Recruitment
Two phone books, and only one of them is marketing.
Recruitment runs two entirely separate calling operations under one roof. Client prospecting is B2B marketing and sits under the corporate calling rules. Candidate calling largely isn't marketing at all, which puts it somewhere different.
The two sides need different rules, different cadences and different lists.
Prospecting a company for a vacancy is business-to-business direct marketing, which brings the corporate calling rules into play — the CTPS rather than the TPS, among other things. Ringing a candidate about a specific role they applied for is a different activity, and conflating the two is where agencies get the compliance position muddled.
Operationally they behave differently too. Client calling is a long, relationship-led cycle. Candidate calling is a race — a good candidate is in several processes, and the agency that reaches them first shapes what happens next.
How leads actually arrive
What goes wrong today
Client and candidate calling share one queue
Different cadences, different rules and different urgency, run through one list, serves neither well.
Business calling is screened against the wrong register
Corporate subscribers sit on the CTPS. A floor screening company numbers against the TPS alone has not screened them.
The candidate database is only worked when a role comes in
Which means it is worked reactively and its best people have already moved.
What the product does about it
Separate campaigns for the two sides
Own cadences, scripts and outcome lists, so a candidate isn't chased like a prospect.
Suppression and screening evidence
Account-wide do-not-call, and a record of when each screen was run.
Callbacks that hold their promise
A candidate told they'd hear back Thursday hears back Thursday, from the person who said it.
Where compliance sits
Client prospecting is business-to-business direct marketing, so the CTPS applies to corporate subscribers while sole traders and most partnerships sit on the TPS. Both registers matter to a mixed list. That distinction is set out properly in our compliance guide.
Whether a particular candidate call constitutes direct marketing depends on what the call is for, which is a judgement about your own activity.
Employment agency conduct regulations carry their own requirements, determined by you.
This is not legal or regulatory advice. Your obligations under the rules that apply to you are yours to determine. What we can describe accurately is the calling rules that apply regardless of sector — PECR, TPS and CTPS, Ofcom's limits on abandoned calls, and UK GDPR — which we have researched from the regulators' own material and written up in full.
Read the UK calling compliance guide →A worked example
Illustrative client-side figures, not a customer's real numbers.
Fee revenue lands after a rebate period, so placements made this month are not revenue secured this month.
Work it through with your own numbers →Questions from this sector
Do we screen client prospecting against the TPS or CTPS?
Corporate subscribers are on the CTPS; sole traders and most partnerships count as individuals and sit on the TPS. A business list containing both needs screening against both.
Are candidate calls direct marketing?
It depends what the call is for. Calling someone about a role they applied for is a different activity from promoting your services to them, and the ICO's direct marketing guidance is the place to check which one you are doing.
See it on your own leads.
Half an hour with someone who has run a floor. Bring a lead source and a question.
Book a demo