Why does ChatGPT recommend other recruitment agencies to employers?

The founder of a growing medical devices company needs a head of quality who knows device regulation inside out. Last time, a generalist agency sent her CVs from people who had never worked in a regulated environment. This time she asks ChatGPT: "which recruitment agencies specialise in quality and regulatory roles in medical devices in the UK". She gets four names. Your desk has placed more quality leaders in medtech than any of them. You are not on the list.

Hiring managers still call the consultant who filled the last role. What has changed is what happens when the hiring manager is new, the role is new to the business or the finance director wants three agencies to compare. The first names now often come from an AI assistant. Forrester found in January 2026 that 94% of business buyers use AI somewhere in their buying process, and that business buyers are four times as likely as consumers to use Microsoft Copilot, which is built into Microsoft 365 (Forrester, January 2026). Candidates do the same from the other side, asking which recruiters to trust.

Most agency websites are job boards with a paragraph of "about us" and a list of sectors ending in "and more", which gives an assistant nothing to separate one agency from the next. This guide is for the founder of a UK recruitment agency, executive search firm or RPO provider who wants to be named when employers in their niche ask for help.

#What do employers and candidates ask AI assistants?

They ask about the role, the market, the law and who can help, in very specific terms. Typical employer questions:

• "Which recruitment agencies specialise in finance roles in Leeds?"
• "Which recruitment agencies are best for fintech roles in London?"
• "Retained or contingent search for a head of sales: which is better?"
• "What is the going salary for a senior quantity surveyor in Bristol?"
• "What does the Employment Rights Act mean for our probation periods?"
• "Is it worth using a recruiter now that AI tools can screen CVs?"

Candidates ask "best recruiters for data engineering jobs in Manchester", "what salary should I ask for as a newly qualified solicitor outside London?" and "is this recruitment agency good to work with?"

Two patterns stand out. The employer questions nearly always name a function, a sector or a level, and often a place, and an assistant can only match those words to agencies whose websites use them about real work. And many questions are about pay, law and process rather than agencies. The assistant answers those from whoever has published the clearest information, and often names that source.

#How does ChatGPT decide which agencies to name?

It names agencies it can describe with confidence: a clear niche, evidence of success in it, named consultants with visible experience and independent sources that agree. The assistants that matter most are ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, then Microsoft Copilot and Gemini, then Perplexity and Claude, and all of them reward the same things.

• A niche in plain words. "Permanent and interim finance recruitment for businesses in Yorkshire" can be matched to a question. "Delivering talent solutions across multiple sectors" cannot.
• Evidence you know the market. Salary data, market commentary and placement stories for that niche.
• Named consultants. Profiles that say which market each person covers and for how long.
• Independent confirmation. Trade body listings, trade press, reviews and LinkedIn all pointing the same way.

Agencies that have grown by adding desks often list twelve sectors with the same two paragraphs under each. To an assistant, that reads as a generalist with no depth anywhere. Most good agencies combine two lines of specialism, such as finance roles in Yorkshire or engineering roles in defence, and that combination is exactly the phrase buyers type. The pattern holds in any regulated market. When we rebuilt ID-Pal's industry pages, "Each opens with the question a compliance lead types, names the regulator, and answers inside the first ninety words." An agency's niche page can do the same for a hiring manager.

#Can an agency pay to appear in the answer?

It can pay for a labelled advert, which is not the same as being recommended. ChatGPT has shown labelled ads to UK users on its Free and Go plans since 11 August 2026, and OpenAI says the ads do not change the answer itself; its Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education plans show no ads (OpenAI, August 2026). Being named in the answer is still earned.

#How do executive search and RPO firms get named?

Treat each as its own niche, because the buyers, the questions and the sources differ. A retained search firm is chosen by a chair, chief executive or investor for one senior hire. An RPO provider is chosen by an HR director or procurement team to run hiring for a contract period.

For retained search, publish partner profiles that say which boards and functions each partner covers, anonymised searches described by role and ownership type, and your process from brief to appointment. Show your membership of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants, whose member firm directory is public, and keep your entry in Executive Grapevine's database of executive recruiters current.

For RPO, the buyer wants proof you can run volume without losing quality: case studies stating the roles, programme size, contract length and the measures agreed, with figures the client has approved. APSCo OutSource describes itself as the trade association for recruitment process outsourcing, managed service providers and statement of work (APSCo OutSource), and membership there does for an RPO provider what REC or APSCo membership does for an agency.

#Retained or contingent: which should a client choose?

For a senior, confidential or scarce role, such as a head of sales, retained search usually suits better, because one firm is paid to map the market and approach people who are not looking. Contingent recruitment suits active markets where several agencies can present strong candidates quickly. Explain this on your own site and say which model you offer.

#Why do salary guides get an agency named?

Because pay is one of the questions employers and candidates ask most, and the assistants need a source to answer it. An agency that publishes clear, current salary data for its niche becomes that source. The guide needs to be specific to the roles you place, clear about its method, dated and written in prose as well as tables, because numbers locked in a PDF or an image are much harder for an assistant to read.

Example: the excerpt below shows the format with round, made-up figures. It is not salary data.

Financial controller, permanent, base salary. Based on our placements from July 2025 to June 2026. Published September 2026.

Commentary: "Manchester ranges widened as more private equity backed firms hired their first financial controller. Candidates with group consolidation experience were offered the top of the range in all three cities."

