I’ve worked in recruitment for over 20 years, navigated several recessions, a global pandemic and an economic meltdown. Through all these times, I’ve never seen it quite like this.
Covid came along and shook things up for a while and reshaped things .. but I believe we are now seeing a seismic shift in how we recruit and this turbulence is rampaging at pace.
Everyone is competing now, more than ever.
And the way we compete is a sorry state of affairs.
- Those in career transition don’t know how to play the game, at a time when they really need to
- There is an agonising disconnect between hirers looking for talent and talent looking for hirers
- Companies are preferring to hire directly via Internal Talent Acquisition teams – heavily reliant on ATS systems and AI processes
- There are some career opportunities around, but you have to dig deep to find the genuine opportunities and navigate past all the confusion, noise and fake/old/duplicate/database-populating jobs, to find them
- Employer brand, professional digital presence and personal brand – play a highly influential role
- AI has decimated automated sifting and selection, where brilliant candidates are easily overlooked
- Your CV keywords, content and formatting can make or break your chances of getting selected
- Hiring teams are overwhelmed with high-volume application responses and CVs that look the same (thanks to AI customisation)
- Ghosting has become normalised
- Things can change a lot more during the course of a hiring process, with many more varying factors and unstable foundations
- Careers don’t have to go in straight lines – it’s OK to take a left turn, or even a U-turn. Candidates recognise this but hirers are still suspicious.
- Salary stagnation
- There are far more graduates than graduate schemes or entry-level jobs.
- Over 50s are more invisible than visible in an era of diversity and acceptance.
Is it time to get back to basics and put people ahead of process?
Put personalised human qualification ahead of flaky AI sifting?
Put common sense ahead of auto rules?
Put conversation ahead of copy and paste?
Bring in the human calvary! Let’s make it real, authentic and personal again.
I like to move with the times and adapt my recruitment and career services to suit the challenges my markets face. But one trend I will be swerving, is this unprecedented preoccupation to automate process within an inch of its life, particularly at the expense of the candidate experience.
This disrespect for the candidate experience has dehumanised the recruitment process, where ‘real people’ are no longer at the heart of what really matters.
But it’s not all bad news .. there are Recruiters out there that are human, have human values and, like me, still believe in, and value the personal experience.