Artificial intelligence is accelerating many stages of the hiring process, prompting recruitment agencies to reconsider the basis of their fees. Traditionally, agencies bill employers a percentage of a new hire’s first-year salary. David Berwick, owner of Adria Solutions, told CNBC that when AI can locate and forward résumés, the value of that service becomes harder to defend, noting that businesses can already automate much of the work themselves.
A 2026 survey conducted by U.S. recruitment-software provider Bullhorn of nearly 300 recruitment professionals in the United Kingdom and Ireland found that 37 percent said AI had accelerated candidate screening by between 26 percent and 50 percent. The same trend appears in LinkedIn’s 2025 UK Future of Recruiting report, which recorded an average 18 percent reduction in weekly working time for talent-acquisition staff that experiment with or integrate generative AI.
Swiss staffing firm Adecco announced in February that it operates six AI recruitment agents across the United Kingdom and France. The company estimates that the tools save roughly 15 percent of the time normally spent on recruitment tasks. Across the broader Adecco Group, AI has supported more than 2.5 million candidate interactions, about half of which occur outside standard working hours. Senior Vice President for the U.K. and Ireland Niki Turner-Harding told CNBC that while AI assists the process, final hiring decisions remain the responsibility of human recruiters.
Matt Collingwood, managing director of the Birmingham-based VIQU Group, described automation as a means to free recruiters for relationship-building rather than merely lowering service costs. He noted that VIQU’s turnover has risen 47 percent over the past 18 months, a growth he attributes in part to the shift toward higher-value activities. Collingwood told CNBC that agencies that combine technology with strong relationships and genuine expertise can justify maintaining or even increasing their fees as the value they deliver expands.
Collingwood warned that only about one-third of today’s recruitment agencies may endure the next five years, a view echoed by other industry observers. James Wright, founder of London-based Velocity Leadership, said AI now enables him to perform work that previously required a five-person team. He cautioned that large global executive-search firms, sometimes referred to as the SHREK firms, could see 60-70 percent of their analyst and consulting staff displaced as AI takes over routine research and screening tasks.
Paddy Lambros, founder and CEO of AI-driven recruitment platform Dex, argued that the traditional model is inherently costly and slow, and that AI should be deployed to support both candidates and employers rather than pit one against the other. He told CNBC that the industry needs an overhaul to eliminate inefficiencies. Conversely, Chris Stirling, managing director of specialist firm Stirling Q&R, said AI accelerates the “easy” parts of recruiting, making the assessment of deeper candidate qualities the primary source of value and the justification for agency fees.