#511 Why Your Recruiters Are Crucially Important and Why Most Organisations Get It Wrong
Why Your Recruiters Are Crucially Important and Why Most Organisations Get It Wrong
Article by Niels Brabandt
Recruiting is widely acknowledged as important. Yet one fundamental question remains largely unaddressed in many organisations: why are recruiters treated as a secondary function rather than a strategic lever of business success?
This question sits at the heart of modern leadership and organisational performance. As Niels Brabandt outlines, the answer lies not only in talent acquisition itself, but in how organisations understand human perception, experience design, and leadership accountability.
A defining concept in this context is the primacy-recency effect. People remember first impressions and final impressions disproportionately. fileciteturn1file0
This psychological principle is not theoretical. It shapes every hiring decision made in your organisation.
Consider a real-world example. A visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York delivers an exceptional experience. Yet, if both the entry and exit are characterised by inefficiency and poor behaviour, the overall perception is fundamentally damaged. The beginning and the end dominate the narrative.
The same applies to recruiting.
Your recruiters are the first and last human interface candidates encounter before joining your organisation. If these interactions fail, everything in between becomes irrelevant.
Three systemic failures explain why organisations consistently underperform in recruiting.
First, inadequate qualification.
Recruiters are often placed into roles with minimal structured training. They receive a list of questions, a system login, and the expectation to perform. Communication, interviewing, conflict management, and decision-making are treated as intuitive rather than learned skills.
This is a leadership failure.
Professional recruiting requires continuous education, structured evaluation frameworks, and clear standards. Anything less results in inconsistency and reputational risk.
Second, flawed processes.
Candidates are routinely asked to repeat information already available, navigate inefficient systems, and tolerate delays. These processes signal one message: the organisation prioritises internal convenience over candidate experience.
High-performing candidates do not tolerate such friction. They leave.
Third, low motivation.
Recruiters operate within the systems leaders create. When organisations cut budgets, overload teams, and neglect strategic alignment, motivation declines. This is not an excuse for poor behaviour, but it is a predictable outcome.
Demotivated recruiters do not create exceptional candidate experiences.
The consequences are measurable. Talent loss increases. Employer branding deteriorates. Platforms such as Glassdoor and Kununu reflect systemic dissatisfaction.
The solution is neither complex nor optional.
Organisations must treat recruiters as strategic assets. This requires investment in continuous professional development, implementation of structured and efficient processes, and leadership accountability for recruiter performance and experience.
Recruiting is not an administrative task. It is a leadership function.
Those who recognise this will outperform competitors in the war for talent. Those who do not will continue to lose the very people they seek to attract.
Niels Brabandt represents evidence-based leadership and supports organisations in transforming recruiting, leadership, and organisational performance at the highest level.
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.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Recruiting is important, and you probably know that. The question is, why do you deal with your recruiters the way you do, or let's say in the way I often see in organizations? There's a certain effect of which most organizations do not seem to be either knowledgeable of, or they simply are not aware of the fact that this effect even exists.
Niels Brabandt
Hello and welcome, this time in a very different circumstance. I'm in New York City at the moment. I'm here usually once, twice, sometimes up to four times a year, so greetings from across the pond. When we now talk about recruiting, often you say, "Yeah, you know, this is HR work," right? That, that, that, that's not for me. So let's just do their let them, let them just do their stuff. They do, like, recruiting on the site, I think. Some people have full-time recruiters. However, the question often is, why do you treat them the way you do? And there is a significant issue with what is happening there at the moment. And we are going to talk about that.
Niels Brabandt
Hello and welcome to our to this week's episode. The this week's episode means that we're going to talk about why your recruiters are crucially important. And when you now think, "Hey, they're crucially important because we need talent," yeah, well, that's not the only take you should have.
Niels Brabandt
I am now in New York City, and last week we had a bit of a rainy day on one day. And what happened was I decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I go there every time I'm in New York City. I usually visit three or four museums when I'm on a New York City trip. Big museum fan, different kinds of museums, everything from art to technology, everything that's available across the whole scale.
Niels Brabandt
So the situation was we went to the Metropolitan Museum, and usually this is a pretty safe bet. You get your tickets online, you go in, everything is well from there. However, this time it was slightly different. So why did we go there on that day? That day was rather cold, was rather a bit misty, a bit rainy roughly 7°C, so not, not too warm. Went out with a jacket, and of course you have to check in your jacket when you are at the Metropolitan Museum because you do not want it carried around in the museum.
Niels Brabandt
What happened there? First, I saw a huge queue, a huge queue when you check in your, your jacket. Okay, here are the news. Weather reports are available upfront, but I just thought maybe just many visitors are here today because due to the bad weather, they're doing something inside. One of the most world-famous museums, you can expect there's a queue. So we queued for about half an hour only to find out that only one-third of all spots for taking jackets or checking in jackets are actually busy with people working there. Two-thirds were empty, and I wonder why. Well, anyway, when I saw this, I already handed in my jacket. Reasonably rude person there. Reasonably rude person there.
