation and service to all of our clients is by supporting our consultants with remote professionals.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell So just to be super clear, so you've got one onshore recruiter.
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:They're supported by one, two remote professionals? Like what does that structure look like?
SPEAKER_04:Aaron Powell We have um revenue targets. Okay. So essentially our revenue targets that we're we we aim to get our consultants to with one remote professional is making fifty thousand dollars in GP in four weeks. Once they've done that or sorry, fifty thousand a month uh uh every four fifty thousand in four weeks. So once they've done four, three periods at fifty thousand, that's when we look at how do we support them get to the next level, which would be say$70,000 or$80,000 in four weeks. And we do that by giving them the option. So it's always the consultant's option whether they would like an onshore account manager to look after some of their accounts while they continue to drive on and do more business development. Um, alternatively, we offer them a second remote professional so that they can essentially continue to grow, um, but their their desk becomes heavily, as you can appreciate, more profitable, which means that they would take home a lot more commission as well.
SPEAKER_01:You partner an onshore recruiter with a remote professional to get them to the 50k a month mark.
SPEAKER_04:It's came four weeks.
SPEAKER_01:Once they hit that, they get a second remote professional.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So so what are the outcomes then for your business? Like what do you see is the the key driver on getting these remote professionals? Is it he gets more time back? Is that ultimately what happens?
SPEAKER_00:I think it'll probably depend on the recruiter and what their motivations and their goals are. So some people it's driven by performance and commission and how much they can earn. Um some of them it is about getting that time back as well, because as everyone knows, recruitment's pretty full on for at the best of times, temp recruitment, especially. It's it's very, very fast-paced. So if you can have someone to help support you to get some of your time back as well, um, if that's what's important, then um then we're we're totally open to that as well.
SPEAKER_04:We even have remote professionals in our business that's you know, we we run hundreds of contractors that that work for us every day, which comes with its own challenges with payroll and pay queries and et cetera, et cetera. So we we have a remote professional, Naomi, shout out Naomi, who uh, you know, her full-time job essentially is to make sure that everyone's timesheet is submitted, approved, and everyone gets paid. We have another remote professional that looks after our social media channels via a platform called Metrical. So she pumps out um you know original content via, you know, so there's so many different aspects of the business where you know you you can get assistance.
SPEAKER_01:I love this. Okay, so that's high level. Sounds pretty good. How does Johnny fit in this picture?
SPEAKER_02:You start. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:So uh Johnny founded the Wingman Group. We've always known of Johnny and with the wingman group from afar because you know they're they are by far the leaders in in outsourcing, in my opinion. Um, and you know, Johnny, you you specialize in the real estate space. Do you want to give us a bit of an overview of how that came about?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's cool to hear how you structured your recruitment agency. So I've got a property management business I started six years ago. Um, the reason I started that business was typically most real estate agencies are sales-based businesses. They got a property management arm. We say it's the ugly kid of the industry. So I started a business to go, right, how do we turn the ugly kid into the cool kid of the industry? And we really focused on PM and we didn't do sales. So we actually had the same model. Every one of our property managers had a remote professional in the Philippines who did all the back end admin. So our property managers could double their output. If the property managers could double their output, it means we could pay them more. Our clients got a better experience and they got to do what they enjoyed. So that was really the foundation. Um, we grew the fastest growing rent role in the country. Wow. We've got 3,000 managements in that business and still running. I've got a CEO who runs that business. Um, and similar to you boys, when um about three years ago, when people started to ask how are you doing this, I started talking about the Philippines and what's possible. So we started helping other real estate agencies do it. And over the last three years we've grown. We've got 1,200 staff in the Philippines across about 800 businesses. Um, and then when I met you guys, um very similar story. It was a cool story, yeah. And an opportunity to support the recruitment industry. And it feels like the recruitment industry is about three years behind the real estate industry in regards to people starting to understand it, but a lot of misconceptions. Um, but now in the real estate industry, every big player is using remote professionals and we're supporting a lot of those agencies. And between all of us, we want to be able to do that in the recruitment space.