Blog Content
Recruiters want two things: more time and a stronger pipeline. But here’s the reality...
🔒 70% of jobs are never advertised.
📞 It can take up to 18 calls to reach a single prospect.
📬 And with email inboxes overflowing, your “Spec CV Send” could be lost before it’s even seen.
We speak to recruiters every day who are in what we call a "JAM"—just about managing. You're doing the work, sending the CVs, following up… but placements aren’t landing the way they should. Why?
Because sending a CV isn't enough anymore. You need that email to work—to stand out, get opened, and drive action. With lead lifecycles shrinking to 24 hours or less, being top of the inbox isn’t optional. It’s survival.
So what’s the fix?
🚀 11 Stats to Focus Your Spec CV Sends and Email Marketing
There’s no shortage of stats out there—but we’ve boiled it down to 11 stats (2 above and 9 below) to get you thinking (and transforming) your candidate marketing and boost placement success.
Why Your CV Sends Are Falling Flat
📩 Your clients receive 121 emails a day (and over 30 billion emails were sent last year).
👀 Only 20% of emails ever get opened.
🛑 And thanks to filters, 1 in 5 emails never even land in your client’s inbox.
How to Get Your Emails Opened (and Actioned)
🎯Be Relevant – 61% of clients open emails if your past contact was useful or timely. Build relationships, not just touchpoints.
📌Nail Your Subject Line – 47% of recipients open emails based on the subject line alone. Ask yourself: What’s in it for them?
💘Get Personal – Using the recipient’s name boosts action rates by 26%. Hi John beats Hello Sir/Madam every time.
📱Think Mobile First – 30% higher open rates happen on phones. Short, punchy, and scannable wins.
⌚Time is Everything – Most emails are opened within an hour. After 24 hours, your lead may be dead in the water.
Convert Emails into Real Opportunities
💪Recruiters using their CRM effectively are 34% more productive.
🏃♂️➡️Our Bullhorn Training training helps you use your database to its full potential—so your best leads don’t slip through the cracks.
🚦What These Stats Mean for You
If your emails aren’t converting into interviews or jobs, it’s not just a marketing issue—it’s a process problem. And the fix doesn’t need to be complex. Clean data, sharp messaging, and smarter timing can put you back in the driver’s seat.
So… What Do You Need to Do Now?
✅ Audit your CV send process.
✅ Review your CRM usage.
✅ Craft better subject lines.
✅ Re-engage old leads.
✅ Learn what works—and automate it.
This isn’t about sending more. It’s about sending smarter.
Need help getting your emails working for you, not against you? Drop us a line and we’ll show you how to turn your Bullhorn database into a placement machine.
CONTACT US
Bullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI RoI
We are Bullhorn experts set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses to increase speed and sales.
We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!
Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.
BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Wayne Barclay
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Bullhorn Power Series ~ Stop Missing Out on Sales: 5 Tips to Use Your ATS, Automation, and Analytics to Drive BD
For many of my clients, Recruitment is now officially in a BD-first market.For recruitment leaders, the challenge isn’t just finding new business; it’s finding the right business and winning it before the competition even wakes up. If your recruiters are still manually scouring the database or "spraying and praying" cold emails, and paying external systems like LinkedIn, Indeed, and job boards for leads, you are losing revenue to firms that have turned their Bullhorn stack into a high-precision sales machine.🔢The Maths of Modern Business DevelopmentRecent data from Bullhorn Grid shows a staggering divide between "traditional" recruitment firms and "automated" ones:The Speed Gap: High-growth firms are 3.5x more likely to use automation to beat competitors to the first CV send.The Admin Tax: The average recruiter loses 12+ hours a week to manual data entry. That’s two full days of lost selling time.The Gold Mine: 76% of placements come from people already in your database, yet most BD teams ignore their own "warm" data in favour of cold outreach.⁉️Are You Paying for a Recruitment Database or a Graveyard?Most ATS/CRM platforms are graveyard-like: full of data, but nothing is moving.But the true ROI from Bullhorn comes when you combine Bullhorn’s core power with Automation, AI, and Analytics. You empower your humans to turn that graveyard into a "Predictive Sales Engine."Instead of asking your team to "hit the phones harder," imagine a world where:Analytics tells you exactly which clients are worth your time (and which ones to fire).Automation nurtures prospects in the background while your recruiters are closing deals.The ATS surfaces the perfect candidate for a "spec call" before the client even posts the job.🚨Join Our Upcoming Webinar: The BD Power HourI see too many recruitment leaders struggling with "activity for the sake of activity." It’s time to move from "busy" to "profitable."I’m hosting a live webinar specifically for recruitment leaders who want to power up their Bullhorn tech stack for new business sales. I’ll be diving into the stats above and sharing at least 5 actionable tips across your Bullhorn ATS/CRM, Analytics, and Automation systems which you can implement immediately to:Identify high-probability prospects.Automate your processes to land more deals.Reduce your team's "admin tax" to free up hours of crucial sales time per week.Hold on tight - the webinar recording is in edit mode... check back tomorrow to watch it.Bullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI ROIWe are Bullhorn experts obsessed with how recruiters can increase sales, reduce costs, speed up sourcing, and improve productivity.We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Lisa Jones
Blog
Vodcast: Death to Spreadsheets: Is Your Agency’s Future Hiding in a Tab?