That is the whole pattern: one role, one contract type, a stated period, the number of placements behind each range, a publication date and two sentences of plain commentary. Our article on publishing your own research covers how to present data so it is trusted.

#What should agencies explain about the Employment Rights Act 2025?

Explain what changes for your clients' hiring and when, in dated plain English. The Act received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 (legislation.gov.uk), and its measures arrive over 2026 and 2027. This table follows the government's timeline, checked on 24 September 2026.

The government says future dates "remain subject to parliamentary processes and may change" (GOV.UK, August 2026), so put a "last checked" date on any page you write and review it when the timeline changes. In our experience three short pages work best: one for permanent hiring clients on probation and the new qualifying period, one for temporary and contract clients on guaranteed hours and umbrella companies, and one on who enforces what.

Enforcement has moved. The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 still set the rules on terms with hirers (legislation.gov.uk), but from 7 April 2026 the Fair Work Agency took over from the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (REC, March 2026). Update any page that still names the old bodies.

#How do you show a track record without breaching confidentiality?

Write short, anonymised placement stories: the kind of client ("a private equity backed engineering group with four UK sites"), the role and why it was hard, how you ran the search in two or three sentences, the outcome and a line from the client given with permission. For example, an agency placing around a hundred engineers a year could publish twenty such stories grouped by role and client type, which gives an assistant far more than a page of logos.

Candidates' experience feeds the same answers. Reviews on Google, Trustpilot and Glassdoor shape the summary a hiring manager sees, so a pattern of ghosted candidates costs you clients as well as candidates. Our guide on what ChatGPT tells candidates about working at your firm covers the employer side of this.

#Which outside sources matter most for an agency?

Independent sources that confirm what your website says, with the same name and description everywhere.

Set out your approach to the Conduct Regulations, the Agency Workers Regulations and IR35 plainly on the site. Agencies that have rebranded or merged desks often have old names live on directories and job boards, which leaves the assistant with two versions of the same firm.

#How long does it take, and how do you tell it is working?

Fixes to pages and listings can show within weeks in assistants that search the web live, such as ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI features. Answers drawn from a model's own memory change only when it is retrained, which takes months. For ID-Pal, an identity verification firm we work with: "UK buyer questions where AI names ID-Pal: none in May, two in August, four in September 2026." The ID-Pal case study explains how.

Track a fixed list of 20 to 50 questions your clients and candidates ask, each run several times a month in a clean session, and count a win only when it repeats. Our guide on finding out whether ChatGPT recommends your firm sets out the method. Then ask every new client how they found you and record it in your CRM.

#What to do this month

1. Choose the niche you lead with. Pick the one or two combinations of function, sector, level and region where you place most and best, and rewrite your homepage opening to say so.
2. Publish a short salary guide. Use last year's placements for that niche, with a method, a sample size and a date, as a web page.
3. Write one dated Employment Rights Act explainer. Cover the next twelve months for your clients, with a "last checked" date and a link to the government timeline.
4. Write five placement stories. Anonymised, specific and tied to the niche.
5. Fix your listings. Match your name and description across Companies House, REC or APSCo, AESC if relevant, Google Business Profile, job boards and LinkedIn, and replace any mention of the EAS or GLAA with the Fair Work Agency.

#Frequently asked questions

#What is the average recruitment agency fee for a permanent hire in the UK?

We do not quote a market figure here, because fees vary with the level of the role, the market, exclusivity and whether the search is retained or contingent. Permanent fees are most often a percentage of the candidate's first-year salary, with a rebate or replacement if the hire leaves early. A page that explains how you charge, what changes the fee and what your guarantee covers gives the assistant something accurate to quote.

#Which recruitment agencies are best for fintech roles in London?

An assistant answers this by looking for agencies whose pages, listings and consultants all say "fintech" and "London" about real placements. To be in that answer, publish a fintech page naming the roles you fill, placement stories from fintech clients, a London salary guide for those roles and consultant profiles that say they cover the market, and make your APSCo tags match.

#How do I check if a recruitment agency is REC or APSCo accredited?

Search the trade body's own directory rather than trusting a logo. REC runs a member directory, and its corporate members pass a compliance assessment every two years. APSCo's "Find an APSCo Member" can be filtered by sector, specialism and region. For executive search, AESC publishes its member firms. If an agency shows a logo but is not in the directory, ask why.

#Is it worth using a recruiter now that AI tools can screen CVs?

In our view, yes, for roles where the best people are not applying. Screening tools sort applications that have already arrived; a good recruiter finds people who have not applied, judges fit and persuades them to move. Agencies should answer this on their own site: what AI tools do in their process and what they do not trust them with.

#Will publishing salary data upset our clients?

Rarely, if you publish ranges based on enough placements that nobody can be identified. Most clients welcome a credible benchmark, because it helps them set pay before they brief you. Say where the data comes from, how many placements sit behind it and when it was last updated.

#Should our consultants post on LinkedIn, or should the agency?

Both, but consultants matter more. LinkedIn appears in about 11% of AI answers, articles make up 50 to 66% of LinkedIn citations, and many cited posts had only 15 to 25 reactions (Semrush, March 2026). A short monthly article from each consultant on their niche builds a record the agency's pages can link to.

The agencies that get named are the ones whose knowledge of a market is written down and confirmed by others. If you want help turning your consultants' market knowledge into salary guides, press comment and a presence employers can find, Reputation That Wins is built for that, and our page for recruitment firms shows how we work with agencies.

#Sources