SYDNEY – February 25, 2026 – Agencies in APAC using AI at any stage of the recruitment cycle are 3 to 5 times more likely to have grown revenue in 2025. That is according to the 16th annual Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) Industry Trends Report published by Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry.

The report surveyed nearly 250 recruitment professionals across APAC to understand the strategies driving performance in today’s market and the findings make one thing clear: AI is no longer an efficiency experiment. It is a competitive necessity. The revenue gap between agencies meaningfully using AI and those that aren’t is widening fast, leaving late adopters at a growing operational and financial disadvantage.

AI is driving measurable gains

The correlation between AI and revenue growth is clear, and the highest-growth agencies prove it. Seventy-three percent of agencies in the APAC region that grew revenue by 25 percent or more have AI embedded in their Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

The operational impact is substantial:

• Most recruitment leaders say AI has improved KPI performance by 11 to 25 percent
• 31 percent of recruiters report AI has made screening 26 to 50 percent faster
• Top-performing agencies in APAC are three times more likely to have average placement times of one to three days
• Screening more candidates faster and streamlined administrative tasks are the top benefits of AI adoption

AI transformation starts at the top

Despite clear performance gains, company-wide AI adoption remains limited. Only 10 percent of agencies from Bullhorn’s global survey have implemented agentic AI across their full workflow, with many citing concerns around data readiness, security, and unclear implementation strategies as barriers to broader adoption. Agencies that move past those barriers share a common trait: confident, prepared leadership. 

With 56 percent of APAC businesses expecting the economy to improve and 38 percent expecting it to stay the same in 2026, the message is clear: agencies investing in AI are not waiting for market recovery. They are building productivity and growth on their own terms.

To download the full GRID 2026 Industry Trends Report, click here.

About the GRID Industry Trends Report
The annual GRID Industry Trends Report is based on data collected from a multiple-choice, online survey of nearly 250 recruitment industry professionals who work across a variety of industries in APAC. The survey was conducted between November and December of 2025.   

About Bullhorn
For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on LinkedIn or X.

Media Contact
Heather Youkhana
Director, Global Public Relations and Content
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

SYDNEY – 28 May 2025 – Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, today announced at its annual Engage Boston conference the launch of Amplify, a next-generation AI solution built exclusively for recruitment agencies. 

Over the last year, Bullhorn customers have leveraged its generative AI and agents over 100 million times. With the launch of Amplify, Bullhorn pioneers the third wave of recruitment AI innovation, helping customers unlock new levels of productivity, profitability, and performance. The results speak for themselves:  Amplify customers report a 51% increase in submissions to jobs and a 22% increase in fill rates. 85% of candidates screened by Amplify report a positive experience.

“For years, the only way staffing and recruitment agencies could grow revenue was by growing their teams,” said Art Papas, founder and CEO of Bullhorn. “Amplify decouples the link between revenue growth and headcount. Amplify handles time-consuming tasks, allowing sellers and recruiters to focus on winning deals, building relationships, and making placements. In my 25 years at Bullhorn, this is our most transformative development yet.” 

Grow your business without growing headcount

Traditionally, growing revenue in the recruitment industry has meant hiring more people and waiting for them to ramp up. For too long, growth has been constrained by time, talent, and team capacity. Amplify changes that. With Amplify, junior recruiters can perform like seasoned pros, and top performers can operate at an entirely new level — delegating hundreds of tasks to Amplify around the clock.

Powered by AI, Amplify instantly and continuously brings the capabilities of your best recruiters to every client and candidate — extending reach, accelerating speed, and improving quality at every stage of the recruitment process – without increasing headcount or hours worked. Amplify doesn’t replace recruiters. It empowers them, amplifying their impact and enabling agencies to grow without limits. It is a smarter way to scale, driving more placements and more profit, without increasing costs.

