Good morning and a very happy International Recruiters Day to you. This might sound nuts, but bear with me. In the 90’s, the 1990’s, recruiters used to be anonymous. Not just that no one knew who they were, but it was an actively held secret. Recruitment agencies did not want anyone to know our names, in fact we were barred from putting names on adverts. We were we were encouraged to keep that to ourselves. When advertising vacancies, the brand of the employer or the brand of the recruitment agency was paramount, and the name of the recruiter not so much. The reason for that wasn’t to keep it from candidates, and wasn’t to keep it from employers and potential clients. It was to keep it from rival recruitment agencies so we wouldn’t be headhunted; which of course happened all the time, and still happens now.
Jump forward to the mid 90’s when I had a recruitment agency in Glasgow called Maxwell Bruce. I had what I reckon was a good database at the time, in the form of sheets of paper on the wall with the names of every agency that I was in competition with, and all of the recruiters. I specialised in manufacturing and engineering. Every sheet of paper in the wall had the name of a rival recruitment agency, and on that sheet had the names of individual recruiters, that I would find out from employers and candidates and wherever else. And alongside those names of recruiters, I would have the names of whatever clients they were working with, because obviously I’d be looking to compete with that agency and either win that client from them or potentially hire that recruiter – who in-turn would come and bring their clients with them. This was common, but also very much frowned upon at the time as seen as being sneaky. Jump forward again to the year two thousand. I launched www.alljobsUK.com. This was essentially a service for jobseekers so they could find out where our vacancies were being advertised This was the earliest days of job boards, but we would have a comprehensive list of every single job board, including niche job boards and generalist job boards; we would have a list of every publication that advertised vacancies, niche publications, who would have their own job boards, and of course all recruitment agencies, with their websites. We had about seventeen thousand recruitment agencies listed in total, and every employer in the country that had more than 100 staff. Beyond that, we also had a database of individual recruiters – close to twenty thousand individual recruiters across the UK.
We would list the names of the agency they worked for, the sector that they worked in, and maybe even the clients that they recruited for. Additionally, job seekers using the website could give a star rating to those recruiters. Now at that time agency owners were not happy that I was publishing a list of their staff online for everyone to see, including their competitors. But jump forward a little bit further from that, and we now have LinkedIn. LinkedIn is now the biggest database of every recruiter in the world. In fact if you’re not on LinkedIn how can you even be a recruiter?
Aside: In fact most recruiters will have multiple LinkedIn profiles for various purposes but let’s not get into that.
So across the world we now know that there are hundreds of thousands of people who work in the recruitment sector. Everyday putting together those three magic elements; candidates, jobs, and employers. And every day knowing that, the smallest thing in their day can be the biggest thing in the day of many candidates.
So we know that the people we get to work with are vital. We get a kick out of making placements with great candidates, and we love what we do.
So on this day, 10th of April 2025, I want to wish you a very happy International Recruiters Day! Thank you.
