How recruiters work

Greg Wyatt • April 3, 2024

I’ll start with some disclaimers and points for consideration:

My knowledge is principally in the UK. I’ve worked as an external recruiter, in-house recruiter, hiring manager, and I’ve looked for work in a downturn.
This post is aimed at giving a little insight into standard working practices, how we work with hiring processes, and why that leads to some of the experiences commonly talked about. It’s about expectation management.
I’ll use broad terms where applicable, and a steer on how others may use more obscure terminology to discuss the same

These are the areas I’ll cover today:

What a candidate is
Different agency recruitment models
Different types of agency recruiter
The internal recruiter
A few takeaways

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 what your experience is will differ wildly.

Part of this may be marketing gumpf.

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

The vast majority of 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, while 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 considered.

By this I mean 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 - because 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 consider 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 everyone that considers employment sees themselves as a candidate for employment.

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

And even if you chose not to apply, it’s not necessarily because you didn’t see yourself as a candidate. It may be because though you are a great 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.

There’s another industry nuance to the candidate definition.

In the same way you may have heard about the hidden jobs market, so too do we talk about the passive candidate market:

“70% of candidates aren’t looking for a job, and these are the best candidates.”

Not my words, btw.

If you’re interested in reading more on the active vs candidate debate, I’ve written about it on my other newsletter: Your Mileage May Vary.

If you think it strange that I’ve started an article on ‘how recruiters work’ with a discussion on candidates, it’s simply 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, so it is deeply integrated into how we work.

Different agency recruitment models

Typically agencies earn their money through the successful placement of staff, irrespective of the nature of work.

The fee is often derived as a percentage of salary, and in most situations is budgeted for separately from the pay the new employee receives.

The overall steps any recruiter works to are these:

Receive job description from employer
Advertise job (either on a job board or through outreach like emails, calls)
Find and submit qualified candidates
Arrange interviews
Coordinate offer process

The differentiator is 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. This is a simplified version of the first bullet point for me.

There are nuances 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.

But the general steps have a lot of crossover.

In a 100% transactional process, the steps are reliant on the quality of documentation- job description and CV- and leave the candidate and employer to do much of the rest.

Most recruitment processes are somewhere in between (I’m sure some are better than mine too, or do it differently, but this is for illustration).

You can tell a transactional process from public adverts - if an advert looks like a copypasta job description, it’s likely they haven’t qualified the vacancy in detail. Equally it shows in how the agency interacts with you.

How we are paid also has an impact in quality of service.

2.1 Contingency

This is the most popular recruitment model, akin to ‘no win, no fee’ where we only derive income from placements. This might be a percentage of salary or fixed fee.

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

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

The reason it’s so 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’ too, in that a submitted CV is seen to be owned by the agency that submitted them first.

As a small exercise - let’s say Joe Recruiter has to fill 3 vacancies a month to hit target. This means he has to work on 15 vacancies a month to achieve the goal. You can see how this might impact quality of service, especially if there are multiple different candidates for each role. And especially if the race is on to get CVs over as quickly as possible.

This can result in some of the bad experiences talked about in recruitment, from refusing to divulge company information (for fear of divulging competitor secrets), to trying to find out who you are interviewing with (which may be so they can use them as leads) to dropping contact if there is nothing they can do for you.

It isn’t necessarily the case, and there are some great contingency recruiters out there, especially those that work more closely with employers, often with exclusivity.

Fwiw, when I was a pure contingency recruiter, early in my career, my fill rate varied between 50 and 70%, annually. It’s higher, consistently, now.

2.2 Other models

The traditional counterpoint to contingency is ‘ retained ’ where we receive a portion of a fee up front to service a vacancy. This also requires exclusivity, and because employers have skin in the game, better access to hiring process information.

I don’t like this term personally, because it can be used to imply one approach is better than the other. That’s not true, neither is inherently better, each with their own issues and challenges, and it is just a fee model.

However, what it can mean, in how it can lead to mutual obligation from the employer while allowing a more qualitative approach to candidate work - this is what can lead to superior service. I.e. the philosophy is what’s important, and a fee model can reflect that.

A different approach is through RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) whereby, like any outsourced arrangement, a 3rd party can manage recruitment for the employer, to different service levels.

