#458 Is Your Recruiting Truly Up to Date? - Article by Niels Brabandt

Is Your Recruiting Truly Up to Date?

Why Modern Talent Acquisition Is a Leadership Strategy – Not an HR Process

By Niels Brabandt

Recruiting is one of those corporate activities many executives believe they understand until it quietly undermines their organisation’s future. Ask senior leaders who “owns” recruiting, and the answer often comes quickly: HR. Ask a second question whether recruiting is a strategic function, and the hesitation begins.

That hesitation is the problem.

Recruiting is not an administrative process. It is a leadership strategy. And organisations that fail to understand this are already losing the competition for talent, often without realising it.

When Arbitrary Judgement Replaces Professional Standards

Recent public debates on professional networks have once again exposed how deeply flawed many recruiting practices remain. Candidates are rejected for arriving a few minutes late, or, paradoxically, for arriving too early. Others are judged on irrelevant behaviours such as seasoning their food before tasting it during an interview lunch.

These examples may sound absurd, yet they are not outliers. They reflect a widespread tendency to replace evidence-based decision-making with arbitrary judgement and personal bias. The problem is not that managers hold opinions; the problem is that these opinions are elevated to hiring criteria.

Recruiting decisions shape careers, teams, and organisational performance. Treating them as exercises in personal preference is not only unprofessional, it is strategically reckless.

Recruiting Is Strategy, Not a Side Process

One of the most persistent misconceptions in business is that recruiting is “something HR does.” This framing already reveals a deeper issue: recruiting is perceived as external to the core business model.

In reality, recruiting is value creation. Every interaction with a candidate shapes how the organisation is perceived, not only by that individual, but by the market at large. Organisations that treat recruiting as a downstream process inevitably signal that people are secondary to structure. High-quality talent draws the appropriate conclusions.

Recruiting must therefore be designed and governed as a strategic leadership function, not outsourced psychologically, or operationally, to software systems and bureaucratic workflows.

Candidate-First Design: A Non-Negotiable Principle

Modern recruiting begins with a simple yet often ignored principle: candidate-first design.

Many organisations require applicants to upload a CV as a PDF, only to re-enter the same information manually into complex forms. When challenged, the explanation is predictable: “Our system requires it.”

The uncomfortable truth is this: no candidate cares about your system. Talented professionals care about respect, clarity, and efficiency. When recruiting processes prioritise internal convenience over candidate experience, organisations reveal how they are likely to treat employees later.

Candidate-first design means asking only what is necessary, when it is necessary, and in a way that respects the candidate’s time and intelligence.

Transparency and Speed Are Competitive Advantages

One of the most damaging trends in modern recruiting is silence. Applications disappear into systems without acknowledgement. Interviews conclude without feedback. Decisions are delayed indefinitely under the banner of “capacity constraints.”

From a candidate’s perspective, this behaviour is indistinguishable from organisational incompetence.

High-performing organisations understand that speed and quality are not opposites. From first contact to final decision, the recruiting process must move decisively. In today’s market, the window between initial application and contract signature is often no more than 28 days. Beyond that, the best candidates are gone, not because they were impatient, but because others were professional.

Transparency matters just as much. Candidates should know the process, the number of stages, and the decision timeline from the outset. Endless interview rounds involving anyone who “wants to have a say” do not improve hiring outcomes; they merely increase political interference and bias.

Evidence Over Ego

There is no credible scientific evidence that more interview rounds lead to better hiring decisions. What they do encourage is ego management, risk aversion, and the exclusion of candidates perceived as “threatening” to existing team members.

Professional recruiting relies on clearly defined criteria, structured assessment, and documented reasoning. Decisions based on vague notions such as “not a cultural fit” are often little more than socially acceptable euphemisms for personal discomfort.

Recruiting is not about finding people who feel familiar. It is about selecting people who add value.

Artificial Intelligence: Tool, Not Substitute

Artificial intelligence can support recruiting by improving data handling, reducing administrative friction, and enabling better analysis. What it cannot replace is human judgement, accountability, and genuine interaction.

