Performance coaching for the recruitment industry
Six private places. No card, no deposit.
"Good months and bad months, and you cannot figure out why."If that stings, keep reading
That is not a talent problem. It is a behaviour problem. Rollercoaster billings follow rollercoaster standards: a pipeline built in panic, client calls that drift, activity that looks busy and bills nothing.
Another training day will not fix it. Someone senior enough to tell you the truth, and close enough to watch how you actually work, will.
Is your desk running on standards, habit, or hope?
The Recruitment Scorecard. Twelve honest situations, three minutes, free.
Liz Flavell is a UK recruitment performance coach. She spent 23 years in the City, first as one of the UK's highest billing recruiters of her era, then running recruitment businesses at board level. For the past ten years she has coached inside close to 50 recruitment businesses, from global agencies to one person start ups, and she now sits as a non executive director and advisor in the industry.
Almost all of that work came by recommendation. No adverts, no funnels, no sales team. People call her.
Clients call her Flav. She turns up in jeans, works on the floor rather than from a slide deck, and if she calls something wrong she says so out loud. It is why she lands as easily with the twenty two year old on their first desk as with the board upstairs. That is the point: a coach who works live in front of your team has nowhere to hide. Neither do you.
You went solo for the freedom and the margin. Nobody warned you how quiet it gets. Working alone is like going to the gym without a PT: you still show up, but nobody checks the standard, so the standard slips.
Weekly private sessions plus WhatsApp in between. About to price a deal? Send the message first. More for solo recruiters and small firms.
Top biller does not mean natural manager. Now you run a desk and run people, and the numbers you own are no longer only yours.
Liz coaches billing managers on standards, accountability and client control: the parts of the job nobody trains, and the reason most billing managers burn out or bounce back to the desk.
Liz works on your floor, not off site. She dissects the business, sits in on real calls, then trades deals side by side with your consultants.
On corporate days, £200K of placements has gone through in a single day from a few well placed tweaks. More for corporate teams.
More of the work now sits above the desk. Owners bring Liz in as a non executive director and advisor: on the board, in the strategy, and accountable for how the business is built rather than how one desk sells.
"Show me the people before you show me the spreadsheet."How every advisory job starts
"On top of the strategic work she has done alongside the board and myself, she is also a massive force for good in the office when doing her desk coaching work."
Craig LancasterCloud International, on bringing Liz in while stepping up to lead multiple teams · LinkedIn, May 2024Most businesses that stall have grown past the structure holding them up. Liz puts that back in first: how people are hired, how work is measured, who owns what.
Then there is something for the growth to sit on.
Boards outgrow each other. Partners who started together end up wanting different things, one building to scale and one wanting a lifestyle business, and the staff feel it long before anyone says it out loud.
Liz has sat on both sides of that conversation and will say the thing nobody in the room wants to say.
Scaling breaks the things that made the business worth scaling. Liz stays in it through the change so the standards, the culture and the people who built it come out the other side.
She will not read a dashboard or a single KPI until she has met the people behind them. Numbers tell you what happened. People tell you why. There is no pack, no brochure and no blueprint: every business she walks into is different, so the work is built for that business.
A plateau is the most common reason people call Liz, and it is almost never fixed by working harder. Plateaus follow slipped standards: fewer real conversations, client calls that drift, a pipeline built in a panic. The answer depends on whether it is your desk or your team.
The diary is full, the activity looks fine, and the billings sit where they sat last quarter. Usually the work has quietly got easier: the same warm clients, the same safe roles, the conversations you already know how to have.
Liz goes through what you actually did last week, names the habit that capped you, and holds you to the standard that lifts it. Weekly sessions, WhatsApp in between, deals run past her before they wobble.
Everyone is hitting a level and nobody is beating it. More training days will not shift it, because the problem is not knowledge. It is what gets tolerated on the floor day to day.