Niels Brabandt
And so we went to the museum. Amazing museum. Absolutely fantastic experience. There are certain, certain aspects I see every single time, and there are other aspects where I say they are new or they change. And this time was absolutely fascinating to see the European paintings exhibition. So when you are here, be sure to take a look at that. Absolutely fantastic.
Niels Brabandt
The question now is, how do we end this visit? Because we have an effect we, we have a fantastic day. We're in the museum for six, seven, eight hours. We have lunch there. Everything is absolutely brilliant. And now we leave. And when we leave, we see the same big queue. So first, I know that the day was probably busy, but second, I know that also staff in New York City is, is, is available flexibly, even at short notice. So obviously no one from management cared. We queued for more than half an hour to get our jacket back, but that was not all.
Niels Brabandt
When I approached the person, and by the way, I was there with a friend, and he, he had the same experience. He went to one person. They said, "Oh, you're not, you're not at B. You're at A. You have to go to A." Well, I, I don't remember where I checked in my jacket. I, I didn't even know this is relevant. You have an electronic system. You probably could just take it out of the B section or the A section. No? Okay. So they sent him away. Me in the same rude way. "You're not B. You're G." So I went to G. A guy was just hanging, checking in a jacket there, looked at me and says, word by word, "What do you want?" Like "May I have my jacket back?" I am. And then I told him my number. I said, "I'm busy. I'm just busy checking in this, this jacket. I am just waiting, answering your question. I didn't say that you, you have to, like, and before I could even answer it, I'm not dropping this now because you want your jacket. I didn't ask you to do so." And I can tell you when, when customer service is so bad that even someone from a European perspective would say that's straightforward rude, it is probably on US standards below zero out of 10. So I waited there. The person then got me my jacket, and with no words, I left.
Niels Brabandt
So my friend and I, on the way then outside to grab a bit of food in a diner, the main topic after an amazing day at the museum, the main topic was how rude the staff at the cloakroom was. And here you see what the problem is. There is an effect which is called the primacy recency effect. And the primacy recency effect means that people remember most, oh, by the way, out of anything, if it's a list of things, it's a movie, or if it's an experience, people remember most what happened when the whole thing started and what happened at the end. Beginning and end is what people remember the most.
Niels Brabandt
That is why when you have professionally booked holidays, people take very much care of the day when you arrive must be fantastic and the day when you leave must be fantastic as well. Hopefully the experience in between is as well, because otherwise that's not going to help you. But the, the beginning and the end are especially remarkable. You probably know these moments when, when, when you go, I don't know if you do package holidays because I don't. But when you, for example, have an amazing holiday and on the last day, the bus is delayed by four hours and the plane is delayed by three hours and everything goes wrong, you remember that. You massively remember that and basically always say, "I was really relaxed, but that has already gone on my way back home now."
Niels Brabandt
So you see here we have a couple of issues. We have a problem with the primacy recency effect. So first, of course, we have to say the circumstances. I often see that recruiters are put in the job by saying, "Here's a list of questions. Here are the candidates. Go for it." There's no professional interviewing training. There's no professional communication training. There's no conflict management, escalation, de-escalation technique, nothing. People are just thrown into it. So they are basically left in the rain.
Niels Brabandt
So when the circumstances already are bad, you should not be surprised that you do not win talent because news flash, your recruiters are the first face people see. And I give you the very first point where you can be really obnoxious with people when someone says, "Oh, you applied here. Yeah, that's cool. I saw that you put in your LinkedIn, but you need to fill in all the different positions you were working in in the last 48 years manually again." And the reason is our system needs that. So you have to abate our software problems, right? So please do that. Absolutely obnoxious. If anyone says anything near that, you should not be surprised that you are losing talent left, right, and center.
Niels Brabandt
And also when people don't know how to communicate, by the way, they probably haven't learned it. As any other skill, communication gets learned. You need to learn it. So the qualification here is that you need to teach people how to do recruiting, interviewing, communication, et cetera, professionally. Just giving them a PDF and saying, "Good luck from here, and you will figure out the system on the go," is not how anything works.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, if you treat your recruiters badly, their motivation is low. And when their motivation is low, surprise, surprise, they are not going to treat the candidates well who are applying for a job in your organization. So be aware that your motivation is that, that, that, that their motivation is always kept up. It is often a leadership issue why recruiters are demotivated.
Niels Brabandt
You need to be aware of the fact that when your recruiters are demotivated, they are the first face that people see, and they are the last face they see before the job begins. And when they say, "From the beginning, it was really obnoxious, but I really want to work with this organization to make it bearable." And when they say, "The end was also really annoying, very, very technical, very, very bureaucracy, very, very everything annoying," then people will say, "This organization, I will go on Glassdoor and give them three stars out of five on a good day and one star if I'm less, less happy with them."
