3 wrong responses to recruitment change. And one smart one.

It’s obvious.

Much of recruitment is changing, very fast. We may not like it, but that is the fact. Technology most obviously, but also candidate behavior and client expectations.

And of course the rapid onset of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in recruitment. More than ‘on its way’. Here already.

My observation is that most recruiters are responding in one of three ways. Perhaps you can recognise yourself here?

The Ostrich

You bury head in the sand and do absolutely nothing. You convince yourself, and those around you, that ‘it will all be ok’, and ‘the old ways still work best’. ‘Recruitment is still recruitment’ is your mantra, and you are sticking to it!

The Worker-Bee

You can feel the change and it is affecting your results, and you are concerned. So you work even harder at the things that are not working as well, trying to replace quality with quantity. More cold calls, more spam emails and inmails, more badly worded job ads that bring tons of irrelevant candidates that you then vigorously screen, because it’s good to feel busy! Right?

The Puppy Dog

You know you must evolve, and you are trying, but mostly you are making small ineffectual changes, at the periphery, like advertising on different job boards, getting on Twitter for a few weeks, or writing the odd blog. Lots of activity. None of it forward.

None of these options is anywhere good enough.

Recruitment is not dying. But you might.

So there is the fourth way. The one you must follow

Embrace the change like a long lost brother, and use it to make you more effective. AI is not a threat if you use it to soak up all the drudgery so you can become better at selling, and consulting and creating outcomes.

Here is how.

Get specific about incremental change. Small shifts to the way you have always worked.

Today’s recruiter is never ‘done’.

You are never ‘trained’, ‘expert’, or ‘finished with learning’. It’s constant renewal, up-skilling and starting again.

Complacency. Inertia. Resistance. Will kill you.

You have to reinvent yourself and become a better version of what you already are.

Soon. Now.

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Photo by G. Crescoli on Unsplash