What 40 Years in Recruiting Has Taught Us

While the tools have changed, some things haven’t

This year marks Jerry’s 40th year in recruiting.

Think about what that means. When he started, there was no LinkedIn, no email, no internet and certainly no AI helping people write résumés or prepare for interviews. Recruiting involved a telephone, a Rolodex, a lot of research and probably more paper than anyone would care to remember.

Four decades later, the way recruiters find and connect with people is almost unrecognizable. But for all that has changed, much of what makes someone good at recruiting hasn’t.

Relationships Still Matter

Technology has made it easier to identify people. In many ways, it has made it harder to connect with them.

People are more skeptical today. They are inundated with emails, LinkedIn messages, texts and calls from people they don’t know. Candidates have good reason to question the legitimacy of an opportunity.

A LinkedIn profile can tell you where someone has worked. A résumé can outline accomplishments and experience. An applicant tracking system can search for keywords in seconds. However, none of those tools tell you whether that person is right for a particular opportunity, or the other way around.

That’s where the relationship becomes important. Getting someone to respond is one thing. Earning enough trust for them to have an open conversation with you is another.

Forty years later, recruiting is still about building relationships.

The Résumé Is Only the Beginning

A résumé gives us the facts of someone’s career. The conversation helps us understand the story behind them.

Why did someone make a particular career move? What did they learn when something didn’t go as planned? What kind of environment brings out their best work? What are they hoping to do next?

Those answers aren’t found on a résumé. They come from talking with the person behind it.

The same is true on the other side of the desk. A job description tells candidates what a company wants, but it doesn’t always explain what the organization actually needs. Those can be two very different things.

Listening Is Still One of the Best Recruiting Tools

Recruiters ask a lot of questions. The useful part is what happens after we ask them.

A candidate may share a detail that changes how we understand their experience. A hiring manager may describe a challenge that reveals something important about the position that wasn’t included in the job description.

That only happens if we’re listening.

Forty years of experience gives you perspective, but it shouldn’t give you all the answers. Every candidate brings a different combination of experience, motivation and goals to the conversation. Every client has its own needs and challenges. Experience helps you know what to listen for and, just as importantly, what to ask.

People Remember How You Treat Them

A recruiting career is made up of thousands of interactions, and each of those interactions matters.

Returning a call, being straightforward, respecting someone’s time and listening to what they have to say may seem like small things. Over time, however, they shape how people define the experience of working with you.

Someone you speak with today may cross your path again years from now, perhaps as a candidate, a hiring manager, a client or a referral. That is one reason relationships built decades ago can still matter today.

The technology surrounding recruiting will continue to change. How we search, communicate, interview and evaluate people will change with it.

But after 40 years, the fundamentals remain remarkably familiar.

Listen carefully. Stay curious. Treat people well. And never underestimate the value of a relationship.