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was a it was a pretty cool story. So um obviously Sam and I have been integrating remote professionals for a number of years, and um I think uh we'd have recruitment agencies ask us how we do it, where we find them where we find them, why we've been so successful. So we did a bit of a planning that we were going to start a a a secondary business. Um and we got along the journey of actually starting it, and yeah, it was gonna be called our people, remote people, remote people, um, and then ran into to Johnno Roston um in the gym. We go to the same gym together. Um, and and sort of like Sam might have touched on earlier, very big believers on surrounding yourselves with great people, great mentors, um, and asked Johnny, uh asked John if I could take him out for breaky or take him for a lunch. And that's where we first got introduced to to Johnny and Johnno um and had a bit of a chat. And the the initial conversation was to really understand where they like how they got to where they were, what mistakes that they made, where what areas that we should be looking for, what are our blind spots. Yeah. Um help us not make mistakes that you've made with was essentially where we were leading with that meeting. Yeah, absolutely. And that and that were so forthright with their time, um completely honest, and I think we all hit it off really well, um, which was which is awesome. So uh obviously that sort of transpired in multiple discussions. Um I think Johnny's idea to to sort of get involved as well, which is pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04:It didn't even cross my mind, like I don't think I would have, you know, approached you and said, can we, you know, come in. So it's pretty, pretty cool that you know you you met us and and saw saw in us, I guess, a little bit of yourself, you know, when when you started out. And um I think the the joined forces of you know the the the beast that or the the the machine that you know um wingman group has become um you know partnered with you know what what what Jory and I know about how to do it in the the recruitment space. I I know that uh we're we're gonna be able to help so many you know recruitment companies, initially in Australia and New Zealand and eventually, you know, globally, hopefully, do you know what we're calling the H people way, um which is you know changing the perception of outsourcing um you know in recruitment.
SPEAKER_01:You put it perfectly there, which segues on to the perception. Let's talk about the perception because I want to I want to kind of dig into some challenges, some misconceptions, some myths, and try and uncover the reality of getting remote people in your agency for whatever reason. So I guess I'm just gonna throw this out here. A common misconception that I hear is they're just not at the level they need to be. It's almost like you've got to spend more time managing them than you can getting the outcomes that they're trying to deliver. I guess how do you guys unite to overcome that?
SPEAKER_04:A general misconception is that you know, these people are virtual assistants or or VAs. And, you know, I had a post go out, you know, after attending the the wingman retreat, the the word VA or virtual assistant will never ever leave my lips ever again. What a lot of people try to do with outsourcing is they'll they'll pick apart things that they don't want to do or they think that oh, you know, I'll just get somebody to you can do reference checking and formatting CVs. And we're not actually gonna talk to you. We're just gonna send you a message on Teams twice a day and say, do this, you know. And then obviously over time, the remote professional, you know, isn't gonna feel like they're making an impact to your business, potentially might become disengaged, as any of us would if we were working in a pointless job that had really no meaning. Um, so I you know, I I guess what where we've seen the the real change is, you know, when when the remote professionals are integrated with the team on the same level as our onshore team, like we do not view them any differently as our onshore or offshore team. We have you know morning meetings every morning, the whole team's involved. We split our business up into like micro pods where it's Australian and Filipino combined partnership, and they really, really see the difference and the impact that they're making on people's lives. Because that's what we do in recruitment. You know, we're we're impacting and changing candidates' lives by finding them hopefully the job of their dream, and we're helping Australian businesses build their team with high-performing, you know, local, experienced staff. And, you know, when our remote professionals can see Jory and I and our entire team of Hage people have got 40 five-star Google reviews from our candidates and clients, and the majority of them Google reviews will mention our remote professionals' names, you know, as well as other consultants.
