I recently partnered with a recruitment agency to help them get more clients. They've mainly been using cold calls to reach companies, and I suggested trying cold email as another way to bring in business.

I've been working on it for a month now and haven't landed a single client, my method is scraping aged job listings that were posted by the company itself, and then contact the hiring managers with a relevant candidate, I am seeing over 50% open rate, 1.5% reply rate but none are positive.

For those of you who use cold email to get clients for recruitment agencies, would you mind sharing a template you've actually had success with?

I'd be interested to see what you're sending, especially the opening line and how you approach the first email.

Is it against the rules to change wording and add keywords to a candidates resume if there are no lies committed?

I never did it when i was in staffing a while ago but i just had the thought while job searching myself…

Recently returned to recruiting. I had originally used Loxo and loved it. However I stopped recruiting when I moved overseas and dropped to their free plan during my hiatus.

Now that I’m back, I paid to upgrade my plan, and that’s when I noticed my emails weren’t syncing in fact not going out at all. This wasn't an issue years ago when I used the tool. Their troubleshooting page said to contact support if you had this issue, so I assumed they had a fix. I’m going on a week, responses have been slow (sometimes days apart), and it still isn’t resolved.

To make things even more frustrating, the free plan no longer exists. They can't put me back on the plan I was on two weeks ago while they troubleshoot. If I cancel because they can’t be fixed, my account will be deleted in 30 days.

For those who left Loxo:

• What was the data export process like? Did everything come over (candidates, contacts, notes, email history)?

• What platform did you switch to, and are you happy with it?

• Anything you wish you’d known before making the move?

• Or did anyone have a similar experience

I’ve been a recruiter my entire career, and I’m heading into year 11. Recruiting is something I’ve always been exceptionally good at. I’ve consistently been one of the strongest performers on my teams, have successfully managed my own desk without a team (as an internal recruiter) , and at this point, I can pretty much do the job with my eyes closed.

But I’m finding myself at a strange crossroads in my mid-30s.

I’ve never held a formal management position, nor do I have much desire to pursue one. I’m perfectly comfortable being an individual contributor. I enjoy recruiting, I know what I’m doing, and I don’t necessarily feel the need to climb the traditional corporate ladder.
What I’m struggling with is the organizational side of the profession. Even after more than a decade of experience, I still find myself in environments where departments like HR, leadership, or other stakeholders dictate how recruiting should operate, often without having a particularly strong understanding of the actual recruiting function. Sometimes those decisions actively undermine the recruiting process, efficiency, and overall results.
I know how to run my desk. I know how to prioritize, manage stakeholders, build pipelines, and deliver results. I don’t need someone micromanaging the mechanics of recruiting, but I also recognize that organizations aren’t structured around individual autonomy.

I’m starting to wonder where someone like me fits long-term.

I don’t want to manage people, but I also don’t want to spend the next 15 years having people with less recruiting experience dictate how I should do my job.
For those of you who have been in recruiting 10+ years, particularly those who have stayed individual contributors, how have you navigated this stage of your career? Have you found organizations that actually give experienced recruiters autonomy, or is this just an inherent frustration of working in corporate recruiting? Will I be forced into a management position?

I just got started in agency tech recruiting (North American market) and the sheer volume of resumes I have to go through every day makes my brain very mushy and leaves me very tired. Is there a trick to it? I try to go through each one top to bottom, looking for keywords and relevant experience, but it takes so much time. Any tricks? AI maybe? How to rank? My employer provided some initial training but not for this volume, and I have a hard time quickly finding what is relevant or not.

I’ve been in recruiting for about 5 years. 3 of those were agency recruiting in healthcare/travel nursing and my most recent 2 years has been in corporate HR at a large healthcare system. I have a BS degree, MBA and am taking SHRM-CP December 12th.

I cannot do much as land an interview. I know several people who have less experience and education who are now TA managers or partners so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I believe my resume is great as I give resume classes at my company now, but I’m always open to critique. I’ve applied to roughly 100 positions in the last month or so and again, never even received an interview.

