Business development (BD) in recruitment
Business development in recruitment is the work of winning new clients and roles: finding companies that are hiring, reaching the people who decide, and turning a conversation into a signed brief on agreed terms. On most desks it competes for time with filling existing roles.
BD in an agency has a few recognisable forms. Spec approaches, where a consultant markets a strong candidate to companies that did not ask for them. Following hiring signals, such as a company advertising roles the agency could fill, a funding round or a new leader who will build a team. Account growth, which means asking existing clients about other teams and sites. And referrals from placed candidates who are now hiring managers themselves.
The hard part is not knowing what to do but doing it consistently. A consultant with a full pipeline stops doing BD because delivery is urgent, and three months later the pipeline is empty. The desks that bill steadily protect a fixed block of BD time every week and measure it, even when they are busy.
Quality of target matters more than volume. A company posting roles that nobody at the agency fills is not a lead. A company hiring for exactly the roles the desk places, where someone at the agency placed a candidate into that team two years ago, is. The best BD calls open with something specific: a candidate who fits, a role they have posted, a mutual contact.
Measurement keeps it honest. The useful numbers are not calls made but meetings booked, briefs taken and the fee value of roles won, broken down by where they came from: spec approach, hiring signal, referral or existing account. A desk that knows most of its new roles come from existing clients' other teams can spend its BD time there, instead of cold calling companies that have never used an agency.
Where it goes wrong: BD tracked in a spreadsheet nobody updates; pipeline forecasts built on the client's total salary spend rather than the fee the agency would actually earn; single-threaded deals that die when the one contact leaves; and spec CVs sent without terms, which win interest but no fee.
How Vayora handles it
You tell Vayora which companies matter and it watches their postings, scoring each new role against what your desk actually places, so a company that posts nothing you fill produces no noise. Deals run on a stage board where weighted value is the estimated agency fee multiplied by stage probability, and each deal records its engagement type, exclusivity, competing agencies, stakeholders across the buying side, and a next step with a date. A signed deal converts into roles from the deal record. Spec approaches check that the candidate is not being sent to their own employer, has not already been submitted there, and has not been marked do not contact.
PlatformThe longer answer: What is a spec CV, and does speculative outreach still work?