In our latest vodcast, which could be renamed as "Keeping Up with the Joneses," I sat down with Carl Jones, founder of Konquest, to tackle a truth that many recruitment leaders are still trying to avoid: the era of "wit and whiteboard pens" is officially over.If you’re still running your recruitment agency’s most critical processes on disparate spreadsheets, you aren’t just being "old school" - you might be making your business completely uncompetitive in an AI-driven market. Here are the 3 big questions we posed that every leader needs to answer1️⃣Is Your Data "Siloed" or Scalable?Carl highlighted a terrifying reality: as you scale, spreadsheets become "damaging".They are slow, corruptible, and unauditable.But the real FOMO trigger?If your data isn't in a scalable, database format today, you will be "completely screwed" when trying to leverage the AI agents of tomorrow. ❓Ask yourself: Are you building a data asset you can interrogate, or are you just "hoping" your team knows what’s going on? 2️⃣Are You Leading by "Facts" or "Feelings"?We’ve all been there. We've made decisions based on gut instinct or ego. But in a shifting market with new legislative changes and complex compensation needs, "facts not feelings" is the only way to retain your best staff. ❓The Question: Can you answer why you’re making a strategic change with "unequivocal data," or is it just subjective guesswork? 3️⃣What Are the Most Profitable Agencies Doing Differently?💡This was the "money shot" of our conversation.Carl revealed that Konquest has identified a dozen different "signals" that separate the fastest-growing agencies from the rest. These are signals from how they incentivise managers to the specific nature of their commission thresholds. Most recruitment leaders are getting commission wrong simply because the data hasn't been available.❓Are you overpaying or underpaying your recruiters? Or is your management setup simply years behind the industry standard? 🚨Stop Scrambling and Start SystematisingThe goal isn't just to have "shiny buttons" on a CRM/ATS.It’s about creating an "objective reality" for your business. As Carl put it, we are entering a period where leaders will soon be "scrambling" to get their data out of spreadsheets. Don't be the recruitment leader left behind while your competitors (which includes your own clients) are already using their data as a high-value weapon. Want to see how you benchmark against the rest of the industry? Carl and the team at Konquest have launched a live, free Recruiter Commission Census. It provides a personalised report on those 12 secret signals so you can finally see if your agency is at risk or ahead of the curve. Ready to spend a speedy 17 minutes thinking about your recruitment data and how to get it powering your recruitment business?Watch the full 17 minute vodcast now. Bullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI RoIWe are Bullhorn experts set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses to increase speed and sales.We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Wayne Barclay
Webinar
Bullhorn Power Series ~ Stop Missing Out on Sales: 5 Tips to Use Your ATS, Automation, and Analytics to Drive BD
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Wayne Barclay
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Automation RoI Webinar Series: Unlock Bullhorn Part 6 ~ Data Wealth
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Lisa Jones
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Recruiter Productivity Series: Optimise Bullhorn Part 6 ~ Easy Candidate Management
