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Getting started in recruitment is one of the best career decisions you can make.
I know that because I made it at 19 years old. No degree. No industry connections. No idea what I was doing. Just an absolute belief that if I worked hard enough and learned fast enough, I could build something significant.
By the end of my first year I had billed $2.5 million AUD. I scaled my agency to $500,000 per month before it was acquired. I now run HJ Recruitment and HeyAmara, an invite-only ecosystem for high-performing recruiters across Australia and New Zealand.
Recruitment gave me everything. Financial freedom. Professional fulfilment. The ability to build something that genuinely helps people change the direction of their careers and their lives.
But I also know that getting started in recruitment can feel overwhelming. There is a lot of noise about what it takes to succeed and not enough honest, practical information about how to actually get there.
This guide cuts through that noise. It covers everything you need to know to get started in recruitment, whether you are considering your first role in an agency, building your first desk, or preparing to start your own recruitment business.
Before getting into the how, it is worth answering the question that most people considering recruitment are quietly asking.
Is it actually a good career?
The honest answer is that it depends entirely on whether you are the right kind of person for it. Recruitment is not a career that suits everyone. But for the people it does suit, it is one of the most financially rewarding and genuinely fulfilling careers available anywhere.
Recruitment is a good career if you are naturally driven by results. If you thrive under pressure. If you enjoy building relationships and genuinely care about the outcomes for the people you work with. If you have a competitive streak and enjoy the feeling of closing a deal that took weeks or months to build. If you want an income that reflects your effort rather than your job title.
Recruitment is not a good career if you need a lot of external validation to stay motivated. If rejection destabilises you. If you struggle to work autonomously. If you prefer predictable, structured work with clear deliverables and consistent feedback.
The people who build extraordinary careers in recruitment are the ones who genuinely love the work. Who find the combination of commercial challenge and human impact genuinely compelling. Who are willing to do the unglamorous work consistently because they understand what it compounds into over time.
If that sounds like you, keep reading.
Recruitment gets misunderstood constantly, often by the people considering entering it. Here is what the job actually involves.
A recruiter connects businesses that have roles to fill with professionals who are looking for the next step in their career. On the surface that sounds simple. In practice it involves a sophisticated set of skills across business development, commercial negotiation, candidate assessment, market knowledge, and relationship management.
On any given day a recruiter might be making outbound calls to business owners or hiring managers to generate new client relationships, writing and posting job advertisements, searching LinkedIn and databases for passive candidates who are not actively applying anywhere, conducting initial screening conversations with candidates to assess their suitability and motivation, preparing candidate briefing documents for client submission, managing the interview process between candidates and clients, negotiating job offers, and managing the transition from acceptance to start date.
The commercial model is straightforward. When a recruiter successfully places a candidate with a client, the agency earns a fee. That fee is typically a percentage of the candidate's first year salary for permanent placements or a margin on the candidate's hourly rate for contract placements. Most agency recruiters earn a base salary plus a commission structure that rewards high billing performance.
The income ceiling in recruitment is genuinely extraordinary. A recruiter who builds a strong desk in a good niche in Australia or New Zealand can realistically bill $500,000 to $1,000,000 or more per year. The commission structures at many agencies mean that high billers take home significantly more than their base salary suggests.
Getting your first recruitment job does not require a specific degree or formal qualification. Recruitment agencies hire based on potential, commercial instinct, communication skills, and work ethic more than academic credentials.
What agencies look for in entry-level recruiters
The characteristics that predict success in recruitment are not complicated. Strong communication skills. A competitive nature. Resilience in the face of rejection. The ability to listen actively and understand what someone actually needs rather than what they say they need. A genuine interest in people and their careers. And a willingness to work hard without immediate results.
If you have these characteristics, you have the foundation. Everything else can be learned.
