How to get clients for a recruitment agency in 2026

A recruitment agency gets new clients by answering hiring signals, because for a recruiter the signal is the deal: an ad still open after 30 days, a role posted again or five openings in one team is a company admitting in public that it cannot fill a job alone. Such admissions are plentiful. US employers had 7.1 million job openings on the last business day of August 2026 and made 5.2 million hires during the month (BLS JOLTS, 29 September 2026), 2.0 percent of jobs in the EU were vacant in the second quarter of 2026 (Eurostat, 15 September 2026), and 68 percent of US HR professionals in a February 2026 survey reported difficulty recruiting full-time employees (SHRM, 27 April 2026).

This guide is for owners and business developers at small recruitment and staffing agencies; for every kind of service firm, see how to get clients. Checked on 23 October 2026. Revexa builds Leo, a tool that watches some of the signals below. This is not legal advice.

How to find clients for a recruitment agency: the job ad is the brief

A consultant has to guess what a company needs. A recruiter can read it: the job ad names the role, the team, the location and often the salary band. Your business development job is to notice which ads the company is failing to fill, and to reach the person who feels that failure, before a competing agency does.

That makes cold outreach to cold lists doubly wasteful for recruiters: a bought list of HR directors at companies that are not hiring is a list of people with no problem to solve, while every company with a stuck vacancy has already published its problem.

Seven hiring signals, from closest to a fee to furthest

The order is our assessment of how directly each signal leads to a paid search, not a study.

Open more than 30 days. Do not rely on the date on the ad alone: LinkedIn's help page says employers can repost a closed, expired or modified job at any time from the Manage job posts page (LinkedIn Help). The page does not say which date a reposted ad shows; our inference is that the date shown may not be the day the search began. Keep your own sheet with the URL, the title and the first day you saw each ad; on day 31 it becomes a lead.

Posted again. A title that returns after it disappeared is the strongest sign of all. Ask what went wrong last time before you pitch.

Several roles in one team. Three or more openings under one manager is a project, and the best moment to ask for exclusivity.

Funding followed by hiring plans. When a funding release says "grow the engineering team", write to the founder about the first three hires, not about your agency. Where rounds get announced: finding recently funded startups.

New head of HR or talent. A new talent leader reviews the agencies the company uses. Reach them in their first weeks with one sentence about the roles you see they are struggling to fill.

Hard-to-fill occupations. Some roles are scarce in many countries, so an ad for them is a likely search (our assessment). The European Labour Authority's EURES report Labour shortages and surpluses in Europe 2025 finds shortages in nearly all occupations in at least one EURES country, unevenly spread, and calls shortages in the health and care sector, which employs around 25 million people, especially severe, with critical gaps for doctors, nurses and care workers (ELA, ELA news).

Free sources to watch, with the latest numbers

For companies, read career pages, LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed and, in Sweden, Platsbanken, the public job board run by Arbetsförmedlingen. Paid job-data tools save time, largely by collecting the same public ads (our assessment). The step-by-step version for a single role is in finding companies hiring SDRs. For markets, use the official statistics:

In the second quarter of 2026 the Netherlands had the highest vacancy rate in the EU at 4.1 percent, followed by Belgium at 3.3 percent, Malta at 3.1 percent and Austria at 2.9 percent; Romania had the lowest at 0.5 percent. Professional, scientific and technical activities had 2.2 percent of EU jobs vacant, as did the sector covering programming and IT consulting (Eurostat). Placing engineers in the Netherlands is a different business from placing them in Spain, where the rate was 0.9 percent.

Fees: what the primary sources say

Contingency means you are paid only if your candidate is hired; retained means part of the fee is paid up front. The UK government's Permanent Recruitment Solutions framework (RM6002, 13 November 2018 to 12 April 2022) shows both structures without publishing rates: for general recruitment, a percentage of the candidate's annual salary paid on placement; for executive search, a fixed price paid in stages, 25 percent when the advert is placed, 25 percent when the shortlist is signed off and 50 percent on appointment (Crown Commercial Service). Fees are set contract by contract, and we found no primary source for an industry-wide contingency or retained rate, so we print none.

One public example of retained terms, not a market norm: Odgers Berndtson's standard executive search terms (October 2021), published as an attachment to a redacted NHS England and NHS Improvement letter of engagement on the UK's Contracts Finder (file name dated 28 March 2022), set the fee at one third of the first year's compensation package. The estimated fee is invoiced as a non-refundable retainer in three equal instalments (on instruction, then after 30 and 60 days), with any difference invoiced when a candidate accepts; engagement support costs add 10 percent of the fee on UK assignments, and the client confirms that no other firm searches for the role (Contracts Finder). That is one firm's standard terms from one year, which allow an agreed alternative fee, not an industry rate.

How to approach a new client

Write to the hiring manager, not only HR. The hiring manager carries the empty seat every day; HR owns the process and the supplier list. Open with the manager's problem (the role, how long it has been open) and keep HR informed rather than bypassed.

