Be careful what you wish for?
So many recruiting tools. So little time. The RecruitTech hellscape is upon us.
For years, recruiting tech lagged behind sales and marketing tools because hiring was seen as a cost center, not a revenue driver (another rant for another day.) Now, with AI and repurposing S&M tech concepts, we’ve gone from no nice things to all the nice things — real damn fast.
This year we’ve seen countless new software for ATS, HRIS, headcount planning, smart scheduling, referral platforms, interview note-taking, chat bots, and AI sourcing, interviewing, & messaging (aka Deepfake Personalization.)
Every problem solved just creates a new one.
Look at marketing technology with the famous (infamous?) “Martech 5000.” (Now 14,106 but it doesn’t have the same ring.) Google it if you’re not familiar.
More tools, more problems. The same things apply to RecruitTech:
👉A Focus on Features Over Strategy
Gimmicks are rampant. But do they actually solve real challenges?
If your recruiting process is bad, streamlining it with more tech only amplifies issues. Putting things on autopilot makes it harder to diagnose and correct issues.
👉Over-Saturation and Redundancy
How many tools do we need that do the exact same thing? More noise makes it tougher to distinguish what does what.
Who has time to evaluate 50 different ATS options?
And they pretty much copy each other. Without clear differentiators, buyers run to the cheapest option, which will end up having subpar support as providers focus on the bigger fish. Another race to the bottom.
👉Complexity and Integration Challenges
The companies making these tools think of very specific use cases but don’t understand the big picture of what users need to accomplish. They rarely solve a full problem.
Stitching together unrelated software requires technical know-how (not something recruiters are typically known for.) Not to mention one of the biggest tools around – LinkedIn – makes it as hard as possible to integrate with anything.
And unlike sales & marketing teams, talent acquisitions teams are less likely to have dedicated tech specialists.
👉 Escalating Costs & Vendor Lock-In (With Declining ROI)
When you buy more and more tools, the stack not only gets bloated and redundant, but expensive. It’s killer when they lock you into more ‘affordable’ yearly pricing then you realized it wasn’t worth it.
(Apparently this is a SaaS rant now!)
👉Ignoring the Human Element
We should be thinking brains over bots, but too much tech makes you choose bots over brains. Instead of prioritizing human creativity and strategy, you end up fitting your processes around what the tech can do. Which makes you less able to connect with people on a human level to assess talent effectively.
Instead of compelling outreach or genuine conversations, too much tech leads to spam templates or automating people right out of the decision-making process.
Trendy new technology won’t fix a crappy recruiting process. Only brains can do that.
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
