By AI search I mean ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini and Google’s AI answers. Getting your firm found and recommended in them is called generative engine optimisation, or GEO.
How do recruitment agencies win clients now?
It’s not recruitment agencies that win work. It’s recruiters. Relationships, trust, reliability, a consulting partnership where you add value to the client and that value is very clear to the business.
The other side of it is that to show credibility, build that relationship and add that value, you need to get in the room first. That’s another question in itself.
One example from my time at Robert Half. A business went out to tender for new recruitment agencies. High staff turnover, struggling to recruit, and every agency was telling them their salaries were the problem. They brought in four or five agencies to pitch for a permanent head of department. I was the youngest in the room.
When I explored what was going on, it was a long-standing team, very set in its ways. Manual processes, systems that didn’t speak to each other, a hard time from the parent company. They didn’t actually know what they were looking for.
In the short term they needed someone to turn things around - a transformation specialist who could face off to a board that had lost trust in them. At the same time they needed someone hands-on who could work out why good people were leaving and why others didn’t want to join. One person can’t do both those jobs. In the here and now, it was two hires.
The other agencies pitched retained search and said they could find someone, because they wanted to win the work. My angle was: I don’t think the person you’re looking for exists on the market. I proposed the contracting route instead of a permanent hire off the bat. A permanent hire at that level has three to six months’ notice anyway.
We won it. We placed two contractors, then the permanent head of department. After that we became the exclusive partner for every role in that team, because we put the client first and what was right for them, rather than putting winning the work first.
The next role didn’t go out to three to five agencies by email. We got two weeks’ exclusivity, met the hiring manager and the talent acquisition lead, brought real data on hiring that role in that area, and were honest with candidates about what they’d be walking into. They knew what they were coming into on day one, and attrition came down.
How does a hiring manager choose an agency today?
That business had treated recruiters as a supplier of CVs for at least a decade. A PSL, a brief out to three to five agencies, CVs fired through. That’s what landed them where they were.
What changed was demand. They no longer wanted a supplier of CVs. They wanted a consulting and advisory partner who could get involved in workforce planning, pull data, put reports together and help them work out who the right hires actually were.
And more and more, the first place they go to work that out isn’t a recruiter. It’s an AI assistant.
Do hiring managers use ChatGPT to find recruitment agencies?
Yes, absolutely. In my own time in recruitment we saw more leads come through from hiring managers going to Copilot - a lot of them have it at work - and asking who the best recruitment agency to use is. And I know it has carried on since.
It depends on the person and the business. Someone who hasn’t taken to AI yet will probably still go to Google if they don’t already have a recruiter they trust. If they are using AI, and more of the population is as time goes by, they’re more likely to go to ChatGPT, Copilot or Claude. They get more thorough research, rather than just whoever’s paid to be top of the Google page.
Why can a niche firm beat a big name in AI answers?
SEO for recruitment has always been expensive, hard to attribute ROI to, and crowded. There are only so many terms someone types to find a specialist recruiter - “best IT recruiter Scotland”, “engineering recruitment agency Manchester” - and a lot of firms fighting over them. It’s proved a very expensive battle.
AI search is different. People aren’t just asking “who’s the best recruitment agency in Manchester?” ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot have already built up a picture of who that person is, their business and the challenges they’re facing. And before they go looking for a recruitment partner, they go to AI with the actual problem.
Take a recruitment firm in financial technology. The UK moves to T+1 settlement on 11 October 2027. It’s a legal requirement, there’s no option, and capital markets firms have to change their systems to meet it. Leaders in that space are going to ask Claude, Copilot and ChatGPT what T+1 means for them, who they need to bring in to deliver it, and what it costs.
A niche fintech recruiter can build content that targets those leaders’ AI conversations while they’re still at the problem stage, not when they’re at the solution. From that you collect data on the businesses that read the article and visit your website, and some will book meetings. What you’re really getting is data on the businesses facing that challenge, for your consultants’ business development. SEO never offered that.
Which recruitment firms shouldn’t bother yet?
Firms that are unwilling to adapt and don’t have an appetite to grow in this direction. It’s not my job to convince you this technology is changing the game. I want to work with those that see it and are willing to act on it. I won’t be bending anyone’s arm behind their back to look at it.
What makes AI recommend one recruitment firm over another?
It depends on the space you’re in. But in an ideal world, an AI platform is looking for four things:
- A clear service specialism. A business that makes it really clear exactly what it does, so there’s no doubt.
- Informed human insight. Knowing the market, from people who work in it.
- Original data. Something only you can publish.
- Corroboration. Third-party mentions, endorsements from other businesses, and reviews and testimonials from previous clients and candidates.
These working together is how AI platforms start to confidently recommend you.
Right now, though, it’s such an infant space that the bar of entry is pretty low for a lot of these prompts. A lot of firms aren’t ahead of the curve and don’t know this yet. You don’t need everything all singing, all dancing to be the firm that gets recommended. That’s the opportunity just now.
