Technology and Recruitment: an arms race no one can win

Every day the news is full of stories about a brand-new piece of technology or software that is going to put a whole industry out of business.

A year later, a decade later that business\industry is still around.

Funny that.

Now recruitment has had this threat happen twice. Once with job boards, does anyone remember Monster saying that all recruiters will cease to exist? And twice with LinkedIn.

Both now would not have a business without recruitment agencies.

I also remember LinkedIn championing the in-house hiring revolution.

Yet, so some reason we are all still hear. Which is nice.

So this got me thinking about recruitment and technology.

Essentially they are in an arms race that no one is going to win.

There will be no Amazon of recruitment.

There will be no Google of finding jobs.

Why?

Recruitment is about humans, and human expectations always rise quickly. The iPhone 1 was amazing. Anyone who got an iPhone 1 now would moan until the ends of the earth once they got an iPhone 7.

A model T Ford radically changed the way the world drives. Yet today, no one would want to have one.

With this in mind let's take the example of matching technology. A recruitment thought experiment if you will.

Let's say Linked In invents the perfect piece of software for matching jobs to candidates. Woohoo. Everyone is sent jobs that match their background and career.

This is super-stuff, until, oh know, in competitive marketplaces some candidates are getting 3,4,5,6 job emails every day. Many are now totally ignoring those emails. If not all.

Worse still. Some are not keeping their details up-to-date. However, all recruiters have now gone bust.

The software has put all recruiters out of business, but a new industry arises as hiring managers and HR are unable to fill their vacancies.

The job sales industry, is being paid to influence and persuade candidates to join. Much of the work is done via the telephone as it is efficient and the spoken word has the most influence

Hey presto, we have recruiters.

This is the constant tension that technology and humans have. What was once novel and indeed elitist becomes one day expected. In the world of human influence that will forever be true. Marvels become commodities.

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