Over the past few years we’ve seen other models come through from subscription types (bizarrely called Recruitment As A Service), to embedded/insourced (acting as an in-house talent/recruitment function but as a 3rd party, similar in notion to RPO) to Uber-style apps.

Personally, my approach is try and find employers who benefit from a strategic partnership - any fee is just a consequence, and can take roughly the shape of any of those above.

I think two important points come from the paragraphs above:

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

b/ that agencies are paid to fill jobs, not to help find people jobs

That second point can cause so 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 - which comes back to that definition above.

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

Which is ironic, considering many jobseekers 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.

I don’t mind saying that while my goal is to help job seekers, a happy byproduct is the same job seekers occasionally ask for my help recruiting in future, with less of the need to sell my credibility.

Different types of agency recruiter

There’s around as many types of agency recruiter as there are recruitment agencies.

What complicates matters is that as an industry we sometimes try to hide what we do by clever names, some of which may have meaning, some of which are smoke and mirrors.

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 there are broadly a limited number of types of agency:

2.1 Temps/interim Agency

This is where you sign up for temporary work, on an hourly/daily rate employed through a contract for service.

This is typically on-demand recruitment, where the agency will make money through a margin/markup related to your rate.

Interim recruitment is a little different technically, in that interim typically have a skills set a traditional employee wouldn’t have, and provide a service through their limited company that is held outside of IR35.

The agency here will likely have a margin on the daily rate.

2.2 Permanent agency

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

2.3 Specialist recruiter

These are typically recruitment agencies that specialise in a domain. This could be a broad industry like ‘industrial’ or a market vertical like ‘marketing’.

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 on a type of role.

2.4 Generalist recruiter

Typically they don’t have one specialty, but may work closer with certain employers across a variety of vacancies. They might be pure scattergun of course!

2.5 Headhunter

This can mean many things, principally as a marketing spiel.

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

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

2.6 RPO / embedded / insourced

An approach which manages part or all of a recruitment function. I find RPOs often are pitched at the multinational end of the market, while embedded / insourced are geared more towards start-ups and scale-ups.

2.7 And many more

Ultimately it shouldn’t matter what a recruiter does, more how they can be a conduit to a job.

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

However, a key message I always say is this

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. And that employer may not know how those agencies work.

While with employers, many hiring managers have never been trained on recruitment or interview, while being very busy at work. It’s not an excuse, but can lead to a more polarised experience as a candidate, than 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 termed Talent Acquisition Managers, Internal Recruiter, Recruitment Manager.

They aren’t always about just filling vacancies, but also about managing the system of recruitment.

It’s a field that is overwhelmed due to a huge amount of layoffs, where internal recruiters are often overburdened, even in very large companies.

When working on vacancies, the mandate is to fill those vacancies, and again 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 and either research the business to what they are recruiting, or simply ask directly “could you tell me who is the best contact for <your field>”, “when are you likely to recruit for these roles” and help them help you.

Takeaways

There’s so much to talk about on this subject, and I’ve no doubt I’ve missed glaringly obvious topics. If I have, let me know and I’ll update this article.

Equally it’s easy to oversimplify what is a huge and complex industry - please treat this as an illustration rather than something to specifically rely on.

Some takeaways:

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, which can lead to thick skin and callous behaviour. It’s not an excuse, more a symptom of the system we all work in.

The next article will be on ‘principles of a good CV’.

Thanks for reading.

