The Curious Misalignment Between Recruiting Platforms and the Behavior of Their Customers
If a productive conversation with the right candidate is the only thing that a recruiter is trying to achieve, why are recruiting platforms still selling applications instead of understanding their user's behavior and solving their actual problem?
30-second read
For startups and other high-growth tech companies, there’s a curious misalignment between the recruiting platforms they’re paying for and their own process for sourcing candidates.
The primary outcome of using these recruiting platforms is an inbound job application (amongst other, much less important metrics like clicks and views).
Meanwhile, the recruiting teams that pay to be on these platforms are spending their working hours competing for conversations with skilled workers who don’t use these sites.
Why don't these workers visit these sites? Because they don't need to. Their demand is too high. The supply comes to them.
When a recruiter reaches out to a prospective (optically qualified) candidate via email, InMail, or phone, the only thing that they are trying to do is schedule a conversation. Everything else creates friction. And friction wastes time.
Recruiters aren’t asking these candidates to apply before scheduling. They aren’t making them jump through any hoops.
All they want is an opportunity to talk and pitch their role.
If a productive conversation with the right candidate is the only thing that a recruiter is trying to achieve, why are recruiting platforms still selling applications—which are generally low in quality—instead of understanding their user's behavior and solving their actual problem?
(For context, this is an observation of the general misalignment between technology solutions and the behavior of its customers.)