Why Tenacity — Not Technology — Is the Real Competitive Advantage in US Staffing
By Nitin
The US staffing market is enormous, growing, and full of well-funded competitors. It is also — according to Francis Larson — strangely, almost embarrassingly, easy to enter.
"The staffing market... to set up a staffing company is the easiest thing. You just have to have a recruiter, put in an ATS maybe, and you find a client and then you go get a candidate. It's so simple to set up."
— Francis Larson, Ascen, on RecTalk
Low barriers to entry. Thousands of competitors. Clients who've seen it all before. So how do some firms break into the US and scale rapidly, while others try and quietly go home?
The answer, Larson says, is not technology. It's something harder to systematise.
The US Staffing Market Rewards Urgency
"People who have a high level of internal urgency do really well. And there's low barriers to entry in the staffing market... some recruitment agencies, even though there are so many other competitors, some find a way to grow rapidly and become big companies. It's shocking."
What separates them? In Larson's view, it's not a product edge or a pricing advantage. It's the drive to move faster, follow up harder, and refuse to accept a slow no.
For UK recruiters entering the US, this translates directly. The US hiring market moves fast. Candidates are off the market in days. Hiring managers make decisions quickly — and they ghost even faster. If you're not responding with urgency, you'll lose. Not to a better recruiter. To a quicker one.
Technology Is a Multiplier, Not a Substitute
Larson's view on technology is nuanced — and worth sitting with. Great staffing firms are great users of technology, but technology doesn't replace the fundamentals.
"Traditional staffing firms are still, the good ones at least, still really good users of technology. They're high-tech, but that doesn't mean they write their own software."
The firms disrupting the traditional staffing market — well-funded platforms built on automation — have an efficiency edge. They generate five times more revenue per recruiter than traditional firms. They're fast, scalable, and have deep pockets.
But they're not always better at the thing that still matters most in high-value staffing: human judgement, relationship-building, and the ability to understand a client's culture well enough to find the right person — not just the right CV.
UK recruiters who try to compete on technology alone will lose. UK recruiters who use technology well, move fast, and build genuine relationships will find the US market very much open for business.
The Scaling Problem Nobody Talks About
Larson identified a growth ceiling that catches almost every UK agency trying to build in the US:
"Companies that go to $10 million... they figure out how to replicate what they are doing well to their team. You can scale to $2 or $3 million with like two founders of recruitment agencies, but then you're stuck."
The transition from founder-led to team-led is where expansion plans stall. You can be brilliant at your niche, your market, your relationships — but if you can't systematically teach your approach to a team, you're capped at what you personally can bill.
"You have to systematically teach everyone in your organisation to really understand what you do. Here are our type of clients, here's what they care about, here's the market."
The Practical Implication for UK Firms
Before you hire a US-based recruiter or business developer, make sure your model is documented enough to be taught. If it only exists in your head, it won't scale. Write down:
- Your ideal client profile (sector, size, funding stage)
- Your candidate sourcing methodology
- How you run a first client conversation
- What makes your specialism distinctive
If a new hire couldn't replicate your approach from that documentation, you're not ready to scale.
What Tenacity Actually Looks Like
Tenacity in the US market isn't about sending more emails or making more calls. It's about staying in a market longer than the competition stays interested — building relationships before there's a live role to fill, and genuinely understanding your clients' businesses well enough to be called first, not as one of six agencies on a preferred supplier list.
The companies that thrive in the US are the ones still playing after everyone else has gone home. They've accepted it's a long game. They've built for it.
That's the edge. Not the tech stack. Not the fee structure. The willingness to still be there.
This post is based on two RecTalk episodes featuring Francis Larson, CEO of Ascen (now part of Upwork). Watch Episode 1 (opens in a new tab) and Watch Episode 2 (opens in a new tab) on YouTube.
Connect with the UK recruitment supplier community and explore US expansion resources at rectools.io.