Greg

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A passive opportunity

By Greg Wyatt • August 18, 2026

What follows is an updated Chapter 32 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It examines the nonsense argument that passive candidates are better than active candidates. It also examines why that perception happens, and what you can learn from it to present yourself as a more compelling candidate. Because, after all, recruitment is psychology. And the hardest psychology to master is your own. 32 - A passive opportunity Speak to headhunters and many will say that passive candidates are inherently better than active candidates. Active means you are actively looking for another job. Passive means you aren’t yet may be open to conversation. The argument goes further stating that something like 80% of the candidate marketplace is passive, while only 20% actively apply for adverts. Therefore, if you recruit only through advertising, you will miss out on a huge chunk of viable candidates. This isn’t a terminology I like - I use ‘ problem awareness ’ as a differentiator instead. It doesn’t help that, in the market we are currently in, adverts can receive 100s of applications, few of which are viable candidates. If an employer doesn’t think adverts are effective, and that candidates are likely to be passive, they may not even advertise, instead relying on activities like headhunting. If all you do is rely on active channels such as adverts, you limit your opportunity. There are two elements to the active / passive argument that are worth talking about. The first is how you come across the vacancy. The second is how you are assessed for the vacancy. How recruiters look for passive candidates Recruiters take an inbound and outbound approach to filling vacancies. Using the argument above, only Active candidates are inbound, whereas Passive candidates are found through outbound work such as headhunting. Outbound work is more controllable because the recruiter only contacts candidates who meet their specific criteria, typically through LinkedIn, CV databases (job boards and agency), networking, referrals and headhunting. I differentiate headhunting from LinkedIn, because anyone can headhunt on LinkedIn using recruiter licence, but proper headhunting should work across multiple channels and involve more rigour throughout. I know because I trained in a headhunting firm that enjoyed a strong reputation well before LinkedIn was invented. And those additional channels are just as effective today - if not more so because of how democratised LinkedIn has become. To be found like a Passive candidate you have to take advantage of the channels used by recruiters. I take a whole of market approach across all inbound and outbound channels where appropriate. Early last year, I had a Talent Acquisition vacancy that went live, although we hadn’t finalised the job description. We agreed that I would only speak to out of work TA folk in London (of which there are many), because the ambiguity of the brief would be less problematic. I didn’t advertise for the same reason. I took the same approach I would to target passive candidates, only concentrating on out-of-work active candidates instead. We had a shortlist of 6 qualified candidates, and another 6 on the backburner. No one else would know this vacancy existed due to its lack of visibility. I recruited it by ordinary means, without advertising. Of course, that vacancy was cancelled, such had been the way of 2025. How to get found like a passive candidate This is simpler than you might think and comes down to understanding how we look for candidates, then optimising your visibility in kind. I call this principle inversion. I’ve written advice on each in part three (edit for this newsletter: you'll see many of these chapters published for free in previous editions). Each of these reflects how I might look for candidates without advertising: optimising for LinkedIn Recruiter licence, CV databases and other data repositories; asking for referrals in thin markets; networking; direct research into incubator companies; industry events and so on. Not all of these are replicable, and the balance of what is effective relies on your specific market conditions. Why passive candidates can be more appealing at interview Passive candidates are already in a suitable job that is at least adequate. To move would have to be for good reason. Which means they may only interview for roles they are closely aligned to and have the freedom to walk away from. This combination of detachment and alignment makes a compelling proposition. Passive candidates are typically in fewer recruitment processes than active candidates, often only one, which allows employers better odds of them accepting an offer. How many recruitment processes are you in? If you had the nice problem of having two or more offers to choose between, how many could you accept? This is a real and quantifiable risk for employers - is there an argument to reduce this risk by only offering candidates who are only in one process? This risk links to the emerging situation of automated AI optimised applications. When employers have a high volume of homogenous applications designed to 'beat the ATS', the entire application base loses credibility. A candidate found through headhunting immediately has the semblance of being more real, even if all they did was optimise their LinkedIn profile. Yet another reason why the myth of 'ATS compliance' will work against you, given passive candidates haven't even read those articles and get hired with CVs that look similar to the ones you used to use. There is a more cynical side to the passive argument, which is that ‘only headhunters can access them.’ These uniquely skilled professionals sometimes rely on an obfuscated process. It’s a boon that employers don’t understand how they work. It can be advantageous not to represent active candidates at all. I choose to lay my process bare and it’s only one way in which I look for candidates. The passive candidate features that improve your odds Detachment. If you are out of work, typically you need a job, which can involve a number of compromises, rather than solely being interested in that one job for what it is. Detaching yourself from the outcome of an application makes you a better candidate, because that freedom to walk is a strong negotiating position and informs the rest of your approach. This same detachment can make knockback less damaging. Read up on detachment and Stoicism for more - some of which is covered in A resilient job search. It's a classic quality of a successful salesperson. Alignment. It's completely understandable that you'll go for jobs that aren't strong fits if you need to get back into employment. For every compromise you make, there will be candidates for whom that compromise is an attraction point. Compromises which typically move you away from a core fit to being a candidate with transferable skills. Like for like, a less suitable candidate than those above. Yes, employers could have the imagination to see how out of box candidates with transferable skills can be brilliant. Something that's out of your control. If a role is of strong interest to you, articulate how your skills and aspirations apply to make you a core fit. If you can't, your odds will be lower. This informs how you communicate throughout the process. Accountability It's easy to compromise on your requirements and expectations in a job search. Such as widening your salary band, and the jobs you'll apply for. Unless you are in a skill short industry or have a connection that can refer you to a role, your odds drop the further away you move from ideal fit roles. Stick to your guns. Don’t use up time and energy on unhelpful activity. Intermediary representation That's what we are as recruiters. An effective recruiter does work behind the scenes to manage expectations, concerns and objections. Something that can improve your odds as a job seeker. If you are in the fortunate position to be working with a recruiter that has your back, trust in the process. The interview How you execute your interviews is key. Read the interview chapters in Part Three. Note: I've made a rare inclusion for the newsletter in this chapter, given others published are verbatim from the Summer update coming out soon. But I'm conscious some of these chapters rely on, lead into and are interconnected with other chapters in the book. It's why if you find these chapters helpful, you'll find the book more-so, as a reference kit for your career.

