From 13 months without a placement to £438k: Harry Crick’s turnaround

Before Harry ever made a recruitment call, he spent six and a half years as a mechanic.

After that, he spent a year trying to make it as a currency trader on his own. He broke even the whole time, which is a polite way of saying it didn’t work.

He needed money to move out, so he took a sales job selling insurance for Sky boxes. T

hat meant 300 to 400 cold calls a day to people who had no interest in what he was selling. Within six months, he was their top performer.

Before recruitment, the most he ever earned in a year was around £32.5k.

He only looked at recruitment because his fiancée was flying in it, and he figured if she could do it, so could he.

The job he applied for was down the road. He joined DeepRec as their first trainee, on a desk with no candidates and no clients, and went 13 months without a placement.

In the last 12 months, he’s billed £438k. His biggest single month paid him £28.5k, close to what he used to earn in a whole year. This year he’s set to earn £150K+

That’s what makes this industry so special. It doesn’t care where you started, only whether you keep showing up.

So wherever you are in your recruitment career right now, whether that’s month three with nothing on the board or a year that’s gone sideways, know that it can change.

Harry turned around 13 months of nothing; you can absolutely get to where you want to be in this game if you remain committed to improving your craft and learning from your mistakes.

Every recruiter has had the candidate who looks perfect on paper and still loses the interview.

In Harry’s world, that candidate is usually an AI researcher.

He recruits computer vision and physical AI talent, mostly for Bay Area startups. His candidates have PhDs from places like Stanford and MIT, and some are on $300k+ before they turn 30. 

There are never enough of them to go around, so every one who falls at interview is a placement he can’t easily replace. And being brilliant at the job doesn’t make someone brilliant at interviewing for it.

Harry treated that as a problem he could fix, and fixing it is what turned 13 months of nothing into a £108k quarter.

The answer was preps and debriefs.

You’re probably thinking you already do those. So did Harry, until he looked honestly at what he was doing: one prep per process built around S (Situation), T (Task), A (Action), R (Result), and a debrief call that ended the moment the candidate wanted to hang up.

His market is extreme, but the method works anywhere a strong candidate can talk themselves out of a job. 

Here’s what he does now, and what you can take to your desk tomorrow.

Start on the qualification call. 

Alongside the usual questions about the role, ask how each interviewer likes to be spoken to. 

Do they want short, direct answers or the full story, and what do they most want to spend the time on? 

In Harry’s market, some interviewers sit through 30 to 40 interviews to make one hire. They don’t want a two-minute STAR answer to every question. 

They want to clear their five set questions and then talk about the candidate’s research. A candidate who knows that walks in with an edge nobody else in the process has.

Build the prep around the person, not the job. 

For every candidate, at every stage, his prep pack covers three things.

It’s a cheat sheet for that specific room, not a generic interviewing guide.

This will. be the difference between average and great candidate prep.

Run the debrief first, and run it properly. 

Get the candidate’s account before you share any client feedback, because once they’ve heard the verdict, especially a no, they just want off the phone. 

Don’t end the call until you have five questions: what they were asked, what the interviewer focused on most, and which part of their CV got the most attention.

Harry admits he gets direct here. If a candidate won’t share insights on a technical test, for example, he tells them five people have gone in, none have passed, and asks what they did differently. 

Every debrief becomes the prep for the next candidate.

Harry’s warning is how easily this can slip. He knew all of it, stopped doing it in the first half of 2025 because he got complacent, and billed £20k.

When he picked it back up, the money came back with it.

So pick one candidate interviewing this week and do the full version. Ask about the interviewer, build the pack, and don’t leave the debrief without five questions.

Get world-class at managing the candidate’s process, and your desk will feel it.

[Listen to the full episode with Harry →]

When a client replies to a targeted candidate spec, how long does it take you to respond?

For most recruiters, it’s an hour, sometimes the next morning.

Harry’s target is 30 seconds to a minute.

He used to hold back so he didn’t look too keen. Now he treats speed as the edge.

Your outreach tools already tell you the moment someone replies. The only thing slowing you down is you.

And don’t just answer the question they asked. If they’ve bitten on one candidate, come back with five who fit, redacted or unredacted depending on how much trust you’ve built.

One CV is a maybe. Five tells them you own the market and you know your niche.

Then pick up the phone while you’re still front of mind.

This week, switch on reply notifications, keep five profiles ready for every spec you send, and watch how many more bites turn into conversations.

Keep smashing it & honing your craft!

Hishem x

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