About Warren

Warren Kemp is the author, the voice and your guide throughout your ku.dos training sessions. He first entered the recruitment industry in the early 1990s, opening up and running a boutique headhunting firm focusing on the retail sector. You may know him from his company Recruitment Matters International, which delivers training across the UK and the world. Warren and his team have been helping recruiters recruit more effectively since 1998.

As well as continuing to run retained recruitment assignments through his firm The Kemp Consultancy, his management consultancy and training work has involved:

Helping grow a legal recruitment firm from 7 staff to 74, and then selling the company for a 8 figure sum
Authoring 3 business books
Host for Recruitment Matters Radio, a music and tips online programme
Working with recruiters from 25 countries worldwide
Writing and voicing Europe’s largest selling audio product on headhunting
Running more headhunting and business development courses than any other trainer around today
Guest speaker at numerous recruitment industry events

Warren’s story

(It’s a long one – he’s 56!)

Hi,

Back in 1993, I was a retailer. I had run supermarkets and DIY stores on a local, regional and national level. At 16, I was the Deputy Manager of a jeans store even though I only worked one day a week (while at school) and there were eight other full and part-time staff. At 17, I was Deputy Manager of a supermarket after only three months with the company (after choosing not to go to college/university). Fair to say I took to retail well and quickly. And after 17 years I was burned out. I wanted something else – my own company. So I opened a recruitment business focusing on retail.

I did OK – I knew my market, I had hired hundreds of staff as a retailer after all, but I lacked something. Process. So I bought into a new start up headhunting franchise and did well. They taught me that process. I had the belief and the drive but it was the process that allowed me to put my personal stamp on what I did, and I taught my team well. I sold the business and not for a fortune, but I was young and excited at the thought of doing other things.

As well as training my own staff, I had retrained most of my fellow franchisees (some have become and remain clients now). Training was the natural next move. So I set up a training company. Now I do something I believe in, I’m committed to, I’m passionate about, I understand the process, and know my market. i.e. The blueprint for anyone to make a success, including you as a recruiter.

I started that business (now Recruitment Matters International) from a shed in my back garden. I wrote one training course “How to headhunt” and decided to market it. I bought a database of 1000 recruiters and split in two. I produced a hard copy flyer advertising it as an in-house one day training event. 500 were advertised at £1200 a day and the other 500 with exactly the same words except it was at £2400 a day. Split testing is a great thing to do. I had two replies at the lower rate and 18 at the higher rate. I bagged 6 of the 18 at £2400 a day as clients, and I had a business that was making money.

With some of that money I then went into a recording studio and put together a set of six cassettes (told you I’m old) entitled “How to headhunt anyone you want to”. To the same database, I sent out an offering of a 28-day buy or return deal and “sold” 20. I got two back. So I repeated it every month for two years and always sold c.20 and got two back. £2600 a month profit every time. Over the next few years and via CD and audio download it became the world’s biggest selling audio on that subject. In the meantime, I was working with a legal recruiter twice a week (on the back of a one-day training gig from that first flyer) as a management consultant & trainer. Over 10 years I helped them grow from 7 to 74 staff, from 1 to 12 offices worldwide and they sold for double digit millions. That bread and butter income helped me grow from my shed to leading a team of world class recruitment trainers and experts in associated fields and into Recruitment Matters International.

Recruiting is still in my blood and I still go out and win and execute assignments and those are predominantly in the eCommerce landscape. That keeps me current to help the 1000’s of recruiters I’ve trained and coached. If I average the days per week that I train or coach, over the 20 years or so it’s nearly 2500 sessions and nearly 20,000 recruiters. And I’ve learned a lot from them too. So I’d like to thank every one of those 20,000 rookies, researchers, consultants, managers and owners who have put me in a position to put all I know into ku.dos. It’s your library for success produced, written and worded by me AND developed by 20,000 of your peers.