Candidates increasingly recognise automated responses and generic messaging. Over-reliance on AI without human oversight signals disengagement rather than innovation. The future of recruiting is not “AI-first”, but human-centred leadership supported by intelligent tools.

Recruiting Is a Mirror of Leadership

Ultimately, recruiting reflects how an organisation thinks, decides, and leads. It reveals whether leadership values evidence over intuition, respect over convenience, and relationships over control.

Organisations that invest in modern, transparent, and evidence-based recruiting do more than hire better talent. They build trust, strengthen their employer brand, and create the conditions for sustainable performance.

The critical question for leaders is therefore not whether they can attract talent.

It is whether their recruiting demonstrates the kind of leadership talent wants to follow.

Niels Brabandt is a leadership expert, executive coach, and advisor on sustainable leadership, organisational development, and strategic recruiting. He works internationally with decision makers who seek evidence-based leadership and future-ready organisations.

Niels Brabandt

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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify

For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.

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Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com

Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn

Website: www.NB-Networks.biz

Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.

Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.

Podcast and Videocast Transcript

Niels Brabandt

Recruiting. You probably now think, that's something HR does. And when you think that this is the solution to your worries and probably concerns about future talent, I have to tell you, it's not only HR. It's not only HR. Today we're going to talk about modern recruiting. Is your recruiting up to date? And the whole and quite wild year is behind us.

And one thing just recently on LinkedIn caused massive outrage. And so first, when someone says something which you I always, please, please stay calm and please give a fact-based comment. Do not put your rage on there. This person had to disable their LinkedIn profile for a while. It's now back online, but without a picture and without the company in there. So the person can't be found that easily. So what happened there?

What happened was this person posted a couple of weeks ago and said, when someone is late for the interview, I never hire them. Reason, bad time management. And of course, that is a bit, let's just put narrow-minded because I can Let me tell you something. I'm in London right now. If someone comes to an interview and shows up late, I'm not happy about that. However, I always ask, is everything okay? And when they say, Look, mate, the tube was cancelled, so I had to take the tube after.

That's why I'm 10 minutes late. That is something where I have to say, you need better planning and better time management. Fully agreed. However, when someone says, Look, I'm half an hour late because I'm a single parent and one of my children fell off the stairs and I really had to take care of them, I'd be happy with you being an hour later or showing up next day. As long as you tell me even briefly. And that is perfectly fine because things happen. I don't have family, I don't have children.

And by the way, when children fall off the stairs, taking care of them has priority over telling me that you turn up late, obviously. So you need to be situational. A situational approach is a two of approach to what you decide there. And this person not only caused a bit of criticism there, it went way, way worse a couple of weeks later. A couple of weeks later, this person posted and said, if someone is early as someone just was to an interview, they were 25 minutes early. I never hire them because they have bad time management. They think that their time is more important than my time and that can't be true.

So I don't hire them. And that is just one aspect of the many, many random arbitrary things we have in recruiting. Of course, when someone is early, there might be many reasons. Maybe you live somewhere where a bus goes only every 30 minutes and you either can be narrowly on time or you're way too early. And of course, when you're a good person and you have the opportunity and the option to do so, you show up early. There's nothing wrong with being early. The person maybe has to wait a bit and you you shouldn't be annoyed with that being too early.

Sorry, when you hold this against someone, you are on the same level as someone who also this year posted another manager who said they always go for lunch with people who apply for jobs. And when they put salt and pepper in their food, before they even tasted it, they never hire them because they have prejudices. Sometimes I wonder, I mean, you can't make this up. Sometimes I wonder how can people actually think that this is anywhere near a potentially viable option for recruiting because maybe someone says, I love an absurd amount of pepper in my food. I just love an absurd amount of. And I know that no one would put that much pepper in a piece of food on a plate as I do.

It's just experience. So that's why you put pepper in there. It's actually preparation. You know what happens, so you are prepared. Saying, by the way, salt or pepper on a dish is the reason why you accepted someone or turned someone down is a wildly unscientific assumption. And we have so many arbitrary aspects of recruiting that today we have to talk about is your recruiting up to date and also is it actually up to date for the year 2026? So when we talk about recruiting, one aspect of course is here when people say, okay, look, this is something HR does.