AI skills that span the recruitment lifecycle

Amplify’s AI skills use generative AI and autonomous agents to seamlessly blend human and digital labour. Amplify’s broad set of AI skills include:

• Sourcing: Automatically find and rank top candidates from job boards and internal databases.
• Matching: Surface the best candidates using insights from 60+ million historical placements.
• Screening: Asynchronously screen candidates via voice or chat, score responses, and fast-track top talent.
• Submitting: Create customised submission packets with cover letters, resumes, and summaries.
• Outreach: Send personalised messages, nurture campaigns, and follow-ups at scale.
• Enriching: Continuously update records with structured and unstructured data from notes and emails to improve match accuracy.
• Scheduling: Schedule interviews directly with candidates, synced to recruiter calendars.
• Analysing: Track performance and productivity to optimise team efficiency in real time.
• Researching: Prepare for meetings by summarising past interactions and identifying opportunities.
• Guiding: Speed up ramp times with AI-driven recommendations for the next best steps.
• Generating: Quickly create content and improve database quality using generative AI.

Amplify makes it easy to get started with AI

Amplify isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; it’s built to adapt to the unique needs of every recruitment organisation. Whether you’re a global enterprise or a growing agency, just starting your AI journey or well on your way, Amplify is designed to meet you where you are.

With Amplify, teams control when, where, and how AI is applied. Recruiters can deploy Amplify agents directly within their workflows to handle specific tasks, while managers can automate Amplify agent deployment across entire teams, accelerating execution and enhancing service quality throughout the recruitment lifecycle. Intuitive and flexible, Amplify will support every function: sales, recruiting, sourcing, operations, billing, and payroll. It is available on the Bullhorn Platform and Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud.

Bullhorn customers report strong results with Amplify

Amplify customers are transforming how they win jobs, source talent, and make placements. 

“Amplify has transformed how we recruit,” said Will Hayes, COO of IDR. “Junior recruiters finish tasks and ramp up 30% faster, and seasoned team members routinely double their daily output. By scaling AI, we redirect our energy toward building relationships and delivering value, while repetitive work runs on autopilot.”

Hayes continued, “As our confidence grew, we embedded Amplify into our broader automation strategy, and that’s when the ROI really accelerated. After refining our prompts and integrating Amplify agents into our automation strategy, we now let AI take the lead in search, match, and screening. The result: our submittal‑to‑hire ratio is down more than 40% year‑over‑year, and we screen over 15,000 more candidates on a monthly basis. AI isn’t just a productivity add‑on anymore—it’s woven into every step of our workflow and has become a true game‑changer for the business.”

Learn more about Amplify.

Media contact:

Kara Prone

Director, Global Content and Communications

Bullhorn

media@bullhorn.com

About Bullhorn

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help agencies scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on LinkedIn.

SYDNEY – 26 February 2025 – The recruitment industry is entering 2025 with renewed optimism and a deepening focus on digital transformation. According to Bullhorn’s GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report, top-performing agencies are almost three times as likely to have an AI strategy compared to those that lost revenue in 2024. These agencies are focused on digital transformation,  prioritising automation and AI across the entire recruitment process to amplify teams to do more, at every step. This technology has become a strategic differentiator that fuels faster placements, higher redeployment rates, and ultimately, business growth.

“2025 is the year that AI becomes mainstream for the recruitment industry,” said Jason Heilman, SVP of Product – Automation & AI at Bullhorn. “Our customers are already using AI to handle sourcing, matching, personalised messaging, screening and scheduling and seeing an impact across their entire recruitment workflow. Recruiters are spending more time building relationships with the best candidates and working more jobs. Candidate experience has improved, they are receiving feedback more quickly, hearing about more relevant jobs, and getting the opportunity to showcase their skills beyond their resume. Customers are attracting higher-quality talent and filling more jobs, faster. It’s a win-win-win.”

AI adoption takes massive leap forward in 2025 

A clear message emerged from the report: AI adoption is accelerating this year. Almost three-quarters (74%) of agencies have either purchased an AI solution, built their own, or are experimenting with generative AI. Additionally, 48% of agencies are already experimenting with AI to sort through candidate resumes and submissions to find the best ones to screen for individual jobs. Among the most influential innovations, search and match agents have emerged as a game-changer, with agencies identifying them as their top AI tool for improving productivity and maintaining an edge in the market. 

As AI adoption takes center stage, agencies should not overlook the importance of accurate and complete data. In fact, 37% of agencies still cite data limitations as a barrier to maximising the benefits of AI, highlighting the importance of data hygiene and system integration. There is still significant data clean-up and data governance to be done to reap the rewards of AI in recruitment.

