Key Characteristics of a Top Biller
Read time: 5–7 minutes
What made a top producer in recruitment before the internet?
In the first real golden years of recruitment, industry-guru Tony Byrne, identified four non-negotiable characteristics that reliably predicted lasting success way back in the 80s. He acknowledged that there are many ways to build a career in recruitment - you need drive, professional ethics, time mgmt., incredible desire, belief, creative problem solving, openness to regular failure, resilience, high energy, calculated risk-taking and independence/self-starting.
However he insisted that if you boil it down, the producers who consistently rise to the top share a smaller set of timeless characteristics: listening, planning, attitude, and hard work. Byrne founded the prestigious Pinnacle Society in 1989 (where entry requires the highest standard of ethics and performance) and his wisdom in recruiting stands the test of time.
In optimizing a recruiting strategy for rec2rec I have learned that we need to add a characteristic to the mix. The distraction-prone digital world has created a new non-negotiable for success: attention.
Even as recruitment moved from faxed resumes to LinkedIn, CRMs, and AI, Byrne’s wisdom still applied. But the modern landscape has also created new challenges and demanded new non-negotiables: not least, the war on attention.
This article explores both: the enduring DNA of great producers, and how the war on our attention creates a dire need for clear and sustained focus. Attention is the new must-have characteristic to enable a biller to thrive in today’s digital world of attention-seeking algorithms.
Listening - what are the core listening skills in recruitment?
Great producers are great listeners. It’s not just about hearing and understanding but about uncovering the real drivers behind what clients and candidates say. Byrne advised:
“Don’t spend your time in conversation thinking what to say next while the other person’s talking.”
Active listening builds trust, surfaces needs that might otherwise be missed, and creates the foundation for stronger, longer-term partnerships. The best listeners avoid common traps:
Feeding answers – e.g., asking “Would you be open to relocation?” and then adding “I imagine it would be difficult to uproot your family.” This shortcuts the real answer.
Not asking for clarification or explanation – avoiding questions when something isn’t clear stunts understanding and growth.
Interrupting – always show deference to whoever you are talking with and if you start to speak at the same time, always yield. One of the most common phrases heard in recruiting offices through the decades, “you have two ears and one mouth”. The Recruiting Gods wanted you to listen more than speak.
In short, producers who listen without ego, with patience, and with curiosity are the ones who serve their clients best and consistently uncover opportunities. The cost to those who are not listening means: unnecessarily long phone calls, too many steps in the placement process, opportunities missed, lack of connection, poor understanding, slow learning, poor awareness of mistakes and many many more. This will never change.
Attitude — how much does attitude affect sales performance?
Attitude is a stance, like footing for a boxer. Attitude shapes how a producer shows up in every moment and how we respond to setbacks and pressure. It also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Byrne captured it well:
“You are who you think you are and you sound like who you think you are.”
In today’s market, this goes beyond positivity. It’s about operating from a mindset of abundance, not scarcity. We must develop professional expertise in recruiting and exude self-belief in a way that takes our own needs completely out of the picture.
Some people say fake it before you make it. I don’t think that works but coming from a position of abundance does similar work on our attitude. Your voice and behavior need to reflect the reality that you don’t actually need your clients or candidates to go your way.
Clients and candidates will feel the difference in attitude. Neediness erodes connection, partnership and trust. Conversely, confidence, self-belief, and gratitude project value and build those things. And in practice, this abundance mindset also means holding the line on fees and margins, demonstrating value rather than discounting under pressure. Abundance as an attitude is magnetic.
Hard Work - Is hard work still important in the digital age of recruitment?
Byrne was unequivocal:
“Hard work is the non-negotiable price we pay for success in this job.”
As we’ve discussed, there are many characteristics that lead to success. Many of them are magnetic, like the ability to persuade and attract business. Those trying to become great can get distracted by these flashy traits either trying to emulate them or, worse, incorporating them into false beliefs of their own limitations in comparison. But the truth is, you can get incredibly far with pure hard work. Many top performers are unassuming types whom you would never guess were million dollar billers. That’s thanks to pure hard work - the know their limitations and don’t let those things prevent their success.
