Do I list billings or placements on a Recruiter CV?

Both, and split them by year. For agency roles, lead with annual GP or fee value (£420k GP in 2025) and total placements. For in-house roles, lead with hires made, time-to-hire and offer-acceptance rate. If you are moving from agency to in-house, translate your numbers — '64 placements in 2024' tells an in-house hiring manager you can deliver volume, even if they do not care about your fee margin. Hide nothing. If you had a quiet year because of redundancies or a hiring freeze, name it.

Should I include the names of companies I have hired into?

If you are agency-side, list a handful of recognisable client names with the role types and seniority you delivered. Three or four logos is enough — a 30-strong list reads like an Excel export. If you are in-house, the company you worked for is the client, so this question does not apply. Either way, never list candidate names. That is a confidentiality breach and any HR Director reading your CV will spot it instantly.

Is it worth listing CIPD or REC qualifications?

REC Certificate in Recruitment Practice (CertRP) is worth listing if you are early-career and applying agency-side; it shows you have been trained on UK employment law basics. For senior in-house roles, CIPD Level 5 in Resourcing and Talent Management carries weight with HR-led hiring panels. Beyond those two, most certifications (LinkedIn Recruiter Pro, AIRS, etc) are nice-to-have and belong in a single 'Certifications' line, not a separate section.

CV Example · People & Legal · UK 2026

Recruiter CV Example UK

I have hired Recruiters into agencies, in-house teams and RPO providers for 12 years, and I will tell you what I tell every candidate I coach: your CV is your sales pitch. If a Recruiter cannot sell themselves on a single page, no hiring manager will trust them with a £90k Engineering hire. Numbers matter more here than almost any other role. Roles filled, time-to-hire, offer-acceptance, GP, fee value. If you cannot remember your placement stats, dig out your old commission statements before you write a word.

By Alex · 12-year UK recruiter · Updated April 2026

Example header

James Okonkwo · Senior Talent Partner · 6 years · London / hybrid

Personal statement / Professional summary

Senior in-house Recruiter with 6 years split across SaaS scale-ups and a global consultancy. Currently hire across Engineering, Product and Data for a Series C fintech, owning the full lifecycle from intake through offer. Filled 78 roles in 2025 with a 91% offer-acceptance rate and a median time-to-hire of 24 days against a 35-day target. Comfortable running structured interview training for hiring managers and partnering with Finance on workforce planning. Looking for a Talent Lead role with hiring-manager ownership, not just a higher requisition load.

Bullet point examples

Strong bullets follow the same shape: action verb, specific scope, quantified outcome. Use these as patterns, not as copy-paste templates — the numbers must be your own.

Volume and quality of hire

Filled 78 permanent roles in 2025 across Engineering, Product and Data with a 91% offer-acceptance rate and 86% pass-probation rate at 6 months.
Reduced median time-to-hire from 41 to 24 days by introducing structured intake meetings and cutting interview-loop length from 5 stages to 3.

Sourcing

Built a direct-source pipeline that delivered 64% of 2025 hires, reducing agency spend from £210k to £62k year-on-year.
Sourced and placed 14 senior Engineers (£90k-£140k) directly via LinkedIn Recruiter and Boolean outreach, with a 22% reply rate against an industry benchmark of 8%.

Hiring-manager partnership

Trained 22 hiring managers on structured interviewing using the STAR-B framework, lifting interviewer-calibration scores from 64% to 88% across the team.
Coached three first-time hiring managers through their first hire, including scorecard design, feedback debriefs and offer negotiation.

Process and tooling

Migrated the team from Greenhouse to Ashby, designing a new requisition workflow and reporting suite used by Finance for monthly headcount reviews.
Introduced a candidate NPS programme; lifted score from +18 to +52 by rewriting rejection comms and adding live recruiter feedback at every stage.

DEI and employer brand

Increased women hired into Engineering from 12% to 31% over 18 months by partnering with two community groups and rewriting all Engineering JDs.
Co-launched the company's first careers blog with the Marketing team, driving 14k organic visits and 412 inbound applications in its first six months.

Skills section — what to list

Mirror the skills exactly as they appear in target job ads. The ATS reads this section literally — synonyms hurt match scores.

Full-lifecycle recruitmentBoolean and X-ray sourcingLinkedIn Recruiter (advanced)ATS implementation (Greenhouse, Ashby, Workday Recruiting, SmartRecruiters)Structured interview design and scorecardsHiring-manager training and calibrationWorkforce planningOffer negotiation and benefits framingEmployer branding and EVPDEI sourcing strategyRecruitment analytics and reportingStakeholder management to VP / C-suiteAgency vendor managementGDPR and right-to-work complianceTalent mapping and competitor intelligence

Recruiter-specific CV mistakes that get you binned

× Leaving out your placement numbers — if you billed £400k or filled 78 roles, that is the headline. Hiding it makes me assume you did not.
× Using the same CV for agency and in-house roles — they are different jobs. Agency wants GP and fee. In-house wants quality-of-hire and offer-acceptance.
× Listing every job board you have ever used — nobody cares that you have a CV-Library login. List specialist channels and direct-source results.
× Calling yourself a 'Talent Acquisition Specialist' if your job title was 'Recruiter' — match the title on your CV to the wording in the job ad you are applying for.
× Forgetting to list the ATS you can configure versus the ones you have only used — implementation experience is a hiring lever.

Common questions

Do I list billings or placements on a Recruiter CV?: Both, and split them by year. For agency roles, lead with annual GP or fee value (£420k GP in 2025) and total placements. For in-house roles, lead with hires made, time-to-hire and offer-acceptance rate. If you are moving from agency to in-house, translate your numbers — '64 placements in 2024' tells an in-house hiring manager you can deliver volume, even if they do not care about your fee margin. Hide nothing. If you had a quiet year because of redundancies or a hiring freeze, name it.
Should I include the names of companies I have hired into?: If you are agency-side, list a handful of recognisable client names with the role types and seniority you delivered. Three or four logos is enough — a 30-strong list reads like an Excel export. If you are in-house, the company you worked for is the client, so this question does not apply. Either way, never list candidate names. That is a confidentiality breach and any HR Director reading your CV will spot it instantly.
Is it worth listing CIPD or REC qualifications?: REC Certificate in Recruitment Practice (CertRP) is worth listing if you are early-career and applying agency-side; it shows you have been trained on UK employment law basics. For senior in-house roles, CIPD Level 5 in Resourcing and Talent Management carries weight with HR-led hiring panels. Beyond those two, most certifications (LinkedIn Recruiter Pro, AIRS, etc) are nice-to-have and belong in a single 'Certifications' line, not a separate section.