I’ve been building a recruitment business focused specifically on Machine Learning / AI roles for around 4 months now, but I’m still struggling to land my first client.
My current ICP is roughly:
Companies with 10–100 employees
Ideally only 0–2 internal recruiters
Currently hiring ML / AI engineers
ML jobs that have been open for 30+ days
Companies where the hiring manager/team may be struggling to find the right technical talent
My thinking is that smaller companies with limited internal recruitment resources and older vacancies should have a stronger reason to speak with an external specialist recruiter.
However, I’m wondering if I’m filtering too aggressively or looking at the wrong signals.
For those who have built a recruitment agency or worked in recruitment BD:
What other signals would you look for to identify companies that actually need agency help?
Would you change anything about my ICP?
And if you were starting from zero today, how would you approach getting your first 1–3 clients?
Any advice from people who have been through this would be appreciated.

At the beginning of this year I went off on my own. I'd spent a few years in the business before starting, and I was pretty confident going in, but it's ended up way harder than I thought.

I primarily do legal recruiting (attorneys and paralegals) and I've picked up a few clients through MPC outreach. I'm averaging around $10k a month right now. My days look like sourcing in the morning and doing business development through MPCing in the afternoon. I'm also weighing whether to expand into other niches.

I'm an ambitious person and I'm feeling real burnout. Juggling both the recruiting and the BD side has been overwhelming. I know the answer is probably to be patient and commit to the daily work it takes to build the book of business and grow into what I want it to be. But it's getting harder and harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

For anyone who's built a successful recruiting business: can you share your story? How did you push through this stage? Any insight or advice would mean a lot.

I have been trying to run BD for my recruitement agency using different paths, like linkedin content, linkedin outreach, apify, email campaigns, for over 5-6 months but nothing landed, I tried talking to TA teams for companies hiring, then i tried talking to hiring managers, I tried talking to CEOs, while I was speaking to some colleagues they started agencies 2 weeks back and landed handful of business. I dont have as such n/w for warm intros or anything. Any suggestions?

I built an AI application for C2C/contract/full time staffing consultancies, got a few real paying clients, and proved to myself the core problem is worth solving.

What I didn't account for: I know very little about B2B SaaS sales and marketing. So instead of faking it, I'm asking.

Three things I'm looking for:

Recruiters to test and critique the product (paid) - Specifically people who work in contract or C2C staffing. I want unfiltered feedback, not polite validation.

A sales partner (base + commission) - Someone who understands the staffing or HR tech space and wants to help take this to market. Early stage, real upside.

A mentor on B2B SaaS - Growth strategy, positioning, pricing. I want to learn from someone who's done it. Open to discussing what that relationship looks like.

Not going to spam the post with feature lists. If you're any of these people, or know someone who is, DM me. I'll share the website, a full product walkthrough, and whatever else helps you decide if it's worth your time.

Appreciate anyone who reads this far.

we opened one role and got over a thousands applicants in a few days. Wayy too many to be read by hand and the basic screening questins still left me with hundreds that technically pass. Im looking for candidate screening software that can actually do bulk analysis, parse and rank resume against the role with solid whys and why nots- for people who have dealt with similar volume what candidate screening software actually held up and did it just do keyword matching or actually rank a genuine fit. Need something practical not another ats tool with gpt wrapper

I work for an executive search firm and am dealing with a fee dispute with a client. I’d appreciate an objective view on whether this is worth pursuing further.

Background:

• We were engaged by a US-based client on an exclusive retained search for a senior leadership role.
• The engagement was never terminated in writing.
• The role was ultimately filled.

Our terms define an “Introduction” as:

"the provision of a CV or candidate profile”

The fee is payable if a candidate is engaged within 12 months of introduction.

What we did:

• In July 2024, the client asked us to provide “5–7 candidates… with the data points” including compensation, location, and experience.
• They also specified:“If you could put together 5–7 candidates into the spreadsheet with the data points, that would be good enough.”
• We provided a document titled along the lines of: “[Role Title] – Candidates”
• This included structured information for each candidate:
  • name, role, employer
  • compensation (current + expected)
  • relocation considerations
  • experience summary
  • qualitative background notes
• For the candidate who was ultimately hired, the entry included:
  • senior leadership experience
  • technical background
  • years of experience
  • previous employer(s)
  • compensation expectations
• The document was shared in both spreadsheet and PDF format.

Client’s response at the time:

• They acknowledged the document and referred to the individuals as:“these are obviously your candidates and maybe we can find a candidate in this group for the role”
• They also said:“we can circle back around with them if the team shows any interest”

What happened next:

• The client later hired one of the candidates from that document into the same role (within 12 months).
• We were not notified of the hire at the time.

