Clients who stopped sending you vacancies

Aug 29
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Introduction

A consultant billed well last year across a dozen clients. This year the figure is similar and it is coming from seven of them. Nobody left, nobody complained, and five clients simply stopped sending roles at some point without anybody noticing.

Recruitment clients rarely announce a decision to stop using an agency. They just do not call, and because there is always something urgent to work on, the absence of a brief from a particular company is the easiest thing in the business to overlook. By the time it registers, the relationship has been dormant for a year. Nothing in a normal working week prompts anybody to notice a call that did not come.

1. Clients who stopped sending you vacancies are lost quietly

Understand the failure mode.

There is no cancellation, no conversation and no signal. The relationship simply stops producing, and a busy desk experiences that as nothing at all rather than as a loss.

2. Build a list of who used to send you work

The first practical step.

Every client who gave you a role in the last three years, with the date of the last one. Most agencies have never produced this list, and it is usually longer and more surprising than anybody expects. Several names on it will be companies the consultant would have described as current clients.

3. Sort by how good the business was

Not everybody is worth pursuing.

Fee level, fill rate, how easy they were to work with and whether the roles suited your desk. Reactivating a client who paid poorly and rarely hired is not a good use of the effort.

4. Find out what actually happened

Before assuming anything.

They may have stopped hiring, built an internal team, joined a framework, or moved to another agency, and the contact may simply have left. Each of those requires a completely different response.

5. Follow the contact who left

Frequently the whole explanation.

Recruitment relationships are personal, and when your contact moves the roles usually move with them. Finding out where they went recovers a client relationship and often adds a new company at the same time.

6. Approach with something useful

Not with a request for work.

Market information, salary movement, a relevant candidate, or something specific to their situation. An approach consisting of asking whether they have any vacancies is easily ignored and does not justify a reply.

7. Ask directly what changed

The question most consultants avoid.

Asking plainly whether something went wrong is uncomfortable and it is the fastest route to an answer. Clients frequently name something small and fixable that nobody ever raised at the time.

8. Accept some are gone

Efficiency requires it.

A client with a single supplier arrangement or an internal team is not available for now. Recording that, and setting a date to check again, is better than repeated approaches that irritate somebody who has already explained the position.

9. Put a review in the calendar

The habit that prevents recurrence.

A quarterly look at clients who have not given you a role recently, before they become dormant. A call at three months is a straightforward conversation; the same call at eighteen months is a reintroduction.

Lapsed clients convert considerably better than new prospects, which is why this is worth doing before any cold outreach. They know how you work, you know their business, and the conversation starts from something rather than from nothing.

Conclusion

Notice the quiet losses, because clients stop calling without ever saying so.

Build a list of everybody who gave you work in the last three years with the date of the last brief, prioritise by the quality of the business rather than pursuing all of them, establish what actually changed before approaching, follow contacts who moved to other companies, lead with something useful rather than a request for vacancies, ask directly whether something went wrong, accept the ones genuinely unavailable and diarise a later check, and review lapsing clients quarterly.