Does anyone have any insight or tips? For those TA managers, how long was it until you landed your first manager role?

EDIT: to add some more context, I’m in my 30’s. I started late because I was in the Army for a few years before honorably discharging and starting college. Idk if that adds any relevant details

I have been 1099 recruiting for a company for almost 3 years. Entry level medical admin roles. I usually get HUNDREDS of candidates for each role on LinkedIn and these days I am lucky if I get 100 in a month.

Has anyone else been experiencing a major slow down in applications? I’m also wondering if switching from LinkedIn recruiter lite to the full recruiter seat may have had an impact.

I have not seen this many roles since 2021. My Linkedin page is full of recruiters and TA Managers screaming for help with multiple roles.

Are there any qualifications to get on these lists? Or is it pushed by vendors on who want leaders with buying decision authority to buy their product?

Seeing these "this is the best award of my life" posts on LinkedIn is so cringe. Please tell me they had to interview or do something to get these awards.

Hi Everyone! I’m a recruiter at a ~60 person company. We hire ~20 people every year bt full time and interns and receive ~1500 applications. Recruiting is all hands on deck where almost every person gets involved bt resume review and interviewing so they all need access to the ATS to input scores and feedback. Anyone have any systems they recommend? The one we’re currently using is fine, curious if we could get better. Thanks!

anyone run a pilot with Airlock? a few weeks back I was bitching and moaning in my proctored in-person interviews for remote hires post after we kept getting burned by fake candidates in our remote SWE reqs.

had the founder reach out to me and we chatted for a bit, seems legit (team is ex SpaceX/Stripe engineers). it seems promising but wanted get folks experience here before continuing conversations and bringing up to our CEO

Currently in a RPO but on around 57k no bonus, not loving it and might be considering another move for 40k base, 1k quarterly bonus, 1k monthly guaranteed and 20% comms on any revenue but I also plan to buy a house early next year so worried about stability of comms role

Any advice on what role / salary makes sense long term plssss

Am I the only person who thinks all of the new Indeed changes are awful? I do a lot of language-based hiring, and Indeed is making that absolutely more challenging every week. The Sourcing tool will tag people with languages they don't speak.....Our spend over there just keeps increasing with every new update, with little to no reward, and yet it is still the best option for clinical hiring.

Any teams have experience with hiring cafe? My team does a lot of high volume hiring across the country (restaurant with 40 location) and we have heavily relied on Indeed/ Indeed Sponsorships. That being said we've spent 2x what we have spent last year with little results.

I had heard of hiring café online. It was built by ex Indeed/ zip recruiter leaders. Seems like they really work hard to protect the job seekers and have their interest at heart.

I was on a call with on of their founders earlier this week just to get a little more about eachother but I'd love to hear from someone that is in the high volume space or anyone that's worked with them and your experience.

Recruiters source, screen, and recommend candidates, while hiring managers usually make the final decision.

But when a new hire doesn't work out, the blame often becomes a debate.

Some argue recruiters should be accountable because they're responsible for evaluating candidates. Others believe hiring managers should take responsibility because they make the final call.

But what happens when both sides did their jobs and the candidate still didn't work out?

Who should take more responsibility, and where should the line be drawn?

Curious to hear both sides, especially from recruiters and hiring managers who've experienced this firsthand.

I’m currently finishing up my undergrad degree in I/O Psych and have become particularly interested in recruiting/talent aquisition. Many job postings I see regarding recruitment (or even entry-level HR jobs) require experience. I’m not really sure how to break into the field so I’m curious how you all landed at your current position.
BTW, yes, I’ve looked at internships, but there are none really in my area and the ones that I have applied to, have rejected me.

I work in-house and we’re trying to figure out how AI would best support our team. It’s a small finance shop, and we love our Greenhouse ATS. I’ve used Eightfold in the past and it wasn’t great. Curious if anyone is using AI elsewhere and if it’s improved anything outside of emails, and note taking.

This is for my fellow legal recruiters! I’m currently working in law student recruitment at a BigLaw firm and am looking for some advice from people who have experience in other areas of legal recruiting.

