Why is the recruiting process broken in 2024?

It’s no secret that the job market has been absolutely rough the past 2 years.

There’s been over 60k layoffs across 250+ companies YTD.

This has been the first bear market in tech in over a decade, and arguably the worst one since the internet bubble of 2000.

All you have to do is scroll your timelines on X and LinkedIn and you’ll see how rough it’s been.

One thing I’ve seen consistently though is job seekers pointing the finger at recruiters and blaming them for an overall broken hiring process.

I’m not here to debate if recruiters are to blame or not. To me that’s a wasted exercise. As of now, they’re still relevant and apart of most hiring processes, so complaining about them does absolutely nothing for you.

What I do plan though is to peel back the curtain to show you at least why the process is broken today.

The purpose of understanding what they’re going through is to help shift your mindset from recruiters being roadblocks, to recruiters being partners.

By understanding their current pain points, hopefully you’ll see that you’ll get more value by trying to make their lives easier vs. pointing the finger at them.

So if you have an open mind, let’s dig in below 👇:

1: Layoffs → Operating Lean

I’m not sure how accurate this is, but I read a while ago the unemployment rate for corporate recruiters was ~30%.

If true, that’s absolutely insane.

Whether that stat is true or not, take a quick scroll on X and LinkedIn and you’ll see corporate recruiters got rocked with layoffs the past 24 months.

Remember, there is a difference between agency recruiters (like me) and corporate recruiters.

Companies hire me to place people for them and I charge a fee, so I produce revenue. Corporate recruiters are a cost center, and they do not produce revenue.

So naturally corporate recruiters were greatly affected by layoffs because of this. Why keep them onboard if no one is hiring, budgets are frozen, and you don’t know what your headcount is going to look like in the near future?

2: High Workloads

The recruiters that did last have massive workloads right now.

So even though the market is slower, since these teams are so small, they have even more roles on their plate to fill vs the zirp era of 2020-2022.

Add on the fact there are more actively seeking candidates available in the market today than there ever have been, and now they need to spend more time reviewing candidates.

Finally, add on the fact that since we are in an employer’s market, the hiring managers are being pickier and stingier on their requirements.

So less recruiters + high workloads + high candidate volume + tougher requirements.

3: Not Enough Time To Look At Every Candidate

To put this into perspective, I spoke with a corp recruiter I used to work with. She’s working almost 60 positions (!!!) and each position has had 100+ applicants (!!!).

What does this tell me? While there are certainly some recruiters out there that “look at every resume that applies”, there is no way that every recruiter does this. It’s physically impossible. They would be working 24/7 and they don’t get paid enough to do that.

So for example, let’s say I’m working a regular SWE role. My manager wants to start off by interviewing 5 solid candidates.

And let’s say there are 100 applicants.

If I have the same workload as that other recruiter, I have 59 other positions to worry about, right?

So if I can find 5 solid applicants within the first 50 resumes, why would I waste time going through the other 50?

So you could be a perfect fit, the Michael Jordan of SWEs. But if you’re applicant 51, you may miss out in this example.

4: Don’t shoot the messenger

Remember, recruiters aren’t the ones coming up with the hiring process. All they are is just a middleman relaying a message from the hiring manager, and/or an operative acting in the best interest & as an extension of the hiring manager.

That’s it.

If it were up to them, most recruiters would make the hiring process - from screening, to interviews, to offers - much easier, as it makes their life easier.

So, now that we understand a little from the recruiting side what they’re going through, how do we combat this?

Make it as easy for recruiters to help you out.

As Jerry Mcguire says:

1: Make your resume easy to read

Use a “boring format”.

Don’t just list generic roles and responsibilities.

Make sure each experience answers “What you did, how you did it, and why it mattered”.

2: Fill out your linkedin

Remember, “LinkedIn Recruiter” - aka our version of premium - is a completely different site than the linkedin you use.

It mimics a job board. So just like your resume, fill out your profile to the max.

The more keywords you add on there, the more likely you’ll end up on our searches when we source for profiles.

3: Know your stuff

A good resume means nothing if you can’t speak to anything.

Have a great elevator pitch that touches on your background, your most recent role, and how it ties into the role you’re applying for.

Know your resume like the back of your hand. Anything listed on your resume is fair game for managers to ask. So if you don’t know it, take it out or brush up on it.

4: Reach out to job posters

Download a chrome extension called “apollo.io”.

If the job poster is listed, look them up on linkedin, use the apollo tool to scrape their email, and send them your resume directly.

Make sure to include the job id and/or the url of the opening.

From there, send them a brief note of your background and why you’re a fit. A few sentences should do the trick.

If there is no job seeker listed, put on your detective hat and dig on linkedin.

You can read a previous article below on how to do this effectively.

Note: Make sure you’re only doing this if you’re objectively a 70% fit or greater for the position.

More on reaching out to job posters

A lot of people here are reluctant to do this, and I don’t blame them. It can be intimidating reaching out to your potential hiring manager or a gate keeping recruiter out of the blue.

But here’s the thing.

In this market, you need to get proactive and take it in your own hands.

You can’t rely on them and think they’ll read your resume. As I mentioned before, it’s pretty much impossible for every recruiter to read every resume.

If you’re actually at 70% fit, they won’t reject you because you reached out. They may not answer, they may tell you to wait your turn, but they will not reject you because you reached out.

If you were rejected, it was not because you reached out. It was because there were X amount of better candidates.

Another piece of pushback I get from job seekers on this is “I’ve reached out to 40 people and I didn’t hear back! This doesn’t work! It’s a waste of time!”

Listen, the entire agency recruiting industry is built on doing this.

Taking a candidate’s resume, emailing a manager directly, and setting up an interview.

They do not answer us every time. We just keep doing it for 8 hours a day, all day, every day, and eventually we get some hits.

So you are just doing the same thing I’m doing, except cutting me out.

So if you’re not hearing back, just keep at it, eventually you will.

….

If you’re interested to book a call to go over this (or anything else) in more detail, click the link below.

I also put together an ebook with all of these details which you can check out below.