How recruiters work

Greg Wyatt • March 23, 2026

What follows it Chapter 8 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026).


Like a lot of the chapters it's both too long and not long enough.


Too long because who wants to read 9 pages of navel gazing on the recruitment industry.


Not long enough because one of the most helpful things you can do at the start of a job search is to understand what you are dealing with, and the rules of the game. So this might have provided even more detail to cover the specific categories of recruiters you might build relationships with.


I've tried to find a balance that makes you think differently.


When you see the word 'recruiter' you might have an expectation of how they'll help you, but that word and it's brothers and sisters can be so wide ranging as to mean nothing.


It's regrettable that I often get replies from job seekers that show annoyance that I can't help them directly. "Did you look at my profile - it's what you do?" sort of thing.


So this may be a valuable read in showing what candidates are for recruiters, the different ways in which we work, how we are often held back by the system we work in, and how this might inform your strategy.


And if you still have questions, you can join me and Simon Ward on Tuesday 24th at 1pm GMT for our LinkedIn Live on this subject. I'll include the link here on this article when it's ready.


8 - How recruiters work


This chapter illustrates standard recruiter working practices and why they lead to some of the experiences commonly talked about among job seekers. This is about managing your expectations, by lifting the curtain on recruitment.


I’ll use broad terms where applicable and a steer on how others may use more obscure terminology.


What a candidate is


If you jump on any recruiter website, I’m pretty sure the vast majority will say something along these lines:


‘We’re disrupting the market with better candidate experience.’ As well as a lot of promises of being different in a way that looks much the same as everyone else.


And yet your experiences will differ wildly.


Part of this may be generic marketing.


Based on many discussions with fellow recruiters, my belief is that the industry definition is different to a job seeker’s definition.


Many hiring processes see candidates as an employable person being considered for a job.


I use this terminology myself. For example, a job advert may have 99 applications, while only 5 are potential candidates - because they meet the criteria of the role and the remaining applicants don’t.


The nuance of this definition is that the more cynical the process, the worse the memory retention of which candidates were assessed.


Some companies may have seen you as a candidate at 2nd stage interview, then completely forget about you if they’ve discounted you from the process - you are no longer a candidate.


Using this definition, many recruiters think they give a first class of candidate experience because they only relate it to the people they think of as candidates.


This is equally true of someone who treats everyone decently and those who only treat people they place into jobs decently.


On the other hand, pretty much anyone who looks at new employment sees themselves as a candidate for that employment.


Assuming you are accountable, you wouldn’t apply for any job you didn’t see yourself as suitable for.


Even if you chose not to apply, it’s not necessarily because you didn’t see yourself as a candidate. It may be that even though you are a suitable candidate for that vacancy, your experience of the process made you choose to step away - which might be as simple as not liking the advert or email you read.


This last point relates to the phenomenon of candidate resentment (p89).


There’s another industry nuance to the candidate definition.


In the same way you may have heard about the hidden jobs market, recruiters talk about the passive candidate market:

‘80% of candidates aren’t looking for a job, and these are the best candidates.’


Not my words, btw. A passive opportunity (p160) explores why this happens and how you can use the same principles to improve your odds.


If you think it odd that I’ve started ‘How recruiters work’ with a discussion on candidates, it’s because our relationship with our candidates is a sign of how we work with employers.


Without placing candidates in one form or another, most recruiters wouldn’t make any money. It is deeply integrated into how we work.


Different agency recruitment models


Typically, agency fees come from the successful placement of staff irrespective of the nature of work.


The fee is often a percentage of salary and in most situations is budgeted separately from the new employee's pay.


The overall steps recruiters often work to are these:


  1. Receive job description from employer
  2. Advertise job (on a job board or through outreach like DMs and calls)
  3. Find and submit qualified candidates
  4. Arrange interviews
  5. Coordinate offer process


The differentiators are the quality of information at each step and how rigorously they are executed.


For example, my requirement for recruiting a vacancy is a full consultation on the company, vacancy, context and culture, which I summarise in writing in a detailed candidate pack. Where there are issues, I advise the employer on how we can overcome them.


There are variations around this type of process.


Some agencies may rely more on a video presentation, others may ‘sell in’ candidates.


Some agencies will use psychometrics or other types of assessments.


Some will meet all candidates, some won't even talk to them.


The general steps have a lot of crossovers.


