James Osborne, Co-Founder of The Recruitment Network looks forward to 2026.
Peter Drucker once said, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence itself, but to act with yesterday’s logic.”
That line could have been written for the recruitment industry of 2026.
Because if 2024 was the year of waiting for some level of normality and calm to return (which it almost did!), and 2025 was the year of making our businesses fit for purpose, then 2026 will undoubtedly be the year we crack on and start accelerating our growth plans with the new / next versions of our businesses in place, future relevant and highly profitable.
The recruitment industry has entered yet another new stage in this endless cycle. We called it the Recruitment (R)evolution.
The “bounce-back” many were waiting for didn’t come in one, obvious single wave, but it is here pretty much and so too is the new world order when it comes to the deployment of talent.
What’s different now moving into 2026 is the mindset. Leaders no longer talk about “when the market recovers”, but rather “how do we perform brilliantly in this market?”
We are seeing is a steady and in many cases deliberate reshaping of the sector where we embrace smarter systems powered by AI, smaller but higher-performing teams, new product lines, better ways of working with our markets and a clear shift from transactional supply to transformational partnership.
That shift, from reactive business management to proactive business growth, is the defining feature of 2026.
We talk a lot about doing the basics brilliantly and consistently. That will still ring true as long as I am in this industry. The difference now, of course, is that there is a new set of “basics” to consider.
Fewer Recruiters, More Productivity
The recruitment agency model of tomorrow isn’t bigger, it’s smarter.
The Recruitment Network’s mission has always been to enable recruitment businesses to increase performance, be more productive and therefore more profitable. That has never been more significant than it is now.
Net contribution per head is at last rising again after years of profit margins being squeezed by the ever increasing cost of revenue acquisition (all those tools and additional support your recruiters have needed) not because of luck, but because of leverage.
Agencies have started to figure it all out and are comfortable with combining automation, AI and offshore capability to give their local consultants more space to do their best work – the work that actually creates business, not just busyness!
The 80/20 rule rules once again, but this time rather than 80% of a recruiter’s time being focused on recruitment administration, it is now just 20%, freeing them up to do more of the good stuff.
You could well argue that if a recruiter can do 4x more of that good stuff, then why not expect 4 x the net contribution per head in 2026? Do your KPIs, your commission thresholds, your expectations reflect that?
They should.
Remember, the real ROI of AI isn’t speed, it is space. The question for recruitment leaders in 2026 is how they get their recruiters (and themselves for that matter!) to best use that space.
The Human Edge in an AI World
BUT and it is a big “but”, for all the tech, AI and automation being thrown at us, the differentiator remains human. Trust, I am predicting, will be the buzzword of 2026.
Trust will be one of the currencies of success in modern recruitment.
We trust less and less what we see.
Reproduced content and fake noise being created at scale on social media, blurring the B2B relationships within the sales process.
000’s of unqualified jobseekers using AI to create the perfect CV, the perfect cover letter, the perfect video presentation of themselves distributed to 000’s of advertised jobs in seconds causing mayhem for hiring managers trying to find genuine talent.
Inboxes bursting with automated sequences created by bots.
We no longer know what is real and what is not. Who is real. Who we can trust.
That’s why technology levels the playing field, but it is those deep, human relationships that will ultimately win the game. I say that not to justify the future existence of recruiters, but because we are already seeing this trending across the TRN community and beyond.
Clients Want Certainty, Not CVs
I said this at a members’ event at the start of the year – customers desperately want to use your services, but maybe just not in the way you are currently delivering them.
2026 will continue the migration from the traditional fee per placement model to outcomes and subscription based partnerships. Clients, like us, are tired of peaks and troughs.
They want more predictability.
So do we!
Capability Projects™, embedded partnerships and talent communities are gaining traction blending permanent, contract and advisory services into recurring, outcome focused revenue models.
The smarter agencies are already doing it anyway – delivering project teams, talent audits, contracted AI agents and workforce strategy advice alongside traditional hiring.
They’ve stopped selling CVs and started selling outputs and certainty.
Consultancies Within the Agencies
The line between recruitment and consulting is blurring fast – at TRN we call it the “white space” and it is very much alive with opportunity.
SME agencies are quietly building consultancy arms, packaging their networks of independent specialists into project teams that deliver business transformation, change management and / or talent strategy work.
It’s a natural evolution of what we have always been doing.
Recruiters already have the networks, the relationships and the deep market insight. By formalising that into a structured consulting offer, agencies move higher up the value chain, from supplier to strategic advisor. Out of the clients’ meeting rooms and into their board rooms, where 30%+ margins still happily exist.
You can expect to see more recruitment businesses launching small consulting divisions in 2026, starting with transformation and talent advisory projects that deepen client relationships and open new revenue streams, in many cases supercharged by AI.
Building Resilience into the Business Model
If 2024 taught us about the cost of volatility, and 2025 taught us about the importance of productivity, then 2026 must be all about resilience.
Recurring revenue, diversified services, deep, deep market specialisation and ownership, embedded client partnerships and proper data-led decision-making are the hallmarks of a future fit and future relevant agency.
This is about designing organisations that are agile enough to pivot, yet robust enough to scale.
The global recruitment market will continue to grow from now through to 2030. The pace of that growth is anyone’s guess, but there will be growth.
APAC will most likely lead the expansion, the Middle East will continue to boom and the UK, despite its many headwinds, remains one of the most mature and innovative recruitment ecosystems in the world. The market is and will continue to be fine (to various degrees).
But the real growth story will come from within our own businesses. How we reimagine our business models, how we redefine what we sell, how we deliver it and how we better enable our people to be more productive and more profitable than they have ever been before.
We will be more relevant than ever before.
We will be fit for purpose. Smarter. Faster. Deliberately More Human.
