r/RecruitmentAgencies

Let's say you are paying a recruiter $20-$50/hr in exchange for BD activities, and he/she spends approx. 5 hours/day for a period of 20 working days per month - this equals to 100 hours, or $2,000-$5,000/month worth of labor alone.

An average good BD specialist will probably generate about 150-200 leads/day through manual scraping. This means that in one month he/she can provide around 4,000 leads. (this number is excluding the email verification, bounce rate, etc) and also time spent on outreach

I was comparing it to what's available nowadays thanks to modern AI tooling, and some agencies are able to get more than 10,000 verified leads/month for much cheaper (approx $1,000 which is < labour cost of a recruiter) than it takes to pay for salary + tools + outreach.

Thus the real question – what's the price per verified workable lead then?

As far as I understand, the numbers simply do not add up here.

Are there any agencies out there which switched to an automated approach yet?

HR generalist at a 300-person company and I've been trying to build proper scorecards for the most critical roles for months and keep hitting the same wall, which is that HMs either say "I'll know it when I see it" or give me criteria so broad they're basically useless to actually source against.

I've tried structured intake forms, competency frameworks, had them rate past hires, and the quality of the conversation gets better each time but I still end up with something I can't hand to a recruiter and have them go find the person. the signal is there somewhere, I just can't get it out in a form that travels.

I am not looking for another intake template. more interested in whether there's a facilitation approach or a specific question format that actually pulls real criteria out of HMs who just don't think that way naturally.

I’ve been contacted by a reverse recruitment firm that offers to write my resume, apply for jobs on my behalf, coach me through interviews/assignments, and negotiate a final offer. In exchange, they require an up-front fee (few thousand dollars) and a percentage of the earned salary (6-percent of final negotiated salary).

The devil in the details of the service: this particular firm boasts a 91-percent success rate, they guarantee at least 20 first-round interviews within a 90-day period, and they say most clients get jobs around $90,000 per year.

I’ve heard of these kind of firms, but this is my first time interacting with one. I’m skeptical, and I find the fee a bit intimidating. Has anyone else worked with this kind of firm? If so, what was your experience, both positive and negative?

Maybe I'm getting jaded but passive candidate sourcing feels structurally different than it did even 18 months ago. Response rates are down, the people who do reply are mostly tire kickers and the candidates who would actually be the right fit are so over messaged they've stopped reading anything that looks templated

Working theory is that the whole motion got commoditized when everyone got access to the same tools. 50 recruiters blasting the same candidate from the same database with the same boilerplate openers means nobody trusts cold messages anymore. Are you guys seeing this too or if I'm just having a rough quarter

if youre cold emailing insurance agents and agencies using the same playbook you use for SaaS founders or marketing directors, youre probably wondering why your reply rates are in the toilet. i see this constantly. we have 19 clients right now and only two are in the insurance space but those two accounts taught me more about vertical-specific outreach than basically everything else combined.

the standard advice is build a big list, write a clever subject line, send 3-4 follow ups, book meetings. and that works fine when youre targeting series B startups or ecommerce brands. but insurance is a completely different animal and the reasons are structural, not just vibes.

first thing you need to understand is that independent agency owners and producers get hammered by vendors constantly. carrier reps, tech vendors, lead gen companies, everyone wants a piece of their book. so the typical "hey {first_name} i noticed your agency" opener gets deleted before they finish reading the preview text. these people have been pitched by every InsurTech startup with a landing page and a dream. the noise level is insane compared to most B2B verticals.

second thing, and this took me about 4 months to figure out, is that the decision making structure at agencies is weird. at a 15-person independent agency the owner might also be the top producer and also handle carrier relationships and also be the one who decides on new tech. theres no neat org chart. so when youre prospecting you cant just filter by title on LinkedIn and call it a day. "agency owner" and "producer" and "VP sales" can literally be the same person at a small shop, or three completely different people at a larger brokerage. the way i had it mapped out initially was all wrong and we burned through like 800 contacts before i realized we were emailing the wrong person at half these places.

the third thing is timing. insurance runs on renewal cycles. if youre selling something that touches quoting, binding, or carrier relationships, you need to understand that agencies are slammed during certain months depending on their book mix. commercial lines agencies are busiest Q4 into Q1. personal lines has its own rhythm. emailing a commercial lines manager in november about switching their rater is like trying to sell someone a new kitchen while their house is on fire.

ok so what actually works.

