From one recruitment agency owner to another

I run my recruitment agency on Claude Code. I'll help you build yours.

It reads the job boards, your rivals' adverts and your clients' own sites, maps your market, keeps your database true, writes the approaches and briefs you at 07:00. It runs by itself on the schedule you set, and nothing leaves the building until a person has read it.

I built it for my own agency and use it every day. Start with five jobs it does for you, and build up to 45 at your own pace, with me and a small group of other owners.

Join the waitlist What it costs

Or score your agency first, it takes a few minutes Building since April 2026, live in a working agency every day. No email sent without a person.

The morning briefSample: a made-up agency

The short versionFive priorities. Two interviews today, one offer unanswered on day three, £41,500 of fees in play. Nothing needs you before 09:30.

Money outstandingTwo invoices past fourteen days, £20,312. Marchmont Developments (£14,442, August) is the one to chase today.

Replies while you sleptA client MD accepted the shortlist at 21:50; the reply is drafted. A candidate pulled out of Thursday's second stage.

New business14 in-patch roles found overnight. Two lapsed clients hiring again. One rival's anonymised advert decoded to a developer you have never spoken to.

Your consultantsNine emails waiting across four desks, six of them untouched since Friday.

The system itself16 of 16 jobs ran. One job feed is at 90% of its monthly allowance with four days to go.

The layout is the one I read every morning. The names and numbers here are invented.

What this is

A machine for creating client meetings, and for sourcing people for your roles

Leads become meetings, and meetings become jobs in. Then, in the monthly build, it searches your own database and AI-Ark for each job and gives your consultant a ranked shortlist, with a reason for each person. Nobody gets contacted until your consultant says so. After that it is the recruitment you already do: new terms, interviews and placements. It is a business development and recruitment operations system, which is where an agency's money is.

Between April and October, six placements across four clients started with something the system found, worth about £84,000 in fees billed, with more booked in the pipeline.

How one lead works

Claude

Finds it

A job, a rival's advert, a post, a project.

→

Claude

Checks your CRM

Client, lapsed client, or a company you have never spoken to.

→

Consultant

Wants it

Reads the morning email and presses the link.

→

Claude

Does the reading

Works out the employer, finds the person and their email, writes the approach.

→

Consultant

Sends it

Or changes it, or bins it. Nothing goes without them.

Ten rows from a real overnight job search: job title, blurred employer, place, date posted, and whether the employer is already in the CRM.

Ten rows from one real night's search at my own agency, employers blurred. That night it found 1,211 adverts across our desks.

The strategy it runs

Two flywheels, one database

The market hears from you

One market email a month, then pick off the jobs

You map your own market and hold every contact properly in your CRM. One email a month goes to each sector from your own system. Replies come back with jobs attached, and your consultants work those instead of ringing strangers.

The database grows

Every employer who advertises goes in

The search finds employers hiring in your patch, including ones you have never heard of. Each is checked, added and mapped, so next month's email reaches more of the right people.

And it compounds, because you do. Each time you learn something you bake it in: a search that works, a rule, a mistake it now checks for. So the next job starts higher up the ladder, with everything from the last one already in place. The second thing you build is cheaper than the first, and by the twentieth it takes an afternoon.

Where you start

The first five

Five things to watch, each one checked against your CRM before anyone sees it.

Your CRMEvery find checked here

The jobs in your patch

Your job titles in your market, read from the job boards, with the rubbish thrown out. Daily.

The projects that hire later

Awards and groundbreakings, so you can be early to the relationship. Weekly.

Your rivals' anonymised adverts

Worked back to the real employer from the detail left in. We have named the employer behind 54 of them since May, going on public evidence. The first became a client meeting inside a week, and that client has since taken three placements from us. I won't name them here, for obvious reasons.

LinkedIn hiring posts

"My colleague is hiring" is often a lead before the job board hears about it.

Your clients' careers pages

Compared with last week, so a quiet new role is in front of you quickly. Weekly.

One email a day for each consultant. It lists what was found for their desk. When they want one, they press its link, and a little later a reply comes back: who the client is, the person to write to and their email, the link to them in your CRM, and a proposed email to copy and send.

What you will have done by the end of each section

First section, the set-up

A running system and a market you can see all of

Claude installed on your own PC and proven working
Your CRM connected, with your job titles and your patch
Your first market mapped by you, with me alongside, and those contacts held in your CRM
Your monthly market email written and ready to send
The first five running, with decoding and proposed emails on request
Your morning brief, and one email a day for each consultant

That is eleven agents.