SPEAKER_01:Let me challenge you on this. Go. Can a remote professional ruin the integrity of your brand a little bit? I'm just putting myself in the shoes of a recruitment agency owner that loves the idea of getting more time back in their day to do the things that they don't want to do. But one of the reservations is if my clients or candidates even knows that you know I've got a you know remote professional or there's like there's a little bit of an insecurity there and could they ruin my amazing brand that everyone knows me for? So how do you overcome that?
SPEAKER_02:I think um the the reasoning you use offshoring. So the reasoning that I've used offshore is to provide a better level of service. So if I can free my in my real estate business, if I can free my property manager's up to spend more time with their clients, ultimately their client, the the landlords and the tenants win. So in our real estate business, we'd like to think we provide a much, far superior service. Why is that? It's because our staff on the ground can spend more time with their clients and then not doing non-dollar productive activities. So if you're in the recruitment space, not that I'm an expert, but if you're spending time doing admin and you're a recruiter, that's time that you could have been spending with the candidates or finding the perfect role for someone. So you're doing it to be able to support businesses, not to cut costs. And I think with that philosophy, how why would you not rather work with a business who's got double the manpower than a business that can't spend the time doing what they should be doing?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I guess it's like a a shift in perspective. It's how you approach it, it sounds like. It's also the future.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's happening and it's gonna continue to happen. Yeah. So I think it's like, you know, you can get on board now and you can understand that it is the future of business. And you know, every big business does it in every industry. Every good business does it at some in some aspects.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you you try and call Microsoft or Google, there's a remote professional that answers the phone. Exactly. If Google and Microsoft can get away with it, surely ABC recruitment down in Sherwood can probably do the same thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So all of the big banks as well, they they outsource all of their recruitment to the Philippines. And you know, that's where we find a lot of the you know, the the remote professionals that we're we're placing into Australian uh recruitment companies.
SPEAKER_02:There's an interesting way to look at it as well. There's outsourcing and there's offshoring. So outsourcing typically is when Telstra Call Center, they outsource their whole customer service division to India, and there's a call center that answers it. Typically, that's a tough experience. We're not outsourcing, we're offshoring. So we're not, we're not actually going in and saying we're gonna outsource your whole business. We're supporting your business. They become an embedded part of your business, which is offshoring. So I think where people go, yeah, they they they see they think of it as that whole department's gonna go offshore. It's not. It's basically you're offshoring, you're supporting agencies and businesses provide better service.
SPEAKER_01:What if with a click of a finger you could start your own recruitment agency? Well, now you can. With XRecruiter, launching your own agency has never been easier. In less than three weeks, you could be taking home 85% more of your billings with everything handled for you. You recruit, we take care of the rest. Click the link in the description to see if you are ready to take that next step. So, what are you doing then to avoid the negative experiences? Um, I know for myself, I've used some uh remote offshore outsource type of businesses before. Um I think about 18 months ago I I put a an offshore remote professional that buddied up with every single one of my consultants. And to be fair, it was a little bit of a train wreck to be totally open open. And I don't know specifically why, if if it was um the inability to know or or to teach the recruiter the best way to engage and manage that offshore person, or the offshore person was no good, or there was there was some sort of disconnect. So you've obviously got 1200, did you say? Yeah. Do you have any secret source on how you're able to like stop these types of situations from happening? Like what what do you see?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, that's the real reason I'm so excited by this partnership as well, is that there's two key reasons offshoring doesn't work. The offshore staff members are not trained in the industry specifically, and they're not really well embedded into the business. So if you go and get a VA that other companies call it, you just go get a random VA and say, hey, here's your job. 99% of the time it's not going to work. You need to train them in the industry. So in the real estate sector, we train them for three months before they go into a business. For three months before they go in, they they learn how to manage the property better than an Australian does. Same as what we're doing in the recruitment space now. We're building a training academy. We have an onshore Australian recruitment trainer who's specifically training that person before they go into the business. Go out. So it so if you were if you're a recruiter, um, if you get an offshore staff member and they're fully trained, the chance of success is much higher than if they're not trained. And then the second part is you then need to teach the Australian on what to delegate and how to delegate. So you give the offshore person a trained offshore to the recruiter, but then you also help them build process, build systems so it becomes embedded. And if you do those two things well, it's a the success rate is highly, highly um it's gonna work. But if it's yeah, if if you don't do those two things and you don't do them well, and it's why um offshoring's never really worked in recruitment in the past, is because no one's really specialized in that training piece. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I mean, we're in the we're we've we're forming partnerships at the moment with you know, the likes of JobAdder, Bullhorn, Locso, so we can really provide uh a tailored um a tailored training academy for every single business, essentially. So we'll run the remote professionals depending on you know which CRM the client uses. We're developing different um different segments and different uh training uh pieces to to run them through before they start.
