aking the first step to finding your next opportunity can be daunting. Equally daunting is the search process businesses invest in to identify potential candidates. For many job seekers, pursuing a dream job can feel more like a nightmare. In speaking with several seasoned executives the last opportunity was presented to them by word of mouth or perhaps a recruiter called them repeatedly until they finally a nswered the call. This process is typically referred to as “head hunting.”

Compounding the stress of finding a job is the rapidly changing landscape to identify legitimate job opportunities. Social media, applicant tracking systems and newly evolving AI technologies are being leveraged by companies trying to reduce costs and identify legitimate applicants who want to work.

What makes the job market so strange now is the pace of change with regard to the job market both by job seekers and employers. Think about it, in just 3 short years we have seen a workforce come out of a pandemic, into the “Great Resignation,” with job seekers driving labor costs by competitively putting themselves out to bid and in response large companies had to compete and stay lean now accessing modern AI to recruit and screen candidates prior to evaluating a resume. The pendulum has certainly swung creating unique opportunities and significant challenges for both applicant and employer.

Old school methods prove expensive yet we have found may offer some practicality. As a boutique consulting firm, we have recently been working with individuals taking coffee shop appointments, conducting strengths evaluations and developing resumes so that applicants can take a very intentional approach to securing a quality position. On the other side of the recruitment and placement effort, we are working with employer’ HR professionals to introduce engaged employees and identify strengths of their current team. By working to develop intentional and focused recruitment efforts, employers have become more intentional about “what problem they are trying to solve,” versus looking only at the resume or worse allowing a software to evaluate the applicant based on the resume alone.

By perpetually identifying talent, taking meetings, and making introductions we are working to humanize the recruitment process. Happily, we are finding fewer “fall offs” and absorbing time and materials for employers allowing HR professionals to do what they do best, managing on-boarding, engagement programs, benefits administration and compliance. In short, recruitment has become a full-time job requiring much more effort and access to resources than just placing advertisements on LinkedIn.