Niels Brabandt
So you shouldn't be surprised that Glassdoor.com or Kununu, which is the German equivalent of that, the German-speaking equivalent of Glassdoor, looks like the massacre it often looks like where people say either leadership failure, recruiting failure, or both, from ghosting to being rude to having absolutely nonsensical processes in place. All of that drains the motivation of your recruiters because they know that the process is not effective and not efficient. Change it. The quicker, the better.
Niels Brabandt
The question is, how do you implement it right now? The implementation. First, of course, professionalism needs to be learned. You need to qualify your people no matter how much experience they have. You need there's a good reason why many larger organizations have an onboarding week. And when you do not participate in the onboarding week, you cannot start working. So the onboarding week is crucially important, must be followed. After that, there's an important aspect. You need to have a continuous piece of education, any kind of coaching, mentoring, whatever it is.
Niels Brabandt
But people need to be continuously reminded and updated on what is the actual level of science we have at the moment in customer service. If you have people out there who are rude and they say, "Yeah, this is just the way they are." If that's your approach to talent acquisition, I wish you good luck for the future, even in a more easy market, which we might have for the next couple of months or even for a year or two. Even then, even then, rudeness puts people off. And anyone who is qualified has different aspects where they say, "I can work for this company or that company or this company. And you know what? I'm not working for the rude one."
Niels Brabandt
So here you see the continuity is extremely important. And now it's important that you put everything into action. When you say, "Oh, we have all these amazing goals. You know, we want to have a training program. We want to have this. We want to have that ongoing and learning and whatnot." Also, by the way, "Oh yeah, we have lots of stress at the moment because the economy is a bit tight. So we, so we just do it later." Later, meaning most likely never. Or what, what comes out of that is, and I can't stress this often enough, is like a 30-minute online class where people say, "Yeah, a YouTube video will tell me more about customer service."
Niels Brabandt
So very important is you need to get interaction. If you put these actions in, because let's face it, I was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and my main piece of memory after an amazing museum experience, the main piece of memory is still days after that dominated by how bad was the beginning and the end. And that is the primacy recency effect. Put things in action as we discussed it here today, and your recruiting will be way better than any competitor's one, and you will get the talent that you actually deserve and also want to have in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Well, I think I have a couple of questions here," feel free to contact me anytime. So when you watch me on YouTube right now, feel free to leave a like here. Thank you very much for doing so. Subscribe to my channel. That's also very nice. And feel free to leave a comment, of course.
Niels Brabandt
If you now say, "Hey, I'm listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify," feel free to leave a review here, five stars. Thank you very much for doing so. We put a lot of, we put a lot of effort into this. So there's lots of research, design, and everything. We put a lot of effort into this. So you get the news information every single week for now, six years straight. We now are facing more than 1,000 episodes in the German and English language in six years' time.
Niels Brabandt
So we see we offer all of that for free. Feel free to leave a review. Thank you very much for five stars. And of course, recommend the channel, either the YouTube channel or the Apple Podcasts, Spotify channel on any channel, basically friends, colleagues, anywhere. I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone of you to recommend it.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, when you now say, "Hey, do you have something daily?" Yes, we do even have that. We have YouTube Shorts, daily leadership and organizational development recruiting tips. So it really pays off on YouTube not only to put the bell in there, but also to, not only to subscribe to the channel, but also to put the bell in there. The bell tells you you get a short notification that you can see when everything new is happening right there.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you can also follow me on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you now say, "Hey, what do you have to offer?" Feel free to go to my website, nb-networks.biz. So you see, if you now need someone, a professional trainer, speaker, coach, consultant, mentor, project intro manager, feel free to get in touch.
Niels Brabandt
By the way, my email address, nb@nb-networks.com. I'm looking forward to hearing from you there. You can either ask something very specific or you can just have general chat. This is open to absolutely anyone. So I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone of you.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you can always when you now say, "Hey, do we have live sessions?" Yes, we have live sessions. You only can access them when you go for the leadership letter. When you go to expert.nb-networks.com, as soon as you're in there, you sign up for it. You receive one email every Wednesday morning and no worries. It's going to be a hundred percent content, no advertising. There's an ad-free guarantee, 100% content, ad-free guarantee.
Niels Brabandt
I'm looking forward to welcoming you on the list here. And by the way, in every leadership letter, we give you the date and the time and the access link for our next live session. We have one live session basically every week sorry, basically every month. So I'm looking forward to seeing you with the next one. The next one, last one was excellent. So I'm looking forward to seeing you at the next one.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, feel free to follow me on social media, connect with me on LinkedIn, connect properly. Don't do the follow thing. Connect with me properly. And of course, follow me on Instagram like me on Facebook, or then just follow sign up the for the YouTube channel. And then we take it from there. I'm looking forward to being in contact with you.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, when you now say, "Should we put everything into action?" Yes, you should, because the most important thing is what I always tell people at the very end of each and every session: apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast, because only when you apply what you've heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this videocast, there's only one thing left for me to say: thank you very much for your time.