SPEAKER_01:I've never heard of that. I've used plenty of you know VAs as other companies call it. And you're right, usually it's just here you go. Hey mate, do you like them? Like, yeah, all right, I'll give them a crack, I guess. And now what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're kind of just winging it. Um and sometimes it feels like hard to fully commit to that level of investment to training up the remote professional because you're still not entirely sure if they understand industry jargon, they understand the CRM. Like there's so many little elements that just take a lot of time up to get them up to speed, which is probably why the fall-over rate's so high.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, 100%. And it's if their um recruiters are busy and they want to spend their time doing DLs. So um that's what we to get to combine. We're gonna take away all that noise so that they can hit the ground running and get some quick wins.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the the the fact that you could have an RP, join your business, be comfortable with your CRM system that you use, whether that's a bullhorn or LOXO, a job adder, and they don't be able to navigate their way around the system. They don't know how you like your CBs formatted because they've spent time with Abby and the onshore training team. It's just gonna be the integration pieces are so key. Um and that's what excites me as well, is seeing how the Wingman group have formed this integration and it's such a well-oiled machine that it's it it it shocked me at first of how well that the system runs and then how well that the RP can essentially hit the ground running.
SPEAKER_02:The only difference with Wingman is we don't charge a replacement fee. Like onshore recruiters, right? Like onshore recruiters.
SPEAKER_04:I was chatting, I was chatting to a um a medical recruitment company uh just yesterday. Um, and you know, I'd asked him if he'd ever considered it or thought about it, and he said, mate, look, I'm gonna stop you there. You know, it's not gonna work. You know, everything that we do is you know too important. Um, you know, we're dealing with doctors and I can't have remote professionals in the Philippines working in my team. And I was just like, okay, cool. Um, you know, do you mind if I ask you something? And I said, Do you you know you use a CRM? Yep. Um do you do you require um, you know, qualifications and documents to be you know obtained from the doctors or the nurses and then to be uploaded, you know, into the CRM? And he's like, Yeah, of course we do. We we need compliance. And I was like, okay, perfect. So, you know, task audit, that is potentially something that we could look at getting your consultants how long does it take them? You know, 15 minutes, 30 minutes back and forward. You know, we can get your consultant 30 minutes of time back just by getting a remote professional to do this one thing for him, which means that he can go out and spend, you know, that's like 10% of your day. You're getting 10% of your day back so that you can go and find another client, or you know, you can provide a better service to your existing client and potentially, you know, bed yourself deeper, make more placements within you know your your existing or you know, more more clients.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that story because that's so true. What was it what was his response?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, actually, you're right.
SPEAKER_01:Cool. Call me next week.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_01:Because there's like there's two things, like there's two questions that I've got from just this conversation. The first is around how to make the RPs have more meaningful work and get better engagement from them, which is something that seems like Wingman does really, really well. I mean, I was looking at some of Sam's stories before I had to put the phone down and thought, geez, I wish I was there. Um, so so there's that that we'll we'll probably dig into that I think is probably um pretty beneficial. But then the second thing is like how do how does it work mechanically? Like the tasks and duties, you know, what are the three key activities or tasks that an RP can do that can really get a recruiter's time back?
