You don't need a sharp proposition or a clear niche or genuine skill - you need a desk and a database and a market doing the work for you.
Recruitment had its tide in 2022. Buoyant market, candidate-short, clients desperate to hire. Billings were up across the board, and it was genuinely hard to tell a brilliant agency from an average one - the numbers looked the same either way. The market was carrying everyone.
Since then, the tide has gone out. Rates have tightened, customers have consolidated their supplier lists, candidates have got harder to place, and AI has started doing work that used to justify a desk fee. And exactly as the phrase predicts, the water dropping has shown which agencies were built to last and which were only ever afloat because the sea was calm.
The agencies still growing now aren't the ones hoping for 2022 to come back. They're the ones who used the lower water to rebuild: sharper positioning, real specialism, diversified revenue, leadership that leads rather than just manages order flow. The agencies still waiting for the tide to return are finding the going harder than ever, because the tide isn't what's being asked of them anymore. Adaptation is.
That's exactly why we built RecConnect - not to wait for a rising market, but to help SME agency owners build something that stands up regardless of the depth of the water: sharper strategy, real community, and the confidence to lead when the market stops doing the work for you.
Prepare for all weather. Because the tide will turn again, as it always does. The agencies that struggle are the ones only ever rebuilt when the downturn forces it: patched up in rough water, left alone the moment things settle. The agencies that last are the ones still being strengthened when the market is flat calm and nobody's watching. That's not luck. That's just good business.
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