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May 3, 2024
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
Successful hiring doesn’t just magically happen
New trend we’ve noticed over the past 2 weeks: companies scaling up hiring again, but they don’t have enough (or any) internal recruiters to do it.
Because they cut them all last year.
We saw this phenomenon in 2021. And it appears we’re seeing it again now. (Admittedly to a lesser extent. I don’t believe hiring will go crazy again until there’s a macro shift in interest rates & the cost of money for fundraising.)
There’s a problem with the talent strategy of “hire & fire your internal recruiters with every cycle shift” approach: it’s not a strategy. It’s as reactive as it gets. (And I say this as someone who 100% benefits from it. The reason why we’re seeing this trend is because companies are coming to us needing help.)
Any time you cut your entire internal recruiting team, a two things happened:
1. You lose all your domain and process knowledge. All the people who know the ins and outs of how your organization hires are gone. You start over from scratch.
How to best partner with the hiring managers. What worked/didn’t work on previous similar searches. How to ‘sell’ your company to job seekers. Relationships built with future possible candidates from previous searches. All the fun things you learn to do better every time a search turns into a trainwreck.
These things take time to hone. And they’re all out the window. The newbie will start from scratch.
2. Anyone left realizes you didn’t learn anything from the last hire/fire cycle.
Layoffs are always unfortunate, but sometimes necessary for a business to survive. Yet repeating the up and down process without asking yourself “is there a better way to do this?” is well, insane. Or just lazy. And no one wants to work for a lazy, crazy company.
(Fun fact: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” was from Rita Mae Brown, not Albert Einstein. You learned something today…)
The point? There’s a better way of doing this. You need:
👉Visionary HR and Talent Acquisition leaders who aren’t still running the 1990’s talent playbook.
If the entirety of your hiring strategy is ‘hire internal recruiters and only use contingent agencies as a last resort’ you’re feeding right into the trap.
👉Find strategic recruiting partners who can integrate with your team, scale up and down as need comes & go, and price things appropriately.
The most innovative things in the recruiting space aren’t faux AI technologies. It’s firms that found the ‘best of all worlds’ approach so you can retain your domain knowledge, get help when you need it (not when you don’t), do the internal heavy lifting (not just source resumes) and not price gouge you.
Hirewell is one of them. Hit me up before you jump back on the crazy train.
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
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Plenty has been written about AI over the past two years. For much of that time, AI has been more hype than reality. I THINK 2026 is when that starts to change.
Here’s the first in a three part series of where we see AI going in the recruiting world.
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For the last few years, most companies treated AI like a recruiting assistant. It helped draft job descriptions, summarize resumes, and speed up outreach. Useful, sure. But it didn’t fundamentally change how hiring worked. And oftentimes, things needed to be double checked before hitting send.
I think that’s going to change.
In 2026, we’re seeing the rise of agentic HR. These are systems that don’t just support recruiters. They can execute work autonomously inside defined guardrails.
That shift is forcing talent leaders to rethink what recruiting teams are actually responsible for and what still requires a human.
From Copilot AI to Agentic Recruiting Systems
Traditional recruiting AI waited for humans to click “next.”
Agentic systems don’t.
They can interpret real-time funnel data, align to hiring goals, and take multi-step action. That includes adjusting sourcing spend, coordinating interview schedules, and triggering workflow changes without manual oversight.
This isn’t automation layered onto old processes. It’s the early version of a self-driving recruiting function.
The Metric That Matters More Than Time-to-Fill
Time-to-fill and cost-per-hire still matter. They just don’t fully capture what’s changing.
A concept showing up more in 2026 is Return on Autonomy. It measures the value created when humans and autonomous systems are paired intentionally.
In plain terms, the question is simple.
Are we using technology to eliminate busywork, or are we just doing the same work faster?
Because speed doesn’t help if it leads to worse decisions, a weaker candidate experience, or more noise in the funnel.
Why This Changes the Role of TA Leadership
As agentic systems absorb transactional work like screening, scheduling, and coordination, the role of recruiting leadership shifts.
The best TA leaders are spending less time managing process and more time doing what actually drives hiring outcomes. That includes aligning hiring to business priorities, building trust with candidates, and improving decision quality.
The real opportunity of 2026 isn’t more AI. It’s that recruiters finally get to focus on the work that requires being human.
The Mistake Companies Are Making Right Now
Here’s the trap.
Companies adopt advanced recruiting technology but keep the same habits. Long approval chains. Inconsistent communication. Unclear evaluation criteria.
When that happens, speed increases, but trust collapses.
Candidates don’t experience innovation. They experience silence, confusion, and a process that feels even more impersonal than before.
In 2026, the human experience of hiring is becoming a differentiator again because so many companies are getting it wrong.
What Talent Leaders Should Be Thinking About Now
You don’t need a total rebuild tomorrow. But you do need clarity.
The companies winning in 2026 are asking the right questions.
What parts of our hiring process truly require human judgment?
Where are we slowing things down out of habit?
Are recruiters trained for strategic work, or just process management?
Do our systems increase transparency, or just efficiency?
These aren’t technology questions. They’re leadership questions.
What’s Next
Agentic HR is changing how recruiting works. It’s also creating a new challenge.
As employers deploy autonomous systems, candidates are doing the same. The result is an emerging AI-on-AI hiring arms race that’s flooding pipelines with highly optimized but low-trust applications.
Next in this series: The AI-on-AI Hiring Arms Race and How to Protect Hiring Quality Without Breaking Trust
A lot of companies are going to try to AI their way into faster hiring this year and still end up with worse results. If you want to build a recruiting model that actually works in 2026, one that balances speed, quality, and credibility, we can help. Reach out if you want a second set of eyes on your hiring approach.
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