How we build and check this agency directory

Why we built it

This is a hand-researched directory of the outside firms employers hire to attract people. It covers three categories: employer branding agencies, recruitment marketing agencies, and RPO providers, which run part or all of your hiring under contract. A firm that sells more than one of the three appears in each list.

We start with the UK, and add firms from other markets that serve UK and US buyers. Each firm gets one profile, not one per category. It carries the office locations we checked, the team size band, who owns the firm, up to three linked case studies, and a hand-written note. Every fact names its source and date.

The lists that rank for these searches today have a problem. Some are marketplaces where a placement is paid for. Some are published by a firm that puts itself at number one. Some print today's date on research nobody re-checked. Almost none says where an agency is, who owns it, or shows a single piece of its work.

We are not neutral either, so here is our position. We sell recruitment video ad software to the same buyers, and to many of the agencies listed here. So we disclose every relationship on the profile, we take no fee for a listing or an introduction, and we do not list ourselves. The directory earns us conversations, not fees.

Who this directory is for

This is written for the person inside an employer who has to hire an outside firm. Usually that is an employer brand lead, a talent acquisition lead, an HR director, or the procurement colleague who runs the shortlist with them.

It is not written for job seekers, and it is not a list of staffing agencies that will find you candidates. If you want people placed into your roles, this is the wrong list. If you want a firm to build your employer brand, run your campaigns, or run your hiring process, you are in the right place.

What we include

A firm has to pass all three of these rules to be listed. We check each one on the firm's own website before anything else happens.

Plenty of good companies fail these rules. Failing them is not a judgement on the company. It means the buyer who reads this page is not the buyer that company serves.

• It sells to employers, not mainly to staffing firms. A firm whose customers are recruitment agencies is selling to a different buyer.
• It has a named recruitment, employer brand or talent attraction practice on its own site. A general design or marketing shop with one careers project is not a specialist.
• It earns from services, not from ad inventory or a software licence alone. That is the line between an agency and a vendor.

What we leave out, and why

Four kinds of company come up often and stay out. The reason in each case is that they answer a different question than the one this directory answers.

• Staffing, recruitment and executive search agencies. They find and place people. That is a different purchase, and half the people searching for them are candidates rather than employers.
• Job boards and job advertising platforms. They sell inventory or a licence, not a service. Software belongs on our software pages, where it can be compared like for like.
• Recruitment software vendors, including programmatic job advertising tools. Same reason. Mixing platforms into an agency list is the most common way these lists mislead people.
• MSPs, which manage a contingent workforce supply chain for procurement. Real category, different buyer, different question.

How a profile is researched

Every profile is built by hand from named sources. Each fact records which source it came from and the date we read it. Where we could not establish something, the profile says so rather than guessing.

Third-party review scores are reported as secondhand. We name the site, the figure and the date we read it, as plain text. We do not link to it, and we never turn it into a rating in our page code.

• The agency's own website: services, offices, sectors, case studies and how it says it charges.
• LinkedIn: the headcount band, recorded with the date we read it, because that number moves.
• Companies House, for UK firms: legal name, company number, incorporation date, registered office, and the ownership behind the trading name.
• Published case studies on the agency's own domain, up to three per profile.
• Award shortlists and wins, with the year and the result.
• Review sites, reported as secondhand with the source named.

What we never do

These are promises, not preferences. Each one exists because we found the opposite on a page that ranks for these searches today.

• We do not score agencies. A score is an editorial rank dressed up as maths, and we are not neutral enough to publish one.
• We do not rank them. There is no best, no number one, and no top spot to win.
• We do not sell placement or position. There is no sponsored slot, no featured tier and no upgrade.
• We do not take a fee for an introduction. We do not sit in the middle of your contact with an agency at all.
• We do not print an auto-generated date. A review date on this site means a person re-checked the page on that day and wrote down what they looked at.
• We do not turn secondhand review scores into star ratings in our page code, for search engines or anyone else.
• We do not publish a percentage nobody computed. Where a figure appears, it is counted from the profiles on that page.

Order, filters and place pages

Every list is in alphabetical order, and we say so next to the filters. Nothing an agency does changes that order. Filters run in your browser, so the page does not reload and no filtered view becomes its own URL.

We build a place page only where there is a measured reason: real search demand, or a results page that clearly wants a list. Everywhere else, location is a filter. Clutch and GoodFirms use the same shape: a place is an indexable path, and every other filter is a query string pointing back to the category page.

• Default order: alphabetical, on every hub and every place page.
• Filters on all hubs: service line, location, size band, ownership.
• The RPO hub adds engagement model and delivery geography.
• A filter never becomes a URL, and a filtered view is never indexed.

Verification and claims

A profile has one of three states. Unclaimed means we researched it and nobody at the firm has been in touch. Claimed means someone at the firm has confirmed they own it. Verified means we have also checked the claim against a second source.

To claim, you use an email address on the agency's own domain. That domain has to match the website on the profile. There is nothing to pay, at any state.

A claim can correct any researched fact and fill the empty slots: logo, named contact, budget band, availability, extra case studies, a founder interview. Where a claimed value replaces a researched one, we keep the researched value as the record.

Two things a claim cannot change: whether the firm is listed, and where it appears in the list. Those stay editorial, for claimed and unclaimed profiles alike.

What we disclose

RecruitmentAds sells recruitment video ad software. Some of the firms in this directory buy it, resell it, or send us work. Every profile states which of four relationships applies, in plain words, on the page.

The relationship never affects whether a firm is listed or where it sits. We are not listed in our own directory, and we never will be.

• None: no commercial relationship of any kind.
• Partner: the firm delivers our software inside its own service.
• Customer: the firm pays us for software.
• Referral: we pay the firm, or it pays us, for an introduction elsewhere in our business.

How often we re-check

We re-check the directory every quarter. Niels Geominy owns that job and is named on it, so there is a person to hold to it rather than a process.

Every profile shows the date it was last checked and one sentence saying what we looked at. If that date is more than 90 days old, the profile says so at the top. We would rather tell you a page is stale than quietly print today's date on old research.

How to report an error

If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. That includes facts about your own firm, facts about a competitor, and anything you think should not be listed at all.

Use the correction link on the profile, or the claim form if you work at the agency. Say what is wrong and where we could have checked it. We re-check the source, correct the page, and update the review date and the line saying what we looked at.

The lists

• Employer branding agencies: Firms that work out what your company is like to work for, then build the words, design and content that carry it to candidates.
• Recruitment marketing agencies: Firms that run campaigns and buy media to fill named roles: creative, media planning, job board and social spend, landing pages and reporting.
• RPO providers: Recruitment process outsourcing: an outside team that runs part or all of your hiring under contract, often with the branding and campaigns bundled in.
• Claim your profile: free, and it never changes where a firm sits in a list.