How to doorknock

By Greg Wyatt • June 11, 2026

What follows is Chapter 43 from A Career Breakdown Kit. Is it a magic salve guaranteed for success? No of course not. But much like anything in a job search, nothing is guaranteed. What we do is identify which avenues can be effective for your context, and form an appropriate strategy. LinkedIn optimisation is great if people search for you on LinkedIn. Except speaking to my recruitment peers, fewer and fewer rely on it. Would it surprise you if I told you I rarely invested in at all before 2019? I've been working in recruitment since 1996 including at CEO level. Applications, networking, referrals, content, CV databases. All have a place and a purpose. Doorknocking on the other hand - some would tell you it has no place in the modern job search. If my daughter*, her friends and other 18 year olds can get a job from an old school technique, while those employers say "only through Indeed" then that might be a hint it still works. Some of whom are socially anxious, but then it's a replicable process, not a cult of personality. Or the periodic messages I get from CxOs who made their own jobs from direct outreach. Not forgetting Granovetter's seminal research and recent LinkedIn-specific studies in Science journal showing weak ties drive more job mobility than strong ties. And why wouldn't doorknocking work on LinkedIn, when you have a weak tie that suggests a viable employer? But no, it's not a guarantee. It's just an arrow in the quiver of a multichannel job search. 43 - How to doorknock Doorknocking is an old-school sales approach you may well have experienced, such as when a salesperson with a clipboard rings your doorbell and asks you to change electricity provider. My wife even once bought from exactly this scenario. While it’s not uncommon in a business-to-consumer situation it can also work business-to-business… if you can get past security. Although technology has moved on, the principle is the same whether in person, by phone, email, letter or LinkedIn: You approach someone cold and create your own opportunity. This isn’t an approach for everyone and requires chutzpah. If you are used to a high failure rate in applications - what do you have to lose by being proactive? More than that - look at all the advice on LinkedIn on how to improve your odds in a job search. It’s all transactional and applicable, available to everyone - if you all follow it, everyone takes the same step forward. While taking steps others are less prepared to do means the approach alone may stand out. If you encounter the equivalent of a sign which says, ‘Trespassers will be shot!’, pay attention. My own career of looking for work includes many non-transactional approaches: Walked into the local Cinema and asked for a job Walked into Office World and asked for a job Worked for Dad Talked to one of my ex-colleagues and gained some by-the-call phone research work Temped through an agency Walked into an Inn and asked for a job Referred to a publishing, training & consulting company In managing their small-scale recruitment alongside my day job I got to know the MD of a recruitment firm as a supplier. I went to work there Tapped up to return to a more senior role Started my business upon being given the boot - thanks Dave! It’s true I did apply through job boards and agencies. It’s mainly through my own means that I have secured my employment. *My daughter even tried doorknocking for her first job in our local town last summer. It didn’t work for her - she found a nice retail job through an application on Indeed. Her experience was positive enough that she helped a friend do the same - who got a job at the first shop they tried. Doorknocking is about approaching companies by category not because they are recruiting. These categories can be: All the employers in your local business park (often they have websites, with directories and job adverts) Companies listed in local newspapers, directories or platforms (local to me this could be Cambridge Evening News, Bury Free Press, Cambridge Network or Business Weekly) Top 100 employers in your domain Companies that have recently had funding and are about to scale Doorknocking companies you’ve come across through networking and its resulting market map Make contact and make a case for yourself on the principle of the right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. There’s an element of luck involved for these elements to all come together. A disadvantage is that they may not be recruiting or ever have a need to employ you and even if they do have a vacancy, you still have to establish the right fit. That means a logically low hit