How to thrive in an AI governed world

These same benefits are accorded to clients and candidates of recruitment services, which actually benefits our industry with caveats.

Clients are inundated with applications of sameness written by AI. It’s harder to differentiate quality in the mountains of applications written by Claude or Chat. Candidates are being screened by AI agents so cannot get a feel for the people and culture, which we know is one of the main factors that determine whether people want to join or stay at a company.

So at a time of great change there are also big opportunities, but only if we do something different to what the clients are doing themselves. Recruiters used to be able to decide if they wanted to build relationships or sling CVs. That choice is now being taken away as AI can sling CVs much faster than they can.

What is the anti-dote to AI? We need to revert back to human to human.

Face to face meetings in person, not via Teams as the prediction is that by 2028, 25% of applications will be fake. How you will stand out is to be able to say to your clients that you have met every single candidate in person and can vouch for that they are ‘real’ people! That you can tell your candidates, that you have visited the company and met their future boss, so you have a firm grasp of whether or not their culture is where they will thrive. Everything old is new again.

The other main difference going forward is building communities for your talent pools. This is critical at a time where people are connected, yet lonelier than ever. There are some great examples of some recruitment companies doing this exceptionally well. As in every economic cycle and market, the recruitment company with the best talent pool wins, if they also have solid client partnerships. It’s time to double down on human to human as recruitment is a people business after all.