The latest recruitment market data gives business owners some cause for optimism, but it also raises a more important question. Is your business still designed around the market you used to have, rather than the market your clients now want?
The myth of “prior knowledge”. Everyone in the recruitment sector has experienced it. You source, engage and interview a candidate for a role. You submit a CV after the terms are agreed.
Every time I have a board meeting with the recruitment businesses I advise, I look at the gap between the forecast sales and the actual sales.
A Teams call booked via an app with a supplier who got lucky. His unsolicited automated outreach campaign happened to land in my inbox the day after I had identified a need for his product on behalf of my client (a recruitment business).
It’s been clear for some time that the traditional recruitment market (“payment on results” especially for permanent recruitment) doesn’t work very well any more, for any of the stakeholders.
When you’ve got real pressures on cash flow, or your sales pipeline is looking really sad, it’s very, very tempting to go for quick wins.
Preparing a recruitment business for sale is a process that should begin years before you intend to exit – not weeks.
Pretty much every recruitment business leader I know has a strong feeling that the world they operate in has changed. It’s more expensive, less stable, and people are buying (and job hunting) differently.
Last year, I started working with a new client. Mike owns a small engineering recruitment business with 18 employees. In early 2025, Mike noticed that job orders were down.
If you run a recruitment business, you’ve probably heard your consultants falling over themselves to “please” clients. They daren’t challenge a hiring manager’s assumptions – they just take the brief and say yes.
