After taking a deep dive into data from our 2025/26 Recruitment Benchmarking Report, an interesting trend emerged: recruitment agencies with 10-50 consultants are leading the industry in confidence, capability, and momentum around AI and automation adoption.
After taking a deep dive into data from our 2025/26 Recruitment Benchmarking Report, an interesting trend emerged: recruitment agencies with 10-50 consultants are leading the industry in confidence, capability, and momentum around AI and automation adoption.
This midsized group of agencies are:
- 14% more confident in adopting AI and automation
- 24% less likely to see AI as a challenge
- 38% more likely to believe they have the internal skills to effectively deploy AI and automation
Looking at these numbers, it seems that midsized agencies are surging ahead of both smaller startups and larger enterprises in leveraging the next wave of recruitment technology.
But what gives this group a distinct advantage? Read on to find out.
The Goldilocks zone
JobAdder’s CEO Martin Herbst says a major reason why midsized agencies are leading the way is because they’re in the “Goldilocks zone”. In other words, they’re the ideal mix of agility, experience, and operational maturity to be able to readily and effectively bring AI-powered tools on.
“These midsized agencies are big enough to have experience scaling and investing in tech, but small enough to stay nimble,” he explains.
Unlike very small agencies, midsized agencies have usually developed some structure, including:
- A leadership team
- Operational or administrative support
- Established processes
- Clear growth ambitions
That means they’re no longer in “survival mode” like many smaller agencies tend to be, where the main priority is just putting one foot in front of the other. Instead, they have the headspace and resources to actually invest in long-term growth and success.
On the flip side, they’re also not so large that bureaucracy slows them down.
“If you get too big, you’re going from a speedboat to a cruise ship – or even a tanker,” Martin says. “You may want to change direction, but you’ve got to contend with multiple layers, competing interests, and different teams doing different things.”
Midsized agencies therefore have the ability to make faster decisions, be more transparent with changes, and get buy-in from leaders without them having to navigate multiple layers of management.
Fast adoption of fast-evolving tools
There’s another key factor driving confidence for midsized agencies, and that’s the rapid rate in which AI tools have grown and evolved. Martin describes this evolution as the meeting of two curves – the learning curve recruiters need to climb, and the “intuitiveness curve” of the technology itself.
“What’s available on the market is becoming more and more intuitive,” he says. “The technology is iterating, and at a rapid speed. It’s more fit for purpose now. And because of that, we’re seeing the learning curve get shorter.”
That means midsized agencies can adopt AI:
- Without needing dedicated data or training teams
- Without needing heavy change management
- Without making recruiters learn totally new workflows
Especially when AI is embedded directly into their recruitment platform, not bolted on as a separate tool.
“If that bright shiny object is actually right in my sphere of operations, not something separate, I don’t have to stop doing this to do that,” Martin explains. “I can be much more effective.”
This thinking sits at the heart of JobAdder’s AI suite of tools and features – Adder Intelligence. Adder Intelligence has been carefully designed to be fully integrated into recruiters’ existing workflows within the JobAdder platform, so it makes a real difference from day one.
Recruiters as early adopters
Recruiters have consistently embraced new tools faster than internal talent acquisition teams, and other industries in general.
“Recruiters have stayed one or two steps ahead,” Martin says. “They’ve always been among the earliest adopters of new tech.”
This is because recruitment agencies have a clear incentive to leverage anything that will improve their speed to market, quality of output, and outcomes. While internal talent acquisition teams often feel overwhelmed by volume and underresourced to innovate, Martin says:
“Recruitment agencies can specialise. They know their niche really well, and that lets them use technology more effectively than anyone else.”
In today’s market, where candidates can craft and send hundreds of applications using AI tools to make them look perfectly suited for every role, the recruiter’s value becomes even more critical.
“Recruiters have become a kind of truth filter,” Martin explains. “They’re ahead in finding the real, high-quality candidates who genuinely fit the job.”
The paradox: High confidence, high resistance
While confidence is high, it’s interesting to note that midsized agencies were also 54% more likely to say their staff were resistant to AI and automation adoption.
It might sound contradictory but, according to Martin, it actually makes perfect sense.
“Midsized agency leaders are closer to their teams, so they hear that natural pushback directly,” he says.
In small agencies, AI adoption is often not the highest priority. And in large agencies, resistance can be hidden by layers of management. But in midsized agencies? Leaders feel any tension firsthand.
They’re rolling out new tools, setting new expectations, and watching in real time as consultants deal with that learning curve.
How leaders can turn resistance into progress
Understanding where the resistance comes from is one thing, but how can leaders of midsized agencies move their teams seamlessly through this change?
“You’ve got to be clear about where you’re going,” Martin advises. “What are your business objectives? What’s holding you back? Which of those pain points is the most critical?”
The key is to pick one of two specific barriers, rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.
“From there, experiment and measure,” Martin says. “Did these tools improve placements? Conversions? Response rates? It doesn’t have to be complicated – you can just do a simple before and after.
Clarity plus measurement equals momentum.”
This structured way of experimenting and measuring success can help midsized agencies continue to outpace the market in their confidence and adoption of AI and automation.
Discover embedded, recruiter-led AI firsthand
Wherever you are in your AI-adoption journey, JobAdder’s powerfully simple Adder Intelligence has been designed to make a real impact and deliver results from day one. Sitting within existing workflows in the JobAdder platform, recruiters can easily and intuitively tap into our AI to streamline operations and get more time back in their day to focus on the human-led aspects of recruitment.
Explore Adder Intelligence, or request a demo to see it in action.