Contingency


The most popular recruitment model is akin to 'no win, no fee'.

In the UK, it’s estimated that the average fill rate is between 20% and 33%. This is a range from several sources, although it’s next to impossible to pinpoint accurately.


At the lower end, for every vacancy filled, that recruiter won’t fill four vacancies. Therefore, their fee implicitly accounts for unfulfilled work.


The reason it’s low is that most vacancies provided to recruiters are given on a ‘multi-agency’ basis and even in competition with the employer themselves.


A lot of contingency recruitment is first past the post, in that a submitted CV is seen to be owned by the agency which submitted it first.


Let’s say Joe Recruiter has to fill 3 vacancies a month to hit target.


At a 20% fill rate, he works on 15 vacancies a month. You can see how this might impact quality of service if there are multiple different candidates for each role. And if the race is on to get CVs over as quickly as possible.


This can result bad behaviours like refusing to divulge company information (for fear of divulging competitor secrets) to trying to find out who you are interviewing with (which may be to use them as leads). And classics like ghosting and poor responsiveness.


It isn’t necessarily the case. There are some great contingency recruiters out there who work closely with employers, often with exclusivity.


When I was a pure contingency recruiter, my fill rate varied between 50% and 70% annually. It’s higher consistently now, though I don’t work contingently anymore.


Other models


The traditional counterpoint to contingency is retained where we receive a portion of a fee up front to service a vacancy. This requires exclusivity and better access to hiring information.


Retained isn’t intrinsically better than contingency - both have their issues, challenges and opportunities.


It can lead to mutual obligation from the employer while allowing a more quality focused approach to candidate work, resulting in a better experience for everyone.


A different approach is RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) whereby a third party manages recruitment for the employer.


Over the past few years, we’ve seen other models come through, from subscription types (bizarrely called Recruitment as a Service), to embedded / insourced / fractional (acting as an in-house recruitment function as a third party) to Uber-style apps.


Different types of agency recruiter


There are as many types of agency recruiter as there are recruitment models.


What complicates matters is that as an industry we sometimes try to hide what we do by clever names.


Am I a boutique headhunter or am I a recruiter? Or a Talent Ecosystem Intelligence Officer?


I’m proud to be a recruiter who wears my process on my sleeve.


Whatever we term ourselves the nature of an agency will inform whether they might help you:


Temps / interim


Where you sign up for temporary work on an hourly or daily rate employed through a contract for service.


While Interim recruitment also relates to temporary projects it is quite different. Interims have a skills set a traditional employee doesn’t have. They provide a service through their limited company, held outside of IR35 (off-payroll working regulations).


The agency will make money on a margin / markup based on your pay.


Permanent


An agency that works mainly on permanent vacancies typically paid on filling a job, by the employer.


Many agencies offer both.


Specialist


These are typically recruitment agencies that specialise in a domain. This could be a broad industry like manufacturing or professional services, or a market vertical like marketing or HR.


It doesn’t necessarily mean they have specialist knowledge of the roles they recruit, although this can be the case. It means more that they regularly recruit a specific type of role.


Generalist


These won’t have one specialty and may work closer with certain employers across a variety of vacancies. They might be pure scattergun.


You may find them excellent for the one vacancy you are in discussion for, yet that’s the only time they’ll have something for you.


Headhunter


This can mean many things.


The idea is that headhunters access passive candidates who don’t apply for jobs. Although many use the same tools other recruiters do.


Some won’t advertise at all. Others might advertise alongside other activities.


The crux of the message for employers is that they have a capability beyond what employers can achieve themselves, which can be true.


Executive Search


Typically, this works on a retained basis for board level appointments. It’s rare to see these roles advertised.


They use many of the same proactive channels others do and may cultivate a specific network of contacts who are go-to candidates. Some are so niche they may not go outside of their network.


And many more


It doesn’t matter so much how a recruiter works, more that they can be a conduit to your next job.


Two points come from the sections above:


1/ that candidate experience is hard to deliver consistently when dealing with the volume of vacancies you see in a contingency model, and takes intent in other models,


2/ that agencies are paid to fill jobs, not explicitly to help find people jobs.


That second point can cause much frustration if you assume it’s the job of a recruiter to help you find a role, especially when our marketing talks about how we help candidates.


Recruitment is often a short-term business. It’s rare that you’ll see recruiters cultivate long-term relationships with job seekers if they can’t help you directly.


