That thing being: “Talking to candidates and nurturing relationships.”
It’s pro-AI propaganda from kool aid drinkers.
When TF has there not been time to “talk to candidates”?! That IS the job. There’s no “making time for it.”
If you don’t have time for the actual CORE of this work, then you are wasting it on procrastination and virtue signaling with busy work, not spending it on the administrative tasks that naturally result from doing what is truly necessary to complete the work.
The real full desk and full cycle experience is not overwhelming if you plan it properly around how you personally actually function.
There is ZERO reason to do such high volume mass emailing or calling in this work. All that does is ruin quality and make you look INCOMPETENT.
What we do is not an emergency and it’s not curing anything. SO CALM TF DOWN. It’s just business problems that need to be solved in a timely matter. It isn’t life or death.
Example: At agencies when they tell you to mass email 1,000 people with barely any recon done (or sloppily done, but yolo because agencies mainly care about hitting numbers). And then angry candidates inevitably reply back to take them TF off your mailing list because you sent them an accounting job when they are actually in tech, etc.
(And that’s just one example of shitty mass and automated work tactics.)
So whose benefit was that even for?
Even at my peak of juggling my own business clients, agency, and corporate reqs managing anywhere from 25-50 orders, the only thing I “automated” was having people use my Calendly link to schedule time with me. Because playing phone and email tag were the biggest time-suck back in the early days!
Keep it simple, keep it quality. There’s nothing wrong with manual work.
It results in better THOUGHT-OUT efficiency, better relationships, better client and candidate experience, and quality results.
My main success has always come from:
-Batching activities
-Prewriting templates and template skeletons (to customize info for each candidate depending on the role) for all repetitive parts of the process
-Calendly for scheduling
-Structuring my hiring teams into strict adherence of no more than 2-3 interviews per role per candidate. (Or I deprioritize their req for wasting time)
This is my actual 10-step recruitment To Do list:
1. Batch research: companies, industries, employee types, job postings etc
2. Business Development Outreach (only sending a single email after thoroughly researching the company) | Receive assigned roles
3. Discovery Call with Client(s) | Hiring Strategy
4. Sourcing and Candidate Outreach
5. Candidate Discovery Calls (scheduled with Calendly) | Reject or Move Forward ON the call or up to 24 hours after
6. Present Candidates to Client | Schedule candidate interviews with client/hiring managers
INTERVIEWS HAPPENING
7. Provide post-interview Rejection or Advancement feedback to all candidates within 24-48 hours
8. Either recalibrate search or Extend verbal offer | Company sends offer letter to candidate
9. Send invoice 1 week before candidate start date | Close req
10. Administrative organization and cleanup
MY FAVORITE OUTCOMES FROM MY PROCESS:
-Repeat client and referrals.
-I haven’t made a single cold call in YEARS.
-My business is 100% inbound.
If you love this work and find a way to make it simple and enjoyable, there’s no reason to use the crutch of AI for everything.
Let’s think profoundly more for ourselves.
Ava Loreimy 