You issued a requirement for a commissioning engineer. Three days later, five CVs arrived. Two were clearly wrong. One had the right titles but the wrong geography. One was a maybe. One was genuinely qualified.
You interviewed three. Hired one. The process worked, technically. But you just spent a week doing the agency's quality control for them.
The incentive is speed, not accuracy
When an agency receives a requirement, the recruiter's priority is to get CVs in front of the client before a competing agency does. Five CVs in three days beats two CVs in five days, even if the two would have been more qualified.
The database is the bottleneck
A profile entered three years ago might show certifications that have since expired, availability that is no longer current, or experience descriptions that were generous when written. Nobody calls each result to verify their current status before submitting.
You become the filter
You read five CVs. You spend 30 minutes on each. You identify two worth interviewing. By the time you have identified the one person you actually want, you have invested 5-6 hours of senior time on a process that could have been completed in under an hour.
What the model would need to look like
Instead of speed to submit, optimise for quality of submission. Send three candidates instead of five, but make sure all three have been verified against the actual role requirements. Add a layer of assessment before submission, not after. Deliver evidence, not opinions.
The agency that does this will submit fewer candidates per requirement. Their fill rate per submission will be higher. Their clients will spend less time on interviews and more time running projects.