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Two cities. Two mornings. One recurring theme. Recruitment leaders, operators, customers and industry partners gathered in Sydney and Melbourne to discuss AI, productivity and the future of recruitment.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking your job ad is your number one (and only) tool for procuring top talent. While it’s an essential part of the process, it’s not the only aspect you should be tapping into when hiring.

The recruitment market has always been quite cyclical. But in 2026, these cycles feel more harsh – the swings are sharper, faster, and at times less forgiving. The demand and need for recruitment agencies is of course still there, but it feels like it’s becoming less predictable and stable.

For years, hiring has defaulted to a simple cycle: open role, post ad, review applicants, repeat. For under-resourced and time-poor in-house hiring teams, it can sometimes feel like this is the only option for keeping your head above water against a torrent of open positions and rising application numbers.

If you ask how 2025 felt, most recruiters will tell you the same thing: tight. Job volumes continued to trend down, clients were cautious, and budgets were scrutinised.

There’s been a lot of talk (and fear) about AI replacing recruiters. While we don’t think that’s true, we do believe AI is raising the bar.

AI has quickly gone from something relatively unknown to a fully integrated part of most recruitment agencies’ operations.

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.

The age of AI is well and truly here, and it looks less like the stuff of sci-fi movies and more like an everyday tool that helps us do our jobs faster, better, and more confidently.

Recruitment leaders are facing tighter budgets and rising competition. When every dollar counts, knowing where you’re leaking money can be the fastest way to reclaim margin and grow smarter.

Business development (BD) has always been the heartbeat of agency growth. But in 2025, it’s changed shape. For the first time in JobAdder’s annual Recruitment Benchmarking Report, BD wasn’t the number-one challenge for recruiters. Instead, client retention took the top spot.

Over the past few years in particular, recruiters have been laser-focused on sourcing talent in a tight market. But new JobAdder research suggests a bigger issue is at play: even when businesses find the right people, they’re struggling to keep them.

In a fast-paced recruiting world where you’re trying to juggle client expectations and connect candidates to the best possible roles, time is of the essence. Automation helps you claim back that time by simplifying your workflow and taking repetitive tasks off your plate.

As a recruiter, you probably use many different tech tools across your day. From internal messaging with your team to tapping into your trusty recruitment CRM and ATS, you’re constantly switching between different platforms.

Recruitment prospecting is tough. Clients are inundated with messages. The market’s more crowded than ever. And decision-makers have less time, more options, and higher expectations. So how do you stand out? The best-performing recruiters are getting tactical.

In recruitment, business development (BD) can’t just be a job title, it has to be a mindset. While many agencies pour money into new tools, automation, or outreach campaigns, they often overlook the real driver of sustained business growth: culture.

Recruitment business development is at a crossroads. When surveyed for our Recruitment Benchmarking Report, 63% of agencies told us they plan to invest more in BD this year. But by the same token, only 5% were completely happy with their current strategy.

Recruitment business development can often feel like a mystery. There's no one-size-fits-all approach and often the biggest growth opportunities are hidden in the areas we haven't explored yet.

AI is fast becoming a mainstay in the way we work. Savvy recruiters already understand this and are finding ways to tap into it: 69% of respondents to our 2025/25 Recruitment Benchmarking Report use AI and automation within their agencies, and a further 80% believe their use of AI will ramp up over the coming year.

In today’s dynamic recruitment landscape, agencies face an ongoing challenge of balancing business development (BD) efforts with client retention strategies.

As we move into 2025, the recruitment landscape across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK continues to evolve.

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a type of recruitment software that helps organisations streamline and optimise their hiring process.

Talent acquisition is more than just finding employees, it’s about building a pool of highly qualified talent to draw from when you need to expand your team, using solid strategies to attract, assess, and hire the right people.

A Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) system helps recruiters build relationships with potential candidates before they are actively applying for jobs.

In a competitive recruitment landscape, landing new clients is only half the battle – keeping them is where the real success and ongoing value lies. Client retention isn’t just a nice-to-have; it fuels exponential growth.

JobAdder’s 2024/25 Benchmarking Report found that a surprising 51% of respondents don’t set targets for their consultants.

