When to Fire vs. Coach: Performance Management for Recruitment Business Owners

When to Fire vs. Coach: Performance Management for Recruitment Business Owners

From The Recruitment CEO's Insider Guide by Katy Green and Nicky Coffin

November 11, 2025 · 39 min · Episode 61

About this episode

Katy and Jane discuss how recruitment business owners can decide when to fire or coach underperforming team members.

You've got an underperformer on your team. They're missing targets, the rest of your people are watching, and you're losing sleep over it. Do you coach them through it or let them go? Make the wrong call and it could cost you six figures. One recruitment business owner discovered this the hard way when keeping someone for 11 months cost them £140K in lost revenue, £35K in salary, and nearly their top biller. Yet the opposite mistake is just as expensive: fire too quickly and you might lose someone who just needed the right support. Jane knows this firsthand. She was once ranked 250th out of 250 consultants, making 80-90 cold calls daily but placing nothing for six months, before the right coaching conversation turned her into a top-five performer within a year. In this episode, Katy and Jane break down the exact framework that helps you make this decision with confidence instead of agonising in that expensive no man's land. They reveal the critical difference between "can't do it" and "won't do it" and why confusing the two will drain your bank account and frustrate your best people. You'll hear the honest truth about why recruitment business owners struggle with this decision…

People in this episode

Host: Katy

Guest: Jane

Topics covered

  • performance management
  • coaching
  • recruitment
  • decision making

Keywords

  • underperformer
  • targets
  • coaching conversation
  • business owner
  • revenue loss

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