Whatever Happened to the Thinking Recruiter?

When I started recruiting in London in 2002, one of my onboarding sessions was on objection handling. The technique was pretty primitive by today's standards – dismiss the objection, downplay the influence of the person making it, and keep moving. If the objection lingered… it would almost always end in a verbal stoush and a smashed receiver!

We've come a long way since then [what's a receiver?]. But back in the day, you had to be a thinker to thrive in reccy.

I always told my team at Halcyon Knights that recruitment was a thinking person's game: work out why a client isn’t engaging... find a different way into a conversation... come up with a unique lever... change the rules... or think your way through an objection you've never heard before.

So, are recruiters using AI nowadays to increase performance, or simply to reduce the effort required to perform at the same level?

Anecdotally, the coveted $1m biller still seems elite. But we had $1m billers ad nauseam at the Knightery 10–15 years ago.

At street level, I’m seeing less problem-solving, less creativity and less willingness to really think through a situation. And there's another problem: people can spot a fake a mile away. The AI-written LinkedIn message. The verbose email. The "personalised" outreach that sounds exactly like the other 15 messages in their inbox.

Of course AI can make recruiters faster and more efficient. But if you’re also outsourcing the thinking, creativity and your uniqueness, I don’t reckon you’re getting the value arbitrage.

The best recruiters I've worked with could see an angle others couldn't... find a conversation lever nobody else had considered... and think their way through a problem.

One recruiter in my team sent physical letters with a T-Bag stapled to them, to prospects who weren't biting on phone or email, asking to share a cuppa. Bang! Meetings galore.

Another prolific biller would arrange "chance" encounters between clients and candidates he knew would be good for their business – at coffee shops, symposiums, wherever. No selling of a CV, just an intro and he’d let the magic happen. We called it "engineering serendipity..." It meant he collapsed long-winded interview processes by up to 80%.

Now that everyone has access to the same AI, I reckon thinking is the competitive advantage again.

Have a nice day.
(this is not written by AI)
Zinger