Remember 2020? Yes, the year when Covid was devastating everything we knew, and there wasn’t a vaccine yet.
Tidying up some files recently, I came across the work I did for a new client in late 2020, a day workshopping their Values and what they meant for behaviours, systems and improvement. Emphatically NOT a “window dressing exercise” where we pick some random abstract nouns and don’t change anything.
But what I wanted to share about that socially distanced day was the two ice-breaker exercises I designed for them.
The first asked them for a plan to thrive in a world where the use of CVs and any biographical information was now banned from recruitment decisions because of ED&I influence.
The second was to respond to a world in which AI was routinely deployed to screen and select candidates for employment, and interested applicants had responded with their own AI agents to create CVs and online personas that would prioritise their applications. All of this was going on without human involvement.
Prescient, or what! I never dreamed that we would be in that world so quickly.
Well, I’m sorry to say that the 2 groups failed miserably at their tasks. The first group could only respond by finding covert, illegal ways to obtain CVs. And the second group? They decided to switch careers.
So what can we learn from this now?
If your recruiters are just purveyors of CVs, with simple keyword matching skills, they will have to sell on cost or speed to clients who don’t have any internal resources and don’t value recruitment as a strategic business driver. The minute that client can do the task cheaper through its own AI, they will.
BUT. And it’s a big BUT, because few of the recruiters I meet have the business understanding, credibility and creativity to really step up.
The recruiters who solve business problems, who can see how a business objective translates into human capital, and can flex their solutions to new models (not plain old introducing a candidate for permanent employment) are really starting to pull away from the herd. They have in-depth interviewing skills, trusted networks of high-calibre people, and a curiosity to go further. Some of them are supplying not only recruitment services, but compliance, L&D, exec coaching and consultancy.
Are you one of them? Are your people?
If you’re questioning whether your recruitment business – and your team – are equipped for where the market is heading, an objective look at your current capabilities can be a useful place to start.
Book a no-obligation 30-minute conversation with Alison to explore where the opportunities – and the gaps – might be.