list building for insurance is annoying because the data is fragmented. ZoomInfo has decent coverage for larger brokerages and MGAs but its thin on the independent agency side, which is where most of the market actually is. we ended up building lists from state department of insurance databases (most states publish licensed agency info), IIABA directories, and LinkedIn filtered by specific carrier appointments. its manual and slow but the quality is way better than buying a list from some data vendor who scraped everything 18 months ago.

for enrichment we run Prospeo to find emails once we have the names and companies, and honestly the email accuracy sits around 82-85% which is solid for this vertical where half the agencies have weird domain setups or use gmail for business. we verify everything through MillionVerifier after that. bounce rate stays under 2% on the Prospeo-enriched lists which matters because insurance people will report spam faster than any other vertical ive worked in (not sure why, maybe theyre just more compliance-minded by nature).

the copy angle that works is completely different from what you see recommended in most cold email advice. forget about "pain points" in the traditional sense. agency owners dont respond to "are you struggling with X" because they see that framing as patronizing. what works is peer-level language that references specific operational realities. mentioning carrier appetite changes, talking about quote turnaround times, referencing the actual workflow of binding a policy. one of our best performing emails for an InsurTech client literally opened with a line about how many clicks it takes to get a BOP quote through their current system. 4.3% reply rate on that campaign across about 1,200 sends. the version that used generic pain language ("tired of slow quoting?") got 0.8%.

someone in a discord group i hang out in made the point that insurance agents respond to specificity because their whole job is about specifics. policy language, coverage limits, exclusions. vague copy signals that you dont understand their world. and thats the kiss of death because these people deal with vendors who dont understand insurance every single day.

sending infrastructure matters here too but not in some exotic way. we use Smartlead for sequencing, 3 inboxes per campaign, warmup for 21 days minimum (i tried cutting it to 14 once and deliverability tanked within the first week of sending). send volume stays at 25-30 per inbox per day. nothing crazy. the key difference for insurance is that you want to send tuesday through thursday, ideally between 7-9am in their local timezone. monday theyre dealing with weekend claims and friday theyre mentally checked out. we tested this over about 11 weeks and the tuesday-thursday window outperformed by roughly 40% on open rates.

for the CRM side we use Close CRM for both insurance clients because the pipeline stages map well to how agency sales actually work. theres a longer consideration period than SaaS and you need to track things like "waiting on carrier approval" or "renewal date in 3 months" which dont fit neatly into standard sales stages.

the last thing ill say is that follow up cadence for insurance should be longer than what most people recommend. the standard "day 1, day 3, day 7" aggressive sequence feels pushy to agency owners. we do day 1, day 5, day 12, day 21. four touches total. the third email is usually the one that converts and its typically a short note referencing something specific about their agency (we have our VA research this manually for the top prospects). Prospeo handles the enrichment step and then our VA does the personalization research, which takes about 2-3 minutes per contact but the difference in reply quality is night and day.

anyway this got longer than i planned. insurance is a weird vertical for cold email but it works if you actually learn how the industry operates instead of just swapping out the company name in your SaaS templates and hoping for the best. the two insurance clients we have are actually our highest retention accounts because nobody else is doing this well for them

Hi guys,

I’ve been a recruiter for eight years, with vast experience both in agencies and in-house across various fields (technology, engineering, marketing, etc.). I live in Vancouver, Canada, and I'm tired of how unstable and saturated the industry is, as well as how hard it is to get a good job with a company. I am seriously thinking about using my experience to become an independent consultant, but I have no idea where to start or how to navigate the transition. Could someone help me?

I work a 360 desk at an IT agency. We have two junior guys on PIPs after about a year of limited to no success. Both of them try, but it just isn’t working out.

I was informed last Friday that we would be getting a new guy. I’m usually involved in new hires and typically have some input on who joins the team. This new guy was originally supposed to be on another team, but that manager is about to go on vacation, so they switched him over after he had already accepted the offer.

It’s this guy’s second day, and on both his first and second days he has taken 4–5 personal calls. I found out they were real estate sales calls and him prospecting homes to sell.

I get that people sometimes need two jobs these days, and some coworkers do have second jobs. I even had a second job refereeing men’s league basketball games. But that was outside working hours.

I feel a little jaded because now I’m going to help train this kid and teach him the job, and I feel like he’ll probably fail because I know this market is tough. You really have to be fully committed to the business and constantly calling and working new opportunities.

I also think it looks bad to the other junior folks that this guy is making real estate calls while in the office. Am I wrong for thinking that?

