“What do you do?” she said, in an inquisitive and mildly entitled tone.
“I’m in recruitment” I said.
“Oh, so you’re an estate agent for people?” She mocked.
“Er…sort of” I floundered to a family friends’ 11-year-old.
As someone currently house hunting, it has been fascinating to interact with multiple estate agents as a buyer. It’s given me a chance to consider how the levels of customer experience in a service industry can fluctuate, even in a buyers’ market, and I dread to think what it’s like in a sellers. This, when combined with the bombardment of AI narrative got me thinking – what makes the difference between good and bad service in our sorts of industries, and will AI ever be able to replicate it in recruitment.
When I was 20, I worked in a bar and the manager said, “any time a customer wants to complain or is disgruntled, crouch down so as to appear submissive and not combative” (or words to that effect in a Bath accent). But I’m not sure that’s always right as a panacea, because sometimes people are also just like opinions and there’s nothing you can do to change that. So can AI judge when someone deserves to be disgruntled and when they’re being unreasonable, will AI ever really be able to read body language and emotions, and influence accordingly.
AGI: Recruiter vs. machina
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is often described as the next frontier of artificial intelligence, the point we are accelerating towards where machines will match and surpass human intelligence across a wide range of tasks. While this vision is currently capturing the imagination of the masses, in my industry I don’t think technology will ever replace the power of human connection.
We do of course use automation in our process, but not to replace people, and I don’t ever think it can fully. For us, automation supports the team by keeping candidates informed, speeding up reporting, and removing unnecessary administrative friction, and we’re learning and developing in this regard all the time. This allows us to focus our time and energy on the most valuable element of the search process, namely meaningful, qualitative interaction.
For me, one of the attractions to this very deliberate career choice (yes, actually) is that the work is rooted in customer, and therefore human, engagement. Every customer deserves to feel heard and understood, and be guided by an expert in their field. That requires empathy, intuition, and judgment, not just experience, and I just don’t think that these qualities can be fully replicated by algorithms or LLM’s.
Human consultants act as sounding boards, offering nuanced advice, and influencing outcomes on behalf of clients in a way that goes beyond data-driven matching. The square pegs and round holes that every so often excel in a process would be lost in my view. Two of the placements in my career that I’ve been the most privileged to be part of (Emma & Pippa you know who you are), quite possibly wouldn’t have happened in an age of automation, but they convinced both the customer and I that they could do the role despite what their CV said and, do you know what, they both flew rapidly well beyond those expectations and on to even greater things. I fear an automated process would have simply overlooked them…
So, the difference that good consultants make, is because executive search is never black and white. It’s about understanding people, their motivations, style and cultural fit, and the areas where human interaction plays a defining role. So, whilst I fully embrace and understand that technology enhances efficiency, I still believe that it is the human touch that makes the difference, and the degree to which we invest in it that makes us different.
So, until I’m proven wrong…I’ll keep believing that it’s the people in our business that make the difference, and it’ll take a lot of proving to the contrary. And whilst I respect the job that estate agents do, because as with every industry there are some brilliant ones, I will quietly always think that recruitment is different and, dare I say, a tiny bit harder.
Because, as a recruiter once said to me on the subject, “you don’t see many houses change their minds at the last minute now do you”…