Walk into any multinational recruitment agency, and you won’t find recruiters deep in research, carefully matching candidates to roles. Instead, you’ll see sales targets on whiteboards, phones ringing off the hook, and teams of recruiters chasing their next deal.

That’s because in these firms, recruitment isn’t about hiring—it’s about hitting sales quotas.

Recruiters at large agencies aren’t just measured on how well they fill roles. They’re judged on how many calls they make, how many meetings they book, and how many new job requisitions they bring in. Their primary job isn’t finding the best candidate—it’s bringing in more business**.**

The Sales-First Culture of Large Recruitment Agencies

Recruiters working in multinational firms face relentless pressure to generate revenue. Their performance is measured against rigid KPIs such as:

• Daily call targets – Recruiters must make a set number of outbound calls to potential clients every day, often well over 50.

• New business meetings – Agencies push recruiters to book in-person or virtual meetings with hiring managers, regardless of whether those businesses have active hiring needs.

• Job requisition volume – The more roles a recruiter brings in, the better—even if they don’t have the bandwidth to fill them all.

• Revenue quotas – Many recruiters are expected to bill hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, often with aggressive quarterly targets.

This means that the majority of a recruiter’s time isn’t spent recruiting—it’s spent on sales.

Instead of focusing on building deep talent networks, conducting market research, and truly understanding employer needs, recruiters at these firms are stuck in a cycle of cold calls, sales pitches, and high-pressure deal-making.

Why This Hurts Employers

From an employer’s perspective, this sales-driven approach creates several problems:

• You’re just another number – Recruiters are trained to win new business at scale, not develop long-term hiring strategies. Once your job is live, it’s just another req in their pipeline.

• Speed trumps quality – Because recruiters are under pressure to close deals fast, finding the absolute best candidate isn’t the priority—placing the fastest, easiest option is.

• No real commitment – If another company comes along with a more urgent role, recruiters will shift their focus. They have too many jobs to juggle and too many revenue targets to hit.

• Endless turnover – The high-pressure environment leads to massive recruiter churn, meaning the person you build a relationship with today might not even be there next month.

In the end, businesses aren’t paying for expert hiring support—they’re paying for a recruitment model designed to maximise revenue, not hiring success.

A Better Approach: Hiring Without the Sales Machine

Not all recruiters operate this way. A new wave of hiring solutions is emerging—ones that separate recruitment from aggressive sales targets and allow recruiters to actually focus on recruitment.

Rather than forcing recruiters to spend most of their time pitching, cold-calling, and chasing quotas, this approach:

• Removes commission-based pricing, so recruiters work for the employer, not for the deal.

• Shifts focus to hiring quality, not volume, meaning recruiters can actually invest time in finding the right candidates.

• Eliminates unnecessary sales efforts, so businesses aren’t constantly being upsold or pressured into signing contracts they don’t need.

This is what recruitment should be—an actual hiring partnership, not a high-pressure sales transaction.

The Future of Hiring Is Moving Beyond the Sales Floor

For too long, businesses have accepted recruitment agencies that prioritize sales over hiring, revenue over results, and deal-making over true recruitment expertise. But that model is starting to collapse.

Companies are moving away from aggressive sales-driven recruitment in favor of on-demand hiring support, upfront pricing, and recruiter relationships based on actual hiring needs—not just revenue targets.

Because when recruiters can focus on hiring, not hitting KPIs, everyone wins.