Problem number one. When you think recruiting is only an HR process, you think it's a process, not a strategy. Basically, you have an organization, the organisation exists for itself and outside of the organisation is something with HR. That's, by the way, one of the reasons why often when you are trade fairs or expos and you ask people what does your business do, they can tell you anything in the wildest, tiniest detail. And then the hand goes up and says something. And then there's HR, recruiting and people, I don't know, something. And then there's IT.

They do computers, something, tech, basically anything with power supply. And there you see what the issue is. People do not see HR as what it is. HR is a process. HR is a strategy. It is part of your value creation as an organization. HR is strategy, not a process.

Of course, within HR you have processes for the recruiting process, obviously. However, it is a strategy, not a process. When you think that recruiting is something external, I have to say, not a good look. That's not a wise choice. And as soon as your recruiting begins, the number one thing you have to take care of is candidate first design. And I give you a very simple example. People apply somewhere and then someone says, oh, you have to fill out this form.

And the form begins with, could you upload your PDF here with your CV? So they upload the CV as a PDF, prepared, perfect. And then on the next page it says, oh, could you please put all your different experiences in there? And of course you wonder, why did I have to upload the PDF in the first place then? So why do you have to do things double and triple? And then the answer from that organisation is, yeah, you know, we have this, we have an applicant management system in place and there are different fields that need to be filled and you need to populate the data into these fields. By the way, if you do that way, if you say upload the PDF here and then manually put anything into these fields, that already gives a very clear evidence of how up to date your IT is.

People will most likely say if they really have other options, they say, yeah, well, probably I'm not going to work here. Very important is candidate first design. It's always about the candidate because when the candidate subjectively says, No, not you. Of course, you can always say, well, you shouldn't stop people who want to leave. Just let them leave. But then don't complain about a lack of talent. If you have a non-up-to-date recruiting process, do not complain that people say, I actually work somewhere else.

And this process that you provide here needs to have radical transparency. I give you a very simple example. People apply, and then you say, oh, there's an interview. Perfect. So you have an interview, and it goes really well. And then you ask at the end, okay, is this it or is there going to be an on-site meeting after the telephone call or the online meeting? Then they say, oh yeah, there's an on-site meeting. Yeah. So you have an on-site meeting.

At the end of that, you say, okay, so decision? When do I... Oh no, no, no, you also have to talk to Jane and to Peter and to Noah and to Samuel and to Jamal and to Thomas. And people reasonably wonder, why? Why do I have to do this? When did we start to think that just because anyone who opens their mouth and says, I want to talk with any applicant that is going to join the team, why do we think that this is anywhere near value creation?

Because it's not. It's very simply not. People just want to be heard, but not in a good way. They want to put self-display ego forward. And basically they also want to filter people and say, if I don't like you, you're not going to work here. And of course someone has to be fit for the team, but liking and disliking someone doesn't necessarily mean if someone fits into a team. I give you a very simple example.

Let's say you hire someone for a sales team and suddenly you give one round to another account executive and they realize, oh, damn, that person's really good. Might be a danger to me. I don't want to have any danger in my position. So I'm going to say this person's not a fit for the team. So we're not going to hire them. But we're just not going to hire them. Not happening because I really don't want to have competition on the team.

I want to stay in my comfort zone. So no, it's a straight no for me.

And that is the problem. Radical transparency means yet you have to tell people what is the process from the very beginning. Only relevant people have to be part of the process. So when you hire someone as the assistant of the CEO, obviously the CEO has to talk with them. Perfectly reasonable. Does any other person on the board have to talk with them? Absolutely not.

Does any other person in the process, any department they have to talk with them? Absolutely not. This whole, we have, and by the way, every single round raises the expectations towards what is the package you offer them. When you have five, four, six, seven rounds, I can tell you not only do you go against scientific evidence because there is no scientific evidence that more rounds need to better lead to better candidates, especially when you randomly allow anyone into recruiting, Many people only want to sort out the people who are dangerous to them. And they also want to say at the annual appraisal interview, Look, I do recruiting. I'm important, you know, talent, where's my salary raise? So be sure that radical transparency does not mean anyone is allowed to put their name forward to have another round with the applicant because that doesn't lead to anything sustainable.

