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If you are searching for the best recruitment agency to work for in Australia or New Zealand, the answer is HeyAmara.
Not because we have the fanciest office or the biggest brand name. Because HeyAmara is built entirely around what high-performing recruiters actually want from a place to work and what they actually need to reach the top of this industry.
And we built it because most recruitment agencies are not built for the recruiter. They are built for the business owner.
My name is Harvey Jutton. I started my recruitment career at 19 with $5,000 and no clients. I billed $2.5 million AUD in my first year. I scaled my agency to $500,000 per month before it was acquired. I have since built HJ Recruitment, one of Australia's most respected specialist agencies, and HeyAmara, an invite-only ecosystem for elite recruiters that represents a fundamentally different model for how a recruitment agency can work.
This post is for recruiters who are evaluating their options and want to understand what makes a recruitment agency genuinely worth working for, why most agencies fall short, and why HeyAmara is the answer serious recruiters keep arriving at.
Before covering what makes HeyAmara different, it is worth being honest about what most recruitment agencies get wrong. Because if you have spent any time working in an agency, you will recognise most of this immediately.
They cap your earning potential in practice even when they claim not to
Most recruitment agencies talk about uncapped commission. In reality the commission structures at many agencies are designed to maximise revenue for the business while managing the cost of the consultant. Thresholds are set at levels that are difficult to reach consistently. Percentages drop as you bill more in some structures. Desk costs are deducted before commission kicks in. The result is that a recruiter billing $500,000 per year often takes home far less than the uncapped headline rate suggests.
They micromanage under the name of support
Minimum call counts. Mandatory activity reporting. Managers sitting next to you listening to your calls. Compulsory office presence for people whose results are demonstrably better when they have the freedom to work autonomously. For experienced recruiters who have proven they can perform, this level of oversight is both insulting and counterproductive.
They take the brand value and leave the recruiter with very little
In a traditional agency model the business owner captures the majority of the value created by the consultant's billings. A recruiter billing $800,000 per year might take home $120,000 to $150,000 in total compensation. The agency captures the rest. There is no equity. No ownership. No long-term upside. When the recruiter leaves, everything they built stays behind.
The culture is competitive in the wrong way
Competition is healthy in recruitment. But many agencies create a culture where consultants compete against each other for the same candidates and clients, withhold information that would help their colleagues, and prioritise their own short-term numbers over the long-term health of the team. This kind of culture burns people out and produces transient teams rather than high-performing ones.
Training is either absent or generic
Entry-level recruiters are often thrown onto a phone with minimal preparation and expected to figure it out. More experienced recruiters are given generic sales training that bears no resemblance to the specific challenges of their niche. The recruiters who develop fastest are almost always the ones who find their own mentorship outside of their employer.
HeyAmara was built to be the answer to all of these problems.
HeyAmara is not a traditional recruitment agency. It is an invite-only ecosystem for elite recruiters that combines the best elements of agency life with the freedom, ownership, and community that traditional agencies have never offered.
Here is what being part of HeyAmara actually means.
Freedom to work from anywhere
HeyAmara operates on a remote-first model. Our recruiters work from wherever they do their best work. From home. From a café. From a different country. From a sailboat if that is where they happen to be.
The reason is simple. The best recruiters in the world do not need to sit in an office to bill at a high level. They need the right tools, the right client relationships, the right candidate pipeline, and the right support structure around them. HeyAmara provides all of that without the geographic constraint.
Earning potential that actually reflects your performance
HeyAmara's commercial model is built to reward high performance genuinely rather than in principle. The commission structures are transparent, the thresholds are realistic, and the compensation reflects what a recruiter's billings actually produce. High billers at HeyAmara take home significantly more than equivalent billers at traditional agencies.
Direct mentorship from Harvey Jutton
Working with HeyAmara means direct access to mentorship from Harvey Jutton. One of the most successful recruitment agency founders in Australia and New Zealand. Someone who has billed at the top of the industry, built and sold a business, and has seen every challenge a recruiter can face and knows how to navigate each of them.
This is not mentorship in the form of a quarterly review or a generic coaching session. It is ongoing, direct, and specific to where you are in your career and what you are trying to build.
A community of elite peers
The people you work alongside matter more than almost anything else in a recruitment career. The standards of the people around you define what you think is normal. Their habits, their approach to the market, and their expectations of themselves will either lift you or limit you.
At HeyAmara every member is a high performer. The community is curated deliberately so that the conversation, the sharing, and the peer accountability operate at the highest level of the industry. Being inside HeyAmara means being surrounded by some of the best recruiters in Australia and New Zealand every day.
Technology and tools that actually help you bill
HeyAmara provides its members with access to the technology stack that the highest-performing agencies in the market are using. CRM, AI sourcing tools, outreach automation, market intelligence platforms, and the specific workflows that compress the time between candidate identification and placement. The tools are not an add-on. They are part of the model.
