Not long ago, just 5% of cold calls connected. And by connected, I mean, rang at the other end.
Now, iOS and Android have built-in spam checkers and features you can turn on, which send unknown callers to voicemail.
This puts the number at 2% in 2025.
A lot of recruiters might not have noticed.
Their refusal or inability to cold call successfully has added fuel to a fire since the end of the pandemic. You can hear it in the eery silence from sales floors around the industry.
I normally steer clear of sweeping generalisations, but here’s one for you anyway… The vast majority of the recruitment sector is now operating on a job-led basis.
Of course there are outliers. But for the most part, those recruiters with the best BD ability are the ones billing the most.
And for the people who employ them… like you… the BDers are the ones you build the business around. They’re the spine of the company. The wheel greasers. Consistently top of your leader boards and never short of motivation or fire in the belly.
But the big question recruitment founders and managers are asking themselves today is… why are these recruiters so few and far between?
Why can’t every recruiter create and develop business? What happened to the 360 recruiters who were just as happy cold calling clients as they were candidates?
Where’s all the BD gone?
According to a report by JobAdder, 75% of recruitment companies surveyed were prioritising winning new clients in 2025. And 72% were focused on “strengthening existing relationships”.
Despite that, just 6% were “fully satisfied with their current BD approaches.”
That’s a staggering deficit. The effort’s going in, but it’s not yielding results.
Our own report, which analyses sales activities on the One Up platform confirms this gap.
We saw a clear disconnect between outbound calls and new business won, especially for smaller and mid-sized agencies.
Why is this?
Does the size of the brand behind the business represent better value in the client’s eyes? Are they perceived as more reliable? Simply better? Is it the employer that makes the difference or the individual recruiter?
There’s clearly fewer people willing to cold call in the modern recruitment office. And possibly less ability to convert those calls into business. But also, a hesitation of recipients to receive them.
Then, to make matters worse, a diminishing capability due to technology to facilitate them.
Which all bodes the question… where do you go from here?
Business development techniques
You might be expecting this article to turn into a “how to cold call effectively” piece. Dedicated to improving the ability of your recruiters.
If articles like that worked, you wouldn’t need this one. Hundreds of thousands have been written. You can find them online right now.
And on social media, you’ll find sales experts aplenty offering practical advice dedicated to learning sales scripts or using permission-based openers.
Almost every recruitment business in the industry has learning and development dedicated to BD. Teaching those who can’t and those who won’t.
And yet the problem remains.
Anecdotally, one of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve had at OneUp over the last few years is the quietening of sales floors.
There’s far less business to go round, and therefore, competition for it increases. Simple supply and demand.
Is the path to more business defined by becoming better at cold calling? Or could it be turning cold calls into warm calls or inbound business?
And if so, how does that happen?
The benefits of a good reputation
There are many ways for a recruiter to be well known for their ability and defrost cold calls to potential clients.
Referrals are a great method. A friend passing on a recruiter’s details will put them at the top of the tree.
According to this research by ThinkInCircles, an agency in Cambridge used content & email to increase referrals by 24%, scaling to £250k GP in year one, exclusively via inbound.
Many success stories in startups talk about the power of referrals. Getting clients to talk about you in glowing terms is a sure-fire way to win business. But they’re hardly a mechanism you can rely on.
The recruiter has to rely on the referral being given at the right moment, to the right person. And you could argue this method’s more likely to produce an inbound call than warm up a cold call.
Unless the referral’s posted online for all to see, of course. But you can count examples of that on one hand. There are recruiters with thriving businesses who rely solely on inbound business. In the vast majority of cases, it comes from their public personal brand.
For some, that’s completely centred around LinkedIn. Of course, there’s the added power to that punch in doing a damn good job once they’re given the chance. But there are hugely successful recruiters who never make outbound sales calls.
And this isn’t an argument for online personal brands only… there are those who’ve never posted on LinkedIn in their life and still have thriving personal brands, made entirely from cold calls and great recruiting.
But for those recruiters building their personal brand online, their audience is widened and reputation amplified.
According to this research, such recruiters boast 23% higher fee than competitors and a 347% increase in inbound leads.
That last stat’s the most crucial. Nearly 3.5 times the inbound leads. When business is hard to find, this might be the secret sauce to improving your recruiters’ fortunes.
Those recruiters who are present on LinkedIn aren’t doing it for the fun of being on the platform. They’re there because it pays off. And they’ve seen others build entire agencies around that premise.
Food for thought: how to help your recruiters’ brand
Are you giving them the confidence, patience and room to take a chance on content creation?
Do they have the materials to learn how to write well?
What have you got to lose in prioritising online content? You trust recruiters on the phone, why not trust them on social media?
Where’s their audience?
What kind of content would convert well?
Who else in their industry is producing enviable content? Can they take inspiration from them? Are there any gaps in their content they could fill?
Here’s a few examples of recruiters with fantastic personal brands. Adam Nichols, a Marketing recruiter who posts daily about his niche. Emma Storey, who puts the personal in personal brand. Or the people on this list. Or on this Youtube short from Sean Anderson - fittingly someone else with a great brand.
The key to finding a suitable example for your recruiters is spotting someone in their market who adds personality and character to their posts to help their phone calls land more effectively.
As this article points out, “outbound isn't dead. It's just intolerant of mediocrity now.”
Imagine how much better the reception on cold calls would be if your recruiters were recognised by the hiring manager as someone who knows their stuff. Someone who lives and breathes their industry for all to see.
Someone who writes stellar ads.
Someone who’s built a community and audience in the right sector.
Someone who can passionately pitch their business with eloquence and authority.
That’s the type of recruiter a client wants a phone call from. And it’s nowhere near as cold as their competitor who’s still relying on “would you hang up if I told you it’s a sales call?”
Because in today’s landscape, they probably will.
Final words
Creating inbound business, or warmer calls for your recruiters isn’t as simple as them posting on LinkedIn once, and waiting for success to drop in their laps.
Building a personal brand, online or offline, takes time. It needs consistent effort. In some cases it might take years to achieve. And more pertinently dedication everyday. Which means they may sacrifice other parts of their job for potential.
That needs both impetus from them, and encouragement from you. Only with both will they succeed.
But amplifying one's thoughts and personality to the wider world, outside of one-to-one interactions is the quicker method.
And this isn’t an excuse not to cold call either.
It’s an argument for doing both. A fantastic personal brand built online will improve the fortunes of cold calling clients, by warming up the reception.
Yes, there may come a point when no outbound sales calls are needed. But that might be a long time in the making. By producing both, you’re pouring fuel on a status made by doing a great job.
Reputations aren’t built overnight. The sooner your recruiters start, the sooner they’ll reap the benefits.
While we’re on the topic of metrics and stats, with OneUp you can analyse BD activity without an ounce of admin.
As the old adage says, “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Therefore the better you define those metrics which bring in business, the bigger the actions behind them will start to pay off.
Of course, you might find some activities worth measuring, where you currently aren’t. What are the recruiters with thriving online personal brands doing to win business? Is it time to start measuring those too?