If you now say, okay, what is the more sustainable approach? The more sustainable approach is that you have hyper personalization. I give you a very simple example here from the real world as well. When people apply and they get to the this application form when you have one. And then they realise it's the same form for... It's the same form for department leader, team lead, operations people, and even students who work here. It's the exact same form and only on top you choose for which job you apply.

Then of course people will drop out. Hyper personalization means you ask as little, basically ask the least amount of questions you have to ask. For example, if you say, we need people who have a driver's license. Perfectly reasonable question to say, hey, have a driver's license. Or when you say, we need people who have the licence to operate forklifts. Reasonable question to say, do you have a licence to operate forklifts? However, when you just ask, okay, what is your travel destination number one? Tell me.

And people wonder, what? I want to be a factory worker. And they told me I'm in logistics, so I have to put parcels from A to B into trucks and out of trucks. My favourite travel location? What do you expect me to say here? So hyper personalization means it needs to be reasonably tailored to the person applying, not sticking only to your process or even worse, your speed of software. And of course, when you now say, yeah, we are very personal, And that's why we are slower.

Bad news here. You have to deliver speed and quality as Will Kintish, who's probably the most well-known networker in the UK always states in his book and his workshops, speed stuns. You need to be able to fascinate people with how quickly you react. When you apply the right way in my business, you get an answer from Monday to Friday at least on the same day or next day. No exception. And it's very important to deliver speed and quality. And by the way, including your true network, no insider deals, no cheating, no someone can bypass the process and others don't really have a chance.

But we pretend that they have nothing of that nonsense. Speed and quality have to be delivered. You always have to see one aspect. As soon as they apply from first contact to the moment you hire them, it's 28 days or less. When you go slower, you will only get answers from the people who are left. And I can tell you, they are left for a reason. Another hint, not a good reason.

The reason is no one wants them. And now you have to pick them. And at the end, you have to complain about, oh, talent is so bad. No, it's just you being so slow. You have you have to deliver on the promise of speed and quality. And when you make decisions, very important here, I know when it comes to decisions, people say, I don't say anything about the decision because I'm afraid of a lawsuit. When you are in a country where any kind of reasoning may lead to a lawsuit, I can understand that you only give generic answers.

For example, anyone was amazing, but someone else was more amazing than you. You're still amazing. Sorry, not you. Thank you. I can understand that because very easily you might end up in court. Otherwise, give a generic answer. However, anyone has the right to an answer.

The omnipresent level of ghosting that we see at the moment. And it gets worse by the minute with the excuse such as, oh, we are understaffed, we don't have enough people in HR, we don't have the software, we don't have this, we don't have that. Just imagine someone does that with you. And they say, yeah, you want me to have a driver's license, but I don't have it. You want me to operate forklifts, don't have the license. You want me to work early hours, can't do that. You want me to work weekends, can't do that.

But you still have to hire me. So you're asking to be accepted while you show unacceptable behavior. So be sure that everything you decide is evidence backed. The burden of proof is always with you internally, of course, first. When you say there's a high risk of lawsuit, you give generic answers. We all accepted that, unfortunately. That is, by the way, something when people vote for parties who put these laws in place, you get generic answers as a response. But especially when people apply for higher level leadership positions, There, the risk of a lawsuit is pretty low often, and people want to have a good answer and give them a good answer.

Because when you say, yeah, all amazing, but you weren't the most amazing, that is something where people very quickly say, I don't think that is the real answer. And you can give me an answer, you just don't want to put the effort in it. And that's just poor showmanship from your side, which usually ends with bad ratings on Kununu and Glassdoor. So be sure that you put everything forward that you actually have, including the evidence that you have. People love good feedback even when it sometimes says it's not going to be you. The question now is how do you implement everything? As soon as you want to implement that, number one, because often people say, oh yeah, we do something with AI.

