From door-to-door charity sales to running a modern, lean recruitment agency, Rupert McSheehy has seen every side of the industry. In this episode of Talent Matters, he joins Dave Jenkins to share the story behind RMG Digital and how he’s flipped the traditional growth model on its head.
Rupert talks candidly about his time at S3, the lessons that shaped him, and why he believes recruitment doesn’t need to be all about long hours, rigid control, and big headcounts. Instead, he shares how trust, sustainability, and strategic client partnerships have become central to RMG’s success.
Whether you’re running your own agency, planning to, or simply rethinking how you measure success in recruitment, Rupert’s insight offers a refreshing take.
You don’t need 50 people to run a great agency
Rupert makes a strong case for doing more with less. Rather than chasing scale, RMG focuses on keeping its cost per desk low and its output per head high. A smaller team means leaner operations, more trust, and often better profit margins. For Rupert, headcount is a vanity metric, not a sign of success.
One of the metrics of success for recruitment businesses has been, in the past, how many people do you employ… I don’t think it’s the right one.
Control freak to enabler: letting go is part of growing up
Like many founder-operators, Rupert started as a high-performing biller. Letting go of that direct revenue generation was tough, especially when stepping into a leadership role. Over time, he has learned to delegate decisions, trust his team, and shift his focus from doing the work to enabling others to do it better.
I am getting better at leading people and showing them how to do things, but also letting them fail… If the worst thing that happens is that we lose a client and customer, then that’s the worst thing that happens.
S3 gave him the hustle, but not the handbook
S3’s intense, competitive environment taught Rupert valuable lessons about work ethic, resilience, and the power of internal culture. But not everything was worth keeping. The communal razors and 9 pm call blitzes stayed firmly in the past. Instead, he has taken the best bits — like belief, accountability, and urgency — and reframed them for a more human-centred workplace.
You’ve got to do this, otherwise someone else will do it. You are replaceable — someone else will come along and someone else wants this opportunity.
Transactional recruitment is on borrowed time
In a world where internal talent teams and AI can handle sourcing, the role of recruiters is evolving. Rupert argues that agencies need to move beyond CV-sifting and become strategic partners. That means offering market insight, helping hiring managers look ahead, and building long-term relationships, not just quick wins.
Recruitment’s not gonna change completely, but you’ve got to evolve from being a shortlist creator… We always talk about moving away from transactional recruitment, and that’s the bigger question — how on earth do you do that?
Podcasting is a business tool, not just a brand play
Rupert’s own podcast, Fireside with Founders, started as a lockdown side project. Today, it fuels RMG’s business development, brand awareness, and client engagement. It’s not about selling — it’s about building relationships in a more meaningful way, and creating something that prospects actually want to engage with.
Most of the time, people… don’t want to talk about recruitment that much if they’re not recruiting. So we’ve got to think of other things that we can engage them with. One of them is the podcast.
About Rupert McSheehy – Co-Founder, RMG Digital
Rupert McSheehy is the Director of RMG Digital, a recruitment agency specialising in Design, Product, and Software Engineering. With 17+ years of experience, he co-founded RMG to build a lean, people-first agency focused on trust, autonomy, and strategic growth. He also hosts Fireside with Founders, a podcast that supports his client engagement and business development efforts.