rate. Your threshold for an acceptable failure rate will inform whether this is the right approach for you. The difference is the anonymous rejection of a volume-based application versus the ‘personal rejection’ from your direct outbound approach. Right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. Let’s reorder and examine this marketing principle: Right Place Those Categories above. The place is the Company, and how you contact them. You can go in blind if you are a bold prospector or research them in advance. ‘site:’ is a useful command in Google. You can search on specific websites: ‘site: linkedin.com ACME jobs’ Right Person Typically this will be the ‘next one up’ - Head of department, Director, CxO or Owner. Who would be the budget holder at work? Those are prospects. Look them up on LinkedIn, PR, news, video platforms. What can you find out? Right Time While time can be happenstance, can timed factors create opportunity? What might be a hiring trigger? Perhaps you could contact a list of companies that have recently announced funding or a big win - news that may lead to hiring additional people. Or maybe you hear through the grapevine that Janine is about to go off on maternity leave. If their process isn’t time-bound, can you make it time-bound? ‘We aren’t hiring right now’ might mean they’ve run out of headcount in the January to June period and may have a new budget in July. What can you learn that helps you both? If you have radio silence, why not try again in a month or three months? Think about how you buy. If you don’t need something how likely are you to respond to a message no matter how well crafted? If you do need something you might think first of someone who keeps in regular touch. Right Offer You have more opportunity for career creativity in being unemployed than someone entrenched in a 9 to 5 permanent job. What problems can you fix for a company in a non-traditional employment capacity? Let’s say an employer has a problem that needs fixing. They don’t have capacity to do it right now. It isn’t burning enough to seek professional help and there isn’t sufficient work in view to make it a job. What if you caught them at the right time? An out-of-work TA Manager who offered to revamp an onboarding process. A web designer who notes lots of issues with their website. A strategic operational issue that is their unknown unknown identified by your expertise. A swamped team that could benefit from their admin burden being reduced. An orchard that needs pickers at harvest time. What starts out as a short-term, project, or part-time piece of work can become proof of concept. While rare, I know a few people whose permanent full-time jobs have come about this way, including at a senior level. Right message This is both specific and crude. It’s specific because nailing the message CAN create an opportunity a poorly written message may miss. It’s crude because sometimes you can catch people at the right time, no matter how cruddy your message is. This is the case in recruitment - I’ve picked up several senior appointments by calling at the right time. ‘I’m glad you called Greg, I’m starting to think about my maternity cover in June.’ Had I not called, that HR Director may well have gone to the specialist HR recruiters she is also in touch with. If you have a strong hook in your message - such as a key area of rare expertise or a clear issue you’ve identified which companies may have - go in with that. If you don’t - done is better than procrastinating: ‘Hi Greg, I live locally to Bircham Wyatt Recruitment. Love what you do. I wondered if you might be recruiting for an apple picker at any point. If you can’t help, could you point me in the right direction?’ Right price I’ve left this until the end because much of this is variable and subjective. What are your needs? What can they afford? What does the market say? How flexible can you be? Research will help if you can get a sense of what they generally pay through Indeed, Glassdoor or others. Or maybe what comparable companies that are advertising will pay. One approach might be to pro-rate your salary over the period you’ll work there. Doorknocking can sometimes give you access to jobs that are being actively recruited. It’s a happy byproduct of your work, if you find yourself in this situation. It’s worth persevering. Otherwise, it’s too easy to think after 10, 20, or 100 unsuccessful efforts that the approach itself is at fault. There is always an element of luck in any activity. This may be out of your comfort zone, in which case it’s an opportunity to grow. The only certain thing is that if you don’t try you definitely won’t benefit.