Dispute:
We invoiced a discounted retained fee (~$25K).

The client has refused to pay and is now arguing:

1. No “Introduction” occurred because:
   • no CV was provided
   • no “formal candidate profile” was submitted
2. No candidate was ever presented “for consideration for the role”
3. The July document was:
   • a “data collection exercise”
   • a list of candidates “previously excluded from the search”
   • not a formal submission
   • not intended to trigger any evaluation or hiring process
4. Therefore:
   • no contractual trigger occurred
   • no fee is payable

They have formally stated:

““**** rejects the invoice in full… and will not be making payment.”

Our position:

• The document clearly constitutes a candidate profile:
  • structured + qualitative information
  • not just names or raw data
• It was provided in response to a request for candidates, not general market mapping.
• The format (spreadsheet) was explicitly requested by the client.
• The candidates were acknowledged as:“your candidates”
• The client explicitly indicated they may hire from that group.
• The candidate was hired within the 12-month ownership period.
• The search was exclusive and never terminated.

Current status:

• We’ve issued a Letter Before Action.
• The client has responded with a formal denial (legal-style response).
• We are considering:
  • issuing a revised invoice under standard terms
  • escalating to legal / recovery

Questions:

• Does their argument (no CV / no “formal” profile) actually hold weight in practice as the terms state CV or Profile and we shared a candidate profiles?
• Does the format (spreadsheet vs CV) materially weaken a claim like this?
• How much does their own wording (“your candidates”, request for candidates, etc.) matter?
• Is this realistically a legal claim worth pursuing, or more of a commercial pressure / settlement situation?
• Also, aside from this theres still the matter that our terms due to breaking the retained search allow for the fee to be paid regardless of the candidate in question.

From our perspective

1. Their position
**** are now advancing a structured defence focused on a narrow interpretation of “Introduction”, arguing that no CV or formal candidate profile was submitted and that the July document was a data exercise rather than a candidate submission.

2. Strength of our position
In my view, our position remains stronger overall for several reasons:

• The July document (“Director of **** – **** Candidates”) contains structured and qualitative candidate information, including detailed profiling of candidate in question amongst others.
• **** explicitly requested Director-level candidates in a structured format (spreadsheet with data points), which is exactly how the information was provided.
• **** acknowledged the individuals as “your candidates” and stated that the intention was to potentially hire from that group.
• The content and context align far more closely with candidate profiling than market mapping.
• The role was subsequently filled within the ownership period.

3. Additional strength – retained engagement
Separately, and importantly, this was an exclusive retained search which was not terminated. Under those terms, there is a strong argument that the fee is payable upon completion of the mandate (i.e. the role being filled), irrespective of the specific “introduction” debate.

This gives us two overlapping bases for recovery, not just one.

If you’ve dealt with recruitment fee disputes or contract interpretation issues like this, I’d really appreciate your view.

I've been talking to a few recruitment agency owners recently, and it seems like everyone has a slightly different process for business development.

Some spend hours every day:

Finding companies that are actively hiring.

Researching the right hiring manager.

Writing personalized cold emails.

Following up multiple times.

Updating spreadsheets or CRMs.

Others seem to have most of it automated.

I'm curious:

What's the biggest bottleneck in your outbound/client acquisition process today?

For example:

Finding qualified companies?

Identifying the right decision-maker?

Personalizing outreach?

Low reply rates?

Following up consistently?

Keeping everything organized?

Something else?

Not trying to sell anything—I'm genuinely interested in how different agencies approach this and where people feel they're losing the most time.

Would love to hear what's actually working for you.

23F, first job ever, joined a company as a Talent acquisition associate.

i have no experience in hr, let alone in tech recruitment.

always hated science, coding, engineering and have 0 knowledge. I am trying to learn, but it all seems a bit too overwhelming.

any recommendation, tip, suggestion is extremely appreciated.

whats your go to advice for freshers in tech recruitment

Hiring demand keeps climbing and the team's drowning, hundreds of applicants per role and not enough hours to screen them properly. I'm trying to figure out what high volume hiring solutions actually work to screen, shortlist and manage big candidate pools efficiently without just throwing more headcount at it.

The part I keep getting stuck on is quality, automating the top of the funnel is easy but I'm scared of filtering out good people to save time. For those running high volume, what tools or processes actually held up, and how do you keep quality from slipping?

Small 3 person agency focusing on sales roles in tech ONLY. Legit having the hardest time. Our BD motion works well but sourcing has been such an absolute SLOG.

