Signs your IT support is failing your recruitment firm.

Part of our complete guide to IT support for recruitment firms.

Most firms don't switch IT provider because of one dramatic failure. They switch because a string of smaller things stopped feeling like a coincidence. Here's what those look like in practice.

You're the one chasing them

If a ticket has been open for two days and you're the one following up rather than getting an update unprompted, the relationship has quietly flipped. You're now managing your IT provider instead of the other way round.

The same issue keeps coming back

A one off fault is normal. The same login problem, the same printer issue, or the same CRM slowdown recurring every few weeks means the underlying cause was never actually fixed, just patched.

You can't explain what they're monitoring

If you were asked right now what your IT provider actually watches for, could you answer? "Monitoring" that nobody can describe is often not much more than a line on an invoice.

Nobody flagged the leaver risk

When a consultant left last, did your provider proactively confirm access had been revoked, or did that fall to someone in your team to remember? A provider that understands recruitment should be raising this without being asked.

Onsite means "we'll try to get someone out"

Ask what onsite actually means in practice. Vague answers here tend to show up at the worst possible moment, like a laptop dying the morning of three interviews.

Pricing was never actually clear

If you still couldn't tell someone else exactly what you pay per user and what's included in that, the provider relationship started on the wrong foot and probably hasn't improved since.