How technology helps recruiting agencies scale and grow
Ask most agency founders when they started thinking seriously about technology, and you’ll hear a familiar answer: later than they should have. The agencies that scaled fastest tell a different story. For them, technology wasn’t something they bolted on once the business was big enough. It was the infrastructure that made growth possible in the first place.
At a recent panel session, three founders who built, scaled, and successfully exited recruiting businesses shared what actually worked and what didn’t. Their experiences span investment banking recruitment, tech and data recruiting, and supply chain. The lessons apply across all of them.
Key takeaways
- Data is a strategic asset, not a reporting function. The agencies that scaled treated it that way from the start.
- Replicability matters more than headcount. You can’t scale a business built around individual superstars.
- Your tech stack is part of your value story. Investors and banks now ask about it directly.
- Adoption is where most agencies fail. A year evaluating software means nothing if your team doesn’t use it.
- You need someone who owns it. At a certain size, a dedicated tech lead isn’t a luxury.
Your data is your most defensible asset
One of the most common challenges recruiting agencies face when approaching investors is the “assets leave in the lift” problem. Every night, your billers go home. What’s left?
Tara, who grew Joslin Rowe from six people to 210 and a £6.5 million EBITDA before its acquisition by Randstad, heard that challenge early and made technology her answer to it.
“We were making decisions that were not based on anecdote or instinct. They were all data-driven. We had real visibility. We could make investment and resource allocation decisions driven by productivity measures, and we started to create much more of a sense of proprietariness around our database.”
— Tara, Founder, Joslin Rowe / Elite Advisory
The shift from gut-feel to data-led isn’t just good management practice. It’s a signal to investors that the business can run without you. Wayne Brophy, founder of Cast UK, took a similar approach, partnering with Lancaster University to bring MSc graduates in to model business performance, optimising metrics like CV-to-shortlist ratios and time-to-fill. The result was a transformation from a 100% contingency model to an almost 100% retained business.
James, co-founder of Venturi, described a turning point at around 30 heads when he realised one-to-ones and instinct weren’t enough. He brought in Bullhorn Analytics and the approach changed entirely.
“I’d come in on a Monday, spend all morning on the data, and instead of firefighting, I’d identify the one initiative that would move the needle that week. It was a transformation.”
— James, Co-Founder, Venturi
Data doesn’t just improve decisions. It gives leadership the confidence to act and gives teams the confidence to follow.
Build for replicability, not just productivity
Growth stalls when a business depends too heavily on its best people. That’s not a people problem. It’s a process problem, and technology is how you fix it.
Tara describes building a target operating model and a playbook that defined exactly how the business operated, then using technology to enforce compliance with it. The goal wasn’t to remove individual flair from recruiters. It was to ensure that the fundamentals were non-negotiable, so the business could replicate its model across new geographies and teams without starting from scratch each time.
“You can’t scale if you’re relying on singular individuals. You’re either going to run a number of franchises or a cohesive business. Tech gave us the replicability, the visibility, and the data-driven decisions that made scaling possible.”
— Tara, Founder, Joslin Rowe / Elite Advisory
Wayne learned the replicability lesson the hard way. When expanding Cast into the US, he set up a separate Bullhorn instance rather than extending the existing one. The logic made sense at the time: a new brand, a potential separate sale. The reality was that he lost all the accumulated configuration, integrations, and process refinements that made the UK business work.
“What I forgot about was the secret sauce already in your business. All the little bits you change and update. Starting from scratch and hoping it’s going to be good, that was just a mistake.”
— Wayne Brophy, Founder, Cast UK
The consistent tech stack across offices also has a cultural dimension. As James put it, it’s one of the few things that is categorically the same, no matter where in the world someone works for your business. It becomes a shared language and a cultural anchor.
Choose your tech stack like you mean it
Wayne runs two rules when it comes to technology decisions. For core systems, your ATS and CRM, always go with market leaders. Your people’s livelihoods depend on these systems running reliably. This is not the place to take a chance on a startup.
