r/Recruitment

I’d like to hear from recruiters and hiring managers.

For senior roles such as Head of Marketing, Marketing Director, or CMO, how often is someone actually hired through a normal job application?

I’ve always assumed these positions are usually filled through referrals, executive search firms, or existing professional relationships. Yet companies still advertise them publicly and accept applications.

Are they genuinely open to outside candidates, or do companies often already have preferred candidates by that stage?

I’ve been applying for senior roles for around 6 months and have received almost no replies, despite having relevant leadership experience. I understand the market is difficult, but the complete lack of response has made me question whether applying through job portals is even a realistic route at this level.

From an HR or hiring manager’s perspective, can strong external applicants really reach the interview stage this way? If so, what usually separates the applications that get reviewed from those that disappear into the system?

Hi everyone how I begin as a recruiter

I’m interviewing for a 4-month contract role through a staffing agency. They’re hiring 3 people.

The first round was an assessment, and the next step is a 30-minute hiring manager interview. I submitted the assessment, and my recruiter emailed me Thursday saying the company was reviewing submissions over the weekend and would provide feedback/next steps by EOD Monday of last week.

I ended up reaching out to them last Thursday via email, and they said that they don’t have feedback for me yet, but they have scheduled a few interviews with other candidates but the recruiter will follow up on my profile.

Would you take this as a bad sign, or is a missed recruiter timeline pretty normal?

I am currently 17 doing an engineering apprenticeship but i really want to break into recruitment. Its something that ive been interested in for a while however i dont have much experience/sales experience. I have customer service experience and some field sales experience which i believe are enough. I am extremely motivated and hungry to succeed which is what these agencies want.

I have interviewed at a fair few companies and these interviews i only get by cold calling hiring managers or reaching out on linkedin. From there, they say we like you and admire your hunger etc but you dont have the experience.

I was at an assesment centre and this girl who knew absolutely nothing about recruitment got the job and i didnt.

Can i speak to anyone on here about this ?

Full disclosure: I’m building RecrutFlo, a lightweight tool that turns CVs received through a recruitment mailbox into structured, searchable candidate records.

The current version keeps the originating email details and CV linked to the candidate, but it does not sync the subsequent email conversation.

A recruiter recently pointed out that small agencies often live inside email threads rather than a candidate library, which made me reconsider this part of the workflow.

For recruiters using a shared mailbox: would you expect the complete conversation to be displayed inside the candidate record, or would a direct link back to the original Gmail/Outlook thread be enough?

I’m looking for workflow feedback rather than trying to sell anything.

Just writing to get a better idea how everyone is running their desk (specifically UK recruiters)? I always feel like I'm just missing the mark, I get on the phone to candidates, I get on the phone to clients, I do all of this and still aren't billing good numbers and I'm not really sure what I can do to help change this? What are your daily KPI's? What's helped you become a better recruiter? Anything that clicked during your first year etc?

Recruiters I need a gut check

Placed a candidate into a role. She was let go within the guarantee period, so I sourced a replacement per my terms.

The replacement candidate started, left on day one, and hasn't come back.

Do I go find them a second free replacement?
I'm just on the fence a bit since she left after a day of induction?

Please let me know how to handle the situation?

For those of you doing fractional TA/recruiting consulting independently, how long did it take before the business started to feel somewhat consistent? Also, what was your best source of new clients?

Had one last week I keep coming back to.

Strong candidate. Good background, easy to talk to, would have moved quickly. I asked what they're looking for next and got about forty seconds of nothing, then, somewhere I can grow. Asked what grow meant and got a job title one rung above the one they have.

That's most of my calls now. Silence, or a title.

I can work with the things people don't want, that's usually the most useful part of the call. But I can't build a shortlist off. somewhere I can grow and I certainly can't put it in front of a client.

Ten years ago I'd have said people didn't know themselves well enough. That isn't it. They know themselves fine. They just can't turn any of it into a job I could go and find.

It costs me directly, because a call that stalls there is a call I have to run again, and half the time they've gone quiet before the second one.

For people doing a lot of intake: how are you actually getting a usable answer out of that question. Or have you stopped asking it.

One of the weirdest parts of running a recruitment agency is that you can have your best month ever and still be nervous about the next 60 days.

Clients are happy.
Jobs are getting filled.
The team's slammed.

Then you look at the pipeline and realize next month's revenue hasn't been created yet.

“Business is going well” and “I know where the next jobs are coming from” are two completely different things.

I think a lot of the stress of running an agency lives somewhere between those two.

Anyone else feel this?

We have launched a new recruiting business and need help with my first U.S hire (we have VA's)- need someone who can handle BD and recruiting until we can hire a recruiter for the placements full time. What role do I hire for- what job title? We do IT recruiting- contingency based. It would be a fully remote role, what salary should I offer to start and what kind of commission structure? Not sure what the norm is for this kind of role. I have some leads coming in and would like the BD to close them and start finding placements..What expectations should I have in terms of metrics? How do I make sure the employee doesn't steal my pipeline or business and run? Any other advice?

I’ve recently been asked to hire someone for my team and I’ve never really been on this side of the process before. I’ve started looking through CVs and LinkedIn profiles and I’m realising I don’t actually know how you’re supposed to tell who is genuinely a good hire. I don’t want to screw it up. Is it a confidence thing or is there something I can do?

When I lost my job I wrote ‘director’ in my own (side) business to fill the CV gap. It’s not in my main sector of expertise but I’m applying for roles both in this and in another industry(my main priority) .

I wonder if I should add something next to ‘director’, such as “portfolio manager/director” or something similar?

What would be your concern from seeing this on someone’s CV

I'm building out a career consulting side business focused mostly on enterprise IT, and I'm trying to get a better understanding of the hiring process from the recruiter side instead of just assuming I know how it works.

I've had a lot more exposure to the hiring manager/candidate side of things, but instead of guessing and making inferences about recruiting, I feel like actually talking to a few of you would be a lot more useful for me and my clients.

Looking for a few recruiters willing to do a short 15-20 min call. Mostly want to pick your brain about how you actually screen resumes, how much ATS matters in practice, what makes you pass/reject someone, what gets sent to the hiring manager, common mistakes you see from technical candidates, etc.

Especially interested in technical/IT recruiters, internal/corporate recruiters, agency/staffing recruiters, and senior recruiters/recruiting leads. Ideally you've recruited for infrastructure, cloud/DevOps, cybersecurity, software engineering, IT project management, SRE, etc.

I'm happy to pay $25 for 15-20 minutes since I'm asking for people's professional time. I'd also like to record/transcribe the conversation for my own research/notes, so you'd need to be comfortable with that. Nothing would be publicly attributed to you without permission.

Not looking for leads or trying to sell anybody anything. I genuinely just want to understand how the process looks from your side of the table.

If interested, DM me with roughly what kind of recruiting you do, how long you've been doing it, and whether you're internal or agency.

I’ve been in TA (in house) for over 10 years specifically within Finance. I recruit for junior to senior level roles, all high revenue generating. I have a thick skin but I’m really wearing thin. The expectations are so high and everything needs to be done in a hurry. I feel like no matter how hard I try I’m always letting someone down bc I can’t get to them fast enough or missing something bc there’s always so much pressure. There’s a lot of scrutiny in my role and the clients are very particular and generally pretty arrogant. Is it my industry? I need to continue working but I feel like I can’t keep up this pace anymore. Hoping others may have been in a similar experience and found a better balance somehow.