As the market matures, more firms that get clients and candidates through AI will sit up and say, we should maybe invest in this. The bar goes up, and it gets more expensive and harder to break into.
Using AI to find clients vs being found by AI
This is where hiring triggers come in. T+1 is one. A supplier breach that sends a business racing to tighten up its security is another. A hiring trigger is when a business faces a problem - regulatory, legal, a shift in the market, whatever it may be - that’s happening under the surface and will lead to hiring further down the line. It’s the point before there’s a live role.
Spotting those triggers is a massive part of the opportunity. Yes, I want the firms we work with ranking for “best construction recruitment business in Glasgow”. But I equally want them collecting data, and collecting clients who see them as a consulting and advisory partner that can help with their challenges, rather than a recruitment supplier when they need one.
“All my work comes from relationships”
Fantastic. I don’t think that’s going to change at all. Recruitment has always been, and always will be, relationship driven.
I’d ask: what are your relationships built on? In my experience it’s a history of delivering, credibility, market knowledge, adding value and being trustworthy. AI search isn’t about replacing any of that. It’s about how those relationships come around in the first place.
Building one takes the first meeting. It takes phoning them, getting in front of them, and going from a business you’ve never worked with to a trusted partner. That doesn’t happen overnight, and AI search certainly doesn’t replace it. What it does do is give you more opportunities to pitch for work with clients and candidates, and data for your consultants’ business development.
Take a senior market. Say you’re recruiting a CISO. Every person you come into contact with for that role, even if they don’t get it, is a future client - wherever they move to. CISOs are tech savvy. Let’s be honest, they’re using AI. When one of them tells Copilot or ChatGPT they’re thinking about a move - not paid enough, the business isn’t doing well, bored of the sector - you want your live role showing up as an option. Then a way to book a meeting. And if that fails, you still know which businesses viewed the advert.
They might be a candidate today. They’ll be a client somewhere else tomorrow. AI search isn’t replacing all that. It’s just a new way of engaging in it.
Can anyone prove it wins clients?
Not yet, not across the market. I wrote up what I’ve seen, and the holes in it, in Do AI recommendations convert to recruitment clients? What you can do is measure it in your own business. More on that below.
Where to start this week
Take a live job advert and put it into Claude, Copilot or ChatGPT. Before you get it to write anything, ask it to research what a job advert needs to look like to show up in candidates’ AI conversations. Then ask it to structure your advert so it can be accessed and lifted by AI platforms.
A lot of the recruitment firms being recommended by AI right now haven’t done any GEO work at all. They’re being recommended because they advertise jobs AI can lift. Even when a client asks AI for a firm to recruit a role, the AI goes looking for who has live roles like that.
It’s a very simple fix, it’s easy to do, it can make a big difference, and it costs nothing.
Free: the AI-ready job advert guide. The exact prompts and the checklist for this fix.
Get the guide >What to ask anyone selling you this
One question: how does this transfer to ROI for me?
Showing up in ChatGPT and Copilot doesn’t give you new clients that pay the bills at the end of the day. You need to be making money from it. So ask how they’ll track meetings and leads, and how they’ll turn those into a return on what you’ve spent.
Free: the GEO partner measurement scorecard. Score any supplier on this, side by side.
Get the scorecard >How do you measure success?
Measurability is where we’ve built the GEO folk. Count the meetings and leads the work has actually generated, then work it back through your own ratios.
As an example: if every two client meetings lead to one vacancy, you fill one in every two vacancies, and your average fee is £15,000, you can calculate what the work has returned for the investment. That’s how you see tangible results, rather than “great, we’re showing up in ChatGPT”.
If you want to see how we’d look at your firm, that’s here. If you want to know who’s telling you this, here’s who I am.
Common questions
Does AI search matter for recruitment firms trying to win clients?
Yes. Hiring managers are already asking Copilot and ChatGPT which recruitment firm to use. AI search doesn’t replace relationships - it creates more chances to get in the room, and data on businesses facing a challenge before it becomes a live role.
Do hiring managers use ChatGPT or Copilot to find recruitment agencies?
Yes. Many have Copilot at work and ask it which agency to use. People not yet using AI still tend to go to Google or a recruiter they already trust.
What makes AI recommend a recruitment firm?
A clear service specialism, informed human insight, original data and corroboration from third parties, clients and candidates. Right now the bar is low because most firms haven’t worked on it.
What can a recruitment firm do this week to show up in AI search?
Ask an AI assistant to research what a job advert needs to look like to show up in candidates’ AI conversations, then restructure your live adverts that way. It costs nothing.
How do you measure whether GEO is working for a recruitment firm?
Count the meetings and leads it generates, then apply your own ratios - meetings to vacancies, vacancies to placements, and average fee - to calculate the return on the investment.
Darren Boyle
Founder, the GEO folk
Over a decade in recruitment. Now works with recruitment firms on how they get found and recommended by AI assistants. LinkedIn · Companies House · About · Get in touch