This is ironic, considering many job seekers will reciprocate the help they’ve received with people they’ve built trust with. Doubly ironic, when it’s someone with hiring authority that gets radio silence from previous suppliers.


It’s common to hear of job seekers blacklisting agencies for poor service - frustrating, demoralising and occasionally crushing to be on the end of bad experience.


Don’t let a bad process get in the way of what might be good employment.


This is as true at the employer end as with agencies.


With agencies, the onus is often on winning the next vacancy, rather than giving service to people who may or may not be candidates. Their client may not even know how those agencies work with candidates.


These same agencies may have further vacancies you could be seen as a good candidate for with different employers.


At the same time, many hiring managers have never been trained on recruitment or interviewing, while being busy at work. This can lead to a poor experience as a candidate compared with what they would be like to work with.


The internal recruiter


These are recruiters employed directly by the employer to fulfil their recruitment. Often these are called Talent Acquisition Managers, Internal Recruiter, or Recruitment Manager.


More than filling vacancies, they manage the system of recruitment. There are many specialist domains within talent acquisition including workforce planning, retention, enablement, marketing and branding.


It’s a field that is overwhelmed by a large number of redundancies and where internal recruiters are often overburdened.


When working on vacancies, the priority is to fill them. This can lead to frustration if you ask corporate recruiters, ‘Do you have any jobs I might be suitable for?’


Whether or not there is an argument that they could help you, it’s more effective to do the work yourself. Research the business areas they recruit for and ask directly ‘could you tell me who is the best contact for <your field>‘ or ‘when are you likely to recruit for these roles?’


Help them help you.


Takeaways


There’s much to talk about on this subject and I’ve no doubt I’ve missed glaringly obvious topics. Equally, it’s easy to oversimplify what is a huge and complex industry.


It’s worth learning the rules of the recruitment game when you can. Be curious and ask questions.


While we should be criticised for poor behaviour, if you don’t understand why a recruiter works in a certain way, please don’t assume it’s for bad reason.


Recruitment is a stressful job at the best of times. This can lead to thick skin and callous behaviour. It’s not an excuse, more a symptom of the system we all work in.



