Welcome to BD Lab
A place where we dig into the real challenges recruitment professionals face — not with theory, but with tested approaches, honest results, and frank conversation. No fluff. No generic advice.
71%
of recruiters say client acquisition is their biggest challenge in 2025
4.2×
more placements made by agencies running structured BD processes
58%
of recruitment leaders report response rates declining year-on-year
Recruitment Tests — Real questions from recruiters, answered by a panel of top billing recruiters. We take the most common challenges we hear from recruitment professionals, run experiments across real agencies, and share exactly what we found.
"The market's been brutal since 2024. How can we get better results from Cold Calling?"
This question came from a Director at a 12-person recruitment agency in Manchester. They'd seen their outbound cold call connect rate drop from 18% to under 6% in 18 months and were struggling to justify the time their BDs were spending on the phone.
"We're getting ghosted a lot after first calls. What's happening in the markets and why aren't clients commiting to hiring?"
A London-based staffing agency came to us with a specific frustration: their BDs were booking meetings but only 20% converted to a second call or proposal stage. They'd assumed it was a market issue — but they weren't sure.
"Our LinkedIn InMail response rates have dropped significantly. What's actually working with all the changes in AI?"
This is probably the most common question we get. LinkedIn has become saturated and hiring managers are tuning out generic outreach. A recruitment BD manager in Dublin flagged that their team was sending 400+ InMails a month and booking fewer meetings than a year ago at half the volume.
"A lot of agencies are dropping fees. We used to work at 20% but now compete at 12% in some cases."
Fee pressure is real. A Recruitment Agency Director in New York told us they'd dropped their standard rate from 20% to 15% across three consecutive deals 'just to keep the relationship' — and still felt like they were losing ground.
Got a recruitment challenge?
Submit your question and we'll run it through the Lab. If we can test it, we will. Either way, we'll get back to you with something useful.