Recruitment is not Tinder. COVID screwed that.

Let’s be honest about our industry for a moment.

Prior to the pandemic, technology and lack of skill drove plenty of recruiters to treat recruitment like a dating app.

Swipe left. Swipe right.

Post-COVID, you have a choice. Go back to being what you always were.

A keyword-matching, resume-flicking, in-box spamming, transactional recruiting hack. (Ouch! I know, right?)

Or shift.

From Transactional. To Relationships. To Consultative selling.

This is what will differentiate the winners from the losers in recruitment. (So it’s not really a choice is it?)

In the end, a recruiter is as good as the number of candidates that she or he can close.

That is it. You don’t get paid for sending resumes. Screening candidates. Writing ads.

We get paid when the candidate accepts the job.

So what recruiters are going to need now, is the ability to architect the deal.

I use the word ‘architect’ because it suggests designing, building, creating, managing. And these are the complex and subtle skills you will need to thrive going forward.

In recent years recruiters did no placement process architecture. What 90% of recruiters did, and still do, is pure ‘introduction’.

That’s all they do. (after a bit of screening and matching, maybe) It is like a totally dysfunctional recruiting Tinder free for all. Anyone can apply for anything on a click, and recruiters are swiping left and right at will, with barely a moment’s thought, and zero ‘finesse’.

I am not exaggerating. Six seconds on average to assess a resume. Thousands of job board applications.  Resumes spammed around town. That’s how it was for many, right?

That won’t do any more.

Those recruiters who understand that the human touch is still our primary tool in making a hire work, are those who will be most successful.

Post-COVID, clients will be focussed on ROI. And they will want to deal with quality people who understand their needs.

So how do we get better at ‘Placement Architecture’? There are three components to building a strong hiring process, and these are skills you are going to need:

1. Take the time required. (Not like Tinder, right?) Recruitment is a series of discrete human interactions and great recruiters will manage, control, and influence the outcome of each of those interactions to maximise success. (Also not like Tinder, right?). And they will only work with clients who make the commitment to spend the time. (Commitment? Tinder? Nah!)

1. Listen better than ever before. (Definitely not like Tinder, right?) Uncovering, questioning, and understanding are sadly undervalued recruiter skills that we need to hire and coach back into our business. Most recruiters do none of this. They act on the client’s word as if it were the true gospel. Or they make assumptions without asking questions first. It sounds counter-intuitive, but great recruiters will purposely be ‘slow to understand‘.

1. Question everything. (Maybe a bit like Tinder. I don’t know 🙂 ) The biggest cause of placements falling through is people making assumptions. Recruiters taking what they are told at face value. Ask for the “why and how” of everything that does not ring true, and don’t stop asking until you get an answer.

The good news is that the role of the recruiter, per se, is not under threat from technology, COVID 19,  or anything else. But the bad news is that the days of the dinosaur recruiter, unwilling to adapt, are gone

The market was starting to get you. COVID 19 just finished the job.

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