AI and automation slash hiring times and improve the candidate experience 

Recruiters currently spend an average of 13.9 hours each week searching for the right candidates to fill roles, and one-third (33%) of agencies say recruiter productivity is the biggest obstacle to reducing expenses this year. But, according to the report, fully autonomous search and match could save recruiters nearly a third of this time (4.2 hours per week) on candidate searches alone, in addition to 4 hours each week for screening and 3.7 for administrative tasks.

According to the GRID 2024 Talent Trends Report released last fall, 80% of candidates want to be placed in less than 20 days, and Bullhorn’s GRID Industry Trends Report underscores the impact of automation and AI on placement timelines. By automating these searches and leveraging AI-driven screenings, agencies are drastically improving efficiency, accelerating time to placement, and becoming more likely to staff candidates within 20 days — as much as 5 times more likely for certain use cases. 

Overall, AI and automation tools are poised to give recruiters up to 17 hours back each week, enabling them to shift their focus from repetitive tasks to building stronger relationships and prioritising other revenue-driving activities. This could amplify an agency’s existing team, giving them a crucial advantage as competition in the recruitment space intensifies and client and candidate expectations for faster, better results continue to rise.

Recruitment agencies unlock profitability with technology use 

Overall, agencies that gained revenue in 2024 were 27% more likely to be experimenting with generative AI and 28% more likely to already be using AI for more personalised outreach. Additional factors that contributed to revenue gains in 2024 were engaging candidates, having the right job matches, and readily redeploying top talent — all areas that AI will make more efficient. In fact, agencies using AI for faster placement are 17% more likely to have seen revenue gains in 2024, and agencies using AI to achieve better job matches are 63% more likely to have seen revenue gains in 2024.

To learn more, read the complete GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report.

About the GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report

The 15th annual GRID 2025 Industry Trends Report, surveyed over 1,500 recruitment professionals across industries and around the globe to uncover the most effective strategies in today’s business environment.  The report combines both quantitative data from recruitment industry professionals along with qualitative insights from seven leading industry executives, offering a firsthand view of the trends revealed in the survey.           

About Bullhorn                                     

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help agencies scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,500+ people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on LinkedIn or X.

SYDNEY — 21 November 2024 — Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, today announced they have joined Salesforce’s Agentforce Partner Network, a global ecosystem of partners building new third-party agents and agent actions for Agentforce accessible through the Salesforce AppExchange. Bullhorn also launched Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud and Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud Marketplace. This collaboration between Bullhorn and Salesforce is designed to meet the complex and changing needs of the recruitment industry, today and in the future.

Bullhorn reimagines recruitment with AI infused everywhere

With Bullhorn Candidate Matching agent actions, customers will be able to automatically generate lists of qualified candidates to more quickly and accurately fill placements in fewer steps, removing manual work for recruiters. 

Agentforce is the agentic layer of the Salesforce platform for deploying autonomous AI agents across any business function. Agentforce includes a set of tools to create and customise agents as well as a suite of out-of-the-box agents. The Agentforce Partner Network is a global ecosystem of leading partners building new third-party AI agents and agent actions for Agentforce.

Bullhorn’s agent action for Agentforce can be integrated into customers’ existing Salesforce agents in Agent Builder or discovered on Salesforce AppExchange, the leading enterprise cloud marketplace.

“Bullhorn’s industry knowledge and tailored solutions have been instrumental in implementing the Salesforce platform within this sector,” said Brian Landsman, EVP Global Business Development and Partnerships at Salesforce. “We are excited to see Bullhorn bringing agents to Agentforce, extending its AI innovation to customers like Medicus Healthcare Solutions, The SR Group, and Eliassen Group.”

Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud delivers front-to-back solution to help enterprise businesses grow

Bullhorn also announced Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud, the latest suite of products on the Salesforce platform that includes ATS, automation, workforce management, middle office, and AI capabilities infused throughout. Informed by 25 years of recruitment expertise, Bullhorn designed Recruitment Cloud to meet the needs of a wide variety of customers, from firms looking for a lightweight ATS to plug into a customised tech stack to those seeking a full front-to-back solution. Recruitment Cloud builds that deep expertise into all the processes that run a recruitment business — from sales to invoicing — through technology that firms can easily customise to differentiate themselves from the competition.

