How Reed made its consultants the main source of applications
The Swiss Army knife of recruitment.
WHY REED CHOSE PAIGER
Ten tools’ worth of workflow in one, at a price that made the decision easy.
Reed is one of the most recognised recruitment brands in the UK, with international divisions and franchise partners. The question was how to let thousands of recruiters build relationships, create demand and attract candidates without losing control of the brand, or of the security standards enterprise and government work demands.
The answer was one platform rather than a stack of point tools — and one that recruiters would actually use, because it speaks their language.
“You could buy ten different tools to do what it does, but you won’t find one that combines everything for as good a price.”
ROB BARKLAMB — DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING, REED
BEFORE
Manual admin, uncontrolled AI plugins, and job boards taking the credit.
Recruiters were spending their days on admin — reformatting CVs, chasing content, working across disconnected tools — while applications came through job boards that owned the brand and the traffic.
AI had arrived on desks the way it arrives everywhere: as browser plugins nobody had approved, with no governance behind them. For a business doing enterprise and government work, “move fast and break things” was never an option.
THE DECISION
Standardise on one platform that met the security bar.
Reed chose Paiger for the range — business development, candidate marketing and candidate attraction in one workflow — and because it met the security thresholds enterprise and government recruitment requires.
AI took the formatting, the writing and the admin. Recruiters kept the interviewing, the client conversations and the relationships.
WHAT REED SWITCHED ON
Three workflows, one standard, thousands of desks.
WORK THE DESK
Candidate Attraction
Each consultant’s roles go out from their own profile. In several international markets, most applications now arrive from recruiters’ posts rather than from job boards.
WORK THE DESK
Candidate Marketing
A CV becomes a polished visual candidate pitch instantly — a faster, more competitive business development workflow. Rob’s phrase for it: a BD weapon.
GROW THE DESK
Personal Brand & Content
Content drafted, approved and published without marketing chasing anyone. The marketing team reclaimed hours every day, and the brand stayed the brand.
WHAT CHANGED
What Reed reports — the pattern, not the percentage.
APPLICATIONS
From consultants, not boards
In several international markets Paiger overtook the traditional job boards as the main source of applications.
MARKETING TIME
Hours back, every day
Centralised, automated execution replaced chasing recruiters and distributing content by hand.
AI GOVERNANCE
One standard
Recruiter AI use standardised on one platform, with the controls enterprise and government work requires — no unapproved plugins.
THE TAKEAWAY
What this means for an agency like yours.
You are not Reed, and this page is not asking you to be. Two things in the story travel to a 20-head agency untouched.
First: when every consultant’s roles go out from their own profile, the applications start arriving from their networks instead of the job board’s. Reed watched it overtake the boards in several markets, and the mechanism is the same at any size.
Second: the AI your consultants already use in browser plugins is a governance problem waiting to happen. One platform, one standard, is the fix — and it costs less than the ten tools it replaces.
More case studies
Primis
Thirty consultants, several tools replaced with one — and business development features Ben Broughton rates above the rest of the market. Video.
Pie Recruitment
415% more job advert views and 231% more website users in two months, once the whole team was posting. Sarah Wixon, Operations Director.
Fortiva
Seven consultants running a US desk from the UK — Business Development signals to Contact Finder to outreach, straight into Bullhorn.