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.
I’m delighted to see some evidence of job flow improving in 2026. But that doesn’t mean guaranteed sales.
The contingent (payment on results) model that has dominated the market in recruitment services for so long isn’t working for recruiters anymore. Client commitment to hire is low, decisions are slow, and the odds of filling a job are lengthening.
If you run a recruitment business, this won’t be news to you. If you are a leader, you’ll be thinking beyond
- Increasing BD efforts
- Cutting staff
- Improving job fill rates.
To the next steps –
- Faster, less expensive delivery mechanisms
- Diversification
- New markets.
I met up with Daniel this week, having not spoken for about 2 years. Back when I was working with him, his business was making more sales, but was less profitable than before. His people worked about 10 jobs to fill one, they spent a fortune on candidate attraction, and the pace was relentless.
We planned to change this, but he didn’t prioritise it. Then, his UK markets dried up.
His team, disillusioned by the leadership style and now not seeing any commission, left en masse. “So I did what you said, Alison – I hired a guy to build out the US for me.”
This was emphatically NOT what I had advised him to do. It failed. But let’s put that aside.
Let me introduce you to Ansoff’s matrix. Igor Ansoff is credited as being the first to identify the idea of environmental turbulence, which suggests how quickly and aggressively a business should read evidence and act for growth.
The colour of each quadrant indicates the amount of risk involved in each development.
- Low risk- Market Penetration. This involves getting better penetration of your services with your existing target community. Account Development, in short. Dan had never done that in any structured way- he was focused on more jobs, from more clients. And he had royally p*ssed off some of his existing clients with poor service, and even aggressively headhunting from them.
- Medium Risk- Product Development. This involves selling different services to your existing clients. After all, one hopes that you understand something about their business priorities, decision-making process and challenges, right? So for Dan, I had designed an entire temp/contract plan, with all the documentation and supply chain he needed. Dan didn’t do that “because the revenue growth was so slow”. And the rest? Let me tell you something you’re not going to like. Most recruiters are so focused on job orders that they are deaf and blind to buying signals for anything else.
- Medium Risk- Market Development. So, taking your services to the US, like Dan did? Yes, but not how he did it. He made the decision based on anecdotal evidence of huge fees from other recruitment businesses in other markets. He hired someone really expensive and left him to get on with it. He was late to the party as well.
- High Risk- Diversification. This is like a reinvention. Nokia was a wood pulp business until it moved into telecommunications. Hays was a shipping and chemicals company until it moved entirely into recruitment. This takes serious capital and the very best market intel. But it can be done.
Now, quickly, meet Emma. Her recruitment business (in a different sector) had similar issues, but we nailed client penetration from the outset. We delivered candidate attraction and onboarding plans, and charged for them. There’s much more, once she understood how to deliver it.
Then we systematically leveraged referrals and market intel to develop her customer base.
And later, we moved into designing and delivering L&D.
As you’d expect, I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses to identify appropriate priorities and make them happen. One contingent supplier of energy staff increased its account penetration and became an MSP. Two have recently made great gains in the Middle East in their sectors. But we started with the BEST market penetration. For one engineering recruiter, that resulted in tripling productivity per recruiter in just 4 months.
So if you’re looking at new markets, talk to me. Book a meeting with Alison Humphries here.
