Why Your Recruitment Team Isn’t Hitting Targets – And How to Turn It Around

If you’re running a permanent or temporary recruitment agency, a search firm, or leading a growing team, you know the frustration of underperformance all too well. Perhaps you’ve poured money into incentive schemes, scheduled endless training sessions, or pushed for more meetings, yet little seems to change. Katy and Jane share that you’re not alone—and more importantly, they shine a light on the real reasons behind why recruitment teams so often miss their targets. This episode offers practical advice straight from their conversation, giving you real-world solutions to get your agency or team hitting those numbers—without sacrificing your own sanity.

Understanding Underperformance: It’s Not Laziness

Both Katy and Jane are quick to point out that underperformance in recruitment is rarely down to simple laziness or apathy. This is a relief to hear, but it also means you have to investigate beneath the surface. Most commonly, the reasons your consultants aren’t hitting targets come down to a handful of core business issues: a lack of structure, inconsistent management, gaps in training, unclear expectations, and broken communication. Left unchecked, these create a cycle of low morale, high turnover, and ultimately, missed revenue.

Katy makes it clear: business owners in recruitment often start on their own, chasing revenue, before they build a team. Suddenly, they’re not just paying their own wages—they’re responsible for everyone’s. With the relentless hustle comes the temptation to cut corners on management basics. You rush from one revenue opportunity to the next. Before you know it, your team’s needs are sidelined and the groundwork for solid performance is never set.

Jane likens employees to a garden: they need regular tending, structure, and encouraging guidance. If these things aren’t built into your agency rhythm, you can expect disengagement, demotivation, and, eventually, people leaving. The solution isn’t to micromanage, but to return to basics—putting in place routines for support and clear channels for feedback.

The First Pitfall: The Coaching Gap and Skipped One-to-Ones

Perhaps the most common management shortfall is the “coaching gap.” You might think informal daily chats or the odd conversation about workload will suffice, but this skips what really matters—focused, regular one-to-ones. When you neglect these, you’re not just cancelling a meeting. You’re unintentionally sending a loud message: the consultant isn’t a priority. As Jane’s story from her own early career shows, pushing aside a scheduled one-to-one can be all it takes for an employee to lose faith and walk out.

Consistent, diarised one-to-ones aren’t just about ticking boxes or reviewing performance targets. They give you a protected space to understand both the tangible—and the subtle—aspects of your consultants’ work. It’s a chance to dig beyond the numbers and ask how they’re really getting on: What’s working? What’s challenging? How are they feeling?

Katy and Jane recommend setting the frequency of one-to-ones based on experience and seniority. For junior recruiters or those with under three years’ experience, weekly catch ups are essential. Seniors may only need this every fortnight, while very experienced, autonomous consultants could move to monthly reviews. The cadence matters most: it brings a drumbeat of accountability and support into the team. Importantly, these meetings should be moved only in absolute emergencies—a tornado, as Jane puts it—otherwise, the message is clear: “Clients and candidates are more important than you.”

One-to-ones should have clear structure and expectation. They’re not just for discussing deals closed; they’re for deeper development, relationship building, and uncovering the person behind the desk. You’ll find that as consultants feel supported and valued, their engagement and discretionary effort both rise.

Chaos vs Structure: Meetings That Work

Jane and Katy move on to the distinction between “chaos meetings” and structured one-to-ones. Too often, hurried or haphazard meetings waste time, run on too long, or never address meaningful topics. A purposeful one-to-one, on the other hand, is anchored by a clear agenda and mutual preparation.

For a start, decide what both you and the consultant should bring to the meeting. Jane suggests the consultant handles the legwork: current numbers, recent issues, notable successes. This not only saves you time—it forces consultants to interface with your CRM, reflect on their performance, and come prepared with questions or areas they’d like input on.

The format can be simple but should remain consistent: numbers, wins, areas for development, and set accountabilities to follow up at the next meeting. For newer hires, it could be a quick daily huddle. For more experienced members, 30 minutes a week may suffice. Always lock the time in both your diaries and make sure the meeting never overruns.

The real value of these meetings is twofold. First, they build habits of high performance—removing surprises and keeping development regular. Second, they normalise feedback, making it safe and constructive rather than something only delivered when things go wrong. When feedback is regular and expected, it’s less likely to be perceived as an ambush.

Feedback Loops That Don’t Wait for Disaster

In the fast-paced recruitment world, feedback often arrives too late—sometimes only when someone’s already underperforming. Worse, consultants may never receive actionable input at all, instead being called to a post-probation ‘review’ where their faults are listed with little prior warning. Katy compares this to training a dog: If feedback comes long after the event, it’s meaningless and demotivating.

The answer is timely, on-the-spot feedback loops, both positive and constructive. These should be integrated into your rhythm so it’s never a surprise. Rather than waiting until frustration boils over or the quarter ends, you’re giving feedback as events occur. Jane notes the importance of clarifying intent, especially for new joiners: let them know you will be offering feedback—public praise, private critiques—so it never carries a sting of the unexpected.

If you weren’t present when a problem occurred, a quick coaching conversation—“How did that call go for you? What went well? What would you change next time?”—takes a minute and fosters a supportive culture.

This approach also dismantles the “fear factor” many have from harsher old-school recruitment environments, where “Can we have five minutes?” was code for a verbal dressing-down. With regular and transparent feedback, consultants don’t live in fear of the unknown, and you address gaps in behaviour or skill long before they turn into headline problems.

