Fractional Ops for recruiting & staffing agencies
Your recruiters are doing your cheapest work.
Or your BD stalls whenever delivery gets busy. Or Monday's numbers can't be trusted. An agency is throttled by one thing at a time. Fulldesk inspects how yours actually runs - read-only, in the tools you already have - names the constraint, prices what it's costing you, and maps what to build first. Priced findings before any build.
One agency, drawn end to end - the full desk. Output is set by the tightest point - and the tightest point moves. Sample marking; details altered.
Two ways an agency leaks.
Every agency runs an ATS, LinkedIn, phone lines, calendars, spreadsheets - and a dashboard somebody stopped trusting last quarter. The tools are fine. The gaps between them are where fees die, and the gaps come in two families.
Starved.
Not enough new work coming in.
Prospecting runs in bursts and stops the moment delivery gets busy. BD follow-up lives in one partner's head. Lists get built by hand once and never refreshed. The month ends, and the pipeline is whatever memory produced.
Stalled.
Work leaking between winning it and filling it.
Roles go stale in silence while the dashboard stays green. Candidates finish interviews and wait. Clients go quiet, and nobody notices until the pipeline meeting. LinkedIn threads never reach the ATS, so the system of record is a system of some records. Run both an ATS and a CRM, and it doubles: two systems of record, neither complete.
None of this is a discipline problem. It's a missing operating layer - and wherever it's missing most, that's the constraint. Guessing which family you're in is how agencies buy the wrong fix. So the first step here isn't a build. It's an inspection.
The Control Review.
A fixed-scope diagnostic that finds the constraint limiting your agency's output - before anything gets built. Read-only, in your own systems, with the findings priced in writing.
What gets inspected
Your ATS and CRM, BD and outreach systems, dashboards, spreadsheets, and existing automations - through read-only access or exports - plus about ninety minutes of your team's time, split between you and one recruiter. Nothing writes to your systems during the review.
What you receive
| The Constraint Map - every leak found and costed in fees and hours, and the one constraint throttling output, named. |
| The Build Map - fixes ranked by impact and effort, each with a fixed price. Buildable by me, or by your team if you'd rather. |
| The Method Note - how every number was measured, so you can re-run the checks without me. |
| A recorded readout - you can replay it for your partners. |
- Access
- read-only
- Team time
- ~90 min
- Timeline
- ten business days
- Credit
- 100% within 30 days
| Active roles, no submittal in 14+ days | 4 |
| Fees sitting on stale searches | $85,000 |
| Interviewed candidates, three weeks silent | 6 |
| Open orders, 30+ days since client touch | 2 |
| BD follow-up after first meeting | the constraint |
† Sample figures; identifying details altered. The format is the deliverable.
Built around the constraint.
The review ends with a decision you own: build with me, with your own team, or not at all. Whatever the constraint turns out to be, the build installs monitored workflows around it - your existing tools, behaving like one operating system.
Every open conversation surfaced daily, in front of whoever owns it.
Lists rebuilt and re-verified on a schedule, without anyone touching a spreadsheet.
Searches with no submittals flagged before the client has to ask.
LinkedIn and email threads logged to the ATS without a recruiter touching it.
The numbers rebuilt on schedule, with proof they refreshed.
Every workflow monitored and logged. If something breaks, you know before it costs you. Unwatched automation is just future technical debt.
The Control Review. Read-only, fixed scope, findings in writing.
$3,500–$5,000
Scoped from the findings. One constraint closed at a time, fixed price per module.
$7,500–$30,000
Monitoring, logs, and a monthly improvement. So it still works in March.
by arrangement
Straight answers.
Will we have to switch systems?
No. The build runs on the stack you already have - Loxo, Bullhorn, LinkedIn, the spreadsheets your team actually uses. Replacing a tool only ever shows up as a Build Map recommendation with the case attached; it's never the starting assumption. The problem is rarely the tools. It's the gaps between them.
How disruptive is this for my team?
The review costs your team about ninety minutes, total, and nothing writes to your systems. Builds ship the same way: one workflow at a time, monitored from day one, with your team's current habits left alone until the new workflow has proven itself in the logs. Nobody's desk gets reorganized mid-quarter.
What if the constraint isn't what I think it is?
That's the reason to inspect first. The obvious guess is recruiter admin - sometimes it's right. Just as often delivery is fine and the pipeline is starving, or the data can't support either answer yet. The review exists so the first build is aimed at the real constraint instead of the loudest symptom.
What happens after the review?
You own the Constraint Map and the Build Map either way - build with me, hand them to your own team, or sit on them. If we build together, the review fee comes off the first module and the work is mine personally: I take two engagements at a time, so nothing gets handed to a bench. The retainer only exists for systems that are already running.
An operator who learned to build.
I work in revenue operations in recruiting and staffing - inside the ATS mess, the follow-up that slips, the dashboards nobody trusts. I'm not a developer who learned business. I'm an operator who got tired of watching the same work leak, and learned to build the layer that catches it.
Discretion is part of the method. Any result you see on this site is sanitized - the figures stay exact, the names and identifying details come off. If I protect a past engagement's numbers this carefully, you already know how I'll treat yours.
I take two engagements at a time. The first step is fixed-price and read-only - I'd rather prove it on your operation than claim it on this page.
- Brett Mammel
Not ready to talk? Run the ninety-second Leak Check - no email needed to see the result.
Run the Leak CheckWhat's throttling your agency?
The Control Review answers that in writing: read-only, fixed price, ten business days. Start with a call, or just send the list of tools you run.