Selling websites to recruiters and employers: the conflict of interest

A recruitment website supplier sells your agency a promise: a stronger online presence to attract candidates, win clients and grow your business.

What happens when that same supplier also sells career sites directly to employers, helping them attract candidates themselves and reduce their reliance on recruitment agencies?

The supplier can then earn money from helping agencies win recruitment business and from helping employers bring more of that recruitment in-house. That is the conflict this article is concerned with. It does not depend on the supplier becoming a recruitment agency or charging placement fees.

Our view is straightforward: presenting yourself as an agency’s aligned growth partner while concealing or downplaying an employer offering built around reducing agency dependence is unethical. The problem is not that employers want to recruit directly. It is that a supplier asks recruiters to trust its commitment to their growth while pursuing a commercial objective that can work against it.

Two sales promises pulling in opposite directions

Consider a hypothetical supplier with two sales conversations.

To the recruiter, it offers a website that will help attract candidates and generate employer enquiries. The commercial objective is to help the agency win more recruitment work.

To the employer, it offers a career site that will help generate direct applications, build an employer-owned candidate audience and reduce spending on external recruitment agencies.

Both products might work well. That does not resolve the conflict. In this example, the supplier’s employer proposition succeeds partly by reducing demand for the service its agency customers sell.

A recruiter does not need to prove that a particular placement has been lost to recognise that tension. Equally, the existence of an employer career site is not proof that any agency has lost revenue. The concern is the opposing objectives the supplier is being paid to support.

A supplier can help employers bypass agencies without ever undertaking recruitment work itself.

“We only sell the technology” does not answer the concern

A career site is not a recruitment agency. It does not have to be one to affect an employer’s need for agency services.

A site that presents vacancies clearly and makes direct applications easier can strengthen an employer’s own candidate attraction. Where that produces suitable applicants, the employer may be able to fill some roles without commissioning an agency.

That outcome is not guaranteed. Direct recruitment and agency recruitment can coexist, and employers may still need specialist search, market knowledge, assessment or temporary staffing. A career site does not replace every service recruiters provide.

But those qualifications do not remove the conflict where reduced agency use is part of the supplier’s employer-facing sales proposition. If the benefit being sold is lower agency spend, the supplier is commercially supporting an outcome that can reduce opportunities for its recruitment agency customers.

The relevant question is therefore not simply, “Do you provide recruitment services?” It is, “Do you sell employers a way to need less of the service we provide?”

Why this becomes an ethical problem

Selling to two customer groups is not automatically unethical. The ethical issue is how a supplier represents and manages interests that can pull against each other.

It can misrepresent whose interests the supplier supports

An agency may reasonably distinguish between buying a website from a general technology vendor and choosing a partner that claims to be committed to recruitment agencies’ commercial success.

The stronger that claim of alignment, the more important it is to disclose a business line that helps employers reduce agency dependence. A supplier cannot credibly ask recruiters to treat it as being wholly on their side while leaving that tension out of the conversation.

The ethical failure is the gap between the relationship being promised and the interests actually being pursued.

It can deny recruiters an informed choice

An agency might knowingly accept a supplier that serves both markets. Another might decide that the conflict is incompatible with the partnership it wants. Both should be able to make that decision before committing.

Disclosure should explain more than the fact that the supplier has employer customers. It should make clear what those customers are being sold and whether reduced agency spend is part of the proposition.

If that information is concealed or minimised, the recruiter is being asked to buy into a relationship without a clear understanding of a commercially important conflict. That is why transparency matters: it gives the agency a genuine choice rather than a reassuring but incomplete sales story.

It asks agencies to trust contradictory messages

There is a difference between saying, “We provide technology to agencies and in-house recruitment teams,” and telling agencies, “We are committed to growing your sector,” while telling employers, “Our solution will help you spend less with agencies.”

The first describes a mixed customer base openly. The second creates a contradiction that needs to be acknowledged, not hidden behind separate product names or sales teams.

Separate teams may help manage the relationship. They do not change the fact that the same business benefits from both propositions.

Employers have the right to recruit directly

None of this is an argument that employers owe agencies their recruitment spend. Employers are entitled to build career sites, attract their own candidates and choose when external recruitment support is worthwhile.

Nor does an agency’s website contract normally give it a right to control every market its supplier serves.

The ethical objection is narrower: a supplier should not sell a relationship of commercial alignment to recruiters while obscuring work that supports reduced demand for their services. Freedom to serve both markets does not justify a misleading account of that relationship.

Openness lets agencies decide whether the supplier’s position is acceptable. It does not make the competing objectives disappear.

An agency-led client career site is a different proposition

Employer branding alone does not establish a conflict. An agency may commission an employer-branded campaign site as part of a service it delivers to its client. In that arrangement, the technology can strengthen the agency’s offer rather than encourage the employer to replace it.

The distinction is commercial purpose. Is the supplier helping the agency deliver a client service, or independently selling employers a route to reduce their use of agencies?

That is why the buyer, the sales message and the agency’s role matter more than whose logo appears on the page.

The question your supplier should answer

Before accepting a claim that a website supplier is your growth partner, ask:

Do you also sell career sites directly to employers on the basis that they can recruit more people themselves and reduce agency spend? If so, how does that fit with your promise to support our growth?

A credible answer acknowledges the conflict and explains the supplier’s position. “We only sell websites” is not enough, because the purpose of those websites is the point.

Recruiters should not have to discover this tension after buying into a partnership. Helping agencies win recruitment business while helping employers reduce agency dependence creates a conflict of interest. Presenting that relationship as unqualified alignment, without candid disclosure, is what makes it unethical.

Why RecruiterWEB is different

At RecruiterWEB, we sell only to recruiters—not directly to employers. Our tools enable recruitment agencies to provide branded career sites and recruitment campaign sites for their own clients, making the technology part of the agency’s service. You can offer the solution yourself and lead the client relationship, rather than face competition from your own website supplier. Our role is to help you deliver more for your clients, not sell them a way to bypass you.

RecruiterWEB websites for agency-led client services

Employer-facing technology can also be part of the service an agency delivers to its clients.

With RecruiterWEB, an agency can provide an employer-branded campaign site through Client Campaign Mode. These microsites can include branded vacancies, employer-story pages and application routes to the recruiter, employer or both.

That gives the agency a way to include a branded digital campaign within its client service. The employer’s branding appears on the site, while the agreed workflow determines how applications are handled.

Other employer-facing features include vacancy submission, candidate-profile enquiries, candidate alerts and salary-survey information. Our websites also support candidate attraction and client generation through service pages, sector and location content, case studies and staff profiles.

We support different recruitment models, including contingency recruitment, retained search, temporary staffing, recruitment process outsourcing, managed service programmes and recruitment campaigns. The website journey can therefore reflect the services your agency actually sells.

Discuss your recruitment website requirements with Rec