From “The Savage Truth” by Chris Savage
The future of agency recruitment is all about the battle for candidates. Not so much clients. Talent is the epicentre of competitive advantage.
Candidate identification will get easier and easier. Candidate recruiting and hiring will get harder and harder. To the very cream of talent, privacy is the new advantage. The best candidates don’t put themselves out there any more.
We must accept, indeed embrace, the fact that recruitment is merging with marketing. Finding candidates is a science. Recruiting them is a seduction. It’s no longer about candidates ‘applying’. It’s no longer about getting their attention. We need to know their intention.
Technology in recruitment is not mostly about driving efficiency and automation. It should ensure a great candidate experience.
Don’t confuse candidate identification (via technology often), with candidate recruitment, via human beings (always), or candidate engagement (both). Most recruiters proudly talk about their database when the word ‘technology’ is raised. But, most recruiter databases are candidate graveyards!
If your company is made up of those lazy recruiters whose ‘strategy’ consists of posting and praying poorly written ads, or even LinkedIn InMail inundation, than you’re not only going to find yourself frustrated in the battle for talent, you’re likely to find yourself out of business. Companies will hire talent when they find it. We have to be the ones that find it for them.