Recruitment agency bad practice has become so widespread that employers are paying tens of thousands of pounds for candidates who were never properly vetted, and the problem is getting worse as agencies scramble to survive a shrinking jobs market. Fake adverts, expired licences waved through, and fees chased before basic checks are complete: the picture painted by business owners, candidates, and former recruiters is of an industry that has largely traded professionalism for speed.
The Race to Place: How Recruitment Agency Bad Practice Takes Hold
Recruiters typically charge 15 to 25 per cent of a candidate’s first-year salary, plus VAT, a fee that can easily run into the tens of thousands for a mid-ranking white-collar role. With that kind of money on the table, the incentive to move fast and ask questions later is enormous. Those within the industry describe a pattern of bad actors posting fake job ads to appear busier than they are, inflating stated salaries to attract more applicants and then cutting the figure at the last moment, and steering candidates towards roles that pay less than they could command elsewhere.
The consequences can be serious. In one case described to the Evening Standard, a candidate was put forward for a role that required a valid driving licence, despite their licence having expired. The same agency pursued its fee aggressively even after the employer raised concerns that the worker had failed to meet requirements and had not been subjected to basic checks. When a replacement was sent, the new candidate was, by the client’s account, less suitable than the first.
Andrew Hulbert, a non-executive director in London, says he repeatedly encountered candidates in interview who had no idea why they were there. “The recruiter just sent my CV forward,” was a common answer. “They were just there because the recruiter sort of pushed them into it.” Of the many hundreds of CVs he received from agencies, he estimates that only one in ten were even suitable for interview. He eventually created an in-house recruiting role, reasoning that a £60,000 salary would cost him less than what he was losing to agencies.
Vetting Failures and a Lack of Accountability
Finlay Wellington, who runs Wellington Web Co, was told candidates had been vetted before being placed with his web design business. In practice, he says, vetting amounted to confirming that a phone number matched an ID: there were no checks on whether stated credentials were genuine. Remote staff would communicate daily and then disappear. After six complaints to the platform, he received no reply. “I am paying for these services and what you’re supplying as a result is essentially false advertising,” he told the service.
Oliver Moheda, who runs Total Artist Management, points to the same pattern. Once a fee is paid, “many agencies disappear when problems emerge.” Hulbert puts it more bluntly: some of the worst offenders face little regulatory consequence because the barriers to entry are almost nothing. “You just literally need a phone number or an email address. They run up debts, they go bust, they write it off and they just start another one the next day.”
A forthcoming legislative change is adding to employer anxieties. Currently, a worker must be in post for two years before they can claim unfair dismissal. From 1 January next year, that threshold drops to six months, meaning employers could find themselves paying a large agency fee and facing an employment tribunal at the same moment. Data from HR platform Deel published earlier this year showed that more than 40 per cent of companies had already extended new employees’ probation periods due to difficulties assessing candidates’ skills during the application process.
AI Is Reshaping the Market, but Not Solving It
Recruitment agency bad practice is not occurring in isolation. Agencies are also battling a tightening market: figures from the Office for National Statistics from May show that job vacancies were down seven per cent on the same period the previous year, intensifying competition for a shrinking pool of roles. At the same time, artificial intelligence tools are moving into territory once occupied exclusively by human recruiters.
LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant claims to save users more than four hours of screening time per role and reduce the number of profiles to review by 62 per cent. Forbes has argued that “AI is not merely assisting recruiters, it is replacing them,” describing a future in which talent is sourced, assessed, and onboarded without human involvement as credible rather than speculative.
Lyndsey Fitheridge, who runs Foxgroves Recruitment, disputes the idea that technology can do what a good recruiter does. She describes her role as “a bit of a life coach as well as a recruitment consultant,” helping people through a major career transition. “I don’t know how AI can do that,” she says. She accepts that the industry has a reputation problem, but argues that recruitment is “bloody difficult” and that payment disputes cut in both directions: one London solicitor says he has recovered £13.3 million for recruiters in five years who were left short by clients who refused to pay.
Hulbert’s verdict is measured but grim. A recruiter-free future, he says, is unlikely anytime soon. “They’re a bit of a necessary evil, I think.” For employers and candidates dealing with recruitment agency bad practice right now, that is a long way from a reassuring conclusion.
