$40M in Fees. Then Cut 50 Recruiters to Save It. Part 1

Tom Kelly scaled EVONA from four bootstrapped founders in a tiny Bristol office to eighty recruiters in three years. Then he made the call most agency owners never make. He cut the team back to thirty. And in doing it, per-head revenue doubled.

 

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation that pulls apart exactly how that happened.

 

Brought to you by Atlas. The AI-first recruitment platform that captures every candidate conversation automatically. Atlas customers report 40%+ EBITDA growth and 80%+ increase in monthly billings. Get your exclusive listener offer at recruitwithatlas.com.

 

 

Tom came up on the inside track at one of the biggest STEM recruiters on the FTSE. He spotted space as a high-growth vertical before almost anyone, pitched it internally, got shut down, and walked. He linked up with three other recruiters in the same office — Jack, Rich, and Ryan. They sketched the company out on a whiteboard at Tom's place: no KPIs, no fixed working hours, no fixed location, brand-first, give back to STEM. Eight years and over $40 million in fees later, they've stuck to every line of it.

 

Their first placement was a chef in a Bristol restaurant for £2,000. Hire number two was a head of marketing — a decision every advisor said was crazy. By Tom's read, recruitment and marketing are the same thing. Brand pull beats spam. That bet became the operating philosophy of the entire company.

 

Then COVID hit and the space industry — recession-proof, Tom argues, because satellites don't get sick — tripled their revenue and headcount. They paid LinkedIn a fortune ahead of a planned scale to three hundred people. They flew the whole company and their partners to Monaco after a million-dollar month. Tom calls that trip the moment the wheels were about to come off.

 

By 2021 the cracks were showing. Five account managers, thirty fillers, two RPO teams, a full operations and finance bench. Tom describes the peak as a hot mess. So the four founders sat down and made the hardest call of their careers. Contract team first — running $20K a week with no real strategy. Then perm cuts. Then operations. Then the advisors. Tom and the other three didn't pay themselves for six months. He moved his family to the US in the middle of it.

 

The episode ends on the moment the four founders agreed one of them had to lead, and that person would be Tom. Without ego. The single reason, Tom says, the business is still standing.

 

Part 2 drops Wednesday — the 25-interview rule that defines elite recruiters at EVONA, and the segmentation that explains why most agency owners are quietly losing 60% of their team.

 

What You'll Learn:

 

- Why scaling to 80 recruiters nearly broke the business, and the moment the four founders knew they had to cut to 30

- The pre-COVID hire every advisor told Tom was crazy, and why it became the engine of the company

- How EVONA tripled in COVID while most agencies were frozen

- The £300,000 company trip Tom now calls a warning sign

- What it actually costs to let 50 people go — emotionally, financially, culturally

- Why the four founders agreed one person had to take the wheel, and how they made the call without breaking the partnership

 

Connect with Tom Kelly:

 

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/evonatom/

EVONA — https://evona.com

 

🎙️ Resources:

 

Atlas — recruitwithatlas.com

Elite Recruiter Community — https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

AI Recruiting Summit 2026 — https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/

Newsletter — https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe