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Use our list of recruitment agencies in the UK to successfully target recruiters by post, email and phone

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Apr 19, 2023

Why purchase a UK recruitment database?

A list of recruitment agencies is an invaluable resource for companies selling products to those working in recruitment services in the UK.

The recruitment sector in the United Kingdom

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the recruitment sector provided a vital service to businesses. It helped place tens of thousands of people into work, and contributed billions to the value of the UK economy.

The REC estimates, in its latest industry status report, that the wider recruitment industry brought £35.9 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) to the economy of the United Kingdom in 2020.

This was an 11.5% drop from the year before, but was a clear sign of the resilience of the sector when faced with the worst recession in 300 years.

Throughout the United Kingdom, different areas of the recruitment sector have been affected in different ways by the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to Business Leader, Paul Vogel, managing director of Access Recruitment said:

“2021 was a challenging year. It’s been incredible to see how the sector responded to these ever-changing, unpredictable and unprecedented times. 2022 will no doubt bring its own set of challenges, however I believe we are better prepared as an industry, especially with the support of recruitment technology, to address these challenges head-on and embrace creativity and efficiency when building on our client services.”

For any business looking to sell products or services to recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom, now is the time to strike.

What’s on our list of recruitment agencies

Our recruitment agency database in the UK includes:

  • 12,263 recruitment agencies,
  • 11,203 contact details for recruitment consultants,
  • 10,058 telephone numbers, and
  • 6,163 email addresses for recruitment services

We will licence the recruitment agency database to your business for 12 months. During this time your company can run email, telephone, and postal marketing campaigns.

Recruitment agency trends for 2022

According to Venturi, the number of recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom currently sits at a record high of more than 27,700.

Recruitment agency trends are tightly linked to significant events of the past year, indicating the following recruitment trends for the coming year.

There will be more available jobs than candidates

With more job vacancies than skilled people to fill them, the balance of power has tipped in favour of job seekers. This is a feature across many industries and both public sector and private sector businesses.

With so few skilled and talented people, recruitment agencies face challenges throughout the hiring process. This is especially true when negotiating pay and contract benefits.

International recruitment

Remote working is becoming increasingly popular among employees. This means that employees in the United Kingdom are now able to work for any business, anywhere in the world.

This, combined with a global skills shortage, has forced recruitment agencies to abandon localised and in-person recruiting tactics. They now broaden their clients to include those looking for any talent in their area of expertise.

Retention-focused employers

During 2022, business management teams will be putting a lot of effort into reducing employee churn. Higher salaries and benefits have worked to encourage management to cultivate existing employee relationships. This is to retain skilled talent, rather than find candidates for existing roles.

For those working in recruitment services, the challenge is now to create stronger acquisition strategies linked to retention.

Recruitment firms must ensure that candidates are carefully onboarded and given learning and career development opportunities in new roles. This will keep them invested in their employment contract.

Automating recruiter processes and integrating AI

In spite of new challenges in both the private and public sector, UK recruitment agencies have adapted to changes in the market.

In 2021, the most effective recruitment solutions involved using automation and AI software in recruiting processes than in any previous year.

This resulted in improvements to key recruiting metrics like time-to-hire, quality-of-hire, and cost-of-hire to recruit.

What do recruitment agencies buy?

Recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom require all of the standard products and services that other firms require. They tend to be cash-rich companies.

This makes them an attractive target for marketing and salespeople to focus on when seeking new clients.

There are some services that are more important to recruitment agencies, below we have listed some of the most popular products and services we help our existing clients market.

General business services

All recruitment agencies will work with a number of general and professional services firms across the UK. This is because of the contractual and high-value nature of their work

These include and are not limited to:

Accounting

Skilled people for general accounting and bookkeeping. R&D tax credit claims on innovative IT software platform creation, payroll services, and more.

For businesses in the sector with a turnover of £6m or more, they will also need the services of an auditor.

Legal services

Each recruitment agency must deal with multiple legal threats to it. These include threats from business clients unhappy with a new hire or contract.

Data theft is also rife in this industry when a recruiter leaves one agency to join another or set up their own agency.

HR consultants

As a direct employer, they will need to ensure staff are treated correctly and legally. If they offer temporary contracts, they will also need to be sure temp workers’ contracts are correct and legal.

Website services and web development solutions

With more than 35,000 competitors, each recruitment agency must stand out to attract the attention more of companies (which pay recruiters’ fees).

Website redesign

A recruiter website must work well on all devices and they require a responsive website to operate properly on desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile. In addition to operating correctly, a recruitment business website must also be easy for users to navigate.

Website content services

In order for a recruitment agency website to rank higher and be found by decision makers within companies and candidates, it must rank highly on Google’s search result pages.

If it doesn’t achieve outstanding results, they are unlikely to achieve the volume of traffic from the people they need to appeal to.

In addition to website page writing, companies are investing in content marketing and copywriting service.

They are looking to offer blogs and articles on:

  • salary advice,
  • career change,
  • what experience employers are looking for,
  • the best answers to give at interviews,
  • how employers read and perceive people’s CVs.

Mobile app development solutions

As technology advances, people are migrating to new mobile-based services to help candidates in the United Kingdom to find jobs.

The best recruitment agencies are developing mobile apps which work as a form of outsourced recruitment solution. They perform a range of tasks from connecting to candidates’ LinkedIn profiles to Tinder-style right-swiping matching services to recruiter network building apps.

Larger and more established recruiters with experience in major IT and website projects would be the best prospects to approach with this type of service.

Information technology (IT) services and solutions

Almost all of the best recruitment agencies in the United Kingdom now use specialist recruitment software to run their businesses and to offer their service to both candidates and clients.

There is already a wide range of choice available of specialist recruitment software. There are opportunities for companies which can offer a service which makes off-the-shelf software packages bespoke to the business processes of each recruiter.

Artificial intelligence IT services have also recently begun to be offered and many predict that they will revolutionise the internal processes of recruitment service providers.

Exhibitions and conferences

Many recruitment professionals in the United Kingdom focus their attention on finding suitable job seekers for their clients by taking out stands and booths at exhibitions and events.

Businesses with the necessary experience offering services like brochure printing, event stand design and build, and audio/visual equipment have an opportunity to introduce their products and services to a receptive audience.

Content services and solutions

Branding

In the way that many businesses now focus on building an employer branding profile to attract candidates, a recruitment specialist must do the same to convince candidates to register with them to access their opportunities.

Recruiter branding is an attempt to gain control of what candidates and business decision makers think of a recruiter’s services.

Copywriting

Most job seekers now look first to a job site to find the jobs and employers they want to work for.

Given the online level of competition between employers to attract suitable candidates, job adverts now needed to be worded to not only attract enquiries but also be found on job sites and Google much easier.

UK recruitment agency database plus managed marketing service

Our service includes:

1. List of recruitment agencies data

  • a current and accurate recruitment agency database
  • email addresses for high-level decision makers
  • multiple fields per entry
  • data can be used for 12 months from the date of purchase

2. Three email broadcasts designed and carried out with full reporting

  • email design – our copywriting and design professionals will create an email design that is strategic, engaging and compelling
  • three email broadcasts – we will send your email marketing campaign to the organisations you specify via our trusted servers
  • full reporting on each email campaign – we will send you a spreadsheet three days after the campaign ends showing which companies have opened and clicked through to your website.

3. After-sales support services

  • technical support – our in-house technicians can offer relevant information and help you use the data.
  • advertising support – our account managers will be able to share their market expertise for advertising to recruitment professionals
Frequently asked Questions (FAQ's)  vector icon in orange and dark blue
FAQ'S

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How to purchase our UK recruitment database

The key to selling your products and services to the providers of recruitment solutions is to focus on those agencies with the greatest need.

Let us know as much about your company as possible and the solutions you offer to recruitment solutions providers.

We will then search for the best recruitment agencies and those most likely to respond to your marketing campaigns.

Use our list of recruitment agencies to show your products and services off to their best to your target audience.

For more information, please call us on 0330 010 8300 or you can click here to email our marketing databases team.

Frequently asked Questions (FAQ's)  vector icon in orange and dark blue
FAQ'S

List of recruitment agencies in UK

Which contact details are included on your list of recruiters?

We collect a range of information on the recruitment organisations included on our marketing databases.

For each of the organisations on our master list, we collect the following contact details for the decision maker:

Decision maker contact details

  • title for salutations (for example, Mr, Mrs, Dr, Miss, and Sir)
  • name (separate fields for first and last name)
  • job title (the job title reported by the contact)

Company details

For each organisation on our database, we include the following contact details:

  • company postal address including 2 lines for the address, town, county, and postcode
  • company telephone number (main switchboard number)
  • the email address given by the contact as the address they’d prefer to receive emails at
  • the company email address (sometimes called the generic company email address)

Additional company information

We also hold the following information on each business and organisation across our UK business database:

  • number of employees (90%)
  • number of branches (90%) (best if you want to target group branches within a larger organisation or a group headquarters)
  • type of premises (70%)
  • website address (75%)
  • level of turnover (banded) (60%)
  • year the original company began trading (40%)
  • company registration number (8%)
  • incorporation date (8%)
  • net worth (7%)
  • profit or loss making? (2%)
  • %age increase or decrease in profitability YOY (2%)
  • turnover increase or decrease YOY (shown in pound sterling) (2%)

The figures shown in brackets indicate the coverage we have across our entire UK business database. For your selection of companies, the coverage may be higher or lower.