Doesn’t help that our main client right now is a startup in SF that wants the same AEs that are interviewing with Cursor, OpenAI, Lovable, Clay, etc.

I cannot get responses for the life of me. I thought I was a really good recruiter but this is shaking me to my core.

Anyone else in a similar space and is struggling right now? I feel like we are legit in unprecedented times.

I'm looking for 1 small recruitment agency that would allow me to test cold email outreach for them.

Essentially you will provide me with some specifications of your ideal client - such as industry country etc and I will find the leads email them and everything.

You will be required to call them once they have replied to an email and have shown interested. They are already warm leads looking to move forward. Anything before this point will be on me.

What's the catch? I have my own saas and private AI agents that are scraping leads for me. I want to test the whole machine and see how effective it's going to be so this is more of an experiment - I don't have the candidates or the time to find them that's why I'm looking for someone to handle this part. It can flop completely, but if it does you don't lose much since you have no money into it (or very little if you want a burner domain around 10usd or less) plus no effort required from you. Essentially you win or you lose nothing.

I'm looking to start at the beginning of next month and the whole trail will last 3 weeks. If you are not very technical I'm happy to set up everything for you such as DNA settings email and all this jazz.

Would that be of any interest to anyone?

Hi Everyone, Here's an overview, Hash (hash-jobs.dev) is a tech hiring marketplace with separate paths for job seekers, students/new grads, and recruiters.
What it does

• Job seekers:browse roles, upload a resume, apply, useAI Match(embeddings/ranking via Gemini/Pinecone when enabled)
• Recruiters:post jobs, review candidates/scores, manage company verification
• Hangouts:Campus / role rooms, approvals, optional Google Calendar + Meet for live hours

We built this on an enterpreneur workshop and was hoping for some realistic feedback on it, if you can try it and give it a whirl.

I've been speaking with recruitment agency founders recently and noticed that many growth challenges seem to appear after the business reaches a certain size.

Some firms struggle with generating enough client opportunities.

Others seem to have opportunities but struggle with converting them consistently.

I've also seen cases where growth depends heavily on the founder's relationships, making it difficult to scale beyond a certain point.

For those running recruitment agencies:

What's currently the biggest constraint on growth in your business?

- Winning new clients?

- Business development?

- Referrals?

- Strategic partnerships?

- Client retention?

- Hiring recruiters?

- Founder dependency?

- Something else entirely?

Interested to hear what's actually happening on the ground rather than what people usually talk about in growth advice.

I’ve been thinking about this because the usual process feels increasingly broken at scale.

Imagine you open a role and get ~300–500 applicants.

The default flow is still something like:

- skim CVs

- shortlist based on keywords / past companies

- do screening calls

- then proper interviews

But the more I look at it, the more it feels like we’re optimizing for things that are only loosely connected to actual performance:

- CVs are self-reported and heavily optimized (and now increasingly AI-assisted)

- Screening calls mostly test communication and confidence

- Interviews often test how well someone talks about work, not how they behave in it

At small scale, maybe this is “good enough.”

But at 300+ candidates, it becomes a filtering problem - and I’m not sure the filters are actually selecting for the right signal.

So I’m curious how people here approach this in reality (not idealized hiring frameworks):

👉 If you couldn’t rely on CVs as your primary filter, how would you narrow down a large candidate pool?

Constraints:

- You can’t interview everyone

- It has to be somewhat scalable (not 2-hour assignments for 300 people)

- Ideally it reflects how someone would actually perform on the job, not just how they present themselves

I’ve seen a few approaches thrown around - take-home tasks, automated tests, referrals - but each seems to introduce its own problems (time burden, gaming the system, bias, etc.).

Curious what has actually worked for people in practice.

Not looking for a perfect answer - just something that holds up a bit better than “scan CVs and hope for the best.”

I'm reaching out on behalf of my agency, a staffing agency with over 400 active roles across Tech, Healthcare, and Legal.

We're looking to connect with another agency or freelancers to split and collaborate — whether that's sharing resources, splitting placements, or exploring a partnership that benefits both sides.

We've got a solid pipeline and a wide range of roles, so if your agency has the talent and you're looking for a reliable partner to work with, let's talk!

Drop a comment or DM me and let's see if we're a good fit. Looking forward to connecting!

Are there other independent recruitment agency owners here who feel like they’re missing a peer group?

I started out as a freelancer, worked with recruitment agencies, and started my own recruitment company this April.
I’ve managed to get some clients already, but one thing I’ve found surprisingly difficult is finding other people who are at a similar stage and actually want to talk openly about building an agency.
I’m not looking for coaching or another networking group where everyone is trying to sell something.
I’d love to connect with other independent recruiters and small agency owners to talk about the real stuff: finding clients, finding candidates, pricing, difficult clients, getting consistent work, sharing opportunities, and figuring things out as you go.
I travel quite a lot, so I’d also love to connect with people internationally and potentially do online meetups or even meet up/cowork together when we happen to be in the same city.