SPEAKER_00:I I think the the activities depend on what's important to the recruiter as well. So um for what I've found out, speaking to so many more recruiters now is what works well in our business doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna work well in another business because they've got different priorities. Um, for us, it's them working hand in hand with each individual recruiter. So if we've got Kurt that's looking after the north side and then Kaz, who's his RP supporting him, Kaz does all the candidate candidate attraction generation. She'll speak to clients, she'll book in meetings, she'll organize medicals. That way, Kurt can really focus on doing new business development or he can do further account management to give that better service. Um but speaking to other recruiters, the the thing that they're falling over might be the compliance aspect. It could be the administrative task, it could be the fact that they don't have enough time to do um lead generation, which is obviously an important part of getting uh getting new deals. So um that's probably what I found out is every recruitment business is a little bit different. And that's why that recruitment academy is so awesome because it gives that RP experience in the recruitment agency that they're about to go into and what works well for them.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've got more questions now because I find it really fascinating how you guys put RPs into your business. Um, KPIs, how do you manage their performance? Like who does that?
SPEAKER_04:We have daily huddles every single morning, which is where we sort of discuss wins from yesterday, priorities for day, challenges, what our outcomes need to be by the end of the day. Um I guess from from a ha the H people way, um, you know, one KPI would be, you know, it's not uncommon for our consultants to have 20 to 30 open roles at any one time, which as you can appreciate is quite stressful, you know, makes the chest quite tight sometimes. Um but knowing that you have a remote professional that, you know, some days, you know, we might be so, so busy that our consultants might do, you know, two to five BD calls and then they're sourcing and our RPs are sourcing. But I guess a KPI for, you know, one of the one of the key KPIs for our remote professional resources would be interviews every afternoon.
SPEAKER_00:Five booked interviews every single day with a minimum of three attended. Um obviously there's things that do come up where a a a candidate might not be available for an interview, but um, all of the RPs need to have three um interviews per day as a minimum. Um it's not uncommon for Joanne to book eight to ten interviews a day for Josh. Um another one of the KPIs that we run with that, they need to connect with a minimum of 30 connected, unique calls per day. Uh so that means that they're connecting with an additional 30 candidates. Sometimes they're connecting with clients as well, but unique 30 calls per day. Um, in terms of call numbers, um, Joanne's probably the biggest in our s in our space, but I've seen her hit 80, 90, 100 calls a day.
SPEAKER_04:Wow. Honestly, unbelievable. And like, you know, some of those calls, like we we never ever, ever want to let our service drop. And that's to both candidates and clients. So one KPI that the remote professionals do is like that they're building relationships with these candidates. They're the you know, they've they're the first person that's spoken to them, they've set up the interview with the consultant, they've sent them their details, they make sure they're okay for the first day. And the KPI is that they speak to every single candidate after they finish work on their first day and ask them how their day was and if they enjoyed the job and if they want to go back tomorrow. And so, you know, some recruiters just, you know, are awesome men, you know, and you never hear from them again. But you know, we want to make sure that the candidate wants to stay in that job long term. You know, a big part of our service is, you know, if the candidate doesn't like the job, we're gonna pick up on that first call and they're gonna say to us, hey mate, look, it was all right, I can't see myself working here long term. Have you got anything else? What you know Jory and I have instilled into our team is do not waste our clients' time training a candidate that is not going to stick around. You know what I mean? So those aftercare calls at the end of every first day, speci we we do it in the t uh you know the blue collar and the permanent space, but they are crucial and we have remote professionals make them phone calls and develop relationships with our candidates. Where do they call from? So we we use a CRM called LOXO and everyone in our Business has a a soft phone number. Like a VoIP.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So essentially we we've got our CRM and we can call directly from our laptop and it doesn't matter. I I actually got stuck Aussie mobile number. I got stuck in the UK during COVID for four and a half months. So I used to work from um 11 p.m. to 9 a.m. every single day until I could actually get a flight back to Australia. No one knew I was there. No one knew I was in England at all. You know, our remote professionals call from and we don't hide the fact that they're they're they're Philip Philippine, but no one's going to answer a number if it says plus six three. So that's why we use an Australian CRM with Australian mobile numbers. And you know, any of our candidates and clients can call our remote professionals on an Australian mobile number and their laptop rings in the Philippines. And it's just like you're ringing a mobile. Yeah, interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Even just over in the Philippines last week on the retreat, doing calls from the laptop there, and it's coming out from an Australian phone number, which is pretty cool. So some pretty cool spots. I was taking some BD calls, that's for sure. Yeah. Borocai, baby.