In recent years, Bullhorn has seen a significant increase in adoption of the Salesforce platform. Bullhorn revenue on the Salesforce platform has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 30% since 2019. Bullhorn solutions on the Salesforce platform are currently used across 40 countries, including by four of the five largest global recruitment agencies and multi-billion-dollar public companies.

Thomas McLain, CIO at Medicus Healthcare Solutions, said, “Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud has been instrumental to Medicus’ growth. With Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud, we’ve transformed our business, improved our operational efficiency from front office to back, and positioned our customers for future success.”

The SR Group, a global recruitment company comprising specialist search consultancies including Brewer Morris, Carter Murray, Frazer Jones, Taylor Root, and Keller West, selected Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud to meet the complex needs of its customers. “In the last five years, The SR Group has achieved incredible growth, placing over 15,000 professionals across 55 markets,” said Darren Wentworth, Chief Operating Officer at The SR Group. “We intend to continue on this growth trajectory in the years to come, and feel confident with Bullhorn as our partner, we have the technology needed to meet our clients’ needs, deliver an unparalleled candidate experience, and support future innovation.”

Eliassen Group, a leading strategic consultancy, now leverages Bullhorn to seamlessly integrate its sales, recruiting, time, and invoicing operations while handling over 20,000 pay/bill transactions per week, with over one million expected in the next year. “Our strategic partnership with Bullhorn has enabled us to pioneer an end-to-end solution that combines the benefits of Bullhorn’s staffing solutions with the Salesforce platform,” said Rob Waddell, EVP and CIO at Eliassen Group. “We’re looking forward to using the power of Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud and its capabilities to continue to innovate and stay on the front lines of AI in the future.”

Marketplace gives firms the ability to build unique solutions to differentiate their brand

In addition to the Recruitment Cloud suite of products, Bullhorn is launching Recruitment Cloud Marketplace, a curated ecosystem of technology partners that provide enterprise-level staffing firms the tools they need to build unique, integrated solutions. The Recruitment Cloud Marketplace includes recruitment-specific vetting and certification of 20 partners currently, and an investment in the infrastructure, documentation, validation, and support staffing firms need to modernise their tech stacks.

“We’ve spent the last 25 years closely studying our customers’ businesses, from the way they win and service their clients to the way they cut paychecks and deliver invoices,” said Art Papas, founder and CEO of Bullhorn. “We are passionate about creating software that helps all of these processes run more smoothly as our customers grow. AI will, without a doubt, have a profound effect on all of these processes. With today’s announcements, we’re taking a big step forward together with our customers toward a very bright future.”

To learn more, visit the Bullhorn website. 

Salesforce, Salesforce Agentforce Partner Network, Agentforce, and others are among the trademarks of Salesforce, inc.

About Bullhorn

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,600+ people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on LinkedIn or X.

SYDNEY – 25 September 2024 – More than 60% of candidates would be comfortable with AI handling the entire recruitment process – from job matching to onboarding and even the interview process. That’s according to the Global Recruitment Insights and Data 2024 Talent Trends Report from Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry. 

With a challenging economy and an increasing demand for skilled workers in industries like healthcare, recruitment agencies must consider candidate needs to maintain the flexibility and scalability of a contingent workforce. Four in five (80%) candidates expect to be placed in less than 20 days, and 65% of candidates want communication from a recruiter once a week or more, according to the GRID findings.

Among candidates who were dissatisfied with the recruitment process, speed and job fit were among the most common pain points. The report revealed that 56% felt their recruiter didn’t understand what they were looking for in a job, and 44% felt recruiters were too slow to respond. The impact of excellent sourcing goes beyond fighting these pain points – with more than half (53%) of candidates choosing their current recruitment agency based on a positive past experience, meaning the value of speed and fit can reap bottom-line rewards.

AI: The secret weapon for candidate loyalty in staffing and recruitment

Artificial intelligence (AI) provides recruitment agencies with a seamless solution for speed and accuracy within the recruitment process. The report suggests that AI is the key tool to deliver that value, and candidates are fully on board with AI in the hiring process – 81% of candidates say they are comfortable with AI in recruiting if it speeds up the process, and 79% are comfortable with AI if personalisation is not compromised.

