Episode 6

Most recruitment businesses don’t struggle because they lack tech.

They struggle because the way they work has evolved by accident.

In this episode of The Performance Zone, Dan Alexander sits down with Simon Curtis — an operations-minded recruitment consultant and Bullhorn specialist — to unpack the real reason so many firms keep buying tools, switching CRMs, and launching new campaigns… while performance stays stuck.

This conversation cuts through the hype around automation and AI and gets brutally practical:
- If your team only fills twenty-five percent of the jobs they already have, why are you chasing more job flow?
- If consultants “don’t use the CRM,” why would a new CRM suddenly fix that?
- And if everything in recruitment still leads to a conversation, why are leaders building systems that make conversations harder?

We unpack:
- Why most recruitment tech purchases are emotional, not strategic
- The hidden reason CRMs fail: behaviour doesn’t match the way the system is built
- Why “hire more people” is often a distraction from poor conversion
- How email-first outreach has made cold calling easier — and BD weaker
- Why technology should enable process, not replace it - What “sales ops” thinking can teach recruitment firms about scale
- The simplest fixes that often unlock the biggest gains
- How to design a desk experience that drives activity, consistency, and performance

If you’re a founder, director, or ops/enablement leader trying to scale — or you’re tired of swapping systems while nothing improves — this episode will feel like someone finally said the quiet part out loud.

👤 Guest – Simon Curtis Recruitment Ops & CRM Optimisation | Bullhorn Specialist https://www.linkedin.com/in/simoncurtisrec/