The agencies with the best technology aren't necessarily the ones getting the best results.
When partnering with recruitment businesses, I spend a plenty of time with consultants and leaders, and many of the challenges I see aren't technology problems.
They are human ones.
• Consultants aren't always asking candidates enough questions to truly understand their true motivations.
• Business Development is being treated as an activity rather than thinking strategically about where opportunities might exist.
• Client conversations can sometimes become transactional rather than consultative.
• Managers are measuring activity but not necessarily coaching the behaviours that create better outcomes.
Technology can make all those things occur faster. But it won't necessarily make them better.
Perhaps one of the unintended consequences of the AI revolution is that it is forcing us to reconsider what actually makes a great recruiter…
If everyone can generate a credible and relevant client email in seconds, the written word itself is no longer the differentiator.
If everyone has access to sophisticated sourcing technology, finding a candidate isn't necessarily the differentiator either.
The differentiators increasingly become the things that are harder to automate… curiosity, judgement, communication, influence, commercial awareness, sales skills, intuition and the ability to build genuine trust.
This presents an interesting challenge for recruitment leaders.
Of course we should continue to invest in technology. The productivity opportunity is enormous, and agencies that ignore it will inevitably be left behind.
But perhaps we need to ask ourselves a more uncomfortable question:
Are we making an appropriate investment in the capability of the person using the technology as we are in the technology itself?
Giving an average recruiter better technology to use might simply enable them to continue to be average, but faster.
AI can write the email. It can identify the candidate. It can analyse the data and even tell us who to contact next.
But can it guarantee that a recruiter will ask the question nobody else thought to ask? Even challenge a client's thinking?
Recognise what a candidate isn't saying? Build genuine trust? Or influence someone when an important decision needs to be made?
Those are recruitment skills.
And as technology gets better, I believe these skills become more valuable, not less.
So perhaps the competitive advantage of the next few years won't be who has the best AI.
It will be who has the best recruiters using it.