For peripheral tools, be an early adopter. Wayne was among the first customers of both a video interviewing platform and Bullhorn Automation, which he used to simplify internal processes, consolidate fragmented marketing systems, and support Cast’s move to a retained model.
“I wanted us to matter to them and them to matter to us. Make it easy to do business with, and find suppliers who’ll go on the journey with you.”
— Wayne Brophy, Founder, Cast UK
James adds a harder lesson: don’t cheap out. The cost of switching CRMs, Venturi moved four times before settling, far outweighs any licence savings.
“If you think you can get something that looks similar for half the price, that has never gone well for me. Spend on market leaders. Go with people who know what they’re doing and have translated that into technology.”
— James, Co-Founder, Venturi
One more thing both Wayne and Tara agreed on: buying technology is not the same as adopting it. Tara described the painful lesson of investing months evaluating a platform, negotiating terms, running trials, then going live and expecting everyone to perform on it without meaningful training.
“If you don’t work equally as hard on training, engagement, and adoption, it falls over.”
— Tara, Founder, Joslin Rowe / Elite Advisory
James put a number on it: spend at least five times as long implementing and driving adoption as you did evaluating.
Dedicate someone to own it
Wayne hired a software developer as his IT and operations lead when Cast was around 30 people. The reaction from peers in his recruiting network was sceptical. What would someone like that do all day?
Today, his view is unambiguous.
“If you’re a modern recruiting business of a reasonable size and you don’t have somebody who’s a key person in your business owning the technology, you’re getting left behind, and significantly so. It’s not a competitive advantage anymore. It’s a necessity.”
— Wayne Brophy, Founder, Cast UK
That person was central to the Cast MBO. When the management team presented to HSBC for funding, being able to demonstrate a sophisticated, future-proofed tech stack, with a dedicated owner committed to continuing that work, gave the bank confidence. It was a tangible answer to the question every investor and lender now asks: how are you thinking about AI, and is your infrastructure ready for it?
James adds a related point on change management. In the early days at Venturi, new tech was handed to the team with a “here it is, get on with it” approach. By year seven, rollouts started six months before go-live, with managers involved throughout. By the time the system launched, the team felt like it was their idea.
What investors and banks actually look at
If you’re building toward a sale, a PE raise, or an MBO, your tech stack will come up in due diligence. All three panellists were clear on this.
Wayne’s MBO with HSBC required the team to answer detailed questions about customer spread, revenue concentration risk, and AI readiness. The fact that Cast had a modern, well-integrated stack, with a dedicated person to run it, gave the bank confidence that the business was secure and forward-looking.
Tara found that data fluency was one of the most powerful signals she could send to investors. Knowing client penetration, deployment rates, and productivity metrics and being able to discuss them fluently demonstrated that the business was being run as an asset, not just a practice.
“Having that narrative in your business gives a real degree of confidence to investors, whether that’s private equity, trade, or otherwise. It instilled confidence that this is a well-run business.”
— Tara, Founder, Joslin Rowe / Elite Advisory
The message is consistent regardless of your exit timeline. Technology that drives data visibility, process compliance, and scalable growth doesn’t just help you run a better business today. It makes the business worth more tomorrow.
The founders on this panel built their businesses across different markets and different eras of technology. What they share is a mindset: technology is a strategic function, not a support one. The agencies that treated it that way grew faster, made better decisions, and attracted better outcomes.
AI is the next iteration of that same pattern. The agencies investing in it now, not waiting until it’s proven, not bolting it on as an afterthought, will have the same advantage their predecessors had when CRMs moved to the cloud and analytics became accessible. With 10,000+ customers and 25 years in the industry, Bullhorn has helped agencies at every stage of that journey.
Ready to see how AI can help your agency grow? Learn more about Bullhorn Amplify.