If a specific field of information is important to you when targeting recruitment services providers, please let your account manager know when you get in touch and they’ll make sure that your requirement is included when we search through the recruitment agencies on our list.

Do I have to purchase data on every recruitment business services provider on your database?

No. As a direct marketing services provider, our job is to only sell you the data of commercial value to you to keep your costs as low as possible.

Please get in touch with us, let us know what you sell, and which recruiters you normally target and we’ll search our database for the most commercially viable prospects for you.

Email marketing using the UK recruitment database

In our clients’ experience, using our B2B email database, of which our list of recruiters is a part, is the best and most successful way to target the sector. With our business email marketing data, we guarantee 85% deliverability to clients (excluding soft bounces).

Data-only clients benefit from 12 months’ free advertising support with their email marketing campaigns – send it what you intend to send to all the decision makers on your list and we’ll give you our feedback, thoughts, and suggestions in advance.

Carry out telemarketing with out recruitment agency database

Telemarketing is the best way to start conversations with decision makers.

Our B2B telemarketing data from which we compile our list of recruiters comes with a 92% accuracy guarantee meaning that your telemarketing teams spends more time speaking with decision makers.

Telemarketing data-only clients also benefit from our 12 months’ advertising support service – send us your telesales script including your opening, closing strategy, and objection handles and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours with advice.

Can we use your marketing team to run our email marketing and telemarketing campaigns to agencies on your database?

Yes. We have our own in-house team of email marketers and telemarketers all of whom have years of experience presenting our clients’ products and services to their target audiences.

When you get in touch, please ask us about our managed outsourced B2B email marketing campaign service and our managed outsourced B2B telemarketing service.

Postal marketing to recruitment agencies

We do not offer an outsourced postal mail marketing service to clients however we are able to recommend and work with a number of 3rd party mailing houses who will conduct your campaign for you if you wish.

We can sort our business to business mailing list (from which our list of recruiters is derived) to help the mailing house you choose benefit from postage rate discounts.

What types of products and services do recruitment agencies buy?
Can you provide lists of recruitment agencies by geographical area?

We are able to provide lists of recruitment companies with a focus on the geographical locations of their head offices and by site.

Some of the most popular site-related lists we provide to our marketing clients are:

  • list of recruitment agencies in London UK
  • list of recruitment companies in Northern Ireland
  • list of recruitment companies in Manchester

When you get in touch with us, let us know which geographical areas you want us to focus on and we’ll create a bespoke marketing database for your company

Can I purchase a list of recruitment agencies in London?

Yes. London is where the greatest concentration of recruitment services businesses are in the UK and, because of the higher-average wages in London and the concentration of the financial services sector in the capital, London-based recruitment agencies tend to earn the highest fees.

In recent years, most newly-launched recruitment agencies have been based in London and the South-East, followed by Birmingham, Leicester and Manchester.

To request of list of recruitment services providers in London, please get in touch with us.

Can you supply me with the details of recruitment service providers by size?

We can provide marketing details of decision makers within recruitment service providers by the size of the firm they own or work for.

You can search the recruitment companies on our database by the number of staff/employees, by the number of branches, and by turnover size.

When searching by staff number or number of employees, numbers of staff shown as working for a business on our database is shown in bands. For example, 1 member of staff, 2-5 members of staff, 6-10 members of staff and so on.

Please note that, other than the decision maker’s name and job titles, we do not record the number of actual recruitment consultants working for that business – we only collect the number of employees currently working at that recruitment agency.

You might want to target recruitment consultants by the number of branches they operate. We collect this information during compilation making note of which branch is the business headquarters.

Finally, we can separate each recruitment business we have on our database by the size of turnover. With each recruitment business, we assign their company turnover to bandings. For example, the company turnover bandings we use are up to £250,000 company turnover, £250,001-£500,000 company turnover, £500,001-£1,000,000 company turnover and so on.

To let us know the size of the recruitment companies you wish to target, please call us on 0330 010 8300 or you can click here to email us.

Recruitment company focus - can I purchase information on recruitment agencies based on their industry/market expertise, sub sector and so on?
How many recruitment agencies are in the UK?

The answers to two of the questions we’re most asked when contacted by clients seeking to market their products and services to the sector. Please note that our database only contains the details of recruiters where we have enough information for you to conduct marketing campaigns to them so it is not a complete snapshot.

Across the sector, here are the latest numbers:

Who is the biggest recruitment agency in the UK?


The top 10 recruitment agencies in the UK on LinkedIn, as reported by Social Talent, are Reed, Adecco Group, Michael Page International, Hays, Aston Carter, Hudson, the Search Consultancy, Venn Group, Robert Walters, and Man Power Group.

Who are the top 100 recruitment agencies in the UK? Reed is most definitely there but please click here to see what The Recruiter magazine believes.

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