“AI presents an opportunity to win for candidates, recruitment agencies, and clients alike,” said Jason Heilman, SVP Product Automation & AI. “Candidates look to AI to speed up the job search process, create more contact, and make sure their value as a prospective worker is properly represented. At the same time, recruitment agencies want to hire better talent faster for their clients, and their clients want the best people on their teams. AI fuels the hiring process of the future, unlocking the ability for all participants in the process to reap the benefits of a faster, more accurate, and improved experience.”

To learn more about candidate expectations, read the full report here.

About the GRID Talent Trends Report

The annual GRID Talent Trends Report is based on a multiple-choice, online survey of more than 2,400 respondents who worked with a recruitment agency in the last five years. Respondents work across a variety of industries and around the globe, including North America, the UK and Ireland, Benelux, DACH, and APAC. The survey was conducted in June 2024.

About Bullhorn
For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,600 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on LinkedIn or X.

Media contact

Kara Prone

Director, Global Content and Communications

Bullhorn

media@bullhorn.com

SYDNEY — 15 March 2024 — Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, today announced the launch of its new AI solution, Bullhorn Copilot. Bullhorn Copilot will span the entire Bullhorn platform, beginning with Copilot Starter, a set of generative AI capabilities embedded directly in recruiters’ ATS/CRM. Copilot Starter debuted at the Bullhorn Engage event in Sydney yesterday ahead of an April product release. 

Like many others, the recruitment industry quickly adopted generative AI in 2023, with 63% of recruitment agencies in the APAC region reporting that they have experimented with AI, according to a recent Bullhorn survey of recruitment professionals worldwide. While the adoption of AI is still in its earliest stages, agencies worldwide that experimented with AI in 2023 were already 31% more likely to see revenue gains than agencies that have not begun experimenting with AI. 

Bullhorn’s unparalleled access to data on recruitment outcomes fuels AI investment

Bullhorn Copilot will span the entire Bullhorn platform, with AI-driven capabilities embedded directly into recruiters’ workflows. Bullhorn’s approach will apply AI technology to three categories designed specifically to serve the needs of recruitment agencies: generative AI, source and match AI, and directive AI. 

• Generative AI will help recruiters write content and messages more efficiently and effectively.
• Source and match AI will help recruiters and sales teams find the best candidates and jobs, allowing them not only to identify candidates that match search terms the recruiter enters, as they do today, but also to predict which candidates are most likely to be placed successfully.
• Directive AI will help recruitment professionals identify the most appropriate next step in their work, informed by past successful outcomes.

Copilot allows recruitment professionals to harness the benefits of AI right in the workflows they’re already using every day. At the same time, they are able to benefit from the wealth of centralized data and industry expertise within Bullhorn: using prompts informed by Bullhorn’s understanding of recruiting, leveraging algorithms that learn from the successes of the most productive recruiters, and being able to apply these insights across all aspects of the business. With 4.4 million placements made in the Bullhorn ATS alone in 2023, machine learning capabilities deployed within the Bullhorn platform are trained on an unparalleled volume of real job placement outcomes. 

Generative AI capabilities are the first to launch, with additional source-and-match and directive AI capabilities to follow later in 2024 and 2025. 

Copilot Starter offers generative AI purpose-built for recruiting

Copilot Starter, the first set of these new capabilities, puts generative AI functionality directly into the ATS to allow recruiters to draft candidate communications faster and more thoroughly. Using data they have already entered into the system, recruiters can craft more accurate and relevant communications, instead of building their own AI prompts in a second application. Copilot Starter uses generative AI to help recruiters with the following tasks:

• Creating pre-screening questions
• Drafting rejection messages
• Pitching a candidate for a job
• Updating a candidate’s resume
• Summarising a candidate’s profile
• Creating a client pitch
• Improving a message to a candidate

Copilot supports integrations to multiple AI providers, allowing recruitment agencies to evaluate and choose the LLM provider that best suits their business needs. Bullhorn Copilot will unlock new levels of quality and productivity, allowing junior recruiters to operate at the level of seasoned professionals and enabling experienced recruiters to work faster with greater accuracy. 

Bullhorn has partnered closely with customers on early adoption of this functionality to understand where AI can add the most value for their agencies. IT and healthcare recruitment agency IDR has been using Copilot Starter for four months. “The job duties that I want employees to be focused on are more of a priority now, because they can hand off some administrative tasks to Copilot. With Copilot, they have their own assistant sitting at their desk with them every day,” said Will Hayes, Chief Operating Officer at IDR. “I’m starting to see improvements in ramp up time with staff and in the amount of training in some administrative areas that we don’t have to invest as many resources into.”