2024 has been a big year for talent leaders. Candidate applications are at an all-time high — up 60% from this time last year, according to our H1 2024 State of the Market Report.

As we head into the final months of the year, it’s common for businesses to hold off on big technology decisions until January.

With hundreds of Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) systems on the market, how do you choose the right one for your business? The right recruitment CRM doesn’t just organise data, it transforms your entire workflow.

It can be difficult to find and recruit the right candidate for an open position. From putting together the perfect job ad to sifting through applications and interviewing for an open role, recruitment is a time-consuming and expensive process for many companies.

JobAdder has been recognised by Capterra as one of the top-rated and most popular staffing agency software solutions for businesses.

In over a quarter of a century of working in recruitment, I’ve worked in two listed, one boutique and one medium-sized agency firm as well as one stint in internal recruitment.

Work-life balance is about to become a protected right in Australia with the introduction of the right to disconnect. It couldn’t have come at a better time, as recent studies show 52% of Australians consider their balance to be average or poor. Employers must understand shifting labour laws.

To excel in the competition for top talent, proactive workforce planning is essential. Traditional methods struggle to adapt to evolving market demands. But with a data-driven hiring strategy, TA and HR managers gain a powerful tool to forecast future needs effectively.

Did you know that data-driven companies are 23 times more likely to beat their competitors and 19 times more likely to stay profitable? Research conducted by McKinsey supported this and revealed how a strong focus on analytics can accelerate business growth.

The art of cold calling has been around for decades, and has served many recruiters well over the years. However, as digitisation transforms modern business, some cracks have started to form in these traditional methods.

To excel in the competition for top talent, proactive workforce planning is essential. Traditional methods struggle to adapt to evolving market demands. But with a data-driven hiring strategy, TA and HR managers gain a powerful tool to forecast future needs effectively.

A successful recruitment agency is not just about filling roles – it's also about building lasting relationships with clients. In the current competitive market, differentiation is key to retaining clients and winning new business.

Recruitment scams are a growing threat to job seekers, often targeting their eagerness to secure a role and leading to financial loss or identity theft. As recruiters, protecting candidates from these schemes isn’t just the right thing to do — it also builds trust and strengthens your reputation.

A substantial volume of candidate information is involved in the hiring process – spanning employment history, educational background, personal details, and even more sensitive aspects like background and police checks tailored to specific job requirements.

Neurodiversity has many benefits and is something that’s increasingly on Australian employers’ radars, including those hiring on a temp basis. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, up to 40% of the population is neurodivergent. But what does this term mean?

Preparing for data migration can be a large undertaking for any recruitment agency. However, cleansing your recruitment database can make the process much easier.

The landscape of talent acquisition is undergoing a profound shift with the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI). Martin Herbst, CEO at JobAdder, points out how technology has always been linked to talent acquisition.

Running a dual desk agency and not sure why your temp desk is struggling? You might be missing out on some temp recruitment best practices. Temporary recruitment is a dynamic and ever-changing landscape with the global temp staffing market valued at a whopping US$500 billion in 2021.

Temp recruitment can be a crucial component of your dual-desk recruitment agency’s long-term success, but there are a few mistakes you need to avoid.

Leading global recruitment software company JobAdder has been declared the winner of the Best SaaS Product For Recruitment this week in the international SaaS Awards program.

Imagine a world where your team’s most time-consuming recruitment tasks are automated, allowing them to perform at a higher level. This is no longer a fantasy, but a reality with the advancement of generative AI in the recruitment sector.

JobAdder is excited to announce that we have entered into an exclusive reseller agreement with Roi-AI, a fully integrated automation and multi-channel communication tool, to enable JobAdder’s customers to generate more value from their database.

After COVID-19, leaders of recruitment companies could very easily discern and articulate their primary challenges; finding great candidates and hiring capable recruiters. As the market shifted, the underlying trends became so much harder to understand.

As in-house talent acquisition professionals, we can sometimes become too focused on our own work and lose sight of broader industry trends. Our perceptions can shape our reality.

We're excited to announce that the JobAdder team has built an integration into workforce management platform Deputy that connects and automates the management and recruitment of temporary and contract workers.