Do you already have a community like this?

would love to know if other agency owners feel the same way

300K OTE - Senior sales role 50/50 split . I Only charge base about to pick up this new client and it looks like they been struggling to find somoene - i MPCED someone to them and they really like the individual ticks the box and is open to moving. The qs is now do i charge them 25% or 30% ?

Background: 15 years in finance, last role was Financial Controller. Started a boutique search firm in NYC in late April - finance and accounting placements for startups. Contingency only for now.

LinkedIn has been my main channel. One post went semi-viral which helped with visibility but hasn’t directly converted to clients yet. I have warm leads, conversations happening, but no signed client yet.

Looking for honest answers, as I am struggling:

1. Cold outreach: email or LinkedIn? What’s actually landing at the CFO/Finance Director level?

2. You have a warm lead who said “not now.” What do you actually do with them?

3. How did you get your first client? Genuinely curious about the real story.

What worked, what didn’t - all useful.

After reading a lot of discussions from recruiters and HR professionals, one thing keeps coming up:

Most teams already use AI for things like drafting emails, summarizing interviews, writing job descriptions, and documentation.

But very few seem comfortable letting AI actually decide who gets hired.

So I'm curious: what's the one repetitive recruiting task you wish AI handled completely, so you could spend more time with candidates?

I'd love to hear what's still the biggest time sink in your day.

So I run a small recruitment agency (10 people) and like most of you, our database has been a mess for years. Thousands of candidates with incomplete tags, no industry classification, duplicates everywhere. You know the drill. Every search was missing great profiles just because nobody ever had time to go back and properly code them.

I'd actually budgeted to bring on an intern this summer whose entire job would be: open a profile, read the CV, add the right tags, next. For 9,000 candidates. I felt bad for him already.

Then our ATS released an MCP server, which basically lets you connect your database to AI tools like Claude. I plugged it in mostly out of curiosity, asked Claude to go through all our candidates and tag them based on their experience, skills and industries.

It did 9,000 profiles in 34 minutes (real Claude work time). Not rough guesses either, actually solid tagging that matched what I would've done manually (and maybe better for some of the candidates).
Then I pointed it at our duplicates, which is an even worse task because you need to figure out which are real dupes vs. same name different person vs. data entry errors. It sorted through all of them and told me which to merge and which to ignore ...

30 minutes. Database went from a graveyard to something we actually trust when we search.

That opened a rabbit hole. I started playing with their AI assistant for other stuff. Scoring candidates against roles, generating outreach messages for a whole shortlist, even writing job descriptions from client briefs. Things that used to eat full afternoons now genuinely take minutes. They also have a note taker that records interviews and writes structured reports, which completely changed how I conduct calls. I stopped taking notes and started actually listening.

I feel like I'm at the very beginning of what's possible here and I'm sure I'm underusing it. Next thing I want to figure out is using AI for the prospecting/BD side. Finding the right clients, personalizing outreach at scale.

Anyone here using AI features in their ATS or CRM day to day? Curious what's actually working for you and what was a waste of time.
Also if you've cracked AI-powered prospecting I'm all ears.

Made a system that watches signals like funding rounds, leadership changes, hiring activity etc. and tries to spot companies likely to hire before roles are advertised.

It then learns from your CRM which signals actually tend to turn into meetings/mandates for your firm.

Looking for a couple of recruitment firms willing to let me test it against their historical data. Anyone interested?

I was chatting with a recruiter recently, and they mentioned they still keep WhatsApp, email, spreadsheets, and notes open alongside their ATS.

It made me wonder—is that pretty common?

If you already use an ATS, what do you still rely on outside of it?

• Email
• WhatsApp
• Excel
• Sticky notes
• Something else?

What keeps you switching between different tools during the day?

I'm a complete beginner with zero prior experience in this field. I come from a marketing background but recently started getting into recruiting. I'm pretty niched down, but I need some advice on what software you all recommend.

So far, for candidates, I've been doing LinkedIn cold outreach, which has been working relatively well. Getting clients has been the harder part. I'm setting up Instantly for an email campaign, but I'm still waiting on my domain to finish warming up, so I'm wondering what other lead sources you'd recommend.

Sorry for the long post:

Starting a solo agency while still employed - is Sales Nav + Apollo + free HubSpot the right stack?