Bullhorn has also taken into account recruitment agencies’ concerns with adopting AI in developing Copilot. “With Copilot integrated into Bullhorn, and connecting our own LLM, we have the confidence that candidate data isn’t being used to train AI models,” said Hamish Annan, Senior Operations and Systems Consultant and Marketing Manager at New Zealand agency ep.education.

“Bullhorn’s approach to incorporating AI into our platform is deeply informed by nearly 25 years of experience serving the recruitment industry. We have the ability to build AI directly into recruiting workflows with the appropriate context to achieve the highest impact for both recruiters and talent,” said Matt Fischer, President and Chief Operating Officer at Bullhorn. “The extensive scope of recruitment data in our platform allows us to train AI to meet the specific needs of recruitment agencies, and we’re keeping compliance and privacy top of mind in the process.”

To learn more about Copilot Starter and Bullhorn’s vision for staffing and recruitment AI, visit the Bullhorn website.

About Bullhorn
For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

Media contact:
Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

SYDNEY — 1 March 2024 —  Although 2023 was a challenging economic climate for the recruitment industry, agencies that adopted AI and automation technologies and improved productivity were more likely to see revenue gains, according to Bullhorn’s Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) 2024 Industry Trends Report.

In 2023, the number of recruitment agencies reporting revenue growth declined for the first time in three years. Despite market headwinds, 54% of survey respondents still saw revenue increase. These high-performing recruitment agencies had something in common: they were further in their digital transformation journeys and shared a focus on increasing productivity and efficiency. 

High performers are experimenting with AI

In the APAC region, 63% of agencies began experimenting with AI in 2023. High-performing agencies have higher adoption rates of AI tools. They are 4.5 times as likely to be using AI to help with interviews and more than three times as likely to be using it for candidate onboarding. 

High performers used more advanced automations

Agencies that heavily leverage automation were 50% more likely to have seen revenue growth in 2023. These high-performing agencies used automation for tasks such as job matching and time capture,  creating a smoother experience for all. Respondents that reported “excellent” success at winning new business were five times more likely to have automated candidate screening, and agencies that saw revenue growth were 25% more likely to have automated tools to help nurture client relationships.

High performers drove more top-of-funnel activity

Agencies that saw the highest revenue gains used technology to move candidates through the recruitment process faster and ultimately make more placements. They did so in part by getting creative with candidate incentives and investing in the talent experience to entice more high-quality candidates. The highest-performing agencies placed candidates in less than 20 days.  

Getting ahead of the competition remains a priority in 2024

The top challenge for 2024 reported by survey respondents is uncertainty over the economy and future growth (cited by 58% of respondents), although 68% of agencies expect the economy to improve in 2024 and 61% expect their revenue to increase this year. Aligned with this outlook, the top priority of recruitment agencies this year is winning new business (cited by 40% of respondents), followed by digital transformation (38%) and improving the candidate experience (28%). Another challenge that gained increased importance this year was competition from online freelance/gig platforms, with 33% of respondents citing this as a top challenge, compared with just 14% in 2022.

“Last year, the industry witnessed a shift in the market dynamics for the first time in a number of years, as the spotlight shifted from sourcing candidates to a focus on business development to counteract a slowdown in the flow of job orders,” said Aaron McIntosh, Regional Vice President, APAC at Bullhorn. “Recruitment agencies that make the most of technologies such as AI and automation are, and will be, in a better position to lower margins, increase productivity, and differentiate their businesses from the competition. Forward-thinking agencies are looking at technology to help candidates find the best-fitting roles, help clients get workers on the job faster, and win more clients.”

Read the full report here.

About the GRID Industry Trends Report

The 14th annual GRID Industry Trends Report is based on a multiple-choice, online survey of more than 1,400 staffing and recruitment professionals working across a variety of industries and around the globe, including North America, the UK and Ireland, Benelux, DACH, and APAC. The survey was conducted in late 2023. 