SPEAKER_01:We need to talk about the retreat. What about what about like their accent? Do they have a thick accent? Are they okay with English?
SPEAKER_02:I um so I've got a Filipino receptionist for my real estate business. His name's Richard. Yes. He used to sell penny stocks on Wall Street. No, he didn't train himself to have an American accent, and then he became the head of customer care for Amex and used to look after the hyper wealthy when they'd have issues with their Amex. So when I heard that story, I was like, how does he not answer tenant calls? Um, he's been our receptionist for the last two years, answers about 80 calls a day, record every single call. We best reception I've ever had. If he was in Australia, we'd hire him tomorrow. He's in the Philippines. So you can get them with the at the end of the day, they're from the Philippines, but they're um they've got this American twang to their accent. Yeah. If they speak really good English and they know the answer, it doesn't matter that they've got some sort of accent as long as they're knowledgeable in what they're talking about. We haven't had an issue with it at all. Um, never had a never had a complaint. We get people come to our office saying we want to speak to Richard. Someone came to our office with a gift for Richard. So yeah, it's again, it's all mindset.
SPEAKER_04:It is, it's a limiting belief. You know, there's there's no it it doesn't matter. Yeah, that they they speak better English than you know, probably half the people in Australia.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and they all listen to American TV, they're not gonna be able to do it. Friends, yeah, they're obsessed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So's my wife, though. Yeah, that's super fascinating. So um so we've spoken about some of the kind of the myths or the concerns that probably many recruiters might have, or some misinterpretations on what that's like. Um how how do you feel like it's changed your business though? Like I I I don't know if this is gonna be too personal, Johnny, but it now that you've got a um a Filipino that's doing a great job answering the phone, like what's the cost difference between hiring someone at his caliber in the office versus hiring someone at his caliber in the Philippines?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so the the average wage is around$30,000, including the wingman fees is about$30,000 annually. Yeah. Um, that includes all setup and everything as well, right? So if you does that include the training that goes into correct. Yeah, so you're getting a full-time staff member for$30,000 because my business is at a certain size, it also includes not paying payroll tax, which stings as well. So in Australia, I reckon that for a receptionist in Australia, you might be paying$80,000 plus super, plus desk space, plus everything else. So it probably works out. I reckon their wage plus 20% to actually have them in your office. So 100, 110 grand. So we I reckon there's about a one to four ratio. You could have four staff in the Philippines to one in Australia. That's wild. And everyone wants to work from home these days as well, don't they? Especially in recruitment.
SPEAKER_01:The big one in recruitment, like recruit people recruiters demand high wages and well, well, to be totally fair, most recruiters are remote professionals themselves, even if they live in Australia. Like, how many, how many recruiters are physically going out and meeting their clients and physically meeting their candidates, mate? Everything's on online.
SPEAKER_04:We are age people, baby. Well, you guys, yeah, we're we're active.
SPEAKER_01:It's different for you boys being in blue-collar labour hire. Like you've got to be boots on the ground. But for the other 60, 70% of the industry where especially, I think my girls have only just started doing client appointments for the first time in like four years.
