Ask an agency owner whether they use AI and the answer is almost always yes. Ask what it actually does in their business, and the answers split fast. We want to measure that gap properly, and we need your help to do it.

In this edition: the Talent Business Industry Report 2026 and why we’re asking for seven minutes of your time, the AI screener that does most of its work while your recruiters are off the clock, a Dutch-language livestream on hiring across borders, executive dinners in Ghent, Paris and Rotterdam, and a new website for the Talent Business Club.

— Jeroen

Every vendor deck says agencies are adopting AI fast. Few can tell you what that means inside an agency on a Tuesday morning.

The Talent Business Industry Report 2026 sets out to find out. It asks owners, CEOs, managing directors, COOs, CFOs and CIOs of recruitment and staffing agencies how they really use AI and technology: temp, perm, executive search, contracting and project sourcing. Not what they say they do. What they do.

Four areas: where AI is actually implemented, what the tech stack looks like, how much agencies invest, and how ready leadership feels for what’s coming.

The survey takes seven minutes and is fully confidential. No individual agency’s data is disclosed. Fieldwork closes on 31 October.

What you get back: the full report when it’s published, and an invitation to the live reveal at the Talent Business Forum in Brussels on 19 November, where the findings are unpacked on stage.

The report is only as good as the agencies in it. Seven minutes from you decides whether the picture of your market is accurate or a guess.

One staffing office screened 114,000 candidates by hand in a year and placed 3% of them. For Diederik Syoen, co-founder of Ringtime, that number is the whole argument.

Ringtime is an AI screening agent built for blue-collar staffing. It reaches candidates by phone, SMS or WhatsApp, in more than 22 languages, can switch language mid-call, and pushes transcripts and screening scores back into the ATS you already run.

The detail that should change how you think about your desk: more than half of successful conversations happen outside office hours. That’s evenings and weekends, when candidates are free and your recruiters aren’t there.

The hard part wasn’t the technology. In some rollouts usage dropped, because recruiters went back to screening by hand and weren’t sure what to do with the time they got back. What worked was involving them from day one, sometimes in person.

Pricing follows the same logic: you pay per successful interaction, not per attempt.

The screening can go to a machine. The real question for an agency owner is what your recruiters do with the hours that come back.

The labour market stays tight, and more agencies are looking across borders for talent. This panel covers the three places it usually gets hard: localising job content across languages and cultures, setting up your ATS for international candidates, and staying compliant through contractors, payroll or employer of record.

Niels Geominy (RecruitmentAds.com), Tom Janssen (Deel), Randy Cillekens (Serena) and I work through it in 45 minutes. Practical, with room for your questions. Tuesday 13 October, 11:00–11:45 CEST, online.

Ten seats, for owners and executives of staffing and recruitment agencies. Off the record, peer level, no pitch. Curious what that looks like? Here’s how Antwerp went, and here’s Brussels.

The format is travelling: we’re hosting the same dinner in Paris on 21 October and Rotterdam on 22 October.

The Talent Business Club has a new website at talentbusinessclub.com. It’s the private club for owners and senior leaders of staffing and recruitment agencies: around 400 members, chapters live in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and South Africa, and Canada, Hong Kong and Denmark opening in 2027. Every dinner, afterwork and livestream, plus the Forum & Gala, now sits on one calendar, and membership is by application.

It’s new, so it’s not finished. If something is unclear, missing or broken, we want to know.

Thanks for reading Talent Business Insights. Hit reply and tell us — what should we cover next? Your answers shape future editions.