The current job market is widely considered to be uncertain, not only for recruitment agencies, but across the spectrum of industry.

There are a number of factors that contributed to this uncertainty with economic challenges - including the general election and a budget which increased taxation on businesses - creating hiring hesitancy in 2024, which directly impacted the recruitment industry.

Understandably, employers remain cautious about spending time and money on the wrong candidates, which is one of the reasons why AI is becoming more important for recruitment agencies to navigate a new era of candidate sourcing and placement.

Firefish’s recruitment insights found that 62% of leaders want AI to assist candidate sourcing, 61% want AI for database management and 54% want it to enhance reporting.

High-growth agencies see the value of AI in processes, with industry leaders seeing the benefits afforded by the technology, removing slow admin tasks from the recruiter workload, enhancing reporting and facilitating database management. Utilising AI in recruitment CRM systems will save agencies time, and time is money, as the saying goes.

However, if we look at both sides of the argument, although recruitment agencies will likely increasingly use AI adoption for administrative purposes in 2025 and beyond, recruiters do not want it to get in the way of human relationship building and networking.

In fact, 84% of recruitment leaders featured in our report stated they would not want AI adoption to interfere with the interview process at all.