SPEAKER_04:But for all of you recruiting interstate as well. You know, that's that's all done remotely, isn't it? When you when you're based in one state. Like I I uh a lot of our permanent placements, you know, come from a number of companies that are national. And I'll get a phone call from you know the the transport manager and he'll say, Sammy Boy, need uh a wharf allocator over in Perth sorted out. You know, all remote.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you could be in the Philippines filling that role for him. May I probably will be living in the Philippines for the winter of Brisbane soon. So um I I've shared that I've I've used remote people in my agency, Vendito, for a while, and maybe this might colour in some sort of inspiration or context on uh some of the things that a remote professional can do in your business from an outcome standpoint. So we've got a remote professional Colin. Um he is honestly the backbone of Vendito. Um I'm pretty sure my whole team would wig out major if he ever left us. He's been with me seven years. And um some of the like the what what the day looks like for a remote professional. So we have our kind of KPIs almost is 10 targeted prospect um BD emails every single day. Um then throughout the day, source 30 to 40 candidates for an open job in the CRM. Then at the end of the day, the consultants tag the two best recruiters that they've uh sorry, the two best candidates that they've spoken to for the day, and he has to reverse market them to 10 companies every single day. So essentially what this does is you've got someone who can do all of this administrative work. You guys are smiling. Yeah. What do you reckon? Just getting some new ideas.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So so essentially, essentially what we do there is the 10 BD emails prospecting, shortlists the candidates for the recruiter just to wake up in the morning and pump phones and then reverse market those actual candidates to 10 competing companies that they work at. And then all of a sudden you've got another 30 BD emails going out, and it's just a machine.
SPEAKER_00:And that's exactly what I was sort of getting at before is like the way that our business operates, completely different to how Vendito operates and doing this recruitment academy with the RP so that they know what to expect when they're coming into the to their new business, um, just sets them up for success. And hearing some of the stories about the Vendito, I'm sort of getting some new ideas for some of our teams. So I'm sorry, guys.
SPEAKER_04:Well, there's a couple of extra tasks we can add on this task. You know, a number of our RPs, like when when we are in a mad growth phase, like and we don't have enough jobs on, like we we we do target our remote professionals to do ad chasing in the specific geographical location that they are partnered up with. So they'll essentially just go on Seek, screen through Seek and find private companies that are posting. Um then they'll scrape the D scrape the information off of uh off of LinkedIn or from another platform, put them in the CRM, send them personalized emails, sometimes even make a phone call to make that personalized touched, and then um put them in a an automated outreach that essentially touches them every three days and says, Did you get my email? How are you going with your recruit? Have you hired anyone yet? More often you know, in in the blue-collar space, they they've probably had like 16 no shows and you know, someone's probably stolen the company car and you know, number number of things. And you know, we we get you know so many discovery meetings from that outbound prospecting that takes a remote professional one to two hours of the morning to do for us.
SPEAKER_01:I know you're probably gonna be a little bit biased, all right, but what's the difference between wingman recruitment specifically for remote people and then finding you know one of the other thousand remote people companies to go and engage with?
SPEAKER_00:I um Sam and I were fortunate to go to the Philippines earlier in May this year, and that was a transformative experience to meet our team for the first time. Um being fortunate enough to go with Johnny and Wingman and getting an invited on that Wingman retreat and seeing how they've integrated their RPs with hundreds of businesses, and then to get to Laguna and see about a hundred real estate companies meet their RPs sometimes for the first time and see the tears in both the Australian and the RP's eyes, was awesome. And to sit back from afar, because Sam and I were very fortunate that we got to do this, we were there with Louie, but I really sat back and and really watched and looked and how happy everyone was. It was a like a big collective family. Um the Wingman Games, which was probably my favorite part of um the whole trip, the retreat um at Laguna, Borocai was awesome, but I think the Wingman Games is great because it wasn't just it wasn't RP, it wasn't um Australian client, it was just one team. Um and I had a post go out the other day and it was two nations and one team, and that's what I saw. Um I don't see any other, let's call it a VA company or an outsource company, an offshore company that does this at all. Um but Wingman does, and that's why it's special.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, most people kind of treat them differently. Yeah, second, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They're they're not they're they're the same.
