30% of UK jobseekers have pulled out of a hiring process after being involved in an AI-led interview. 82% of people who were interviewed by AI said that they weren’t told in advance that AI was being used.
What does this mean for recruiters? There’s no legal requirement for hirers to tell candidates that they’re using AI for interview, or for that matter, behind the scenes. However 59% of those surveyed said that they felt it should be required.
ATS for recruitment agencies UK often includes AI as a bolt on to more traditional candidate database software, which presents another problem – AI use is only as sophisticated as the user, and few agencies have in-house expertise in AI utilisation. 27% of survey respondents felt that the AI interviews exhibited age bias and 17% believed there had been race or ethnicity bias. Now that’s hard to prove – it’s a subjective response from a person who’s already in a stressful situation (interview) and is probably struggling to navigate an AI-led experience. But it’s a concern that weakens confidence in employers and agencies. Candidates clearly want human judgement to figure prominently in recruitment.
UK temporary workers increase in importance to recruitment agencies
At the same time, British employers are currently hiring more temps than they are permanent staff. This almost certainly means that recruitment CRM for agencies is being increasingly used to assess temporary candidates against potential placements. Hiring for permanent employment fell at the greatest rate for three months in April 2026, a trend that began in 2022 and hasn’t abated. The causes are obvious; war in Iran, continuing cost pressures; political uncertainty in the UK.
Getting some financial leeway by hiring temps which both lowers future fixed costs and allows for adaptability in staffing skills is just good sense. But it adds to a recruiter’s burdens – the best recruitment software UK wide is likely to be able to help recruiters identify temporary workers with the best skill set, whilst serving as the kind of CRM that gives those temporary workers regular, timely and personalised updates about their recruitment journey so that they feel valued as much by their agency as by their short-term employer. This is one of the best routes to revenue improvement when recruiting for the temporary sector.
There is an important element here – recruitment agencies need to build trust with candidates to have a sufficient pool to draw from, but they also need to work on defining the best matches in terms of values and team alignment if they are to become the preferred partner of an organisation. Whether you send in a temp for a week or a year, whether they work for a month or go temp to perm – being able to identify and offer cultural fit in your temporary work force makes any agency into a valued resource.