Data Matters: Banishing the Data Void

For Katy and Jane, one of the most significant contributors to underperformance is a “data void.” Simply put, your team can’t hit what they can’t see. Far too many agencies either over-rely on their shiny CRM dashboards or, worse, avoid performance numbers altogether because of historical resistance to “KPIs.”

Numbers aren’t just for the business owner—they are fuel for the consultant as well. But it’s not enough to present team figures. Consultants should be tracking their own ratios: calls taken, meetings booked, CVs sent, first interviews, placements, and so on. Crucially, they need to know the conversion rate at each stage (e.g., how many calls it takes to book a client meeting, how many CVs lead to a first interview).

Jane recounts her early training, where she had to prepare these numbers for her monthly reviews, pen, paper and all. This wasn’t just hoop-jumping—it gave ownership and made her directly responsible for her performance. When consultants have to calculate—and understand—these ratios themselves, they become the drivers of their own outcomes. They learn how to reverse-engineer their targets and understand what really moves the needle.

If your tech stack is impressive but nobody knows how those colourful dashboards are calculated—or what to do with the numbers—you’re missing the point. A fifteen-minute explainer video or a simple training session for new joiners on how to prep for a monthly review can make all the difference. Automate reminders for them to prepare. The key is for every team member to feel their numbers are their own—and for the system to make access to those metrics simple and vital.

You’ll know you’re on the right track when consultants are the first to shout if they can’t log in to check their ratios.

Rising and Falling Morale: Spotting the Signs and Intervening Early

Morale is a fragile commodity in recruitment, and it directly impacts performance. Katy notes that dips in motivation and engagement often go unnoticed—until someone’s numbers crash, or worse, they quit. Jane describes the typical life cycle: a new starter is initially buoyant, wins a few quick deals, but then inevitably hits obstacles. Clients complain, candidates drop out, deals collapse. Confidence wanes, and with it, performance.

It’s in this critical period—often a few months in, when enthusiasm gives way to reality—that ongoing management and support are most needed. But this is precisely where many owners panic, focusing on attitude (“they’re leaving at five-thirty on the dot, they mustn’t care”) rather than recognising the crushing effect of repeated failure and lack of support. As Jane points out, “Who wants to stay a half-hour longer just to fail even more?”

If you’re meeting your team consistently and using structured one-to-ones, you can spot these changes in attitude and intervene early. A straightforward question—“I’ve noticed you seem a bit flat this week. What’s on your mind?”—can open up the root cause long before it turns into a performance problem. Most importantly, regular check-ins mean there are no surprises, and your team feels genuinely cared for, not just treated as revenue-generating cogs.

Skills Stagnation: Moving Beyond Sink or Swim

Everyone knows that new recruiters need structured training. But skills stagnation isn’t just a junior issue. Katy and Jane highlight a common mistake: hiring in experienced billers, assuming they’re the finished article, and then leaving them to sink or swim in a new environment. These new joiners might have a decade of experience—but that doesn’t mean they know your processes, client approaches, or house style. Without ongoing training and support, both new and experienced hires are left to develop “bad habits” or simply fend for themselves.

Jane uses a telling analogy with her gym: observing Olympic weightlifting, it’s clear that watching a master coach isn’t the same as executing perfectly yourself. Transfer this to recruitment: consultants might know what good objection handling or market mapping sounds like, but unless you put them through the paces—roleplays, practice sessions, regular refreshers—they’re unlikely to match your ideal standard.

This is why on-the-job, osmosis-style learning has its limits. Real, scheduled skills development is essential. Where gaps are spotted in reviews or one-to-ones, mini-sessions or focused feedback can address them. This ongoing investment pays for itself many times over—bringing up billings, reducing costly mistakes, and keeping morale high.

Katy and Jane agree: you must make skill-building a constant in your business rhythm. When a high-performing consultant’s numbers start to dip, the question is: has their toolkit been sharpened lately, or have they been left to manage alone?

Building a Culture That Supports Consistent Performance

All these points add up to a simple conclusion: you cannot fix underperformance with pressure alone. As Katy says, “You have to fix it with structure, clarity, belief, and the right leadership.” This means defining what good looks like—mapping the activity and rhythm that drives results—and making sure everyone, including you, adheres to it.

Reverse-engineer targets using conversion ratios: know the revenue, work backwards to jobs required, CVs sent, interviews booked, calls made. Lock this rhythm into your week or month and adjust for skill level and experience. Make room for coaching on beliefs and behaviours, not just outputs. Get under the skin of the team, set them up to win, and keep skill training, feedback loops, and data ownership front and centre.

Jane is unequivocal: if your team isn’t performing, it’s on you to look in the mirror. Where are you failing to provide clarity, support, or structure? Have you simply hired and hoped? Or do you have meetings, review systems, skills sessions, and feedback embedded in your business’s DNA?

And as Katy puts it, building a team that succeeds independently of you is the “holy grail” for many owners—yet it remains elusive when the basics aren’t in place. With these routines, your team’s momentum will build, and the business becomes less dependent on your day-to-day hustle. Regular meetings, open feedback, clear data, and ongoing training allow you to shift your own focus from putting out fires to actually enjoying your business and planning for the future.

So if you’re tired of carrying the team on your back, perhaps the answer isn’t more pressure—but better structure, clarity, and care. This approach doesn’t just improve billings; it builds the sort of agency people want to work for—one where everyone, including you, can thrive.