Michelle Rubinstein knows what drives recruitment success. As the 2023 RCSA Recruitment Professional of the Year, she’s been recognised by the industry as a standout leader in her field.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping many industries, with recruitment being no exception. This advanced technology, with its ability to analyse vast amounts of data, is revolutionising many recruitment tasks, thereby increasing efficiency, driving revenue and creating a more streamlined workflow for recruitment agencies.

In today's competitive recruitment landscape, an automated hiring process is one of the most effective ways to streamline workflows for recruitment agencies and their clients. Automation tools enhance communication, paving the way for the best candidate and client experience possible.

The evolution of the digital landscape has undeniably impacted various aspects of our lives, including how we approach the recruitment process.

Recruiters are busy, they have to interact with a huge volume of people on a day-to-day basis and generally work on commission, so they focus (understandably) on revenue-generating conversations.

In today's digitally dominated era, email marketing for recruiters is a powerful and accessible tool for recruitment agencies looking to attract top-tier candidates and potential clients.

Recruitment agencies can use marketing to reach more candidates, generate new client opportunities and build long-term relationships.

Proactive recruitment is all about sourcing and nurturing talent before you need it, building diverse talent pools that you can draw from when you need to place a candidate quickly.

Managing temporary workers across multiple clients can quickly become a juggling act. From scheduling conflicts to varying client expectations, it’s easy for things to slip through the cracks without the right structure in place.

Wondering what to look for when hiring good temp recruiters for your recruitment agency? Temp recruitment is fast-paced and demanding, so a good temp recruiter is worth their weight in gold.

Recruitment software platform JobAdder today announced the appointment of Ginger Kidd in the newly created role of Chief Growth Officer.

As a recruiter, managing temporary workers across multiple different clients can be challenging with scheduling conflicts, differing expectations and disorganisation.

In the world of temporary recruitment, having access to high-quality candidates can make or break your agency’s ability to deliver. Building a strong temp talent pool means you can respond to client requests faster and with greater confidence — all while maintaining a consistent standard of service.

Balancing permanent and temporary recruitment is no easy task for dual desk agencies. From managing competing priorities to juggling client relationships and candidate pipelines, the demands can stretch even the most experienced recruiters.

As a recruiter at a recruitment agency, one of the most critical parts of your job is to conduct phone screen interviews to identify the best candidates for your clients.

As a growing recruitment agency, finding and attracting top talent for your team is crucial for the long-term success of your business. One of the most critical steps in this process is conducting effective interviews with potential recruiters.

Hiring can be overwhelming for many businesses. Sorting through resumes, screening candidates, coordinating interviews — it all takes time and resources that are often in short supply. That’s where full life cycle recruiting, also known as end-to-end recruiting, comes in.

Recruitment software platform, JobAdder, today announced it has secured another round of funding from its parent company, SEEK Ltd. This additional funding will help fuel innovation and grow its Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service offering for recruitment customers across the globe.

Understanding what reference questions are most helpful before hiring your candidate can be the difference between getting an excellent new employee or having tons of trouble down the road.

Hiring dashboards are essential tools for recruiters, hiring managers and Human Resource (HR) teams to evaluate the hiring process. By examining data-set trends through a dashboard, patterns emerge and turn into actionable insights that can improve your hiring process.

Everyone is chatting about ChatGPT at the moment (sorry for the pun, I had to!) so I thought I’d explore how to use ChatGPT in recruitment and what it means for the industry.

The latest JobAdder global industry report is another fascinating insight into the recruitment sector, with many prompts for action for recruitment leaders. As the data illustrates, the market is slowing, job numbers are dropping and candidate flow is increasing.

Wondering what big recruitment trends will shape how the recruitment sector shifts in 2023? Our latest global industry report reveals the recruitment trends you need to know this year.

Want to future-proof your recruitment agency in 2023? With job growth slowing and economic tides turning, it’s a great time to prepare your agency for the future.

Navigating a candidate-short market? Our 2023 recruitment strategies have you covered. Attracting top talent requires more than perks – your employer brand must shine and your approach should be inventive and distinct.

