Dana Sarkissian | How to Become the Go-To Recruiter in Any Niche | COAR S3 E6

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Send us Fan MailMatthew Munson, Managing Director NSW at Talent Group, came to recruitment the long way round. A campervan trip around Australia turned into a decision to stay, and a phone call about a job in tech recruitment changed everything.He landed in 2006 with no idea what a .NET developer was. First six months, he hated it. The language was foreign, the role was a step back from where he'd been, and his ego took a hit. After six months, something clicked. Two years later he was team lead while billing at the top of his office.What followed was twenty years of building desks, running multi-office teams across Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, leading RPO accounts at the exec level for brands like Yahoo 7 and eBay, and eventually becoming MD of NSW at Talent — a business he's been growing for nearly a decade.In this episode Matthew talks through what actually goes wrong on an underperforming desk, why he's fired high billers, and why moving into management too fast is one of the most common mistakes he sees. He also gets into what it takes to build a personal brand that actually works, why AI-generated content is already valueless, and what being proud to call yourself a recruiter has to do with how long you last in this industry.One of the most honest career conversations we've had on the show.Support the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

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Send us Fan MailDana Sarkissian, Associate Director at iPharm Consulting, started in recruitment in 1999, back when shortlists went out by fax and couriers on bikes collected printed resumes off your desk.Twenty-five years on, she's the go-to recruiter in clinical trials, running a 9,000-member industry community on LinkedIn and taking calls from clients who want her advice before they want her candidates.In this episode Dana talks through the early years on a desk that never fit, why she left the industry without another job lined up, and what brought her back. She unpacks the decision that changed everything: going deep into a niche she actually cared about, and saying no to work that falls outside it.We also get into what real business development looks like when you stop chasing job ads, why the KPIs most agencies track are measuring the wrong things, and the advice she gives every rookie who's thinking about walking away.One of the most practical conversations we've had on the show.Support the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

Send us Fan MailYour career can look “successful” on paper and still feel wrong in your gut, and that’s where this chat with Chris Barr lands straight away. Chris is State Director Queensland at Six Degrees Executive, and he’s refreshingly honest about what it really takes to build a recruitment career in Australia: making the calls when you’re nervous, doing the reps when you’d rather hide, and sticking with the long game even when the market turns.We walk through Chris’s path from running 51 supermarkets in the UK to starting recruitment after a life jolt, six months travelling the east coast, and interviewing from a Brisbane backpackers hostel. From there, we get into the real skills that separate average from great in agency recruitment: a tight feedback loop, learning by osmosis in a strong team, and why investing in candidates early pays off years later. We also talk about the “playbook” culture in bigger firms, how it can crush authenticity, and why being yourself is not a soft extra, it’s part of your brand and performance.Leadership is a big theme too, from inheriting teams and building social capital, to stepping into a State Director role and dealing with imposter syndrome. Chris shares how he thinks in clear buckets (people, performance, customer), why a personal board matters, and what he’s doing with AI in recruitment to buy time back for real human conversations. If you’re curious about practical AI use, you’ll love his example of building a Claude app to prep better one-to-ones and reclaim hours every week.If you got value from this, subscribe, share it with a recruiter mate, and leave a review so more people can find the show.Support the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

Send us Fan MailSupport the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

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Send us Fan MailRikki Tiwari became a recruiter purely by accident. He arrived in Sydney with $500 in his pocket and no plan, having spent his early UK career on corporate sales floors, then in sales coaching and NLP training. Robert Half in Sydney threw him straight into it, and year one tested him hard even when he was doing everything right. His first major placement came from a move most recruiters avoid: meeting a client when there was no live job at all. From there it was Ourpath, then in February 2020, walking away from the corporate ladder to build ARCQ Talent, his own agency, niched into the Microsoft ecosystem across infrastructure, cloud, dev, data, security and AI/ML. Going solo meant learning the hard way that you're also the marketer, the finance department and the delivery team, and that the loneliness is real. So he built the systems and SOPs to protect his family time, while staying stubbornly human-first on the phone with clients and candidates.If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe, share it with a recruiter mate, and leave a review to help more people find the show. Support the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

Send us Fan MailHe landed his first deal within days of launching Trade Plus Recruitment. No inherited database. No clients waiting. No one telling him what to do next.We sit down with Max Kozin to talk through the part nobody glamorises: payroll exposure, insurance, health and safety compliance, and the mental load of starting a blue-collar recruitment agency from scratch.We get into the systems he built to move fast. Max uses Loxo to send candidates a structured pre-screening form that updates his database automatically, so when a client needs carpenters tomorrow, he can sort by tickets, location, and availability in minutes. If you've ever tried to phone-screen hundreds of applicants, you'll understand why this changes everything for labour hire.We also dig into niche strategy and BD. Max breaks down how his niche tightened over time, why "carpentry" alone is still too broad, and why focusing on self-delivering builders makes the desk more profitable. He shares how he approaches market mapping, uses tools like Firmable, and why going interstate made sense once he truly knew his market.The thread running through all of it: back yourself, build better processes, and make your edge the fact that clients deal directly with the person who cares most.If you're thinking about starting a recruitment agency, scaling a labour hire desk, or just sharpening your niche, this one's for you. Support the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io

Send us Fan MailSupport the show· Our Website is: xrecruiter.io