About Bullhorn

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

Media contact
Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

BOSTON — 5 January 2024 — Bullhorn®, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, today announced its acquisition of Mployee,  a provider of Salesforce-based solutions for recruitment agencies, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. Mployee’s technology will accelerate Bullhorn’s vision to deliver a full, end-to-end, enterprise solution for Bullhorn customers using the Salesforce platform.

Mployee expands Bullhorn’s Salesforce-based enterprise offerings

Uncertainty over the economy, pricing pressure, and fewer job orders have all forced the recruitment industry to streamline internal operations as much as possible this year. Centralizing all recruitment activity on a single platform helps agencies gain those efficiencies. As a result, Bullhorn has seen a significant increase in adoption of the Salesforce platform, especially in Europe. It is now the largest independent software vendor (ISV) for Salesforce serving the recruitment industry. Bullhorn revenue on the Salesforce platform has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 30% since 2019. 

Bullhorn products on the Salesforce platform are currently used across 40 countries, including by four of the five largest global recruitment agencies. By combining Mployee’s middle-office capabilities with Bullhorn’s front-office, Bullhorn can offer a true enterprise-grade, end-to-end solution built on the Salesforce platform. This solution will help solve a myriad of front- and middle-office challenges inhibiting agencies’ growth and differentiation.

Together, Bullhorn and Mployee will help global recruitment agencies excel

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in customers using Bullhorn for Salesforce globally in recent years, and this acquisition will help us better support those agencies throughout the world in delivering more efficient middle-office operations,” said Matt Fischer, President and Chief Operating Officer at Bullhorn. “We’re excited at the potential of combining Mployee’s offerings with Bullhorn for Salesforce to deliver a full, end-to-end solution.”

“We’re very excited to join Bullhorn to further our efforts to drive the digital revolution of the staffing industry,” said Mployee CEO Karen Weebers. “Bullhorn has the resources to invest in Mployee’s product roadmap and bring our solutions to even more recruitment agencies.” 

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs nearly 1,500 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

About Mployee

Mployee is a leading front and mid office solution for the staffing and recruitment sector. The company has established a strong market position and is recognized as a rapidly growing technology company in the Netherlands by Deloitte Fast 50 and Main Software 50. Mployee has proven itself as an innovative player in the industry, with a commitment to optimizing workforce management.

For more information about Mployee and the solutions we offer, visit www.mployee.com.

Media contact

Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

9 Nov. 2023 — SYDNEY — Contingent workers expect a smooth experience at every stage of the recruitment lifecycle, according to new data from Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Out of more than 1,000 contingent workers surveyed globally, 68% of contingent workers would work with their recruitment agency again, an increase from 57% of contingent workers surveyed in 2022. But there’s still opportunity to improve: meeting talent expectations at each stage of the hiring process stands to increase that loyalty significantly. 

Overall, contingent workers appear more satisfied with their experience working with recruitment agencies. In 2023, 57% of contingent workers are considering leaving temporary work for full-time employment if it is available, down from 64% in 2022. Still, with an increase in employers’ reliance on contingent labour and a persistent talent shortage, it’s more important than ever for recruitment agencies to exceed candidates’ expectations and increase the likelihood that they will want to work with an agency again. The GRID 2023 Talent Trends Report identified key areas in which agencies can do that by delivering a smooth recruitment process from start to finish.

Candidates’ experience throughout recruitment process impacts loyalty

Candidates were clear that at every stage of the recruitment process, a smooth experience would increase their likelihood of working with an agency by about 50%. At each of the stages below, a positive experience showed a corresponding increase in the likelihood that candidates would work with an agency again:

• Job search: 27% increase
• Interview process: 44% increase
• Filling out forms: 57% increase
• Job fit: 48% increase
• Logging and submitting time: 35% increase

Candidates expect frequent communication before and during assignments

Responsiveness is key to retaining talent: candidates are 73% more likely to keep working with a recruitment agency if they found their recruiter to provide prompt communication. Whether during the recruitment process or while on assignment, 60% of candidates expect to hear from their recruiter at least once a week; if recruiters meet this expectation, then 84% of candidates would work with them again. When it comes to candidates’ preferred communication channel, email still reigns supreme, with 44% of all candidates listing it as their top choice — although it’s important to pay attention to local preferences, as approximately one-quarter of candidates preferred WhatsApp or other app notifications in Europe. Meanwhile, 30% of candidates stopped working with a recruitment agency if they didn’t receive enough communication from their recruiter.

