AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND — 28 September 2026
Recruitful, a New Zealand start-up launching this week, is hoping to shake up the way small and mid-size companies recruit and fill roles in a market saturated by applicants.
“We were hearing the same story time and time again,” says the founder of Recruitful, Ash Thompson. “Businesses advertising to fill roles and being overwhelmed by applicants. With more CVs being written by AI and hundreds of possible but unvetted candidates, a single role was taking an inordinate amount of time to fill.”
Thompson believes advertising for candidates is no longer efficient or effective for many companies without dedicated HR staff. In creating Recruitful, his goal was to design an online marketplace capable of disrupting the status quo.
“In a market where unemployment is at an 11-year high, it’s just not effective to throw a job out into the open market and hope for the best,” Thompson says. “The insights we have leveraged are that recruitment processes are broken – too many applicants that are too hard to assess – and the people best placed to help are the experts: recruiters. But recruiters are traditionally seen as expensive. Our question was – how do we make them easy and more affordable to access?”
With a 15-year career in recruiting behind him, Thompson saw an opportunity to change how the industry works. Recruitful puts employers and recruiters together in a new marketplace where the employer sets the price they are willing to pay for a more direct line into proven candidates. Rather than spending money on their own advertising and carrying the weight of internal resourcing, employers get a shortcut to candidates worth interviewing.
“It works hardest for businesses with limited or no HR resource,” Thompson says. “Doing it in-house costs time, and time is money. Time to run an ad, time to screen hundreds of applicants, and time to work through interviews and references. Job applications on SEEK hit a record high last year. That’s just not efficient when recruiters already have relationships with potential candidates or know how to quickly find a shortlist.”
Thompson expects Recruitful will ultimately benefit the recruitment industry. “Lots of companies don’t want to work with recruiters because of perceived cost and other barriers. Using Recruitful is lower risk for everyone. It starts a conversation, and if a recruiter thinks they can access a pool of candidates easily, they can jump in to bid for the job.”
What about applicants? Thompson doesn’t think the current experience works for them either. “Chances are, many applicants are having a poor experience too – applying for roles and never hearing back or going into a melting pot with hundreds of others. Recruiters want to ensure both applicants and employers have a positive experience. When recruiters establish a relationship with a job-seeker, they keep them in mind for any jobs that come up in the future. That works for everyone.”
There’s also another string to Recruitful’s bow: helping companies source hard-to-find candidates. The construction industry is feeling the pressure most acutely. New apprentice starts fell 24% in 2025 and workplace-based learner numbers are at their lowest since 2011, according to Ministry of Education figures, so firms are competing harder for the skilled people already in the workforce.
“We’ve got some pretty specific recruitment needs, and finding the right people can be tough,” says Chelsea Petera, People & Culture Lead at TDM Construction Ltd. “We used Recruitful for one of our roles and managed to fill it pretty quickly. For us, the big benefit was being able to access multiple recruiters at once, rather than relying on just one. Recruitment can also get expensive, so being able to set a fee that worked for our budget made a lot of sense.”
How Recruitful Works
Recruitful.co.nz operates as a four-step marketplace:
- Post the role. Employers list the vacancy and set the success fee they’re prepared to pay. It’s completely free for employers to list a role on Recruitful.
- Recruiters bid. Every recruiter who specialises in that industry is notified immediately and can submit a proposal, which includes their price (their price could be more or less than the amount offered by the employer)
- The employer chooses. The employer picks one recruiter at a time to work with, or none, if no bid is right for them. Whoever is chosen works the role exclusively for as long as it takes for the employer to work through their proposal.
- Pay on results. The success fee is only payable once a candidate is hired and confirmed in the role. No hire, no fee.
Learn more or post a role at recruitful.co.nz, or follow Recruitful on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/recruitfulnz
About Recruitful
Recruitful is a New Zealand recruitment marketplace open to employers in any industry, connecting them directly with specialist recruiters. It has particular depth in construction and the trades, its founding verticals, and is expanding across every sector from there. Recruitful is based in Auckland and was founded by Ash Thompson in 2025.
Media contact
Ash Thompson – ash@recruitful.co.nz – 022 418 3852
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Notes for editors – sources
Record job applications: SEEK NZ Employment Report, via RNZ, 19 September 2025 – https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/573493/job-applications-rise-to-record-high
Apprentice starts down 24% in 2025, workplace-based learner numbers lowest since 2011: Ministry of Education, New Zealand’s workplace-based learners (educationcounts.govt.nz), reported by News Wire, 6 September 2026 – https://newswire.co.nz/2026/09/apprentice-numbers-15-year-low-2026/
Unemployment at an 11-year high (5.6% in the June 2026 quarter): Stats NZ, Labour market statistics, reported by 1News, 5 August 2026 – https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/08/05/nzs-unemployment-rate-hits-11-year-high-in-june-quarter/