It’s all robots surely??
With the so-called recruiter-replacing AI and ‘disruptive’ tech (read shiny) we continually read/hear/are shouted at about, it comes as no surprise that recruitment is again being looked at as something transactional rather than something that genuinely adds value and as such recruiters are an easy target for the ‘I could do that if I had the time again’ brigade.
It made me think, with candidates becoming increasingly more visible & accessible, where would we fit, how do we need to adapt and is this
‘the end of the world as we know it’
(thanks REM for that ray of sunshine)?
One of the main reasons I’ve been thinking about this is LinkedIn’s ‘open candidates’ option for those silly enough…sorry, those who have invested in the £4k+ recruiter package.
If you haven’t heard it’s a secret button you highlight that sets off a blinky light to those with the recruiter package that a candidate is looking for work. Yes, it’s the same as a candidate uploading their CV to a job board, however, those that love recruiter bashing are lining up to call it a ‘game changer’ heralding ‘the end of costly recruitment fees’.
To me it’s another arrow in the quiver of those who want to shoot down recruiters and, to be honest, I’m one of them.
Let me explain. When I first started in recruitment in 2000, the internet (as we sort of know it now but without all the pornography) was really only used for prospecting and research. LinkedIn kicked off in 2002 but it was nothing like it is now – think Myspace for suits. This meant we had to work hard to find candidates, harder to find those that wanted more than just an extra few quid, even harder still to extol the virtues of the new career path we were representing and it was almost impossible to understand how they would fit within the client’s business as we were lucky to have a Job Description let along a phone call briefing session or, god forbid, we wanted to meet the client face to face.
Although times have of course changed and technology has enhanced our lives and made it easier to find a candidate that matches a Job Description, I believe it should form part of our toolkit rather than as a complete replacement. It’s so easy to find candidates online now there is a website you can upload your CV to and it tells you how much you should be paying (whilst selling your data to recruiters/job boards I assume), I mean come on it’s like some people have given up on the art of recruitment altogether.
The reason I am one of the people wanting to proverbially shoot* these type of recruiters is anyone that relies only on this kind of tech for the success of their business is, in fact, a human AI machine passing information from one source to another, a modern day fax machine if you will, which does the sector’s image no good at all.
Without sounding all grumpy old man, until you show me a piece of ‘disruptive’ tech or AI that can distinguish between a candidate wanting an offer letter to play hard-ball with their current employer against someone with a real motivation to move career based on hours of research, in-depth analysis, profiling assessments, face to face interviews, phone calls at weekends/evenings to discuss the nuances of the offer and all accompanied in most cases by some good old fashioned gut feeling, then I’ll carry on sleeping easily at night.
The future of recruitment is it’s all rosy for those that know it’s really hard work to do properly, however, the rewards both financially and emotionally (it’s also good for the soul) are worth it.
*disclaimer* i don’t want to actually ‘shoot’ anybody
