With apologies for my miss-use of the French word form, a lot of the recruiting technology that is out there today really is “Les Misérables”. If Fantine was a recruiter and left alone, unemployed and destitute – I could hear her sing:

I dreamed a dream in times gone by

And hope was high

Recruiting software was worth the buy

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I’m living

So different now from what it seemed

Now recruiting tech has killed

The dream I dream!

The problem has really been that most of the products on the market out there today take a broken process that was developed 20 years ago and try to make it more automated. The only thing you get from automating junk is faster junk. There have been some attempts to get at the heart of the problem (getting the best candidates to want to apply for your job) but little innovation has really helped much. The standard recruiting organization uses a tool to manage the requisition, create a job post, shove it out to irrelevant job boards, and pray for a good outcome. When that fails they call a headhunter. Ugh.

Maybe there is more help to come. Recruiting is going to change because job seekers (both passive and active) are going to change. The target audience for recruiting is more online today than ever before. They like hearing about opportunities – as long as they don’t get spammed. They like to move around a bit to find the best fit.

One area for hope is with referrals. Our employees are connected to huge number of people. But we don’t know how to tap the reservoir. Opportunity knocks. 

So in spite of the efforts of Javert to thwarts the best efforts of change, perhaps there is hope for the dream over this next decade