Build your own recruiting business around your day job, on one system that runs both sides of the desk

Savanna's first year began on her lunch breaks

October 2024. Savanna had a marketing job, zero recruiting experience and one goal: a single placement by year-end.

She kept the job and built her desk on lunch breaks and after 5:30pm.

And a voice in her head kept asking what you may be asking right now: "Do you know what you're doing? Why are you doing that? Just because you love to do this doesn't mean that you can."

Back then, if you had told her she would quit her job to recruit full-time, she would have said, "That sounds dumb."

Her clients answered the voice for her: "Each placement, each conversation, each validation, all my client feedback that I get is like, no Savanna, you got this. You're doing great."

About 13 weeks in, she quit her marketing job.

She finished her first year with 30+ placements, beating my own first year of 23. All of it came before any of the AI tooling in today's system existed. In 2026 she rebuilt her setup on that system.

She keeps what she calls a "why folder": screenshots of messages from candidates thanking her for changing their lives. "I cry tears, all the happy tears," she says.

"This really does fill my cup," she says. "Recruiting doesn't feel like work to me." She calls it her ikigai, the Japanese word for a life's purpose.

What got her through, she says, was "the people that I'm speaking to on a day to day": clients and candidates. Those are the conversations that never get automated. They stay yours.

Five more members, five different starting points

• Aure Garcia, a CPA with zero recruiting experience: $80K in placement fees in the first 90 days, closing a controller, a staff accountant and an FP&A analyst.
• Steve, a real estate agent with no recruiting background and no network: $40K to $60K in monthly billings within 90 days, and $101K in month 4.
• Ryan, a sales professional: $200K in billings in 8 months, and dinner with his kids every night.
• Jillian Rodriguez, a cybersecurity manager working full-time: 10 months on her own without a single client call, then two client calls in her first month.
• Alexandria, a 15-year VP of Talent Acquisition: built her agency in 90-minute blocks each day, all while keeping her VP role.

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Why new desks stall: the desk stops when you stop

Most people who want to start recruiting think they're missing experience or a network.

Savanna started with zero recruiting experience. Steve started with no network. Neither is what stops a desk.

Sixteen steps run a recruiting desk, and the usual advice makes you the engine for every one of them: pick the perfect niche first, work your contacts, then do each step by hand, one side of the desk at a time. When you stop, the desk stops.

That one cause shows up as three traps:

• The niche. Nothing moves until the niche is perfect. Dawn spent 16 months trying to define hers the old way, without a single client. Her first week with us: 2+ clients and 7+ job orders.
• Feast and famine. While you fill one client's role, nobody is out finding the next client, so one good month turns into three quiet ones.
• Burnout. One person does the work of fourteen steps, and those steps don't care how tired you are.

I learned this the hard way. In 2018, while billing $500K+ a year, I lost three major clients in a single month, and my pipeline dried up overnight.

My desk ran on me and my relationships. When those relationships went quiet, nothing else was running.

So I studied how 50+ high performers bill. Every one of them ran the same systematic process. Here it is.

Sixteen steps run a recruiting desk. Fourteen of them run on one system

Seven are on the client side: find companies that just posted a role, find the hiring manager, get a verified email, personalize the message, send the outreach, send the follow-ups, and put the call on the calendar.

The other seven are on the candidate side: find candidates, save their profiles, get verified emails, personalize, reach out, follow up, book the call.

Both sides run at the same time, on one system, so the desk doesn't stop every time you do.

Automated doesn't mean abandoned, though. You still pick the leads, review every message and hit approve.

Every reply that comes back, you read and answer yourself. The only thing that goes away is the labor.

That leaves steps 15 and 16: closing the client and closing the candidate.

Those two never get automated, because they're the two that pay you. We coach you on them live, twice a week, on real deals.

Most people's real fear is that nobody will respond at all. Getting the response is the system's job. The close is the coaching's job.

Five phases in order, and the last one is yours

Research finds the companies hiring now, so there's no niche to pick first. Enrich and Engage get the verified emails and send the outreach, so the labor isn't yours.

Acquire runs both sides together, so one good month doesn't turn into three quiet ones. Close is the two conversations, and that part is all you.

We build every piece of it with you, through coaching and implementation on live calls, so the business is truly yours.

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Why listen to me? I'm still working a live recruiting desk

I'm Preston Park, and I'm not teaching from memories of an easier market.

I still run an active agency and still place candidates every week. I've billed $5M+ in placements on my own desk.

My clients include Lyft, ADP, Dropbox, Casper and Rimkus.

The process those 50+ high performers ran became the five phases above. 254+ students have enrolled at Recruiter School to build it, from total beginners to 15-year veterans.

No experience, a day job, no network: straight answers to the usual doubts

Why not take a course or a certification instead?

A course or certification teaches you recruiting and grades you on a test. Then you still have to go find that first client alone.

Here we build the system with you on live calls, and we keep score in placements.

Couldn't I build this myself?

Some of you should. I mean that. The tools work.

What you'd miss is the reps, the feedback, and every mistake I've already made for you. And tools only get you as far as the conversations. Handle a client or a candidate the wrong way, and they won't work with you again.

No recruiting experience?

Neither did Savanna, Aure, Steve or Ryan. And starting from zero means you have no bad habits to unlearn.

Got a day job?

Savanna kept hers for about 13 weeks, and Alexandria and Jillian kept theirs. Today fourteen of the sixteen steps run on the system, so the hours you do have go into the two conversations.

No network?

Steve didn't have one either. The system starts with companies that are hiring right now, not with who you know.

Will you run it for me?

No. We build it with you, so the desk is yours and you know exactly how it runs.

What does it cost?

Your strategist will walk you through the investment during the session. The session itself is free.

Starting from zero is a smaller climb than it used to be

72% of employers worldwide say they have trouble hiring (69% in the US), according to ManpowerGroup's 2026 Global Talent Shortage survey.

When a company fills one of those roles through a recruiter, it pays a placement fee of, conservatively, $20,000 to $40,000.

Setup used to mean wiring a stack of tools together yourself and then keeping it all running. Today the system takes you from a blank screen to leads with verified emails in under five minutes.

Every month you spend picking the perfect niche is another month your desk isn't running.