Salary on the job description

By Greg Wyatt • November 11, 2026
I've written many variations on the article below, over the years, and it seems sensible to revisit given the UK government's announcements around salary transparency. On the whole, I'm for it, with the many advantages it brings. But like a lot of things in recruitment, there is a more involved discussion to be had, especially when this fix treats the symptoms, not the rot. That's not to say the fix isn't worth doing, just that it won't fix many of the problems underlying a lack of transparency. This article is a little dated, in terms of the research shared, but I think the points are as relevant as ever. Originally published May 2023 Salary on the Job Description? Yes, the headline is trolling. The question should be ‘salary on the job advert?’ You wouldn’t confuse a job description with an advert, would you? This is a subject rife with disagreement around ethics and practicality, and worth broaching again considering recent campaigns in the UK to increase salary transparency and ban the ‘what’s your current salary?’ question. Let’s focus on some practicalities first, based on UK research I ran last year for my “Accessing a Candidate Short Market” guide:  Job boards can penalise you for not listing salary. As of December 2021, Totaljobs penalises adverts that don’t list salary, and these aren’t sent out as job alerts to candidates (who may be passive). These adverts are considered sub-standard. Unlisted salaries attract fewer qualified applications. This was estimated to be between 20% and 45% fewer, across the job boards I talked to. LinkedIn reported that not only can you expect more applications, you may also expect better-qualified applications when the salary is advertised. My work supporting senior job seekers confirms this - many would not apply to adverts that had no salary or "competitive salary" because they felt this was a waste of their time. There is less emphasis on salary negotiation from the candidate side, due to transparency in pay. This is a key part of equity, relating to gender, race and intersectional identity. According to Payscale 's research, white men are most likely to negotiate the highest salary. It’s simple – if you advertise vacancies and don’t list salary, you risk receiving fewer, less suitable applications. Then there’s the ethical question, where a common argument is that there is ‘no ethical reason that salaries can’t be listed’. Now, while I’m a proponent for advertising salaries, where possible, I think this ethical argument isn’t the right one - ‘can’t be’ is a strong statement. I think a better question is ‘how does this do harm’ when establishing reasons for not listing salary. This balances pragmatism with the most important aspect of ethics. It can be a complicated question too in scenarios like this: How do you establish salary transparency for job families across multiple regions where the local pay is established by HQ in one country? Currency exchange rates and cost of living mean that a fair salary one day may not be the next, therefore flexibility in not listing salary may be ethically the right thing to do if the intent is right. What about new vacancies that serve to solve a business problem and can be recruited at different levels? What about practical situations like recruiting hard-to-fill vacancies during a wider redundancy programme, whereby listing a salary would create concern in unrelated areas of that unsettled business? It's not always as simple a question as we’d like to think. If you’re facing a complex situation in advertising a role, I recommend describing your stance in the advert itself, if you legitimately can’t state the salary. At the same time, as we’ve seen in the US, legislation to enforce salary transparency creates situations such as Netflix apparently advertising a range of $90-900k. Who does that help? The problem with this kind of legislation is that companies can comply while continuing the behaviour that led to the legislation in the first place. It’s palliative, rather than treating unfairness at its root. We should also consider the unforeseen consequence of salary transparency, such as this research which appears to show a reduced link between performance and pay: Influence of Pay Transparency Helping candidates negotiate better pay or terms is a privilege I enjoy. And there's more to understanding someone's existing remuneration than simply establishing whether they can afford to move. Sometimes these conversations reveal that someone is being underpaid. With evidence of what their experience and contribution might command elsewhere, they can go back to their current employer and make the case for a pay rise. That might mean they decide not to move at all. Which is a perfectly good outcome for them, even if it isn't for the vacancy in the short term. It also opens up the counteroffer conversation early. If their employer could resolve the reason they're considering leaving, I'd rather understand that before they accept an offer elsewhere. There's a benefit for prospective employers too. A new employer may budget £52,000 for a role, believing that to be market rate, based on historic data. But if conversations with suitably experienced candidates reveal that their existing remuneration, expectations and other opportunities consistently indicate otherwise, there's good reason to revise either the budget or the requirements. If that budget does prove unrealistic, and it's the same budget other team members are measured against, it can also create the argument to revisit everyone's salaries - subject to affordability, of course. After all, it's cheaper to retain fairly paid staff with all the knowledge they have than to replace them. Of course, conversations with candidates aren't a substitute for proper salary benchmarking. But they can reveal problems that wouldn't otherwise be apparent. There are also situations where understanding the whole package matters. What if someone currently receives a 16% pension contribution and moves to a role offering a 10% pay rise but only a 5% pension? Car allowances, RSUs, tax-efficient packages? Remuneration is a more involved conversation than simply salary. And none of this means someone's existing salary should determine what they're worth to their next employer. If their previous salary was unfair, using it to determine their next salary risks perpetuating that unfairness. And if an employer routinely offers a 15% increase on previous earnings, the new salary may have little relationship to the contribution that person can make. It makes sense to pay commensurately with contribution and capability, rather than what may be irrelevant history. So I understand the reasons for wanting to ban questions about previous salary. They're often used badly. But I think there's an important distinction between asking to establish someone's worth and asking to understand their circumstances. One can perpetuate unfairness. The other can help identify and correct it. If legislation restricts these conversations, I'll adapt how I offer this support. But I'd hope any restrictions recognise the difference between using salary history to determine an offer and voluntarily discussing remuneration to help someone make better decisions. I hope you’ve found these thoughts helpful to start a broader conversation in your business. My thoughts aren’t set in stone, so please let me know your opinions if you disagree. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services: Commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment Manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client Outplacement support Email me on greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk if you'd like to discuss.