In recruitment, much work goes unpaid until a placement lands. That’s why success isn’t just about good work, it’s about a lot of good work. And as Byrne said, “we don’t make money shuffling paper - we make it on the phone and in meetings”. Today, we have a lot of substitutes for shuffling paper - scrolling LinkedIn feeds, cleaning up email inboxes, attending to personal lives during the working day, analyzing KPIs and a lot more. These things give the illusion of hard work but are the same kind of misguided procrastination that Byrne called shuffling paper.
Hard work compensates for lacking in all other areas. Early in a recruiter’s career, hard work compensates for lack of experience. Later, the trap is believing that working smarter means you can work less. But consistent effort is what balances out the randomness of the unforgiving recruiting gods.
Sustained, disciplined effort is what separates the producers who plateau from those who sit on top of the leaderboard year after year over long careers.
Planning - how important is it to plan your day as a sales person or recruiter?
The best producers don’t simply react; they map markets, maintain clean pipelines, and approach each conversation with intent. Planning is about structure and preparation.
Byrne’s original 30-step permanent placement process proved how discipline creates consistent outcomes. Today, planning means more than mapping: it means sticking to the plan, even when distractions are everywhere.
In recruitment, planning is what keeps activity aligned with long-term success rather than just chasing short-term wins.
Tony Byrne had a very structured approach to planning because he knew that most people in our industry are not natural planners. A lot of the required characteristics are innate but planning needs to be learned and benefits from consistent structure. Back then he said it takes an hour at the end of the day to plan the next day. That’s 20 mins to plan tomorrow's sales calls, 20 mins to plan tomorrow's recruiting and 20 mins to plan follow up on existing pipeline. He warned that in-bound follow-up activity breaks a recruiter's concentration but a good plan stops those interruptions derailing the day.
If only Byrne could have foreseen the multi-front war on our focus today. How would he have helped us stay on plan in a digital world clamoring for our attention?
Attention - is attention a skill sales professionals can work on? How can we protect our pipelines from distraction?
If Byrne was a trainer today, I believe he’d add attention to his core list.
There’s a multi-front war on people’s attention in all walks of life. Recruiting is no different. We must master the discipline of focusing on what matters most: conversations that move placements forward.
LinkedIn is a perfect example. Scrolling the feed feels like work, but is it?
Even this blog has captured your attention. It’s written with the intention of helping you to be more successful. However, it should meet your standards to invest 10 minutes. If you’re reading this and your job is to make placements… you have to decide for yourself if this is an investment of time that will pay off by helping you learn to make more placements, train someone else to make more placements or hire the right person to make more placements. If it doesn’t, I don’t want you to read it.
The greatest ally of attention is time. To recognize and interrupt distractions, you must know how to truly value your time. Top performers are constantly checking if they are getting closer to their goals and are judicious in how they spend their time.
Think of time as money. A lesser-known recruiting guru, Ruben Sutton, suggests that in the same way a day trader starts each day with a certain amount of money to invest, a recruiter’s currency is time… each day you have a certain amount of time to invest and you’re faced with the possibility of investing your time wisely or foolishly. Pay attention to how you are using your time and cultivate wisdom here.
Recruiters who treat time like day traders treat capital, making careful, strategic bets, consistently generate better returns. Every call, every email, every profile review is an investment. The producers who compound smart investments over time win.
Attention is about focus, filtering noise, and avoiding the illusion of productivity. It’s a modern skill that underpins all the others.
We live in a world where we get more of what we click on. Be careful where you click, who you talk to and pay constant attention to where you are on the path towards your goals.
Why these traits still endure
While tools, platforms, and processes have changed dramatically, Byrne’s four pillars remain essential. Layer on attention, wise time investment, and coming from a position of abundance, and you have the modern DNA of a top producer.
Producers with these traits don’t just have occasional good years; they build durable careers. They win trust, defend their value, and consistently deliver results that withstand market shifts.
The question for today’s recruiter isn’t whether to adopt these traits, it’s whether you’re willing to practice them, daily, with focus and intent.
Solving recruitment 2 recruitment challenges throws up endless opportunities to think about optimizing the hunt for top billers and I will continue to share my learning in these blogs. Look our for a newsletter which will be starting up this fall.
Do you think we have missed a non-negotiable characteristic of a top biller? Please speak up!