Liz works on your floor rather than off site. She listens to live calls, trades deals side by side with your consultants, and resets what good looks like where the work actually happens.
Nothing here comes off a shelf. There is no programme to enrol on and no workbook to fill in, because no two desks are stuck for the same reason. Liz meets the people first, then builds the work around what she finds.
Thirty minutes on a call. You bring the numbers, Liz brings honesty. If she is not right for you, she will say so, and tell you what she would do instead.
Weekly one to one sessions, plus WhatsApp between them. Deals get run past her before they wobble, not after. Corporate work happens on the floor, live.
You agree what good looks like, then she holds you to it. Accountability without hovering: clear expectations, clear ownership, follow through.
Between sessions
WhatsApp between sessions is part of the work. This is what access means.
Last February, Sohan's business was doing £3M and everyone in the room knew there was a higher gear. Twelve months of coaching later: £10M.
Not from working harder. From a roadmap, higher standards, and someone honest in the building. He tells it himself, on camera.
Sohan · founder, London
One of Liz's private clients, being honest about the early weeks of coaching. What changed it was clarity, not a pep talk. Confidence is the result, never the starting point.
Here he is with Liz now, on camera, talking through how he runs his business and his people.
Private client · on camera with Liz
"I have had the pleasure of working with Liz for over 12 months now and she has been instrumental in the success of Clear's newly formed freelance division. Liz's experience along with her genuine desire to see people succeed has been of such great help and I couldn't have done it without her! Her dedication, continued care and expertise is second to none.
I would have no hesitation of recommending Liz and her services to any Recruitment business that is looking to scale up, grow new divisions or guide their current staff to the next level!"
There are more, written publicly by CEOs, agency owners and private clients under their own names. Liz has never asked for one. Read the rest there, then decide.
Lots of people run businesses off hope. Hope does not make you successful. Standards do.
Private coaching runs on Mondays and Fridays, three clients each day, so everyone gets the same attention. There is no way to buy a seventh place.
When a place opens, it is offered down this list, in order. That is the whole system.
There is no 07.
Liz will email when a place opens. While you wait: score your desk in two minutes, or book a fit call and find out where you stand now.
A short call, no pitch and no slides. You talk through where billings are stuck, Liz tells you what she sees, and you both decide whether working together makes sense.
If it does not, you will still leave with something you can use. Every client has started with this call. So have the people Liz has told, kindly, that coaching is not what they need.
A recruitment coach works with recruiters, billing managers and agency owners on the behaviour and standards behind their billings. Liz coaches live: real deals, real client calls, weekly sessions and WhatsApp between them. Training hands you a workbook. Coaching changes what you actually do on the desk.
Usually behaviour, not the market. Plateaus follow slipped standards: fewer real conversations, client calls that drift, a pipeline built in panic. A plateau is rarely fixed by more effort. It is fixed by raising the standard of the work you already do, then holding that standard every week.
One private session every week, on a Monday or a Friday, plus WhatsApp in between. About to price a deal or send a difficult email? It gets run past Liz first. Solo does not have to mean alone, and most solo recruiters say the accountability matters more than the advice.
Yes. Corporate coaching happens on your floor, not off site. Liz dissects the business, observes how the team actually works, then trades deals side by side with your consultants. Engagements run from a day or two a month to several days a week.
It depends on the work. Private coaching is a simple monthly arrangement and corporate coaching is priced by the day. There are no packages, no courses and no long contracts. Costs are discussed openly on the first call, once both sides know the fit is right.
Yes, because capacity is genuinely fixed. Liz takes six private clients, three on Mondays and three on Fridays, so every client gets the same attention. Recruiters are rightly cynical about manufactured scarcity. This is arithmetic, not marketing: an hour a week each plus WhatsApp does not scale.
More questions? Ask Liz, the video library: billings, client control, going solo and scaling, answered on camera.
A list for when a place opens, or a call to find out where you stand. Both start here.