That's the usual answer at the moment, something with AI. And AI is tremendously helpful. You know that I got my education from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School, Vanderbilt, and there's going to be another qualification or a couple of them in a couple of weeks. You will find that on LinkedIn then. However, AI is not the solution to absolutely anything. When people receive AI answers, they often can spot them. Probably this is going to be solved in a couple of years or even in the near future, but I just recently did a test where they put 15 emails in front of me.

14 out of 15, I classified correctly as either AI or handwritten. When people have a phone call with you, they know what your personality is, they know how you talk, and as soon as they then suddenly get an artificial AI email sounding like a letter from a legal department, they are probably not too fascinated about that, and they say, oh, you play nice. But at the end, you're just another organisation that doesn't tailor anything. It's just all talk, no trousers. So yes, AI, but yes, plus to brains.

Use your brains, please. People love to work with humans, and that is not even new. This cannot possibly be new to you, at least I hope so. So be sure that you always tailor things, not only using AI. Don't just put some AI slop out there, by the way, when you don't know what AI slop is. Watch the episode from John Oliver last week tonight about AI slop. AI slop is something that young people use as some generic blabla that AI puts out there, either in pictures or in writing.

AI slop means something an AI created, but which is basically useless. So don't use the AI. Don't put AI slop there. We have enough of that already on the internet. In addition to that, always be sure it's always a two-way assessment. You, of course, say the person needs to prove that we can hire them. Well, you also need to prove that they want to work for you.

And I know this is a hard pill to swallow for many, and very quickly people end up with, oh, but back in the days, people weren't so bad. Yeah, But back in the days, it's not today. You have to deal with what is today. And today you find that it's always a two-way assessment. People are less afraid of even facing unemployment because they say, Look, there's such a high pressure on the market on talent. And there's a talent shortage. There's even a workforce shortage.

They need to hire someone. So I'm not going to work somewhere where I really hate it from the interview to our point.

It's always a two-way assessment. The person applies for a job in your organization, but you also apply. To be their preferred employer. And there's always more than one. Be sure about that. And in addition, of course, you need to have diversity in place. Anyone, by the way, now streaming this is woke and left wing.

It's the first person basically signing up for I'm in the category of IQ 75 points and less. So you need, of course, to have diversity. Your recruiters need to be well trained, by the way. There's nothing more ridiculous when you have someone in a recruiting position, first round of recruiting, A very junior recruiter speaks to a very senior lead manager who applies for a certain job and then they say, oh no, sorry, you are doing leadership wrong while this recruiter never let anything. So be aware that recruiters need to be well picked. And then of course, they need to have good software to tech the data. Trust and relationship building is at the core of each recruiting activity because people decide often when they have multiple choices, they always think, what is the organisation taking best care of me?

And what is the organisation where I can thrive the most, have an amazing career, but also a really good time. And they are willing to work for less money as long as you don't go below a certain threshold they have in mind. They are willing to work for less money when they say it's a cultural fit and a personal fit. I can tell that from my experience, even as someone who's self-employed, there are clients where I work for different fees compared to others. And that is perfectly normal, by the way. That is something anyone does. It always depends, of course, the effort, what they expect.

However, when someone is just really obnoxious, It gets way more expensive because I know it's going to be a harrowing job to work for you. And maybe I even walk away. That's something I did just a couple of weeks ago, probably for the second time in 25 years. I said, sorry, just absolutely not a fit to anything. How you deal with people is just wildly overstepping the mark. You even do that towards me. So, no, not me.

Very important is trust and relationship building is at the core of each recruiting business. You see, it's a lot of work. However, when you do it the way we just discussed, and that of course is only a tiny, tiny amount of things you need to do. But if you start with these aspects and you put them in place, then your recruiting will not only be better, it will be future ready for the year 2026. And I wish you all the best putting that in place in your organization. And when you now say, Whoa, I need to discuss something here, feel free to do so. So first, when you watch me on YouTube, leave a like here, subscribe to my channel, feel free to leave a comment or a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, five stars are much appreciated.

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