Is recruitment broken?

It can certainly feel like it.

If you're a job seeker experiencing the rough end of it.

Or an employer who struggles to recruit yet perpetuates a transactional cycle where your needs get lost among the promises, unable to see your own part in where it's going wrong, when you thought more is more, but didn't want to spend time giving a brief or even just feedback, let alone enabling your suppliers to improve.

Recruitment isn't broken, it is what it is.

A system built on speed and volume that works well enough in many situations for its objective, yet often neglects the most important thing of all - an actual good experience.

Good experience for the candidate and good experience for the employer.

A system that forgets the fundamental skill is a human skill, not an automated process.

People.

Psychology.

What's in it for them?

You're a person too, don't forget, and how would you feel if you came across the same experience you're pushing on others?

If the answer is, at best, ambivalent, you've a problem you should fix.

And isn't that problem even worse, when all the processes, promises, pitches and tech serve to fail you even quicker?

Senior consultants with 12 months experience and no insight. AI that regurgitates twaddle quicker. Assessments that push good people away, when you thought they helped you select. More CVs, but fewer actual candidates.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Start with the corner of the puzzle.

The difficult vacancy that forces you to consider a different approach.

And flip from employer-led inside-out recruitment to candidate-first outside-in.

When you see how that fixes your problem vacancies, you'll wonder how it can help the remainder.

And help it will.

It's no easy fix. First a mindset shift, then learning the skills to execute.

Don't look to transactional agencies, transactional job boards, or HR practitioners who can only see the transactional in recruitment.

This is the 99% that repeat the cycle with no self-awareness.

They're stuck in the same trap you are.

Promises, promises.

Instead look within, and be accountable.

Put candidate needs first, to get what you need.

You'll find candidates aren't as short as you thought.

And they'll benefit too.

I can help.