Tone deaf - No problem, pt 6

By Greg Wyatt • November 5, 2026
It's interesting revisiting this article from 3 years ago, especially now AI products are more embedded in market. If anything my view on AI is more polarised, bringing many new opportunites, brand new problems, as well as the existential angst many are talking about. For me, codifying my experience with AI tools means I can help more people, while freeing up my time to do more human work. It's certainly helped with job seeker support, and increasingly so in my recruitment work. Mainly it's giving me more time to talk to people, and when homogenous AI applications at scale are one new problem, as well as the increasing threat of deep fake interviews, in person conversations might be a necessary exnovation (just googled that - what a great word that I will now abuse at scale). While the article below has dated somewhat, I think the threat it assesses has never been more pertinent. I've said for some time that AI might be the death of knowledge and judgement, even so far as 'meaning', something that this recent research also indicates . Importantly the research doesn't say the recommendations were wrong, just how they were followed. Read that article and think about how AI recommendations on applications relate. I've certainly found them more problematic, so far, than the old school ATS style ranking and filtering - because of the false confidence they convey, especially when dealing with non-traditional applications. Things may improve, or so is promised. And while words might be the first facility of LLM, they are still the core facility, given all it does is determine the most probable answer in its outputs (I know I'm being reductive, some of the developments from AI are amazing). Whereas words should be the consequence of thoughts, lead to the development of thought, and distil ideas in a way you can act on. Much like job adverts should be the consequence of effective job analysis, rather than a polished word that lacks meaning. The greatest risk for me in recruitment isn't so much the answers AI offers, but that we become so reliant we forget to ask better questions. I've edited down the previous article, but if you're curious, you can see it here . September 2023 I’d commented about my hearing on a social media post on deafness. ‘Have you looked into these hearing aids - they’re designed to overcome head shadow’, came the impromptu reply from a hearing aid specialist. Head shadow? Not a phrase I’d heard before, despite having no hearing on one side, which effectively creates a sound-free shadow to my right. See, when I had mumps at 18 months it killed the vestibulocochlear nerve in my right ear and damaged the one on the left. But it was my balance that showed the nursery assistants that something was wrong - I kept falling over for no reason. I expect they thought my slow response was normal naughty-boyness. Balance, intermittently poor audio processing, energy required to maintain attention in noisy environments and that bloody tinnitus - all these issues are far more annoying than not being able to hear in one ear. That and not being able to tell where sounds come from. “Over here, Greg!” is the most useless call on a football pitch. And the head shadow thing? Well, it’s never been an issue - I just turn my head when in conversation. It might look like I’m turning to kiss you, but it’s just a conversation I want honest. Sure I miss out on certain audio cues, but it’s rarely an issue. Anyway, curious as I am I looked into the £4,000 hearing aid that solves head shadow by placing a microphone on the deaf ear and projecting it into the the good ear. Quite the brute force tech solution and one I’m sure some benefit from. But the key issue is one of reverb. While the product is good, it would impact the quality of sound in my good ear, which seems a pointless trade-off for me, when my process of life is more effective than shiny tech. It’s ironic that I consider myself highly excitable when it comes to technology developments, yet I’m never an early adopter. Because I always ask myself, other than giddiness, what problems does this solve and how will it enhance my life. And so it is for AI in recruitment, and the shininess of tech in general. They are positioned as solving problems, and indeed they do, but in many cases, it’s the wrong problem that detracts us from the real opportunities for better processes. Simpler administration, speed and scale are clear benefits. And some of these AI-branded automations are excellent. The Star Trek-style auto-translator makes me giddy. As does the sales bot conversation-as-a-human sales video that’s doing the rounds. But AI for writing? What problem does that solve? For me, it depends on what you consider sales to be. Is sales pitching a generic message and hoping someone will bite? Or is sales laying out the facts so that the right person can reach an objective decision? A decision which might mean getting in touch, or changing their view on what needs recruiting. For the former AI writing seems to solve a problem. The words are certainly better, but the message is even worse. Yes: prompting. But if you can prompt the right message, why aren’t you just writing it, so that you embed that knowledge for use across other mediums - conversations, meetings and so on? While AI writing does not meet the requirements for the second type of sales. You can only do this by establishing the right facts from a briefing, consultation or interview. Then interpret this with meaning to the right people so that it creates the right impact. Sales as data visualisation, if you will. And if AI doesn’t work for sales in this way, why would it work for content or marketing? I think the answer depends on whether you value contextual insight or not. Until AI is better at asking questions that create meaningful conversation, it’s a non-starter for me. I say until because this hesitation will be moot in the next year or so. Because it isn’t what AI is now that’s the opportunity - it’s what’s coming soon. I can’t wait to see what’s next. Until then, AI, for writing, is a question of in one ear and out of the other. Which, if you’re deaf in the one, is quite the problem. Go learn copywriting instead, and listen to how it transforms your approach to recruitment. Then layer tech on top, when it’s ready. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg p.s. If you like good recruitment and you need help with it in the UK, drop me a line. DM on LinkedIn, email greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk , whichever you prefer.