Ask ChatGPT which firms to call for contract engineers in your market. You’ll get three names back. We find out whether yours is one of them, put a number on it, and fix what isn’t working.
6sense studied nearly 4,000 B2B buyers. Ninety-five percent of the time, the winner was already on the shortlist the buyer built on day one. Potential clients look at about five firms and have already worked with four of them. That leaves just one seat for you.
Today, an answer engine will give them the name to fill that seat. Forrester surveyed roughly 18,000 buyers and found they rank generative AI above vendor websites and above sales reps as a research source. G2 found 51% open a chatbot before a search engine, and one in three bought from a company they’d never heard of before that conversation.
Why should you care? Because if you don’t show up in a candidate or potential client’s AI search, you won’t make the shortlist.
This is an urgent challenge for staffing and recruitment sites. Most are a job board with a services menu on the front. There’s nothing on the page an engine can lift, attribute, or repeat in its AI search results.
Why your ranking report stopped predicting citations
Ranking used to predict citation. Then it didn’t. By early 2026 the overlap between top-ten Google results and the pages cited in Google’s own AI Overviews had fallen to between 17% and 38%, down from about 75% a year earlier.
So your SEO report can be green in every cell while your firm goes unmentioned in every conversation that matters. Nobody’s lying to you. The report is answering a question buyers stopped asking.
At a glance
We run a scored visibility audit built for staffing firms. Seven weighted levers, a 0-100 index, four bands, and an evidence appendix where every score traces to something we tested.
The preview is free: three live prompts, back in 48 hours. The full audit is $4,500. Positioning work is $14,000. Ongoing programs start at $7,500 a month, and anything here can be scoped smaller.
This is one part of what we do for staffing firms. The rest is on the staffing agency marketing page.
Services and pricing
| Service | What it is | Timeline | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Initial Audit | Three live prompts showing who gets named in your niche and whether you’re one of them | 48 hours | Free |
| Full AI Visibility Audit | The full scored model against a locked competitor set, with recommendations on how to fix issues | 2 to 3 weeks | $4,500 |
| 90-day re-measure | Re-scored index against your baseline | 1 week | $2,500 |
What comes after the audit, like positioning work and ongoing programs, are on the staffing agency marketing page.
What the audit covers
We score seven things. Four of them count double, because they’re the ones that decide whether you get named at all.
- Can the engines even read your site? Plenty of staffing firms are quietly blocking the exact AI tools they want to show up in. It’s usually a one-line fix that nobody has checked.
- Do they know who you are? Whether ChatGPT can say what you do, who you serve, and where you do it without contradicting itself. When it can’t, it names a firm it feels sure about instead.
- Is there anything on your site worth quoting? Engines repeat clear, specific answers. They skip past pages about partnership and integrity.
- Does anybody else vouch for you? Your rating profiles, directory listings, reviews, and press. Engines lean hard on third parties when they’re deciding who’s credible.
- And when someone does find you, is there an obvious reason to call? Plus how your site is structured, how current it is, and whether it’s decaying.
Each one is scored against written standards, so a 4 on your report means the same thing as a 4 on your competitor’s. No vibes.
How we test:
- Against three real competitors, not the three you assume you’re up against. Who actually turns up tends to be the first surprise.
- With at least a dozen queries phrased the way your buyers really type them, from “what does a staffing agency cost” through “best IT staffing firms in Charlotte.”
- Live, on every engine, logged by hand. We don’t guess at what ChatGPT said based on what Google did, which is how a lot of AI visibility reports get written.
- Across every place the engines look for confirmation: ClearlyRated, ASA and state association directories, SIA lists, Glassdoor, Google, Wikidata.
What you get:
What you get:- A 0-100 score and your band. Above 80 is Defensible, 60 to 79 Contested, 40 to 59 Leaking, below 40 Invisible.
- The single biggest thing holding you back, stated plainly.
- A ranked list of three to five fixes, in the order we’d do them.
- The receipts. Every score traces back to a specific test you can go look at yourself. If you can’t audit our audit, it isn’t one.
Who you’ll work with
MSMC has worked with staffing and recruiting firms for years. Especially independent or specialized ones.
Search visibility is a lot of that history. One firm’s traffic rose 655% in six months. One hit page one of regional results in three. One came back a month after launch with candidate inquiries up 334%. A rebuilt site increased traffic 445%.
See more on the staffing agency marketing page.
What’s your ROI from this?
One IT contractor placed at $25 an hour of gross margin, billed across 1,900 hours, throws off $47,500 in gross profit over a year. Six months of our services cost just $45,000. So the more contractors you place thanks to improved visibility, the better your ROI.
Mostly direct hire? Two placements at a 20% fee on a $115,000 salary covers the Position Sprint with money left over.
FAQs
What’s an AI visibility audit for a staffing firm?
A scored look at whether your firm shows up when hiring managers ask AI engines which staffing partner to use in your niche. We test live queries, score seven weighted levers, and hand you a 0-100 index with a ranked list of fixes.
How is this different from SEO?
SEO optimizes your position in a list of links. This optimizes for inclusion in a generated answer. They used to be the same job. Now they aren’t.
How long does the audit take?
Two to three weeks from kickoff.
What size firm is this for?
The ongoing programs suit firms billing roughly $12M and up. Smaller firms usually take the audit as a one-off, or go straight to positioning and website work. We scope to what you’ve got.
Will this work if my site is WordPress with a Bullhorn job board attached?
Usually, and that describes most of the segment. The job board is rarely the problem. Your service pages are.
Does this replace my SEO vendor?
No. Traditional search still brings traffic. This measures a layer your SEO vendor almost certainly isn’t reporting on. The two run side by side.
What happens after the audit?
Some firms run the backlog themselves. Most come back for the positioning work, because the audit usually turns up an undifferentiated claim rather than a technical problem.