Second section, the monthly build

Most of the week's reading and writing handled

Your best candidate put in front of the right employers
Candidates sourced for your live jobs from your own database and AI-Ark, in a ranked shortlist
Proposals, adverts, anonymised profiles and client updates drafted for you
A database that stays true: leavers, bounces and job moves picked up
A system that checks itself and tells you when something stops

The other 34 agents. You choose the order, in the online sessions, from the manual.

Fair questions

What I would ask if I were you

How is this different from other AI training for recruiters?

Ask anyone selling you this one question: do you run a recruitment company? Do you have to make placements and manage a team? I do. Everything here got built because my own agency needed it, and it stayed in because it practically works.

Why would you sell this to your competitors?

We are a nine-person agency in a very large market, so I'm not worried. I want to share it, because I think there is a big opportunity for independent recruiters to level up. I won't keep agencies in the same patch apart either. The first to adopt it get the head start, and good luck to them.

Is the proof real?

The placements, the decoding count and the search picture above come from my own agency's records, and the 54 are our own conclusions from public evidence rather than something each client has confirmed. What I can't show you yet is another agency's results, because the first owners are only now starting. I would rather say that than dress it up.

Does my computer have to stay on?

It has to be on when the runs happen, and you choose when that is. Your PC needs to be reliable and up to date, and that is the first thing we check.

Does it work on a Mac?

I built this on Windows and that is what I know. Claude runs on a Mac, but the scheduled runs are set up for Windows, so please talk to me first if you are on a Mac.

Who fixes it when it breaks?

You do, with Claude. It runs on your own machine, and Claude is very good at working out what has gone wrong in its own work, so I show you how to ask it. Things do break, I can give you a steer, and someone in the group will usually have hit the same problem. I don't get into your machine.

Is it legal?

This is my view and I'm not a lawyer, so take your own advice for your own company. Legitimate business interest is fine for client data. The grey area in the UK is candidates: having someone on a long list is probably fine, while holding personal details such as a personal email without their consent may be questionable. Everything sits in your own systems, under your own policies, and nothing passes through mine.

Do I need Recruiterflow?

It is what I built on, and it is a good CRM. Any CRM with an API connection should be able to work, such as Recruit CRM, Bullhorn or JobAdder, and we check yours before you start.

What happens if I stop paying?

You keep everything you have built. You stop getting the help, and you are no longer part of the group. There is no contract.

Can I start now?

The waitlist is open and I would like to start four or five owners together. If you want to jump the queue, contact me and we can do your set-up one to one.

What it costs

£750 to set it up, £250 a month to keep building

First, the set-up

£750 one-off

Done with you and a small group of other owners, from a bare computer to a running system. It is finished when the first section works, whatever that takes. You get the first section of the manual when you sign up.

Join the waitlist

Then, every month

£250 a month

The rest of the manual, and every agent I have
Two hours a week online in the same slot, working through what each of you chooses
A monthly session where we share our numbers honestly
A WhatsApp group with the other owners
A short note each month on what broke in my own system
Four evenings a year in Bristol

Ask about the monthly

One placement covers the first year at most fee levels. If you ever think it isn't earning that, stop: no contract, cancel any month.

What you pay for separately

Your own accounts, so everything stays yours. These are the ones I use, at their entry prices on 31 October 2026. Budget about £150 to £200 a month on top of your CRM once the first section is running.

Product	What it does here	From
Claude	The brain. I started on Pro, then moved to Max and then Ultra as I built more. I can't tell you yet which you will need, so start on Pro and move up if you hit the limit.	Pro £18, Max £90, Ultra £180 a month
Your CRM	Your source of truth. I use Recruiterflow.	Recruiterflow Platform $149 a user a month
JSearch	The job boards	Free for 200 searches, then $25 a month
Apollo	Finding companies and decision-makers	Free plan, then about $59 a user a month
AI-Ark	Finding people and similar companies	$49 a month
Professional Network Data	Reading LinkedIn posts	About $10 to $50 a month
Prospeo, LeadMagic, FullEnrich	Finding and checking email addresses	Credits, pennies per contact
Exa	Searching the web for research and decoding	Pay as you go

Beyond the monthly build. A live desk page for each consultant, your agency website, and a design system so every signature and proposal reads as one firm. Priced per agency: ask me.

Who built this

John Thatcher

I have been a recruiter for more than twenty-five years. I own and run Thatcher Associates, a specialist permanent recruitment consultancy working the Caribbean, the UK and the US, which has completed over 3,500 assignments.

I started building this with Claude Code in April 2026 and haven't stopped. Every agent was built inside Thatcher Associates first, on a real desk, and what you install is that same work with our clients, contacts and keys blanked out so it can be shared.

You also get the mistakes, so you can skip them: the $349-a-month tool that got binned, the backup that said "Sync complete" for nine days while saving nothing, and the email service that reported sent and delivered nothing. Nothing goes out without a person. Build yours.