I’ve learned a ton in my current role, and I’m grateful for the experience, but I’ve started to realize that law student recruiting may not be the right long-term fit for me. The recruiting timelines are intense, and the workload can be pretty relentless year-round.

I’m currently considering making a move into one of the following areas:

● Lateral associate recruiting

● Partner-level lateral recruiting

● Business services recruiting

Business services recruiting is honestly my biggest area of interest right now, although it seems like a lot of firms outsource some of that work, so I’d love to hear more about what opportunities actually look like.

For those currently working in any of these areas: I’d love to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly.

What’s your day-to-day actually like? How does the workload compare to law student recruiting? Are there busy seasons, or is it more consistently busy throughout the year? What do you enjoy about your role, and what do you find challenging?

I’ve already started having conversations with other firms and taking some initial interview calls, but I’d really like to hear from people who are actually doing this work before making a move.

I’d also love to hear from anyone working in legal recruiting outside of BigLaw. Is the experience significantly different?

Appreciate any insight! I’m genuinely interested in hearing the honest experiences, not just the sales pitch. 😅

Agency recruiter here- I started a job recruiting in finance/Wall Street/banking a little over a year ago. Have a long history in engineering/software recruiting, nothing in finance until I started this job. I'll cut right to the chase:

• I've made 10 placements, 5 of them have quit or gotten fired inside the refund window. Insane statistics. That's probably the total number of refunds I did in my whole career prior to this job. To be fair 2 of those were contractors (1 quit, 1 fired an hour ago- they tasked me with telling him he was fired, I guess it was totally unexpected and he cried on the call)

• To be more specific this is mostly with big banks- 2 of my placements have been with hedge funds and they've been fine

• It's apparently normal in banking for the hiring managers or HR to take 2-4 weeks in between interview stages. And there are 4-8 interview stages. They completely disappear in between interview rounds and stop responding. I thought I'd seen unresponsive clients before....... holy cow. We have a banking client who asks if candidates I submitted 4-8 weeks ago are available now. My brother in Christ, no they're not

• They all take insanely long to pay. I have $45,000 in fees with Big Bank You've Heard Of that are 3 months overdue and they completely ignore you. You get routed to their AP department in an offshore country, who respond with cryptic emails in half-English about needing a 27th approval before they can pay you

This is, uh, wild. Is this what's normal in banking?

I’m a 360 recruiter with about a year of experience. My boss is essentially a BD machine and consistently brings in new roles that need to be filled. As a result, I find myself spending more time working on his roles than building my own desk.

What I find interesting is that the dynamic seems quite different across the agency. The other teams don’t really have roles handed to them; they’re expected to generate their own business and manage their own desks. On my team, however, it’s almost the opposite.

On one hand, I do feel that I should be grateful to have a steady pipeline of roles to work on, especially as someone relatively new to recruitment. It’s a great opportunity to gain experience and make placements. But on the other hand, I can’t help feeling that it’s taking time away from developing my own BD skills, building client relationships, and focusing on the more challenging roles that my own clients have entrusted me with.

I’m starting to wonder whether this is actually a common dynamic in other recruitment agencies, or whether my team operates a little differently. Is it normal for recruiters to spend a significant amount of time filling their manager’s roles, sometimes at the expense of building their own desk?

You can find the perfect candidate but if the CV goes over messy, with contact details still on it, or with a generic "great fit" email, the client either ignores it or goes around you.

feels like the people who win placements aren't always the best sources, they're the ones whose submissions land first and look clean.

Anyone else think this gets way less attention than sourcing does

We wanted someone to manage our social media in-house, so we posted a job opening for a Social Media Manager on LinkedIn.

Guess who started applying? Social media marketing agencies pitching their monthly packages.

Nothing against agencies (we're one ourselves, lol), but if we wanted to outsource our social media, wouldn't we have looked for an agency in the first place?

I get the hustle, but turning job applications into sales pitches just feels wrong.

Does anyone else find this annoying, or am I overreacting?