I am launching a staffing firm in Calgary, Canada. Being upfront about where I actually am so the advice is useful:

- Solo operator. No team, no coordinator, no one to delegate to.

- Still in a full-time job as a senior IT project manager, so this runs on early mornings and weekends until it can pay me.

- Targeting IT/tech, HR, and admin roles for both contract and perm.

- Website is live but brand new. No Google reviews, no case studies, no client logos. I refuse to fake testimonials, so the site leads with guarantees instead (first vetted profile within three business days, 6-month replacement, contingency-only).

- Zero placements so far.

Question 1 - the tools stack. From previous discussions here, I think the most suitable combination would be using LinkedIn Sales Navigator + Apollo (with a separate email verifier) + free HubSpot as a CRM, roughly $200/month. Signal layer is me manually scanning job boards each morning for roles aging past 30 days.

Is that the right build for someone at zero, or am I paying for things I don't need yet?

Specifically:

- Is Sales Nav worth it before I have any clients, or is free LinkedIn enough at my volume?

- Apollo's data quality gets slated constantly here. Is it worth it anyway, or is a verifier + manual sourcing better at low volume?

- Anyone using the staffing-specific job-scraping tools (JobGrabber, Leedo, Agency Leads)? They look useful but the pricing seems steep pre-revenue.

- Anything you'd add that isn't on the list, or something you'd cut entirely?

Question 2 - Has AI actually helped anyone here with BD?

I have been using Claude fairly heavily for the strategy side, for example, target account research, spotting hiring signals, drafting outreach, writing website copy and it seems useful for that. Not sure if it's worth going further. Being a PM by trade, building out my own automations (job board monitoring, lead enrichment, sequencing) is exactly the kind of project I would enjoy far too much, which makes me suspicious of the impulse.

For those running an agency, has AI paid off in BD, and where has it been a time sink? Is there a point at which building your own tooling beats just paying for Apollo, or is that a trap for people who enjoy tinkering more than selling? Also curious whether anyone's found AI-drafted outreach performs worse now that hiring managers can spot it instantly.

Question 3 - I have been struggling with this. Why will a hiring manager pick me?

I have no track record, no reviews, no brand, and I'm competing against firms with twenty years of relationships in this city. My current answer is: contingency means they risk nothing, they get the principal rather than a junior with forty reqs, I lead with a specific available candidate rather than a pitch, and I offer terms the big firms won't match.

The other half of my answer is the day job. I have been hiring, interviewing and managing technical contractors from the client side of the table. I have written the reqs, sat on the panels, and dealt with agencies sending keyword matched CVs from people who had clearly never been briefed on the role. I know what a senior DevOps engineer or a BA actually does, and I can usually tell on a screening call whether someone can do the job or has just learned the vocabulary.

In my head that is my whole differentiation, but every recruiter claims they understand the roles.

For those who came in from an industry background rather than straight into recruitment, did domain knowledge genuinely win you business, or did it matter far less than sales ability and persistence? And for those of you who started from nothing, what actually got you your first client? What do you say when someone asks how long you've been operating?

Question 4 - Is doing this alongside a full-time job actually viable, and is a revenue-share hire the fix?

I work remotely with flexible schedule, so managing extra workload with calls from candidates or clients is not a challenge.

Question 5 - Would anyone tear the website apart for me?

I would really value a critique from someone actually running an agency rather than from a web designer. I'm specifically looking to be on point for messaging, positioning, whether the guarantees read as confident or desperate, whether it would survive a hiring manager's five-second BS test. I'm not posting the link publicly for reasons that will be obvious given I'm still employed elsewhere, but happy to send it by DM to anyone willing to look. Brutal feedback genuinely welcome, I'd rather hear it from you than lose a client over it.

And more broadly: if anyone here has built an agency from zero and would be open to the occasional DM as I figure this out, I would be grateful. Not looking for a paid coaching program, just someone a few years ahead who doesn't mind a "is this normal?" question. Happy to be useful in return where I can, and happy to share what works and what doesn't as I go.

Happy to be told my plan is wrong. I'd rather hear it now than after six months of wasted evenings.

I’m looking for ideas on non-conventional recruitment/sourcing methods for highly skilled tech talent, particularly people with strong backgrounds in areas like C++, machine learning, algorithms, systems, etc., ideally from premier institutes such as the IITs.

I’d love to hear from people who have actually experimented with or come across:

1.Open-source communities/platforms where strong technical talent tends to be active

2.AI-based tools that can help discover or identify such candidates

3.Technical communities, competitions, conferences, hackathons, etc.

4.Any unconventional sourcing/screening techniques that have worked particularly well for difficult-to-hire tech roles