The UK Recruitment AI Visibility Leaderboard
We analysed which UK recruitment firms appear when buyers ask AI tools for recommendations across tech, product, finance, executive search and specialist hiring.
Recruitment buyers are increasingly asking ChatGPT for shortlists, comparisons and "who should I speak to" recommendations. If your firm is not clearly represented in those answers, you may be missing high-intent demand before it ever reaches your website.
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How this works - no smoke and mirrors
We ask ChatGPT 140 buyer-intent questions across 14 recruitment specialities - 10 questions per speciality, each run 3 times to capture variance. If your firm gets mentioned in a response, you score. If you never come up, you score zero. We don't take money to rank firms higher. We don't hide the queries - examples are below. Ask us for the full set of 140.
Q1
What are the best recruitment agencies in London?
Q2
Best tech recruitment agencies in London
Q3
Best AI recruitment agencies UK
Q4
Best marketing recruitment agencies in London
Q5
Best SaaS sales recruiters London
Q6
Best fractional executive recruiters UK
Q7
Best finance recruitment agencies London
Q8
Best legal recruitment agencies London
Q9
Best life sciences recruitment agencies UK
Q10
Best fashion recruitment agencies London
Q11
Best construction recruitment agencies London
Q12
Best insurance recruitment agencies UK
Q13
Best charity recruitment agencies UK
Q14
Best hospitality recruitment agencies London
How firms are scored. Every ChatGPT response is parsed for every firm named. The AI visibility score is weighted heavily on whether and how prominently your firm appears: (1) how often you're named across our 420 responses, (2) whether you're named first vs. lower down (top-pick weight), (3) how relevant the speciality of the prompt is to your sector, and (4) how many different specialities you show up in. No manual ranking, no editorial weighting, no paid promotion. If you never appear in any response, you score zero and you're flagged Invisible.
Why some firms have more than 10 mentions
The "Mentions" column counts unique prompts a firm appeared in across all 14 specialities, not just one. Each speciality has 10 prompts, so the cap per speciality is 10. The cap across the whole benchmark is 140. Two real firms make the trade-off visible.
Deep vertical visibility
Aquilas - rank #1, score 76
8 of 10 prompts in one speciality. Concentrated, dominant in their niche.
Non-Profit & Public Sector8 / 10
All other specialities0
Total unique prompts8
Broad horizontal visibility
Exec Capital - rank #17, score 52
Named in 6 different specialities. Visible everywhere, dominant nowhere.
Fractional & Executive Search5 / 10
Finance, CFO & Accounting4 / 10
General London Recruitment2 / 10
Marketing, CMO & Growth2 / 10
Sales, GTM & SaaS1 / 10
Tech & Product1 / 10
Total unique prompts15
Neither pattern is "better". A deep vertical signal tells buyers in that niche you're the answer. A broad horizontal signal tells buyers across many sectors you're credible. The score reflects both: appearance frequency (heaviest weight) plus cross-category strength.
How stable are ChatGPT's answers? Why we run each prompt 3 times
ChatGPT does not return the same answer every time you ask the same question. We measured the variance across all 140 prompts. The numbers below are the actual averages from our benchmark.
7.6
Firms named per single run. A typical buyer-intent question gets ChatGPT to name about seven or eight recruitment firms.
9.8
Unique firms across all 3 runs. Combining the three answers reveals roughly ten distinct firms per question. Some are dropped between runs, others swapped in.
5.6
The "always named" stable core. Roughly five or six firms show up every single time. These are the ones a real buyer would consistently see.
In plain English: about 5 of every 8 firms named are rock solid, and the rest shift between runs. That's why a single run isn't enough. Three runs gives us a reliable "always named" signal for the stable core, partial credit for firms named in 1 or 2 runs out of 3, and a strong negative result for firms that never surface across 420 attempts. Five runs would tighten it further but you hit diminishing returns. Three is the sweet spot for cost versus signal.
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FAQ
What is AI visibility for recruitment firms? ▼
AI visibility is whether a recruitment firm appears when buyers ask AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI for recommendations, comparisons or shortlists. Buyers increasingly skip Google entirely and trust AI's first answer.
Is AI visibility the same as SEO? ▼
No. Traditional SEO focuses on ranking in Google's blue links. AI visibility depends on whether AI systems can retrieve, understand and cite your firm when generating answers. The two overlap but require different content structure, different proof points and different distribution.
Which recruitment firms appear most often in ChatGPT? ▼
The top of this leaderboard is dominated by focused specialists - firms like Aquilas (non-profit), Flotech Recruit (tech), HFG (insurance & actuarial), Lutine Bell (legal & governance) and FD Capital (fractional executive) - not the largest household-name agencies. Big generalists (Hays, Michael Page, Odgers Berndtson) get mentioned in general "best recruitment agencies in London" answers but score lower overall because they rarely come up first when buyers ask sector-specific questions like "best SaaS sales recruiter" or "best insurance recruiter". Niche clarity beats brand recognition in AI search.
How do I improve my recruitment firm's ranking in AI search? ▼
Build clear, AI-readable sector pages. Publish structured salary guides and hiring reports. Add FAQ schema to your site. Create comparison and "best of" content. Post consistent niche thought leadership on LinkedIn. Rafiki helps recruitment firms do all of this end to end.
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), in plain English? ▼
SEO is about getting your website to rank in Google's blue links. GEO is about getting your firm to be the answer when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI "find me a recruitment firm for X". The mechanics are different: AI tools don't rank links, they generate a written recommendation. To be in that recommendation, your public content has to be structured so AI can find it, parse it, trust it, and quote it confidently. That means clear sector pages, comparison pages ("X vs Y"), salary guides, FAQ schema markup, and credibility signals that AI systems can verify. GEO is what Rafiki does for recruitment firms day to day.
How is the leaderboard scored? ▼
We run 140 neutral buyer-intent prompts against ChatGPT three times each via the OpenAI API with web search enabled, extract every firm GPT mentions, then score based on appearance frequency (heaviest weight), mention position, category relevance, and cross-category strength. Firms that never appear score zero. Full methodology is documented above and the queries are open for anyone to reproduce.
How often is the UK recruitment leaderboard updated? ▼
The leaderboard is refreshed quarterly. AI-generated answers shift as the underlying models update, so we re-run the full benchmark every three months and publish a changelog of what moved.
Is this a paid ranking? ▼
No. The ranking comes from what ChatGPT actually says in response to buyer-intent prompts. Firms cannot pay to appear higher. We publish the methodology, the prompts, and the raw appearance data so anyone can audit the result.
How does Rafiki help recruitment firms specifically? ▼
Four ways, all built for recruitment workflows: (1) GEO content - restructuring your site so ChatGPT can read and cite it (sector pages, comparison content, FAQ schema, salary guides). (2) Chat-based recruitment flows - AI chat assistants on your site and in candidate inboxes that screen, qualify, and route candidates automatically. (3) Automation pipelines via OpenAI and Anthropic - workflow agents that source candidates, draft outreach, vet CVs and produce shortlists without manual lift. (4) Custom MCP servers - exposing your candidate database to AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude) so they can answer questions directly from your data, plus purpose-built agents for vetting, qualification, sequencing and client updates. Start a conversation above to see what to prioritise.