Maybe I'm getting jaded but passive candidate sourcing feels structurally different than it did even 18 months ago. Response rates are down, the people who do reply are mostly tire kickers and the candidates who would actually be the right fit are so over messaged they've stopped reading anything that looks templated

Working theory is that the whole motion got commoditized when everyone got access to the same tools. 50 recruiters blasting the same candidate from the same database with the same boilerplate openers means nobody trusts cold messages anymore. Are you guys seeing this too or if I'm just having a rough quarter

Question for recruiters/staffing agencies.

When you send a candidate's resume, profile, portfolio, or shortlist to a client, do you have any way of knowing if the client actually reviewed it?

I’m trying to understand this workflow better.

Would it be useful to know:
- which candidate profiles were opened
- how long a client spent reviewing them
- whether they came back to a candidate later
- which candidates got the most attention
- when it makes sense to follow up with the client

Or is this not really something recruiters care about?

Looking for honest feedback from people who submit candidates to clients.

An AI-powered resume screening engine built for high volume (handles 1 to 50k resumes in minutes) with a strict Zero Data Retention architecture, meaning it permanently stores 0 candidate data.
MY favourite feature: It has a "Passport System." The moment you select a candidate, the AI auto-generates a temporary, secure web link breaking down exactly why they fit the job description in plain English. Recruiters can just copy-paste this link straight to their boss or client to justify their choice instantly.
i don't want to sell anything I am 18 and i just want some brutal feedback on my landing page and the features 😄, and if you are thinking that thsi is AI slop just check website please.
link in pinned comment.

So I've been on Lemlist for about 18 months and starting to feel like its not worth the price anymore. The multichannel stuff is nice but deliverability has been sketchy lately even with proper warmup. plus their data enrichment is super limited. You basically need a separate data tool anyway.

the email finder works maybe 60% of the time and half of those bounce. tried their LinkedIn automation but it feels clunky compared to dedicated tools. support used to be great but now takes forever to get a response.

still solid for basic sequences and the UI is clean. but at like 60 bucks per user it adds up quick when you have a team of 4. been testing Instantly and Smartlead as replacements for sending. also grabbed Prospeo for the data side since Lemlist's enrichment is so weak. my manager keeps asking why we're paying for three tools now which is a fair question honestly.

anyone else move off Lemlist recently? what lemlist alternative are you using instead?

Introduced an executive candidate (US). Terms were sent 25% total comp. Company rejected terms and said were too high, despite mentioning over email ‘they expect to compensate for the introduction’ and despite back and forth we couldn’t agree to a reasonable amount (we were very fair)The company is treating it as a referral (<$5k) as they didn’t ask me to send him although happy to interview. It’s been back and forth with both legal teams and now going through litigation, anyone been through this / what outcome was? FYI candidates package was close to $2m…..

Solo recruiter in a lull between orders, I need some asap work while my sales efforts catch up. I’m on sourceowls and looking for additional resources.

Thank you!

Edited to add, I am US based. I thrive in construction, accounting and some engineering. I’m not a tech or healthcare recruiter.

Hello! Anyone here doing recruiting while on a full time job? How is it? kindly share your experience. 🙂

Just wanted to share my experience being solo so far. I just closed my 5th placement and crossed $150K in billing. In a few days, it will be four full months since I resigned from my big agency where I spent the first 10 years of my career.

It took a couple months to get up and running. I dealt with email deliverability issues and many other challenges. Once I got those solved and started running high volume BD campaigns, things really picked up.

This job really is all about relationships and every placement I've made has come with a client who I have had many phone calls with. But the mass emailing for BD has been super helpful to get that first touch.

I just want to open things up to questions if anyone has any. Also, if anyone is running their own solo agency, I want to hear how your years are going and what you are observing in the market.

Wishing everyone a profitable year. I am planning to hire people in the future and scale my business, but for now am trying to put up a $500K year solo.

Tomorrow is my first day going fully independent with my recruitment business.

Right now I have 1 client and close to $0 in revenue, so I figured I’d post here instead of pretending everything is already figured out. I need your help guys

If you’re hiring, or know someone who is, send me a DM and honestly, even introductions help a lot right now. If you know someone with hiring needs, feel free to share their LinkedIn, email or company name and I’ll gladly reach out professionally.

Hello guys!

Do you know of any good and professionall recruitment agencies in eastern europe (e.g. Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, etc.) that recruit workers in construction, craft and industry to construction sites in germany and austria?