Why you don't need a big recruitment agency to fill roles at a big company

The size of a recruiter tells you very little about how well it'll fill your roles, and a large employer has more choice than the assumption that it needs a big recruitment agency to match would suggest. We'd rather make that case with figures than opinions. Over the past 17 months, working with one large financial services client, we've submitted 57 CVs, which led to 54 first-stage interviews, 42 second-stage interviews, and 22 offers. Nearly every CV we sent earned an interview, and more than a third of them ended in an offer. Those are the numbers of a supplier that knows exactly what its client wants.

Ratio shows whether your recruiter understands the brief

Hiring managers often judge a recruitment partner on speed and volume because those are the easiest to measure, but the number that shows whether a recruiter understands your business is how many of their CVs you want to interview. When 57 CVs turn into 54 first interviews, the person shortlisting has understood the role, the team, and the kind of person who'll say yes to it, and the hours you'd otherwise spend sifting have been spent on your behalf before anything reaches your inbox.

That kind of ratio comes from the attention a specialist recruitment agency can give a single account, and it has very little to do with headcount. The same consultant has worked this account from the first vacancy to the twenty-second offer, sat in on the feedback after every interview stage, and carried what was learned into the next search. By the tenth role we knew which interview questions tripped good candidates up, which teams moved quickly and which needed a nudge, and what a candidate needed to hear in the first phone call to take the opportunity seriously. That knowledge builds when the same person is doing the listening every time.

Pushback is part of the service

It hasn't been a simple 17 months, and we'd be wary of any supplier who told you their client relationships were. There's been pushback in both directions along the way: on salary bands, on how long a process was taking, on what a job advert should promise and what it shouldn't. What made the relationship work is that the client was willing to listen and make changes where they could, and we were willing to tell them things they'd have preferred to hear differently.

That honesty is easier to offer when a director is on the account and answerable for the outcome rather than the invoice. Over 17 months we've told this client that a role was priced below the market, that a process was losing strong candidates between second stage and offer, and that one advert was attracting people who'd never have accepted the job. Each of those conversations was uncomfortable for a week and paid for itself within a quarter, and the offer figures above are the result.

Knowing where your roles sit in the market

The figures at the top of this post came from work that happens before a single CV is sent. Over time we built a clear picture of where this client fits in the market, which candidates their roles appeal to and, just as usefully, which candidates they won't appeal to, and we shaped the advertising and the recruitment process around that. Knowing who to leave off a shortlist is as much a part of insurance recruitment as knowing who to put there.

That groundwork matters more than it did when candidates were plentiful, and roles were scarce. The Bank of England's agents reported in July that recruitment difficulties have eased to a little below normal for routine roles, while pockets of tightness persist in specialist skills (Bank of England, 2026). A third of employers still have hard-to-fill vacancies (CIPD, 2026), and insurance and finance vacancies fell to 30,000 in June, their lowest level in four years (Insurance Business, 2026). Fewer vacancies means experienced claims handlers, underwriters and advisers are prepared to move and can afford to be choosy, and a recruiter who understands exactly what your role offers them is the one who'll get them to the interview.

Four questions to ask any recruitment partner

Ask what their CV-to-interview ratio looks like with clients similar to you. Ask who will actually work your account day-to-day, and whether that person will still be there in a year. Ask for an example of something they've told a client that the client hadn't wanted to hear. And ask what happens when a role stalls, because every role stalls eventually, and the answer will tell you whether you're buying a process or a relationship.

Any recruiter can be measured against those four questions, whatever size, and the answers will tell you more than whether the name on the door belongs to a big recruitment agency or a small one. A specialist recruitment agency with a director on the account can give you strong answers to every one, and our 17 months with this client is one example of why big companies don't always need big suppliers.

If you'd like a confidential, no-pressure chat about a role you're struggling to fill, we're happy to talk it through. See how we work with employers at exchange-street.co.uk or call us on 0161 973 6900.