Artificial intelligence is accelerating certain steps of the recruitment process, which may force recruitment agencies to rethink their charging methods.

David Berwick ( David Berwick ), the owner of a recruitment agency in Stockport, UK, Adria Solutions, stated that as AI takes on more and more tasks related to completing hiring processes, clients may begin to question what value they are getting for the fees they pay. Recruitment agencies typically charge employers a certain percentage of the first-year salary of the successful candidate.

"If a recruitment agency simply collects resumes and forwards them to employers, then AI is making such services increasingly difficult to justify," Burke told CNBC, "Companies can already automate a large part of that work on their own."

AI How to speed up filtering

A 2026 survey conducted by the American recruitment software provider Bullhorn among nearly 300 recruitment professionals in the UK and Ireland found that 37% of respondents stated that AI increased the candidate screening speed by 26% to 50%. A 2025 report titled "Recruiting the Future" from the UK also discovered that talent recruitment professionals who are piloting or integrating generative AI can save an average of 18% of their working time per week.

“They have a large hierarchical structure, including analysts, researchers, consultants, and managing partners... I think at least 60%, 70% of the people will lose their jobs,” said Matt Collingwood of VIQU Group.

Large recruitment companies have already begun to put this automation into practice. In February, the Swiss human resources company Adecco stated that it has 6 AI recruitment agencies operating in the UK and France, and the tools used in the UK can save approximately 15% of the recruitment process time.

According to Niki Turner, Senior Vice President of the group in the UK and Ireland, Adecco - Harding, the UK is the group's first market to test these AI recruitment agencies. The group stated that AI has supported over 2.5 million candidate interactions, of which about half occurred outside of normal working hours.

However, Turner-Harding says that these agents are merely auxiliary to the recruitment process and do not make hiring decisions. The ultimate responsibility still lies with the human recruiters, and candidates can always request to communicate with real people.

"People enter the recruitment industry not because they enjoy administrative tasks, but because they enjoy interacting with people, solving problems, and building relationships," she told CNBC. "So, we will see that recruiters spend less time on procedures and more time actually on recruitment."

Will the intermediary fee be maintained?

The Managing Director of VIQU Group, a recruitment company based in Birmingham, UK, Matt Collingwood, stated to CNBC that he believes automation provides recruiters with more opportunities to build relationships, rather than simply making the same services cheaper. He mentioned that VIQU's turnover has increased by 47% in the past 18 months, and part of this is due to this approach.

"The companies most likely to succeed will be those that combine technology with strong relationships and genuine professional capabilities," he said. "If the value we provide continues to grow, I see no reason why our costs should not remain stable, or even increase."

However, Collingwood predicts that only one-third of today's recruitment agencies will be able to survive in the next five years. Some also expect large-scale layoffs to occur. Velocity Leadership, a London-based executive recruitment company, was founded by James Wright. James Wright stated that AI now allows him to complete work that used to require a team of five people.

He mentioned global large-scale executive search firms, which are sometimes referred to as SHREK companies – Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Russell Reynolds, Egon Zehnder, and Korn Ferry – and they dominate the recruitment at the executive and board levels. He said that these companies may face significant pressure to reduce their staff sizes.

“They have a large hierarchical structure, including analysts, researchers, consultants, and managing partners,” he said to CNBC, “I think at least 60%, 70% of the people will lose their jobs.”

Pricing Pressure

Although some recruiters expect to be able to maintain their fees, others believe that AI will ultimately drive down recruitment costs.

The founder and CEO of London's AI recruitment platform, Dex, stated that this industry long needed reform.

"No matter how you look at it, this way of conducting recruitment isn't considered efficient at all," he said to CNBC, "It's very costly and also very slow. One of the reasons why the fees are so high is that the process efficiency is too low."

Lambros believes that AI is causing both ends of the job market to become crowded: job seekers are sending thousands of automatically generated resumes, while employers find it difficult to screen through the applications.

"The solution is not to give each candidate a AI, give each client a AI, and then let these AI oppose each other – that would just be a huge waste of time," he said. "Technology must be used in a way that can support both parties at the same time."

Some also believe that AI will make human judgment more valuable, rather than less so. Stirling Q, a professional recruitment company in the UK, and Chris Stirling, its Managing Director, stated that the value of recruitment companies will increasingly be reflected in the assessment of candidates' abilities.

He said that the software can identify hundreds of people in the data within a few seconds who contain terms such as “QA” or “regulatory”, but “it is unable to tell a biotechnology founder whether a candidate has built a quality system from scratch or is merely maintaining an existing one”.

“AI is making the easier parts of recruitment faster,” he said, “and that’s exactly why the current costs must be earned through the harder parts.”