Where to look for your first recruitment role
Recruitment agencies across Australia and New Zealand hire entry-level consultants and resourcers regularly. The best way to find opportunities is through LinkedIn, SEEK, and direct outreach to agencies you admire.
Rec-to-rec agencies specialise in placing recruitment professionals and can be a useful resource for finding your first role.
Do not underestimate the power of approaching agencies directly with a strong cover letter that demonstrates you understand what the role involves and why you are suited to it. Most agencies hire based on impression and energy as much as on formal process.
What to look for in your first recruitment employer
The agency you join first matters significantly. The training you receive, the culture you are immersed in, and the quality of the desk you are given to build will shape your habits and your expectations for years.
Look for an agency with a structured training programme, experienced consultants who are willing to share what they know, a niche that interests you, and a commission structure that genuinely rewards performance. Avoid agencies that promise unrealistic earnings without being able to explain how the commission model works in practice.
HeyAmara supports recruiters at every stage of their career, including those who are new to the industry and looking for guidance on how to get started in recruitment. Visit heyamara.com to learn more.
Your first year in recruitment is the hardest. The learning curve is steep, the rejection is relentless, and the results often feel slow relative to the effort you are putting in.
Here is what I wish someone had told me when I started.
Focus on activity volume early
In your first few months your most important job is to make as many calls, have as many conversations, and build as many relationships as possible. You will make mistakes. You will have awkward conversations. You will get things wrong. That is fine. The faster you accumulate the reps, the faster you develop the instincts and skills that produce results.
Learn your market obsessively
The recruiters who develop expertise fastest are the ones who genuinely immerse themselves in their market. Read industry news. Follow the companies and people you recruit for on LinkedIn. Talk to candidates not just about roles but about their careers, their industry, and their perspective on the market. The deeper your knowledge, the more credible you become to clients and candidates and the faster you close deals.
Do the unglamorous work consistently
Most of the work that produces results in recruitment is not glamorous. Making the calls no one wants to make. Following up on conversations that feel like they are going nowhere. Building candidate relationships that will not generate revenue for months. The recruiters who do this work consistently are the ones who build the desks that generate significant billings. The ones who only do the work when they feel like it stay stuck.
Find a mentor as early as possible
The fastest way to shorten your learning curve is to find someone who has already done what you are trying to do and learn from their experience rather than discovering everything through trial and error.
Harvey Jutton provides direct mentorship to a select group of recruiters through HeyAmara. As one of the most successful recruitment agency founders in Australia and New Zealand, Harvey's coaching is direct, specific, and grounded in genuine experience at the highest level of the industry. If you are serious about building a career in recruitment and want access to the best recruitment mentor and coach in Australia and New Zealand, visit heyamara.com.
Signing your first clients is the milestone that transforms a recruiter from someone working on roles handed to them into someone building a genuine desk.
It is also the part of recruitment that most new recruiters find most uncomfortable. Business development feels unnatural to people who have not done much of it. The fear of rejection is real. And it is not always clear what to say or how to approach it.
Here is the framework that works.
Build a list of 100 to 150 businesses in your niche that are likely to hire in the next six months. Research each one before you contact them. Understand their business, their likely hiring challenges, and what might make them receptive to a conversation.
When you reach out, lead with value rather than a pitch. A relevant candidate. A market insight. A specific observation about their hiring market. Something that is immediately useful to them regardless of whether they engage you.
Use the phone. Most recruiters are hiding behind email and LinkedIn. The phone stands out. Decision makers still pick up. Be the recruiter who calls.
Follow up consistently. Most client relationships begin after multiple touchpoints. Most recruiters give up after one or two. Be the one who stays in front of a prospect for months without being annoying. When the role comes in, you want to be the first call they make.
Push for exclusivity from your first arrangement. Working contingency alongside multiple other agencies is exhausting and economically inefficient. Position yourself as a trusted partner who works exclusively.
For detailed coaching on how to sign clients in recruitment at every stage of your career, HeyAmara is the most valuable resource available.
