The effect AI is already having
An effect that I think AI will have on our industry is now clear. Agencies are getting to grips with the idea that everything is scalable. Business development and resourcing are scalable. The tools are there.
So juniors in companies are having their jobs taken away from them, which is such a great shame, because ultimately you will have to train someone to take over from the seniors when they move on at some point. But the truth remains that one person can now do the job of five or ten people.
I think agencies will naturally start becoming more boutique.
Where the bottleneck moves
Before, the bottleneck was things like headhunting, resourcing, finding the right people and growing your network. These are all now fairly automatable, depending on how far you want to go down the automation road. I think sometimes less is more with that, but horses for courses.
Business development needs a little more care with automation, because people want to deal with real people.
Ultimately, the bottleneck will come down to your time spent on the phone. Every candidate has to be called. Every reference has to be phoned. You can now fill your day with phone calls, and that will become the new bottleneck.
What a good recruiter needs now
The skills of a recruiter are not what they were ten years ago. You don't have to be as tenacious, as inventive or as relentlessly hardworking to find people. But you do have to:
- Be a good people person
- Understand your industry intimately
- Understand your network
- Know what your clients want
- Know the inner workings of your client's household and private office
- Have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, and have precedent
- Know the going rate for each role in each country, and what a fair contract and package looks like
- Understand the rhythm of a household's year: the seasons, the travel, the busy periods
- Read a CV and know which questions to ask on the reference call
- Handle sensitive information with complete discretion
And then you have to spend time on the phone with your clients and your candidates. That is now what the best recruiters will do. Everything else can be done through scaling and different types of assistance.
The bad recruiters will be exposed
You can't hide from being on the phone. You can't hide from building rapport with people.
Once you scale back everything else, a recruiter's time goes on building relationships, understanding people, selling candidates, knowing what the client wants in advance, earning trust and being a professional.
Clients will work with people they trust to handle the automation and the parts of the work they don't trust others to do. I think they will lean towards people with long experience in their market and the biggest networks.
Is this real?
Another thing I see all the time is fake jobs and scams. We see the memes about people interviewing with AI managers. I now get asked, "Is this real? Are you real?"
In a world where everyone is racing to cut as many corners as possible, proving your value and your human touch as a recruiter is going to be more important than ever.
My prediction
The boutique firms that do things right, do things well, keep their relationships and stay human will be the ones that survive this revolution in tech.