Andy Dunne thought other recruiters were the enemy. They stole clients, poached candidates, and copied ideas. Does this sound familiar?
Then, in 2014, he joined Team to save £130 a month on job boards. CV Library wanted £330 for 10 job adverts. Team got it down to £200 plus £65 membership. Andy figured he’d take the discount and skip the meetings.
Eleven years later, he’s the Team’s managing director. Their 500+ agencies split over £6 million in fees last year. What changed? Andy learned that hoarding everything actually kills more deals than it creates.
Episode Outline and Highlights
- [2:20] How payroll admin led to recruitment (thanks to Peaches Green, the branch manager who saw his potential)
- [10:45] Placing 100+ articulated lorry drivers daily for Tesco and burning out
- [13:10] The Team lightbulb: why collaboration beats competition
- [25:39] 130 hires in one year – doubling the previous record of 60 at Thales
- [29:24] Mental health matters: losing a colleague to suicide during lockdown
- [37:16] The flip: 80% of Team members went from generalist to specialist since 2014
- [42:31] How two specialists split £40,600 by working together instead of competing
- [44:43] The quarterly report that made one recruiter untouchable
- [51:25] Growing Team using the same BD tactics that work for agencies
- [55:50] Bot applications are flooding job boards – here’s the opportunity
From Competition to Collaboration
Most agency owners protect their knowledge like state secrets. Andy was the same. When he started his business, he had zero interest in talking to other agency owners.
“I always had the perception that they would steal my ideas, steal my clients, steal my candidates. I didn’t really understand what they could give.”
One team meeting changed that—twenty-five other agency owners were in one room. The energy was different. These people had walked his path already. They’d made the same mistakes, figured out solutions, and were willing to share them.
Andy realized that your real competition isn’t the agency down the road. It’s AI replacing recruiters, managed service providers, and companies trying to hire without you entirely.
After seven years running his own defense recruitment business, Andy took a year-long detour. He went in-house at Thales the defense contractor. It was the best decision he ever made.
With security clearance, he could see the actual technology being built. He understood project forecasts. When CVs came in from other business units, he could map candidates across divisions because he knew what each team did.
The result? 130 hires in one year. The previous record was 60. He offered £9 million in base salaries.
“I learned so much in that one-year period. Stuff I wish I knew earlier in my journey.”
What’s the lesson for agency owners? Most of us guess at what clients really need. Andy could see it. He knew which roles were genuinely urgent and which were nice-to-haves. He understood which hiring managers moved fast.
The Specialist Revolution and Market Intelligence
Here’s a stat that should wake you up. When Andy joined Team in 2014, 80% of the members were generalists. Today, 80% are specialists. Why the flip? The generalists are getting crushed.
“The ones doing really well are doubling down on their specialisms.”
But here’s where most people get specialization wrong. They think “IT recruiter” counts. It doesn’t. You need to go deep enough that you’re the obvious choice when clients have problems in your space.
Two Team members prove this. One specializes in engineering, one in finance. The finance recruiter gets an engineering role. Instead of faking it, she brings the engineering specialist to the client briefing. The client is so impressed that they make it retained. Two months later, the engineering recruiter returns the favor. Both roles get filled. They split £40,600.
Want to stop chasing prospects? Make them chase you instead. Andy tells this story about a recruiter who cracked the code. He’d send reports to hiring managers at his target companies every quarter.
Page one: competitor analysis. He’d scrape their websites and show vacancy counts by skill set, salary bands, and locations. Page two: candidate insights from his daily conversations. Salary expectations, reasons for moving and market trends.
When the company finally needed external help, guess who they called?
The beauty? Every recruiter already has this information. You talk to candidates daily. You see what clients are doing. You don’t package it properly. With AI note-takers, you can capture everything and turn it into reports without the manual grind.
The Reality of Running an Agency Alone
During lockdown, a guy in Andy’s office building took his own life. Solo business owner, couldn’t handle the isolation.
“That had a big impact on me. It changed what I was writing in my journal every day.”
Now Andy runs mental health sessions for Team agencies, covering burnout, resilience, and the impact of alcohol on business owners. Running an agency is brutal: long hours, constant rejection, feast-or-famine cycles. The “grind harder” mentality breaks owners and their businesses.
Andy partners with Shout UK, a crisis text service, and raises funds to train more counselors. The isolation of running a solo agency, especially during tough markets, isn’t something to ignore.