SPEAKER_01:Why do you treat them differently, Johnny?
SPEAKER_02:Because they're real people. When you get to know their story, they're just they're human beings. They're the the culture over there, they're very loyal, um, they're extremely family oriented. Like the culture, the way they live. When you first go to the Philippines, you go, how do they live like this? But then after a while you start to go, this is how everyone should live. Like, you know, on a Friday night, they'll sit with their family singing karaoke till 2 a.m. And that's their dream now. And they're so appreciative of the little thing. So I mean, they've transformed my life, they've transformed my business. Um, and you know, I want to give back. And then, you know, to answer your question around the differences, obviously that's a huge part of our DNA. But then there's also no company that has grown like you guys have in the recruitment space who's now helping others. So, you know, other recruitment agencies are getting your IP free of charge. And it's, you know, I was thinking about it's like built by recruiters for recruiters. And I think same as Wingman in the real estate space, we're a real estate company. We get the game, we know what the offshore need to do, and we know what they need to be able to do for other agencies. And I think being a specialized having the manpower of Wingman, but specialized in recruitment, that's where the magic's gonna be, and that's why we've had so much success together so far.
SPEAKER_01:Love that. So um I want to leave the audience with some actionable insights. Um, if someone likes the idea of offshoring, um, they're not sure where to start. What do they do next?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. They can hit hit us up on LinkedIn. It's probably the the easiest option. There's there's heaps of content around either Wingman recruitment, wingman group, um, Sam and I. Um you could check out our pages if you're if you're interested. Um that would probably be the first actionable step. Um, check out some of the vlogs that will be coming out as well, what the actual trip is like, um, and then you'll start to see how it can really transform your business for sure.
SPEAKER_01:All right, so wingman recruitment on LinkedIn, H people, everyone knows H people, so that'll be nice and easy. Was there some sort of checklist of like tasks? Like, let's say I'm just gonna play devil's advocate. I'm not ready to reach out to you boys right now. I don't know what I'm doing. I just like the idea of offshoring. What's maybe a less committed way that they can start to get their mind ticking along for offshoring?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, we do have a task list that essentially what some of our team do, and it's not an exhaustive task. I think there's about sort of 40 action points. I'm sure we'll be able to clip a link to the bottom of the episode, um, whether that's on Spotify or YouTube, so you could check that out. Um, and we can also sort of link that into our um Wingman recruitment page as well, um, sort of see what that's all about too.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. I'm really excited about Wingman Recruitment because especially seeing Johnny and the absolute crazy success that he's had, and it seems like the just the key differentiator is you treat the remote people like humans. So you must be a good human yourself. So it's nice working with good humans. Um, you've really focused your niche, the training for three months before they go into a business. That's that's pretty crazy. Yeah. Um, so there's a lot of uh infrastructure behind behind making these RPs work on day one. It's not like you're just putting someone in the role for the first time and going, hopefully this works out. Um, you're spending your resources, your time, your IP up front to try and get them job ready so they can hit the ground running and have a higher success rate, which is really, really cool and fascinating. So congrats, boys. I love that. Um, and so if anyone wants, can can I can we do like a some sort of discount plug for confessions? Like if they come through confessions and they reach out to Wingman Recruitment, can they have some sort of discount? Oh, sorry to put you on the spot, boys.
SPEAKER_02:This is an expensive podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Um I suppose full transparency at the moment, um, it is um the onboarding fees is$2,000 to initially sign up. Anyone that does mention the confessions will drop it to that$1,000 for initial sign up. Um, and then obviously ongoing from there.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. So save a thousand bucks just by listening to confessions. You're welcome. Cool. Well, it's been a good episode, boys. I appreciate you sharing more insights around remote professionals and how it can elevate your business. Johnny, it's always good seeing you, mate. You too. Thanks for the opportunity. Awesome. Love it. Thanks, thank you. Thanks, BT