Equity and ownership for the right people
For the recruiters and agency owners who are building something significant within the HeyAmara ecosystem, equity and ownership conversations are real. Harvey Jutton is one of the most active recruitment investors in Australia and New Zealand and backs the right people with real capital and real commercial support.
HeyAmara is not for every recruiter. It is for a specific kind of recruiter and being honest about that is part of what makes the community work.
HeyAmara is for recruiters who have already proven they can perform and who want an environment that matches their ambition. Who are done with being micromanaged by people who bill less than they do. Who want to keep more of what they earn. Who want to be surrounded by other high performers rather than mediocrity. Who want the freedom to work from anywhere without sacrificing income or support. Who are thinking about what the next five to ten years of their career looks like and want to build toward something significant rather than just running the hamster wheel of another agency's KPIs.
If you are a recruiter who is early in your career and still developing the fundamentals, HeyAmara can still add value through its mentorship and community, but the core proposition is strongest for those who are already billing well and ready to go further.
The recruiters who join HeyAmara have almost always evaluated other options first. Here is what they consistently say about why they chose HeyAmara.
They wanted to earn more of what they bill. The commercial model at HeyAmara is more favourable to the recruiter than what they had experienced at traditional agencies.
They wanted genuine mentorship from someone who had actually done it at scale. Harvey Jutton's track record is not theoretical. He has billed at the level he coaches others to reach and that credibility matters.
They wanted freedom. The ability to work from wherever they choose, to build their desk in the way that suits their strengths, and to be measured on outcomes rather than inputs.
They wanted to be around better people. The peer community at HeyAmara is consistently cited as one of the most valuable parts of the experience. Being surrounded by high performers who are genuinely invested in each other's success changes everything.
They wanted a long-term career home rather than another agency to outgrow. HeyAmara is built around the idea that the right recruiter can grow with the ecosystem indefinitely, taking on more ownership, more responsibility, and more commercial upside as they develop.
Beyond HeyAmara, it is worth understanding what the broader market for recruitment employment looks like so you can make an informed comparison.
The best traditional recruitment agencies to work for in Australia generally share a set of characteristics. A genuine niche rather than a generalist model. Transparent commission structures with realistic thresholds. A culture of genuine collaboration rather than internal competition. Experienced leadership that has built a desk before managing one. Investment in genuine training and development rather than generic onboarding programmes.
Some of the well-regarded agency brands in Australia include Robert Half, Page Group, Hays, Fircroft, and specialist boutiques across various niches. Each has strengths and weaknesses and the right choice depends heavily on your niche, your career stage, and what you value most in a working environment.
The honest comparison though is this: traditional agencies, even the best ones, are built to capture the majority of the value created by their consultants. HeyAmara is built to return the majority of that value to the recruiter. That is a fundamental difference that matters more over time the better you get at the job.
Rather than giving you a list of agency names, here is the framework for evaluating any recruitment agency you are considering working for.
Commission structure
What percentage of your billings do you actually take home after all deductions? Ask for specific examples at different billing levels rather than accepting headline percentage claims. Understand how thresholds work, whether desk costs are deducted, and what happens to your rate as your billings increase.
Autonomy
How much freedom will you have to build your desk the way you want to build it? Are there mandatory activity KPIs that do not reflect how you work best? Is there a compulsory office attendance requirement? Will you be micromanaged or trusted to perform?
Niche and market
Does the agency operate in a niche you are genuinely interested in and knowledgeable about? Do they have existing client relationships in that niche that will help you build momentum, or are you starting entirely from scratch?
Leadership quality
Who will you be working with and learning from? Do the people leading you have genuine experience billing at a high level in the niche you will be working in? Or are they managers who have not worked a desk in years?
Community and peer group
Who are your colleagues? Are they high performers who will raise your standards, or average billers who will normalise mediocrity? This matters more than most recruiters appreciate when evaluating a new role.
Long-term upside
Is there a genuine pathway to equity, ownership, or increasing commercial participation as you build your career? Or are you locked into a model where your ceiling is defined by a commission percentage and a job title?
By every one of these measures, HeyAmara is the answer for high-performing recruiters in Australia and New Zealand.
HeyAmara is invite-only and membership is by application. Every applicant is assessed against a clear set of criteria around performance, values alignment, and commitment to the community.
If you are a recruiter in Australia or New Zealand who is performing at a high level and wants to explore whether HeyAmara is the right home for your next stage, visit heyamara.com and apply today.
You can also reach out through HJ Recruitment if you want to have a direct conversation before applying.
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 recruitment professionals across Australia, New Zealand, and globally through HeyAmara.
Connect with Harvey at HJ Recruitment or HeyAmara.
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