Fast and accurate job placement matters

When asked why they chose to work with a recruitment agency, 31% of workers said it was because the agency had access to the jobs they wanted, making this the top reason. Delivering on this perception pays off: there was a 48% increase in a worker’s willingness to work with an agency again if the recruiter found jobs that were a good fit. Speed is also a priority when talent choose to work with a recruitment agency. Nearly three-quarters of candidates (72%) indicated they want to be placed in a job within four weeks of their first contact with an agency – and 22% actually hope to be placed within a week. Most recruitment agencies fall somewhere in between these ranges, taking about two weeks, according to Bullhorn data. It is worth noting that 62% of candidates stopped working with a recruitment agency for reasons related to speed: either the process was taking too long or they found another job before the agency was able to complete the process. 

“As recruitment agencies strive to retain business and improve their margins, it’s more important than ever to cultivate a loyal community of satisfied talent,” said Andre Mileti, Product Evangelist, Talent Experience at Bullhorn. “The agencies that succeed in this climate will be those that can place candidates in the right jobs quickly, while offering a convenient, consumer-grade experience. And the recruiters who will be able to do this best are those who have the right talent-facing technologies accompanying their efforts.” 

Read the complete report here.

About Bullhorn
Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs nearly 1,500 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

Media contact:
Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

SYDNEY, 1 March 2023 – While most staffing and recruitment agencies saw growth in 2022, certain practices were more likely to separate those who saw the highest gains in revenue from those who suffered revenue losses. Agencies with the highest revenue gains were twice as likely to have digitised their data as those with the greatest revenue losses and nearly twice as likely to use automation heavily, according to Bullhorn’s Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) 2023 Industry Trends Report. 

Most (84%) recruitment agencies in the APAC region have begun implementing a digital transformation strategy, ahead of the global average of 77%.

However, many are still in the early stages. Only 30% said they use self-service technologies such as chatbots to streamline operations and engage candidates, and only 16% heavily leverage automation throughout their business. 

More than half (59%) of APAC recruitment agencies reported an increase in revenue last year, while a higher number (65%) expect to improve again in 2023. Both numbers are slightly below the global average. 

Acquiring new candidates remains the top priority

Perhaps given the severe impact of talent shortages, APAC recruitment agencies again cite acquiring new candidates (39%) as this year’s top priority. The second biggest priority is winning new clients (34%), followed closely by digital transformation (33%).  

Despite feeling optimistic about their business growth prospects, APAC recruitment agencies continue to face client-related challenges. The most pressing is an increase in job requisitions that are too specialised or demanding (according to 23% of respondents), followed by a reduction in overall job requisitions (21%), and a lack of communication from clients (14%). 

Engaging existing talent leads to higher revenue gains

For APAC recruitment agencies, candidate acquisition remains a challenge: 59% cite the talent shortage as a top challenge in 2023, compared to the global average of 56%. However, agencies that followed certain best practices in engaging candidates were 30% or more likely to report revenue gains in 2022, according to the global survey results. These best practices include engaging with passive candidates in the agency’s database, soliciting referrals from candidates, and using candidates’ preferred methods of communication, among others.

The two practices most correlated with success worldwide were redeploying candidates and database utilisation. The firms that lined up the highest proportion of workers for new roles before the end of their assignments and those that most frequently filled a position with a candidate already in their database were twice as likely to report revenue gains last year and 50% more likely to expect gains in 2023. However, fewer than 10% of firms use automation to redeploy candidates. 

Aaron McIntosh, Managing Director, APAC, at Bullhorn, comments: “Recruitment agencies are cautiously navigating a historic talent shortage, evolving candidate expectations, and fierce competition. A clear commitment to accelerating digital transformation plans will go a long way in addressing both client- and candidate-related challenges, as well as future-proofing businesses to thrive in an environment of constant change.”

“The agencies that excel in 2023 will be those that provide an exceptional talent experience, double down on sales and marketing, and use their technology investments as a tool to differentiate themselves from the competition.”  

Bullhorn will share more key insights and examples from the report at today’s Engage Sydney event. 

Read the full report here.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,600 people globally. 

To learn more, visit bullhorn.com or follow @Bullhorn on Twitter.