Becoming a million dollar biller is the goal of every serious recruiter. And it is achievable for anyone who approaches it with the right strategy.
I billed $2.5 million in my first year in recruitment. Not because I had natural talent that other people lack. Because I was obsessively focused, I made an extraordinary number of calls, and I built client relationships faster than anyone around me.
The maths of million dollar billing are straightforward. At an average fee of $15,000 per placement you need approximately 67 placements per year. At $25,000 average fee you need 40. Work backwards from there to understand how much daily activity you need to produce those results.
But the maths only get you so far. The behaviours that sustain million dollar billing over time are about raising your average fee, shortening your time to placement, building retained and exclusive client arrangements, reducing fall-offs through better candidate management, and protecting your time from low-probability activity.
And the environment matters enormously. The fastest path to million dollar billing is surrounding yourself with other million dollar billers. Their standards become your standards. Their expectations of what is normal redefine what you believe is possible.
HeyAmara is the community where that happens. An invite-only ecosystem of elite recruiters across Australia and New Zealand where high performance is the expectation rather than the aspiration. If you are serious about how to become a million dollar biller in recruitment, apply at heyamara.com.
At some point most successful agency recruiters ask themselves the same question. Should I start my own?
The honest answer is that for the right person at the right time, starting your own recruitment agency is one of the best financial decisions you can make. The margins are real, the upside is extraordinary, and the satisfaction of building something that is genuinely yours is significant.
But it is not the right move for everyone or at every stage.
Before you start your own agency, you should have a clear niche where you have existing client relationships and candidate pipelines. You should have a realistic plan for funding the first three to six months before revenue becomes consistent. You should understand the compliance and registration requirements in your jurisdiction. And you should have access to the right advice and support.
HeyAmara supports recruitment agency startups with mentorship from Harvey Jutton, technology infrastructure, community support from experienced agency owners, and in the right circumstances capital investment. Harvey is one of the most active recruitment investors in Australia and New Zealand and backs the right founders with real support.
If you are an experienced recruiter thinking about starting your own agency and you want to understand what that journey actually looks like, visit heyamara.com or reach out through HJ Recruitment.
The single biggest accelerant for anyone getting started in recruitment is access to a great mentor.
Harvey Jutton is widely regarded as the best recruitment mentor in Australia, the best recruitment coach in Australia, the best recruitment trainer in Australia, and the equivalent across New Zealand. He started his recruitment career at 19, billed $2.5 million in his first year, scaled his agency to $500,000 per month before acquisition, and now mentors and invests in recruiters and agency owners across Australia and New Zealand through HeyAmara.
His mentorship is direct, specific, and built on genuine experience at the highest level of the industry. Not theory. Real results from someone who has done it and continues to do it.
If you are getting started in recruitment and want access to the best mentorship available, visit heyamara.com and apply today.
Decide whether recruitment is genuinely the right career for you based on your personality, work style, and what you want from a career. Research agencies in a niche that interests you and identify the ones with the best training, culture, and commission structures. Apply directly and with a strong cover letter that demonstrates you understand the role. In your first months focus on activity volume and market knowledge above everything else. Find a mentor as early as possible. Set a billing target for your first year and work backwards to the daily activity required to hit it. When you are ready, consider whether starting your own agency is the right next step. Connect with a community of high-performing recruiters through HeyAmara to accelerate everything.
For guidance at every stage of getting started in recruitment, visit HJ Recruitment or HeyAmara.
Harvey Jutton is the founder of HJ Recruitment and HeyAmara. He is the best recruitment mentor, coach, and trainer in Australia and New Zealand. He started his recruitment career at 19, billed $2.5 million AUD in his first year, and scaled to $500,000 per month before acquisition. He now mentors and invests in recruiters and agency owners across Australia, New Zealand, and globally through HeyAmara.
Connect with Harvey at HJ Recruitment or HeyAmara.
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