How are you maximising the growth you’re already seeing in your recruitment agency or talent team? Are you tracking the right recruiter KPIs? Understanding and measuring the right KPIs can have an immense impact on the efficiency and success of your recruitment or talent acquisition team.

The potential of a company is often determined by its employees. Without dedicated, hardworking and competent employees, a company’s efficiency will undoubtedly plummet. This is why the recruitment process and hiring process is so vital.

Working for a recruitment tech company, I’ve listened to talent acquisition professionals across many industries describe the challenges they face.

Today, technology has placed many tools at our disposal, making many tasks more accessible than ever. One such technology is recruitment automation, which can help you quickly and efficiently streamline the hiring process for your recruitment agency or company.

While hiring new employees can be incredibly exciting, the onboarding process also takes up a bunch of time and energy. A strategic and effective onboarding program is crucial to ensure you’re setting up new employees for success.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) should form the foundation of every modern business. Globally, there’s growing awareness around unconscious bias, discrimination, inequality and systemic issues in the workplace.

As more and more organisations embrace remote working, leaders are looking for new ways to hire and scale teams. Leaders must balance the need to scale while achieving efficient growth and providing teams with the right tools to scale and perform.

We’re so happy to announce that JobAdder has been awarded 29 G2 badges from July 2021 to June 2022. The badges cover a range of areas from easiest admin to highest user adoption, easiest to do business with, high performance, momentum and a whole lot more.

Looking to fill more roles in a market dominated by candidate shortages and job growth? Recruiters are struggling with a range of market challenges from changing candidate behaviour to competitive counter offers, unprecedented job demand and falling applications per job.

“We are beyond excited to announce that JobAdder will be our official awards partner for the 22nd annual NORAs this year.” – Stephen O’Donnell, founder and Chairman of the NORAs. The JobAdder National Online Recruitment Awards (NORAs) 2022 are open for public nominations from Monday 1st August.

In the realm of recruitment, juggling client expectations and a myriad of candidate interactions can make staying organised a challenge. If you find tasks slipping through the cracks and your to-do list overwhelming, we're here to provide essential recruiter organisation tips.

Recruitment is the process of sourcing, identifying and screening candidates for open positions or future positions at a company. When you think of recruiting, you may think of the hiring process, but hiring and recruitment are two separate things.

In the recruitment industry, diversity recruiting and hiring has become a top priority among many companies and hiring teams. Building a diverse team has a lot of clear business and culture benefits within the workplace and it’s become more important than ever.

Onboarding is the process of hiring and training new employees for your team, and it’ll come as no surprise that it’s crucial to have a successful onboarding program. The onboarding experience starts from the time that your new hire accepts a job offer, and goes well beyond their first week.

Hiring efficiency, also known as recruitment efficiency, is the key to attracting, engaging and securing the best candidates for your organisation. There are several moving parts in the hiring process.

A candidate relationship management (CRM) system, also known as a talent management system, needs to be an essential part of your recruitment process and strategy.

Finding, interviewing and hiring new employees often takes time and effort. Hiring managers must work hard to find the right fit for a new role out of their applicant pool.

No matter the size or industry, most businesses will face staffing challenges at some point. Being short-staffed can put pressure on your existing team, slow down operations, and impact overall performance. Pinpointing the root cause isn’t always easy.

With the abundance of open positions in the market now, it’s highly competitive, so finding potential candidates to fill a management role can be incredibly overwhelming.

We all know that the hiring and recruitment process is something that takes time to perfect for each company. While everyone’s goal is the same—finding the best candidates to fill your open positions—an overly complex and long hiring process can hamper this goal.

Talent acquisition technology is software or modules that automates and streamlines recruitment processes for a company’s HR team.

LinkedIn currently has over 830 million users and this number keeps growing. In recent years, this social media platform has become one of the most-used recruiting tools for hiring managers and businesses.

Struggling to determine the best person for your open role from a pool of qualified applicants? Hiring the ideal applicant for your position can be tricky at times. But, with the best hiring practices, you can easily narrow down your choices.

Recruitment is a continuous, end-to-end process of locating, identifying, attracting, and hiring prospective candidates for an organisation.