Send a spec CV only with the candidate's agreement, and remove what identifies them. Sending a candidate's profile to a company that has not hired you, often called a spec CV or MPC (most placeable candidate), discloses that person's personal data whenever the profile can identify them. The GDPR requires a legal basis for each processing (Article 6), and Articles 13 and 14 require that people are told how their data is used, Article 14 covering data not obtained from the person directly (GDPR). In Great Britain, regulation 28 of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 bars agencies from disclosing information about a work-seeker without the work-seeker's prior consent, with listed exceptions (legislation.gov.uk). Our advice: ask the candidate first, then strip the name, photo, current employer, exact titles and anything else that would identify them. In a small market, "senior payroll lead at a named competitor in Aarhus" is a name. Doing both lowers the risk but is no guarantee that a given disclosure is lawful; check with your own counsel.

Get on the preferred supplier list, then ask for exclusivity. Many companies buy only from a preferred supplier list. Ask when it is next reviewed, and use a new talent leader or a stuck role as the reason to be tested off-list once. When a team has several open roles, offer a fixed shortlist date in return for a few weeks of exclusivity; a short exclusive window with a clear deadline is easier to grant than an open-ended one (our assessment).

Be careful with Germany. Under UWG §7, advertising email to a business without prior express consent counts as an unreasonable nuisance, and phoning a business to sell requires that its consent can at least be presumed. Our guide to cold email in Germany explains the rule.

Recruitment business development: a weekly routine

A routine that fits a small agency (our suggestion):

1. Monday: update the sheet of target companies with new ads, ads past 30 days and reposts.
2. Tuesday: check funding news and new HR and talent appointments for the same companies.
3. Wednesday and Thursday: write to the hiring managers behind the strongest signals, naming the role and how long it has been open.
4. Friday: follow up, log replies and remove companies whose roles are filled.

Fictional example: a four-person IT recruitment agency in Utrecht tracks 150 software companies. A 250-person fintech posted two backend roles in early August; in September both are still open, a third appears in the same team, and the company's new head of talent announced her start three weeks earlier. The agency writes to the engineering manager about the stuck roles and to the head of talent with an offer: three anonymized profiles, each cleared with the candidate, and a shortlist within ten working days in return for a three-week exclusive.

For more places to look, see where to find clients; for routes that need no cold list at all, getting clients without cold outreach.

Where Leo fits for a recruiter

Leo by Revexa is an AI GTM agent that finds the B2B companies ready to buy and starts the conversations that turn them into customers, by email and LinkedIn. By default you approve every message before it is sent.

For an agency, the relevant part of Leo's signal list on our facts page is hiring and job ads (Platsbanken in Sweden among the sources), plus funding, headcount growth and new executives in the buying role; for a recruiter, our interpretation is that this can include a new head of talent. Ad age and reposts are not separate signals on that list, so keep the 30-day sheet yourself. Candidate consent, CVs, shortage reports and supplier lists stay with you too, and Leo makes no calls.

Leo learns which companies you serve from your website, checks each company's business model, finds the right person and drafts the LinkedIn message or email in your voice. By default every draft waits for your approval or skip in the portal, Slack or iMessage. With a CRM connected (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Upsales or Close), your current clients and open deals are kept out of outreach. Leads in Germany never get a cold message from Leo (UWG §7). Pricing: $99 a month in the US and the rest of the world, €89 in Europe, 999 SEK in Sweden, excluding VAT; 7 days free, no lock-in (pricing).

The 10x claim holds only against hiring an SDR to do business development: our calculation puts that route at 12 to 23 times the cost per held meeting, at equal meeting rates. Choose something else if your clients are mostly German, if most of your new business comes by phone or if you want published customer results first; Revexa, founded in Sweden in 2026, has none yet.

Other industries: Web design, Marketing agencies, Consultants and Software development companies.

Frequently asked questions

How can a recruitment agency get new clients?

By answering hiring signals: ads open past 30 days, reposted roles, several openings in one team, funding with hiring plans, a new talent leader, fast growth and shortage occupations. Start with the hiring manager behind the stuck role.

How do I find clients for my recruitment agency for free?

Read career pages, LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed and, in Sweden, Platsbanken, and keep your own record of when each ad first appeared. Use BLS JOLTS and Eurostat's job vacancy rate to choose markets.

How do I get clients for a staffing agency?

The same signals apply, at higher volume: many hourly or temporary ads in one location, a new site opening or a seasonal peak. The buyer is often the site or operations manager (our assessment), so contact them alongside HR.

What is recruitment business development?

The weekly work of finding companies with hiring problems and winning them: tracking signals, contacting hiring managers and negotiating terms.

Can I send a spec CV to a company that has not hired me?

Our advice is to do it only with the candidate's agreement and with anything that identifies them removed. The GDPR requires a legal basis for sharing personal data and that the person is informed (Articles 6, 13 and 14), and in Great Britain regulation 28 of the 2003 Conduct Regulations bars disclosure without the work-seeker's prior consent, with listed exceptions. This is not legal advice.

What fee should a recruitment agency charge?

We found no official or industry-wide rate; fees are negotiated per contract. One public example, not a norm: Odgers Berndtson's standard executive search terms of October 2021, published with an NHS England engagement letter on the UK's Contracts Finder, set the fee at one third of first-year compensation, invoiced as a retainer in three instalments.