My best wishes to you all for an outstanding 2024!

We had COVID-19, which skewered recruitment and recruiters and society generally.

Then, we had an unexpected (but most welcome) recruiting boom for almost two years. Many recruiters worked hard and did very well in 2021 and 2022 and even the start of 23.

However, it was never sustainable. Most recruiters found that out in the second half of 2023. And now, 2024 will bring a fearsome combination of old and new challenges.

It will also bring outstanding opportunities if tackled right.

We have hit the twin challenges of a declining market and an explosion in recruitment AI and automation.

There are two things for sure. The recruiters likely to thrive will deal with these.

1. Recruitment winners will be defined by how they react to the market. 

Regardless of the demand cycle, innovation, updating skills, and changing tactics are how you succeed.

There are enough jobs to fill.

(The freshly launched JobAdder ‘Recruitment Agency Trends Report‘ confirms that. ANZ and UK).

Underlying skill shortages remain pervasive. Economies have defied prediction and continue to grow.

However, clients are more selective, have higher hiring benchmarks, and can be slow and change their minds mid-process. Candidates are hesitant. They have shifted from ‘money and cool gigs’ to ‘stability and certainty’. The market is different!

We need to change our process and adapt.

Qualify your job orders. Get closer to candidates and their real motivators. Work on fewer jobs and fill a higher percentage of those jobs.

Your most significant danger is inertia. Doing nothing and wheeling out the old tactics that worked during the post-boom. Regressing to reactive recruiting and eschewing proactive sourcing is a dangerous step. Being too slow to react to the looming temp/contract boom will hurt you. Following the pack and racing to the bottom on price is a slippery slope to recruiting oblivion. Hiding behind digital, not seeing clients, and avoiding real candidate engagement. There is the real danger. Not the market itself. What you do or don’t do about the market is the differentiator.

2. The second significant certainty is the relentless march of tech.

We are all aware of AI and automation and certainly read and talk about them enough. However, we do not know how to use them in recruitment and don’t understand their likely impact or where the tech can be most effective. What is a recruiting leader, let alone a desk recruiter, expected to do?

You don’t need to become an AI expert. I have done a lot of research on AI and tech and how recruitment is likely to be impacted. Still, I am a novice with no real expertise in the nitty-gritty.

What you can do is get your mindset right and prepare accordingly.

The question du jour is, “Will AI and tech replace recruiters?”

It’s the wrong question – because it’s not binary.

Like people in life generally, it seems recruiters want to ‘pick a side‘. “AI will destroy agency recruitment“, or “Recruiting is a human skill and that will never change‘.

The more telling question is, “What parts of the recruiters’ jobs will be better done by tech?“

That is an intelligent question because it allows leaders to implement tech accordingly and will enable recruiters to up-skill and adapt to ensure their value and longevity.

Over a short period, AI and tech will absorb much of the work recruiters currently do. That is your threat. Will it replace everything you do?

AI and tech won’t replace agency recruitment. But it will end the careers of many agency recruiters who cannot excel at that part of the process that technology cannot do – because that’s where a recruiter’s real value lies.

I encourage you to read that last paragraph again.

Your value as a recruiter is in your knowledge, advice, consulting, networks, brand, influencing, and problem-solving skills. Embrace the technology; automate as much as you can. So, you can add value where it counts.

That will be your competitive advantage.

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The new “Reinvent your recruiting in 2024 Masterclass” is now live on the Savage Recruitment Academy.

Based on what I see is working and not working in the leading recruitment companies I work with

90 minutes of fresh tactics to thrive in the coming year. Sign up now